[Nell'ambito dei "processi" a Karadzic e Mladic, il "Tribunale ad hoc" dell'Aia è costretto ad occuparsi dei controversi episodi dei massacri del mercato di Markale, nel centro di Sarajevo (1994-1995), dei quali da subito altissimi funzionari dell'ONU e della UNPROFOR misero in dubbio la paternità, ma che servirono per "aprire la pista" ai bombardamenti della NATO contro i serbo-bosniaci. Sul tema si veda anche la documentazione raccolta al nostro sito:
• Reportage di M. Caldarola e M. Marianetti (Contropiano 2/1995)
• Stragi nel mercato (1994, 1995): CHI SONO GLI STRAGISTI? (Guerre e Pace 10/1995)
• Sarajevo 1994: La strage di Markale / Sami snimili svoj zločin
Markale false-flag massacres discussed at ICTY
1) My Brigade Had No Snipers at Sarajevo – Witness (19 Oct 12)
2) Karadzic Witness Denies Mortar Attack Happened (25 Oct 12)
3) Karadzic Witnesses Question Markale Attack (2 Nov 12)
4) Bosnian Army "Shelled Own Side" – Karadzic Witness (9 Nov 12)
5) More articles at serbophobic, anti-yugoslav IWPR website (LINKS)
=== 1 ===
http://iwpr.net/report-news/my-brigade-had-no-snipers-sarajevo-–-witness
Courtside
My Brigade Had No Snipers at Sarajevo – Witness
Battalion commander in besieging Serb forces claims incidents were often fabricated to make his side look bad.
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 761, 19 Oct 12
A former colonel in the Bosnian Serb army told the Hague tribunal this week that there were no professional snipers in his brigade based at Sarajevo, and that incidents where civilians were targeted were “rigged” by the other side.
Blagoje Kovacevic was the third witness to testify on behalf of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, whose defence case began on October 16. [For more, see Karadzic Says He Deserves Praise, Not Prosecution.)
Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, who was president of Bosnia's self-declared Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, planned and oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ravaged the city and left nearly 12,000 people dead. Karadzic’s army is accused of deliberately sniping at and shelling the city’s civilian population in order to “spread terror” among them.
The indictment alleges that Karadzic was responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which "contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory".
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run. He is representing himself in the courtroom.
According to a lengthy summary of evidence which Karadzic read aloud in court, Kovacevic held various positions in the Sarajevo Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army between 1992 and 1996, including chief of operations and training of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, and then commander of a battalion in the same brigade.
He now works as an education and training adviser for the defence ministry of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Karadzic put no questions to the witness once he had finished reading out the summary of his evidence.
During the prosecution’s cross-examination, lawyer Carolyn Edgerton asked the witness about his assertion that there were “no trained professional snipers” in his unit.
“I was the person in charge of training units. I had never organised nor conducted any training of snipers. Snipers in units are selected on the basis of physical and psychological traits and are subjected to special shooting training. I can categorically assert that in the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, there were no such personnel,” Kovacevic said.
He went on to assert that the brigade never issued orders to use snipers. As a battalion commander in the brigade, he said, he would have known about it.
He said it was possible that there were “individuals who wanted to portray themselves as being some sort of specialist to boost their image” but there was no “organised sniper group.”
“Are you disputing that the brigade had firing positions in buildings on Grbavica Street?” Edgerton asked.
“No, but I dispute that they had sniper groups. The brigade did not organise such things. I know that for sure,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then read from a wartime army document listing the types of weapons issued to soldiers in firing positions, including semi-automatic rifles with optical sights, machine guns with optical sights, sniper rifles, and sniper-rifle silencers.
Kovacevic replied that the majority of units of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade were deployed in the “outer ring” of the city, and not facing it.
“That is where this type is weapon is prominent,” he said, adding that “Croatian and Muslim forces had identical weaponry.”
“Are you saying that brigade units at the confrontation line in Sarajevo did not possess any of these weapons?” Edgerton asked.
“Please, an optical sight can be mounted on any kind of rifle, including a hunting rifle, but [a] person having this kind of weapon does not [make] this person is a sniper. In that case, you can say all hunters are snipers if you apply that logic,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then asked who “planned the fire” for soldiers using these weapons in the inner ring of the city.
“There can be no planning of fire. A soldier is either in a trench or in a facility. He’s observing the area in front of him and whatever appears that poses danger, he will fire [at]. If there is no danger, there is no need [to fire],” the witness said.
Edgerton asked “what kind of reporting” units had to make, and if they had to report “every kill” to superiors.
“The person who fires a shot – he doesn’t know whether he made a kill or not. How can he send a report to that effect? This is beyond comprehension,” the witness said.
“Are you saying that a person firing a rifle shot wouldn’t see the target impact? I don’t quite understand,” Edgerton retorted.
The witness chuckled and replied: “I understand that you don’t understand me because you were not in this position.”
He went on to say that “a soldier on the line makes his own decision about whether he will shoot or not, based on the risk assessment that he himself makes”.
“If [the soldier was] really in danger and waited to send a report, and waited for the order to open fire, he would have been killed a hundred times in the meantime. That is completely pointless and senseless,” Kovacevic said.
He pointed out that generally, when a chain of command is set up, an “order is issued of what kind of regime [of] fire is going to be applied, and most often amongst our ranks… we were forced to prove that we were not the ones who opened fire first but rather did it in self-defence”.
Edgerton then asked the witness about a line in his witness statement where he asserts that he only learned about civilian casualties in Sarajevo through the “Muslim mass media.”
Kovacevic confirmed that this was the case, and added that he “didn’t know what was going on in Sarajevo and whether it was really so. I watched that on television.”
