Zorica Subotic, defence witness of Radovan Karadzic

Zorica Subotic, a ballistic expert from Belgrade, said in her evidence today that the first Markale incident in 1994 was caused by a ‘stationary explosive device’. As for the second massacre in 1995, every scenario is possible apart from the one presented by the prosecution in its case against Radovan Karadzic.

As many as 66 persons were killed and 140 were wounded in the explosion of a mortar shell at the Markale town market on 5 February 1994. In the second incident on 28 August 1995, 43 persons were killed and more than 75 were wounded. The prosecution alleges that both shells were fired from the positions of the VRS Sarajevo-Romanija Corps.

As far as the first incident is concerned, the defense expert claims that ‘it was not possible’ for a shell to fly in and impact on the market without hitting any of the roofs. ‘A shell could be activated at that impact site only if it were placed there and then activated’, she explained. A way to achieve this, as the witness said, was to bury a shell stabilizer fin in the ground beforehand, and then put a layer of material over it and finally to place a shell without stabilizer fins on this base and activate it remotely.

Subotic listed a series of ‘peculiarities’ that in her view showed that the incident did not happen ‘suddenly’ and that it didn’t follow a ‘natural’ sequence: the recording started immediately after the explosion, and the evacuation wasn’t carried out ‘logically’, because the casualties were taken through Denetica Cikma Street, ‘a one-way, small and congested alley, if you compare it with the main road’. The evacuation took only 15 minutes. Cars drove down Marsala Tita Street the wrong way, and there were many persons with the official insignia. Also, the ‘number of victims was manipulated’, Subotic said.

The defense expert claimed that it was ‘much simpler to say what did not happen’ in the second incident. Based on the available documents and the results of the investigation, Subotic concluded that it was ‘technically impossible’ to fire the shell that caused the incident from the VRS positions. Any shell fired from those positions would have been caught on radar and would have exploded as it hit one of the roofs.

Subotic said that based on the evidence recovered on the scene it was ‘completely clear’ that the so-called ‘primary charge’ was used to fire the shell. It ‘could have been fired from a BH Army position, although in that case people would have heard the sound of firing’. The prosecution’s witnesses claimed that the other four shells were used to ‘adjust fire’. According to Subotic, they ‘didn’t have anything to do with this incident’. The four shells didn’t explode on the same day as the fifth shell that caused the massacre. Also, Subotic claimed that it was ‘technically impossible to explain’ the presence of two stabilizers at the crime scene. According to her, there was no plausible explanation for the difference between the stabilizers shown on the photos taken at the crime scene and the stabilizers that were handed over to the Tribunal.

At the beginning of the cross-examination, prosecutor Katrina Gustafson stated that Mrs Subotic didn’t hold a doctor’s degree. In the examination-in-chief, Karadzic addressed the witness as ‘doctor’. The prosecutor also noted that the witness had never done any crater analysis before this report, except perhaps in training grounds while she studied. The prosecution will continue the cross-examination of the defense witness tomorrow.

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