Karadzic

The Trial Chamber has issued an order compelling General Milenko Zivanovic to testify in Radovan Karadzic’s defense on 8 May 2013. If the former VRS Drina Corps commander complies with the order, this will be his first testimony before the Tribunal

The accused Radovan Karadzic insisted there was ‘the imbalance’ between civilian and military authorities, but General Stanislav Galic said that he as a corps commander had to obey both the president who planned combat operations ‘through his directives’ and Ratko Mladic, whose Main Staff implemented the directives

Former Sarajevo-Romanija Corps commander has continued his testimony in Radovan Karadzic’s defense. Galic denied his subordinates were responsible for the attacks on Sarajevo civilians but at one point he backed down and admitted that he would ‘surely have dealt with [some of these incidents] differently’ if he had knew then what he knows now. Claiming that the army under the control of Karadzic and Mladic was not guilty of the crimes, the witness said ‘only 36 per cent’ of all the people killed in Sarajevo had been civilians

Several VRS generals have refused to obey Radovan Karadzic’s requests and give evidence in his defense. Ratko Mladic is the latest to rebuff Karadzic, who promptly addressed the Trial Chamber asking it to issue a subpoena to the former Main Staff commander to compel him to testify in Karadzic’s defense

On 5 February 1995, a shell killed 66 and wounded more than 140 persons in the Markale market in Sarajevo. The judgment sentencing General Stanislav Galic to life in prison established beyond reasonable doubt that the shell was fired from the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps positions. In his evidence in Karadzic’s defense, Galic denied the responsibility arguing there was ‘something abnormal’ in that finding

The former UN Secretary General special envoy’s request to testify in closed session was denied by the judges. Akashi asked them to allow him to testify at Radovan Karadzic’s trial in closed session because he was unhappy with the media coverage of his statements

The prosecution contends there is plenty of evidence that Karadzic is responsible for the genocide in the municipalities. Karadzic shared the genocidal intent with other members of the joint criminal enterprise, the prosecutor insisted, corroborating the claim by invoking a putative baker from Prijedor. Karadzic’s legal advisor Peter Robinson compared the OTP’s efforts to prove that genocide was committed in the municipalities with the futile efforts of an untalented student to enroll in Harvard

VRS general Stanislav Galic contends that the ‘enemy’ regularly attacked their own combat positions and civilian targets in the city in order to blame the Serbs for ‘turning Sarajevo into hell’. They used ‘postmortems conducted by their pathologists’ to reinforce the image, Galic exclaimed, obviously referring to the investigations conducted by crime scene technicians

Former president of the Bratunac municipality Ljubisav Simic confirmed that Miroslav Deronjic informed Karadzic about the ‘events’ in Kravica. On 13 July 1995, about 1,000 detainees were killed there. A couple of minutes later, the witness corrected himself, saying that Deronjic, as the civil commissioner, informed ‘those at the top’ without specifying their names

General Stanislav Galic is trying to defend Radovan Karadzic using the same arguments he had used at his trial, which ended with a life sentence. Galic contends that the Bosnian Serb army only responded to the attacks from Sarajevo and tried hard not to go overboard and endanger the civilians