Richard Higgs, witness at the Ratko Mladic trial

The defense of Ratko Mladic, former VRS Main Staff commander, continued the cross-examination of Richard Higgs, prosecution mortars expert. Mladic’s defense tried to contest Higgs’s conclusion that the shell that hit the Markale market on 28 August 1995 was fired from the VRS position on Mount Trebevic. As alleged in the indictment against Mladic, 43 inhabitants of Sarajevo were killed and 75 were injured in the incident.

The defense highlighted the differences between the reports on the Markale incident the British expert prepared for the trials of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic that pertained to the measurements used to calculate the direction of the shell. The differences show that Higgs made some mistakes in the report he produced for the Karadzic trial, the defense argued. According to the defense, Higgs then tried to correct the mistakes in his latest analysis by ‘adjusting’ the calculations from the crime scene reports to fit the prosecution’s allegations.

Higgs agreed that he had amended to some extent the report used at Mladic’s trial. However, in Higgs’s view the ‘differences were minimal’ and didn’t have an impact on his conclusions in the report.

The cross-examination of the prosecution expert was highly technical and extremely confused today. The fact that defense experts had prepared the questions asked by defense counsel Lukic only added to the confusion. At times, Lukic himself didn’t understand the questions, and couldn’t reply to the judges who sought clarifications.

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