Page 3849
1 Tuesday, 4 November 2003
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 2.16 p.m.
5 JUDGE LIU: Call the case, please, Mr. Court Deputy.
6 THE REGISTRAR: Good afternoon, Your Honours. This is Case Number
7 IT-02-60-T, the Prosecutor versus Vidoje Blagojevic and Dragan Jokic.
8 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
9 Before we have the witness, are there any matters that the parties would
10 like to bring to the attention to this Bench?
11 Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
12 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. I just wanted the record to
13 reflect and the Trial Chamber to be informed that counsel for Blagojevic
14 and counsel for Mr. Jokic have met with the Prosecutor today, and we have
15 come to an agreement about disclosure of the intercepts. And the ability
16 of our expert witness to examine the raw material and Mr. McCloskey met
17 with us and Mr. Waespi. We came to an agreement that at a future date
18 they would provide their archived original raw data to the laboratory here
19 in Holland that the OTP has used. We've agreed to use the same laboratory
20 that they've used and we'll have our expert come and be present with the
21 OTP raw material at the Dutch lab at a future time. So the complete
22 analysis of the intercept tapes would probably not take place until
23 probably the Defence case.
24 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Is there anything that the Prosecution
25 would like to raise on this same issue? Ms. Issa?
Page 3850
1 MS. ISSA: No, thank you, Your Honour. Not at the moment.
2 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Thank you very much.
3 Well, could we have the witness, please.
4 [The witness entered court]
5 JUDGE LIU: Good afternoon, witness.
6 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Good afternoon, Your Honour.
7 JUDGE LIU: Are you ready to start?
8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, I am.
9 JUDGE LIU: I understand that you have been in The Hague for quite
10 a long time. We will try our best to send you back home tomorrow.
11 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you.
12 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
13 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour, I'll take the hint from the Trial
14 Chamber.
15 WITNESS: WITNESS P-117 [Resumed]
16 [Witness answered through interpreter]
17 Cross-examined by Ms. Sinatra: [Continued]
18 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra, you may start.
19 MS. SINATRA: Thank you, Your Honour.
20 Q. Dobar dan.
21 A. Good afternoon, Madam.
22 Q. I want to go back to some questioning regarding the UHER
23 reel-to-reel tape recorder and I just want to ask you some technical
24 points about the recorder itself, if you don't mind us going back.
25 A. No, no, I don't mind. Please go ahead.
Page 3851
1 Q. The UHER tape recorder that you used, did it use -- it used
2 quarter inch Mylar tape or was it acetate tape?
3 A. Please believe me, Ms. Sinatra, I don't really know much about
4 this. All I know is that it could be played for a few hours and I think
5 it was 16 millimetres wide, like a videotape. Of course I know what it
6 looks like because I worked with it.
7 Q. And it was a brown colour exposed tape, wasn't it?
8 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
9 Q. And, in fact, the tape was such that you had a feed line on it
10 that you put into the receiving reel and you had to bend it like this
11 before you could start activating the reel-to-reel action?
12 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam. And we had to make a few turns for
13 the tape to become taut.
14 Q. Right. Now, you said -- I forgot how many centimetres you said
15 the cassette was or the reel-to-reel tape was, but that's one of the
16 smaller versions. I don't know if you know the rate between centimetres
17 and inches, but would it be equivalent to a five-inch tape, reel-to-reel?
18 No?
19 A. I wouldn't go into the dimensions in inches. It was 16
20 millimetres, so you can calculate that.
21 Q. I'm sorry. I'm not really adept at that at the moment. Your
22 reels were plastic or metal?
23 A. I remember there were metal ones, but I think there were also
24 plastic ones, so it would be both.
25 Q. And this was a portable machine that you used? It wasn't attached
Page 3852
1 to the wall? It sat on the desk?
2 A. Yes, on the desk.
3 Q. And did you maintain this UHER equipment yourself?
4 A. No, I didn't. The technical part, the repairs of the machines,
5 what was inside the machines, no, I didn't deal with that.
6 Q. Was there a regular maintenance schedule for the machines?
7 A. We regularly cleaned the heads after playing a few tapes. We
8 would do that once a week or more often if necessary, and we would use
9 cotton wool and alcohol to clean them. And when necessary, they would be
10 sent to the command for servicing.
11 Q. Now, the machine that you were using was a two-headed machine,
12 too, wasn't it, which means one head was for erasing and the second head
13 was for recording and playback?
14 A. Yes, that's correct. And there was also a rubber wheel on which
15 magnetic dust would collect and we had to clean that from time to time
16 because it would get very dirty.
17 Q. And you said that that was cleaned about once a week. Right?
18 A. Yes. Something like that.
19 Q. You also stated that a lot of the reel-to-reel tapes that you were
20 using had been donated to you from a radio station. Isn't that right?
21 A. That's correct.
22 Q. And in 1995, the radio station had gone to cassettes or CDs to
23 play for their radio station, hadn't they?
24 A. I don't know that. I apologise.
25 Q. So you don't know whether they were just donated because they were
Page 3853
1 extinct for the radio station or not?
2 A. I don't know the reason. But they seemed to have had a large
3 amount of them that they didn't need.
4 Q. And you know that they were probably stored somewhere at the radio
5 station before they were donated to the military. Right?
6 A. I don't know that either, Madam. I don't know anything about the
7 taking over of the tapes, but we could tell from their content that they
8 came from the radio.
9 Q. Let me ask you, you do know that a very microscopic amount of dirt
10 can affect the quality of a recording. Right?
11 A. Yes, that's correct.
12 Q. Let me ask you this too: When you originally recorded the
13 intercepted conversation on the UHER reel-to-reel and you marked that the
14 conversation had to be listened to again, you took the tape off of the
15 original machine and listened to it somewhere else, didn't you?
16 A. No. No, that's not how it was. The tape was listened to on the
17 same machine on which the material had been recorded.
18 Q. Okay. Thank you. I understand that now. Okay. I'm going to go
19 back to the general precept of the war. You know that everybody and most
20 of the intercepts that you intercepted from the VRS, most of them came
21 from the hand-held Motorolas, didn't they?
22 A. Madam, I wouldn't agree with you that all the intercepted
23 conversations during the war came from hand-held Motorolas, because these
24 were radio relay connections, so they were telephone connections, that is,
25 referring to the period we are discussing now. At the beginning of the
Page 3854
1 war, I had activities connected to the matters you have just mentioned,
2 things that happened directly on the battle front.
3 Q. In fact, just for clarification for the Trial Chamber, there's a
4 big difference between an intercept from a communications centre like
5 Okresanica versus the tactical intercepts on the front. Right?
6 A. Yes, that's correct.
7 Q. And a tactical intercept involves someone crawling around on his
8 stomach, doesn't it, dodging bullets?
9 A. That's correct.
10 Q. Isn't it true that during 1995, the BiH army had a severe
11 personnel shortage?
12 A. Yes, there was a certain problem. Yes, you're right.
13 Q. And the BiH army didn't have any mobile interception units, did
14 they, the trucks?
15 A. I don't think I understood your question this time. Could you
16 please -- are you talking about the trucks we had or the trucks from which
17 there were communications? Are you referring to trucks belonging to my
18 unit?
19 Q. No. I know your unit did not have a mobile interception unit or
20 communications centre. I know your unit did not. But the BiH army didn't
21 have any mobile communications centres, such as the JNA and the VRS had,
22 did they?
23 A. Well, let's say if we're talking about the whole army, I'm not
24 really interested in that, but my unit had a blue van.
25 Q. And the blue van was a mobile communications centre?
Page 3855
1 A. No. It wasn't a mobile communications centre. It was used to
2 transport staff and appropriate equipment to a separate location.
3 Q. Okay. Thank you. And you also had another problem in the BiH
4 army in 1995, and believe me, I understand the conditions at the time, but
5 you didn't have -- you had a shortage of spare parts from all the
6 communications equipment, didn't you?
7 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
8 Q. I want to go back to -- we discussed antennas yesterday, but I
9 just want to clarify that the antenna that you had, it was a directional
10 antenna, was it, or was it not?
11 A. That's the antenna you showed yesterday. That was a scanner
12 antenna, but we didn't use that antenna at this location. The equipment
13 refers to the beginning of the war, the equipment we had at the very
14 outset. Later it all changed. To be quite specific, at the location I
15 worked in in the period now under discussion, we used directional antennas
16 of the Yagi type. And there was also an original military antenna,
17 RRU-800.
18 Q. So the equipment that you described during your testimony in
19 Krstic had to do with 1992; whereas, the equipment that we're talking
20 about in 1995, you had already acquired a directional antenna. Is that
21 correct?
22 A. Madam, it says there what type of equipment we started out with.
23 Don't let us get confused. The equipment we had in 1995 were Yagi antenna
24 for RRU-1 and a Yagi antenna for RRU-800 and we also had a military
25 antenna for RRU-800.
Page 3856
1 Q. And a military antenna is just a stationary antenna. Is that
2 correct?
3 A. Yes. All these antennas were stationary. They were on masts
4 which had nylon ropes. It was all done very properly.
5 Q. You did say that some of your antennas were homemade at one point,
6 didn't you?
7 A. You mean made by hand?
8 Q. Made by amateur radio operators to fit the situation because you
9 didn't have access to more sophisticated equipment at the time.
10 A. Look, Madam, I'll have to explain a bit about this. We had
11 original antennas from the television, which were completely adequate to
12 the diameter, and it was RRU-800. The VHF range of the television covered
13 VHF 3 and RRU-1, so it was quite adequate.
14 Q. Okay. The reason I want to talk to you about antennas again is
15 that your maximum height of your antenna was 842 metres. Is that right?
16 That's above sea level.
17 A. Yes. Maybe even less.
18 Q. And you were in a mountainous region and Zvornik was in a valley
19 region and had to go through a relay system. Isn't that correct?
20 A. Yes, that's correct.
21 Q. And you know that radio waves only operate on line of sight links,
22 unless you can beam up from a relay station. Isn't that right?
23 A. I wouldn't fully agree with that, because in the direct line up to
24 optical visibility, there is a skein effect. There is a 20 per cent
25 deviation, and that's what it says on the military equipment, which is why
Page 3857
1 there is some confusion as to why we were able to get these signals. But
2 we had very strong amplifiers in these antennas. These were called
3 pre-amplifiers.
4 Q. Just based on your expertise and all your knowledge of radio
5 waves, radio waves do not bend? They travel in a straight line, in a
6 vector, don't they?
7 A. Yes, that's correct. But I would like to add that these waves are
8 also reflected from the first surface they come across.
9 Q. Now, let me ask you -- when you say -- I'm not going to go into
10 reflective because that's beyond my knowledge at the moment, but I assume
11 you mean like a relay station, beamed from one point to the next. Is that
12 a reflection?
13 A. No. That's not a reflection. That's a direct wave. You are now
14 talking about direct waves. I would like to mention that radio relay
15 equipment was of the duplex type. And therefore, they have a very strong
16 component emitting and receiving signals. So there have to be strong
17 filters called duplex filters to separate this, which is why the
18 characteristics deteriorate. You get various types of signals, and that's
19 why radio relay equipment cannot be as sensitive and have the same range
20 as radio relay equipment in connection with a direct receiver whose
21 receiving field is strengthened with additional equipment. And with the
22 very sensitive Japanese equipment that we have listed and that we had at
23 the time, which we used in our monitoring.
24 Q. I'm just going to try to sort out the information you just gave
25 me. Are you saying that the base communications centres had much stronger
Page 3858
1 receiving and transmitting abilities than a relay station used this
2 duplex-type system? Is that what you're saying?
3 A. I wouldn't -- I don't want to go into the differences between
4 radio relay stations and the equipment used in the communications centre.
5 But if this is necessary, I'll do it.
6 Q. Let me just ask a basic question. We know that Zvornik had no
7 direct communication with anybody. Everything that came from Zvornik had
8 to go through a relay station 60 kilometres away. Right?
9 A. It depends on the route, Madam. I don't know what the route was
10 up to the relay station that you're talking about. They simply appeared
11 to us as participants on this relay station. It would be very difficult
12 at this moment to know the exact route for each participant. Very often
13 even the people whose basic equipment this is have this problem.
14 Q. Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to say or wanted to ask
15 you. Was from a relay station, you can't tell the location of the
16 conversation or where it began, because it's going through another
17 location. So you can't tell the difference between a communication from
18 Vlasenica or one from Zvornik, can you, when they go through a relay
19 station? You can't pinpoint the location of origination?
20 A. Madam, my small unit was not given this task. These are elements
21 for analysis carried out by others. Even had we wanted to, we would not
22 have had time to deal with these matters. Our task was to receive
23 information and to transmit it faithfully to those in charge.
24 Q. And through a relay station, you know that there's really no
25 difference in the quality of the transmission, whether you pick it up from
Page 3859
1 Zvornik or from Vlasenica. Right?
2 A. Well, you see, the difference in the signal of one and the other
3 participate, communicated by telephone whom you are listening to through a
4 radio relay station is reflected precisely in who the transmitting
5 component is, who is the participant from the relay station who is
6 transmitting. The receiving party is the weaker party, if there is a
7 difference. They can be of the same quality, but very often they weren't
8 in practice. And another reason can be additional junctures between the
9 participants up to the relay station where they were transported further
10 on.
11 Q. I think your answer was yes to my question, but I'm not quite
12 sure, that you can't pinpoint the origination of an intercepted
13 conversation from a relay station. Right?
