Ronald Hatchett, defence witness of Radovan Karadzic

After a break that lasted almost a month, because of the Orthodox holidays, the trial of former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic for genocide and other crimes during the war in BH continued today. The first to give evidence was retired colonel Milosav Gagovic, former commander in the JNA 4^th Corps in Sarajevo. In May 1992, the 4^th Corps morphed into the VRS Sarajevo-Romanija Corps.

The witness’s statement to the defense was admitted into evidence. In the statement, the witness tried to corroborate Karadzic’s case that Serbs in Sarajevo had to get organized to defend themselves against the constant attacks of the paramilitary and police units from the city. The JNA was neutral and tried to prevent the conflict from escalating, the witness claimed.

Prosecutor Tieger used Gagovic’s testimony to tender into evidence during the cross-examination several intercepted conversations. The witness, Ratko Mladic and other JNA and VRS officers took part in these conversations, which show that the ‘neutral’ JNA sided with the Serbs. Gagovic said that it was only because they wanted to protect Serb civilians against the attacks by Muslim paramilitary groups.

In a conversation on 11 May 1992, Mladic said that ‘Sarajevo is surrounded’ and that the JNA ‘is in a better position’ although its soldiers were blocked in the military barracks. That same day, Gagovic was on the air in a Yutel TV network show in which a journalist begged him to stop attacking civilian areas in Sarajevo. Today the witness said that the JNA always protected civilians but in that particular situation it was impossible to discern who was firing at whom. In another intercepted conversation some days later, the commander of the BH Territorial Defense Hasan Efendic accused the witness of ‘destroying and tearing down’ Sarajevo. ‘Fuck it, you know how the troops react, they open fire from everything they have’, Gagovic replied. The witness today commented that it was ‘a strange conversation’. At the time he was already ‘a commander without an army’ because the JNA was pulling out from BH, Gagovic explained.

Gagovic was then re-examined by Karadzic. He said that the army responded to the provocations from the city: ‘civilian population might have suffered at times’ as a consequence. Gagovic also claimed that Sarajevo was ‘blocked from within and not from the outside’. One couldn’t leave Sarajevo without a large amount of German marks that had to be paid to the people holding the ‘internal siege’, Gagovic explained. Gagovic also claimed that he never heard Karadzic issue any unlawful orders. On the contrary, Gagovic noted, Karadzic begged his subordinate officers ‘not to tarnish the honor of their nation’ and to treat civilians and prisoners of war humanely.

After Gagovic completed his evidence, the defense called Professor Ronald Hatchett, who visited Pale in 1994 with his colleagues from the Lord Byron Foundation, headed by Srdja Trifkovic, an American of Serb origin. In his statement, Hatchett said he could see Dr. Karadzic’s peace efforts during his visit to Pale. In front of his US guests, Karadzic rejected General Tolimir’s proposal to end the war by having the Serb forces enter Sarajevo. In a separate conversation with Hatchett, Karadzic proposed to divide BH into two autonomous republics, Serb and Muslim-Croat, with 49 per cent of the territory going to the former and 51 per cent to the latter. Professor Hatchett contends that he conveyed the proposal to US president Bill Clinton, who ‘liked’ the idea, but the State Department dismissed it. The witness said that a little over a year later, in November 1995, a platform was adopted in Dayton that was remarkably similar to Karadzic’s proposal. The cross-examination of the witness began as the hearing drew to a close.