False Flags in Sarajevo: Shelling and Sniping

[Owen Parsons]

In my Racak post, Len Colby asked if I "have evidence of similar chicanery in Bosnia? Were all the reported cases of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities there faked also?" As I said there, I do indeed. In this post, I will be looking at one specific area of the conflict. Namely, the attrocities that the Bosnian Serb government of Republika Srpska was accused of committing by the Islamist government of Alija Izetbegovic during the "siege of Sarajevo" (it wasn't actually a siege). Actually, all the evidence appears to show that most of these acts were carried out by the Muslims government to create international sympathy for Izetbegovic's cause and outrage at the Serbs, thus facilitating the fulfillment of his goal of creating a Muslim state in Europe, as laid out in his book The Islamic Declaration. I suggest readers read this brief article by Andy Wilcoxson for background information on how the war started, so readers will have some context to place all this in.

1. Shelling

a. Kosevo hospital

The conventional wisdom about the shelling of Kosevo hospital at the time is exemplified best in this story for The Washington Post, March 10, 1993, by Peter Maas:

"SARAJEVO -- It was midday, and Munira was at the doorstep of Kosevo Hospital's diagnostic building. She was an architect, and her job was to assess shell damage at the medical complex and supervise repair work.

Midday is the time when the hospital is busiest. Doctors and nurses are on their noon break, going from one mortar-gouged building to another. It is also visiting time, when family members come to the hospital to see an injured mother, father, brother or friend.

It also is the deadliest time. The Serbs often shell the hospital around noon.

At 12:30 on March 2, a tank shell fired by Serbs came smashing into the hospital complex and landed a few feet from the diagnostic building.

One man and seven women -- grandmothers, mothers, a couple of girls -- were injured. One person was killed. That was Munira, who knew better than most that at Kosevo Hospital death can be just around the corner for the healthy, too.

(...)

The Serbs have two explanations: that the Muslim-led Bosnian Army is shelling its own citizens, and blaming it on the Serbs, or that the Bosnians are firing mortars from the hospital grounds, thereby turning it into a legitimate target of retaliation." (source)

The way Maas writes this, you would think there was no evidence that the Muslims were actually firing mortars from the hospital. In actual fact, the evidence for this is not disputable. At least he is honest enough to note that the allegation was made, unlike some reporters.

In footnote 13 of his paper, "Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware," Lt. Colonel John Sray, who was on the ground in Sarajevo, writes:

"In a similar media oversight, the Bosniacs have long maintained a mortar in a garage adjacent to Kosevo Hospital. They occasionally fire this weapon into Serb gun positions hoping to draw counterbattery fire which would hit the hospital and generate substantial publicity. This fact is well-known around the city but conveniently not mentioned in press dispatches." (source)

On the Crimes of War Project website (which is anti-Serb), you may read this in an article by Emma Daly entitled "Immunity from Attack":

"Two weeks earlier, two patients had been killed when a shell hit their ward. We could hear the sounds of bombardment in the distance, and, suspiciously close to the hospital, the hollow sound of outgoing mortar fire. Hospitals are generally immune from attack under the Geneva Conventions, which grant civilians and civilian objects a high level of theoretical protection in times of war. The siege of Sarajevo, however, made a mockery of the humanitarian ideal that the dangers of war should be limited, as far as possible, to the armed forces engaged in the fighting." (source)

Peter Brock, in his article "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press," writes:

"'Kosevo' hospital in Sarajevo was a favorite backdrop for television journalists who, when the hospital's water supply was interrupted because of the shelling, eagerly awaited the first birth without water in the maternity ward. Once they got their pictures, the Western film crews dismantled their cameras and returned to the nearby Holiday Inn, where hot water was abundant. Unreported was the fact that on their exit from the hospital they had to avoid tripping over a shielded Bosnian army mortar emplacement that was never identified as the probable reason why Serbs sporadically fired at the hospital." (source)

Finally, I quote from Andy Walker's summary of the testimony of General Phillipe Morillon, who was the UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia from September 1992 to July 1993:

"Tapuskovic read out a quote from Morillon's testimony to the French Parliament regarding the Kosevo Hospital in Sarajevo. Morillon said, 'We saw a [Muslim] mortar there ready to provoke a reaction from the Serbs. They did that all the time. I know that some UN observers saw that mortar at Kosevo. Very frequently they used mortars at Kosevo for provocation purposes.'

Morillon confirmed that this was true and that he denounced that practice. It is unconscionable that anybody could be so evil that they would try to draw their fire on to a civilian hospital for the purposes of propaganda, but that is exactly what the Muslim authorities did in Sarajevo." (source)

I agree with this moral judgment, and this is far from the worst that the Muslims did.

b. The "Breadline" Massacre

Peter Maas alluded to the Bosnian Serb allegation that the Muslims shelled their own people above, implying that there is no evidence for it. Indeed, there is quite a bit of evidence for it. The first case is the "Breadline" massacre.

I quote from Leonard Doyle's article for The Independent of August 22, 1992, entitled "Muslims Slaughter Their Own People":

"The televised scenes of civilians cut to pieces by an explosion as they queued for bread on one of Sarajevo's main shopping thoroughfares, Vase Miskina, horrified international public opinion and added to growing pressure for military intervention against the Serbian side in the war. Vivid footage showed dead bodies littering the street and people with severed limbs sitting on the pavement in pools of blood. The attack came shortly before a meeting of European Community ambassadors to consider imposing sanctions on Serbia. The world's press concluded that the atrocity was caused by mortar bombs fired from a Serbian-held positions and attack was widely interpreted as a cynical display of defiance by the Serbs.

UN officials said then that they were suspicious about the circumstances but could not go public without jeopardizing the UN mission and possibly endangering UN peacekeepers' lives.

Classified reports to the UN force commander, General Satish Nambiar, concluded, however, that the Bosnian forces loyal to President Alija Izetbegovic may have detonated a bomb.

'We believe it was a command-detonated explosion, probably in a can,' a UN official said then. 'The impact which is there now is not necessarily similar or anywhere near as large as we came to expect with a mortar round landing on a paved surface.'" (source)

This is not the end of it, however. Mrs. Radmilla Draskovic, a Bosnian Serb recounts in a deposition how

"...I was an eyewitness of the Vasa Miskin street massacre. About forty minutes beforehand they [Muslims] forbade passage through this street from the Muslim Slav part of the town, while allowing passage from other parts of the city. They were preparing the ambulance and the TV report truck. I saw this from the window of my apartment, noticing that passage was forbidden from one side of the town. The TV report truck were by the Sarajevo city market, allegedly reporting on the market. The same moment explosion occurred on the street, they began the TV report. For that day, they transported bread and ice cream to that street. I knew some of the people who were hurt in that alleged artillery attack. I heard only the explosion, but not the sound of mortar shells in the flight. Stretchers and ambulances were prepared beforehand, and there were other vehicles parked in front of my house just before the explosion..." (source)

Dr. Zoran B. Djordjevic, a representative of Republika Srpska Krajina in Croatia (which would later be ethnically cleansed in Tudjman's Operation Storm) wrote to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali about the incident:

"Serbs still living hidden in the streets near the place of the accident informed the Serbian Government that cameramen of [Moslem controlled] TV Sarajevo visited the site with their gear half an hour before the killing. Most of the people, standing in line, were brought close to the site by the soldiers with Muslim insignia. Three of those killed were recognized as Miroslav Svrakic, Stojan Skoric and Nedeljka Dobrijevic, all Serbs.

