Mladic Expert Claims War Didn’t Effect Bosnian Demographics

“With the deepest respect towards every victim, this isn’t data which would lead to significant changes in the vitality of the population,” Radovanovic said while commenting on demographic data presented by expert witnesses testifying for the prosecution.

Radovanovic said the war did not cause a dramatic drop in birth rates or negative increment (when the number of deaths is higher than the number of births). Radovanovic said she based her conclusion on official Bosnian demographic data from 1996-2004.

“There’s no problem when we talk about vitality,” Radovanovic said.

Radovanovic criticized Ewa Tabeau, a demographic expert who testified for the prosecution, for claiming that a massacre took place in Srebrenica.

“I don’t know what her definition of a massacre is. She must know that in demographics there is only violent death in the sense of murder, suicide and accidents…She can’t know if someone was killed in battle, committed suicide or died in an accident…I don’t know what a massacre is, but I presume she meant execution. She couldn’t have possibly known who was a victim of execution,” Radovanovic said.

According to Radovanovic, the names of more than a thousand victims listed in the Hague prosecution report on Srebrenica victims weren’t listed in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 1991 census.

“So I know that those one thousand people were not citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They might have been Muslims, but not necessarily so,” Radovanovic said.

She also accused Hague prosecution experts of manipulating their data and using unscientific methods.

Mladic, the former general of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been charged with genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorizing the local population of Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.

The trial continues on Wednesday.