14 A. Yes, you're right.
15 Q. Thank you. I want to bring out what is marked now -- I'd like to
16 show you Defence exhibit -- I'm going to bring out 36.1/3 and 36.2/3.
17 And, sir, I'm really sorry that I don't have a B/C/S translation
18 of it right now, so I'm going to have to read the paragraph that I'm
19 talking about to you, which is a short paragraph, Your Honour. And I
20 would like, for the Court's attention and the Prosecution's attention,
21 I'll be referring to a book that was referred to me by the Prosecution
22 that has just been published here in -- I don't know how long it's been
23 published. But it's a Dutch book by Cees Wiebes. The name of the book
24 is: "Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992 to 1995." And it's based
25 upon the NIOD report that came out last year from the Dutch government.
Page 3860
1 And I'm going to -- I think this must be 2 -- I mean 36.2. Page
2 299 of the book. I'm sorry -- yes, it is. I really apologise. I just
3 got the book on Friday, so it was not possible to translate it between
4 Friday and now. But page 99, the conclusion from the author of this book
5 is that, "We know that an absolute minimum of ten channels had to be
6 monitored continuously. That three persons were needed per channel for
7 interception, transcription, and reporting, and that there was a rotation
8 of three shifts a day and a ten-day working week. Then" -- I'm sorry, "a
9 seven-day working week. Then at least 90 signal operators would have to
10 be active at Okresanica, not to mention 15 to 20 staff for support,
11 technology, security, catering, and so on. Hence, if there were 20
12 channels, probably a more realistic estimate, than at least 180 people
13 would be needed. In reality, a maximum of 12 people worked at Okresanica.
14 Most of the communications were re-recorded on tape. It seems, therefore,
15 that a near realtime analysis and processing was unattainable."
16 I'm sorry, sir, were you able to understand the gist of the
17 paragraph from "Intelligence in the War in Bosnia, 1992 to 1995"?
18 A. Yes, I did understand it, Madam. And that is why the gentleman
19 should admire us for the work that we did.
20 Q. I agree. I think under the circumstances you did a fabulous job,
21 but you could not, as you stated in the Krstic trial, know that every
22 intercept was accurate, that every transcription was accurate, that every
23 encryption was accurate. You could not know that.
24 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Issa.
25 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I'm going to object to that. I believe
Page 3861
1 counsel has referred to the Krstic trial. She hasn't referred to a
2 particular portion in the transcript. We don't know what the context of
3 that is. We don't really even know what the witness said at that point.
4 So I don't think that was a proper question.
5 JUDGE LIU: Well, maybe Ms. Sinatra could provide more information
6 on that subject.
7 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. I can, if given one moment and my
8 glasses. Actually, Your Honour, I will come back to this after the break.
9 I know that I can find it, but I'll come back.
10 Q. I believe that you know what your testimony was in Krstic, which I
11 will refer to specifically, but you did say that everything was recorded
12 accurately, didn't you?
13 A. Yes, that's correct.
14 Q. I want to go back to the process and the circumstances you were
15 working under, I understand. But the intercepters did miss a lot of the
16 messages, because your intercepter not only had to listen, he had to leave
17 25 per cent of his time to transcribe and write his notes into a notebook,
18 so he missed a lot of conversations while he was making his rough notes,
19 didn't he?
20 A. Yes. For that man, yes, you said that correctly. But I said
21 several times in transcripts from yesterday and other days that some
22 materials were taken at the same time. So you failed to state that we had
23 two devices which were able to do this, they were able to cover the same
24 relay station at the same time. The RRU-801 and RRU-802. So when the
25 RRU-800 was not working, the other one would be working to cover the
Page 3862
1 materials. So this would prevent anything from just being missed. Of
2 course, everything is possible.
3 Q. Thank you. And you're not saying that you didn't miss
4 conversations. Right?
5 A. It was possible for something to get past us, Ms. Sinatra, but as
6 far as we knew, nothing did.
7 Q. And another thing that had to occur was that you had the thankless
8 job of handling this material for the third time and typing it out, didn't
9 you, I'm talking about recording it, transcribing it, and then you were
10 the one responsible for typing it out, weren't you?
11 A. Yes, that's correct. But I didn't do everything. That means that
12 this was done by people for a total of three times. That's what you're
13 trying to say. But, Your Honours, I would just like to go back to the
14 transcription of my statement. It was stated RRU-801 and 802. I
15 apologise. What I said that one position of the equipment was RRU-800 and
16 the other position was also an RRU-800. So I apologise for this
17 correction.
18 Q. Well, thank you very much for clarifying that for us because
19 you're watching the record a lot easier than I am. But when you say
20 units, are you talking about the RR-800 being at Okresanica and the RR --
21 the other one that you mentioned being at the other location at Konjuh?
22 They weren't both located at Okresanica, were they?
23 A. Madam, I will be very specific. I think that it's really
24 necessary. If you can imagine a table of 4 metres long where these
25 devices for radio monitoring are placed. The first monitor would contain
Page 3863
1 a first set, so a device for receiving the waves. The second one to deal
2 with the frequencies. Then there would be another device to mediate
3 between the second and the third device. And then there was an adaptation
4 system for the UHER in order to receive all the messages as flawlessly or
5 as perfectly as possible in order to avoid any background noise, humming,
6 or anything. The second position would also hold an RRU-800. The third
7 metre would hold such a device. And the fourth metre was hold an RRU as
8 well. So all of this was at Okresanica and it was under my supervision.
9 I hope that I was clear.
10 Q. You had two units going at one time, each one with the UHER
11 connected to the end; right? When I say "units," I'm talking about
12 electronic equipment. Two series of your electronic equipment running at
13 one time?
14 A. Each one would have its own UHER.
15 MS. SINATRA: And Your Honours, just for clarity purposes, I have
16 a blank sheet of paper here. I would like it if we could give the witness
17 this blank sheet of paper and let him draw two diagrams. One is a diagram
18 of the flow of the equipment and the second will be a diagram of the
19 building itself, the location of his unit, the location of the 21st unit,
20 the location of the secret service and where they are in relation to each
21 other.
22 JUDGE LIU: Any objections?
23 MS. ISSA: I just wonder, Your Honour, what the relevance is of
24 all this. Why is it necessary to embark on this exercise at this point?
25 I mean, I don't think it's particularly relevant.
Page 3864
1 JUDGE LIU: Well, Ms. Sinatra, I wonder if you have a specific
2 case there. I mean, whether those matters will be directly related to
3 your case, your Defence case.
4 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. Since we are challenging the
5 reliability of the process and if you'll be tolerant -- I'll go ahead and
6 ask him another question, too, just to make this clear.
7 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
8 MS. SINATRA:
9 Q. In the cross-examination of the Blagojevic counsel yesterday, you
10 had stated in the record that you didn't have any way of telling whether
11 the document was generated by you or whether it was generated by the
12 secret service. I believe that the secret service documents were typed in
13 all capital letters and the documents generated by your department were
14 typed in lower case letters. Isn't that correct?
15 A. Yes, that's correct. What's the problem? I don't understand?
16 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, we've got to have the relationship of
17 exactly where the secret service office was compared to his unit and how
18 they were all really basically lumped together. I think it's important
19 for the clarity of our examinations, both the Prosecution and the Defence.
20 If you like, I could ask the usher to give him a blank sheet of paper at
21 the break and maybe he could go into that issue and make those drawings at
22 the break for us.
23 JUDGE LIU: Yes, we may do that during the break.
24 MS. SINATRA: I'll move forward and come back to this.
25 MS. ISSA: I just want to clarify, Your Honour, one point.
Page 3865
1 Ms. Sinatra made a statement and then she went on and asked a specific
2 question. And I don't necessarily think the statement -- that the
3 evidence was that he had no way of knowing that the document was generated
4 by him or by the state police. She said secret service. I think she was
5 referring to the state police. I just want to -- I just want to make it
6 clear for the record that I don't think that's quite the way the evidence
7 came out yesterday. But she went on and asked him another question and
8 that's fine.
9 JUDGE LIU: Well, Ms. Issa, I think if there's anything that you
10 are not clear on, you may revisit it during your re-direct.
11 MS. ISSA: Certainly, Your Honour.
12 JUDGE LIU: Thank you.
13 You may proceed.
14 MS. SINATRA: Thank you.
15 Q. There was no direct telephone line between Okresanica and Tuzla,
16 was there?
17 A. There was a direct line.
18 Q. From Okresanica to Tuzla in 1995?
19 A. Yes, in 1995 it went via Srebrenik.
20 Q. In 1995 you stored all of the intercept information on floppy
21 disks and couriered it to the 2nd Corps, didn't you?
22 A. No, that's not correct. We did not store them all and send them
23 over, but as the material was filled in, then we would pass those
24 materials on immediately in shifts.
25 Q. In shifts meaning every ten-day period that you changed out your
Page 3866
1 unit. Right?
2 A. Yes, that's correct.
3 Q. And you never received those floppy disks back, did you?
4 A. We didn't need them, Madam.
5 Q. And you aren't stating that these were preserved in any way? They
6 were probably not stored, were they?
7 A. As far as I'm concerned, I passed them on for storage and then
8 they became the care of other people. So even if I wanted to respond to
9 that question, I'm not able to. But there are those who could give you a
10 response.
11 Q. Okay. Thank you. Based on the interviews with a lot of intercept
12 operators from the BiH army, in this book the author says that one of the
13 mottos of the intercept operators was: "In God we trust, all others we
14 monitor." Wouldn't you think that was true of the intelligence service or
15 the communications service for electronic warfare?
16 MS. ISSA: I'm not sure how that's relevant, Your Honour.
17 JUDGE LIU: Well --
18 MS. SINATRA: I admit. I think it was just interesting. I'll
19 pass it.
20 Q. You know with your experience that intelligence is the gathering
21 of secret information, especially for military use, isn't it?
22 A. Other than secret information, it also means the gathering of
23 other types of information, Madam.
24 Q. So it all fit -- secret information is a subtitle of intelligence,
25 isn't it?
Page 3867
1 A. Yes, but also based on other information, certain knowledge about
2 the enemy can be compiled.
3 Q. And anti-electronic warfare is a part of intelligence of any army,
4 isn't it?
5 A. Yes, Madam.
6 Q. I would like to go to what has been marked as Defence Exhibit
7 36.1/3. And again, I apologise that we don't have a translation. But I'm
8 going to page 224. And I just want to ask you if these are -- if you
9 agree that these are disadvantages of intelligence information. Do you
10 agree: Intercepts are always a matter of greatest secrecy, only a
11 need-to-know basis. Right?
12 A. Yes, that's correct.
13 Q. And besides the extreme secrecy and limited distribution, there's
14 an inhibition regarding its use. I mean, it could result in
15 life-threatening situations for others, couldn't it?
16 A. Yes, that's correct.
17 Q. In fact, let me ask you, isn't intelligence, it was also not
18 valued properly and sometimes not even believed by the people that
19 received the information. Right?
20 A. Yes, this happens.
21 Q. And in many countries, the intelligence and military become too
22 dependant upon intelligence, don't they?
23 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I'm not sure how he can answer that
24 question.
25 MS. SINATRA: If he knows.
Page 3868
1 JUDGE LIU: Yes. Yes, that question is too broad.
2 MS. SINATRA: These are general disadvantages of intelligence. I
3 believe since he is an expert in the anti-electronic warfare unit that may
4 be -- I'm -- not an expert in the term of the Court, but because of his
5 information I would like to just ask him whether he agrees or disagrees
6 with the conclusions on intelligence.
7 JUDGE LIU: Well -- but could you please ask a specific question
8 concerning the work he is engaged in.
9 MS. SINATRA: Okay.
10 Q. A lot of time because of the intelligence information provided,
11 the other sources might be dismissed or not looked at carefully. I'm
12 talking about the other sources other than intercepts.
13 A. Madam, you took only one excerpt and read it out and said that it
14 does not refer to intercepted messages. So could you please tell me,
15 which part are you specifically thinking of? Which part of the
16 intelligence information are you referring to specifically, and which ones
17 do you mean are then dismissed. So could you please tell me that.
18 Q. What happens when you're listening to electronic warfare
19 communications? You're only getting part of the puzzle. You're not
20 getting the entire picture, are you?
21 A. Yes, that's correct.
22 Q. And a lot of times due to situations beyond your control, a lot of
23 times the information arrives too late to be useful to the parties at the
24 time. Right?
25 A. I don't believe that then we are the ones to blame for that.
Page 3869
1 Q. I'm not trying to blame anybody. These are just general
2 disadvantages of electronic warfare. But you do agree with me that a lot
3 of times the information arrives too late to assist in the military
4 situation?
5 A. If tactical information is in question, then of course that can
6 arrive too late. But if they are of a command nature, then they have a
7 longer lease on life.
8 Q. Well, as you stated, even your floppy disks that were sent down to
9 command were on a ten-day shift. So if they didn't receive them until ten
10 days later, in some situations that could be too late, couldn't it?
11 A. Madam, this time we didn't really understand each other. You
12 asked me whether there was a direct line of communication with Tuzla, and
13 I said that there was. So we had a computer and a modem through which we
14 sent this on to the command. So each daily report contained this
15 material. This material was sent off and received with this report. But
16 when we're talking about tapes, then it did wait for the shift. If
17 necessary, if the material was very important or significant, then the
18 commander, and I'm just giving you an example, could order somebody to
19 come and pick up this tape, and then this would be done.
20 Q. Okay. So you're really confirming that the tapes, as a rule, were
21 only sent down on a ten-day shift, unless you decided that it was urgent.
