Continuing his cross-examination of the prosecution mortars expert, Radovan Karadzic argued that the shelling incidents targeting the citizens of Sarajevo had been ‘staged to make the Serbs’ position difficult, to gain worldwide sympathy and provoke an international intervention’. In Karadzic’s view, the investigations of those incidents were ‘improvised’ and ‘sloppy’, meant for public consumption


Former Republika Srpska president Radovan Karadzic continued his cross-examination of prosecution mortars expert Richard Higgs. Karadzic contends that the ‘Serb side is not responsible for any of the eight shelling incidents’ the witness analyzed in his report.

In his expert analysis, Higgs established that the mortar shells that hit the Markale market, Dobrinja, Alipasino Polje and five other locations listed in the indictment had been fired from the Serb positions around Sarajevo. Higgs highlighted the fact that he had not taken part in any of the investigations into the incidents he analyzed. His conclusions, Higgs noted, are based on the reports of the Sarajevo MUP and CSB and the findings of UNPROFOR investigative teams.

Karadzic on the other side maintains that the methodology ‘based on trust in the conclusions reached by previous investigators’ cannot be reliable, adding that all the incidents ‘were staged to make the Serbs’ position difficult, to gain worldwide sympathy and provoke an international intervention’. As Karadzic put it, the investigations were ‘improvised’ and ‘sloppy’ and meant for public consumption.

In a brief re-examination the prosecutor tendered into evidence a stabilizer fin from the shell that killed 43 and injured 75 persons at the Markale market on 28 August 1995, as the indictment alleges. The witness confirmed that the shell had been fired from the VRS positions on Mount Trebevic.

Initially the Trial Chamber granted Karadzic three hours for the cross-examination and then allowed him an additional half an hour to complete it. Karadzic maintains that he has not been given enough time to ‘shed light’ on all eight incidents. Karadzic was ‘somewhat relieved’ to hear the prosecution intended to call quite a few witnesses who also took part in the crime scene investigations after the incidents.

Tomorrow, the prosecution will examine prosecution expert Tomasz Blaszczyk on the chain of custody of Ratko Mladic’s diaries, from the time they were recovered in Belgrade to their transfer to the Tribunal. The trial will then be suspended for two weeks, to give Karadzic an opportunity to listen to the audio tapes seized together with Mladic’s diaries in Mladic’s wife’s apartment in Belgrade. In the meantime, there will be a status conference at which the parties will discuss the progress of the trial.

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