Karadzic: No Orders to Punish Civilians
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Simic, former Chief of Artillery with the First Sarajevo Brigade of VRS, said that VRS forces around Sarajevo exclusively defended themselves, preventing a breakthrough by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and defending Serbian neighbourhoods.
I never targeted buildings inside the city, except the positions from which Muslim forces opened fire. They skillfully placed those weapons next to buildings, which were supposed to be protected…We would respond to fire from their side only in case of extreme urgency, Simic said.
Simic told the Tribunal that his superiors often prohibited him from opening fire in order to avoid hitting civilians. He said that it was not possible to hit the Markale open market twice with individual mine-thrower grenades in 1994 and 1995 in incidents in which hundreds of citizens were killed or wounded.
In an explosion at Markale open market on February 5, 1994, 66 people were killed and 140 wounded. Forty-three citizens were killed and 75 wounded in front of a nearby closed market on August 28, 1995. The indictment charges the two incidents upon Karadzic, who is charged with terrorising civilians in Sarajevo by shelling and sniping. Also, he is charged with genocide, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats and taking international soldiers hostage.
During the cross-examination Simic said that VRS opened fire exclusively on particular points in Sarajevo from which the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina opened fire, adding that they did not target the neighbourhoods of the entire city.
The witness agreed with a suggestion made by Prosecutor Alan Tieger, who said that the shooting of entire neighbourhoods would be considered illegal. I did not hear about such an order. I never received one. As far as I know, no such orders existed. I would consider opening fire at a city without any specific target illegal, he said.
Simic stuck to his allegations even after Prosecutor Tieger showed him a warning issued by VRS Commander Ratko Mladic, who is on trial before The Hague Tribunal, saying that he would return fire on Sarajevo and that the city would quake in case even one single bullet was fired from it.
I am not familiar with that. I did not receive any orders from anybody to commit revenge or punish civilians, Simic said.
Prosecutor Tieger then presented the witness with a transcript of a conversation involving Mladic, which was intercepted on May 28, 1992, and in which he ordered the artillery to target the Velusici and Pofalici neighbourhoods in Sarajevo, because not many Serbs live there. Repeating that he had never received such an order, Simic assumed that the mentioned order was a response to a big offensive from the city by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Both buildings and the population were hit, that is for sure But, the other side is to be blamed for that We did not have an intention to target the city, Simic said.
When asked why they responded to fire from mobile mine-throwers of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina located in the city area, knowing that the weapons would be relocated to other locations and that civilians might be hit, Simic said: They should have taken into account that those were inhabited areas….They directly endangered civilians…We never had an intention to punish or target civilians in Sarajevo.
The trial of Karadzic before The Hague Tribunal is due to continue on Tuesday, November 13.
