Derek Allsop, defence witness of Radovan Karadzic

In an effort to contest the charges for the Markale massacre on 5 February 1994, Radovan Karadzic called Dr. Derek Allsop from Great Britain. Allsop wrote an expert report for the defense on the incident in which, as alleged in the indictment, a mortar shell fired from the Bosnian Serb army positions killed 66 persons and wounded over 140.

The defense wanted Dr. Allsop to inspect the UN reports and other documents about the scene of the incident and give his opinion on whether it was possible to calculate the distance from which the shell was fired, as Berko Zecevic, the prosecution expert, did in his report. Professor Zecevic examined the remains of the mortar shell and concluded that the zone of the origin of fire ranged from 5,600 to 6,400 meters from the impact site.

The main conclusion of Allsop's report is that there is no sufficient evidence to determine the speed and angle of impact of the shell. Without these parameters, it is impossible to establish the origin of fire. In Allsop's view, the key error in measuring of the angle of descent of the shell was made when the shell's stabilizer was removed from the asphalt where the shell had detonated. Whoever had done that must have known that the edges of the furrow would cave in and that it would be impossible to put the stabilizer back in its original position and make accurate calculations.

Prosecutor Fergal Gaynor cross-examined Dr. Allsop, who dismissed as 'entirely improbable' the possibility that the shell had been thrown on the town market from a nearby building. A previous defense witness, Canadian officer Stephane Joudry, had made that claim in his evidence. Dr. Allsop also dismissed the defense's theory that the incident could have been caused by a planted explosive device and that the shell could have been buried under the asphalt.

The witness confirmed that he had never worked with 120-mm mortars and that he was unfamiliar with the types of mortars the Bosnian Serb forces used during the war. Also, the witness confirmed that he didn't visit the Markale market. Dr. Allsop agreed that there were no grounds for him to contest the findings of experts who had been at the scene of the incident, and particularly those who had investigated the crater and the remains of the shell. However, Dr. Allsop was adamant that based on the documents he had examined it was impossible to determine the distance from which the shell was fired.

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