Impossible Findings

Testifying at Radovan Karadzic’s trial, the Defence’s ballistic expert Mile Poparic continues denying the allegations that the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, under the indictee’s supreme command opened sniper fire on civilians in Sarajevo.

According to the charges against the former RS President, sniper attacks, accompanied by long-lasting shelling, were part of a campaign for terrorising the local population in Sarajevo, which the VRS implemented in the period from 1992 to 1995.

Expert witness Poparic, former officer with the Yugoslav National Army, JNA, said that the bullets, which hit trams in Sarajevo in 1994 and 1995, were fired from downtown Sarajevo territories controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and not from Serb positions in the city surroundings.

Commenting on an attack on a tram in the vicinity of the former Marshall Tito military barracks on November 23, 1994, when two women were wounded, Poparic said that, according to an investigation conducted by Sarajevo police, the bullet entered the tram through an open window and then burst into pieces, wounding he passengers.

“This was practically impossible,” the expert witness said.   

According to Poparic, the fact that the bullet hit the tram under a big angle indicates that the person, who fired it, could not have been situated in the tower blocks in Grbavica, which were controlled by Serbs, but in the Executive Council building, which was held by the ABiH.

Karadzic’s ballistic expert reached the same conclusion about an incident in which three Sarajevo citizens were wounded by bullets in a tram at almost the same location on February 27, 1995.

At the beginning of cross-examination Prosecutor Fergal Gaynor tried to undermine the credibility of the Defence’s expert by saying that he was not an expert in snipers and that he had not been trained to conduct criminal investigations. Poparic confirmed his allegations.

The Prosecutor then examined the Defence’s expert about technical details of modified air-bombs, which the VRS fired on Sarajevo, suggesting that they were improvised and imprecise.  

Prosecutor Gaynor is due to complete the cross-examination of Poparic on May 31.  

Karadzic is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.