“I know how a media war is conducted, and this time the enemy side did not hide it, they openly announced it. I knew that many incidents were rigged but that was all I knew, I didn’t know anything else,” Kovacevic continued.
“Do you mean to say that you had no forward observation of anything that was going on in city?” Edgerton asked.
“In Sarajevo, an urban area, that’s impossible,” the witness replied.
“You had no forward observation of any targets you might be seeking to engage?” Edgerton asked.
“Only what can be seen from the [confrontation] line at a distance of 20 metres,” Kovacevic answered.
Edgerton then pointed out that the witness’s statement says he took measures to avoid collateral damage “when determining whether or not to engage a target”.
“If you fired your weapons with no forward observation I’m really curious about what measures you took to avoid collateral damage,” the lawyer put to the witness.
“You are asking [for] an impossible answer,” the witness said, adding that “to claim that somebody could see from [the] Grbavica [area] what going on in Bascarsija [the old town], that person is crazy… Not every bullet hits the target; there are also ricochets, there are misses, etcetera.”
Edgerton pressed him on this, saying she was not asking for “an impossible answer”, and referred again to his comments about measures to “reduce civilian collateral damage.”
“Quite simply, the order not to open fire without need avoids unnecessary casualties,” Kovacevic replied. “Refraining from senselessly opening fire when there is not a reason – those are simple things, nothing spectacular.… It’s more like appealing to the conscience of the soldier in the trench. To be composed, smart and protect himself without endangering unnecessarily others.”
Edgerton later asked the witness to explain a part of his statement where he says that “we punished breaches of discipline” in the unit.
Kovacevic said the most common example of this would be a soldier getting drunk, firing off his weapon and “provoking a response from the other side.”
Edgerton asked whether any of these breaches had to do with shooting and killing civilians in parts of the city held by the Bosnian government.
“I cannot say precisely what exactly happened over there because I was unable to go there. However, there is one thing that I know because I saw it most often on television… I know many things were staged. There were instances, and I don’t know if they were truthful ones, and it’s not up to me to judge,” Kovacevic said.
Asked whether he ever investigated the shelling of civilians by his forces, the witness said he was not “competent” to do so because he did not have artillery pieces in his unit.
“Were you aware of investigations [into the] sniping and shelling of civilians by [Bosnian Serb] forces in Bosnian government-held territory?”
“I know definitely that the chief of artillery [in the brigade] was maintaining constant contact with the [United Nations] observation team which was deployed at the command post of the artillery unit,” the witness said.
“I take it from your answer that’s a ‘no’, and we’ll move on,” Edgerton replied.
The trial will continue next week.
Rachel Irwin is IWPR’s Senior Reporter in The Hague.
Blagoje Kovacevic was the third witness to testify on behalf of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, whose defence case began on October 16. [For more, see Karadzic Says He Deserves Praise, Not Prosecution.)
Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, who was president of Bosnia's self-declared Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, planned and oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ravaged the city and left nearly 12,000 people dead. Karadzic’s army is accused of deliberately sniping at and shelling the city’s civilian population in order to “spread terror” among them.
The indictment alleges that Karadzic was responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which "contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory".
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run. He is representing himself in the courtroom.
According to a lengthy summary of evidence which Karadzic read aloud in court, Kovacevic held various positions in the Sarajevo Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army between 1992 and 1996, including chief of operations and training of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, and then commander of a battalion in the same brigade.
He now works as an education and training adviser for the defence ministry of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Karadzic put no questions to the witness once he had finished reading out the summary of his evidence.
During the prosecution’s cross-examination, lawyer Carolyn Edgerton asked the witness about his assertion that there were “no trained professional snipers” in his unit.
“I was the person in charge of training units. I had never organised nor conducted any training of snipers. Snipers in units are selected on the basis of physical and psychological traits and are subjected to special shooting training. I can categorically assert that in the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, there were no such personnel,” Kovacevic said.
He went on to assert that the brigade never issued orders to use snipers. As a battalion commander in the brigade, he said, he would have known about it.
He said it was possible that there were “individuals who wanted to portray themselves as being some sort of specialist to boost their image” but there was no “organised sniper group.”
“Are you disputing that the brigade had firing positions in buildings on Grbavica Street?” Edgerton asked.
“No, but I dispute that they had sniper groups. The brigade did not organise such things. I know that for sure,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then read from a wartime army document listing the types of weapons issued to soldiers in firing positions, including semi-automatic rifles with optical sights, machine guns with optical sights, sniper rifles, and sniper-rifle silencers.
Kovacevic replied that the majority of units of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade were deployed in the “outer ring” of the city, and not facing it.
“That is where this type is weapon is prominent,” he said, adding that “Croatian and Muslim forces had identical weaponry.”
“Are you saying that brigade units at the confrontation line in Sarajevo did not possess any of these weapons?” Edgerton asked.
“Please, an optical sight can be mounted on any kind of rifle, including a hunting rifle, but [a] person having this kind of weapon does not [make] this person is a sniper. In that case, you can say all hunters are snipers if you apply that logic,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then asked who “planned the fire” for soldiers using these weapons in the inner ring of the city.
“There can be no planning of fire. A soldier is either in a trench or in a facility. He’s observing the area in front of him and whatever appears that poses danger, he will fire [at]. If there is no danger, there is no need [to fire],” the witness said.
Edgerton asked “what kind of reporting” units had to make, and if they had to report “every kill” to superiors.
“The person who fires a shot – he doesn’t know whether he made a kill or not. How can he send a report to that effect? This is beyond comprehension,” the witness said.
“Are you saying that a person firing a rifle shot wouldn’t see the target impact? I don’t quite understand,” Edgerton retorted.
