Karadzic: Cleaning the Explosion Location

Sead Besic, former Crime Technician with the Safety Services Center in Sarajevo, testified for the Prosecution at the trial of Radovan Karadzic at the Hague.

He said he was involved in investigations into shelling and sniping incidents in the period from 1992 to 1995, adding his task was to “prepare sketches and diagrams and photograph the locations”.

Besic said that on February 5, 1994, he was asked to photograph the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo, where a mine-thrower grenade had exploded, adding he noticed upon his arrival “a pile of destroyed material, tissue and blood”.

“The explosion location was being cleaned in order to determine the direction from which the mine-thrower grenade had been fired. Ballistic experts placed rods in order to determine the direction from which the projectile had been fired. They said the projectile hit the ground at an angle of 18 degrees and it came from the northeast,” Besic recalled, testifying under face alteration measures.

Radovan Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska and Supreme Commander of its armed forces, is on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws and customs of war, as well as a sniping and shelling campaign conducted in Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995.

The indictment charges him with the shelling of the Markale open-air market in Sarajevo with a mine-thrower grenade on February 5, 1994, when 66 people were killed and more than 140 were wounded. The Hague Prosecution considers that the projectile was fired from the territory controlled by the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, located in a north-northeast direction.

Witness Besic was not able to confirm how many people were killed at Markale in February 1994, but he said he saw “many corpses”.

“I saw corpses on metal sheets. Those sheets had been used for covering market stalls, but people used them to carry the corpses on them. I saw many corpses placed on parts of roofs. People used all kinds of things to transport those people to hospitals or morgues,” Besic said.

The witness told the Court he also photographed the explosion location in front of the Markale marketplace entrance on August 28, 1995, adding he saw “many dead people and many blood stains” on that day as well.

The indictment alleges that a projectile fired from the territory controlled by VRS exploded in the vicinity of Markale on August 28, 1995, killing 43 and wounding 75 people.

During the course of cross-examination, indictee Karadzic asked the witness if it was possible that the bodies of people killed in the Markale incidents were actually “bodies of soldiers who had previously been killed on frontlines”, but Besic denied this possibility.

“The Markale incidents bodies were fresh bodies, with no soil or dirt on them. They were not old. On the other hand, bodies brought from the frontlines were in very bad shape,” Besic said.

Cross-examination of this witness is due to continue on Thursday, December 9.

D.Dz.