All evidence collected so far indicate that this 'accident' was a premeditated murder organized by the Muslim Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina with intention of slandering Serbian side. It appears that those massacred were Serbs which had been held as hostages in the city of Sarajevo by Moslem and Croat forces." (source)

Of course, we all know that Serbs are untrustworthy, so I'll quote a greater authority just in case.

Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie, who was Chief of Staff of UNPROFOR forces in Bosnia in 1992, writes in his book Peacekeeper:

"Disaster in Sarajevo. People lined up for bread were attacked, and at least seventeen killed. Presidency claims it was a Serb mortar attack, Serbs claim it was a set-up using explosives. Our people tell us there were a number of things that didn't fit. The street had been blocked off just before the incident. Once the crowd was let in and lined up, the media appeared but kept distance. The attack took place, and the media was immediately on the scene. The majority of people killed are alleged to be 'tame Serbs'. Who knows? The only thing for sure is that innocent people were killed." (source)

It should be noted before moving on that this staged atrocity against Serbian civillians appeared to be timed to influence a vote in the U.N. to impose sanctions on Serbs (see here) They were imposed and were brutal (see here).

c. The First Markale Massacre

The second staged shelling took place on February 5, 1994. Peter Makara notes that on January 14th, 1994, NATO issued adopted a communique that read as follows:

"On the basis of the authorization given by the UN Security Council and in accordance with the decisions made by NATO on 2 and 9 August 1993, we confirm our readiness to take air strikes in order to prevent strangulation of Sarajevo, safe zones and other endangerd areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina."

NATO wanted the U.N.'s "Go" signal first, however. Makara reproduces an articles from the Washington Post:

"At a Jan. 11 meeting in Brussels, NATO leaders called on Boutros-Ghali to draw up plans for carrying out the operations and reiterated the threat, originally made last August, to use U.S. and other NATO combat aircraft if called on for help by the United Nations."

On February 1st, 1994, NATO gets its way:

"Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali signalled his preparedness Tuesday to use air power in Bosnia to maintain the credibility of U.N. and NATO threats. In a wide-ranging news conference, the U.N. chief also said he was strongly opposed to lifting the arms embargo for Bosnia, saying it would only prolong the conflict.

'There is no reason not to use force,' he said in response to a query on airstrikes. "To the contrary, once we use force we will give credibility to the fact that we say we will use force.

'I believe it is important to use air force without any hesitation to impose certain decisions taken by the Security Council.'

(for all the above, see here)

The massacre took place four days later. It was an odd sort of shelling, in that 68 people were killed and 144 wounded. Paul Beaver, editor of Jane's Defense Weekly, told The Independent "I find it difficult to contemplate that a 1200mm mortar could cause this number of casualties even in a confined space like market... I'm not aware of such a high number being killed by a single shell." (source)

"Within hours of the explosion, the Clinton administration, while acknowledging there was no definitive culprit, pointed the finger of blame for the massacre at the Serbs... Madeleine Albright, the U.S. representative to the U.N., said on television: 'It's very hard to believe any country would do this to their own people, and therefore, although we do not know exactly what the facts are, it would seem to us that the Serbs and the Bosnian Serbs are the ones that probably have a great deal of responsibility.'" (source)

David Binder's article, Anatomy of a Massacre in Foreign Policy, relying on a U.N. report of the incident (source), notes the strange events that followed the massacre, reminiscent of the earlier Breadline incident:

"The UNPROFOR officers who hurried to the scene immediately after the blast were barred from the interior of the market by Muslim policemen. Partly as a result, the UNPROFOR officers deposed no eyewitness of the shelling at that time. In the UNPROFOR report, the officers stated that they were permitted to stand at the southern edge of the market and observe while casualties were evacuated in the trunks of small cars and on truck beds. That was "done exceptionally quickly," one officer reported -- within 25 minutes. The officers saw no medical personnel attending the evacuation. When the evacuation was complete, the two officers were permitted to walk the 40 yards or so from the edge of the market to the explosion crater in the northeast corner, where they stood watch until the first UNPROFOR crater analysis team arrived at about 2 p.m. They later reported that there had been no tampering with the crater site while they watched." (source)

Dr. Sevket Karaduman, who treated the victims, reported:

"that 80% of the injuries were from the waist down. There were burns on legs and some cases of heavy bleeding from open fractures. On the other hand, there were hardly any foreign bodies or shrapnel in the wounds, most of which were internal. 'Some of the first casualties to arrive said they had seen four or five grenades flying through the air... and thought they had heard a bomb. Only later, when U.N. personnel arrived, they said that a shell had fallen.'

(...)

"Dr. Karduman's testimony was presented two days ago to a senior Israeli ballistics and explosives expert, who specializes in investigating sabotage. He concluded no shell could have caused such devastation and that the disaster had been caused by a cone-shaped explosive device placed among the crates in the market. Within the device were a propelling charge, a phosphorus bomb and three or four shell heads and hand grenades, which exploded simultaneously. It was probably detonated by remote control. The Israeli expert added that the device need not have weighed more than 15 kilograms and that similar devices are used by the Hezbollah in Lebanon and were used by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan. There are at present several hundreds of Mujaheddin in Bosnia.

The absence of a shell crater was explained in news reports by the suggestion that the shell fell on a table. But the Israeli expert said that this would have caused injuries mainly to the upper part of the body and that the nature of the wounds described by Dr. Karduman points to a phosphorus bomb which would cause tissue burning. The near-absence of shrapnel in the wounds and the high proportion of internal wounds point to a propelling charge." (source)

British journalist Eve-Anne Prentice also had some information of her own (one of her sources was the aforementioned Paul Beaver, see page 47945 of the transcript). I quote from Andy Wilcoxson's summary of her testimony:

"Milosevic questioned the witness questions about the Markale market. Over the course of her work, Ms. Prentice spoke with people who had access to ballistics data on the blast. According to the information she received the blast did not come from an outside projectile. The blast came from an explosive device that had been taped under one of the tables at the market.

When she interviewed Lord Owen she asked him whether he had believed that the Bosnian-Muslim government planted the bomb themselves. She said that Owen responded by refusing to confirm or deny the suggestion. The Markale Market is significant because NATO used it as the justification to bomb the Bosnian Serbs." (source)

In article about the incident, she writes:

"Survivors and witnesses said they heard no characteristic whistle of an approaching missile; this later led to suggestions that a bomb had been placed under a stall. A Western diplomat who was in Sarajevo at the time told me in 1999 that he was convinced the bombing was perpetrated by the Muslim-led Government. The Muslims were sure that the Serbs would be blamed and hoped that outrage at the carnage would lead to airstrikes against their foes and increase pressure for a lifting of the arms embargo that was in place against all the warring sides. Britain and France were vehemently opposed to lifting the embargo, although America had shown signs of wanting to arm the Muslims.

