THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 8 (Hina) - A professor from the University of Harvard, Andreas J. Riedlmayer, on Tuesday took the witness stand at the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic before the UN war crimes tribunal for
the ex-Yugoslavia (ICTY). The witness testified about the systematic destruction of Roman Catholic churches and mosques and other Islamic facilities and cultural monuments in Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1996.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 8 (Hina) - A professor from the University of
Harvard, Andreas J. Riedlmayer, on Tuesday took the witness stand
at the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic before
the UN war crimes tribunal for the ex-Yugoslavia (ICTY). The
witness testified about the systematic destruction of Roman
Catholic churches and mosques and other Islamic facilities and
cultural monuments in Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina
between 1992 and 1996. #L#
The boundaries of the Republic of Srpska on Bosnia's map can be
drawn by connecting with a line all points which mark hundreds of
destroyed mosques and Catholic churches, said Riedlmayer, an
expert on the Ottoman heritage in the Balkans.
Riedlmayer, who testified as an expert witness for the prosecution,
prepared a report on the destruction of Bosnia's cultural heritage
in the period from 1992 to 1996 after he did field research and
collected pertinent documentation.
The report covers 19 municipalities controlled by Bosnian Serbs, in
which three fourths of 57 Catholic churches were torn down or
damaged. Of the 277 mosques which he toured in said areas, 92 were
completely torn down or seriously damaged, and 71 of them were
listed monuments.
Once the fighting ended and Serb authorities took over control of an
area, the churches and mosques were pulled down as a rule. The
rubble, and sometimes the foundations of the buildings, would be
removed, to be replaced by parking lots, garbage dumps or Serb
Orthodox churches, the witness said.
Testifying about the demolition of mosques, Riedlmayer spoke about
the example of Banja Luka, where local authorities ordered the
removal of the rubble only after all of the city's 15 mosques were
torn down, and later prevented their reconstruction. That,
according to the witness, indicates organised activity.
Serb authorities also confiscated or destroyed the archives of
Islamic and Catholic religious communities where documents on
births, marriages and deaths were kept.
Speaking about deliberate destruction, Riedlmayer said that the
building of Sarajevo's Institute of Oriental Studies had been
destroyed in a 1992 shelling from Serb positions around the Bosnian
capital. Over 2,000 documents from the 500-year-long history of
Bosnian Muslims, records of births, marriages and deaths from the
19th century and the national library with about 1.5 million books
were destroyed with incendiary shells fired from those positions.
Cross-examining the witness, Milosevic tried to undermine the
credibility of his testimony, claiming that he had a selective and
discriminatory approach to the topic because he did not cover
Orthodox churches in his research.
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