The witness chuckled and replied: “I understand that you don’t understand me because you were not in this position.”
He went on to say that “a soldier on the line makes his own decision about whether he will shoot or not, based on the risk assessment that he himself makes”.
“If [the soldier was] really in danger and waited to send a report, and waited for the order to open fire, he would have been killed a hundred times in the meantime. That is completely pointless and senseless,” Kovacevic said.
He pointed out that generally, when a chain of command is set up, an “order is issued of what kind of regime [of] fire is going to be applied, and most often amongst our ranks… we were forced to prove that we were not the ones who opened fire first but rather did it in self-defence”.
Edgerton then asked the witness about a line in his witness statement where he asserts that he only learned about civilian casualties in Sarajevo through the “Muslim mass media.”
Kovacevic confirmed that this was the case, and added that he “didn’t know what was going on in Sarajevo and whether it was really so. I watched that on television.”
“I know how a media war is conducted, and this time the enemy side did not hide it, they openly announced it. I knew that many incidents were rigged but that was all I knew, I didn’t know anything else,” Kovacevic continued.
“Do you mean to say that you had no forward observation of anything that was going on in city?” Edgerton asked.
“In Sarajevo, an urban area, that’s impossible,” the witness replied.
“You had no forward observation of any targets you might be seeking to engage?” Edgerton asked.
“Only what can be seen from the [confrontation] line at a distance of 20 metres,” Kovacevic answered.
Edgerton then pointed out that the witness’s statement says he took measures to avoid collateral damage “when determining whether or not to engage a target”.
“If you fired your weapons with no forward observation I’m really curious about what measures you took to avoid collateral damage,” the lawyer put to the witness.
“You are asking [for] an impossible answer,” the witness said, adding that “to claim that somebody could see from [the] Grbavica [area] what going on in Bascarsija [the old town], that person is crazy… Not every bullet hits the target; there are also ricochets, there are misses, etcetera.”
Edgerton pressed him on this, saying she was not asking for “an impossible answer”, and referred again to his comments about measures to “reduce civilian collateral damage.”
“Quite simply, the order not to open fire without need avoids unnecessary casualties,” Kovacevic replied. “Refraining from senselessly opening fire when there is not a reason – those are simple things, nothing spectacular.… It’s more like appealing to the conscience of the soldier in the trench. To be composed, smart and protect himself without endangering unnecessarily others.”
Edgerton later asked the witness to explain a part of his statement where he says that “we punished breaches of discipline” in the unit.
Kovacevic said the most common example of this would be a soldier getting drunk, firing off his weapon and “provoking a response from the other side.”
Edgerton asked whether any of these breaches had to do with shooting and killing civilians in parts of the city held by the Bosnian government.
“I cannot say precisely what exactly happened over there because I was unable to go there. However, there is one thing that I know because I saw it most often on television… I know many things were staged. There were instances, and I don’t know if they were truthful ones, and it’s not up to me to judge,” Kovacevic said.
Asked whether he ever investigated the shelling of civilians by his forces, the witness said he was not “competent” to do so because he did not have artillery pieces in his unit.
“Were you aware of investigations [into the] sniping and shelling of civilians by [Bosnian Serb] forces in Bosnian government-held territory?”
“I know definitely that the chief of artillery [in the brigade] was maintaining constant contact with the [United Nations] observation team which was deployed at the command post of the artillery unit,” the witness said.
“I take it from your answer that’s a ‘no’, and we’ll move on,” Edgerton replied.
The trial will continue next week.
Rachel Irwin is IWPR’s Senior Reporter in The Hague.
=== 2 ===
Courtside
Karadzic Witness Denies Mortar Attack Happened
Former Serb officer says heavy mortar unit was redeployed before Markale market was struck.
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 762, 25 Oct 12
A former officer in the Bosnian Serb army testified at the Hague tribunal this week that it would have been impossible for a mortar shell to hit Sarajevo’s Markale Market in August 1995, as prosecutors claim it did.
“I don’t think that a [120 millimetre] shell can fall on Markale…these are weapons I know very well. In order to hit such a location – well that’s simply impossible. I’d stake my life on that,” said defence witness Stevan Veljovic, who was testifying on behalf of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic.
The accused has long claimed that the August 28, 1995 attack on Markale market – which killed some 34 people and wounded more than twice that number – was staged by the Bosnian government army and not perpetrated by Serb forces for which he was responsible.
This was the second of two major attacks on the Markale market, and should not be confused with the one that occurred in February 1994.
The argument that the 1995 attack was staged was rejected in the 2007 tribunal verdict against Dragomir Milosevic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army’s Sarajevo Romanija Corps, who is now serving a 29 year prison sentence.
Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, the president of Bosnia's self-declared Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, planned and oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ravaged the city and left nearly 12,000 people dead. Karadzic’s army is accused of deliberately sniping at and shelling the city’s civilian population in order to “spread terror” among them.
The indictment alleges that Karadzic was responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which "contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory".
He was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run, and represents himself in the courtroom.
Karadzic told the court that witness Veljovic held various posts in the Sarajevo Romanija Corps during the war. As of early August 1995, the witness was commander of the 4th Sarajevo Brigade.
The accused read out a brief summary of Veljovic’s witness statement, which included the assertion that the 120-millimetre mortar battery located in Sarajevo was sent to the southeastern municipality of Trebinje in August 1995 to assist Bosnian Serb forces there. Thus, such a mortar could not have been used to strike Markale, Karadzic told the court.
The accused did not ask any further questions of the witness.
