The gruesome Sarajevo massacres were carried out by the Serb side.

Few events have been such political turning points in this war as the three highly publicized and gruesome massacres of civilians in Sarajevo (Vase Miskina Street breadline in May '92, and the Markale marketplace in February ' 94 and August '95). Their political conseqences have been overwhelming: introduction of the total economic embargo on Serbia/Montenegro; total derailment of the Geneva peace process, and official introduction of NATO military involvement in the area; and, massive use of force against Serbian military and civilian targets, respectively. All avialable evidence by now shows that these were staged mass murders, carried out by the Muslim government against its own people, with at least tacit approval of some Western powers.

"United Nations officials and senior Western military officers believe some of the worst recent killings in Sarajevo, including the massacre of at least 16 people in a bread queue, were carried out by the city's mainly Muslim defenders - not Serb besiegers - as a propaganda ploy to win world sympathy and military intervention.

The view has been expressed in confidential reports circulating at UN headquarters in New York, and in classified briefings to US policymakers in Washington. All suggest that Sarajevo's defenders, mainly Muslims but including Croats and a number of Serb residents, staged several attacks on their own people in the hope of dramatizing the city's plight in the face of insuperable Serbian odds.

1994, Sarajevo, Bosnia.
War crime at its worst. Muslim troops fired at their own people,
in a propaganda ploy to win world sympathy and draw military intervention.

"Last August, American pilots became the desperate Bosnian government's surrogate air force. What triggered the NATO bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs was a U.S. Army officer's bogus report that a Serb mortar attack had killed 38 people.[...] Have the American people been tricked again? CIA spooks and several NATO officers plus a squad of U.N. ammo experts say so. All report that the mortar round that kicked off the NATO bombing was fired not by the Serbs, but by Bosnian Muslims."

"This Belgian officer claims that the whole event at the Markale market place in Sarajevo was a Muslim hoax. 'Already in February 1994, we knew that something was fishy there. Many people think that it was a deception and that the Serbs had nothing to do with it'.

As for the second incident at Markale, which was followed by NATO air strikes against Serbian targets, this Belgian officer is completely convinced that it was a premeditated provocation by the Muslim side, which produced the desired effect.

'Although the United Nations spokesman stated then that a Serbian assault was involved, we from the monitoring mission immediately drew attention to the possibility of that being done by the Muslims themselves. However, we knew that we were being manipulated and misused for the sake of higher objectives'".

"Officials of the US Congress and members of the intelligence service in Great Britain are also aware of a firm agreement between the US officials and Izetbegovic's people in Bosnia for staging of a casus belli for the recent bombing, most serious since the beginning of the war. Once again the Sarajevo administration planted explosive on the city market, and when it was detonated resulting in the loss of many lives, the Bosnian Serbs were accused of "shelling" innocent civilians. The US intelligence officers stated for this journal that the radar had failed to register the missile (although it was on). Collateral damage did not match that which would have been caused by a shell. As proved and noted by UN observers after the previous "mortar attack on the market" it was clear that this again was the case of an explosive charge placed in advance by Izetbegovic's men in order to sacrifice their own citizens only to put a blame on the Bosnian Serbs on the very eve of the important peace negotiations."

"America has not been so pathetically deceived since Robert McNamara helped to micromanage and escalate the Vietnam War."

" The 'innocent victim' ploy tugs on the world's heartstrings the most effectively. Gut-wrenching pictures of guiltless dead children who moments before being gunned down by cowardly snipers were playing in safe vacant lots, noncombatants (women and elders) shot for merely crossing the street, people weaving between anti-sniper shields, sand bags, and protective UN vehicles merely to buy a loaf of bread. And, of course, most dastardly of all, the two mortar attacks in Sarajevo's Markale Market Square on February 5, 1994 and August 28, 1995. These attacks snuffed the lives of 68 and 37 unsuspecting people, respectively, and served as the catalyst for NATO retribution from the air in both cases. However, who must shoulder the responsibility for the mean streets of Sarajevo? Both the mortar attacks and the sniping incidents require closer examination.

In an investigative report published in the October 2, 1995 edition of The Nation, David Binder penned a most fascinating and thorough summary of the inconsistencies associated with these two mortar attacks. While stating that the UN 'sticks by the conclusions of its inquiry' and blames the Serbs - at least in the second incident - the author nevertheless persuasively enumerated the factors which indicated that the BSA was not responsible.

