1 Day 67 Thursday, 19th March 1998

2 (11.15 am)

4 JUDGE JORDA: Let us have General Blaskic

5 brought in, please. May I have Mr. Mesic brought in,

6 please. We have a very busy day to day. We will try

7 to complete Mr. Mesic's testimony. Then we have another

8 witness. Please be seated. As I said, we will try to

9 finish with Mr. Mesic's testimony. Perhaps even two,

10 Mr. Harmon, but certainly one. That may take quite a

11 while. Then we have an ex parte hearing. We will try

12 to do all of this because Mr. Mesic has to testify in

13 another trial and the Presiding Judge of the other

14 Trial Chamber told me that it would take up some of the

15 afternoon, but experience has shown us that it is not

16 always possible to do what we planned to do. So if

17 necessary, we will sit for part of tomorrow afternoon.

18 Mr. Nobilo, continue with your

19 cross-examination, please.

20 I had forgotten to say good morning to the

21 interpreters, but I think that everybody knows that I

22 would like to say good morning to them.

23 Cross-examined by MR. NOBILO (continued).

24 Q. Thank you Mr. President and good morning

25 Mr. Mesic. Here we are to continue and I hope that I

1 will not be very long. Yesterday we looked at a

2 portion of the article, the interview that you gave to

3 the Hercegovacki Tjednik, the Herzegovinan weekly.

4 For the interpreter, it is no. 10.

5 You said that you did not recall this

6 interview. What we will try to do is try to read you a

7 portion of it and see whether this is your opinion at

8 the time and whether this was what you were talking

9 about.

10 For the interpreters, it is C. (Handed).

11 This is on Nikola Koljevic. He was in Zagreb

12 and I hope that you recall this. Here it goes.

13 Recently Mr. Koljevic came to Sarajevo. As an

14 explanation, he was one of the leaders of the Bosnian

15 Serbs. In the Bosnian press, this was interpreted as

16 an agreement with Franjo Tudjman regarding the dividing

17 of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Is this the truth?

18 This is your answer: this is what the little

19 Milosevic propaganda would like to use, that is Croatia

20 always was in a position that we should negotiate

21 rather than wage war. We were often criticised for it

22 because we wanted to negotiate even with Milosevic. If

23 Mr. Milosevic comes to Zagreb and asks to talk,

24 obviously we will talk to him. That does not mean that

25 we divide Bosnia with him.

1 Croatia abides by the principle that the

2 borders are respected and that there is no division of

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina. The citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina

4 are going to decide their fate on their own.

5 We are moving on to the next question: every

6 once in a while, Bosnian intellectuals who had recently

7 also been called Croat intellectuals, are

8 criticising Franjo Tudjman on his division of

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina. How do you comment on this?

10 Now your answer: it is the ignorance about

11 what Franjo Tudjman really said. He said that in

12 principle, he supported the sovereignty of

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina and this is why he had big

14 discussions with Mr. Alija Izetbegovic and attempt to

15 give him arguments to win over Mr. Izetbegovic to accept

16 at first federal concept and later, the sovereignty of

17 Bosnia-Herzegovina because this is the only way to get

18 rid of Yugoslavia which is no more and which Serbia is

19 using for the realisation of its imperial interests.

20 I believe that Bosnia waited too long, but we

21 cannot change this now. We must solve the problem that

22 we are facing now. That means that Franjo Tudjman

23 never said that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be divided.

24 But he said that he cannot leave the Croat

25 population at anyone's mercy in Bosnia and

1 Herzegovina. The Croat population in

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina does not want to join any kind of

3 Serboslavia or any small Yugoslavia. They want to have

4 an opportunity to cooperate with Croatia in one way or

5 another."

6 Mr. Mesic, is this what you were saying at

7 that time at the time when Nicola Koljevic was visiting

8 Zagreb? Do you still say this?

9 A. I believe that this is at variance with what

10 I was saying at that time. As I said, I do not recall

11 the Herzegovinan weekly and I never authorised this. I

12 believe that this was somehow compiled. There are some

13 things that are acceptable here, but there are some

14 that are misconstrued, even the use of certain words

15 which I never use.

16 Q. What would you accept today that you believe

17 is truth in this? Is it true, for instance, that the

18 misunderstanding or ignorance about the views of Franjo

19 Tudjman, that he was in support of the sovereignty of

20 Bosnia-Herzegovina but wanted to protect the Croat

21 population there?

22 A. I would not like to comment on this because I

23 really do not think that it is an authentic document.

24 Q. You mentioned Fikret Abdic. Is he Muslim?

25 A. I believe that that is how he identified

1 himself.

2 Q. You mentioned the positive role of Croatia

3 with regard to Bihac. Can you explain this, clarify

4 this. In what way was this positive role?

5 A. Croatia helped with the liberation, that is

6 with the breaking of the blockade of Bihac. When the

7 Fifth Corps was threatened.

8 Q. The Fifth Corps is the Fifth Corps of the

9 Bosnian Army, for the Tribunal's information, and they

10 helped to resist the Serb forces.

11 MR. HARMON: Excuse me. The question and

12 answer is going a little bit fast. I notice that

13 Mr. Nobilo asked a question that was being translated;

14 Mr. Mesic answered before the translation was

15 completed. Mr. Nobilo asked another question. I think

16 for the benefit of everybody in the courtroom, if we

17 could just wait until the interpretation is completed

18 before the questions are asked and answered it would be

19 very helpful. Thank you.

20 JUDGE JORDA: I am sure that Mr. Nobilo

21 agrees with this remark.

22 MR. NOBILO: We will try to take breaks

23 between questions and answers.

24 Regarding the incident when you were

25 misunderstood to have ordered the killing of Kordic,

1 how did you understand that Boban said he could not

2 kill Kordic? Was he autonomous?

3 A. I believe that is very clear, that this is --

4 was taking certain liberties. I could not order the

5 killing of Kordic, nor did I ever order this to

6 anyone. This is a very lax interpretation. What I

7 asked of Mate Boban was to let it pass, but he -- I

8 believe that he was just pretending that he could

9 not -- he could order him anything, so I guess he could

10 have ordered him this as well.