22 And under special extraordinary circumstances you could have a tape picked
23 up. Right?
24 A. Madam, this is what it looks like: We did not conclude that the
25 material was so important or significant, but the gentleman from the
Page 3870
1 command based on the report would make this conclusion, and then they
2 would send somebody. I apologise, but this is how it was.
3 Q. Okay. And this is a more important disadvantage of electronic
4 warfare. The flow of information is so enormous, but the analysis
5 capability is not sufficient. Analysts must decide is a message is
6 valuable and they're flooded with masses of intercepts, as this author
7 says, unable to see the wood for the trees.
8 MS. ISSA: Your Honour.
9 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Issa --
10 MS. SINATRA: Yes. I will.
11 MS. ISSA: It's a little more than that, Your Honour. Frankly, I
12 don't see how this witness could possibly answer that question. I think
13 it's overbroad. It's an opinion from an author. And he's already
14 testified that it wasn't his job to analyse the intercepts.
15 JUDGE LIU: Yes, I agree with you.
16 MS. SINATRA: I will go into the analysis process in a moment.
17 But I was just trying to get through the basic generic disadvantages of
18 electronic warfare. If he can answer the question, I will simplify.
19 JUDGE LIU: Well, you did not pose a question to this witness. It
20 is just a statement there.
21 MS. SINATRA: Okay.
22 If the Court will allow me to pose a question.
23 JUDGE LIU: Yes. Yes, you may try.
24 MS. SINATRA:
25 Q. Isn't it true, sir, that there is an enormous flow of information
Page 3871
1 and that the information comes in but there's not enough people there to
2 analyse it, whether it's important, urgent, valuable. Isn't that correct?
3 A. Usually we would know which channel on a multichannel repeater
4 station were covering civilian stations and which ones were strictly
5 military. So based on that, you could narrow down the number of channels.
6 This question, really, it's a relative thing to evaluate material. You
7 could see which material is interesting in some way. But the material
8 which is not interesting, and you consider it to be interesting, then you
9 could consider that material to be as material that was missed.
10 Q. Well, let me just say, it would be a true statement if one of your
11 intercept operators said that what they considered important was dependant
12 on whether the person speaking was important or not.
13 A. That could be one of the methods, yes.
14 Q. And another problem with electronic warfare is that signals can be
15 rendered secured and codes can be changed suddenly. Transmitters can
16 frequency hop, false information can be disseminated, and superior
17 cryptology methods could be used by the opposing party. Right?
18 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
19 Q. And the limited distribution of intercepted conversations was many
20 times used for personal political ends, wasn't it, not just military
21 decisions?
22 A. Believe me, I really don't understand your question.
23 Q. Okay. I'll skip that one. The next one, though, as a
24 disadvantage of anti-electronic warfare is, many times there was a lack of
25 coordination between the intelligence gathering activity, such as you've
Page 3872
1 pointed out the security service, the military, the headquarters in Tuzla,
2 the headquarters in Sarajevo. One person could gather information and not
3 inform the other intelligence gathering organisation. Right?
4 A. Madam, this was a problem pertaining to a higher level. Whether
5 the various sources of intelligence would communicate among themselves and
6 harmonise their activities, well, that was up to them. I delivered my
7 materials regularly.
8 Q. Okay. One more general question. The electronic warfare and
9 interception units were also subject to atmospheric disturbances, static,
10 poor reception, occasional dropouts of signals, and it's specifically a
11 disadvantage when intercepting conversations if there are mountains and
12 valleys, right, or even tall buildings in cities?
13 A. Yes. That's correct. And that's why the same channel on the same
14 relay station could have dropouts of signals, fadings, because of fog or
15 other conditions, static also. You've listed all the elements, yes.
16 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I think this might be a good time to
17 take a break. I'm going to be starting another topic. If it's time, I'm
18 not sure.
19 JUDGE LIU: Well, would you please tell me how long you will last
20 for your direct -- cross-examination?
21 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I have at least one more full session,
22 maybe more than that. This is an important witness for us.
23 JUDGE LIU: I hope you could finish your cross-examination during
24 the next sitting.
25 MS. SINATRA: I hope so, too. I'll do my best.
Page 3873
1 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. So we'll resume at 10 minutes to 4.00.
2 --- Recess taken at 3.19 p.m.
3 --- On resuming at 3.51 p.m.
4 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
5 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. Thank you. I think this is my
6 last reference to the book, but I was informed you pronounce the name
7 Cees, Cees Wiebes. And I'd like to refer to Defence Exhibit 36.2/3 page
8 300. And again, I apologise for no translation, but it's a very short
9 statement.
10 Q. I would just like to ask if the conclusion drawn by the Dutch
11 institute that studied the Bosnian intelligence, that you agree or
12 disagree with it. Page 300: "Taking the Bosnian efforts as a whole, it
13 must be concluded that the service responsible for signals," that's -- you
14 know what signals is, "was simply too undermanned and too poorly equipped
15 to fulfill its mission adequately. Though there were many intercepts, the
16 processing, analysis, and reporting were totally inadequate. Intercepts
17 were not typed out immediately in a word processing programme, but
18 transcribed by hand in a logbook. Tapes bearing messages were reused, and
19 hardly any use was made of computers to process and disseminate the data
20 flow."
21 A. Madam, I have to tell you that in view of the fact that you have
22 read out a paragraph by, as you say, an eminent expert, writer, or
23 whatever, who wrote about what was happening at the time, about a whole
24 army, what I can say is that I partially agree with what you have read.
25 But for me to know precisely what the conclusion of the book is, I would
Page 3874
1 have to read the whole book, if you will allow me to say.
2 Q. I think that's a very fair answer, and if I had it in B/C/S, I
3 would offer it to you. Trust me. I'm going to go to another subject.
4 Let's go to the content. At Okresanica, you didn't have any people who
5 were considered analysts, people that could analyse the message and assess
6 their value, did you?
7 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
8 Q. And, in fact, your commander of the 2nd Corps General Said Delic,
9 he did not inform you all or brief you daily of the political and military
10 situations going on, did he?
11 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
12 Q. On the 14th of July, 1995, the 28th Division from Srebrenica - I
13 think they were led by Naser Oric - made a mass exodus from Srebrenica to
14 Tuzla. There were 10.000 soldiers, men, women, and children trying to
15 save their lives, weren't there?
16 A. As far as I know, this is correct, Madam.
17 Q. And you received an order from your command telling you to monitor
18 the location and the progress of the 28th Division, didn't you?
19 A. You're partly right there, too. It was our task to catch a
20 communication if possible.
21 Q. And these soldiers coming from Srebrenica, they had hand-held
22 Motorolas with limited battery life, didn't they?
23 A. I heard the same thing you did. As it was our task to try to find
24 out how far they had come to intercept a message or catch a message, and
25 this same applied to a radio relay station as well as to hand-held
Page 3875
1 Motorolas.
2 Q. And you know that as the 28th Division or the column, as it was
3 called, of Bosnian Muslims was approaching the Zvornik Brigade zone of
4 responsibility, wasn't it?
5 A. I heard about that later on, Madam.
6 Q. At the time your order didn't encompass zoning in on the Zvornik
7 area in order to protect and listen and intercept the messages from the
8 28th Division?
9 A. Madam, I said everything I know about this.
10 Q. Well, when you intercepted any messages from the Zvornik Brigade
11 via the relay station, it was only because you were really concentrating
12 on the approach of the column, isn't it?
13 A. It was because we were concentrating on one of the relay stations
14 or several relay stations. I know that there was one that would provide
15 more information. There were others we expected information from, but I
16 can't say right now how much information there was. But it was -- what we
17 were focusing on was to get all the information we could. And that's what
18 our orders were.
19 Q. When -- on the July 14th and 15th, during the fleeing of the
20 Bosnian column from Srebrenica, there was heavy combat activity going on
21 in and around Zvornik, wasn't there?
22 A. I couldn't judge that in any detail at the time, how and where
23 heavy fighting was going on, but we did have some information about this,
24 and this was information coming from the relay equipment, where we found
25 out what you have just mentioned, that they were moving in columns of
Page 3876
1 about 100 men, that at one point they had broken through their lines.
2 That's what I remember now.
3 Q. Let me ask you, due to this urgent situation of the combat in the
4 area, the fleeing of 10.000 people for their lives, the possible falling
5 of the Municipality of Zvornik, there was unusually heavy radio traffic,
6 wasn't there?
7 A. Yes, that's correct.
8 Q. I want to go on to your testimony on Thursday where you testified
9 about the procedure for intercepting a VRS conversation. And I am one of
10 these people that's a bottom-line person. From your testimony I extracted
11 what I believe you described as your procedures. So will you verify,
12 confirm, or deny that these were the procedures of Okresanica July 14th,
13 15th, 1995. And I'm going to give you a list.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. The first thing you do is you get some kind of order from your
16 command to look for a special feature, don't you?
17 A. Yes, Madam. In principle, yes. However, if we happen to be on a
18 frequency where there was a conversation going on, whether it was an old
19 frequency or a new one we had come across accidentally by scanning, we
20 could tape that conversation also, even without an order. But in
21 principle, yes, our activities were contingent upon an order.
22 Q. Okay. So after you get the order, the next thing you do is you
23 have to redirect your antennas to whatever that order encompasses. Right?
24 A. Yes, that's correct.
25 Q. And then after you redirect the antennas, you put your earphones
Page 3877
1 on?
2 A. I don't know, Madam, where you got these earphones. After
3 redirecting the antennas, we had to find the suitable frequencies, find
4 out if there was any activity there. On more complex relays, we had to
5 find out whether they had pilots, whether there was any interference and
6 what the other characteristics of the relay equipment was. What the route
7 was, what the strength of the signal was. So first they had to be found,
8 recognised, and then monitored. And also the order we received might
9 contain a frequency, that was one of the procedures.
10 Q. Thank you. I hadn't even put that in my list of things, but ...
11 A. I would like to add to this that after this entire procedure, what
12 would usually follow in the order would be that we would also look for
13 other frequencies with the same participants, whether another relay route
14 or small relay stations belonging to particular units and so on that would
15 have the same participants. Only when we had done all this would we put
16 on all our earphones.
17 Q. Okay. So order, redirect antennas, and then you have to find the
18 frequencies that you're looking for pursuant to the order. Right? Or the
19 relay stations that are stipulated.
20 A. Yes, that's correct.
21 Q. And then you put your earphones on?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And then you scan for participants on these frequencies?
24 A. Yes, that's correct.
25 Q. And then you record the frequencies if you find one that you're
Page 3878
1 locking into?
2 A. What you're saying now, the scanning meaning looking for
3 participants. But usually we had the frequencies that the same
4 participants had used previously. And also, we would get basic
5 instructions from the command containing the frequencies, and this would
6 be immediately put into operation and we would do the scanning on another
7 set of equipment.
8 Q. During a combat operation like this, the frequencies change often,
9 don't they?
10 A. Yes, that's correct.
11 Q. And then once you decide that you hear a frequency and you hear a
12 conversation and you hear participants, then you have to determine who the
13 participants are -- no, first of all you have to determine whether the
14 conversation is important. Right?
15 A. You know, we could easily be mistaken. We could press the pause
16 button or we could start recording the conversation, because we couldn't
17 tell right away whether it was important or not, and if it wasn't, we
18 could stop the recording.
19 Q. Right. You listened for a little bit to determine whether it was
20 important, then you made a decision whether you wanted to record it?
21 A. Madam, that's what you say. I have said what I have to say in
22 that respect.
23 Q. Well, I'm here to have you tell me, not for me to tell you. But
24 once you determine that it's a conversation you want to listen to, then
25 you have to determine who you think the participants are in the
Page 3879
1 conversation. Right?
2 A. Yes, that's correct.
3 Q. And then once you determine who the participants are, then you
4 either move to another frequency or you start the tape, whether it's
5 important or not. Right?
6 A. Madam, what you are saying runs counter to what I said. I said
7 that on many occasions we could be mistaken as to the first assessment
8 about whether the conversation was important or not. So we would begin
9 recording right away. This happened very often, especially when orders
10 arrived before we got into the activity, we would start recording, and
11 then if it wasn't something for us, we would go back. And at the same
12 time, we would be looking for other frequencies for duplex and so on.
13 Q. Sorry. I thought you did mention the pause button, so sometimes
14 you would start the tape to record and then you would push the pause
15 button until you saw whether it was something you found of interest?
16 A. I did mention the pause button. I said that between conversations
17 it was always on pause. So when we had to start recording, we would press
18 the pause button to start it. But there was another way. The juro
19 button, we would just pull it out. If there was no activity for a long
20 time and then we would depress the button and it would start recording
21 right away, as soon as the conversation started.
22 Q. I think what you're saying is once you determined that the
23 conversation was important, you would take the pause button off so it
24 would start recording. Once you got the conversation recorded -- and by
25 the way, did you record the entire conversation when you decided it was
Page 3880
1 important or just a portion of it?
2 A. In principle, it would always be an entire conversation. We
3 weren't always able to intercept the beginning, so the beginning might be
4 missing in some cases.
5 Q. And then after you recorded the conversation -- or simultaneously
6 it was transcribed into a notebook in handwritten notes. Right?
7 A. Or simultaneously if it was an easy conversation when there was
8 not much activity going on, when activities were few and far between, when
9 the participants were speaking slowly, the operators were so well
10 practiced that they could note it down right away, and then they would go
11 over it again to check whether they had missed something. But in
12 principle, the procedure was to record the conversation to go back to
13 zero, then to transcribe the conversation.
