At the end of his cross-examination, Canadian officer Francis Roy Thomas said that in the nine months of his stay in Sarajevo, the BH Army didn’t use tanks and other heavy artillery on Bosnian Serb positions. In 1993 and 1994, Thomas was in Sarajevo as a UN military observer. Radovan Karadzic’s trial continues on 27 September 2010


Former Republika Srpska president Radovan Karadzic continued the cross-examination of Canadian major Francis Roy Thomas. Karadzic contended that the BH Army had 10 brigades in Sarajevo or ‘50 to 80 thousand men of military age’.

‘I wouldn’t’ agree there were so many of them’, said the witness who was head military observer in Sarajevo from the fall of 1993 to the summer of 1994. According to the witness, the military observers noted that the BH Army personnel did not all have their own weapons. They would hand weapons to other soldiers when they changed shifts.

The Canadian major agreed with Karadzic that the BH Army had some tanks and other heavy artillery, but he noted it was not used. ‘We didn’t see it’, the witness said, adding that in the nine months of his stay in Sarajevo the Serb side never complained that the enemy opened fire from tanks.

The witness agreed with Karadzic that the separation line between the Bosnian Serb army and the BH Army in Sarajevo was from 42 to 64 km long. Thomas nevertheless dismissed the claim of the accused that the line separating the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps positioned around Sarajevo and the BH Army outside Sarajevo was 200 to 250 km long.

In an attempt to contest the prosecution’s allegations that the Serb forces held Sarajevo under siege, Karadzic is trying to prove that the VRS Sarajevo-Romanija Corps had in fact been ‘half-surrounded by the Croat-Muslim forces’: the BH Army Tuzla, Zenica and Mostar Corps, deployed outside Sarajevo.

Radovan Karadzic’s trial continues on 27 September 2010 with new witnesses on crimes in Sarajevo. The trial will be adjourned for one week to give the accused time to examine about 5,500 pages of material seized in the apartments of two former VRS officers.

Sharing