Post by uz on Oct 20, 2012 15:39:51 GMT -5
Radovan Karadzic denies Bosnia war crimes
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has said he should be rewarded for "reducing suffering", not accused of carrying out war crimes.
Beginning his defence at his trial in The Hague, he said he was a "tolerant man" who had sought peace in Bosnia.
-
He began his lengthy personal statement by saying he had done "everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering".
Speaking calmly, Mr Karadzic said he was a "mild man, a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others".
He had stopped the Bosnian Serb army many times when it had been close to victory, he said, had sought peace agreements, applied humanitarian measures and honoured international law.
He insisted that there had been no history of conflict between ethnic groups.
--
He criticised media coverage of the war as biased and disputed the official number of victims of the war, saying the true figure was three to four times less. More than 100,000 people were killed, according to official figures.
"As time passes this truth will be stronger and stronger, and the accusations and the propaganda, the lies and hatred, will get weaker and weaker," he said.
:::
One of the accusations faced by the former Bosnian Serb leader is that he adopted a military strategy of using snipers and shell attacks on the civilian population of Sarajevo.
Mr Karadzic said that every shell that had fallen on Sarajevo "hurt me personally", but he complained that an attack on a street market in February 1994 had been a "shameless orchestration".
---
While some people had clearly been killed, the former Bosnian Serb leader said "we also saw android mannequins being thrown onto trucks, creating this show for the world".
:::::
The 28 August attack left 34 people dead and many more wounded and Col Demurenko suggested that it was almost impossible that a mortar round could have been used to target a small market, particularly a market that had already been hit.
"The chance that a mortar shell would hit such a small single street... is one in a million. It's virtually impossible," Col Demurenko told the court, insisting that no such mortar fire had happened.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19952899
My Brigade Had No Snipers at Sarajevo – Witness
Battalion commander in besieging Serb forces claims incidents were often fabricated to make his side look bad.
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 761, 19 Oct 12
A former colonel in the Bosnian Serb army told the Hague tribunal this week that there were no professional snipers in his brigade based at Sarajevo, and that incidents where civilians were targeted were “rigged” by the other side.
---
According to a lengthy summary of evidence which Karadzic read aloud in court, Kovacevic held various positions in the Sarajevo Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army between 1992 and 1996, including chief of operations and training of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, and then commander of a battalion in the same brigade.
-----
During the prosecution’s cross-examination, lawyer Carolyn Edgerton asked the witness about his assertion that there were “no trained professional snipers” in his unit.
“I was the person in charge of training units. I had never organised nor conducted any training of snipers. Snipers in units are selected on the basis of physical and psychological traits and are subjected to special shooting training. I can categorically assert that in the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, there were no such personnel,” Kovacevic said.
He went on to assert that the brigade never issued orders to use snipers. As a battalion commander in the brigade, he said, he would have known about it.
--
“Are you disputing that the brigade had firing positions in buildings on Grbavica Street?” Edgerton asked.
“No, but I dispute that they had sniper groups. The brigade did not organise such things. I know that for sure,” Kovacevic said.
---
Edgerton then read from a wartime army document listing the types of weapons issued to soldiers in firing positions, including semi-automatic rifles with optical sights, machine guns with optical sights, sniper rifles, and sniper-rifle silencers.
Kovacevic replied that the majority of units of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade were deployed in the “outer ring” of the city, and not facing it.
“That is where this type is weapon is prominent,” he said, adding that “Croatian and Muslim forces had identical weaponry.”
“Are you saying that brigade units at the confrontation line in Sarajevo did not possess any of these weapons?” Edgerton asked.
“Please, an optical sight can be mounted on any kind of rifle, including a hunting rifle, but person having this kind of weapon does not [make] this person is a sniper. In that case, you can say all hunters are snipers if you apply that logic,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then asked who “planned the fire” for soldiers using these weapons in the inner ring of the city.
“There can be no planning of fire. A soldier is either in a trench or in a facility. He’s observing the area in front of him and whatever appears that poses danger, he will fire [at]. If there is no danger, there is no need [to fire],” the witness said.
Edgerton asked “what kind of reporting” units had to make, and if they had to report “every kill” to superiors.
“The person who fires a shot – he doesn’t know whether he made a kill or not. How can he send a report to that effect? This is beyond comprehension,” the witness said.
“Are you saying that a person firing a rifle shot wouldn’t see the target impact? I don’t quite understand,” Edgerton retorted.
The witness chuckled and replied: “I understand that you don’t understand me because you were not in this position.”
He went on to say that “a soldier on the line makes his own decision about whether he will shoot or not, based on the risk assessment that he himself makes”.
“If [the soldier was] really in danger and waited to send a report, and waited for the order to open fire, he would have been killed a hundred times in the meantime. That is completely pointless and senseless,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then asked the witness about a line in his witness statement where he asserts that he only learned about civilian casualties in Sarajevo through the “Muslim mass media.”
Kovacevic confirmed that this was the case, and added that he “didn’t know what was going on in Sarajevo and whether it was really so. I watched that on television.”
