Anton Per Brenskag, witness at the Radovan Karadzic trial

Radovan Karadzic continued his cross-examination of crime technician Dragan Miokovic, trying to prove that the Security Services Center (CSB) personnel in Sarajevo ‘altered crime scenes’ of sniper and artillery incidents to blame the civilian victims on the Serb side. To that end, Karadzic analyzed the incident in the Livanjska Street on 8 November 1995, in which a 15-year-old girl was killed, and there were other casualties.

In an effort to show how his arrival in the dock in The Hague was ‘carefully orchestrated’, Karadzic claimed that the CSB staff, as they carried out a crime scene investigation in the Livanjska Street, ‘tore off’ the stabilizers of the shell in order to ‘alter’ the incoming angle of the round and then prevented UNPROFOR from investigating the incident. ‘I am fully aware of the fact that I am under oath and I claim there was no manipulation aimed at altering the crime scene, or falsifying evidence’, Miokovic replied.

As Miokovic recounted, a vehicle arrived as the investigation team was working at the crime scene. A UN soldier stepped out, with a weapon ‘in an almost combat position’. The witness assumed on the basis of the soldier’s stance that he was not there to do the on-site investigation but to establish what had happened and the witness asked the UN soldier to leave. Miokovic explained he did so because of the tensions after the incident in which a 15-year old girl was killed and several persons were seriously injured.

Karadzic then put it to the witness that the initial results of the UNPROFOR investigation showed the shell had been fired from the BH Army positions. In the course of the on-site investigation conducted the next day, the UN staff concluded at one point that the charge in the shell was not sufficient to propel the round from the VRS-held territory to the impact site. The witness believes that the UN soldiers’ conclusion is wrong because they used ‘Finnish tables’ to calculate the charges in the shells.

After Dragan Miokovic completed his evidence, the prosecution called retired Norwegian officer Anton Per Brennskag to the witness stand. Brennskag was UN military observer in Sarajevo in 1995, and has already testified in the cases of Dragomir Milosevic and Momcilo Perisic. The summary of Brennskag’s written statement indicates that after his arrival in Sarajevo in March 1995, he supervised the storage sites with the VRS heavy artillery in Pale. Brennskag was then transferred to the UN observation post in Pofalici. He witnessed the firing of several modified air bombs from the VRS positions in June and July 1995. On two occasions, Brennskag took part in investigations at explosion sites.

Anton Per Brennskag continues his evidence on Monday morning.

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