11 Q. Very well, so we are to conclude that this

12 was not real, that he was somehow lying to you?

13 A. It was realistic that he could order Kordic

14 anything.

15 Q. You also mentioned a humane resettlement.

16 When you mentioned it, you said that people started

17 talking about it. I would like to ask you where did

18 you hear this expression? Who mentioned it, in what

19 context? Was this an official meeting? Was this sort

20 of something that was talked about over lunch or

21 dinner?

22 A. I first heard of the humane resettlement

23 during the conversations with the Bosnian leadership.

24 Tudjman used it several times saying that this would

25 lower the casualties and this would limit the

1 destruction and he mentioned this several times in his

2 public statements. Whoever gave you all these media

3 excerpts, he can certainly find excerpts where the

4 humane resettlement is being mentioned.

5 Q. But can you explain us, what does it mean,

6 humane resettlement? Is this something that -- when

7 the state is giving an opportunity to move to another

8 place?

9 A. Sorry, it is going too fast.

10 MR. HARMON: It is a little bit too fast.

11 THE INTERPRETER: Could you slow down,

12 please? Could the witness be asked to repeat his

13 answer, please?

14 MR. NOBILO: My colleague is telling me that

15 we were going too fast, so I am going to repeat it. I

16 said, did Tudjman say -- imply to burn down five

17 villages and people flee the sixth on their own?

18 A. I think you understood me well. I think that

19 the reasons given was to assist people. However, I

20 have common sense. I understand very well what this

21 is, what kind of humane resettlement it is if one has

22 to leave one's own hometown, family, friends, property

23 and say that he is leaving in a humane way? He is

24 leaving because his life is threatened, because certain

25 actions had been taken beforehand so that he had to

1 leave. To me, humane resettlement is a euphemism for

2 ethnic -- for genocide.

3 Q. You said as an example for Croat

4 aspirations that Croat currency was introduced in

5 Bosnia-Herzegovina in the territories controlled by

6 Croats. I would like to ask you what currency was

7 in force in Bosnia at that time? Was it not the

8 Yugoslav dinar through which the financial attack was

9 made on Bosnian Herzegovina and Croatia?

10 A. Yes, that is correct. I did not express an

11 opinion that I criticise this. I just am stating the

12 facts, that the Croat currency was in force there as

13 well as the German Marks. I am not objecting to it. I

14 am just stating the facts about it.

15 Q. Have you ever heard President Tudjman say, or

16 anyone in the Croat leadership, that in the meetings

17 where you were present, with Bosnian representatives,

18 that he was advocating ethnic purity, that members of

19 other nations had to leave the areas controlled by the

20 Croats?

21 A. The only thing I can remember is that Tudjman

22 claimed that after this war, that about 5 per cent of

23 Serbs will remain in Croatia. Whether he meant -- and

24 this is a matter of speculation -- that it is because

25 some -- a part of Serbs would voluntarily leave and go

1 to Serbia or whether the policy would be such -- this

2 was not stated by him, but his view was that some 5 per

3 cent would remain, from 10 to 12 per cent before, that

4 later 5 per cent would remain.

5 However, this could be interpreted in another

6 way. In order to glean what his real view was, I spoke

7 to Bela Tonkovic who came as -- from Serbia from

8 Vojvadina as leader of Croats there. Tudjman proposed

9 that the Croats there swap houses and come to Croatia,

10 that they leave Vojvadina. Tonkovic disagreed with that

11 because he said that for centuries their homes were

12 there, their ancestors were there, they lived in

13 Vojvadina and they wanted to stay there.

14 This conversation was fairly tough and I

15 think for a while Bela Tonkovic stopped coming to

16 Croatia.

17 Q. But my question was directed to Bosnian

18 Herzegovina. In these meetings or any other official

19 meetings or private, did Tudjman tell you that where

20 Croats controlled territories in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

21 the non-Croat population need to be driven out?

22 A. No. He never openly stated that the

23 non-Croat population needed to be expelled.

24 Q. You mentioned dual citizenship during

25 examination-in-chief, so my question to you is: was

1 this meant only for Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina or for

2 ethnic Croats from anywhere in the world, whether they

3 lived in the US or Australia -- could they also get

4 dual citizenship?

5 A. Yes, that is correct, according to our law,

6 all ethnic Croats can receive Croat citizenship.

7 Q. Next question: with respect to the dual

8 citizenship and the electoral law, the right to vote

9 and be elected to the Parliament, is this a right of

10 only ethnic Croats or all citizens of Croatia so that

11 the ethnic Croats, let us say in Australia and the US,

12 can vote for the Croat Parliament?

13 A. Yes. That is cheating, because the HDZ was

14 this way to get 10 per cent of Members of Parliament,

15 so this would be just like in a game of chess, if you

16 have a rook, and to give you an example, as to how far

17 this control is going, I think that one piece of

18 information suffices. Out of all Croats who live in

19 Australia and who have acquired Croat citizenship,

20 so that means Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide --

21 all Croats will live there and there is quite a few of

22 them. All of them, to the last one, voted. Nobody was

23 on any business trip. Nobody was sick. Nobody did not

24 show up.

25 So that means that 100 per cent of them

1 voted, so how serious this turns out, you conclude. As

2 far as Bosnia and Herzegovina is concerned, the moment,

3 this regulation was passed I called the ambassador

4 Trnka and I said: this not only destabilises

5 Bosnia-Herzegovina, but it does huge damage to Croatia,

6 this system of voting, so I told him to convey to the

7 Bosnian leadership to not agree to this, to simply be

8 against the possibility of Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina

9 being able to vote for the Croat Parliament, because

10 other serious countries, and I do not consider our own

11 one such country, enable their own citizens who happen

12 to find themselves abroad during election to vote for

13 the Parliament, because they pay taxes.

14 We got citizens who are not in diaspora.

15 They are really authentic Bosnians. Their ancestors

16 are from there. They do not pay any taxes from Croatia

17 and they participate in taking decisions. They affect

18 all of us and we are the taxpayers in our country.

