Former VRS soldier moves Hague judge

Former VRS soldier moves Hague judge

As Carkić described in his examination-in-chief, he was issued the first weapon at the roadblocks near the School of Economics in Sarajevo.

He had gone there to demonstrate against the murder of a Serbian guest at a wedding in Baščaršija in May 1992.

After that, he and about 200 to 300 of his neighbors took their families to Pale and went back to Pofalići to “defend our homes.”

The battle of Pofalići, on May 16, 1992, is marked by the Bosnian Army as the day when it prevented the city from being divided in two and from being overrun by the enemy.

The witness described it as the struggle of “unarmed Serb people” against the Muslims from Sandžak who “killed 63 men” before his eyes.

He claims there were no JNA troops in Pofalići, contrary to what the prosecution is alleging.

The witness then recounted how he had been captured on that same day and taken to the Sarajevo Central Prison, where he had been beaten with “wooden and iron rods.”

He told the court he had glass and salt shoved into his mouth. He was exchanged on May 28, 1992, and then volunteered to join the VRS.

On June 1, 1992, he was deployed on the “defense” lines at Strojerad at Grbavica, where he spent the entire war “shooting at all those who shot at me.”

Presiding Judge Patrick Robinson called his testimony one of the most moving he had heard in the past eight and a half years of his tenure at the international war crimes tribunal.

The court already heard, during the prosecution case, a number of victims of the terror campaign General Milošević is charged with, including the mothers whose children, aged six or seven, were killed by snipers firing from the areas controlled by the VRS Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, as the prosecution alleges.