“I know how a media war is conducted, and this time the enemy side did not hide it, they openly announced it. I knew that many incidents were rigged but that was all I knew, I didn’t know anything else,” Kovacevic continued.
“Do you mean to say that you had no forward observation of anything that was going on in city?” Edgerton asked.
“In Sarajevo, an urban area, that’s impossible,” the witness replied.
“You had no forward observation of any targets you might be seeking to engage?” Edgerton asked.
“Only what can be seen from the [confrontation] line at a distance of 20 metres,” Kovacevic answered.
Edgerton then pointed out that the witness’s statement says he took measures to avoid collateral damage “when determining whether or not to engage a target”.
“If you fired your weapons with no forward observation I’m really curious about what measures you took to avoid collateral damage,” the lawyer put to the witness.
“You are asking [for] an impossible answer,” the witness said, adding that “to claim that somebody could see from [the] Grbavica [area] what going on in Bascarsija [the old town], that person is crazy… Not every bullet hits the target; there are also ricochets, there are misses, etcetera.”
Edgerton pressed him on this, saying she was not asking for “an impossible answer”, and referred again to his comments about measures to “reduce civilian collateral damage.”
“Quite simply, the order not to open fire without need avoids unnecessary casualties,” Kovacevic replied. “Refraining from senselessly opening fire when there is not a reason – those are simple things, nothing spectacular.… It’s more like appealing to the conscience of the soldier in the trench. To be composed, smart and protect himself without endangering unnecessarily others.”
Edgerton later asked the witness to explain a part of his statement where he says that “we punished breaches of discipline” in the unit.
Kovacevic said the most common example of this would be a soldier getting drunk, firing off his weapon and “provoking a response from the other side.”
Edgerton asked whether any of these breaches had to do with shooting and killing civilians in parts of the city held by the Bosnian government.
“I cannot say precisely what exactly happened over there because I was unable to go there. However, there is one thing that I know because I saw it most often on television… I know many things were staged. There were instances, and I don’t know if they were truthful ones, and it’s not up to me to judge,” Kovacevic said.
iwpr.net/report-news/my-brigade-had-no-snipers-sarajevo-%E2%80%93-witness
www.vancouversun.com/news/ExBosnian+Serb+leader+Radovan+Karadzic+opens+defence+says+tried+stop/7395421/story.html
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic tells court he should be rewarded
"I should have been rewarded for all the good things that I've done because I did everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering," the former Bosnian Serb leader told the court in The Hague as he began his defence against charges including genocide.
www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/karadzic-opens-srebrenica-defence/story-fnd134gw-1226497424880
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has said he should be rewarded for "reducing suffering", not accused of carrying out war crimes.
Beginning his defence at his trial in The Hague, he said he was a "tolerant man" who had sought peace in Bosnia.
-
He began his lengthy personal statement by saying he had done "everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering".
Speaking calmly, Mr Karadzic said he was a "mild man, a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others".
He had stopped the Bosnian Serb army many times when it had been close to victory, he said, had sought peace agreements, applied humanitarian measures and honoured international law.
He insisted that there had been no history of conflict between ethnic groups.
--
He criticised media coverage of the war as biased and disputed the official number of victims of the war, saying the true figure was three to four times less. More than 100,000 people were killed, according to official figures.
"As time passes this truth will be stronger and stronger, and the accusations and the propaganda, the lies and hatred, will get weaker and weaker," he said.
:::
One of the accusations faced by the former Bosnian Serb leader is that he adopted a military strategy of using snipers and shell attacks on the civilian population of Sarajevo.
Mr Karadzic said that every shell that had fallen on Sarajevo "hurt me personally", but he complained that an attack on a street market in February 1994 had been a "shameless orchestration".
---
While some people had clearly been killed, the former Bosnian Serb leader said "we also saw android mannequins being thrown onto trucks, creating this show for the world".
:::::
The 28 August attack left 34 people dead and many more wounded and Col Demurenko suggested that it was almost impossible that a mortar round could have been used to target a small market, particularly a market that had already been hit.
"The chance that a mortar shell would hit such a small single street... is one in a million. It's virtually impossible," Col Demurenko told the court, insisting that no such mortar fire had happened.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19952899
My Brigade Had No Snipers at Sarajevo – Witness
Battalion commander in besieging Serb forces claims incidents were often fabricated to make his side look bad.
By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 761, 19 Oct 12
A former colonel in the Bosnian Serb army told the Hague tribunal this week that there were no professional snipers in his brigade based at Sarajevo, and that incidents where civilians were targeted were “rigged” by the other side.
---
According to a lengthy summary of evidence which Karadzic read aloud in court, Kovacevic held various positions in the Sarajevo Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army between 1992 and 1996, including chief of operations and training of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, and then commander of a battalion in the same brigade.
-----
During the prosecution’s cross-examination, lawyer Carolyn Edgerton asked the witness about his assertion that there were “no trained professional snipers” in his unit.
“I was the person in charge of training units. I had never organised nor conducted any training of snipers. Snipers in units are selected on the basis of physical and psychological traits and are subjected to special shooting training. I can categorically assert that in the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade, there were no such personnel,” Kovacevic said.