"On the morning of the explosion some people were told that it was not a good day to go to the market," the Western diplomat said. "There was also no shelling from the Serb positions that day, and the injuries were mainly from the waist down, as if a bomb had exploded in situ." The diplomat said that another sign that the Muslim-led Government had been responsible was that government media with cameras were on the scene "within seconds", as if poised in advance to record the full horror of the carnage to gain as much world impact as possible." (source)

On February 8th, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, president of Republika Srpska, wrote letters to President Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and B.B. Ghali urging a UNPROFOR investigation that would include both Serb and Muslim experts. (source) (source)

Running on the assumption that it was mortar fire that caused the carnage, investigations by the U.N. were carried out. A French officer arrived at the conclusion that the shell had come from behind Muslim lines.

"On February 9, NATO foreign ministers, animated by the belief that Serbs had fired the mortar, were meetting in Brussels to set a 10-day deadline for a Serb widhdrawal of heavy weapons to a point 12 miles outside of Sarajevo. At that moment, Rose, the UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, was negotiating a ceasefire in Sarajevo. He was operating on the French captain's premise that Muslims may have shelled their own people.

The Serb commander, General Manojlo Milovanovic, showed up on time at Sarajevo's Butmir Airport to meet Rose. But the Bosnian government leaders, long reluctant to commit themselves to ceasefires that they believed gave the Serbs an advantage, stayed away, breaking the date. In a fury, as he later confided to a BBC correspondent, the British UNPROFOR commander drove downtown to the Bosnian government presidency to confront General Jovan Divjak and President Aija Izetbegovic. Demanding that they sign the ceasefire agreement, he waved an envelope at them, according to senior UNPROFOR officers, saying, 'I have an allegation here.' Rose said that it implicated Muslims in the mortar attack on the market- place. He was referring to the French captain's crater analysis. Divjak hastened to the airport and signed the ceasefire accord -- a response that seemed to Rose to confirm the culpability of the Muslims." (source)

The U.N. would do another investigation and arrive at an "inconclusive" conclusion. What is important here, however, is the reaction of Divjak and Izetbegovic, which seem to be the actions of guilty men.

Binder continues:

"There was one other indicator of culpability, though it would hardly rate as evidence in a court of law: Bosnian Serb officers confirmed to the team that their Kosevo Brigade had mortar positions in the area of Mrkovici, which lay within the cone determined by UNPROFOR as encompassing the possible firing site. On February 5, U.N. monitors (UNMOs) stationed within Serbian lines reported no shots fired from the Serbian mortars. Although the UNMOS stationed near the Muslim side had 'no indication of the origin of the fire,' the fact that U.N. monitors had reported no shelling from Serb-controlled areas led one high-ranking UNPROFOR official to speculate from this 'shot report' that the mortar was probably fired from within Muslim lines." (source)

Finally, Lord Owen, of the Vance-Owen peace plan, wrote in his book, "Balkan Odyssey," of the efforts to cover up unhelpful information:

"In addition, a senior ballistic expert in Zagreb has studied a map of likely trajectory patterns produced by UN investigators in Sarajevo and believed the angle at which the mortar had hit the roof of the market stall indicated that the firing point was more likely to be 1,100 - 2,000 metres from the impact than 2,000-3,000 metres, and that this would tend to indicate that the mortar had been fired from a Bosnian army position. When this highly charged information reached the UN in New York on Tuesday everything was done to clamp down on the number of people who saw it so as to reduce the chance of press leak." (source)

This was all quite good for NATO, who succeeded in getting the Serbs to remove their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo with the threat of air strikes, and on April 10th, 1994, NATO carries out its first air raid against the Serbian positions around Gorazde. (source)

d. The Second Markale Massacre

On August 27th, 1995, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke threatens the Republika Srpska on Meet the Press:

"If this peace initiative does not get moving -- dramatically moving -- in the next week or two, the consequences will be very adverse to the Serbian goals.

One way or another, NATO will be heavily involved, and the Serbs don't want that. NATO will either assist the U.N. withdrawal, or there will be more active NATO air over the skies. These are not things the Serbs should want..."

(source)

The very next day, NATO gets its pretext. A shell hits Markale market; 37 people are killed and 90 are wounded.

I quote from David Binder's article, Bosnia's Bombers, in The Nation of October 2, 1995:

"Within a day of that explosion, investigators for the UN Protection Force under Lieut. Gen. Rupert Smith 'concluded beyond all reasonable doubt' that the lethal mortar round had been fired from a Bosnian Serb position in the suburb of Lukavica, 1.5 to 3.5 kilometers southwest of the marketplace. On August 30, NATO's bombs began to fall.

The crucial UN report on the market massacre is classified secret, but four specialists--a Russian, a Canadian and two Americans--have raised serious doubts about its conclusion, suggesting instead that the mortar was fired not by the Serbs but by Bosnian government forces.

(...)

The Russian dissenter is Col. Andrew Demurenko, an artillery officer who commands the small Russian UN peacekeeping force in Sarajevo. On August 29, Demurenko announced that the probability of hitting a street less than thirty feed wide from one or two miles away, 'the distance to the nearest Serb artillery positions', was 'one to one million'. Noting that no UN artillery observers heard the distinctive high-pitched whistle of a mortar shell prior to the detonation, he said he believed the fatal round had been 'fired from some technical' weaponry other than mortars.

On September 2, Demurenko went on television in Sarajevo, declaring the UN report 'a falsification'. With maps and diagrams he pointed out what he called inconsistencies and contradictions, saying 'It is absolutely unacceptable for me to consent to the arguments ... that the shelling came from the Serb side'. Later a senior UN official confided to the Associated Press that the UNPROFOR command was considering disciplinary action against Demurenko.

The Canadian specialist, an officer with extensive service in Bosnia, said in a telephone interview that the UN report, which he'd seen, was 'highly suspect'. He cited 'anomalies with the fuse' of the mortar shell recovered from the marketplace crater. Unlike the fuses of four other shells that hit Sarajevo that morning, this one, he said, 'had not come from a mortar tube at all'. He added that he and fellow Canadian officers in Bosnia were 'convinced that the Moslem government dropped both the Feb. 5, 1994, and the August 28, 1995 mortar shells on the Sarajevo markets'.

A US Administration official who may not be identified further says, "It is impossible to see the street level of the marketplace from the distance and location of the Serb gun positions" meaning the Serbs would have been 'shooting blind'. Further, such a shot from such a distance would have had a high trajectory, he says; however, since 'there was no distinct whistle ... a shell could not have fallen from a very great height'. Also, the crater as shown was very shallow, while a high trajectory shell digs deep'. He contends that the available evidence suggests either 'the shell was fired at a very low trajectory, which means a range of a few hundred yards--therefore under government control' or 'a mortar shell converted into a bomb was dropped from a nearby roof into the crowd.'

