Mladic Prosecutors Test Witness’s Markale Claims
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He said his team visited all locations under the Bosnian Serb army’s control in the Sarajevo surroundings from which, according to UNPROFOR’s investigation, the projectile could have come, but did not find any traces of use of mine-throwers at any of those locations. According to Demurenko, those positions were inappropriate for mine-throwers.
During the cross-examination, however, prosecutor Alan Tieger said Demurenko wrongly understood the direction from which the projectile had come, which was determined by UNPROFOR’s French experts, due to different measurement units.
The witness responded by saying this was “not important”, adding he used the direction drawn on a map by the same French investigators, examining all possible positions of mine-throwers.
Prosecutor Tieger then said Demurenko investigated only the narrow, not the wide, area of possible mine-thrower positions.
The Russian responded by saying this, too, was “irrelevant”, repeating that he checked all the positions along the projectile path determined by the French UNPROFOR.
The prosecutor also tried to prove that Demurenko did not consider all types of mine-thrower projectiles that could have been fired at Markale, neglecting the possibility that the attack could have been conducted from 12 locations, not the six which he claims to have visited.
According to the prosecutor, the difference between the distance of those positions and the ones that Demurenko checked was up to a kilometer and a half.
“It does not change anything, because we visited all the potential firing locations on the projectile path that was six kilometres long, starting from the explosion location,” Demurenko continued, claiming that the mentioned distance was the maximum reach of a mine-thrower.
The witness specified that he and his investigators had moved from the explosion location towards the hills surrounding Sarajevo in the direction from which, according to UNPROFOR, the projectile had come, and examined all possible positions of mine-throwers.
When asked by judges whether he noticed any mine-thrower positions held by the Bosnian Army, ABiH, on that path, Demurenko answered negatively.
The Russian officer said the goal of his investigation was to “deny the lies” that “Serb aggressors” fired the grenade at Markale.
Asked by judges if that meant he knew in advance that Bosnian Serb forces were not responsible, Demurenko said: “Of course not. Had we found a firing location on the VRS [Bosnian Serb army] territory, I would have said it openly”.
Prosecutor Tiger will continue cross-examining Demurenko tomorrow.
Mladic, wartime commander of VRS, is charged with terrorizing the local population of Sarajevo by conducting artillery and sniper attacks from 1992 to 1995.
According to the charges, the grenade that killed 43 and wounded 75 people in the street in front of Markale on August 28, 1995 was fired by the VRS from its positions around the city.
Mladic is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica and with persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities.
