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Testifying at Radovan Karadzic’s trial, Defence witness Momcilo Krajisnik denies that Serb political leaders were guilty of the bombing of Sarajevo, adding that the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, just responded to fire opened from the city.
During the cross-examination Prosecutor Alan Tieger confronted Krajisnik with a thesis that “the Serb political leadership called for revenge against Muslim forces and population in Sarajevo”.
“Nobody ever supported the bombing of Sarajevo. On the contrary, in June 1992 the Presidency of Republika Srpska rendered a decision to stop the bombing,” Krajisnik said. He said that he was now “sure that the VRS just responded to fire opened from the city”, although, during the war he “was not sure” whether the Army’s allegations were true.
As a proof that the witness was involved in the attacks on Sarajevo, Tieger quoted an intercepted conversation conducted in the spring of 1995 during which Krajisnik told a VRS officer that “some sort of revenge must follow” and accepted his interlocutor’s suggestion that it should happen “in the city”. During their conversation they mentioned air bombs and “flame” rockets.
Krajisnik said that the conversation was conducted after “a horrible attack from Visoko on Ilijas” and requests by the local Serb population to do something.
Krajisnik denied Prosecutor Tieger’s allegation that Serb political leaders thought out the taking of UNPROFOR members hostage in the spring of 1995.
Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska and supreme Commander of its armed forces, is charged with terrorising civilians in Sarajevo through long-lasting shelling and sniping. Besides that, he is on trial for persecuting Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, committing genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities and taking UNPROFOR members hostages.
The Hague Tribunal sentenced former President of the Republika Srpska Parliament Momcilo Krajisnik to 20 years in prison for crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After having served two-thirds of his sentence, he was released to liberty this year.
Prosecutor Tieger quoted several intercepted telephone conversations during which Krajisnik, among other things, convinced his interlocutors from Serb Diaspora that “the blue helmets” would not be released until “the highest price has been paid” for them. Before that one of his interlocutors told him that “hostages are the cheapest anti-airplane defence”.
Suggesting that he “relaxed the radical” interlocutors from the Diaspora, Krajisnik said that UNPROFOR members were not hostages, but “prisoners of war”.
“I think that the VRS implemented that. If there is some document, indicating that Karadzic said that, I will withdraw my words…If there is evidence that Karadzic ordered the arrest of hostages, although I do not know about such evidence, I could say that it was an act of deterrence,” the witness said.
Reminding that this was “the time of the split between Karadzic and Mladic”, Krajisnik said that he “does not believe that Mladic would have executed it, had it been Karadzic’s initiative”.
Speaking about the document “variants A and B” from December 1991, under which the Serbian Democratic Party ordered the establishment of Serb municipalities in places, where Serbs were the majority, but also in those, where they were the minority, Krajisnik said that he did not know about it at all.
Krajisnik stuck to his statement that, in the spring and summer of 1992 he knew nothing about crimes against Bosniaks and Croats, including the unlawful detention of thousands of people in detention camps, near Prijedor, abuse, murders and forced resettlement.
“I certainly did not know about them. Karadzic surely did not know about them either…Had he known that, he would have certainly informed us,” Krajisnik said, adding that he perhaps heard “rumours” only.
The trial of Karadzic is due to continue on Thursday, November 21.
