Markale Massacre Revisited

The trial of Bosnian Serb general Dragomir Milosevic this week focused on the second Markale market massacre in Sarajevo, which left dozens of people dead and injured, in one of the bloodiest episodes of the 1992-95 Bosnian war.



Shocking scenes of the massacre broadcast around the world shortly after the crime outraged the international community and prompted NATO bombing of Serb positions around the city, which finally ended the three-and-a-half-year seige of Sarajevo and led to the Dayton Peace Agreement a few months later.



However, controversy surrounding the United Nations investigation immediatelt after the massacre - which occurred in downtown Sarajevo on August 28, 1995 - and conflicting statements made by UN officials in the days that followed, sparked many conspiracy theories, one of which is that the Bosnian Muslims fired the shells themselves, in a ruse to gain international symapthy and force NATO to intervene and stop Serb attacks.



Dutch general Cornelis Nikolai, who was the United Nations Protection Force, UNPROFOR, Chief of Staff in Sarajevo at the time of the massacre, told the trial of Dragomir Milosevic this week that even he was puzzled by the results of the UN investigation.



He said it was strange that no one heard any of the five 122 mm mortar shells that hit the market, and that none of them was picked up by sophisticated radar systems UNPROFOR had at its disposal at that time, to determine the direction of the incoming fire.



But he was adamant that the results of the UN investigation, announced on August 29, 1995 - the day NATO bombing of the Serb positions around Sarajevo began - showed “with 99 percent certainty” that the mortars were fired from the Serb-held territory near Sarajevo.



Dragomir Milosevic succeeded Stanislav Galic as commander of the Sarajevo Romanija Corps in August 1994, having served as his chief of staff from March 1993, and is suspected of having commanded 18,000 military personnel to shell, shoot at, terrorise and kill tens of thousands of Sarajevo civilians whilst they went about their everyday lives.



About 10,500 civilians were killed, 1,800 of them children, and 50,000 wounded during the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo.



Galic was recently sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal for his role in the shelling and sniping campaign.



General Nikolai told the Milosevic trial this week that Serb forces around the city often fired “in response to provocations by the Bosnian army”, whose positions were in the besieged city itself, but he added that response was almost always disproportionate and too severe.



He also said firing modified air bombs at highly populated residential areas could not be justified by provocations of the enemy side. “They were not guided missiles,” he said, and therefore no one knew where they might land.



In his cross-examination of the witness, Milosevic’s lawyer Branislav Tapuskovic mainly focused on the “mystery”, as he called it, of the shells that exploded at the Markale market, killing 37 and wounding 90 people.



Out of five 122 mm shells, four landed near the market, causing only minor material damage, while the one, which hit the roof of a building overlooking the stalls, was fatal. Its shrapnel fell “like rain” on a crowd at the market, said Nikolai, with terrible consequences.



Tupuskovic pressed the witness to explain how it was possible for mortar shells of such high calibre to be undetected by Dutch and British radars installed in Sarajevo, or to land without their approach being heard, as apparently many witnesses later said.



“I’ll say this bluntly: I suggest that these shells were not launched from Serb positions, but were triggered at the market itself. What is your answer to that?” said Tapuskovic.



But Nikolai’s answer seemed evasive. “I can only say that no-one heard these shells coming, and they were not detected by our radars,” he said.



However, he added that there is a possibility that radars were pointed in some other direction at that time, and that the shells were fired from long distance, in which case they would not be heard.



Tapuskovic then mentioned peace negotiations between Serbs and Muslims prior to the massacre, “which were going very well for the Serb side, especially after the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa”, and suggested it was clearly in the interest of the Bosnian Muslims to provoke an incident which would trigger NATO air strikes and put them in a better position for negotiations.



“These are just assumptions and I can talk only about facts,” said Nikolai.



“But do you agree that if the interests of a state are at stake, it is possible to sacrifice one’s own people to achieve those goals?” continued Tapuskovic.



“That’s a possibility we didn’t exclude,” answered Nikolai.



Tapuskovic then put it to the witness that on the day of the massacre, UN investigators themselves said they could not say with any certainty where the shells were fired from. However, he continued, the green light for the NATO air strikes was given the same day, although the results of the investigation were still inconclusive.



But Nikolai rejected these claims, and said NATO bombing was approved a day later, on August 29, 1995, when UN investigators said with “99 percent certainty” that the shells were fired from the Serb positions outside the city.



A prosecution witness who testified last week also shed some light on this mystery.



David Harland, former head of UN Civil Affairs in Bosnia, said he was responsible for the assessment that UNPROFOR was unable to determine who fired the mortar shells that caused the massacre. He told the court he personally advised UNPROFOR Commander General Rupert Smith to state that “it is unclear who fired the shells” in order not to alarm the Bosnian Serbs, and thus warn them of the impending NATO airs strikes.



Merdijana Sadovic is IWPR’s Hague programme manager.