A second US dissenter, a military officer, says that at least three of the five mortar founds that hit Sarajevo on August 28 'came from the identical firing position' on the Serb side. 'But the fourth was of different origin, the one that killed people in the market.'

The UN command in Sarajevo was offered a point-by-point rebuttal to these arguments. Curiously, it agrees with the dissenters on three basic points: that the fatal shell was fired at a very low trajectory; that it would have been a 'one in a million' shot if it had been fired by Serbs; and that it would have been fired blindly. Nevertheless, the UN's Lieut. Col. Chris Vernon says the UN sticks by the conclusions of its inquiry."

(source)

Another report, this time from the Sunday Times of October 1, 1995, cited British and French ammunition experts who concluded that there was no evidence that the Serbs were responsible.

"A senior American officer at the United Nations Protection Force (Unprofor) headquaters in Sarajevo dismissed their findings, however, citing a small groove known as a fuse furrow made in the ground by the bomb head.

...Neither British nor French analysts notice such a groove." (source)

2. Sniping

Undoubtedly Serbs were behind some snipings of civillians in Sarajevo. What has been overlooked, however, is some rather irrefutable evidence that the Muslims were sniping their own civillians to frame the Serbs and manipulate world opinion.

I quote from a Reuters report:

"FRENCH BELIEVE BOSNIAN ARMY FIRED ON SARAJEVO AS SNIPERS

NEW YORK (Reuter) - French U.N. peacekeepers believe Bosnian soldiers on a Sarajevo rooftop have shot at civilians, perhaps in an attempt to gain international sympathy, The New York Times reported in Tuesday editions.

The shooting stopped in June after the investigators from an anti-sniping unit used ``very sophisticated optical enhancement equipment'' to spot a sniper on a government-held roof and then notified the Bosnian army the sniper would be shot, the Times said.

The French officers started an investigation into shots they thought had been fired from the former parliament building, which is held by Bosnian forces, after studying the trajectory of some bullets, the paper said.

"It was the only place where some of the snipers could be,'' one investigator told the Times.

Kemal Muftic, a spokesman for President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, told the Times that the report was ridiculous and was designed to allow the United Nations to shirk responsibility.

"Instead of doing its duty, the United Nations wishes to blame both sides equally,'' the paper quoted Muftic as saying. ''By doing so, the United Nations can justify remaining impassive.''

The newspaper quoted a `"senior French officer'' saying the report was never written or reported to "upper-level United Nations officials'' because the shooting stopped.

The soldiers told the Times that they did not keep records but believed that bullets fired from the building hit at least two civilians, came close to others and damaged U.N. vehicles.

The soldiers theorized that the shootings were designed to generate publicity and sympathy, and unidentified diplomats blamed a rogue group within the army who might profit from instability by dealing on the black market.

The 40-story building was damaged in 1992 and is used by the Bosnian army to fire on Serb positions."

(source)

The New York Times report goes into a great deal more detail and can be read here.

Jovo Janjic, who founded the Democratic Initiative of Sarajevo Serbs, talks about the Muslim snipers here:

Also, there were plenty sniper attacks from Sarajevo on this side, controlled by the Army of Srpska. I recall when several citizens died in sniper attacks, one of them was a friend of mine, in the center of Ilidza. They were shot by a sniper stationed on the top of the Freezer building. Finally, during the last few years we are slowly learning details about some of their organized sniping groups, such as "Seve", which, besides Serbs, even killed Bosniaks in their part of the city.

Read these articles about "Seve."

Seve practiced by Shooting Civilians in Sarajevo

Hague Investigators Collected Evidence That Indicates That Bosniak Authorities Murdered Their Own Citizens!

Here's an excerpt from one:

"In a display of honesty seldom seen in these parts, Nijaz Durakovic explained that he had prepared all the documentation in connection with the case Alibabic-Alispahic, photocopied and hid it in Vienna. "I also informed the Presidency about that. I wanted to make sure that I won't be hit by a 'Chetnik sniper'," said Durakovic. An unpleasant experience Prof. Durakovic had with "Chetnik snipers" while driving over the bridge in the direction of the bar "Dva Ribara" was definitely enough for caution. Several months earlier a sniper bullet flew though the window of the room in the State Hospital in which at the time gravely wounded deputy Prime Minister of the government of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and today the leader of the SDP, Dr. Zlatko Lagumdzija, was recovering. That happened on the day when, after being tied to the bed for several days, Lagumdzija tried to get up and walk. Experts confirmed that the bullet could not have come from the Jewish cemetery, or any Serb sniping positions.

The fact that these days the Hague investigators are focusing the investigation in the case "Seve" on Slobodanka Sakotic and her brother Slobodan, indicates that Durakovic's caution was justified. The two Sakotics were before the war distinguished sharpshooters, and in "Seve" they were among the chief killers. They used sniper rifles for the executions. The wartime biography of brother and sister Sakotic became the object of investigation by the Hague Tribunal. The investigation indicates that the Sakotics were members of the group "Seve" and were ordered to shoot from sniper rifles at civilians and carry out executions in Sarajevo and around the city. For a while the unit "Seve" was based in the base of the Special Police Unit. Asim Dautbasic was in charge of coordinating its activities during the time the unit was based in the special forces base."

Previous threads

The hoaxing of the Racak "massacre"

Lie #2: "Operation Horseshoe"

Edited July 22, 2006 by Owen Parsons

[Sid Walker]

In my Racak post, Len Colby asked if I "have evidence of similar chicanery in Bosnia? Were all the reported cases of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities there faked also?" As I said there, I do indeed. In this post, I will be looking at one specific area of the conflict. Namely, the attrocities that the Bosnian Serb government of Republika Srpska was accused of committing by the Islamist government of Alija Izetbegovic during the "siege of Sarajevo" (it wasn't actually a siege). Actually, all the evidence appears to show that most of these acts were carried out by the Muslims government to create international sympathy for Izetbegovic's cause and outrage at the Serbs, thus facilitating the fulfillment of his goal of creating a Muslim state in Europe, as laid out in his book The Islamic Declaration. I suggest readers read this brief article by Andy Wilcoxson for background information on how the war started, so readers will have some context to place all this in.

1. Shelling

a. Kosevo hospital

The conventional wisdom about the shelling of Kosevo hospital at the time is exemplified best in this story for The Washington Post, March 10, 1993, by Peter Maas:

"SARAJEVO -- It was midday, and Munira was at the doorstep of Kosevo Hospital's diagnostic building. She was an architect, and her job was to assess shell damage at the medical complex and supervise repair work.

Midday is the time when the hospital is busiest. Doctors and nurses are on their noon break, going from one mortar-gouged building to another. It is also visiting time, when family members come to the hospital to see an injured mother, father, brother or friend.