During the prosecution’s cross examination, lawyer Carolyn Edgerton seized on Veljovic’s claims regarding the 1995 Markale attack. She pointed out that when the witness testified in the Dragomir Milosevic case, he never denied that the incident occurred, and did not mention that the mortar battery had been sent away from Sarajevo.
“Which testimony are we supposed to rely on?” Edgerton asked at one point.
The witness insisted that the army had sent the mortar battery to Trebinje before the August 28 attack on Markale, and was not responsible for the massacre.
Instead, he said, the munition that exploded in the market was “planted and activated by remote control”.
“Our opinion was that the Muslim forces had done this for propaganda purposes,” Veljovic said, adding that he did not mention these matters in his previous testimony because he was not asked about them.
Edgerton pressed the point, especially as regards Veljovic’s new claim that the mortar battery had been moved out of the city.
“This incident is one of the single most controversial events in the history of the conflict around Sarajevo. In the [Dragomir] Milosevic case, you were testifying at the last opportunity to provide that evidence, and you’re saying it didn’t even occur to you to bring it up,” the lawyer said.
Karadzic’s legal advisor Peter Robinson objected before the witness could answer, but the prosecutor continued to press the witness on the issue.
“You had an opportunity in [the Dragomir Milosevic] proceedings to talk about that mortar battery, and are you asserting now that the only reason you chose not to raise it was because you weren’t asked?” Edgerton asked.
Robinson again objected, saying, “That’s an unfair question. He doesn’t have the opportunity to raise issues. He can only answer what he is asked. She’s making a point that this [was] omitted from the Milosevic testimony, and that’s as far as she can go with it.”
“Fair enough,” presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon replied.
Prosecutor Edgerton then turned to a Bosnian Serb army report on the “availability of ammunition and fuel for combat vehicles” dated August 31, 1995 and signed by Veljovic himself.
The report, Edgerton said, listed the number of weapons and vehicles available to Veljovic’s unit, and included “some self-propelled guns and a number of mortars, including 120-millimetre mortars”.
“It seems that this document, dated 31 August 1995, puts in doubt your assertion that your brigade’s mortar battery was out of the Sarajevo theatre,” Edgerton said to the witness.
Veljovic contended that there was “nothing surprising” about this.
“I listed all the equipment that belonged to a number of battalions. I made a list of all material and equipment in order to be sure we had them,” he said.
The prosecutor then moved onto the topic of aerial bombs, which the Bosnian Serb army is accused of using on Sarajevo. They were modified so that they could be launched at targets from the ground.
Veljovic confirmed that the air bombs were “not concise” and the army was “only allowed to use them in wild areas” because they could cause so much damage. They were not used in urban areas “because we might hit our own men or civilians”, he added.
He said that it “should have been the case” that corps or brigade commander would decide on how to use the air bombs, with approval of the army’s main staff.
Edgerton then showed him a report that the Sarajevo Romanija Corps sent the main staff on April 7, 1995 which stated that a 250-kilogram aerial bomb was fired into the Hrasnica area of Sarajevo.
“This document suggests that something happened other than what you said,” Edgerton said.
The witness said that the detonation of such a large aerial bomb would have “such a destructive power” and would be heard “60 kilometres away”.
He said that the United Nations Protection Force in Sarajevo, known as UNPROFOR, would have recorded an incident like this, but that “they never mentioned anything of that kind happening in the territory of the city of Sarajevo”.|
“Are you then saying this didn’t happen?” Edgerton asked.
“It didn’t happen,” the witness said, adding that during his previous testimony, he saw UNPROFOR reports which stated that everything was “calm” in Sarajevo.
Hrasnica, he said, is very close to the city’s airport and UNPROFOR “would have heard [the blast]; they would have informed someone about it. This never happened.”
Edgerton then read aloud from a Bosnian Serb army report, sent from the main staff to Karadzic himself and dated April 7, 1995. It stated that “the enemy activity was adequately responded to whereby an air bomb [of] 250 kilograms was launched on the centre of Hrasnica.”
“This document says not only that Karadzic was informed [but] contradicts your assertion that it didn’t happen,” Edgerton said.
“I don’t know what the main staff told the supreme command. I don’t know anything about that. That’s why I referred to the UNPROFOR report covering the four-day period which was relevant and coincided with this event. For that period, they stated that the situation in Sarajevo was calm,” the witness said.
Edgerton pointed out that Veljovic had previously testified that he knew everything that was happening in the brigade and was also involved in drafting such reports.
“So what should we rely on, Mr. Veljovic?” Edgerton asked.
The witness reiterated that he did not draft the report, that he did not know anything about the bomb being launched, and that “only UNPROFOR could know about that”.
“So in contrast to what you said in the Milosevic case, and what you said today – that the bomb wasn’t launched – you’re now saying you didn’t know anything about it. Is that correct?” Edgerton asked.
“I didn’t know anything about that. I told you that the detonation would have been heard at 60 kilometres away. The UNPROFOR soldiers were there; they would have heard it,” the witness said again.
Judge Kwon then interjected to say it was “difficult to follow” Veljovic’s testimony.
“It’s a separate thing to say that the aerial bomb was not launched at all and saying you don’t know. Even after having looked at the documents that say that the aerial bomb was launched, you are still saying that the bomb was not launched, which means that these reports were lying at the time,” the judge said.
The witness responded that “maybe at that moment” he was not there and was not in a position to know whether the bomb had been launched.
“If UNPROFOR had confirmed the launch, then yes, it happened. I don’t know who signed this on behalf of the Sarajevo Romanija Corps, on behalf of the main staff, and sent it to President Karadzic,” Veljovic said.
The judge again questioned the witness’s assertions.
“So, to be sure, is it your submission that if the UNPROFOR report doesn’t confirm the content of this [army] document, this [air bomb incident] is not true?” he asked.
