Emir Turkusic, witness at the Radovan Karadzic trial

The trial of Radovan Karadzic continued with the evidence of Emir Turkusic. Former employee of the Counter-Sabotage Department in the BH MUP took part in about a hundred investigations of artillery incidents in Sarajevo in 1994 and 1995.

In his written statement based on his previous testimonies at the trials of Dragomir Milosevic and Momcilo Perisic, the witness spoke about sixteen artillery incidents, including the explosion of a mortar shell at the Markale town market on 28 August 1995. Forty-three persons were killed and 75 injured in the incident.

Commenting on the famous footage from the Markale market, Turkusic said he was convinced that the people in the town market were targeted ‘intentionally’: the aim was to ‘scare the people and put pressure’ on the Bosnian politicians to be more accommodating in their negotiations with the Serb side.

The witness said that on the day of the incident he and his colleague from the MUP went to the Markale market to buy food. Halfway to the market, they saw a large number of cars with legs and arms of the victims protruding from the trunks. The witness and his colleague returned to the MUP, took all the necessary equipment and went to the impact site. After the investigation, the conclusion was that the shell hit the ground at an angle of about 170 degrees, with a five degree error margin.

The witness explained that all the members of the investigation team reached this conclusion independently . It was confirmed by all subsequent investigations, including the one performed by the UN, the witness noted.

In the cross-examination Karadzic claimed that the ‘whole story about the Markale I and II incidents was conceived and planted’ by the Bosnian authorities in order to provoke NATO air strikes against the Serb forces. According to Karadzic, the casualties of those two incidents were in fact ‘old dead bodies brought in from the frontlines’ that were ‘handled without any respect at all’, ‘crammed into car trunks and trucks... this is not something that we do in our culture with the dead bodies and the injured’.

Turkusic replied that Karadzic’s claim was tantamount to a claim that in World War II the English ‘fired rockets on London in order to have nicer history and to trick the Germans’. The witness added that all the victims were taken to hospital, and the media and UN staff that got there quite soon were able to verify that those people had indeed been killed that day and not seven, eight or ten days earlier as Karadzic argued. According to the witness, Karadzic’s claim is a ‘speculation more monstrous than what happened at the crime scene’.

Karadzic will complete his cross-examination of Emir Turkusic tomorrow. The trial will then be adjourned for a month. If some of the scheduled witnesses cannot postpone their evidence, the trial will resume to hear them.

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