It also is the deadliest time. The Serbs often shell the hospital around noon.

At 12:30 on March 2, a tank shell fired by Serbs came smashing into the hospital complex and landed a few feet from the diagnostic building.

One man and seven women -- grandmothers, mothers, a couple of girls -- were injured. One person was killed. That was Munira, who knew better than most that at Kosevo Hospital death can be just around the corner for the healthy, too.

(...)

The Serbs have two explanations: that the Muslim-led Bosnian Army is shelling its own citizens, and blaming it on the Serbs, or that the Bosnians are firing mortars from the hospital grounds, thereby turning it into a legitimate target of retaliation." (source)

The way Maas writes this, you would think there was no evidence that the Muslims were actually firing mortars from the hospital. In actual fact, the evidence for this is not disputable. At least he is honest enough to note that the allegation was made, unlike some reporters.

In footnote 13 of his paper, "Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware," Lt. Colonel John Sray, who was on the ground in Sarajevo, writes:

"In a similar media oversight, the Bosniacs have long maintained a mortar in a garage adjacent to Kosevo Hospital. They occasionally fire this weapon into Serb gun positions hoping to draw counterbattery fire which would hit the hospital and generate substantial publicity. This fact is well-known around the city but conveniently not mentioned in press dispatches." (source)

On the Crimes of War Project website (which is anti-Serb), you may read this in an article by Emma Daly entitled "Immunity from Attack":

"Two weeks earlier, two patients had been killed when a shell hit their ward. We could hear the sounds of bombardment in the distance, and, suspiciously close to the hospital, the hollow sound of outgoing mortar fire. Hospitals are generally immune from attack under the Geneva Conventions, which grant civilians and civilian objects a high level of theoretical protection in times of war. The siege of Sarajevo, however, made a mockery of the humanitarian ideal that the dangers of war should be limited, as far as possible, to the armed forces engaged in the fighting." (source)

Peter Brock, in his article "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press," writes:

"'Kosevo' hospital in Sarajevo was a favorite backdrop for television journalists who, when the hospital's water supply was interrupted because of the shelling, eagerly awaited the first birth without water in the maternity ward. Once they got their pictures, the Western film crews dismantled their cameras and returned to the nearby Holiday Inn, where hot water was abundant. Unreported was the fact that on their exit from the hospital they had to avoid tripping over a shielded Bosnian army mortar emplacement that was never identified as the probable reason why Serbs sporadically fired at the hospital." (source)

Finally, I quote from Andy Walker's summary of the testimony of General Phillipe Morillon, who was the UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia from September 1992 to July 1993:

"Tapuskovic read out a quote from Morillon's testimony to the French Parliament regarding the Kosevo Hospital in Sarajevo. Morillon said, 'We saw a [Muslim] mortar there ready to provoke a reaction from the Serbs. They did that all the time. I know that some UN observers saw that mortar at Kosevo. Very frequently they used mortars at Kosevo for provocation purposes.'

Morillon confirmed that this was true and that he denounced that practice. It is unconscionable that anybody could be so evil that they would try to draw their fire on to a civilian hospital for the purposes of propaganda, but that is exactly what the Muslim authorities did in Sarajevo." (source)

I agree with this moral judgment, and this is far from the worst that the Muslims did.

b. The "Breadline" Massacre

Peter Maas alluded to the Bosnian Serb allegation that the Muslims shelled their own people above, implying that there is no evidence for it. Indeed, there is quite a bit of evidence for it. The first case is the "Breadline" massacre.

I quote from Leonard Doyle's article for The Independent of August 22, 1992, entitled "Muslims Slaughter Their Own People":

"The televised scenes of civilians cut to pieces by an explosion as they queued for bread on one of Sarajevo's main shopping thoroughfares, Vase Miskina, horrified international public opinion and added to growing pressure for military intervention against the Serbian side in the war. Vivid footage showed dead bodies littering the street and people with severed limbs sitting on the pavement in pools of blood. The attack came shortly before a meeting of European Community ambassadors to consider imposing sanctions on Serbia. The world's press concluded that the atrocity was caused by mortar bombs fired from a Serbian-held positions and attack was widely interpreted as a cynical display of defiance by the Serbs.

UN officials said then that they were suspicious about the circumstances but could not go public without jeopardizing the UN mission and possibly endangering UN peacekeepers' lives.

Classified reports to the UN force commander, General Satish Nambiar, concluded, however, that the Bosnian forces loyal to President Alija Izetbegovic may have detonated a bomb.

'We believe it was a command-detonated explosion, probably in a can,' a UN official said then. 'The impact which is there now is not necessarily similar or anywhere near as large as we came to expect with a mortar round landing on a paved surface.'" (source)

This is not the end of it, however. Mrs. Radmilla Draskovic, a Bosnian Serb recounts in a deposition how

"...I was an eyewitness of the Vasa Miskin street massacre. About forty minutes beforehand they [Muslims] forbade passage through this street from the Muslim Slav part of the town, while allowing passage from other parts of the city. They were preparing the ambulance and the TV report truck. I saw this from the window of my apartment, noticing that passage was forbidden from one side of the town. The TV report truck were by the Sarajevo city market, allegedly reporting on the market. The same moment explosion occurred on the street, they began the TV report. For that day, they transported bread and ice cream to that street. I knew some of the people who were hurt in that alleged artillery attack. I heard only the explosion, but not the sound of mortar shells in the flight. Stretchers and ambulances were prepared beforehand, and there were other vehicles parked in front of my house just before the explosion..." (source)

Dr. Zoran B. Djordjevic, a representative of Republika Srpska Krajina in Croatia (which would later be ethnically cleansed in Tudjman's Operation Storm) wrote to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali about the incident:

"Serbs still living hidden in the streets near the place of the accident informed the Serbian Government that cameramen of [Moslem controlled] TV Sarajevo visited the site with their gear half an hour before the killing. Most of the people, standing in line, were brought close to the site by the soldiers with Muslim insignia. Three of those killed were recognized as Miroslav Svrakic, Stojan Skoric and Nedeljka Dobrijevic, all Serbs.

All evidence collected so far indicate that this 'accident' was a premeditated murder organized by the Muslim Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina with intention of slandering Serbian side. It appears that those massacred were Serbs which had been held as hostages in the city of Sarajevo by Moslem and Croat forces." (source)

Of course, we all know that Serbs are untrustworthy, so I'll quote a greater authority just in case.

Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie, who was Chief of Staff of UNPROFOR forces in Bosnia in 1992, writes in his book Peacekeeper:

"Disaster in Sarajevo. People lined up for bread were attacked, and at least seventeen killed. Presidency claims it was a Serb mortar attack, Serbs claim it was a set-up using explosives. Our people tell us there were a number of things that didn't fit. The street had been blocked off just before the incident. Once the crowd was let in and lined up, the media appeared but kept distance. The attack took place, and the media was immediately on the scene. The majority of people killed are alleged to be 'tame Serbs'. Who knows? The only thing for sure is that innocent people were killed." (source)

It should be noted before moving on that this staged atrocity against Serbian civillians appeared to be timed to influence a vote in the U.N. to impose sanctions on Serbs (see here) They were imposed and were brutal (see here).

c. The First Markale Massacre

The second staged shelling took place on February 5, 1994. Peter Makara notes that on January 14th, 1994, NATO issued adopted a communique that read as follows:

"On the basis of the authorization given by the UN Security Council and in accordance with the decisions made by NATO on 2 and 9 August 1993, we confirm our readiness to take air strikes in order to prevent strangulation of Sarajevo, safe zones and other endangerd areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina."

NATO wanted the U.N.'s "Go" signal first, however. Makara reproduces an articles from the Washington Post:

"At a Jan. 11 meeting in Brussels, NATO leaders called on Boutros-Ghali to draw up plans for carrying out the operations and reiterated the threat, originally made last August, to use U.S. and other NATO combat aircraft if called on for help by the United Nations."

On February 1st, 1994, NATO gets its way:

"Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali signalled his preparedness Tuesday to use air power in Bosnia to maintain the credibility of U.N. and NATO threats. In a wide-ranging news conference, the U.N. chief also said he was strongly opposed to lifting the arms embargo for Bosnia, saying it would only prolong the conflict.

'There is no reason not to use force,' he said in response to a query on airstrikes. "To the contrary, once we use force we will give credibility to the fact that we say we will use force.

'I believe it is important to use air force without any hesitation to impose certain decisions taken by the Security Council.'

(for all the above, see here)

The massacre took place four days later. It was an odd sort of shelling, in that 68 people were killed and 144 wounded. Paul Beaver, editor of Jane's Defense Weekly, told The Independent "I find it difficult to contemplate that a 1200mm mortar could cause this number of casualties even in a confined space like market... I'm not aware of such a high number being killed by a single shell." (source)

"Within hours of the explosion, the Clinton administration, while acknowledging there was no definitive culprit, pointed the finger of blame for the massacre at the Serbs... Madeleine Albright, the U.S. representative to the U.N., said on television: 'It's very hard to believe any country would do this to their own people, and therefore, although we do not know exactly what the facts are, it would seem to us that the Serbs and the Bosnian Serbs are the ones that probably have a great deal of responsibility.'" (source)

David Binder's article, Anatomy of a Massacre in Foreign Policy, relying on a U.N. report of the incident (source), notes the strange events that followed the massacre, reminiscent of the earlier Breadline incident:

"The UNPROFOR officers who hurried to the scene immediately after the blast were barred from the interior of the market by Muslim policemen. Partly as a result, the UNPROFOR officers deposed no eyewitness of the shelling at that time. In the UNPROFOR report, the officers stated that they were permitted to stand at the southern edge of the market and observe while casualties were evacuated in the trunks of small cars and on truck beds. That was "done exceptionally quickly," one officer reported -- within 25 minutes. The officers saw no medical personnel attending the evacuation. When the evacuation was complete, the two officers were permitted to walk the 40 yards or so from the edge of the market to the explosion crater in the northeast corner, where they stood watch until the first UNPROFOR crater analysis team arrived at about 2 p.m. They later reported that there had been no tampering with the crater site while they watched." (source)

Dr. Sevket Karaduman, who treated the victims, reported:

"that 80% of the injuries were from the waist down. There were burns on legs and some cases of heavy bleeding from open fractures. On the other hand, there were hardly any foreign bodies or shrapnel in the wounds, most of which were internal. 'Some of the first casualties to arrive said they had seen four or five grenades flying through the air... and thought they had heard a bomb. Only later, when U.N. personnel arrived, they said that a shell had fallen.'

(...)

"Dr. Karduman's testimony was presented two days ago to a senior Israeli ballistics and explosives expert, who specializes in investigating sabotage. He concluded no shell could have caused such devastation and that the disaster had been caused by a cone-shaped explosive device placed among the crates in the market. Within the device were a propelling charge, a phosphorus bomb and three or four shell heads and hand grenades, which exploded simultaneously. It was probably detonated by remote control. The Israeli expert added that the device need not have weighed more than 15 kilograms and that similar devices are used by the Hezbollah in Lebanon and were used by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan. There are at present several hundreds of Mujaheddin in Bosnia.

The absence of a shell crater was explained in news reports by the suggestion that the shell fell on a table. But the Israeli expert said that this would have caused injuries mainly to the upper part of the body and that the nature of the wounds described by Dr. Karduman points to a phosphorus bomb which would cause tissue burning. The near-absence of shrapnel in the wounds and the high proportion of internal wounds point to a propelling charge." (source)

British journalist Eve-Anne Prentice also had some information of her own (one of her sources was the aforementioned Paul Beaver, see page 47945 of the transcript). I quote from Andy Wilcoxson's summary of her testimony:

"Milosevic questioned the witness questions about the Markale market. Over the course of her work, Ms. Prentice spoke with people who had access to ballistics data on the blast. According to the information she received the blast did not come from an outside projectile. The blast came from an explosive device that had been taped under one of the tables at the market.

When she interviewed Lord Owen she asked him whether he had believed that the Bosnian-Muslim government planted the bomb themselves. She said that Owen responded by refusing to confirm or deny the suggestion. The Markale Market is significant because NATO used it as the justification to bomb the Bosnian Serbs." (source)

In article about the incident, she writes:

"Survivors and witnesses said they heard no characteristic whistle of an approaching missile; this later led to suggestions that a bomb had been placed under a stall. A Western diplomat who was in Sarajevo at the time told me in 1999 that he was convinced the bombing was perpetrated by the Muslim-led Government. The Muslims were sure that the Serbs would be blamed and hoped that outrage at the carnage would lead to airstrikes against their foes and increase pressure for a lifting of the arms embargo that was in place against all the warring sides. Britain and France were vehemently opposed to lifting the embargo, although America had shown signs of wanting to arm the Muslims.

"On the morning of the explosion some people were told that it was not a good day to go to the market," the Western diplomat said. "There was also no shelling from the Serb positions that day, and the injuries were mainly from the waist down, as if a bomb had exploded in situ." The diplomat said that another sign that the Muslim-led Government had been responsible was that government media with cameras were on the scene "within seconds", as if poised in advance to record the full horror of the carnage to gain as much world impact as possible." (source)

On February 8th, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, president of Republika Srpska, wrote letters to President Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and B.B. Ghali urging a UNPROFOR investigation that would include both Serb and Muslim experts. (source) (source)

Running on the assumption that it was mortar fire that caused the carnage, investigations by the U.N. were carried out. A French officer arrived at the conclusion that the shell had come from behind Muslim lines.

"On February 9, NATO foreign ministers, animated by the belief that Serbs had fired the mortar, were meetting in Brussels to set a 10-day deadline for a Serb widhdrawal of heavy weapons to a point 12 miles outside of Sarajevo. At that moment, Rose, the UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, was negotiating a ceasefire in Sarajevo. He was operating on the French captain's premise that Muslims may have shelled their own people.