14 Q. I think what you were just saying is that sometimes they skip the
15 process of hand transcribing into the notebooks. If there was no activity
16 or little activity, they would take right from the tape into the computer.
17 Is that what you're saying?
18 A. No, that's not what I said, Madam.
19 Q. Okay. So it's transcribed handwritten into a notebook, and then
20 once it's put in a notebook is it typed up on the computer first or is it
21 sent to encryption? It's typed up on the computer first, isn't it?
22 A. The first part of what you said. The first part of what you said,
23 Madam. First it would be typed into the computer. So after recording,
24 transcribing, and copying from the notebook into the computer, it would
25 then be encrypted and sent on to the command.
Page 3881
1 Q. So it's typed into the computer, and encryption gets your --
2 printed out, computer-typed transcription of the recording. Is that
3 right?
4 A. Yes, that's correct.
5 Q. And then these tapes and these notebooks and these floppies were
6 then couriered or after a ten-day shift were sent to the 21st Division,
7 and if they were important enough they would be sent on to the 2nd Corps,
8 or did they go directly to the 2nd Corps? I'm sorry, I know the answer to
9 that. They went directly to the 2nd Corps.
10 A. No, that's not how it was, Madam. I apologise. It couldn't go to
11 the 21st Division when I was not a member of that division. I think the
12 procedure has been explained several times. It went to the command of my
13 corps, of my unit.
14 Q. Okay. Let's talk about shift changes every ten days. Every ten
15 days you had a new group of people come up, new set of notebooks, new set
16 of tapes, new set of equipment, and you had a debriefing process that you
17 had to go to. So the shift change took a lot of time, didn't it?
18 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
19 Q. And I want to go back to your process. I think you testified
20 before that if you heard a conversation clearly, then you would transcribe
21 it immediately into your written notebook. If you could not hear the
22 conversation clearly, it was written on a little piece of paper to be
23 transcribed later. Is that right?
24 A. Madam, I have to draw your attention to the fact that I have
25 already explained this to your colleague, but I will go over it again.
Page 3882
1 When conversations were clear and when they were not clear, and with
2 regard to the pieces of paper, when there was several conversations, they
3 would be taken down on a piece of paper with the basic information, such
4 as the frequency, time, participants, and the counter position. When
5 there was several conversations going on. If there was only one
6 conversation going on, this was not written down on a piece of paper, but
7 it would be put into the notebook. The tape would be rewound and the
8 conversation would be transcribed.
9 Q. So you're saying that whether you wrote it in the notebook or
10 whether you wrote it on a little piece of paper had nothing to do with the
11 clarity of the recording whether you could hear it clearly or not?
12 A. You keep saying that if conversations were not clear we
13 transcribed them on a piece of paper. But I have explained what it was
14 that we put on a piece of paper. The conversation itself, regardless of
15 how unclear it was, was transcribed in the notebook word for word. If
16 there was something that was not clear, it would be played back over and
17 over again. And you could call a colleague to help you. That's how it
18 was done.
19 Q. Okay. So the little pieces of paper were just your rough notes on
20 conversation that you couldn't hear clearly so you could go back and
21 listen to it again. Is that what you're saying?
22 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
23 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, she's now asked the witness the same
24 question a number of times and, respectfully I say, has misstated it a
25 number of times. The witness has repeated himself several times. I think
Page 3883
1 his evidence is clear and that's not what he said. And I think, you know,
2 it may be time to now move off this point given that we've now gone over
3 it over and over again.
4 JUDGE LIU: Yes, we've spent enough time on that subject,
5 Ms. Sinatra.
6 MS. SINATRA: May I just have him answer the question whether the
7 pieces of paper had rough notes on them so they could go back and review
8 this testimony -- I mean, this recording.
9 JUDGE LIU: Well, if you like. But we have to move on. You have
10 to remember that.
11 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I'm trying.
12 Q. The little pieces of paper were just your rough notes so you knew
13 to go back and listen to this interception again. Right?
14 A. Yes, that's right.
15 Q. And then the little pieces of paper were destroyed, weren't they?
16 A. That's right.
17 Q. And then the tapes that were sent to the 2nd Corps, were erased or
18 destroyed. Right?
19 A. I don't know how you came to that conclusion, Madam.
20 Q. Well, we don't have any preservation of the tape recordings that
21 you had at Okresanica in July 1995, do we?
22 A. Madam, that is your problem or somebody else's problem. I want to
23 be clear about these tapes. I've stated several times, and I will repeat
24 it again, that we sent out completely recorded tapes with all the live
25 material, everything that happened. When there was a lot of material when
Page 3884
1 no more could fit in, then we would pack that -- those tapes and send them
2 on to the command.
3 Q. Okay. But you've never been played a tape reflecting your
4 notations that you transcribed in July of 1995, have you?
5 A. Yes, that's correct.
6 Q. And when you say you take notes and you go back and you listen to
7 a conversation to make sure it's transcribed accurately, if there's a poor
8 recording of a conversation, playing it 11 to 15 times over and over again
9 is not going to make it clearer, is it?
10 A. Sometimes there were parts of conversations that were not
11 complete, but what we were able to determine, what we were able to put
12 down on paper, we did put down on paper.
13 Q. And so on Thursday you testified that you would rerun it like a
14 disk jockey to identify with 100 per cent certainty. The truth is, you
15 can't identify a poor recording with 100 per cent certainty, can you?
16 A. Not only did I say that on Thursday, I said that a little while
17 ago also. I would return or play back the tapes several times not only
18 myself, all the others would do that, too. There were conversations which
19 we were not able to transcribe 100 per cent. In that, you are right.
20 Q. And I just want to add, you even would invite in members of the
21 secret service for an extra set of ears to help determine the accuracy of
22 the recording, but playing over and over again with however many ears you
23 bring in a recording that is not recorded clearly will not make it clear,
24 will it?
25 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I'm not sure that the witness said that he
Page 3885
1 would invite members of the secret service for an extra set of ears. I
2 don't believe that was the evidence at all. And I think that at this
3 point counsel is simply repeating another version of her same question.
4 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra, you have to rephrase your question.
5 MS. SINATRA: Thank you. I will, Your Honours.
6 Q. Sir, isn't it true that on occasion members of the secret service
7 would come in -- security service, I'm sorry, would come into your room
8 and assist you in listening to a conversation and filling in the gaps that
9 are in the poor recording?
10 A. This did not happen in my presence. If it happened in the
11 presence of some other operator, then you would have to ask him that
12 question.
13 Q. You're not saying it didn't happen. Right?
14 A. I know that I never invited any of them to help in the
15 transcription because the staff that we had was quite sufficient. And I
16 said several times that we would call perhaps one person, sometimes they
17 would all be there. But this referred to my unit only, to my shift.
18 Q. When you say you listened to a tape over and over again to make it
19 make sense, you mean that you filled in the gaps of what you couldn't
20 understand. Right?
21 A. No, that is not right. We tried to identify some extra word or
22 tried to see what the reason was why we could not make more of the text
23 available. So these were efforts to try to transcribe a little bit more.
24 Q. And I just want to go back. I don't know if it assists the
25 previous cross-examination by counsel for Blagojevic, but earlier he was
Page 3886
1 questioning you intensely on periods and exclamation marks. And the truth
2 is, those were really important in transcribing conversations, weren't
3 they?
4 A. But these are main components of a conversation, as far as I'm
5 concerned.
6 Q. I just want to go to the meaning that it had for your unit. For
7 example, dot, dot, dot meant that you didn't understand the rest of the
8 statement. Right?
9 A. It means that between the last word and the next words, a part of
10 the conversation was -- we were not able to understand it. It was either
11 inaudible or unclear, and so on.
12 Q. And an exclamation mark represented a special tone or inflection
13 in the voice, didn't it?
14 A. Yes, that's right.
15 Q. And an asterisk meant that you missed the rest of the total
16 conversation. Right?
17 A. I'm not sure that I know exactly what this is about.
18 Q. It's about the signals and the codes that you had within your
19 transcription unit, which takes a conversation down, puts punctuation
20 marks in it, and then those punctuation marks have special meaning when
21 that written transcription is transcribed into a computer programme.
22 A. Yes, that's right. They mean something, but I'm not sure about
23 the asterisk coming in for mixed -- for missed text. I don't know whether
24 I said that. It doesn't quite sound to me ...
25 Q. Like you said it or was it just common knowledge for your unit?
Page 3887
1 About the asterisk. You knew about the meaning of the asterisk, although
2 you didn't testify about it to this point. Right?
3 A. You mentioned the asterisk, Madam, not me.
4 Q. I'm going to go on to another topic. The training of the people
5 that worked in your unit, most of them were very young conscripts, weren't
6 they?
7 A. Yes, that's right.
8 Q. In fact, most of them were under 25 years old. Right?
9 A. Well, Madam, you're forcing me now to calculate and to go back and
10 see how old they were at the time. It is my opinion that perhaps a half
11 or at the most or a little bit less than half were of that age.
12 Q. And these new conscripts, they came to you with no prior training
13 in radio equipment or communications. Right?
14 A. Madam, now if we're talking about the period of 1993 or 1995,
15 we're talking about a majority of people who were radio amateurs and who
16 had already some degree of experience from the beginning of the war in
17 these tasks.
18 Q. So if one of your intercept operators said he had no prior
19 experience but he was trained on the job, he wouldn't be telling the
20 truth?
21 MS. ISSA: Your Honour --
22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, I wouldn't say that.
23 JUDGE LIU: Well, the witness has answered that question.
24 MS. ISSA: That's fine, Your Honour.
25 MS. SINATRA:
Page 3888
1 Q. Now, all of the important conversations were recorded and sent on
2 to operations people at command. Right?
3 A. Yes, that's right.
4 Q. And the people in your unit were monitoring a minimum of, like, 24
5 frequencies at one time. Would that be accurate? I mean, each member on
6 shift was monitoring about 24 frequencies.
7 A. This was only in case one person was on the shift and following
8 24, but he actually monitored two devices. The scanner itself monitored
9 24.
10 Q. Okay. And you do know that some of the VRS interceptions were
11 spoken in Hungarian and Romanian. Right?
12 A. No, I don't know about that, Madam.
13 Q. The search for frequencies when you took over a shift, that wasn't
14 done automatically. That was done manually, wasn't it, with the dial?
15 A. Madam, you're not right. There is a scanner for that as well, and
16 it would go from one frequency to another. But if there was something
17 interesting, you could manually go back and forth. At the same time, you
18 could also combine manual and scanner operations, because with a certain
19 pause we could also pick the frequencies manually. We also had devices
20 like that.
21 Q. Okay. I would like to bring your attention, if I could, with the
22 assistance of the usher to what was marked as P232.
23 MS. SINATRA: I don't know if the witness has a copy of P232 --
24 oh, I'm sorry.
25 Q. I know you're familiar with this intercept. And I just wanted to
Page 3889
1 bring your attention, as previously noted by the Prosecution, /A -- 232/A
2 is an English translation of the handwriting sample which is P232/B, which
3 is -- and then /C is an English translation of the computer typed-out
4 version of 232/D and /E, which are the same conversation.
5 Just for verification, there is no audio tape to support any of
6 these writings in 232. Right?
7 A. If you're asking me, Madam, this is something I don't know. This
8 is something you need to find out from the Prosecution.
9 Q. And without an audiotape, there's no way for us to check on the
10 audio accuracy, is there?
11 A. Yes, that's correct.
12 Q. And without an audio recording, there's no way for us to go back
13 and use any type of expertise in voice identification, is there?
14 A. Voice identification is not possible, no.
15 Q. And as you stated, these tapes were used over and over again. If
16 you notice the original /B of 232/B --
17 A. Yes. Yes.
18 Q. This is not your handwriting, is it?
19 A. That's what you say, Madam.
20 Q. No. I'm asking you, is it? That's a question. I'm not ...
21 A. Yes, this is my handwriting.
22 Q. Okay. And you stated that the reason you remember this is because
23 you made a notation that the only reason you were able to record this
24 conversation was because a switchboard operator had left the line open.
25 Isn't that right?
Page 3890
1 A. Madam, the remark was made why they were receiving a conversation
2 in this state, because nobody would understand what was actually going on
3 without this remark.
4 Q. Well, that's true, because you're supposedly recording an
5 intercepted telephone conversation, but as you note there are letters BB,
6 JJ, XY, BE. Right?
7 A. That's right. Except that I allegedly taped it, but everything
8 else is correct.
9 Q. Well, I'm not going to go into the fact that we don't have a tape.
10 So we have to rely on what you've written down here. But under your
11 direct testimony on Thursday, you were asked by Ms. Issa which telephone
12 operator you were referring to when you said that one of the lines had
13 been left open at the switchboard. Right?
14 A. Yes. The switchboard operator from the main exchange. Should I
15 say which participant I mean? Is that it?
16 Q. No. I'm going to ask you. And you stated that it -- bless you.
17 It was the operator from Badem, didn't you?
18 A. Yes, that's correct.
19 Q. And Badem was the code name for the Bratunac Brigade, wasn't it?
20 A. Yes, that's correct.
21 Q. And you know that Mr. Jokic was never a part of the Bratunac
22 Brigade, was he?
23 A. Madam, if we read the text, then we can see that the gentleman who
24 was calling is calling Badem. So the gentleman who called, called the
25 Bratunac Brigade.
Page 3891
1 Q. So you're stating that the Badem switchboard operator left the
2 line open, not the Zvornik Brigade switchboard operator. Right?
