VRS Commission on Markale Case

Responding to prosecutors’ questions during the cross-examination, a former Commander of the Ilidza Brigade with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, says that Ratko Mladic ordered the establishment of a commission with the aim of determining what happened at Markale market place in February 1994.

Defence witness Vladimir Radojcic said that, “on the basis of an order issued by Ratko Mladic”, he was tasked with participating in a commission, which was supposed to visit the Markale market place in Sarajevo together with UNPROFOR members and determine what had happened at that location.  

“Later on I was informed by an UNPROFOR liaison officer that Muslims did not agree with us working and being members of an expert team, which was supposed to determine what had happened at there,” Radojcic said.

He began testifying on June 25 this year, when he said that, in April and June 1995 he ordered the firing of modified air-bombs on the Sarajevo Television building and “Aleksa Santic” school in Hrasnica, which was used by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH.  

Mladic, former Commander of the VRS Main Headquarters, is on trial for having terrorised local Sarajevo residents through a shelling and sniping campaign. A massacre at Markale market place, which happened in February 1994, when more than 60 persons were killed, is one of the incidents described in the indictment.  

Besides that, Mladic is on trial for genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities, persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout BiH and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.  

Witness Radojcic described the sound of modified air-bombs, saying that it was “scary”.  Responding to a question by Prosecutor Dermot Groome, he said that he accepted that people in Sarajevo would find the sound dreadful.

Prosecutor Groome presented the witness with a document issued by the VRS Sarajevo Romanija Corps in 1993, indicating that “they should restrain from opening fire from large calibre weapons on Sarajevo” despite the fact that “it is our common goal to destroy as many converts to Islam as possible”.   

Witness Radojcic did not want to respond to a question on whether it was appropriate to use the term “poturica” [a convert to Islam] in a document issued by the Corps Command, but he said that he did not use such words.  

“This order was written rather clumsily. One can comment on it in various ways. It says that we should destroy as many people as possible, but then it also says that we should save ammunition. As far as your displeasure with this term is concerned, our forces too were called all sorts of names by members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Radojcic said.

The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Thursday, July 3.