Former UN commander testifies in Karadzic trial

Oct 5, 2010, 19:07 GMT

The Hague - War crimes defendant Radovan Karadzic had such a tight grip on the Bosnian-Serb military that he was able to allow a football game watched by thousands of people to take place in the middle of the siege of Sarajevo without a single shot being fired, a former UN commander said Tuesday.

The evidence came as part of the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) war crimes case against Karadzic - who faces 11 charges of genocide and war crimes. Karadzic denies all charges.

'There was extreme coordination between the front lines and the upper echelons of the political military structures. And the decisions taken at the top would immediately be taken on the ground, as one would expect in any army,' Michael Rose, a retired British Army general who headed the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and 1995 told judges in The Hague.

While in Bosnia, Rose held regular meetings with the military and political leaders of the warring factions, including Karadzic.

Asked by prosecutors to illustrate the former Bosnian-Serb leader's control over the military, General Rose recalled a match played in March 1994 in Sarajevo by UN peacekeepers and local footballers and attended by up to 20,000 spectators.

Karadzic had promised the game would take place without interruption.

'Karadzic was as good as his word and made sure the match could go ahead without any sniping or shelling,' Rose told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Rose said Karadzic's forces repeatedly blocked aid convoys, actions that resulted in the reduction of the civilian population in Srebrenica to a state of 'near starvation'.

'It was systematic and could only have come as a decision from the top,' Rose told the court.