3 A. Yes, that's right.
4 Q. I'm going to move on. Now, Ms. Issa did try to direct your
5 attention to a portion of the intercept where it says -- sorry, "I will.
6 I will. Hello. Hello." Right? She asked you to look at that phrase
7 over and over again, I believe, during direct examination.
8 A. Yes, that's right.
9 Q. In fact, she asked you if there was anything in this sentence that
10 you were listening to that you were uncertain about, didn't she?
11 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
12 MS. SINATRA: Okay. I think this probably needs to be done in
13 private session, Your Honour. But I would like to distribute what could
14 be considered a confidential document that is marked D37/3 for
15 identification purposes.
16 JUDGE LIU: Yes, we'll go to private session, please.
17 [Private session]
18 (redacted)
19 (redacted)
20 (redacted)
21 (redacted)
22 (redacted)
23 (redacted)
24 (redacted)
25 (redacted)
Page 3892
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 Page 3892 – redacted – private session.
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Page 3893
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 [Open session]
5 MS. SINATRA:
6 Q. Okay. I just want to go back to what was marked D36.2/3. And I
7 would like to draw the Trial Chamber's and the Prosecution's attention to
8 page 292, because I have no translation for the witness, and I will have
9 to read it. I will provide the witness with a translation. But I just
10 wanted to verify that this is from the book, but it is citing witness CC
11 from the Krstic trial. Did witness CC tell the truth and is this a
12 truthful statement from the Krstic trial?
13 "Crew of the electronic warfare unit of the 21st Division in
14 Okresanica was small, consisting of three interception positions which
15 were manned around the clock in shifts. Each team worked between four and
16 eight hours a day for a whole week and then had a week off. Operators who
17 intercepted the message made crude notes and worked it out later in their
18 logbooks. These notes were passed on to the commander who typed out the
19 messages on a computer. The intercepts were then sent by courier to the
20 command of the 21st Division for further analysis. Important messages
21 were phoned through immediately to the 2nd Corps in Tuzla. There was no
22 direction-finding equipment and frequencies that were identified on the
23 basis of knowledge of the comment operator, that's the information
24 operator." And that's from witness CC in Krstic.
25 Is that accurate or not?
Page 3894
1 A. Madam, you're asking me a lot. This is about the 21st Division.
2 What have I to do with that?
3 Q. Well, just tell me, what was your relationship with the 21st
4 Division?
5 A. There wasn't any, Madam.
6 Q. Okay. So all of this information about the 21st Division in your
7 unit and the security service being located in one building, it was really
8 just your unit and the security service. Right?
9 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, what does that mean? I mean, I don't
10 quite understand what Defence counsel is asking there, and quite frankly,
11 I haven't objected, but you know up to this point, but a lot of this is
12 not particularly relevant. And I think the witness has pointed out that
13 he isn't really in a position to answer questions in relation to other
14 units. The last question doesn't quite make sense to me.
15 JUDGE LIU: Ms. Sinatra, I believe the witness has answered the
16 question already.
17 MS. SINATRA: Okay. Well, he said there wasn't any 21st Division
18 there --
19 JUDGE LIU: No, no, no, no. There wasn't any relations between
20 the two units.
21 MS. SINATRA: My question is that the 21st Division is a military
22 division. The security service is a civilian organisation. So we have
23 the identification of three separate units at this place and he's only
24 telling us about two. I think it has to do with credibility and testing
25 his knowledge.
Page 3895
1 JUDGE LIU: Well, I think, you know, you could not get much by
2 asking this kind of question as to the credibility of this witness. How
3 could you ask this witness to tell something of other units?
4 MS. SINATRA: No. Just identifying their presence. I'm not
5 asking him to tell what their purpose --
6 JUDGE LIU: I think the witness has already testified in this
7 aspect.
8 MS. SINATRA: Okay. I'll move forward then.
9 Q. Okay. The interception by your unit was made more difficult by
10 the increased use of encryption equipment by the VRS, wasn't it?
11 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam. Can you wait just a moment, please.
12 Your Honours, I would like to show Ms. Sinatra this document which
13 she asked me to draw during the break. And if it, she will find the
14 precise answer to what she was asking.
15 Q. And I thank you very much. The problem is I can't be provided
16 with the document until the next break, so I will come back to this line
17 of questioning and I appreciate your offering that information to me. But
18 it has to be marked by the registrar and then given to me. So please
19 understand the procedures here. I will talk about it.
20 JUDGE LIU: Well, Ms. Sinatra, since we are on this subject, why
21 don't we use that map, whatever, at this moment.
22 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I haven't been provided a copy of it
23 yet.
24 JUDGE LIU: Well, us either, but you could have a look at this
25 copy right now.
Page 3896
1 So please show this map to Ms. Sinatra.
2 MS. SINATRA: Thank you very much.
3 Your Honour, it's in B/C/S.
4 JUDGE LIU: Well, we could ask the witness to say in B/C/S and the
5 interpreters will translate it into English.
6 MS. SINATRA: So would we put it on the ELMO?
7 JUDGE LIU: Yes, I think there is no problem.
8 Well, I have been advised that although this document is under
9 seal, we could put it on the ELMO.
10 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Ms. Sinatra, please pay attention
11 now to this room I am pointing out right now and what it says here, 21st
12 Division. This gives you the answer to the question you put. I think
13 it's all right now, Ms. Sinatra.
14 MS. SINATRA:
15 Q. Can you tell me what DB is.
16 A. That is the service of the civilian authorities.
17 Q. And that would be the security service -- state security service?
18 A. State security, that is a service of the Ministry of the Interior.
19 Q. And there's another room next to the 21st Division that has two
20 doors going in and out of it. Is that correct?
21 A. Madam, this double door here is entrance number 2 used by the
22 state security and the 21st Division. And this was a wall separating them
23 and us. And these were the rooms belonging to my unit, this part here. I
24 apologise for the proportions which may not be quite correct, but all the
25 elements you asked of me are here.
Page 3897
1 Q. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. It's very illuminating. When you
2 say there's a wall there, so when you shared information with the state
3 security services, you had to go outside and come in another door?
4 A. Yes, that's right.
5 MS. SINATRA: I would like to have an opportunity to analyse this
6 in a moment. I don't know what it says. But I assume from the wall
7 over -- but I know the KZ is the encryption department or KZU. Right?
8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, yes, Madam. I do apologise.
9 KZ, that's what it means. I think that this also will be familiar to you.
10 This is the first room to the left from the entrance. This is the
11 monitoring centre where our activities were carried on, the ones we are
12 discussing now. This is the corridor. This is a dormitory, and this is a
13 kitchen and living room. And this is another small corridor. I didn't
14 have an eraser, which is why I crossed out this little line here. So this
15 is another small corridor from which one entered the kitchen and the duty
16 room of the 2nd Corps communications centre. So the person on duty
17 belonging to that unit would be here. Here we have a storage area and the
18 commander's bedroom, that would be my bedroom.
19 Q. The first door to your right when you enter from your side, you
20 said that's where your communications centre was located, is that where
21 you had the two 4-metre long tables?
22 A. No, Madam. I have just said that this is the communications
23 centre of the 2nd Corps. That's what it says here, and the person on duty
24 had his room here. And there was a man working here and by mistake I put
25 a bed in the kitchen -- actually, it should be in here, in this little
Page 3898
1 room. So this bed here in the living room was actually in here, but I
2 made a mistake, you know. And the room that you have just mentioned, this
3 is that room.
4 Q. Okay. Thank you very much. Just for clarification purposes,
5 the -- I had talked about that room where it says DB as being a MUP
6 facility, Ministry of the Interior, but that's not actually correct, is
7 it?
8 A. It is correct, yes.
9 Q. Isn't the state security service, isn't it more -- instead of the
10 FBI, it's more like the CIA or the KGB, it's a more secret operation than
11 the MUP?
12 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Issa.
13 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I don't know how relevant this is. My
14 submission is it's totally irrelevant and I don't think the witness is in
15 a position to make those kinds of conclusions.
16 JUDGE LIU: Well, that comparison is not proper.
17 MS. SINATRA: If you would just allow me to ask the one next
18 question I will make it relevant and proper.
19 JUDGE LIU: Well, you may try.
20 MS. SINATRA: Isn't the state security service a more secret group
21 than the MUP; right? This is a precursor. I haven't come to the other
22 question. I have to get a yes or no on this one first. Okay. I'll go
23 ahead and ask it.
24 Q. In fact, this state security service later became the AID which is
25 the one that is in control and custody of the tapes from 1995?
Page 3899
1 MS. SINATRA: I hate to ask a compound sentence, but I had to.
2 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] You're asking me a lot again.
3 Whether this service later became the AID, well, we referred to it as the
4 DB. That's what we called it, DB, and that's what it stayed. And I'm
5 mentioning the name that we used at the time. DB was the department of
6 the MUP, the Ministry of the Interior that was stationed here. And it's
7 common knowledge what they were doing there.
8 Q. Okay. Thank you.
9 A. You're welcome.
10 Q. Since this is -- you've testified before this Tribunal before
11 regarding this same subject. I wanted to ask you if you are aware that in
12 your last testimony there were audiotapes supporting the intercepts that
13 you were discussing, whereas there are not audiotapes in this one.
14 MS. ISSA: Your Honour.
15 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
16 MS. ISSA: I'm certainly not aware of that and if there's portion
17 of his testimony that Ms. Sinatra wants to point him to, she certainly can
18 do that, but I don't think it's a proper form to ask the question in the
19 manner that she did.
20 JUDGE LIU: Well -- but the -- in the cross-examination the
21 Defence is entitled to ask this question first. And later on, the Defence
22 may show some evidence to rebut any answers given by this witness. Let's
23 hear what the witness is going to tell us.
24 MS. ISSA: All right, Your Honour.
25 JUDGE LIU: Thank you.
Page 3900
1 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Ms. Sinatra, would you repeat your
2 question, please.
3 MS. SINATRA:
4 Q. You testified in another case, the Krstic case, before this
5 Tribunal and as so, when you testified about your notes on intercepts, you
6 also heard an audiotape that supported those notes, didn't you?
7 A. Yes, that's correct, Ms. Sinatra.
8 Q. Thank you. And although we have several A, B, C, D, and E, D and
9 E of 232 -- P232 are really the same interception just typed by two
10 different units. Right?
11 A. Yes, that's correct.
12 Q. So there's no corroborating simultaneous recording from, say,
13 Konjuh or another communications location, is there?
14 A. I wouldn't know that, Madam.
15 MS. SINATRA: I'd like to bring out also -- earlier today or
16 earlier yesterday, I believe, P231. The witness was questioned on that.
17 If we could look at P231, please.
18 Q. You're familiar with your previous discussion on P231. Right?
19 A. Well, I do remember some things. I don't know what you're going
20 to ask me.
21 Q. Well, I want to go to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
22 eight, eight spaces up from the end of this document, and your notes, are
23 the written notes 231/B.
24 Sir, could you just read that to me, the part that is in italics,
25 "pronovo jaci." Could you read that, please.
Page 3901
1 A. Yes, in line 8 from the end. It says: "Well, now my boys are now
2 in the western part. Working there as of today. Everything is in place.
3 Sweet as a nut."
4 Q. I think I'm looking for the part that's in parenthesis. I think
5 that it's maybe ten lines up then. It's a part that says -- the line
6 starts with: "I understand completely," then we'll focus on one down
7 there. Then there's a portion in parenthesis, and I'm sorry for my
8 pronunciation, but it starts with "pronovo jaci." Could you read that in
9 your language, please.
10 A. Yes. The translation, I find it funny. It says: "Because," and
11 then parenthesis, (in the continuation drowned out again), it says (by
12 previously recorded conversation).
13 Q. Thank you very much. And this was from the document you were
14 discussing earlier. That's all I wanted to illuminate from that document.
15 Thank you.
16 Now, I want to go back to the people that analyse whether -- or
17 monitor whether a conversation is important or not. You testified earlier
18 that -- that you testified in the Krstic trial that the operators were not
19 briefed by the army on the military circumstances. Right?
20 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I'm going to object to this. It's one
21 thing to put a question to the witness, for example, were the operators
22 briefed, et cetera. But to put it in the form that she's putting it in,
23 it's improper. If she's going to suggest to him that he testified in a
24 particular manner, that I think she needs to point to the exact portion of
25 the testimony.
Page 3902
1 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
2 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, may I respond?
3 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
4 MS. SINATRA: I believe that Ms. Issa is incorrect here. If the
5 witness can remember from his own personal knowledge about his testimony,
6 I don't have to point to a record. If he remembers, he can testify about
7 it.
8 MR. KARNAVAS: And, Your Honour, for the record, I totally agree
9 with Ms. Sinatra. It is totally proper, the form of the question. This
10 is classic cross-examination before confrontation.
11 JUDGE LIU: Well, as I said before that this kind of
12 cross-examination is allowed, but at the same time, Ms. Sinatra, I have to
13 remind you of the time. We are almost finished this sitting. I wonder
14 how long are you going to use.
15 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I am going to say that I have at least
16 30 more minutes, maybe more of cross. I could sit here at the next break
17 and I may have duplicated some questions. Can I cut and consolidate, but
18 I think I still have 30 minutes conservatively.
19 JUDGE LIU: You know, at the beginning of this afternoon's
20 session, we told everybody that we would like to have this witness go back
21 home tomorrow morning. This witness has been in The Hague for quite a
22 long time. Of course, there are three days in between that we were not
23 sitting.
