Former Chief UN Military Observer: Not Determined Who Fired at Markale Market

Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), has been charged with firing a mine-thrower grenade that exploded in the Markale Market. He has been charged with terrorizing the local population of Sarajevo with shelling and sniping.

The explosion at the Markale Market took place on August 28, 1995, killing 43 and wounding 75 citizens.

Norwegian major Oien was the head of the UN military observers who conducted an investigation into the explosion. He said he went to the Markale Market approximately twenty minutes after the detonation.

While being examined by Mladic’s defense attorney, Dragan Ivetic, Oien said the investigation couldn’t determine which of the conflicting parties fired the projectile.

“Both the VRS and the Bosnian Army (ABiH) had positions in the direction from which the grenade fell on Markale, but the investigators couldn’t determine the exact location from which it was fired,” Oien said.

Oien said they reported on the facts they found in the field and what they personally saw.

“Nothing can change that,” he said.

Defense attorney Ivetic presented Oien with testimony given by Dutch general Cornelius Nicolai, the chief of staff of UNPROFOR in Sarajevo. Nicolai had said that “the chief UN military observer” told him the grenade had come from the Serbian side.

Oien denied having made such a statement to Nicolai. He expressed disbelief that his superiors, who didn’t participate in the investigation, could do that.

Oien was asked if he had gotten information that the Bosnian Army “shelled its own people,” which was mentioned as a possibility by general Nicolai.

“As far as I can remember, we suspected that the ABiH was shooting at Sarajevo,” Oien said.

He however dissociated himself from those allegations by saying he wasn’t sure whether those suspicions were supported by facts. He said local authorities in Sarajevo declared a Danish UN officer, “who went to the ABiH headquarters and told them to stop shelling their own people,” persona non grata in June 1995.

During cross-examination, prosecutor Adam Veber said the Danish officer made that statement after the shelling of the Sarajevo television building on June 28, 1995. Veber said Bosnian Serb Army general Dragomir Milosevic took responsibility for the shelling two days later.

Prosecutor Adam Veber then presented a document in the courtroom. According to the document, Dragomir Milosevic said Sarajevo Television was the “center of the media’s lies against the righteous fight of the Serbs.”

When asked if he knew about this, lieutenant colonel Oien answered negatively. He said he wasn’t in Sarajevo at that time.

The Hague Tribunal previously handed down a second instance verdict against general Dragomir Milosevic, the former commander of the Sarajevsko-Romanijski Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army. He was sentenced to 29 years in prison for terrorizing the citizens of Sarajevo.

Prosecutor Veber tried to argue that the Bosnian Serb Army attacked civilians. He quoted a threat made by a Bosnian Serb Army officer who said he would shoot “at all moving subjects, including women and children,” due to the death of one of his soldiers.

Oien responded by saying he had never heard such an order.

Due to problems the defense is facing in bringing in its last witnesses to testify, the tribunal won’t hold hearings in Mladic’s trial until the end of the week. The trial chamber will decide when the trial will be continued at a later stage.

Mladic has also been charged with the Srebrenica genocide, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina (which reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities), and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.