19 This is why I was against it and this is why I believe

20 that this law will be put out of force because I think

21 this is cheating.

22 For instance, today, in the Federation of

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, you have

24 high officials who are members of the Croat

25 Parliament and I can find no parallel example anywhere

1 in the world.

2 Q. I would just like to sum up. Do you agree

3 with my contention that all Croat diaspora can vote

4 for the Croat Parliament and not only Croats from

5 Bosnia-Herzegovina?

6 A. Yes, because the entire diaspora is

7 controlled by the HDZ and this is what suits Tudjman

8 and his party.

9 Q. You held really significant positions --

10 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Nobilo, what I would like

11 to ask you and I think that the judges have not

12 interrupted you often, but when you put a question, you

13 get an answer. If you need to say: I think that this

14 means that or this or that, this prolongs things. You

15 have put a question; you have an answer. If, after

16 four, five, six questions, you say, "if I understood

17 you well", I am being a little cruel, but that is your

18 problem, whether you understood it well or not, I am

19 afraid. All the judges were able to understand, so it

20 is a bit complicated. You have put three, four, five

21 questions regarding the status of members of the ethnic

22 group. If every time you have to say, "if I understood

23 well", then I am afraid it is your problem if you have

24 not understood well. That is what I wanted to say.

25 MR. NOBILO: I understand, Mr. President, but

1 what I am I trying to do, I am posing a direct

2 question: could the Croats outside Bosnia-Herzegovina

3 vote for the Croat Parliament? The answer could

4 have been yes, but Mr. Mesic finds it necessary to

5 elaborate, and I am trying to summarise.

6 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Nobilo, I must say it is

7 perhaps no more objective than any other summary. It

8 is your own summary. You have questions and you can

9 make your own conclusions. We are slowing down

10 things. When you say, "If I understood well", I must

11 say once again, it is up to you whether you understood

12 or did not understand. Even the judge, if they do not

13 understand, it is their problem. You are putting very

14 precise questions. They are within the framework of

15 the examination-in-chief. The witness answers them.

16 You may then pose more precise questions, more detailed

17 ones, but if at the end of this whole discussion we

18 have to see whether Mr. Nobilo has understood well or

19 not, then, I do apologise, but I am not in agreement

20 with that at all.

21 MR. NOBILO: Of course I will stand corrected

22 by you, your Honour.

23 JUDGE JORDA: After all, yesterday you were

24 very well-versed in questions of propaganda and I think

25 we understand one another well.

1 MR. NOBILO: I understand everything that you

2 have said, but I am trying to separate from political

3 propaganda what is essential for this trial. But I

4 will certainly follow your instructions. So let us go

5 on, but please, Mr. Mesic, I would like to ask you, be

6 kind enough in the interest of expediency to answer

7 direct questions very briefly so as to save time.

8 I started by saying that you indeed held very

9 high positions and you are probably familiar with

10 certain details far better than many of us who live

11 there, not to mention those who did not. Could you

12 tell us whether there is any difference within the

13 Croat people in Bosnia-Herzegovina, something that

14 could be called the Herzegovina wing and the Bosnian

15 wing, and do their interests coincide and was their

16 fate the same in the war?

17 A. No, they did not have the same fate, because

18 the majority of Croats in Croatia stayed on and a large

19 proportion of Croats outside of Herzegovina have had,

20 for this or that reason, to abandon their homes.

21 Q. Would you agree -- the translation is wrong.

22 The majority of Croats in Herzegovina stayed behind and

23 the majority of Croats outside Herzegovina abandoned

24 their homes, but there was an error in the translation

25 and I added, "for this or that reason, for whatever

1 reasons". For the benefit of the transcript, do you

2 agree that this was a misinterpretation?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. In the examination-in-chief, you said that,

5 due to the disastrous policies of Franjo Tudjman, and

6 this is a free interpretation, 500,000 Croats have fled

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina; is that correct?

8 A. Not only because of that. Certainly the most

9 important reason was the Serb aggression and the other

10 reason is the policy of Franjo Tudjman.

11 Q. Out of those 500,000, was the largest number

12 from Central Bosnia?

13 A. I do not know all the figures, but if you are

14 asking me about that erroneous policy, I think it is

15 sufficient to say that the Croats inside were finding

16 themselves under siege, and were given the task -- and

17 Miljenko Brkic can testify to this -- that they were

18 given this task by Mate Boban, that all Croats had to

19 resign all their positions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even

20 professors, who, considering the population mix, the

21 Croats were few in number, but they had a strong

22 intellectual grouping. There were more than 200

23 university professors, assistant professors and

24 lecturers, so Miljenko Brkic asked Mate Boban, "Well,

25 then, where shall we go from Sarajevo", because,

1 according to him, whoever stayed in Sarajevo was a

2 traitor.

3 Before all the approaches were taken around

4 Sarajevo by the Serbs and Mate said to him, "Come and

5 stay with us at Grude. You will live like we are

6 living." So, you see, this was a policy to withdraw

7 the Croats from a certain area and this was confirmed

8 to me by people from Vares. A member of the Croat

9 People's Council, Josip Jozelic from Vares, he told me

10 that the HVO had evacuated Croat villages due to

11 certain arrangements that he could not go into because

12 he did not know what was happening.

13 So that policy contributed to the exodus and

14 not only the Serb aggression.

15 Q. Would you agree, then, that one could make

16 the conclusion from what you said that the Herzegovina

17 wing wanted to join Croatia at all cost, but as the

18 Croat enclaves were an obstacle to them, they sought

19 to evacuate those enclaves so that they could attach

20 themselves to Croatia more easily; would you agree with

21 such a conclusion?

22 A. There must have been views along those lines,

23 but I cannot enter into the details. Who gave the

24 orders to whom, how a certain policy was implemented.

25 These things are often more subtle than may appear at

1 first glance. Certainly no one will issue orders which

2 may subsequently be exposed to criticism. This is,

3 after all, done in a different way.