He went on to assert that the brigade never issued orders to use snipers. As a battalion commander in the brigade, he said, he would have known about it.
--
“Are you disputing that the brigade had firing positions in buildings on Grbavica Street?” Edgerton asked.
“No, but I dispute that they had sniper groups. The brigade did not organise such things. I know that for sure,” Kovacevic said.
---
Edgerton then read from a wartime army document listing the types of weapons issued to soldiers in firing positions, including semi-automatic rifles with optical sights, machine guns with optical sights, sniper rifles, and sniper-rifle silencers.
Kovacevic replied that the majority of units of the 1st Sarajevo Mechanised Brigade were deployed in the “outer ring” of the city, and not facing it.
“That is where this type is weapon is prominent,” he said, adding that “Croatian and Muslim forces had identical weaponry.”
“Are you saying that brigade units at the confrontation line in Sarajevo did not possess any of these weapons?” Edgerton asked.
“Please, an optical sight can be mounted on any kind of rifle, including a hunting rifle, but person having this kind of weapon does not [make] this person is a sniper. In that case, you can say all hunters are snipers if you apply that logic,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then asked who “planned the fire” for soldiers using these weapons in the inner ring of the city.
“There can be no planning of fire. A soldier is either in a trench or in a facility. He’s observing the area in front of him and whatever appears that poses danger, he will fire [at]. If there is no danger, there is no need [to fire],” the witness said.
Edgerton asked “what kind of reporting” units had to make, and if they had to report “every kill” to superiors.
“The person who fires a shot – he doesn’t know whether he made a kill or not. How can he send a report to that effect? This is beyond comprehension,” the witness said.
“Are you saying that a person firing a rifle shot wouldn’t see the target impact? I don’t quite understand,” Edgerton retorted.
The witness chuckled and replied: “I understand that you don’t understand me because you were not in this position.”
He went on to say that “a soldier on the line makes his own decision about whether he will shoot or not, based on the risk assessment that he himself makes”.
“If [the soldier was] really in danger and waited to send a report, and waited for the order to open fire, he would have been killed a hundred times in the meantime. That is completely pointless and senseless,” Kovacevic said.
Edgerton then asked the witness about a line in his witness statement where he asserts that he only learned about civilian casualties in Sarajevo through the “Muslim mass media.”
Kovacevic confirmed that this was the case, and added that he “didn’t know what was going on in Sarajevo and whether it was really so. I watched that on television.”
“I know how a media war is conducted, and this time the enemy side did not hide it, they openly announced it. I knew that many incidents were rigged but that was all I knew, I didn’t know anything else,” Kovacevic continued.
“Do you mean to say that you had no forward observation of anything that was going on in city?” Edgerton asked.
“In Sarajevo, an urban area, that’s impossible,” the witness replied.
“You had no forward observation of any targets you might be seeking to engage?” Edgerton asked.
“Only what can be seen from the [confrontation] line at a distance of 20 metres,” Kovacevic answered.
Edgerton then pointed out that the witness’s statement says he took measures to avoid collateral damage “when determining whether or not to engage a target”.
“If you fired your weapons with no forward observation I’m really curious about what measures you took to avoid collateral damage,” the lawyer put to the witness.
“You are asking [for] an impossible answer,” the witness said, adding that “to claim that somebody could see from [the] Grbavica [area] what going on in Bascarsija [the old town], that person is crazy… Not every bullet hits the target; there are also ricochets, there are misses, etcetera.”
Edgerton pressed him on this, saying she was not asking for “an impossible answer”, and referred again to his comments about measures to “reduce civilian collateral damage.”
“Quite simply, the order not to open fire without need avoids unnecessary casualties,” Kovacevic replied. “Refraining from senselessly opening fire when there is not a reason – those are simple things, nothing spectacular.… It’s more like appealing to the conscience of the soldier in the trench. To be composed, smart and protect himself without endangering unnecessarily others.”
Edgerton later asked the witness to explain a part of his statement where he says that “we punished breaches of discipline” in the unit.
Kovacevic said the most common example of this would be a soldier getting drunk, firing off his weapon and “provoking a response from the other side.”
Edgerton asked whether any of these breaches had to do with shooting and killing civilians in parts of the city held by the Bosnian government.
“I cannot say precisely what exactly happened over there because I was unable to go there. However, there is one thing that I know because I saw it most often on television… I know many things were staged. There were instances, and I don’t know if they were truthful ones, and it’s not up to me to judge,” Kovacevic said.
iwpr.net/report-news/my-brigade-had-no-snipers-sarajevo-%E2%80%93-witness
www.vancouversun.com/news/ExBosnian+Serb+leader+Radovan+Karadzic+opens+defence+says+tried+stop/7395421/story.html
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic tells court he should be rewarded
"I should have been rewarded for all the good things that I've done because I did everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering," the former Bosnian Serb leader told the court in The Hague as he began his defence against charges including genocide.
www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/karadzic-opens-srebrenica-defence/story-fnd134gw-1226497424880