Bosnia: Karadzic blames 'Muslims' for fatal attack
The Hague, 11 May (AKI) – Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is being tried for war crimes and genocide, on Tuesday said that Muslims killed 68 people in an attack on Sarajevo's market in 1994 and blamed the Serbs. Karadzic is conducting his own defence at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. During cross examination of prosecution witness David Harland, Karadzic showed the court footage of the Markale market, before and after the bombing, saying Muslims planted toys, prostheses and dead bodies of soldiers killed in battle before the explosion. The footage showed an empty market, without people and goods, with only a few people around. One man carried an artificial limb and put in on the ground. “You can clearly see the preparations, it was a primitive set-up,” Karadzic said. After the bombing, Karadzic pointed to the same prosthesis and a “stiff, dehydrated corpse” being taken to the truck. Asked by Harland for the source of the footage, Karadzic said it was raw material aired by Bosnian television and picked up by a Serbian channel. “No-one who was at the scene suggested that the whole thing was a set up,” Harland said. Karadzic has been indicted on two counts of genocide and nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment focuses on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which over 8,000 Muslims were killed and the shelling of Sarajevo, including two bombings of Markale market. Serbs have denied the bombing of Markale market, saying it was staged by Muslims to blame the Serbs and to provoke foreign intervention in the war. Karadzic quoted a report to the UN Security Council by former secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali, saying that “there is not enough physical evidence to prove that either one or the other side had fired the grenade” at Markale. Harland was a civilian officer with international peacekeepers in Bosnia from 1993 to 1995, was the sixth of 410 witnesses to be presented by the prosecution. Karadzic trial resumes next week with the testimony of a new witness. http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.1.375440973 __._,_.___
<<image001.jpg>>
_______________________________________________ News mailing list News@antic.org http://lists.antic.org/mailman/listinfo/news