4 Q. Well, could you use the example of Vares and

5 the crimes in Stupni Do?

6 A. The people who committed the crimes in Stupni

7 Do obviously wanted to develop fear among the Croats

8 because of the revenge that the Bosnia acts may take,

9 and obviously this was in someone's interest, otherwise

10 I see no reason for a crime of such proportions.

11 Q. And in your view, the enclaves are surrounded

12 by Muslim territories and have no physical links with

13 Herzegovina and Croatia. What did the Herzegovina wing

14 want to do with those enclaves?

15 A. I would not enter into those details. It is

16 our blame, the blame of Croatia, that we entered into a

17 conflict with the greatest victim of the Serb

18 aggression. I am not interested whether a Croat will

19 stay here or move there. The whole concept was wrong

20 and, after all, Mate Boban told me, and only a couple

21 of months before his death, he claimed that Herzegovina

22 would join Croatia whether people liked that or not.

23 We could tell you an anecdote. Two or three

24 months before his death, we met at the Intercontinental

25 in Zagreb. He invited me to have a cup of coffee with

1 him and of course I said certainly we could have a cup

2 of coffee together, because, after all, the two of us

3 are former heads of state. I was the head of State of

4 Yugoslavia and he of Herzegovina and both have

5 disappeared. He said, "Yes, yours has disappeared, but

6 mine is stronger by the day." I said, "Where do you

7 intend to go?" He said, "Where do you think, except

8 with Croatia?" Whether that was policy or whether he

9 was just daydreaming, it is rather difficult to say

10 today.

11 Q. You mentioned an interesting example. The

12 Croats committed a crime in Stupni Do for the Muslim

13 Army to start taking revenge?

14 A. I did not say that. I said that the crime

15 was committed in order to be able to frighten the

16 Croats with the possible revenge of the Bosniaks. You

17 heard very well what I said.

18 Q. Of course I agree with what you said, but I

19 want to make a comparison. You mentioned the crime in

20 Ahmici. The Lasva Valley was surrounded by the BiH

21 army. The Croats of Lasva Valley had no contact with

22 Herzegovina. The Croats of Lasva Valley were an

23 obstacle to the secession of Herzegovina from Bosnia

24 and a crime was committed there. Is not that the same

25 model which was intended to be used to intimidate the

1 Croats and to have them leave the Lasva Valley?

2 A. I claim that everyone is capable of

3 committing crimes. No nation, or rather no members of

4 a nation are exempt from that possibility. It is only

5 Milan Vukovic, the judge of the Supreme Court of

6 Croatia, who claims that a Croat cannot commit a

7 crime. I think this statement is indicative of the

8 Supreme Court, of its leader, and the psychosis in

9 Croatia. I am in favour of guilt being individualised

10 on the Serb, on the Muslim and the Croat side

11 without any exception. Therefore, I do not exclude

12 from this anybody, anybody's tactics, anybody's

13 actions, but guilt has to be individualised.

14 Q. But would you allow that this model of Stupni

15 Do and Vares may have been applied in the Lasva Valley

16 and in Ahmici? Would you allow for that possibility?

17 A. I do not exclude any assumption, but this is

18 something that needs to be established. The truth has

19 to be established. I would rather you did not ask me

20 about my assumptions.

21 Q. Do you know at all how the war in the Lasva

22 Valley started? What was the balance of forces between

23 the Croats and the Muslims? Who had the upper hand?

24 Do you have any information about that?

25 A. I do not have the real information but, in

1 fragments, I would receive reports from that area. I

2 have my own opinion about that, but that is not

3 important for the Trial Chamber.

4 Q. You mentioned several senior officers who

5 were in the Croat Army and later in the HVO. Let me

6 mention those names: Petkovic, Roso, Praljak and

7 Tolj. Were they born in Bosnia-Herzegovina?

8 A. I only know that Praljak was. I do not know

9 where Petkovic comes from, but they would appear for a

10 while in one army and for a while in the other. How

11 their status was regulated, I do not know.

12 Q. You told us that you heard rumours to the

13 effect that Croat soldiers had waged war in

14 Bosnia-Herzegovina. Did you speak to any single

15 Croat soldier who told you that he was forced to go

16 to Bosnia-Herzegovina? That he was not a volunteer?

17 A. You see, many soldiers came to see me who had

18 fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who were Croat

19 soldiers. Some volunteers from Bosnia-Herzegovina also

20 came to visit me and before that they were Croat

21 soldiers. The mothers and fathers would come to see

22 me, claiming that their children were not volunteers,

23 but that they were in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

24 So I must admit that I requested an official

25 explanation from the Defence Minister and he claimed

1 that there were no Croat units in

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina. Whether there were any, I cannot

3 tell. I was not an inspector. Nor was it up to me to

4 establish it. But my nephew, Vladko Mesic, who was a

5 Croat soldier, he was in Bosnia. He came back from

6 there and he was not a volunteer in Bosnia. He was

7 born in Slavonia. He has nothing in common with

8 Bosnia, but he was there. You asked me for a name. I

9 gave you one.

10 Q. As the President of Parliament, the

11 Speaker --

12 JUDGE JORDA: The last sentence was not

13 translated. The witness took the floor again and I did

14 not get the translation. "I gave you a name", said the

15 witness.

16 A. I said, "You asked for a name and I gave you

17 one."

18 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you, thank you. I

19 apologise.

20 MR. NOBILO: So you had certain information

21 or certain doubts, certain suspicions. Did you, as the

22 speaker, take any steps for this matter to be

23 investigated, because of course it is the Assembly's

24 responsibility regarding the use of the army outside

25 its borders. Did you form a commission? Did you put

1 this issue on the agenda of any single meeting and all

2 these are your responsibilities according to the rules

3 of procedure of the Assembly?

