Today belongs to Radovan Karadzic's victims - but he will never give up

ITV News broadcast the first shocking pictures from Trnopolje in August 1992 and Social Affairs Editor Penny Marshall, who met Radovan Karadzic in 1992, helped to expose the brutal concentration camps he set up in Bosnia.

Today is the day of reckoning for Radovan Karadzic, the man I first met in the hills above Sarajevo in the summer of 1992 as his shells reigned down on the city below.

But it is also - crucially - a day which belongs to his victims: some of whom have spent 25 years searching for their murdered and missing loved ones. They need and deserve justice.

There were plenty of us at ITN; reporters, camera operators and fixers who went out to Bosnia regularly in the early 1990s. Witnesses to all this. Many went much more often than me.

But I'm the one Dr Karadzic likes to mention sometimes. He doesn’t like me... Not one bit.

The last time he talked about me he asked how I could sleep at night, given the lies I have told.

It is very strange being named and known by a man now convicted of some of worst crimes in Europe since the Second World War. Some would wear the association as a badge of honour, but make no mistake, the association has not come without its own trials and tribulations for me.

For when Dr Karadzic was in hiding before this trial, some of his apologists and supporters launched an attack on our journalistic integrity in an attempt to destroy my reputation and damage ITN.

Along with my colleague from Channel 4 News, Ian Williams, who was also attacked, we chose to sue for libel when the accusations that we had fabricated footage of the Bosnian Serb detention camps was picked up and believed by some intellectuals here.

We won in the High Court. Overwhelmingly. That poison did not enter the well of history.

But whilst our libel trial was a mere historical footnote, this trial is on the main page - a vital moment for Bosnia and it may well have implications for other leaders whose actions during war are judged in court as well.

Today the Court judged a senior leader responsible. This then was no local mayhem and madness - but deliberate and planned crimes against humanity and genocide.

Karadzic personally arranged ITN's visit to the heart of war-torn Bosnia Credit: ITV News

I’m sure over the coming 40 years - or for the rest of his life - which ever is longer - the unrepentant Dr Karadzic will not give up. Appealing and shouting "lies and conspiracy" from his cell.

But he is powerless now - this verdict hands the power of record to those Bosnian Moslems and Croats he tried to have killed.

Many of them have by now gone on to have children and grandchildren. People who weren't meant to be here if Dr Karadzic and the other military leaders and politicians had had their way.

And the survivors will all count their blessings as they say goodnight to each other in peace this evening, remembering those who didn't make it out of the camps, those who died in the burning houses. and the shelled out cities of Bosnia.

And I will remember them too before I shut my eyes to sleep.

For Dr Karadzic, in answer to your question, I do sleep well.

I hope much better than you do.