24 Yes, you may proceed.
25 MS. SINATRA: I'm sorry to hold him over, Your Honour, but he has
Page 3903
1 important information. I'll do my best.
2 Q. So these people that were making the decisions on what
3 conversations were important and what were not were young conscripts,
4 people taught on the job, and people who had not been briefed about the
5 military circumstances surrounding them. Right?
6 A. Previously you asked me whether the commander briefed us daily.
7 From time to time we were briefed on the military situation, but not on a
8 daily basis, as you put it in your question. I think I've already
9 answered that question. Yes, you observed rightly that these were young
10 people, but they were experienced ham radio operators, and they were
11 people who started doing this job as soon as the war started. So by this
12 time they would have gained quite a great deal of experience.
13 Q. Not all of them had previous amateur radio operator experience,
14 did they?
15 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
16 Q. In fact, going back to briefing and whether they were informed,
17 you stated in your testimony on Thursday that the army did not tell you
18 why they asked for certain intercepts, "You were working in the dark."
19 Isn't that true?
20 A. Madam, I really don't remember working in the dark.
21 Q. Okay. But they didn't brief you or they didn't tell you why they
22 asked for certain focus on intercepts. Right?
23 A. Madam, as you yourself have said, we had debriefings at the shifts
24 and the officer from the command carrying out the change of shift would go
25 through the information and he would brief the men and so on. So this was
Page 3904
1 the regular procedure, more or less.
2 Q. And the decisions on whether a conversation was deemed important
3 or not was made by the intercept operator listening to the conversation?
4 A. If certain activities were found to be on a certain channel and
5 one started monitoring conversations, there was no need to decide whether
6 a conversation was important or not. All such conversations would be
7 recorded.
8 Q. Okay. So you're saying that the decision to record a conversation
9 was not discretionary with the intercept operator?
10 A. It was easy for him to tell which conversation was civilian and
11 which was military. They were also very familiar with the distribution of
12 channels, so this was not a problem for them.
13 Q. You didn't answer my question. Are you telling us that the
14 decision on whether to record a conversation was not totally discretionary
15 with the intercept operator?
16 A. It was. It was up to him.
17 Q. Now, when a conversation was deemed important and it was
18 transcribed, only part of the conversation was transcribed -- only the
19 part that this operator deemed important, wasn't it?
20 A. Madam, are you trying to say that there are conversations like
21 that? Well, I think that there are several such conversations where
22 previously the conversation was purely of a private nature so that the
23 operator -- yes, yes.
24 Q. Okay. Thank you. In fact, when only part of what the intercept
25 operator deemed important, that's the only part that was put into the
Page 3905
1 computer. The rest of it was erased or destroyed; it was discarded?
2 A. Madam, what you have just said seems to deepen even more and more
3 the statement that you gave about the text. I did say that there was such
4 a text, but globally it was not the procedure to work in that way. A
5 conversation regardless of how many moments it contained which were no
6 longer interesting were not something that we made the decision of. It's
7 possible that the conversation would turn around suddenly. So then we
8 would begin recording. So perhaps this is the situation that you seem to
9 be looking for, Madam.
10 Q. Well, I'm going to ask a long question which involves your
11 procedure. And just to get it straight, you catch a frequency of an
12 intercepted conversation midway through the conversation on many
13 occasions. Right?
14 A. It would happen, yes.
15 Q. And then when you've recorded part of a conversation, sometimes,
16 especially in the middle of combat, only part of that partially recorded
17 conversation would be transcribed. Right?
18 A. Madam, I don't see any interdependence there. One thing did not
19 depend on the other. Let me respond first to the first part of your
20 question. If it should happen that we came up to a conversation which was
21 already in progress, we would record it and then we would have a recording
22 of that part of it. As far as the second part of the question, that did
23 not have to be so closely related to whether there was combat or not.
24 Major combat operations may not call for major activity on our equipment.
25 Q. I think what I was trying to ask you is: Most of the time you
Page 3906
1 record part of a conversation on the reel-to-reel tape, and then after
2 part of the conversation is recorded, only the part of the conversation
3 that is deemed important would be transcribed in the notebook. And that
4 would be especially true during a time of intense combat operations.
5 Right?
6 A. Madam, the part of the conversation that we heard, that part would
7 be recorded. When we came up against a part of a conversation which was
8 already in progress, that is what you said, from the moment we came upon
9 that conversation, we would record that conversation. We would not leave
10 anything out. There would be nothing that needed to be left out. It
11 wasn't up to us to decide. There were people whose duty it was to decide
12 whether something should be left out or not, but that wasn't us.
13 Q. So if another intercept operator from your unit stated that not a
14 complete -- only the important parts of a recording many times were
15 transcribed, he would not be telling the truth?
16 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
17 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, first of all, that's an improper form of
18 the question. A witness can't be -- it's not relevant that -- a witness
19 can't comment on the voracity of a potential other witness or whatever
20 Ms. Sinatra happens to be referring to, a previous witness. And frankly,
21 Your Honour, we've been over and over this. I'm not really sure how much
22 further we're getting along by re-asking the same questions over and over
23 again.
24 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra, I think this is not a proper
25 question to ask this witness. It's quite a hypothetical question. And
Page 3907
1 it's time for the break. If you feel proper, we'll break now,
2 Ms. Sinatra.
3 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour, I do.
4 JUDGE LIU: But after the break I think you'll have 15 minutes to
5 finish your cross-examination. And we'll resume at 10 minutes to 6.00.
6 --- Recess taken at 5.22 p.m.
7 --- On resuming at 5.50 p.m.
8 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
9 MS. SINATRA: Thank you, Your Honour.
10 Q. Okay. We're back. I would like to distribute what has been
11 marked as P34 -- I mean, D34/3 for identification purposes, and I would
12 like to have the witness look at it, please.
13 Yes, sir, I just want you to answer if you can identify these
14 notes. Do you recognise this?
15 A. Yes. These are notes from my notebook, from my diary.
16 Q. And these are your personal notes that you took an July 14th,
17 1995?
18 A. Yes, that's correct.
19 Q. And what precipitated these notes was the changing of the shift.
20 Right?
21 A. Yes, that's correct, Madam.
22 Q. And for clarity, the shifts in July 1995 were the 4th of July
23 through the 14th of July. Right?
24 A. Yes, I think that was right.
25 Q. And then the next shift also began on the 14th through the 24th.
Page 3908
1 Right?
2 A. That's correct, yes.
3 Q. And you stated before that during a shift change, that's the time
4 you bring supplies in, you brief the new people coming in, you make all
5 these notes of personal things that are taken care of on the shift change.
6 Right?
7 A. Yes, that's right.
8 Q. I would like to bring your attention to your notes, and if you see
9 the -- there's an underlined part with a check next to it, one, two,
10 three, four, five, six, seven, on the eighth line, I believe, and if I've
11 miscounted, you know what line I'm talking about, right. It's the only
12 one that's -- no, it's the second one that's underlined in your notes.
13 A. Is that a warning, Madam?
14 Q. No. I'm just asking for your cooperation so that I don't have to
15 go sentence by sentence. But it is --
16 MS. ISSA: No, Your Honour -- I'm sorry there seems to be a bit of
17 confusion. The witness -- there is a word referring to warning in the
18 transcript, and the witness may have just been trying to figure out where
19 he is.
20 JUDGE LIU: Yes. I understand that.
21 MS. SINATRA: I'm sorry. I didn't realise what he was talking
22 about. But there is -- on the line down there I would like to read in the
23 English translation what it says.
24 Q. And you can confirm or deny. "The UHER 2," I think that means 2
25 UHERs, or the UHER labelled 2 or 1, I'm not quite sure, "was taken to be
Page 3909
1 repaired. It's number 045612, type 1424."
2 So this UHER, type 1424, had been experiencing recording
3 difficulties prior to July 14th, hadn't it?
4 A. Before the 14th of July, this UHER was broken, so that's why it
5 was laid aside. When it broke down, at that point, it was substituted
6 with one in reserve or -- I assume by an UHER number 4. This was the UHER
7 that was at a different work location, the RRU-1. So we have the first
8 work station, that's this UHER. So it could have been substituted or the
9 frequencies from UHER 2 were passed on to or transferred on to UHER 4. I
10 apologise, there is even the possibility that we did have a reserve one.
11 Q. Okay. But it also notes in your notes that it was returned on the
12 17th of July, 1995. Right? If you're looking --
13 A. Yes, that's correct. That's correct.
14 Q. And I want to bring your attention again to that Prosecution ERN
15 number which ends in 144, which I believe you're looking at. It says:
16 "Amir took the old UHER, the 1423 type. He brought two adapters for the
17 UHER." Right? "And he took an old adapter from an UHER type 1424."
18 Right?
19 A. That's what it says.
20 Q. So before July 17th -- well, that's all I have to question from
21 this document.
22 MS. SINATRA: Thank you, Your Honour.
23 Q. And just to lay the proper foundation, this -- these notes that
24 you're looking at you recognise as your handwriting?
25 A. Yes, that's correct.
Page 3910
1 Q. They were taken from the notebooks which you brought the
2 Prosecution when you came or which you promised to provide when needed?
3 A. That's correct, yes.
4 Q. But when you returned to The Hague this time you didn't bring
5 these notebooks with you, did you?
6 A. That's what you said, Madam. I did bring them.
7 Q. Oh, okay. Because the Prosecution made me think that they had to
8 send for them. I hope you did bring them.
9 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, that's not true. First of all, the book
10 had been photocopied about a year ago and was disclosed to counsel. She
11 had the entire book. And pursuant to a particular question that
12 Ms. Sinatra asked us, and at the time I personally wasn't aware that the
13 book had been photocopied about a year ago and given to her, I made a
14 point of ensuring that these pages were photocopied so that we could
15 disclose them to counsel because the witness did happen to have his
16 personal diary with him at the time. So she has had these for quite some
17 time.
18 JUDGE LIU: Well, Ms. Sinatra, your comments are quite
19 unnecessary, taking into consideration the time limits.
20 MS. SINATRA: Thank you and I appreciate Ms. Issa using up five
21 minutes of my time -- just teasing.
22 Okay. I want to go now distribute what has been marked for
23 identification purposes as D33/3, if we could secure the assistance of
24 Madam Usher.
25 I feel like I'm in a football game and the time is running out to
Page 3911
1 make that touchdown.
2 Q. Now, I know that you are not -- you have maybe not been provided
3 this document by the Prosecutor, but these are supposedly -- these are
4 intercepted conversations and indexed to them and the intercepted
5 conversations provided by the Office of the Prosecutor that had been
6 seized from the BiH headquarters in Mostar. They were seized by SFOR.
7 All I want you to do is thumb through the ones in B/C/S and look at the
8 chronological order of the dates for July 1995. To assist, maybe if you
9 thumb through and open it up in the middle, you'll come to the 13th of
10 July, but take your time and thumb through them, please.
11 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Issa.
12 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I don't believe these have anything to do
13 with this witness. They are completely irrelevant and I don't see how the
14 witness could possibly answer any questions in relation to these.
15 JUDGE LIU: I didn't see any relevance either, Ms. Sinatra. Could
16 you shed some light on that.
17 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. I just want to note that these
18 were respected by the Prosecutor as intercepts that had to do with July
19 1995. Our witness is in charge of the anti-electronic warfare division of
20 an area of the BiH army. What is significant is that I would like for him
21 to look through here. There are intercepted conversations on every day
22 except for the 14th of July. If he can just tell us that he's looked
23 through these intercepts, he knows what they're about, and he recognises
24 that there are no intercepts on the 14th of July. It jumps from the 13th
25 to the 15th.
Page 3912
1 JUDGE LIU: Well, do we have the English translation for the 13th
2 of July?
3 MS. SINATRA: No, Your Honour I don't have an English translation.
4 I have an index in English provided by the Prosecution.
5 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, I'm objecting to any questions to be put
6 to this witness. There's no foundation that he knows anything about this.
7 Whatever inference that Ms. Sinatra is trying to draw from these documents
8 has absolutely no foundation. I mean, giving a bunch of documents to a
9 witness and saying do you see anything there that refers to the 14th of
10 July is just improper and it doesn't assist in any way.
11 JUDGE LIU: Well, we haven't heard the question put by the
12 Defence. Let's hear the questions first.
13 MS. SINATRA: Thank you.
14 Q. Sir, do these look like intercepts that were traditionally under
15 the procedure of the BiH army?
16 A. The way in which I was ordered to hand over documents, this
17 document does not seem to be to me done in that particular way.
18 Q. So you're saying you don't believe they area authentic intercepted
19 conversations for July 1995.
20 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
21 MS. ISSA: I'm sorry, Your Honour, to keep interjecting at this
22 point. But that's a clear misstatement of the evidence. That's not what
23 the witness says. He's clearly indicating he doesn't recognise them,
24 which is what I was trying to say before. They're not relevant to this
25 witness.
Page 3913
1 MS. SINATRA: I'll just ask him one more question and I'll move
2 on.
3 MR. KARNAVAS: Your Honour.
4 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
5 MR. KARNAVAS: Just a point of clarification. The witness never
6 said he doesn't recognise them. He doesn't recognise the form. I think
7 there needs to be maybe another question or to two. But I don't think the
8 witness has indicated that he doesn't recognise anything in there.
9 JUDGE LIU: You may ask some questions along this line.
10 MS. SINATRA:
11 Q. Sir, are you familiar with the communications centre that recorded
12 these intercepts?
13 A. No, Madam.
14 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I'll save it for another witness.