4 A. I have no possibility to form any such

5 commissions. This is only the possibility of the

6 Assembly. I was the primus inter pares. What I could

7 do I tried. I asked the Gojko Susak whether there were

8 any of our units in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He said no. I

9 asked Franjo Tudjman because, after all, people were

10 contacting me, not only in my office, but also when I

11 had talk shows on the radio and a woman would call me

12 by phone; she would introduce herself and say that her

13 son was in the Croat Army and that he was in

14 Bosnia. I could not establish whether this was true or

15 not. I wanted to check on it and both these people

16 claimed that the Croat Army was not present in

17 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

18 Then it was up to me to accept that or not,

19 but I had no other powers because nobody had asked

20 Croatia for the Croat Army to go anywhere outside

21 the Croat territory.

22 Q. But, as the Speaker of Parliament, did you

23 propose an investigating commission? Did you propose

24 that this should be put on the Assembly agenda? Did

25 you make any such proposals?

1 A. If the head of state tells me that there are

2 no Croat soldiers there, what possibility do I have

3 to propose any kind of a commission which would be

4 accepted in the Assembly in which the HDZ has a

5 majority? Please, let us be realistic after all.

6 Q. But the proposal itself would mean a great

7 deal.

8 May I ask for the usher's assistance now? I

9 have another document to show. It is the Official

10 Gazette of the Republic of Croatia where all the laws,

11 conclusions and bylaws are published. A copy for the

12 Registry, the Prosecution and Mr. Mesic. (Handed).

13 It is issue no. 14, for the interpreters.

14 We are talking about Narodne Novine, the

15 Official Gazette of the Republic of Croatia, no. 27,

16 dated 6th April 1993:

17 "The House of Representatives of the Assembly

18 of the Republic of Croatia on 26th March 1993 adopted

19 the following conclusion."

20 I draw your attention to conclusion no. 3.

21 No. 3 states:

22 "The House of Representatives applauds the

23 policy of the President of the Republic of Croatia and

24 the Government of the Republic of Croatia which is

25 based also on the fact that it is in the greatest

1 interest for Croatia for the war to be ended and a

2 political solution to the crisis to be found in the

3 sovereign state of Bosnia-Herzegovina."

4 This document is signed by the President of

5 the House of Representatives, Stjepan Mesic. Do you

6 remember these conclusions and did you sign them?

7 A. I think there is no doubt about that.

8 Q. So you do confirm that. In the light of what

9 you just said, I am asking you, you signed conclusions

10 which were contrary to the alleged information that you

11 were aware of?

12 A. I do not understand where the contradiction

13 is. May I interpret this? It is in Croatia's interest

14 for the war to end and for questions to be resolved

15 politically in the sovereign state of

16 Bosnia-Herzegovina. I was always interested in the

17 Sovereign Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

18 Q. So this is, in your view, in conformity with

19 your aspirations at the time?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. I have another document, please. I ask for

22 the usher's assistance. This is another issue of the

23 Official Gazette of 10th May 1993. (Handed).

24 For the interpreters, it is document no. 15.

25 It is issue no. 43 of the Narodne Novine of

1 10th May 1993 and the text of the conclusions reads:

2 "Pursuant to Article 113 of the Rules of

3 Procedure of the House of Representatives of the

4 Croat Assembly, the House of Representatives of the

5 Republic of Croatia adopted the following conclusions

6 at its session of 30th April 1993:

7 "(1) The Muslims and Croats, the parties to

8 the conflict in the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina are

9 called upon in the interests of protecting human life,

10 the defence of their historical communality and the

11 sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina from greater Serb

12 aggression to immediately cease all armed conflicts in

13 the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina in accordance with

14 the agreement signed by representatives of both

15 peoples.

16 "(2) The parties to the conflict who are

17 still not abiding by the agreement signed, are called

18 upon to deal with all outstanding problems through

19 their civilian and military representatives.

20 "(3) The House of Representatives of the

21 Croat Assembly notes that the historical

22 togetherness of the Muslims and Croats is a

23 precondition for the survival of both peoples in the

24 state territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and a foundation

25 for the preservation of the sovereignty and integrity

1 of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its future.

2 "(4) Both peoples are called upon to join

3 forces and resist the Serb imperialist aggression

4 directed at exterminating both peoples and annexing

5 Bosnia-Herzegovina to 'the Greater Serbia'.

6 "(5) In the aim of supporting a peaceful

7 resolution of existing differences and the preservation

8 of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the

9 friendly neighbouring state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the

10 House of Representatives of the Croat Parliament

11 will send a multi-party delegation on a mission of peace

12 and goodwill."

13 The number, dated Zagreb, 30th April 1993,

14 the House of Representatives, the Assembly of the

15 Republic of Croatia, the President of the House of

16 Representatives, Stjepan Mesic.

17 Can you verify this document as being

18 authentic?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. Next text with the usher's assistance,

21 please.

22 It is a Declaration on the foreign policy of

23 the Republic of Croatia and we will read only one item

24 referring to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

25 Document no. 16 for the interpreters.

1 (Handed).

2 Issue 68 of the Narodni Novine, the Official

3 Gazette, dated 14th July 1993. The title is,

4 "Declaration on the Foreign Policy of the Republic of

5 Croatia", and I am reading only chapter 4:

6 "The state integrity of the independent and

7 sovereign internationally-recognised state of the

8 Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina is supported as well as

9 the constitutional and legal definition of the state's

10 structure in accord with the agreement of the three

11 constituent peoples."

12 Signed by the President of the House of

13 Representatives, Stjepan Mesic. This Declaration was

14 adopted on 30th June 1993.

15 Can you authenticate this Declaration?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. We have examined and reviewed a whole series

18 of documents, including the list of events that

19 occurred between Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of

20 Croatia and you confirm that this was the official

21 policy of the Republic of Croatia which was a positive

22 one in favour of the preservation of the integrity of

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina, but you also said there was a

24 secret policy. I am not asking for your opinion or

25 your conclusions, but I am asking you, what are the

1 grounds on which you claim that Croatia had a secret

2 policy designed to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina? What are

3 the facts?

4 A. There are many, but I shall list just a few.

5 If members of the Croat Parliament go to

6 Bosnia-Herzegovina, go to Herceg-Bosna, they are

7 photographed there wearing HVO uniforms, while at the

8 same time being members of the Croat Parliament.