The Serb commander, General Manojlo Milovanovic, showed up on time at Sarajevo's Butmir Airport to meet Rose. But the Bosnian government leaders, long reluctant to commit themselves to ceasefires that they believed gave the Serbs an advantage, stayed away, breaking the date. In a fury, as he later confided to a BBC correspondent, the British UNPROFOR commander drove downtown to the Bosnian government presidency to confront General Jovan Divjak and President Aija Izetbegovic. Demanding that they sign the ceasefire agreement, he waved an envelope at them, according to senior UNPROFOR officers, saying, 'I have an allegation here.' Rose said that it implicated Muslims in the mortar attack on the market- place. He was referring to the French captain's crater analysis. Divjak hastened to the airport and signed the ceasefire accord -- a response that seemed to Rose to confirm the culpability of the Muslims." (source)

The U.N. would do another investigation and arrive at an "inconclusive" conclusion. What is important here, however, is the reaction of Divjak and Izetbegovic, which seem to be the actions of guilty men.

Binder continues:

"There was one other indicator of culpability, though it would hardly rate as evidence in a court of law: Bosnian Serb officers confirmed to the team that their Kosevo Brigade had mortar positions in the area of Mrkovici, which lay within the cone determined by UNPROFOR as encompassing the possible firing site. On February 5, U.N. monitors (UNMOs) stationed within Serbian lines reported no shots fired from the Serbian mortars. Although the UNMOS stationed near the Muslim side had 'no indication of the origin of the fire,' the fact that U.N. monitors had reported no shelling from Serb-controlled areas led one high-ranking UNPROFOR official to speculate from this 'shot report' that the mortar was probably fired from within Muslim lines." (source)

Finally, Lord Owen, of the Vance-Owen peace plan, wrote in his book, "Balkan Odyssey," of the efforts to cover up unhelpful information:

"In addition, a senior ballistic expert in Zagreb has studied a map of likely trajectory patterns produced by UN investigators in Sarajevo and believed the angle at which the mortar had hit the roof of the market stall indicated that the firing point was more likely to be 1,100 - 2,000 metres from the impact than 2,000-3,000 metres, and that this would tend to indicate that the mortar had been fired from a Bosnian army position. When this highly charged information reached the UN in New York on Tuesday everything was done to clamp down on the number of people who saw it so as to reduce the chance of press leak." (source)

This was all quite good for NATO, who succeeded in getting the Serbs to remove their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo with the threat of air strikes, and on April 10th, 1994, NATO carries out its first air raid against the Serbian positions around Gorazde. (source)

d. The Second Markale Massacre

On August 27th, 1995, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke threatens the Republika Srpska on Meet the Press:

"If this peace initiative does not get moving -- dramatically moving -- in the next week or two, the consequences will be very adverse to the Serbian goals.

One way or another, NATO will be heavily involved, and the Serbs don't want that. NATO will either assist the U.N. withdrawal, or there will be more active NATO air over the skies. These are not things the Serbs should want..."

(source)

The very next day, NATO gets its pretext. A shell hits Markale market; 37 people are killed and 90 are wounded.

I quote from David Binder's article, Bosnia's Bombers, in The Nation of October 2, 1995:

"Within a day of that explosion, investigators for the UN Protection Force under Lieut. Gen. Rupert Smith 'concluded beyond all reasonable doubt' that the lethal mortar round had been fired from a Bosnian Serb position in the suburb of Lukavica, 1.5 to 3.5 kilometers southwest of the marketplace. On August 30, NATO's bombs began to fall.

The crucial UN report on the market massacre is classified secret, but four specialists--a Russian, a Canadian and two Americans--have raised serious doubts about its conclusion, suggesting instead that the mortar was fired not by the Serbs but by Bosnian government forces.

(...)

The Russian dissenter is Col. Andrew Demurenko, an artillery officer who commands the small Russian UN peacekeeping force in Sarajevo. On August 29, Demurenko announced that the probability of hitting a street less than thirty feed wide from one or two miles away, 'the distance to the nearest Serb artillery positions', was 'one to one million'. Noting that no UN artillery observers heard the distinctive high-pitched whistle of a mortar shell prior to the detonation, he said he believed the fatal round had been 'fired from some technical' weaponry other than mortars.

On September 2, Demurenko went on television in Sarajevo, declaring the UN report 'a falsification'. With maps and diagrams he pointed out what he called inconsistencies and contradictions, saying 'It is absolutely unacceptable for me to consent to the arguments ... that the shelling came from the Serb side'. Later a senior UN official confided to the Associated Press that the UNPROFOR command was considering disciplinary action against Demurenko.

The Canadian specialist, an officer with extensive service in Bosnia, said in a telephone interview that the UN report, which he'd seen, was 'highly suspect'. He cited 'anomalies with the fuse' of the mortar shell recovered from the marketplace crater. Unlike the fuses of four other shells that hit Sarajevo that morning, this one, he said, 'had not come from a mortar tube at all'. He added that he and fellow Canadian officers in Bosnia were 'convinced that the Moslem government dropped both the Feb. 5, 1994, and the August 28, 1995 mortar shells on the Sarajevo markets'.

A US Administration official who may not be identified further says, "It is impossible to see the street level of the marketplace from the distance and location of the Serb gun positions" meaning the Serbs would have been 'shooting blind'. Further, such a shot from such a distance would have had a high trajectory, he says; however, since 'there was no distinct whistle ... a shell could not have fallen from a very great height'. Also, the crater as shown was very shallow, while a high trajectory shell digs deep'. He contends that the available evidence suggests either 'the shell was fired at a very low trajectory, which means a range of a few hundred yards--therefore under government control' or 'a mortar shell converted into a bomb was dropped from a nearby roof into the crowd.'

A second US dissenter, a military officer, says that at least three of the five mortar founds that hit Sarajevo on August 28 'came from the identical firing position' on the Serb side. 'But the fourth was of different origin, the one that killed people in the market.'

The UN command in Sarajevo was offered a point-by-point rebuttal to these arguments. Curiously, it agrees with the dissenters on three basic points: that the fatal shell was fired at a very low trajectory; that it would have been a 'one in a million' shot if it had been fired by Serbs; and that it would have been fired blindly. Nevertheless, the UN's Lieut. Col. Chris Vernon says the UN sticks by the conclusions of its inquiry."

(source)

Another report, this time from the Sunday Times of October 1, 1995, cited British and French ammunition experts who concluded that there was no evidence that the Serbs were responsible.

"A senior American officer at the United Nations Protection Force (Unprofor) headquaters in Sarajevo dismissed their findings, however, citing a small groove known as a fuse furrow made in the ground by the bomb head.

...Neither British nor French analysts notice such a groove." (source)

2. Sniping

Undoubtedly Serbs were behind some snipings of civillians in Sarajevo. What has been overlooked, however, is some rather irrefutable evidence that the Muslims were sniping their own civillians to frame the Serbs and manipulate world opinion.

