Newsgroup: it.cultura.storia.militare
Titolo: (OT?)La strage del mercato si Sarajevo

Qualche giorno fa in una discussione su questo gruppo è stata attribuita
ai musulmani
la responsabilità per la strage del mercato di Sarajevo.
Paolo Rumiz nel suo libro (Maschere per un massacro, Editori riuniti)
afferma invece
la responsabilità serba tanto nella strage del mercato (febbraio 94) che
in quella
successiva (agosto 95), sostenendo tra l’altro che nel primo episodio
l’ONU aveva
interesse a ‘scagionare’ i serbi e che quindi una eventuale
responsabilità bosniaca
sarebbe saltata fuori.
Vorrei sapere quale è la tesi più accreditata al momento.
Grazie
Simone Galeazzi

 wrote in message
384588DD...@tin.it...

Non conoscevo il libro di Rumiz, vedrò di procurarmelo. Mesi  (forse più di
un anno) fa io ho letto su tre quotidiani differenti (prima the Indipendent,
poi le Monde, poi il Manifesto (ma non ne sono certo per ciò che riguarda
quest'ultimo)), che perizie ONU avevano stabilito che il colpo ( o i colpi)
ce si abbatterono sul mercato di Sarajevo venivano dal "settore musulmano".
In effetti Sarajevo, da come me la ricordo (ci sono stato quando ero
piccolo) e l'ho sentita descrivere, è una città situata in una conca
circondata da montagne (tra le quali spicca il monte Igman). Se ho capito
bene, durante la guerra gran parte delle montagne circostanti Sarajevo era
controllata dai serbo-bosniaci, tuttavia vi erano anche settori controllati
dalla armija musulmana. Ora, a quello che ho letto e sentito dire, il colpo
che provocò la strage che scatenò l'intervento arereo NATO, contemporaneo
all'offensiva terrestre croata (che permise di cambiare gli equilibri
militari in Bosnia) partì proprio dalle alture controllate dai misulmani
bosniaci. Immagino si tratti della seconda strage.
Tuttavia io non so darti la fonte precisa, tu invece sì, con tanto di
titolo, nome e cognome, quindi la notizia più attendibile è la tua. Vedrò di
recuperare informazioni.
Ciao

Articolo del Washington Post  (tesi Rumiz, 1994)
Se non conoscete l'inglese, posso anche tradurvelo.
link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/bosnia/stories/market.ht
m
Shelling of Sarajevo Market Kills 66; More Than 200 Wounded
By Tony Smith
Associated Press
Sunday, February 6, 1994; Page A01
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA, FEB. 5 -- A mortar shell landed in a crowded open-air
market in Sarajevo today, killing at least 66 people and wounding more than
200. Horribly mangled bodies and severed limbs lay scattered amid
bloodstained market stalls in the bloodiest single attack on Sarajevo's
civilians since the war began 22 months ago.
"There are trucks of dead, there are legs, arms, heads -- as many as you
want," said a wounded young man while waiting for care at Kosevo Hospital.
It was not immediately known who fired the shell into the Bosnian capital,
which is under siege by Bosnian Serbs fighting the Muslim-led government.
But President Alija Izetbegovic's spokesman, Kemal Muftic, charged that the
120mm mortar shell was fired from a Serb-held position north of Sarajevo.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, however, suggested that government
soldiers had fired on their own people to persuade NATO to go ahead with
threatened airstrikes on Serb positions. But there was no evidence to
support his charge, which was dismissed by the Bosnian government.
"We see the shells coming from the hills," Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic
told CNN. "This is a city under siege."
U.N. troops were analyzing the crater in an attempt to determine the shell's
origin.
The attack came a day after 10 people were killed and 18 wounded in a mortar
attack on Sarajevo's Dobrinja neighborhood that Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, the
U.N. commander in Bosnia, blamed on Bosnian Serb gunners. Civilians have
been targeted frequently since Sarajevo's siege began in April 1992, and in
most cases U.N. officials have found Serbs responsible.
{In Washington, President Clinton denounced the slaughter and called on the
United Nations to "urgently investigate" who was to blame. In a meeting he
held with advisers, a senior administration official said, "sentiment" grew
for bombing Serb positions. Story on Page A26.}
{Defense Secretary William J. Perry, in Munich for a European security
conference, warned Serb gunners that Western airstrikes might be launched
against them if the killing of civilians continues.
{"That will be certainly be considered. . . . President Clinton has already
stated that we would not permit the strangulation of Sarajevo," Perry told
reporters. "If the action which is being described today would be seen to be
strangulation . . . we would definitely consider stronger action, including
airstrikes."}
U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali condemned the "heinous act of
violence" and ordered an investigation. Pope John Paul II urged world
leaders "to try everything -- even if it means great sacrifices -- to bring
about a cease-fire."
To the horrified bystanders at the Markale market, the question of who fired
the shell today seemed less important than how it reflected the world
community's impotence at ending the war.
 [...]