9 Those same people in the Croat Parliament are

10 satanising, to the limit of the permissible, the

11 Muslims and their right to defend Bosnia-Herzegovina.

12 Take just the statements of Vice Vukojevic in

13 the Croat Assembly. Take the statements of Ivan

14 Tolj, a general of both armies, about the Muslims and

15 about Bosnia-Herzegovina. Take just the statements of

16 my successor, Miljelovic, referring to the Muslims,

17 what he thought about them and how he demonised the

18 Muslims and the very possibility of the survival of

19 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

20 Take what was said about the Muslims in the

21 Croat Parliament by Antun Vrdoljak, who was at the

22 time a deputy and director of Croat television who

23 virtually served to the Croat public what was

24 considered to be the official state policy.

25 Without listing other names, these are

1 sufficient, and this brings me to my conclusion. If I

2 say to Franjo Tudjman that the behaviour of Izetbegovic

3 in the Croat Parliament is impermissible, his

4 vulgarities, his fury and rage against the Muslims --

5 and he does not even call them always Muslim, but

6 refers to them as "Balijas", and when I said that

7 this was harmful for the work of the Parliament, that

8 it undermined the integrity of Croat policy, what

9 should I do? He was President of a committee of the

10 Croat Parliament when he went to Herzegovina and his

11 photograph was taken in uniform and Tudjman said to me,

12 "Well, do something. Have him replaced as head of

13 that committee."

14 I called up Ivan Milas, head of the HDZ club

15 of deputies to carry out this proposal and his response

16 was, "Tudjman had nothing to object about the work of

17 Izetbegovic." On the contrary, whenever I speak to

18 him, he supports what Izetbegovic is doing and that

19 same Izetbegovic was elected to the Croat Parliament

20 at the last elections on the HDZ list.

21 So I think there is no need for me to

22 enumerate other factors serving as grounds for me to

23 see that the policy was -- the policy of double

24 standards, one official one and another one that had

25 disastrous consequences for the Croats in

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina and for the prestige of Croatia as a

2 serious nation in the world.

3 Q. Just one or two final questions. You

4 received various kinds of information being in the

5 position that you were. Have you been able to form any

6 opinion about our client, Mr. Blaskic? Do you perceive

7 him as an extremist, as a moderate person? Have you

8 ever met him?

9 A. I met General Blaskic. All the information I

10 ever received of him was always positive. What I can

11 especially stress is that once I stepped out of --

12 stepped down from the position of Speaker of the

13 Parliament and left the HDZ, I met General Blaskic. He

14 approached me. He shook hands with me and I considered

15 that to be a gracious act since at that time I was no

16 longer a member of the ruling team.

17 Q. And many of the people who used to greet you

18 and shake hands with you before did not?

19 A. Yes, that is correct.

20 Q. Very well, just in conclusion, you are no

21 longer a politician of the ruling party. You are now

22 with an opposition party and, as far as I can tell, I

23 think you are somewhere in the centre of the political

24 spectrum. Is one of the goals of your party the

25 removal of all HDZ from power, and Tudjman, and do you

1 believe that such a process would signal

2 democratisation in Croatia?

3 A. If you want my personal opinion, the Croat

4 People's Party believes that we have replaced a single

5 party system, which was the Communist Party system

6 which did not allow any democratic processes to take

7 hold, and if these democratic processes did happen,

8 they were of short breath and it took a very long time

9 for them to happen.

10 But when the HDZ came into power, even though

11 I was part of that, I disagreed with it in a sense that

12 it again assumed control of the legislative executive

13 power, the media, and again established a monopoly of a

14 single part or of a single movement. In order to

15 change that, it is necessary to either create a new

16 movement and then face the same problem which would be

17 retrograde. We believe that we need several parties,

18 regardless of how strong individually they are. I

19 believe that we need to participate in the political

20 process, that they should go to elections and that

21 eventually they should win.

22 We had elections in the Oljeka Jupanja and we

23 went to elections for the municipal bodies in my town

24 of Orahovica, and there were two lists fielded in this

25 election. I was leading one and the other one was led

1 by Franjo Tudjman, and a pro-fascist Croat party of

2 the right led by Mr. Djapic and they are known by such

3 things as -- for instance, about a month ago, they

4 visited Vukovar in about 100 black limousines with

5 black shirts, black flags, and singing songs from World

6 War II with fascist salutes and with black thoughts in

7 their minds.

8 So this is the coalition partner of the HDZ.

9 However, fortunately, we, the united opposition, won

10 and I believe that we will win in the next elections,

11 if you are interested in that.

12 Q. Yes, I am interested in that. You believe in

13 the victory over the HDZ and Franjo Tudjman?

14 A. Do not be fooled by the composition of the

15 Croat Parliament. The next elections will show the

16 foolishness of it and we will meet again and you will

17 be proud that you were once a member of my party.

18 Q. Do you believe that it would be a great

19 watershed, a great cross-roads if this happened?

20 JUDGE JORDA: I am afraid that this

21 discussion, which is certainly interested, does not

22 really concern the Trial Chamber. Have you finished,

23 Mr. Nobilo?

24 MR. NOBILO: Mr. President, I have concluded,

25 but I believe there is a direct connection there.

1 Thank you, but I have concluded.

2 JUDGE JORDA: I just understand that

3 Mr. Mesic is recruiting members.

4 A. No, I already have members.

5 JUDGE JORDA: Very well.

6 MR. NOBILO: I have completed my

7 cross-examination. I thought it was important to note

8 that Mr. Mesic had certain political aims, he had them

9 in 1992-93. He has them today, but I should now like

10 to tender into evidence the videotape with the French

11 and English translation. That is one exhibit. Then

12 also the Official Gazettes. These are the last three

13 that I referred to. If Mr. Dubuisson could help me with

14 the numbers, the one dated 10th May 1993, the other one

15 of 6th April 1993 and of 14th July 1993. Four exhibits

16 that I should like to tender, three issues of the

17 Official Gazette and one videotape with the transcript

18 translated into French and English. Mr. Prosecutor, you

19 no longer have the same objections?