“Yes, because maybe that day I was in Rogatica and that’s why I didn’t know about that bomb. Maybe I was at home…. If the UNPROFOR report confirmed there was a launch, then yes, but they said it was calm, so there was no launch,” the witness said.
The trial will continue next week.
Rachel Irwin is IWPR’s Senior Reporter in The Hague.
“I don’t think that a [120 millimetre] shell can fall on Markale…these are weapons I know very well. In order to hit such a location – well that’s simply impossible. I’d stake my life on that,” said defence witness Stevan Veljovic, who was testifying on behalf of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic.
The accused has long claimed that the August 28, 1995 attack on Markale market – which killed some 34 people and wounded more than twice that number – was staged by the Bosnian government army and not perpetrated by Serb forces for which he was responsible.
This was the second of two major attacks on the Markale market, and should not be confused with the one that occurred in February 1994.
The argument that the 1995 attack was staged was rejected in the 2007 tribunal verdict against Dragomir Milosevic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army’s Sarajevo Romanija Corps, who is now serving a 29 year prison sentence.
Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, the president of Bosnia's self-declared Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, planned and oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ravaged the city and left nearly 12,000 people dead. Karadzic’s army is accused of deliberately sniping at and shelling the city’s civilian population in order to “spread terror” among them.
The indictment alleges that Karadzic was responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which "contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory".
He was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run, and represents himself in the courtroom.
Karadzic told the court that witness Veljovic held various posts in the Sarajevo Romanija Corps during the war. As of early August 1995, the witness was commander of the 4th Sarajevo Brigade.
The accused read out a brief summary of Veljovic’s witness statement, which included the assertion that the 120-millimetre mortar battery located in Sarajevo was sent to the southeastern municipality of Trebinje in August 1995 to assist Bosnian Serb forces there. Thus, such a mortar could not have been used to strike Markale, Karadzic told the court.
The accused did not ask any further questions of the witness.
During the prosecution’s cross examination, lawyer Carolyn Edgerton seized on Veljovic’s claims regarding the 1995 Markale attack. She pointed out that when the witness testified in the Dragomir Milosevic case, he never denied that the incident occurred, and did not mention that the mortar battery had been sent away from Sarajevo.
“Which testimony are we supposed to rely on?” Edgerton asked at one point.
The witness insisted that the army had sent the mortar battery to Trebinje before the August 28 attack on Markale, and was not responsible for the massacre.
Instead, he said, the munition that exploded in the market was “planted and activated by remote control”.
“Our opinion was that the Muslim forces had done this for propaganda purposes,” Veljovic said, adding that he did not mention these matters in his previous testimony because he was not asked about them.
Edgerton pressed the point, especially as regards Veljovic’s new claim that the mortar battery had been moved out of the city.
“This incident is one of the single most controversial events in the history of the conflict around Sarajevo. In the [Dragomir] Milosevic case, you were testifying at the last opportunity to provide that evidence, and you’re saying it didn’t even occur to you to bring it up,” the lawyer said.
Karadzic’s legal advisor Peter Robinson objected before the witness could answer, but the prosecutor continued to press the witness on the issue.
“You had an opportunity in [the Dragomir Milosevic] proceedings to talk about that mortar battery, and are you asserting now that the only reason you chose not to raise it was because you weren’t asked?” Edgerton asked.
Robinson again objected, saying, “That’s an unfair question. He doesn’t have the opportunity to raise issues. He can only answer what he is asked. She’s making a point that this [was] omitted from the Milosevic testimony, and that’s as far as she can go with it.”
“Fair enough,” presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon replied.
Prosecutor Edgerton then turned to a Bosnian Serb army report on the “availability of ammunition and fuel for combat vehicles” dated August 31, 1995 and signed by Veljovic himself.
The report, Edgerton said, listed the number of weapons and vehicles available to Veljovic’s unit, and included “some self-propelled guns and a number of mortars, including 120-millimetre mortars”.
“It seems that this document, dated 31 August 1995, puts in doubt your assertion that your brigade’s mortar battery was out of the Sarajevo theatre,” Edgerton said to the witness.
Veljovic contended that there was “nothing surprising” about this.
“I listed all the equipment that belonged to a number of battalions. I made a list of all material and equipment in order to be sure we had them,” he said.
The prosecutor then moved onto the topic of aerial bombs, which the Bosnian Serb army is accused of using on Sarajevo. They were modified so that they could be launched at targets from the ground.
Veljovic confirmed that the air bombs were “not concise” and the army was “only allowed to use them in wild areas” because they could cause so much damage. They were not used in urban areas “because we might hit our own men or civilians”, he added.
He said that it “should have been the case” that corps or brigade commander would decide on how to use the air bombs, with approval of the army’s main staff.
Edgerton then showed him a report that the Sarajevo Romanija Corps sent the main staff on April 7, 1995 which stated that a 250-kilogram aerial bomb was fired into the Hrasnica area of Sarajevo.
“This document suggests that something happened other than what you said,” Edgerton said.
The witness said that the detonation of such a large aerial bomb would have “such a destructive power” and would be heard “60 kilometres away”.
He said that the United Nations Protection Force in Sarajevo, known as UNPROFOR, would have recorded an incident like this, but that “they never mentioned anything of that kind happening in the territory of the city of Sarajevo”.|
“Are you then saying this didn’t happen?” Edgerton asked.
“It didn’t happen,” the witness said, adding that during his previous testimony, he saw UNPROFOR reports which stated that everything was “calm” in Sarajevo.
Hrasnica, he said, is very close to the city’s airport and UNPROFOR “would have heard [the blast]; they would have informed someone about it. This never happened.”
