Djukic: Contradictory Views on Tuzla Missile Attack

Defence of Novak Djukic has tried to prove he was not guilty of shelling Tuzla in May 1995 by concentrating on the direction from which the missile was fired.

After nearly three months, the Defence of Novak Djukic completed presenting evidence, to prove that he was not responsible for the murder and wounding of civilians in Tuzla in May 1995.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Djukic, former commander of the Ozren Tactical Group, TG, with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, with having ordered an artillery squad based on Mount Ozren to shell Tuzla using 130mm cannons on May 25 and 28, 1995. Tuzla was then a UN protected zone.

After a missile hit the downtown area known as Kapija, on May 25, 1995, 71 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded.

Djukic’s Defence was based on trying to prove the direction from which the missile had been fired. Three ballistic experts spoke about the issue.

Berko Zecevic, a ballistic expert who originally testified as a prosecution witness, was then also invited by the defence to testify for them.

He said that it “could be concluded” that the missile that hit Tuzla had been fired “from a position located on Mount Ozren”.

“The missile hit a granite floor, that is a hard surface, leaving clear streaks that looked like flukes, as well as sidewise streaks, which enable us to determine the direction from which the missile was fired,” Zecevic explained.

The expert witness further said that he had conducted “a reconstruction of events”, which led him to conclude that the caliber of the missile that hit Tuzla was 130mm.

But two other ballistic experts, Vlado Kostic and Branka Lukovic, who testified as defence expert witnesses, said the missile that hit Tuzlanska Kapija was fired from an opposite direction to the one the Prosecution alleged.

“The orientation of the missile ignition streak and crater undoubtedly determine the missile’s position, direction and orientation at the moment of explosion,” Kostic said.

“The missile that hit Kapija had an east-west orientation. Therefore, the cannon from which it had been fired was located to the east, not to the west [of the city], as the prosecution alleged.”

Kostic told the Court that on the basis of available data, it was “not possible to give a precise opinion on the cannon caliber”, adding that he was not able to spot parts of “guide pin ring” on the photographs showing missile parts found at the location.

“The guide pin ring represents physical evidence that a projectile had been fired from a cannon,” he said. “On the basis of this ring, we can determine which type of cannon was used. Most probably we are talking about a 130 mm cannon, but we cannot confirm this.”

The same expert explained that by looking at the photographs taken at the crime scene, it was obvious that the missile ignition streak was “rather long”, which went to show it “hit the ground at a small angle”.

He continued: “There are two options here. The missile might have been fired from a rusty pipe, so that it oscillated. Another option is that the projectile was set up at the location. No matter how it got there, it is certain that the missile had an east-west orientation.”

In his findings Kostic said he had determined that “in no way could the missile have caused so many victims” as the indictment alleged.

“This many victims could only have been injured or killed had the projectile weighed a couple of hundred kilos, or had an explosive device been mounted on a vehicle, weighing two or three tons,” he said. “But, a single projectile, containing 3.7 kg of explosive, causing so many victims… It is illogical”.

Speaking about the shelling of Tuzla on May 28, 1995, the expert witness said that he noticed “contradictory statements” in the documents made available to him, adding that the crime scene had not been “professionally” analyzed.

“The data is contradictory. We have not managed to analyze it in such a way as to produce valid data for this court,” the expert witness said.

Besides the Court experts, some former VRS members, appearing as defence witnesses, also denied the Prosecution’s claim that the missile had been fired from Mt Ozren.

Mile Savic said that 130mm cannons were located on Ozren but the missile that hit the Tuzla downtown area could not have been fired from there, because the range of the cannons had been “drastically reduced” owing to their age.

Milan Djuric and Ljubisa Corsovic, former VRS members, confirmed that the cannons had not been repaired during the course of the war.

“As the tubes were time-worn and the gunpowder chamber was extended, the shooting range could have been reduced by several thousands metres,” Savic said. “No weapon keeps its original shooting range for so long [‘forever’?].”

Some photographs taken from prosecution expert Zecevic’s findings and opinion, showing the location at Kapija hit by the missile, as well as a vehicle and store window next to the “missile crater”, were shown to the witness.

Savic pointed out that car windows and shop windows were not broken, although close to the explosion site. “Had a missile hit this area, the vehicle would have been turned upside down and destroyed,” he said. “It would have been full of holes.

“The manikins in the shop window are standing up,” he continued. “Such an explosion would have knocked a man down, let alone a doll. This is all hard to understand. All this should have been knocked down and broken.”

Like the Defence expert witnesses, Savic said such a missile could not have caused such consequences as the Prosecution alleges.

The Defence also examined as a witness Mladen Dostanic, former Chief of Staff of the Second Ozren Brigade.

He confirmed that the TG was based on Mt Ozren in 1995, adding that 130mm cannons were located there, but could “not confirm who was responsible for them”.

Djukic was arrested in November 2007. He has been in custody since then. The Prosecution began presenting evidence in March and completed it in October 2008.

Merima Husejnovic is a BIRN – Justice Report journalist. [email protected] Justice Report is a weekly BIRN online publication.