Iceland opened a criminal trial Monday against its former prime minister, Geir H. Haarde, becoming the first country to try one of its leaders over his role in the financial crisis of 2008. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors Mr. Haarde is charged, in effect, with doing too little to protect the country against the depredations of its bankers as they pursued wildly expansionary lending that ended in financial disaster for the country. He was indicted in 2010 by a sharply divided Parliament, charged with violating the laws of ministerial responsibility. Public opinion in Iceland about the case is split, according to Hannes Holmsteinn Gissurarson, a professor at the University of Iceland. Some people hope the case will help to shine more light on a traumatic episode, but “many think that Haarde is a sacrificial lamb, and that it is strange to drag him in front of court for something he failed to do,” Mr. Gissurarson said. “He may be a failed politician, but is he a criminal?” The trial opened a month after an Icelandic prosecutor indicted the former heads of one of three failed Icelandic bank, Kaupthing, on charges of fraud and market manipulation. Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the bank’s former chief executive, and Sigurdur Einarsson, the former chairman, have pleaded not guilty and are due in court later this year. Iceland was hit harder by the global financial crisis than many other countries because of its inflated banking system. In a matter of weeks after the banks’ collapse, the unemployment rate jumped to 10 percent, house prices fell, the currency plunged and inflation surged. Mr. Haarde, whose government was ousted after the debacle, has rejected the charges laid against him, saying as he took the stand Monday that there was “no basis” for them. “None of us realized at the time that there was something fishy within the banking system itself, as now appears to have been the case,” Mr. Haarde told the court on Monday, Reuters reported. Mr. Haarde, 60, served as prime minister from June 2006 until February 2009, until his center-right Independence Party was ousted in general elections by a coalition of the Social Democrats and the Left-Green Movement under Johanna Sigurdardottir. The trial raises renewed questions about what really lay at the heart of Iceland’s financial collapse. While the public is still angry at the bankers, the government ministers are a different matter, and even some members of Parliament who voted to indict Mr. Haarde have started to express doubts about their decision. Perhaps the most prominent of those is Ogmundur Jonasson, the minister of the interior, who said that he has changed his mind and no longer thinks that Mr. Haarde should be singled out to stand trial.
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