Trial of Sarajevo siege commander begins

THE HAGUE, Jan 11 (Reuters) A former Bosnian Serb commander charged with the shelling of Sarajevo and creating a deliberate ''state of terror'' in the city during the Bosnian War went on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal today.

Dragomir Milosevic faces four counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, and three counts of violations of the customs of war for the campaign waged against civilians by his Sarajevo Romanija Corps (SRK) unit of the Bosnian Serb Army.

''This is a case of a city which was exposed to a relentless campaign of shelling and sniping by a superior military force ...

which subjected the population to severe psychological trauma,'' said prosecutor Alex Whiting.

Sarajevo's plight became synonymous with the 1992-1995 Bosnian war during the 44-month siege. The world witnessed via television images how sniper and shell fire rained down on the city's largely Muslim population from the steep hills surrounding the capital.

Milosevic, 64, who is not related to the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, has pleaded not guilty. He surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal in December 2004.

He inherited command of the SRK in August 1994 from Stanislav Galic, who was the first suspect to be tried by the tribunal in connection with the siege of Sarajevo.

Last November, Galic, who was convicted in 2003, had his sentence increased to life imprisonment from 20 years after an appeal by prosecutors.

After Milosevic took command hundreds more were killed and thousands maimed during the last 15 months of the siege, the prosecution said.

''Everyday civilian activity was a hazardous endeavour, subject potentially to a barrage of shells or bullets from the besieging forces,'' Whiting said.

Everything from taking a tram to tending one's garden carried risks and even buying a loaf of bread became a death-defying exercise.

The campaign was intended to damage and destroy Sarajevo's cultural and religious monuments and deprive the population of food, water, electricity, gas and transport, Whiting added.

Prior to 1992, the city of half a million people had been a blooming multi-ethnic community, the prosecution said.

Shortly after Bosnia declared its independence, separatist Serb forces besieged Sarajevo with the objective of either dividing it between Muslims and Serbs or razing it, it said.

Norwegian government-backed research by the Sarajevo-based Investigation-Documentation Centre has said about 14,000 people were killed in the Sarajevo area during the war.

Of these, more than 10,000 -- mostly Muslims but also Croats and Serbs -- were killed in the Muslim-held part of Sarajevo in fighting and by indiscriminate shelling and sniper attacks.

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