Articolo del Sunday Times  (tesi da me conosciuta, 1995)
Posso tradurvelo, in caso di necessità.
link: 
http://detnews.com/menu/stories/22268.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 October 29, 1995
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British experts dispute Sarajevo bombing probe
By Hugh McManners, London Sunday Times
British ammunition experts serving with the United Nations in Sarajevo have
challenged key "evidence" of the Serbian atrocity that triggered NATO's
devastating bombing campaign this year.
The experts, who examined the scene of the market massacre in Sarajevo in
August, said they found no evidence that Bosnian Serbs had fired the lethal
mortar round. They suspected the Bosnian government army might have been
responsible.
They said French analysts who also examined the scene agreed with them. But
they were overruled by the senior American officer, and the UN issued a
statement saying it was beyond any doubt that the Bosnian Serbs were
responsible for the blast, in which 37 people were killed and 90 wounded.
The carnage was used as the pretext for NATO's huge air campaign against the
Bosnian Serbs, which was followed by extensive battlefield losses and forced
the Serbs to the negotiating table.
The British experts were part of a UN team that reached the Trznica market
in Sarajevo 40 minutes after the mortar attack on the morning of August 28.
They began their inspection amid a bloody scene of smashed fruit stalls and
screaming people.
Five mortars had been fired. The size of the craters and metal splinters
indicated that they were all of 120 mm caliber, probably from towed mortars
that are regularly fired into the city.
The splinters were too small for any more precise identification to be
possible. But the analysts were able to determine from the pattern of
splinters and the shape of the craters the direction from which each bomb
was fired.
They concluded that four of the mortars, which had caused no injuries or
loss of life, had been fired from areas indicating Serb positions.
The fifth shell, which caused the bloodshed, had come from a position they
could not identify. They suspected that the perpetrator might easily have
been the Bosnian government army, which has been implicated in other
incidents such as a rocket attack on Sarajevo's television station on June
29 in which five people died and 30 others were injured.
The observations and findings were confirmed by the French, and they
returned to base to make their report.
A senior American officer at the United Nations Protection Force
headquarters in Sarajevo dismissed their findings, however, citing a small
groove known as a "fuse furrow" made in the ground by the bomb head.
He said this indicated that the fatal mortar round had come from the same
direction as the others. Neither British nor French analysts noticed such a
groove.
By nightfall, the UN announced that the Bosnian Serbs were to blame. Fewer
than 48 hours later, the NATO air strikes and artillery campaign began.
Behind the technicalities of the dispute lies the murderous ability of
Sarajevo's mortar teams. Mortars usually have to be adjusted onto a target
by firing single bombs, a forward observer passing back corrections until
the target is hit. Since the siege of the city started in April 1992, the
significant targets have become well known to mortar men from all sides,
making the target adjustments unnecessary.
Single mortar rounds can be fired without warning into crowded squares or
streets with enough accuracy to ensure casualties.
Last month, the United Nations was defensive about the August massacre. One
official said that after two previous mortar strikes to which the Bosnian
Serbs had owned up -- one of which had killed an Egyptian UN soldier --
using this particular attack to trigger NATO action was, at its most
charitable, a presentational error.