15 Thank you.
16 Q. Okay.
17 MS. ISSA: Just, Your Honour, for purposes of clarification, again
18 I apologise for having to jump up, but I'm actually informed that these
19 intercepts that Ms. Sinatra has referred to were actually taken by the
20 Croatian army. I just want Your Honour to be aware of that so there's no
21 confusion, perhaps. And that may just settle the matter.
22 JUDGE LIU: Well, thank you very much for that clarification. But
23 Ms. Sinatra has already told us that she will save that document for other
24 witnesses. So I believe that this document will not be the subject of the
25 matter of this case.
Page 3914
1 MS. SINATRA: You're right, Your Honour. Thank you.
2 Q. I just wanted to ask a follow-up question on your procedure. You
3 know, you said that you were undermanned and understaffed. Under -- you
4 weren't provided with enough tapes and you didn't have enough equipment
5 and you didn't have replacement parts for the equipment. Is that correct?
6 A. Madam, may I add to what you have just said. Also that everything
7 that we had at our disposal had to be utilised and I had to make sure that
8 the job was done as well as possible. That's the only thing that I can
9 say.
10 Q. Well, I certainly appreciate your position that you were in in
11 1995. But undermanned and understaffed, as we've talked about before, you
12 recorded these tapes and then you transcribed them in a notebook, when did
13 you have time to go back and listen to the tapes 11 to 15 times?
14 A. Madam, you are using the data 11 to 15 times very nicely. It was
15 just about one word or one sentence that this pertained to, so this had to
16 do with just one conversation that was critical, that was difficult to
17 transcribe. So please, do not use this piece of information as if it
18 applied to all the other intercepted conversations.
19 Q. Okay. Well, let's just take it in general. When did you have
20 time to re-listen to tapes over and over again? You didn't, did you?
21 A. No, I didn't.
22 Q. Thank you.
23 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, I would like to go into private session
24 for the last question.
25 JUDGE LIU: Yes, we'll go to private session, please.
Page 3915
1 [Private session]
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 (redacted)
8 (redacted)
9 (redacted)
10 (redacted)
11 (redacted)
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 (redacted)
17 (redacted)
18 (redacted)
19 (redacted)
20 (redacted)
21 (redacted)
22 (redacted)
23 (redacted)
24 (redacted)
25 (redacted)
Page 3916
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 (redacted)
8 (redacted)
9 (redacted)
10 (redacted)
11 (redacted)
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 (redacted)
17 (redacted)
18 [Open session]
19 MS. SINATRA: I mean, I have further questions, but I know my time
20 has run out.
21 JUDGE LIU: Thank you very much for your cooperation.
22 Any re-direct, Ms. Issa?
23 MS. ISSA: Just one question, Your Honour.
24 Re-examined by Ms. Issa:
25 Q. Sir, one of the last questions that you were asked in relation to
Page 3917
1 having the time to listen to the tapes over and over again, can you
2 clarify what you meant by that, given your previous evidence that you
3 listened to the tapes over and over again to make sure that you understood
4 a particular word or sentence?
5 A. Yes, that's correct. Your question is not in line with the
6 question Ms. Sinatra put as to whether we played a tape 11 or 10 or 15
7 times and how we could find the time to listen to all this. I was quite
8 specific in my response. So what I was talking about was listening to the
9 text and the procedure. Until the material is transcribed and entered
10 into the computer, it is listened to as many times as is necessary for it
11 to be clear and for it to be handed in. After that, there was no longer
12 any reason for us in the unit to listen to that material. That's what I
13 wanted to say.
14 Q. All right. Thank you.
15 MS. ISSA: I don't have anything further, Your Honour.
16 JUDGE LIU: Thank you.
17 Judge Vassylenko.
18 MS. SINATRA: Your Honour, if I might.
19 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
20 MS. SINATRA: If I might, I have one further follow-up question
21 based on Ms. Issa's question.
22 JUDGE LIU: Well, there's no kind of procedure on that.
23 Questioned by the Court:
24 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Sir, can you tell us, what was the most
25 important objective in your unit's work.
Page 3918
1 A. The objective in my unit's work was to gather as much information
2 as possible about the other side.
3 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Would you say that there were occasions that
4 the exactness had to give way for quickly passing on information to your
5 command and superiors?
6 A. I apologise, Your Honour, but that was not for me to judge. Only
7 circumstances could indicate something like that.
8 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: And my last question: During Ms. Sinatra's
9 cross-examination, you agreed that the JNA and the VRS shared information.
10 Could you please clarify what time period this refers to.
11 A. Yes, Your Honour. This is a very good question. This refers
12 primarily to the beginning of the war, perhaps the first year of the war,
13 1992, and possibly part of 1993 when I was in the 1st Brigade unit doing
14 the same work. There we had information as to how the colonel was
15 attending meetings and giving briefings and asking for the current
16 situation in connection with certain attacks. And in this way, we would
17 get very significant information, because as a colonel deployed in the VRS
18 in a narrow area in the town where I lived and carried out this work, at
19 the meeting of the Main Staff in Belgrade, he would attend. And you can
20 find information about this in the material. I think the material must
21 exist because I handed it into my command.
22 Another example was in large-scale operations and attacks on a
23 narrow part of our defences, the officers of the VRS would establish
24 telephone contacts with other higher-ranking officers, and they would
25 state the location of the columns where they were going, what they were
Page 3919
1 taking with them, and they would specify the material that was to be
2 delivered. I am speaking from memory, so you will excuse me if I get my
3 numbers a little wrong. But for example, they would be discussing several
4 trailer trucks of looted goods, also ammunition, heavy weapons, such as
5 howitzers, large calibre guns, multiple rocket launchers, and so on, as
6 well as ammunition for tanks and they would even have the numbers.
7 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: I have no further questions.
8 A. Thank you.
9 JUDGE LIU: Any questions out of Judge's questions? Ms. Issa?
10 MS. ISSA: No, thank you, Your Honour.
11 JUDGE LIU: Mr. Karnavas?
12 MR. KARNAVAS: No, Your Honour.
13 JUDGE LIU: Ms. Sinatra?
14 MS. SINATRA: No, Your Honour.
15 JUDGE LIU: At this stage, are there any documents to tender?
16 Ms. Issa?
17 MS. ISSA: Yes, Your Honour. I'd -- sorry, at this stage I'll be
18 tendering P318, 321, 346, which I would be seeking to tender under seal,
19 that's the list of members of the witness's unit; P349, which refers to
20 the witness's name, which I would also be seeking to tender that under
21 seal as well; and P312, which is the index to the code names. Now as for
22 the remaining exhibits, P231, 232, 322 and 323, I would be moving to
23 tender those documents. Those are the notebooks and the intercepts. At
24 the end of the calling of the intercept witnesses, I would be moving to
25 tender all of the intercepts at that point, Your Honours. Those are the
Page 3920
1 intercepts that are largely contained in the binders, as well as, I
2 believe, the additional pages that reflect 231/E and 232/E.
3 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Thank you very much for your cooperation
4 and I hope when you are tendering those documents of intercepts, please
5 provide us with a list listing all those intercepts that you are going to
6 tender. I mean at a later stage.
7 MS. ISSA: Yes, Your Honour. I might just want to clarify that
8 there is an index that we've provided at the beginning of the first binder
9 that contains the lists of all the intercepts that we intend to tender.
10 JUDGE LIU: Thank you very much.
11 Any objections to those documents tendered by the Prosecution?
12 Mr. Karnavas?
13 MR. KARNAVAS: No, Your Honour. Not to the ones that were
14 tendered. But one comment with respect to the intercepts. I would
15 suspect that only intercepts that are being discussed in this courtroom
16 through witnesses will be tendered. Any other intercepts we will be
17 objecting to, specifically given the Prosecution's objection to having
18 witnesses discuss intercepts other than the ones that the intercept
19 operators are commenting on in court. So that's why I believe that if
20 they do intend -- and I'm just doing this out of a courtesy so everyone
21 knows where I stand. If they do intend to introduce intercepts, we will
22 object to any intercepts being introduced that have not been brought into
23 court and questioned or foundation laid by the particular individual that
24 actually wrote the intercept at the time and listened to the
25 transcription. But as far as the material being proffered at this time or
Page 3921
1 tendered, we have no objections, Your Honour.
2 JUDGE LIU: Well, any comments, Ms. Issa.
3 MS. ISSA: Yes, Your Honour. It would be my submission at the end
4 of the day that we would have provided the foundation for the tendering of
5 all of the intercepts, given the evidence that Your Honour has heard today
6 and that Your Honours will be hearing for the remainder of this week. As
7 for Mr. Karnavas's comment regarding my objection to that particular
8 intercept, as I believe I indicated before, Mr. Karnavas was trying to put
9 a question to the witness that came from a different platoon. And that
10 was the reason I was objecting, not because -- I wasn't objecting to an
11 intercept that came from the platoon that the witness is part of. And
12 that's the distinction. And I think that's a viable one.
13 MR. KARNAVAS: Your Honour --
14 JUDGE LIU: Thank you.
15 MR. KARNAVAS: Just very briefly, Your Honour. The individual
16 that had just testified did lay what I would call a tentative or a partial
17 foundation. Clearly the witness is not qualified to go through every
18 single one of those handwritten intercepts that are in the notebooks.
19 He's only qualified to testify about the ones that he actually listened to
20 and wrote down. And the ones that he was shown here were indeed, as I
21 believe, his and that's why he was able to reflect and comment upon them.
22 So unless the -- this particular witness is willing to say that he can
23 comment on each and every one of them, and that hasn't been laid, that
24 foundation hasn't been laid, the questions haven't been posed, I don't
25 believe that the entire notebook comes in.
Page 3922
1 So if the Prosecutor wishes for the Court to review at the end of
2 the trial certain intercepts, they need to bring in the intercept
3 operators that will lay the proper foundation for every single intercept,
4 not merely as they're doing with this particular witness as if he's a
5 summary witness in saying that these are the notebooks, and I vouch for
6 everything that's in there. So I think that would be improper.
7 JUDGE LIU: Well, Ms. Sinatra, do you have any objections to those
8 documents tendered by the Prosecution?
9 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour, I do. Although I believe that
10 Mr. Karnavas is correct in the fact that this looks like instead of a
11 summary witness, it almost appears as -- I don't want to use this term,
12 but intercept dumping. Because they're throwing two notebooks of
13 intercepts with no foundation at us. But besides a improper foundation,
14 Your Honour, we object to the introduction of P -- I think it is. Are
15 these the right numbers, 322 and 323?
16 MS. ISSA: That refers to the two notebooks, Your Honour. I'm not
17 sure --
18 MS. SINATRA: Oh, okay.
19 JUDGE LIU: Well --
20 MS. SINATRA: Any intercepts -- until the proper reliability has
21 been established, until all the evidence has been gathered by this Trial
22 Chamber, which the admissibility is to be determined later, because we're
23 challenging. It's not our burden of proof. It's the proof on the
24 Prosecution to prove they are reliable, not our burden.
25 JUDGE LIU: Well, we are not talking about those intercepts that
Page 3923
1 are not tendered. We are going to talk about the documents tendered by
2 the Prosecution, which she kindly announced the number. Do you have any
3 objections to those documents?
4 MS. SINATRA: We approve and concur with the introduction of all
5 documents that are not intercept related or notebook related. And so I
6 believe we agree, if I'm -- I just want for clarification, we're talking
7 about P 318, P 321, and P 346?
8 JUDGE LIU: And two more.
9 MS. SINATRA: I'm sorry. I missed it.
10 JUDGE LIU: Yes --
11 JUDGE ARGIBAY: P 349 that is under seal because of the name of
12 the witness.
13 MS. SINATRA: Thank you.
14 JUDGE ARGIBAY: And P 312.
15 MS. SINATRA: And that was a map, Your Honour?
16 JUDGE ARGIBAY: I believe so.
17 MS. SINATRA: We have no objections. Thank you very much for
18 helping me.
19 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Those documents tendered by the
20 Prosecution are admitted into the evidence.
21 Are there any documents to tender on the Defence part?
22 Mr. Karnavas.
23 MR. KARNAVAS: Thank you, Your Honour. Yesterday there was a
24 request that we have the two documents transcribed -- translated; we've
25 done that. And so I've consulted with Mr. Registrar and the Prosecution.
Page 3924
1 And so what is -- the English version translation of P249/B should have a
2 number of D73/1. And the English translation of P249/D should have an
3 identify -- a Defence identification number of D74/1. And I made
4 references to these through this gentleman, Your Honour.
5 JUDGE LIU: Can you brief us what these documents are about.
6 MR. KARNAVAS: Certainly, Your Honour. Yesterday I cross-examined
7 the gentleman with respect to the Prosecution's evidence that was marked
8 for identification purposes as P249. As you will recall, there was a line
9 of questioning with respect to sharing of information between the army and
10 the state security services. Initially there was a denial. At some point
11 there was a partial admission. Later on there was a total admission. And
12 these two reports, these -- this particular exhibit, which is I believe
13 from A to E, demonstrated that. At one point in time, I tried to have the
14 gentleman read a portion of one of the documents, and I believe,
15 Mr. President, you requested that I get a translation. So in keeping with
16 the request and the procedure, I made that -- I had it done. And so as a
17 result, I'm requesting that P249/B, the translated version of it be
18 entered into -- be tendered as part of our evidence as D73/1 and P249/D be
19 entered -- be tendered as D74/1. And I do believe, Mr. President, that I
20 will be referring to these documents with the next witness. So I can
21 revisit that issue as well.
