THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Nov 12 (Hina) - The trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague continued on Wednesday with the testimony of prosecutorial witness Francis
Thomas, a Canadian army major who headed a UN military observer mission in Sarajevo in 1993 and 1994.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Nov 12 (Hina) - The trial of former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal for
former Yugoslavia in The Hague continued on Wednesday with the
testimony of prosecutorial witness Francis Thomas, a Canadian army
major who headed a UN military observer mission in Sarajevo in 1993
and 1994. #L#
Between October 1993 and July 1994, Thomas headed some 200 UN
military observers in Sarajevo, Gorazde and Zepa, who reported to
the UN about military activities, exchange of fire and victims.
In the said period, random fire was opened from Serb positions on
Sarajevo, whose residents were terrorised with the shelling of
water pumps, hospitals and other civilian facilities.
The witness said that in early February 1994 UN observers
established that two mortar shells, which killed a number of
civilians, including six children, had been fired from Bosnian Serb
army positions.
At Milosevic's request the witness confirmed that in December 1993
forces of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina burned a number of Serb
villages around Han Pijesak and killed their residents. The witness
also described other incidents involving Serb victims.
Before Major Thomas' testimony, protected witness B-1399, who
survived an execution after the fall of Srebrenica, took the
witness stand.
He described how Bosniaks, who surrendered to Serb forces on 13 July
1995, were transferred to Bratunac, where some of them were killed
while around 2,000 others were transferred to Zvornik the following
day, where they were imprisoned in a school gymnasium in Grbavica.
The witness said that the prisoners were blindfolded and taken from
the gym in groups, and executed in a nearby field. The witness
survived the execution after a prisoner who was shot fell on him.
At the end of today's hearing the prosecution called to the witness
stand Mirsad Kucanin, a senior Bosnian interior ministry official,
who between 1992 and 1994 took part in some 40 investigations into
artillery and sniper attacks on Sarajevo. On a map of the Sarajevo
area he showed some 15 locations from where Serb artillery and
snipers attacked the city, adding that the victims were mostly
civilians.
(hina) rml sb