The constant sniping incidents deserve equal scrutiny. Objective observers in Sarajevo frequently describe the abhorrent activity of snipers from both sides, but suspicions persist that the Muslims have murdered their own people when the potential existed for instant newsworthiness. Photographers have done nothing to abate this horror by their vulture-like waiting at areas vulnerable to sniping. In fact, the Bosnian government encourages this wrongheaded activity in the belief that such publicity aids its cause.

Anti-sniping activities conducted by the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Sarajevo, in fact, constitute quite impressive operations. Teams which perform this duty receive exceptional training from their armies and possess state-of-the-art optical aids and equipment. Employing these capabilities, the French recently decided to test over three years' worth of UN hunches pertaining to this issue. Their investigation 'definitively' (their words) established the validity of UN suppositions that 'some gunfire came from (Bosniac) Government soldiers deliberately shooting at their own civilians.'"

"Mr. Binder's article concentrates primarily on the second mortar attack, but the technical factors which he notes apply equally to the first incident. Additionally, some very tough questions remain unanswered from the more devastating Feb 1994 episode. These include: Why were people herded into the area minutes before the attack?; How could a government which consistently justifies its inability to abide by short ceasefires on inadequate communications miraculously notify the press and simultaneously dispatch ambulances to the scene within minutes?; and Why did the tail fin of the mortar shell inexplicably disappear shortly after the attack?"

"Some of the city's suffering has actually been imposed on it by actions of the Sarajevo government. [...] Government soldiers, for example, have shelled the Sarajevo airport,the city's primary lifeline for relief supplies. The press and some governments, including that of the United States, usually attribute all such fire to the Serbs, but no seasoned observer in Sarajevo doubts for a moment that Muslim forces have found it in their interest to shell friendly targets."

"The crucial UN report on the market massacre is classified secret, but four specialists--a Russian, a Canadian and two Americans--have raised serious doubts about its conclusion, suggesting instead that the mortar was fired not by the Serbs but by Bosnian government forces.

Similar suspicious were raised following the February 5, 1994 mortar shell explosion that killed sixty-eight Sarajevans in the adjacent Markale marketplace."

"Why would the Bosnian government kill its own people? The fact is that in the week before the marketplace killing, government forces launched heavy artillery attacks on Serb positions around Gorazde and at Vogosca, north of Sarajevo, both times provoking Serb retailiatory fire. On each occasion the Muslim leaderhsip loudly demanded NATO air attacks but General Smith refused to call them in.

Then came Assistant Secretary Richard Holbrooke's August 27 threats that 'in the next week or two, the consequences will be very adverse to the Serbian goals' and a few seconds later his warning of 'more active NATO air'.

Clearly the airstrikes had already been planned before Holbrooke set off for the Balkans to push President Clinton's peace plan. Only a pretext was needed. Indeed, State Department spokesman Nick Burns was talking about Serb responsibility and airstrikes before the UN report even reached New York. The first wave of US planes started bombing targets just thirty-nine hours after the marketplace explosion."

"Once the bombing was under way, Gen Rasim Delic, commander of Bosnian forces in Sarajevo, began picking targets -- phoning Adm. W. Owens, vice- chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, daily with his wish list of sites. The Pentagon then passed those on to NATO in Naples. As one US officer put it, 'We have become the Muslim Air Force.'"

"[...] Those around general Rose have never concealed the fact that, at this meeting, he told the Muslim leaders that he had just received technical information indicating that the [February 1994 Markale] grenade had not come from the Serb controlled area, but from the Muslim part of the town.[...]

General Rose kept rather silent on what transpired at that meeting, but I know that on Tuesday a report was sent stating that the grenade might have been fired by the Bosnian army and they were continuing their investigation. Moreover, a senior ballistic expert in Zagreb, having studied the map of possible paths of the grenade drawn by the UN investigators in Sarajevo, believed that the angle at which the grenade hit the roof of the market indicated a probable firing point at 1110 to 2000 meters from the place of impact (rather than 2 to 3 thousand meters) which would also indicate that it was fired from the positions of the Bosnian army.

When this explosive information reached the UN New York headquarters on Tuesday, all was done to limit the number of people who saw it, so as to reduce the chances of its being leaked to the press. The problem was that the information was much more widespread among the UN staff in Sarajevo, which is why it was highly likely that it might reach the Russians and the Bosnian Serbs. In view of the state of extreme paranoia among the Serbs and their indignation for being accused of something they were not guilty of, the hushing up of the information on the part of the UN would have been highly damaging. And yet, the basic problem of the Sarajevo siege still required us to try to stop the shelling. The fact that the Muslims could fire at their own people so as to provoke NATO to become involved on their behalf, which was one of their standing objectives, did nothing to change the need for preventive action. [...] "

"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'. [...] "