Karadzic: Fortified Sniper Nests

Alen Gicevic, a Prosecution witness at the trial of the former president of Republika Srpska, told the Court he spent the war in Sarajevo, adding he was shot in his right lower leg while in a tram near the Holiday Inn Hotel during the course of a ceasefire at the beginning of 1995. 

“I was shot in my right upper leg and I bled a lot. Moments before being wounded I heard two or three gunshots. It all happened in the blink of an eye. I remember the tram was full of people, some of whom were also wounded,” the witness said.
 
Gicevic said that on that day the gunfire had come from the right bank of the Miljacka river, where, he said, members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, were situated.
 
Radovan Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, is charged by the Prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia with crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1992 to 1995.

The charges against him include, among other things, the shelling and sniping campaign conducted in Sarajevo, which resulted in the murder and wounding of thousands of people.
 
The indictment lists 16 sniper incidents that took place in Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, in which more than 20 adults and children were wounded and two were killed.
 
During the course of his testimony, Gicevic said that during the course of the war Sarajevans were exposed to constant sniping, adding the living conditions were difficult in many ways. 
 
“People were fighting for survival. The fact that they never had sufficient food or electricity while being exposed to sniping and shelling during the course of each day made Sarajevo residents live in uncertainty about their own survival. It was simply a fight for survival that lasted for several years,” Gicevic said.
 
During the course of cross-examination the witness repeated that he considered the bullets that hit the tram could not have been fired from positions controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because Serbs targeted the entire tram line in Sarajevo city from their positions in the Grbavica district.
 
Mirza Sabljica, a forensic analyst for ballistics, also testified at this hearing. He said he took part in ballistic investigations of sniper fire in Sarajevo during the course of the war. 
 
The witness said an investigation determined that the tram mentioned by witness Gicevic was attacked from Serb positions in Grbavica, or more precisely from one of four skyscrapers where fortified sniper nests were located.
 
As he told the Hague Tribunal, following the reintegration of Grbavica, “sniper nests” were found in each of the four skyscrapers in the former Lenjinova Street in Grbavica. 
 
“I had never seen anything like that before. We found a few apartments above the tenth floor which were used for nothing else but sniping. Sniper holes had been made in apartment walls. In each apartment we found sand bags and parapets on which sniper guns were placed,” the witness said.
 
At the beginning of cross-examination indictee Karadzic asked the Hague Tribunal to allow him to examine the witness for 30 hours.
 
The Hague Tribunal will respond to Karadzic’s request tomorrow, when the cross-examination of this witness is due to continue.

D.E.