Mladic’s Defence Disputes Mass Grave Autopsies
This post is also available in: Bosnian
As the trial of Ratko Mladic continued after a prolonged break on Monday, pathologist Zoran Stankovic contested the findings of a medical expert who previously testified for the prosecution about the autopsies conducted on the bodies exhumed from the Tomasica mine.
In July 2015, medical expert John Clark told Mladic’s trial that 293 bodies dressed in “everyday clothes”, without uniforms, were exhumed from the mine in 2013 and that the vast majority of them had injuries caused by firearms.
Without commenting on the substance of the prosecution’s finding Stankovic tried to undermine them for procedural reasons, pointing out that, according to Clark’s own testimony, he was not officially a member of the exhumation and autopsy team.
Stankovic said this was professionally unacceptable.
“I can’t understand someone saying their role was unofficial … The role should have been specified,” he said.
“It now turns out that a random person could have come and done it… From the court medicine point of view, this is unacceptable,” he said.
Stankovic also said that it was unacceptable that Clark – by his own admission – was not part of the exhumation team from the beginning, but made his report on what he called “unofficial discussions” with Bosnian pathologists who were conducting the autopsies.
Mladic is on trial for genocide in seven Bosnian municipalities, Prijedor among them. He is also charged with the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, the persecution of non-Serbs, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The Hague prosecution is trying to prove that the Bosnian Serb Army killed hundreds of Bosniaks and buried them in Tomasica and Jakarina Kosa in 1992.
Mladic’s lawyer Dragan Ivetic read Clark’s testimony in which he said that he had “little influence to change things” in the autopsy report because he was not doing the actual work.
“I cannot believe he said that. If he did, he should withdraw the report and let a Bosnian pathologist do it… After this statement, his report is unusable for criminal proceedings,” said Stankovic.
He also said that there were discrepancies between Clark’s findings and those of the Bosnian team “in nine or ten cases”.
Stankovic will continue his testimony on Tuesday.
