Mladic Troops 'Defending Themselves' In Sarajevo

A Bosnian Serb army officer has told the trial of his former chief Ratko Mladic that they were acting in self-defence during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo, in which 10,000 people died.

Mile Sladoje, the first witness for the defence, told a three-judge panel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that Mladic's troops "never were snipers".

In a statement read by Mladic's lawyer Miodrag Stojanovic before questioning began, he said: "All our activities (in Sarajevo) were defence activities."

"There were standing orders, fire could only be returned in response to enemy fire."

The assistant logistics commander added: "[We] never received or gave orders to attack civilians."

Mr Sladoje was saluted by Mladic as he walked into the courtroom.

Mladic, 71, faces 11 charges ranging from hostage-taking to genocide during the Bosnian civil war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995 and came amid the break-up of Yugoslavia.

More than 100,000 people are believed to have died in the conflict.

Questioned about an incident in Sarajevo when a teenage girl was shot by a sniper, Mr Sladoje denied there were any snipers among Mladic's troops or that they had sniper weapons.

"We had normal infantry weapons, we never had snipers or such rifles," he told the judges.

The trial at the Hague has already been sitting for two years after Mladic was arrested in Serbia in 2011.

The ICTY said in a statement that Mladic's lawyers have been given 207 hours to question witnesses - the same amount of time given to the prosecution who finished their case earlier this year.

Among the crimes Mladic is accused of masterminding is the June 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which was the worst atrocity committed on European soil since World War Two.

Bosnian Serb forces overran lightly-armed Dutch UN troops, who were supposed to be protecting the area, before killing more than 8,000 men and boys and dumping their bodies into mass graves.

Mladic's "right hand" man General Zdravko Tolimir, who was a commander when the massacre occurred, has already been convicted.

Mladic has also been charged with taking hostage a group of over 200 United Nations peacekeepers during the conflict and keeping them as "human shields" against Nato air strikes.

Mladic, who has made a number of outbursts in court, has denied the charges. He faces life in prison if convicted.

In January, Mladic refused to testify at the trial of Radovan Karadzic, his political counterpart at the time, repeatedly dismissing the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal as "satanic".

Karadzic's trial is also ongoing.