Balkan War Crimes expert to speak at UNSW

03 October 2006

The war crimes expert who testified against Momcilo Krajisnik, who was last week sentenced to 27 years in prison, will speak on Thursday at UNSW. András Riedlmayer gave expert testimony in March this year against Krajisnik at the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

An expert on Ottoman architecture in the Balkans, Mr Riedlmayer is Director of the Documentation Centre of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard's Fine Arts Library.

Krajisnik, 61, was found guilty of persecutions, extermination, murder, deportation and forced transfer of non-Serbs during the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995. He is the most senior Bosnian Serb in the UN detention unit at The Hague since the death this year of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian President.

According to Riedlmayer’s testimony, 85 percent of Islamic and Catholic religious sites were destroyed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 during the time relevant to the indictment against Momcilo Krajisnik.

DETAILS

Who: András Riedlmayer, Director of the Documentation Centre of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University's Fine Arts Library

What: Public lecture: Killing Memory: Cultural Heritage under Fire in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s

When: 12-2pm, Thursday 5 October 2006

Where: Red Centre, Room 4036

Contact: Stan Fung, ph 02 9385 4841

UNSW Media contact: Dan Gaffney, UNSW, 0411 156 015