20 MR. HARMON: No objection.

21 MR. NOBILO: There was a newspaper that was

22 not authenticated.

23 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. I have just been

24 told what has been requested and what has not.

25 Perhaps the Prosecutor has certain additional

1 questions to put to the witness. It is his right to

2 re-examine, after which the judges may have some

3 questions for the witness. Mr. Prosecutor?

4 MR. HARMON: Yes, thank you, Mr. President.

5 Mr. Mesic, you were asked questions about

6 various conversations you had with Mr. Boban. Can you

7 tell the Chamber how he referred to Muslims in those

8 conversations?

9 A. I knew Mr. Boban since about 1967, 1968. We

10 were fairly close, which is why I mentioned my

11 discussions with him. However, after the conflict with

12 Muslims -- and I had not noticed this before about him,

13 he never called them Muslims. He always used an ugly

14 expression. He called them Balijus, in a sense that we

15 could not get along with the Balijus and that

16 co-existence with them was impossible and we needed to

17 part ways.

18 Q. Very briefly, can you describe to the judges

19 what the term "Baliju" means? Is it a perjorative

20 term?

21 A. As far as the information that I possess, it

22 is an expression from the Turkish days and it referred

23 to the lowest stratum of -- let us say something that

24 would be akin to the lumpen proletariat.

25 Q. Now I would like to turn your attention to --

1 JUDGE JORDA: Excuse me, because you know

2 this is being translated. The lowest strata of

3 society? We cannot use "the lumpen proletariat". How

4 would you translate that? The serf proletariat. Thank

5 you.

6 A. Something like that. Something like that.

7 MR. HARMON: How did President Tudjman

8 characterise President Izetbegovic and his political

9 views?

10 A. I believe that President Tudjman did not know

11 Mr. Izetbegovic very well and I -- if you allow me, I

12 believe that I knew him somewhat better because we were

13 represented by the same lawyer, same attorney in the

14 previous regime. When he came out of prison and when I

15 came out of prison, we met and I can tell you that we

16 had friendly relations. I believe that President

17 Tudjman was mistaken by placing President Izetbegovic

18 among the Muslim fundamentalists.

19 I believe that Mr. Izetbegovic is a truly

20 religious man. I think that he is a moral person. I

21 think that he is a wise man. He entered politics

22 without any major previous political experience. He

23 certainly knew what was done in politics and what

24 politicians were doing to one another, and maybe this

25 is why he could -- he was a bit awkward at first, but

1 he was a moral person, an honest person and a wise

2 person, and I think that this is a fitting description

3 of him.

4 Q. Was he a moderate in your view?

5 A. I believe that he was moderate and let me

6 tell you --

7 MR. NOBILO: Mr. President, I thought of

8 raising an objection earlier on, but I changed my

9 mind. I never asked a single question about Mr. Alija

10 Izetbegovic. I had planned to do it, but I thought it

11 was not important, so I simply did not ask a single

12 question about Alija Izetbegovic, so I think I am

13 entitled to object to these questions.

14 JUDGE JORDA: Yes, but I was going to add

15 that you are asking a question regarding the political

16 opinions of Alija Izetbegovic, so please proceed to

17 your next question.

18 MR. HARMON: Thank you, Mr. President.

19 Mr. Nobilo asked you a question in respect of

20 whether Muslims refugees from Bosnia were housed and

21 fed in Croatia. My question is: did the State of

22 Croatia receive foreign aid and assistance in respect

23 of housing and feeding those refugees and could you

24 describe the types of foreign aid that Croatia

25 received?

1 A. It is true. A large number of refugees were

2 in Croatia and there were a -- they were a great

3 burden. It was both in terms of accommodation and in

4 feeding and organising life for these refugees, for

5 these displaced persons. And Croatia needed the

6 donors' assistance. I do not know what amount of

7 assistance it was. I know that there was never an

8 objection that this food and everything else that was

9 needed for the refugees was not sufficient. That means

10 that, both in terms of money and food, this assistance

11 was actually sufficient in real terms.

12 Q. You also testified yesterday that one high

13 state official from the State of Croatia said, and I

14 quote:

15 "We must make life so unbearable for them

16 that they will want to leave."

17 First of all, who made that statement? Which

18 high state official made that particular statement?

19 A. I must give you the context within which this

20 was done and then if you insist, I can tell you who it

21 was who stated it. When the war broke out between

22 Bosnia and Croats, when the armed conflict started and

23 when victims started piling up, there was a great

24 pressure in Croatia and great criticism of the Croat

25 authorities about why they were keeping Bosnian

1 refugees in Croat camps. And the Minister of Social

2 Affairs at that time, Mate Granic, who now is the

3 Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that such an

4 impossible situation would be created for them that

5 they would have to leave, so that other countries would

6 receive them and that they would not be a burden on

7 Croatia.

8 Q. Now, you were asked a series of questions by

9 Mr. Nobilo about whether Croatia was a transit country

10 through which both humanitarian aid and weapons went

11 into Bosnia. You said that, yes, that in fact was the

12 case, but that Croatia itself kept a portion of the

13 arms and the humanitarian aid as the price for

14 permitting the transit to take place. Have I fairly

15 characterised your answer to yesterday's question?

16 A. Since this is a closed session, then maybe we

17 can say certain things that would not go out in public,

18 otherwise I would not dare say so. We were under an

19 embargo, so we were not supposed to receive any arms.

20 However, yes, we had to get arms, both we and Bosnians,

21 because it was an absurd situation. We were victims of

22 an aggression and we had an embargo on import of

23 weapons. In other words, we would be just served on a

24 matter to the Serbs that way. So the assistance did

25 come and there was always agreement on how much of this

1 was to be left to Croatia, both because of the needs

2 and the risks that Croatia was taking because of the

3 embargo.

4 On one occasion -- actually, on more than one

5 occasion, I asked Alija Izetbegovic whether he was

6 satisfied with this kind of arrangement. He said,

7 "I would be satisfied if another portion did not stay

8 behind in Herzegovina." Which portion of that stayed

9 behind, the amount, I too I do not know.

