Keserovic: A Video Clip Calling for Killings Played

Expert witness Dino Osmankadic of the Sarajevo police said that, on the basis of analysis of contested and uncontested photographs, he concluded that there was a high probability that it was Keserovic who said out the message in the video.

The prosecution played the recording in which that person calls on Muslims to kill “Christians and their servants”, suggesting to them to place explosive in their houses and offices and kill them with snipers.

“Kill them any way you can, even with a knife. Do not differentiate between soldiers and civilians … just like their planes did not differentiate between civilians and Islamic State soldiers,” the person said in the video.

In his address to Muslims he told them not to doubt the rightness of their acts, calling upon “Allah’s words: ‘When you punish, punish them like they punished you’.”

Expert Osmankadic said that he extracted several photographs of face and half-profile from the video and compared them with photos of Keserovic taken in March this year.

He said that, following the original matching of the contested and uncontested photos, he measured the characteristic points and calculated certain proportions and distances on the face, on the basis of which he drew his conclusion.

Osmankadic said the video consisted of several recordings. He said he, to a certain extent, distanced himself with regards to that video, claiming he worked under a presumption that the video depicted a real person and no simulation programmes had been used. He indicated that he had not noticed traces of such actions.

Responding to a defense’s question, he said he did not know what device was used for making the video or its origin, not counting the sites on which it was published.

The expert witness agreed with defense attorney Senad Dupovac that there are applications and programmes enabling face manipulations, as well as speech. Dupovac suggested that such manipulations could be performed on a phone too.

Osmankadic added that with the help of some of those tools, you could deceive a child, but in order to deceive an expert, you would need top quality tools and professional machines, “like the ones used in movies”.

He pointed out that it could be determined whether some programmes had been used, but that was not his task.

At the beginning Osmankadic introduced himself as a mechanical engineer working with the police. He said he had worked on ballistic and mechanoscopic and later also digital expert examinations. He said this was his first expert assessment of a face on the basis of photos.

At one of the next hearings he will amend his findings after he has processed 27 photographs submitted to him by the Prosecution.

Keserovic has been accused of joining foreign paramilitary formations and publicly inciting terrorist activities. According to the charges, while in Syria he fought for so-called ISIL.

The trial will continue on August 11. Despite the holiday season, prosecutor Cazim Hasanspahic and defense attorney Senad Dupovac said they would attend hearings whenever it was needed.