22 JUDGE LIU: Are those documents intercepts?
23 MR. KARNAVAS: They are -- one is an intercept, Your Honour. The
24 other one is the daily report, is the daily report. If I may -- and I
25 know it's late and we all want to go home, but if you will recall,
Page 3925
1 Mr. President, yesterday I brought to the attention a particular daily
2 report that was dated 16 July, 1995. And below it it demonstrated that
3 actually the daily report contained information which the gentleman's unit
4 had obtained from and was incorporating into the daily report from the
5 state security services. That would be, I believe, the document with the
6 Prosecution number of P249/D. And then I also showed the gentleman 249/B
7 which is actually the document generated by the state security services
8 themselves, demonstrating that they had in essence incorporated this
9 entire line of intercepts starting with number 652. And the one in
10 particular that I was most interested in was 655, which apparently --
11 which I understand the Prosecution had or will be making references to.
12 And I wanted to -- the date is of some critical importance. So I didn't
13 make references to them. These were intercepts that we received from the
14 Prosecution. Part of it was not translated by the Prosecution. In fact,
15 only the part dealing with intercept number 655 was. So I had the entire
16 document -- these entire two documents translated, lest there be any
17 confusion, misunderstanding, or allegations that somehow we're being less
18 than complete in your work product.
19 JUDGE LIU: Thank you.
20 Any objections, Ms. Issa?
21 MS. ISSA: Well, Your Honour, I actually haven't seen those
22 translations, frankly. Although I know that Ms. Stewart was informed that
23 they -- that Mr. Karnavas has actually went ahead and translated these
24 documents. I am wondering, however, and Mr. Karnavas has indicated that
25 he was in a position to tender them at a later point through the next
Page 3926
1 witness, I'm just wondering if perhaps it would be more appropriate to
2 wait at that point, given that we didn't have the translations during the
3 questioning of this witness. But I leave that to Your Honour.
4 JUDGE LIU: Mr. Karnavas.
5 MR. KARNAVAS: Yes, Your Honour.
6 JUDGE LIU: Is there any possibility to tender those documents
7 through the next witness?
8 MR. KARNAVAS: Well -- thank you, Your Honour. Yes, we can -- we
9 will be using them through the next witness because -- in fact, it might
10 save us a lot of confusion, because the next witness, they are actually
11 hand and glove. So this one and the other one will have total foundation.
12 Just for the record, the translation was done by the Registry. So it is
13 an official translation not our Karnavas translation.
14 JUDGE LIU: Thank you very much. Since the Prosecution -- yes.
15 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. I'm sorry to have to interject
16 right now. I'm not quite clear. Is Mr. Karnavas withdrawing his offer of
17 these documents into evidence? Because we have objections to them.
18 Should we just withhold our objections until the next witness?
19 JUDGE LIU: Yes, you may express your objections for the sake of
20 the record.
21 MS. SINATRA: Thank you very much. The objections, of course,
22 are - I hate to use this term - you're either pregnant or you're not. You
23 either accept the intercepts as admissible and reliable or you don't. I
24 don't believe we can pick or choose. Our position is that none of the
25 intercepts are admissible into evidence because they are not reliable. On
Page 3927
1 the other hand, Ms. Issa and the Prosecutor, their position is that
2 they're introducing these intercepts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
3 that Mr. Jokic had knowledge and was part of this joint criminal
4 enterprise. Mr. Karnavas is using them to impeach the witness. So they
5 have different purposes at this point and I wanted to differentiate that.
6 Any admission based on reliability, based on a proper foundation laid by
7 the Prosecution is objected to by the Jokic Defence team. There is
8 another purpose for impeachment purposes. Like I said, we can't condone
9 it. But I do understand that there are two different purposes we are
10 dealing with.
11 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Thank you very much for drawing our
12 attention to that important point.
13 Well, Mr. Karnavas, since there is objections from the Defence
14 team and the since those are all the intercepts, I believe that we should
15 hold the consideration of whether to admit them into the evidence or not
16 until a later stage. And maybe together with the Prosecution's
17 intercepts, documents at a later stage.
18 MR. KARNAVAS: If I understand you correct, Mr. President -- well,
19 with the -- after the next witness I would be tendering it, but as I
20 understand the rules of evidence as they apply to this Tribunal which are
21 quite distinct from what exists in the Anglo-Saxon world. Tendering is a
22 lot different than actually admitting them into evidence and then we go
23 through the process of how much weight, if any, to give to it. So I will
24 be asking the -- I will be tendering the documents after the next witness,
25 and I understand Ms. Sinatra's position, the Jokic's team position. I
Page 3928
1 fully support their position. However, as was aptly pointed out, we have
2 a different case and that is a decision that the Court will have to make
3 at some point whether there is reliability. As far as tendering, as I
4 understand the rules, you can tender anything and then it is a matter for
5 the trial Bench to decide the next series of questions.
6 JUDGE LIU: Well, in our mind I think concerning of those
7 intercept documents and after we hear all those witnesses, we'll give each
8 party seven days to file their written objections on those intercepts.
9 And then we'll consider whether we will admit them into the evidence or
10 not. This rule applies equally to the Prosecution as well as to the
11 Defence team concerning the intercepts. So at this stage we are not going
12 to admit these two documents into the evidence. We will leave it until a
13 later stage.
14 MR. KARNAVAS: Very well, Your Honour, thank you.
15 JUDGE LIU: Maybe in two weeks.
16 Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
17 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour, I just wanted clarification. You
18 said seven days after all of the intercept witnesses. Are you talking
19 about just the Prosecution's intercept witnesses and not after the Defence
20 has put on their intercept witnesses, seven days after that point?
21 JUDGE LIU: Well, it depends whether there's any objections from
22 the Prosecution concerning your intercept witnesses in the future. If in
23 the future there is an objection from the Prosecution, I think this rule
24 is also applied to your witnesses in your case.
25 MS. SINATRA: I'm just trying to clarify, after the last witness
Page 3929
1 that is scheduled for this week, then we have seven days to respond and
2 write our written objections?
3 JUDGE LIU: Yes.
4 MS. SINATRA: Okay. Thank you.
5 JUDGE LIU: We have to be very cautious on those evidence and we
6 want to give the parties a full opportunity to express their views
7 concerning these documents. Since those documents were regarded as very
8 important in this case. Thank you.
9 Ms. Sinatra, do you have any documents to tender into the
10 evidence?
11 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. We have several documents to
12 tender. I believe there's D32/3 which is the pictures of the equipment
13 used by this witness, if he identified it. There's D34/3, which are the
14 witness's personal notes from his notebooks that he took regarding -- I
15 think it's regarding the maintenance of the equipment. And D36.1/3 which
16 is an excerpt from the book "Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992
17 through 1995," Cees Wiebes. And D36.2/3 is a same excerpt from the
18 same -- I mean, not the same excerpt but a different excerpt from the same
19 book. Then there is D37/3 which for purposes of this court I believe
20 needs to be filed under seal. And that's it, Your Honour.
21 JUDGE LIU: How about D38/3? That is the map drawn by this
22 witness.
23 MS. SINATRA: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, Your Honour. I'm sorry. It was
24 the diagram. Yes, we do offer the diagram of the information centre,
25 D38/3, personally diagramed by the witness.
Page 3930
1 JUDGE LIU: Thank you.
2 Any objections? Ms. Issa.
3 MS. ISSA: Yes, Your Honour. I am objecting to the following:
4 I'm actually objecting to 32/3, because as I understand it the witness has
5 indicated that the photographs didn't quite match what he was using at the
6 time. 34/3, the witness's personal notes, I believe the witness was asked
7 specific questions in relation to those notes. He already testified from
8 those notes. To now submit the notes would be taken potentially out of
9 context. And given that he's already given testimony on it, it's not
10 necessary at this point to submit the notes.
11 D36.1/3 and D36.2/3, those are the excerpts from the book that
12 Ms. Sinatra referred to. Again, she only pointed out particular portions
13 of that book. The witness disagreed with much of those portions. Again,
14 in my submission it's not appropriate to simply take out excerpts of a
15 book and submit them into evidence. They're completely out of context.
16 We already have live testimony with respect to the portions that she
17 quoted, statements that she quoted in any event. I'm also objecting to
18 the information report going in for the same reason, 37/3, given that the
19 witness has explained his -- in his testimony in relation to that
20 particular sentence, the "I will, I will. Hello. Hello," from the
21 intercept. And for all those reasons, those are the documents I'd be
22 objecting to. I'm not objecting to the remainder which I believe is the
23 sketch.
24 JUDGE LIU: Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
25 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. As far as D32/3, I believe that
Page 3931
1 the witness did identify this RUP-12 as the equipment that he was familiar
2 with and he had used before. And he did say that he used the -- he owned
3 one of these walkie-talkies -- it's not a walkie-talkie, but the second
4 picture, the FT23R, he said he personally owned one of those. And I
5 believe, he testified today about the antenna. He referred to it himself
6 during his testimony, so I believe that that's totally admissible. The
7 witness did testify about it. His personal notes in his diary on the
8 maintenance of the equipment is seminal in this case. It's most
9 important. Although he testified to it, the document itself impeaches the
10 reliability of the equipment we're that talking about and which is the
11 centre of the objections in our case -- not the centre, but one of the
12 many centres. And I believe his notes, which he identified as his own
13 handwriting, he discussed, they are appropriate to be filed as a record in
14 this case. And I think it totally admissible. As far as the excerpts
15 from the book go, we'll withdraw those introductions of those excerpts.
16 He did testify to it. Although he did agree on many times, especially the
17 12 disadvantages of the intelligence information. He agreed, I would say,
18 90 per cent of the time.
19 The D37/3 which is filed under seal, the document itself impeaches
20 what the witness said, not what he comments on the document. So the
21 document is used to impeach the credibility of this witness. It's
22 admissible. I provided it to the Trial Chamber under seal because it was
23 a work product of the Prosecution and it's most important that it remain
24 part of the record as -- because he didn't comment on it. I introduced
25 it. He recognised it. And then I moved forward, because I didn't think
Page 3932
1 it was appropriate for him to comment on -- he recognised the people in
2 it, he understood what it said. I think it's totally admissible. And I
3 don't think she's objected to the drawing by this witness, Your Honour.
4 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. Well, I think the document D38/8 there's
5 no objections from the Prosecution. It is admitted into the evidence. As
6 for the document D32/3, as Ms. Sinatra said, the witness gave the
7 testimony about those equipment, so we believe they should be admitted
8 into the evidence.
9 As for D34/3, these are the witness's personal notes dated July
10 1995. As the Defence said that some of the documents will be used to
11 impeach the credibility of the witnesses, we believe this document is this
12 kind of evidence, so it's admitted. As for D36.1 and .2, I understand
13 that the Defence team has already withdrawn, generally speaking, those
14 books which are publicly available are not admitted into the evidence
15 unless they are closely related to the subject matter of this case.
16 As for D37/3, this is an information report. According to our
17 Euro practice, these kind of documents are not admitted into the evidence.
18 Yes.
19 MS. ISSA: Your Honour, in relation to D34/3, given that you've
20 admitted it, I would ask that it be admitted under seal to protect the
21 witness.
22 JUDGE LIU: Thank you very much. This is admitted under seal.
23 Well, Witness, thank you very much for coming to The Hague to give
24 your evidence. I'm sorry to have kept you so long in The Hague. And we
25 all wish you a pleasant journey back home.
Page 3933
1 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour. I would
2 only like to make a comment about the procedure of Mr. Karnavas's
3 cross-examination. A document was offered to me for recognition, which
4 was a copy of a document, and that's not how I originally recognised any
5 of the documents. All the documents I recognised were originals. And to
6 help Mr. Karnavas, this may not be so important anymore, but for the
7 gentleman to know, I want to say that I know it's not my document 100 per
8 cent, but I was afraid that copies of documents might contain pages from
9 my unit. Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, and I wish you good luck in
10 your future work.
11 JUDGE LIU: Thank you. You may leave now.
12 [The witness withdrew]
13 JUDGE LIU: As for the map drawn by the witness, I hope that the
14 Defence team or the registrar could have it translated into English, to
15 have the English subtitles. Yes, Ms. Sinatra.
16 MS. SINATRA: Yes, Your Honour. We can have it translated by
17 tomorrow. No problem.
18 JUDGE LIU: Thank you very much.
19 Yes, Mr. Karnavas.
20 MR. KARNAVAS: Just two minor housekeeping matters since we have a
21 few moments left.
22 JUDGE LIU: I can hear you.
23 MR. KARNAVAS: Oh, good. If we could go into private session just
24 for one of the matters.
25 JUDGE LIU: Yes, we'll go to private session, please.
Page 3934
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22 [Open session]
23 JUDGE LIU: Well, I have to remind the parties that the time at
24 our disposal is limited, so we have to make the best time available in
25 direct or in cross-examining the witness. We have been warned by the
Page 3937
1 Victim and Witnesses section that those witnesses that have been in The
2 Hague for quite a long time and there is unnecessary duration for them,
3 especially for the next witness, he has been here waiting to testify the
4 whole afternoon. But we have to send him back and call him back tomorrow.
5 So I hope that both parties should make the best use of their time. And I
6 also remind the parties the Trial Chamber has the right to cut short the
7 direct examination as well as the cross-examination.
8 Well, it's 7.00, so the hearing is adjourned until tomorrow
9 afternoon.
10 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned
11 at 6.59 p.m., to be reconvened on Wednesday,
12 the 5th day of November, 2003, at 2.15 p.m.
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