Edgerton then read aloud from a Bosnian Serb army report, sent from the main staff to Karadzic himself and dated April 7, 1995. It stated that “the enemy activity was adequately responded to whereby an air bomb [of] 250 kilograms was launched on the centre of Hrasnica.”
“This document says not only that Karadzic was informed [but] contradicts your assertion that it didn’t happen,” Edgerton said.
“I don’t know what the main staff told the supreme command. I don’t know anything about that. That’s why I referred to the UNPROFOR report covering the four-day period which was relevant and coincided with this event. For that period, they stated that the situation in Sarajevo was calm,” the witness said.
Edgerton pointed out that Veljovic had previously testified that he knew everything that was happening in the brigade and was also involved in drafting such reports.
“So what should we rely on, Mr. Veljovic?” Edgerton asked.
The witness reiterated that he did not draft the report, that he did not know anything about the bomb being launched, and that “only UNPROFOR could know about that”.
“So in contrast to what you said in the Milosevic case, and what you said today – that the bomb wasn’t launched – you’re now saying you didn’t know anything about it. Is that correct?” Edgerton asked.
“I didn’t know anything about that. I told you that the detonation would have been heard at 60 kilometres away. The UNPROFOR soldiers were there; they would have heard it,” the witness said again.
Judge Kwon then interjected to say it was “difficult to follow” Veljovic’s testimony.
“It’s a separate thing to say that the aerial bomb was not launched at all and saying you don’t know. Even after having looked at the documents that say that the aerial bomb was launched, you are still saying that the bomb was not launched, which means that these reports were lying at the time,” the judge said.
The witness responded that “maybe at that moment” he was not there and was not in a position to know whether the bomb had been launched.
“If UNPROFOR had confirmed the launch, then yes, it happened. I don’t know who signed this on behalf of the Sarajevo Romanija Corps, on behalf of the main staff, and sent it to President Karadzic,” Veljovic said.
The judge again questioned the witness’s assertions.
“So, to be sure, is it your submission that if the UNPROFOR report doesn’t confirm the content of this [army] document, this [air bomb incident] is not true?” he asked.
“Yes, because maybe that day I was in Rogatica and that’s why I didn’t know about that bomb. Maybe I was at home…. If the UNPROFOR report confirmed there was a launch, then yes, but they said it was calm, so there was no launch,” the witness said.
The trial will continue next week.
Rachel Irwin is IWPR’s Senior Reporter in The Hague.
=== 3 ===
Courtside
Karadzic Witnesses Question Markale Attack
Former United Nations officers express uncertainty over prosecution allegation that Serb unit fired fatal shell at Sarajevo market.
By Velma Šarić - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 762, 2 Nov 12
According to the indictment against Karadzic, on February 5, 1994, a single mortar shell fired from a Bosnian Serb army position outside the city killed 66 civilians and wounded 140 in this crowded open-air market in central Sarajevo.
Karadzic, who represents himself in court, claims that the incident was staged by the Bosnian army in order to provoke NATO attacks on Serb positions around the city.
The first witnesses who testified this week was Stephan Joudry, a retired Canadian army colonel. At the time of the 1994 Markale attack, Joudry was a senior staff officer in the United Nations Protection Force, UNPROFOR, stationed in the Croatian capital Zagreb.
"We received reports about the incident [at the Markale market] which were sent to us from the UN teams in Sarajevo", Joudry said, adding that this was "standard operational procedure".
However, he noted that the reports he saw were not compiled in an entirely professional manner.
"Looking at the report of the crater analysis which was carried out by the operatives on site, there is no way that one could conclude… who was to blame for this incident."
He added that the "methods and the results of the investigation left a rather strange feeling about the whole thing, and many unanswered questions".
The witness said that in his personal view, "the incident was caused by the Bosnian side, probably by a projectile which was thrown by hand from a nearby terrace".
Joudry offered no explanation as to how he came to this conclusion, except to say that “it would be the most efficient way to hit [the target]. Otherwise, it would be impossible to hit the market with just one projectile.”
During cross-examination of the witness, prosecutor Alan Tieger challenged his testimony.
"Mr Joudry, did you visit the crime scene?", Tieger asked, to which the witness replied that he had not done so. Joudry also confirmed that he had not seen the crater or the projectile, or spoken to the witnesses.
"So do you have a basis to dispute the statements of the witnesses?" the prosecutor asked.
“No, I don’t,” Joudry replied.
Asked by the prosecutor to elaborate on his claim that the projectile was thrown by hand from a nearby terrace, Joudry said that "one or two persons could do it, with a mechanism or without one".
Tieger said that afterwards, the attackers would have had to run down "among the bodies of the dead and injured and place a stabiliser [mortar round tailfin] within the crater at such an angle which would show that the shell was fired from far away".
"Yes, that could be the case," Joudry said.
The second witness who testified this week was another Canadian officer, John Russell. He served with UNPROFOR and was based in Sarajevo at the time of the attack.
Russell told the court that he was in Markale on the day of the incident and saw the shell crater.
"The large impact angle was indicating that [the mortar round] probably came from the Bosnian Muslim side," he said. "I mean, that was my initial feeling, but what I stated in my report later was that the projectile was fired from a distance ranging from 900 to 4,800 metres. And judging by the direction from which it was fired, it could have been launched from either side of the front line.”
The witness added that by the time he arrived on the scene, "the shrapnel and the dead bodies had been removed from the site".
“This was an unacceptable interference with the investigation from the Bosnian Muslim side. The stabiliser and all the remains of the projectile had also been removed", Russell said.
