Bosnian Serb Commander ‘Didn’t Target Sarajevo Civilians’

“My orders said that nobody had the right to chose civilians as targets,” defence witness Galic told the Hague Tribunal trial of former Bosnian Serb political leader Karadzic on Monday.

Galic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Sarajevo-Romanija Corps who was jailed for life by the Tribunal in 2006 for terrorising the population of the capital, was responding to Karadzic’s question about whether he ordered the shooting of civilians or received reports about such attacks.

He denied that the forces he led in Sarajevo from 1992-94 had a sniper unit, explaining that only individual snipers were deployed against enemy snipers and “important targets” such as Bosnian Army officers.

Karadzic is charged with terrorising civilians in Sarajevo with a systematic shelling and sniping campaign, as well as genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

When asked whether he gave an order to open fire at three-year-old Anisa Pita, a girl who was injured by a bullet injured while playing on the balcony of her house in the Sirokaca neighbourhood of Sarajevo on December 13, 1992, Galic said that he was “sure” that neither he nor any other members of his corps ordered anybody “to open fire at a child”.

However, he suggested that positions held by the Bosnian Army were close to where the girl was hit.

Galic gave almost identical answers when Karadzic presented him with about ten other attacks listed in the indictment in which, as he put it, civilians were “allegedly” wounded.

When asked about the wounding of two women in a bus full of passengers in the Dobrinja neighbourhood on May 25, 1994, Galic said: “It was prohibited to open fire at means of transportation, but if vehicles transported military units, they were considered legitimate targets.”

Presiding judge O-Gon Kwon asked him whether “on the basis of what you know today, you are excluding the possibility that the victims mentioned in the indictment were killed by Serb soldiers?”

Galic responded that he could not say something like that.

“Concerning the victims whose names are mentioned, I cannot say that none of those things happened. The current evidence shows that some incidents undoubtedly happened. However, I am repeating again that I did not have those pieces of evidence in that period of time,” he said.

Karadzic continues examining Galic on Tuesday.