As his evidence at the trial of Radovan Karadzic drew to a close, Momcilo Mandic explained that Radovan Karadzic could not control the army, contrary to what he had said in his previous evidence in the Krajisnik case. Mandic then wished the best of luck to ‘Mr. President’, as he addressed the accused during his testimony, and left the courtroom. The next witness is Dr. Milan Mandilovic, head surgeon in the Ear, Nose and Throat Ward of the State Hospital in Sarajevo


In his evidence at the trial of Momcilo Krajisnik, Momcilo Mandic said that Radovan Karadzic was undoubtedly ‘No. 1’ in the Republika Srpska leadership and controlled the army and police. As his evidence at the trial of Radovan Karadzic drew to a close, Mandic claimed that this was not really the case, and that Karadzic could not control the army because its commander, Ratko Mladic, was out of control.

When Judge O-Gon Kwon asked him to give an example of Mladic’s recalcitrance, Mandic recalled an incident from 1993, when General Mladic ordered the arrest of Mico Ninkovic and a dozen or so cabinet ministers and forced them to spend a few days feeding pigs at a farm in Han Pijesak. Mladic ignored everyone’s demands for their release, even Karadzic’s, Mandic said.

As Mandic’s testimony drew to a close, Karadzic devoted some time to his favorite wartime activity – map drawing. He tried to show that the front line for the most part coincided with the ethnic map of BH: according to him, the Serb army held ‘ethnically Serb areas’. Noting that the indictment misinterprets his statement in the RS Assembly that the Serb forces ‘have managed to grab some municipalities in Eastern Bosnia where Serbs were in the minority’, Karadzic explained that he wanted ‘to heal the wounds of the deputies from the municipalities where Serbs used to have almost 100 percent majority, yet lost them’. Mandic remarked that the deputies were so greedy that they would not have been satisfied even if ‘half of Croatia and Serbia had been taken’. Karadzic then said that the term ‘pure Serb’ did not mean that others had been ‘cleansed’ from it, but that there was a clear Serb majority there. Mandic agreed.

Karadzic used a series of photographs of Sarajevo taken from the hills around it to prove that the ‘Muslim forces’ held almost all the heights in the city and around it, and opened fire from those positions not only on Grbavica and other Serb neighborhoods, but on their own people too.

[IMAGE]4874[/IMAGE]At the end of his evidence, Mandic wished ‘Mr. President’ the best of luck, and the prosecution then called Dr. Milan Mandilovic, head surgeon in the Ear, Nose and Throat Ward of the Sarajevo State Hospital. The prosecution tendered into evidence the witness’s written statement, based on his previous evidence at the trials of generals Stanislav Galic and Dragomir Milosevic and the former chief of the VJ General Staff, Momcilo Perisic.

In a brief examination-in-chief, Mandilovic described the working conditions in the former military hospital which was shelled virtually every day during the 44 months of the siege of Sarajevo. As he said, the hospital was targeted ‘with every kind of artillery weapon’, from every direction, but most of the fire came from the south. There was no food, water, fuel, medicines, and other vital supplies. Yet, despite the fact that the hospital was at the front line, it ‘never stopped working’, Mandilovic said.

Dr. Mandilovic will continue his testimony on Monday.

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