During the cross-examination of the witness, prosecutor Kimberly West said such a clean-up was considered "normal procedure", and would not have influenced the investigation because there were sufficient traces left on site.
However, Russell stuck to his claim that clearing the site interfered with evidence, adding that he had even written in his diary that he was convinced “the Bosnian side fired on its own people".
The third witness who testified about the Markale massacre this week, retired Canadian general Michael Gaultier, said that he investigated the scene of the incident a few days after it happened.
He said he was sent to Sarajevo on February 11, 1994, from UNPROFOR headquarters in Zagreb to investigate the incident.
When Karadzic asked this witness whether the crater could have been "dug up", he replied, "We saw a crater on site, but it is true that it may have been interfered with during the time between the incident and the time by which we arrived at the scene."
"The result of our investigation was that the mortar shell was fired from a direction which spread across the territory controlled by both sides, from a distance between 300 and 5,500 meters, and any side could have fired the shell," Gaultier said.
Prosecutor Carolyn Edgerton asked Gaultier whether he was familiar with UNPROFOR's information that there were no Bosnian army mortar positions in the given line of fire at the time of the incident, to which the witness replied that he was.
He also said that he and his team did not visit Bosnian Serb army positions located along the flight path of the mortar.
"It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack", he explained, "so we didn't even ask to go there".
In addition to the three Canadian officers, Karadzic invited another witness this week, Dr Derek Allsop from Great Britain, who wrote an expert report on the Markale incident for the defence.
According to Allsop, the only thing he could confirm as a result of his investigation was that it was "impossible to determine the speed and angle of the shell and therefore the place where it was fired from".
However, Allsop dismissed the theory "that the projectile was fired from the terrace of a nearby building". He said this was "entirely improbable and unfeasible".
The trial continues next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
=== 4 ===
http://iwpr.net/report-news/bosnian-army-shelled-own-side-–-karadzic-witness
Courtside
Bosnian Army "Shelled Own Side" – Karadzic Witness
Former UN observer claims Serb units were not responsible for certain shelling incidents blamed on them.
By Velma Šarić - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 764, 9 Nov 12
A former United Nations military observer testified this week that the Bosnian government army targeted civilians on its own side in Sarajevo in order to provoke an international military intervention.
“I believe that it was part of a strategy, a general strategy of the Bosnian government, to cause an international intervention. Therefore they did what was necessary, including shooting at their own civilians,” said Richard Gray, a retired officer in the New Zealand army, who appeared as a witness on behalf of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic.
Gray served as a UN military observer in Sarajevo from April to September 1992.
He said that when British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd visited the city on July 17, 1992, “the Presidency building was shot at [with mortar fire], and that resulted in the deaths of some ten [people]”.
Gray said that because the mortar shell was fired from a distance of approximately 200 metres, “it could only have been fired from a position controlled by the Bosnian army".
The witness failed to explain how he concluded that the mortar was based at such a close location.
Gray mentioned another incident in July 1992, in which he said "a group of teenagers were being shot at by the Bosnian army while some UN peacekeepers were trying to give them candy".
He also claimed that Bosnian army kept firing at Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, positions from the vicinity of civilian buildings and UN headquarters, in order "to cause the [Serb army] to fire back at these objects".
"This was a general strategy. In fact, we even lodged protests to the Bosnian government against this kind of activity, which we considered illegitimate,” Gray said.
Gray added that the Bosnian army even fired directly on a group of UN observers stationed in Sarajevo.
In the prosecution’s cross-examination, Gray acknowledged that it was "very hard for UN military observers to determine who was actually the first to have opened fire".
"We were in a difficult position, but it was obviously hard to know all the details", Gray explained.
In addition, Gray was asked whether a quote he apparently gave an American journalist – that "the Serbs actually wanted peace"- reflected his views.
Gray said this quote was "not accurate".
"But that doesn't surprise me – journalists tend to misquote and simply state things which aren't accurate," Gray said.
Karadzic, who served as founder and president of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska, RS, from 1992 to 1996, is alleged to be responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer, committed across a number of municipalities throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina. He is also charged with the responsibility for the 44 month sniping and shelling campaign against Sarajevo and the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995.
Another witness appearing on behalf of Karadzic this week was Savo Simic, the former head of artillery for the 1st Sarajevo Motorised Brigade of the VRS. Simic said he was "on the front line for a rather long time, for most of the war", but could not remember the exact dates of his deployment.
At the outset, Karadzic – who represents himself in court – read out a summary of Simic's written statement. It said that "the only activity that the [Bosnian Serb army] had around Sarajevo was defensive, and… that several incidents involving civilians were obviously caused by fire from the Muslim side".
Simic’s zone of control was "in the western part of the front", around the area of Dobrinja and towards Lukavica.
"There was never any kind of intention to terrorise the civilian population," he adde.
In court, Simic said there was “a simple reason" why it was practically impossible for the VRS to shoot at civilians:
"You see, we were under permanent UN observation, and our positions were being constantly monitored by UN peacekeepers."
Simic rejected claims that fire from positions under his control related to incidents mentioned in the indictment.
Under cross-examination from prosecutor Alan Tieger, Simic was asked to explain his statement that VRS troops around Sarajevo were "under double siege, from within and from without".
Simic answered that "one couldn't quite call it a typical siege... rather a major half-siege". He said the presence of Bosnian army troops not just inside Sarajevo but also in areas adjacent to the city created an "internal siege for the Serbs", while the presence of troops of the Bosnian Croat armed forces or HVO could be "considered an external siege".
He failed to explain how the concept of a "siege" fitted these explanations, given that VRS troops were never truly isolated from other Serb units.