I quote from a Reuters report:

"FRENCH BELIEVE BOSNIAN ARMY FIRED ON SARAJEVO AS SNIPERS

NEW YORK (Reuter) - French U.N. peacekeepers believe Bosnian soldiers on a Sarajevo rooftop have shot at civilians, perhaps in an attempt to gain international sympathy, The New York Times reported in Tuesday editions.

The shooting stopped in June after the investigators from an anti-sniping unit used ``very sophisticated optical enhancement equipment'' to spot a sniper on a government-held roof and then notified the Bosnian army the sniper would be shot, the Times said.

The French officers started an investigation into shots they thought had been fired from the former parliament building, which is held by Bosnian forces, after studying the trajectory of some bullets, the paper said.

"It was the only place where some of the snipers could be,'' one investigator told the Times.

Kemal Muftic, a spokesman for President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, told the Times that the report was ridiculous and was designed to allow the United Nations to shirk responsibility.

"Instead of doing its duty, the United Nations wishes to blame both sides equally,'' the paper quoted Muftic as saying. ''By doing so, the United Nations can justify remaining impassive.''

The newspaper quoted a `"senior French officer'' saying the report was never written or reported to "upper-level United Nations officials'' because the shooting stopped.

The soldiers told the Times that they did not keep records but believed that bullets fired from the building hit at least two civilians, came close to others and damaged U.N. vehicles.

The soldiers theorized that the shootings were designed to generate publicity and sympathy, and unidentified diplomats blamed a rogue group within the army who might profit from instability by dealing on the black market.

The 40-story building was damaged in 1992 and is used by the Bosnian army to fire on Serb positions."

(source)

The New York Times report goes into a great deal more detail and can be read here.

Jovo Janjic, who founded the Democratic Initiative of Sarajevo Serbs, talks about the Muslim snipers here:

Also, there were plenty sniper attacks from Sarajevo on this side, controlled by the Army of Srpska. I recall when several citizens died in sniper attacks, one of them was a friend of mine, in the center of Ilidza. They were shot by a sniper stationed on the top of the Freezer building. Finally, during the last few years we are slowly learning details about some of their organized sniping groups, such as "Seve", which, besides Serbs, even killed Bosniaks in their part of the city.

Read these articles about "Seve."

Seve practiced by Shooting Civilians in Sarajevo

Hague Investigators Collected Evidence That Indicates That Bosniak Authorities Murdered Their Own Citizens!

Here's an excerpt from one:

"In a display of honesty seldom seen in these parts, Nijaz Durakovic explained that he had prepared all the documentation in connection with the case Alibabic-Alispahic, photocopied and hid it in Vienna. "I also informed the Presidency about that. I wanted to make sure that I won't be hit by a 'Chetnik sniper'," said Durakovic. An unpleasant experience Prof. Durakovic had with "Chetnik snipers" while driving over the bridge in the direction of the bar "Dva Ribara" was definitely enough for caution. Several months earlier a sniper bullet flew though the window of the room in the State Hospital in which at the time gravely wounded deputy Prime Minister of the government of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and today the leader of the SDP, Dr. Zlatko Lagumdzija, was recovering. That happened on the day when, after being tied to the bed for several days, Lagumdzija tried to get up and walk. Experts confirmed that the bullet could not have come from the Jewish cemetery, or any Serb sniping positions.

The fact that these days the Hague investigators are focusing the investigation in the case "Seve" on Slobodanka Sakotic and her brother Slobodan, indicates that Durakovic's caution was justified. The two Sakotics were before the war distinguished sharpshooters, and in "Seve" they were among the chief killers. They used sniper rifles for the executions. The wartime biography of brother and sister Sakotic became the object of investigation by the Hague Tribunal. The investigation indicates that the Sakotics were members of the group "Seve" and were ordered to shoot from sniper rifles at civilians and carry out executions in Sarajevo and around the city. For a while the unit "Seve" was based in the base of the Special Police Unit. Asim Dautbasic was in charge of coordinating its activities during the time the unit was based in the special forces base."

Previous threads

The hoaxing of the Racak "massacre"

Lie #2: "Operation Horseshoe"

Interesting that in Owen's lengthy and informative post, in which he refers to Eve-Anne Prentice on several occasions, he omits the piece of evidence she gave to the Milosevic trial that brought the house down.

Read all about it: BRITISH JOURNALIST EYE-WITNESSED OSAMA BIN LADEN ENTERING ALIJA IZETBEGOVIC’S OFFICE IN SARAJEVO

The most explosive part of (Ms Prentice's) testimony dealt with an interview that she scheduled with Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. While she was waiting in Izetbegovic's foyer both she, and a journalist from Der Speigel, saw Osama bin Laden being escorted into Izetbegovic’s office. Yes *that* Osama bin Laden -- the same Osama bin Laden who masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Needless to say this evidence did not sit well with the tribunal. Mr. Nice immediately objected and Judge Robinson cut off the testimony immediately declaring it “irrelevant.”

Milosevic tried to explain that the involvement of Islamic terrorists with the highest level of the Bosnian Muslim government shows that the Bosnian Serbs were fighting a war for self-preservation, not a war for some made-up “greater Serbia” conspiracy. Unfortunately the Judges wouldn’t have any of it so he was forced to move on.

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg020306.htm

Sadly Milosevic was running out of time to explain anything to anyone.

Just over a month later, he suffered a 'heart attack'.

Strange the judges seemed so uninterested in hearing out Ms Prentice.

I thought we had a War on Terror and that OBL was/is Public Enemy No. 1?

Why wouldn't his earlier contacts have been of interest to an International Criminal Tribunal?

Edited April 29, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Sid Walker]

Definitely NOT worth reporting, this story.

Congratulations to the mainstream media. Well done 'liberal' media! Great stuff 'progressive' media! Good show all round!

How very interesting that from The Times to Salon.com, from The Guardian to the Village Voice, from The Nation to The Daily Telegraph, from the BBC to Fox News... ALL agree this is NOT a story worth reporting.

The most explosive part of (Ms Prentice's) testimony dealt with an interview that she scheduled with Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. While she was waiting in Izetbegovic's foyer both she, and a journalist from Der Speigel, saw Osama bin Laden being escorted into Izetbegovic’s office. Yes *that* Osama bin Laden -- the same Osama bin Laden who masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Needless to say this evidence did not sit well with the tribunal. Mr. Nice immediately objected and Judge Robinson cut off the testimony immediately declaring it “irrelevant.”

Milosevic tried to explain that the involvement of Islamic terrorists with the highest level of the Bosnian Muslim government shows that the Bosnian Serbs were fighting a war for self-preservation, not a war for some made-up “greater Serbia” conspiracy. Unfortunately the Judges wouldn’t have any of it so he was forced to move on.

Nothing to see here.

Move on!

[Sid Walker]

Question about the War on Terror...

Do they also hate us for our rigorous justice system, fearless, independent judiciary and inquisitive free mass media?