Serbian Mortar Found at Massacre Site

A mortar shell recovered from a site where Sarajevo civilians were killed in a bomb blast was manufactured in Serbia, a witness in the trial of ex-Yugoslav army chief Momcilo Perisic told the Hague tribunal this week.



The witness, known as MP-238 to protect his identity, was a former member of the Bosnian police. During the war of 1993 to 1995, he served as a member of a team that de-activated explosive devices and conducted investigations to determine the area from which they had been fired.



He told tribunal judges that he attended one such incident on June 18, 1995, in which a shell hit a line of civilians queuing for water in the Dobrinja area of Sarajevo, killing seven and injuring 12.



“The people who had been massacred had been taken away when we arrived, but we saw a huge quantity of blood and parts of brains,” said the witness.



He said he had examined the tailfin of the mortar found there, and its markings indicated that it had been made at an arms factory in Valjevo, Serbia.



“The tail fin is key,” said witness MP-238 when asked by prosecution lawyer April Carter if he knew where the projectile had been made. The witness said that his team always focused on this when conducting analyses of mortar attacks because the date and place of manufacture were imprinted on it.



“As far as I can recall, it was Krusik, Valjevo with a month of manufacture from the war-time period,” he said of the shell found on June 18.



This attack is one of several shelling incidents in the Bosnian capital detailed in the indictment against Perisic.



The ex-army head is charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the aiding and abetting of murder and inhumane attacks against civilians during the 1993-5 siege of Sarajevo, as well as the shelling of Zagreb and the Srebrenica massacre, which both took place in 1995.



This week, Perisic’s defence counsel Gregor Guy-Smith tried to show that the shell apparently used in the June 18 attack could have been fired by either side in the conflict.



Guy-Smith asked the witness if he knew the possible range of a 120mm shell.



“The range figures have faded from my memory,” he replied.



“However, it is impossible to fire a shell from a close range which would correspond to the shell having been fired from our [Bosnian army] positions a couple of hundred metres away,” he added.



Guy-Smith then asked whether the witness’s investigation had taken into account the position of the conflict’s front line and the location of Bosnian forces in relation to where the shell landed.



“That was not an essential factor in the analysis,” replied the witness, adding that their investigations showed that the shell had been fired from Nedjarici, in Bosnian Serb-held territory.



Guy-Smith next asked the witness if he was aware that the Bosnian army had captured mortars from the enemy.



“Of course, we took all that we could lay our hands on,” replied witness MP-238.



“During this period of time, would it be fair to say that your army was in possession of mortars, including 120mm mortars?” asked Guy Smith.



“Yes, we produced the shells for these mortars in several towns in Bosnia because we had very competent personnel capable of manufacturing them.”



When asked where these arms were made, the witness mentioned Tesanj, in north-east Bosnia. However, he said he could not give further details, because as a member of the police he was not privy to information about military strategy.



Judge Bakone Moloto asked the witness if he knew what the Bosnian army did with captured shells.



“The captured shells were put into action on the front line. They were used as valuable assets on the most critical part of the front line,” said the witness.



“Are they used in the place where they are captured, right on the front line?” asked Judge Moloto.



“Once you have such ammunition, it is taken to the place where it is most needed – that can be 1 kilometre from the place where they were captured or 50 km,” replied the witness.



Rory Gallivan is a London-based IWPR contributor.