"We were all under a kind of siege," he said. "You see, it would have been disastrous for the Bosnian Serbs if the Sarajevo corps of the Bosnian Muslim army connected [up] with the other units of their army. That was a very strained position we were in."
The cross-examination will continue next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR contributor in Sarajevo.
“I believe that it was part of a strategy, a general strategy of the Bosnian government, to cause an international intervention. Therefore they did what was necessary, including shooting at their own civilians,” said Richard Gray, a retired officer in the New Zealand army, who appeared as a witness on behalf of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic.
Gray served as a UN military observer in Sarajevo from April to September 1992.
He said that when British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd visited the city on July 17, 1992, “the Presidency building was shot at [with mortar fire], and that resulted in the deaths of some ten [people]”.
Gray said that because the mortar shell was fired from a distance of approximately 200 metres, “it could only have been fired from a position controlled by the Bosnian army".
The witness failed to explain how he concluded that the mortar was based at such a close location.
Gray mentioned another incident in July 1992, in which he said "a group of teenagers were being shot at by the Bosnian army while some UN peacekeepers were trying to give them candy".
He also claimed that Bosnian army kept firing at Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, positions from the vicinity of civilian buildings and UN headquarters, in order "to cause the [Serb army] to fire back at these objects".
"This was a general strategy. In fact, we even lodged protests to the Bosnian government against this kind of activity, which we considered illegitimate,” Gray said.
Gray added that the Bosnian army even fired directly on a group of UN observers stationed in Sarajevo.
In the prosecution’s cross-examination, Gray acknowledged that it was "very hard for UN military observers to determine who was actually the first to have opened fire".
"We were in a difficult position, but it was obviously hard to know all the details", Gray explained.
In addition, Gray was asked whether a quote he apparently gave an American journalist – that "the Serbs actually wanted peace"- reflected his views.
Gray said this quote was "not accurate".
"But that doesn't surprise me – journalists tend to misquote and simply state things which aren't accurate," Gray said.
Karadzic, who served as founder and president of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska, RS, from 1992 to 1996, is alleged to be responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer, committed across a number of municipalities throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina. He is also charged with the responsibility for the 44 month sniping and shelling campaign against Sarajevo and the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995.
Another witness appearing on behalf of Karadzic this week was Savo Simic, the former head of artillery for the 1st Sarajevo Motorised Brigade of the VRS. Simic said he was "on the front line for a rather long time, for most of the war", but could not remember the exact dates of his deployment.
At the outset, Karadzic – who represents himself in court – read out a summary of Simic's written statement. It said that "the only activity that the [Bosnian Serb army] had around Sarajevo was defensive, and… that several incidents involving civilians were obviously caused by fire from the Muslim side".
Simic’s zone of control was "in the western part of the front", around the area of Dobrinja and towards Lukavica.
"There was never any kind of intention to terrorise the civilian population," he adde.
In court, Simic said there was “a simple reason" why it was practically impossible for the VRS to shoot at civilians:
"You see, we were under permanent UN observation, and our positions were being constantly monitored by UN peacekeepers."
Simic rejected claims that fire from positions under his control related to incidents mentioned in the indictment.
Under cross-examination from prosecutor Alan Tieger, Simic was asked to explain his statement that VRS troops around Sarajevo were "under double siege, from within and from without".
Simic answered that "one couldn't quite call it a typical siege... rather a major half-siege". He said the presence of Bosnian army troops not just inside Sarajevo but also in areas adjacent to the city created an "internal siege for the Serbs", while the presence of troops of the Bosnian Croat armed forces or HVO could be "considered an external siege".
He failed to explain how the concept of a "siege" fitted these explanations, given that VRS troops were never truly isolated from other Serb units.
"We were all under a kind of siege," he said. "You see, it would have been disastrous for the Bosnian Serbs if the Sarajevo corps of the Bosnian Muslim army connected [up] with the other units of their army. That was a very strained position we were in."
The cross-examination will continue next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR contributor in Sarajevo.
=== 5 ===
More to read on Markale's false-flag massacres at serbophobic, anti-yugoslav IWPR website (in chronological order):
Prosecution and Defence Appeal Galic Judgment
By Katy Glassborow - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 466, 1 Sep 06
By Katy Glassborow - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 466, 1 Sep 06
Markale Massacre Revisited
By Merdijana Sadović - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 486, 26 Jan 07
By Merdijana Sadović - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 486, 26 Jan 07
Milosevic Defence Tries to Raise Doubts About Sarajevo Massacre
By Rebekah Heil - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 509, 10 Jul 07
By Rebekah Heil - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 509, 10 Jul 07
Karadzic Denies Sarajevo Siege
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 637, 6 Mar 10
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 637, 6 Mar 10
Milosevic Allegedly Distrusted Army
By Velma Šarić - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 662, 24 Sep 10
By Velma Šarić - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 662, 24 Sep 10
Ex-UN Commander Says Bosnian Serbs Blocked Aid
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 664, 8 Oct 10
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 664, 8 Oct 10
Karadzic Urges “Reconciliation”
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 665, 15 Oct 10
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 665, 15 Oct 10
http://iwpr.net/report-news/karadzic-urges-“reconciliation”
Karadzic Markale Staging Claims Challenged
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 673, 10 Dec 10
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 673, 10 Dec 10
Karadzic Wants Greek President Questioned
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 726, 27 Jan 12
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 726, 27 Jan 12
Judges Won't Subpoena Greek President
By Rachel Irwin - TRI Issue 734, 26 Mar 12
By Rachel Irwin - TRI Issue 734, 26 Mar 12
Mladic Trial Hears Witness to Second Markale Attack
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 764, - 9 Nov 12
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY - TRI Issue 764, - 9 Nov 12