Agenzia di stampa tedesca  (1996)  Conforme alla tesi da me riportata
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June 6, 1996
New York
For the first time, a senior U.N. official has admitted the existence of a
secret U.N. report that blames the Bosnian Moslems for the February 1994
massacre of Moslems at a Sarajevo market.
Yasushi Akashi, the Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the
former head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, told the German Press Agency dpa
that the secret report is "no secret."
An international outcry over the massacre, in which 68 civilians perished at
Markale marketplace, led directly to a toughening of Western policy towards
the Serbs, who were widely blamed for the incident.
But there have been persistent rumours at the United Nations ever since that
a U.N. report clearly blamed the Moslems for firing on their own people in
order to create international sympathy and get the West to fight on their
side against the Serbs.
Until Thursday, U.N. officials strongly denied the report existed, even
after it was quoted in press reports.
Akashi told dpa that not only did the first report exist, but that some
journalists already had a copy. He said the details were in a 1995 story by
U.S. journalist David Binder, who quoted from the confidential report.
According to Binder, the report said U.N. peacekeepers were prevented by
Moslem police from entering the site in the aftermath of the explosion. No
doctors were allowed on the scene and the 197 victims were carried away to
hospital within 25 minutes.
After studying the crater left by the mortar shell and the distribution of
the shrapnel, the report concluded that the shell was fired from behind
Moslem lines. U.N. monitors reported no Serbian shelling that day from
points near the marketplace.
The official U.N. report that was subsequently released said the evidence as
to who fired the shell was inconclusive, since it originated from an area
where Moslem and Serb lines were very close. The two reports represented
divergent views, but the United Nations chose to publish the neutral report
and keep the other secret.
The incident led to a NATO ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their
heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.
At the time, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said:
"It's very hard to believe any country would do this to their own people,
and therefore, although we do not exactly know what the facts are, it would
seem to us that the Serbs are the ones that probably have a great deal of
responsibility."
END

La tesi piu' accreditata  indica  i serbi resposabili dell' accaduto.


 Ciao
Grazie per le fonti che hai indicato in seguito. A parte un paio di siti serbi
avevo trovato
solo l'articolo del Washington Post (e non gli altri due che sono più cauti) e
uno su Frontline
 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/radovan/marketplace.html
La parte rilevante è comunque questa:
... a Canadian major assigned to the United
Nations forces was crouching in the northeast
corner of the marketplace, hard at work
examining the "splash pattern" left by that
afternoon's shrapnel in order to determine whence
the shell had come. In fact, the Canadian major
was working on no less than the third of that
afternoon's "crater analyses," a French lieutenant
having conducted the first at two o'clock, and a
French captain a second an hour later. As it
happened-and not surprisingly with what was a
rather inexact science-results differed markedly:
while the French lieutenant concluded that the
shell had followed a northerly course, and thus
either Serb or Muslim gunners could theoretically
have launched it, and the Canadian major arrived,
by a slightly different path, at largely the same
destination, the French captain found that the
round had followed an easterly path-which would
have put the mortar and its crew behind Muslim
lines.
Quanto al libro di Rumiz non posso giudicarlo perchè non l'ho ancora letto ma
comunque dovrebbe riguardare i rapporti politica-media-opinione pubblica che
una dettagliata ricostruzione dei singoli avvenimenti (alla strage è dedicato
ben
poco spazio).
Ciao

posso solo dire che sarajevo durante questa inutile guerra e' stata
massacrata, ci sono stato nel periodo gennaio /maggio 96 con la missione
ifor della nato e posso dire che di chiunque sia la colpa non importa ,
importa che una nazione e' stata rasa al suolo per soli motivi religiosi
(cristiani,mussulmani), i quali non riuscivano a convivere assieme.
oggi dopo anni di guerra continuano a vivere assieme e l'odio non e' stato
cancellato,ma e' aumentato.
ho visto anche le barricate fatte in montagna per colpire la citta'
dall'alto e vi dico che e' una cosa da non credere, pensare solo quanti
colpi di mortai, obice, e granate sono state lanciate dall'alto e quante
vittime hanno fatto e' una cosa incredibile.


 ifor della nato e posso dire che di chiunque sia la colpa non importa ,
Su questo sono perfettamente d'accordo. Mi imoprta però il fatto che a causa
di un bombradamento la cui responsabilità è quantomeno incerta l'alleanza
militare di cui siamo membri si sia schierata con una ben precisa parte in
causa (croata , croato-musulmano-bosniaca) intervenendo militarmente e
quindi UCCIDENDO delle persone (se non altro quelle degli artiglieri serbi).
Mi interessava conoscere le motivazioni ( i pretesti?) e discutere il ruolo
dei mass media in tutto ciò. S.Galeazzi aveva riportato una fonte che diceva
una cosa diametralmente opposta a ciò che sapevo io, io ho rintracciato
delle fonti a sostegno della mia tesi e così si è sviluppata la discussione.
Ecco tutto