10 Q. Have you any idea and are you able to tell

11 the Trial Chamber what percentage of the arms that

12 transmitted through Croatia were taken by Croatia?

13 A. It is hard for me so say, because there were

14 different arrangements. There were different sources

15 of this material. It would be somewhere between 10 and

16 20 per cent.

17 Q. Do you know what happened to the arms and the

18 humanitarian aid once it transmitted through Croatia

19 and went into Herzegovina-Bosnia? Did the authorities

20 there also extract a share of the arms intended for the

21 Bosnian central Government?

22 A. Yes. Yes, there were such occurrences.

23 Q. I believe you testified that -- to put it

24 into context -- Mr. Izetbegovic's statement to you about

25 how much arms he received, you cited an example in

1 yesterday's testimony that in fact there were occasions

2 that you knew of when arms intended for relief in the

3 siege of Sarajevo did not make it to Sarajevo because

4 they were interdicted in Vukovar by the HDO?

5 JUDGE JORDA: Please limit yourself to the

6 cross-examination, Mr. Harmon. Let us not restart the

7 examination-in-chief. Thank you. Go on to another

8 question, please.

9 MR. HARMON: My last question: in the course

10 of the cross-examination, it has been suggested by the

11 cross-examination that because you are a politician in

12 Croatia and because you oppose President Tudjman in the

13 political arena, that your testimony in The Hague in

14 closed session is politically motivated. Do you care

15 to comment on that?

16 A. Objectively speaking, by this testimony, I am

17 only going to suffer political damage. I do not have

18 any -- I do not benefit from this and since this is a

19 closed session, this is going to be my approach for the

20 public too. I accept the rules of this court and after

21 this testimony I am not -- I am going to observe the

22 rules and I am not going to interpret what the other

23 side or a third side or somebody outside may offer, but

24 if somebody wanted to use my testimony in political

25 ways, it is Mr. Tudjman.

1 When I gave my first statement to the

2 investigators of the Tribunal, and I had to do it

3 because there is a law in Croatia which calls for

4 cooperation with the Tribunal, and as a legalist

5 I abide by that and I testify about what I know.

6 However, Mr. Tudjman somehow got the record of my

7 statement to the investigators. He brought the

8 media -- representatives of the media that he controls

9 and all this was then splashed all over the media and

10 offered to the public, because other witnesses needed

11 to be intimidated by my being accused for high

12 treason.

13 You have to bear in mind that last month,

14 during the Congress of his party, its President said,

15 and this could only have referred to me -- he never

16 named me, my name -- he said, "In the union protests,

17 which was organised by four unions, which was set for

18 the main square in Zagreb, 12,000 policemen came out to

19 suppress this manifestation organised by the unions",

20 and I was in the organising committee of this protest.

21 And his Congress, President Tudjman said, "In the

22 organising committee of this union protest, there are

23 persons who testify and slander Croatia in The Hague.

24 I thank him for addressing me in the plural, because

25 that means that is a sign of respect that he has of me.

1 Q. Thank you, Mr. Mesic.

2 Thank you, Mr. President.

3 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you. Judge Riad.

4 JUDGE RIAD: Good morning, Mr. Mesic. I

5 would like to ask you first a specific question. Do

6 you have any knowledge of the concrete position of

7 Colonel Blaskic in the Lasva Valley? Was he, to your

8 knowledge, the undisputed commander of the area or was

9 it some kind of divided and anarchic region?

10 A. I cannot say unequivocally what position and

11 what chain of command -- where in the chain of command

12 General Blaskic was. I only know that he was a

13 military man, that he was in the HVO, that he was a

14 professional soldier, and people whom I met told me

15 positive things about him. But I do not know his place

16 in the chain of command.

17 Q. You spoke of the HVO. The HVO was

18 disciplined, military division or was there some kind

19 of insubordination and lack of authority throughout the

20 various levels of commanding?

21 A. Since this army was being established in a

22 chaotic situation, it is certain that these lines of

23 communication did not function fully. But, in my view,

24 this army, compared in relation to Croatia and its

25 Ministry of Defence, it was in a subordinate position,

1 so I assumed that the orders on many operations came

2 from there, because oftentimes the operations of the

3 Croat Army were coordinated with those of the HVO.

4 Q. So you think the policy was determined by the

5 high authority in Zagreb and it was executed in the

6 Lasva Valley?

7 A. My views are based on what I know and Mate

8 Boban, as President of the HDZ and President of the

9 Croat community of Herzegovina-Bosnia, always

10 claimed that he was exclusively implementing the Zagreb

11 policy and that he did not have his own policy and

12 Zagreb meant the top of the Croat leadership.

13 Q. You mentioned during your testimony that once

14 in a discussion with Markovic, he mentioned that there

15 was no official decision for cleansing of the Muslims,

16 but he told you in practice they managed to make sure

17 that no Muslim was left. Did you understand how this

18 came to happen? Was it through terrorising the

19 population in order to run away or was it through --

20 not to say genocide, but at least killing and

21 extermination? Do you have any idea how they managed

22 to have no Muslim left, according to Mr. Markovic?

23 A. Pero Markovic?

24 Q. Yes.

25 A. This is one example, but it was known that

1 after the conflict between Bosniak Muslims and Croats,

2 many Bosniks who were in the HVO were disarmed and many

3 of them ended up in camps. It is known that in many

4 towns, there were -- pressure was exerted so that

5 people were leaving, but the most important example to

6 me was the one of Mostar when I sent a delegation which

7 was going to find facts about what was going on there

8 and, upon their return, they told me that there were a

9 large number of Muslims from the surrounding villages,

10 villages surrounding Mostar, and that they came into

11 the city, so that the demographic complexion changed,

12 not by their own will.

13 They had to come. They were forced to come

14 to Mostar. So now that this ethnic balance changed,

15 which would have changed after the war because

16 everybody would go back to where they came from, there

17 was additional pressure to expel these people out of

18 Mostar during the war and the television broadcast this

19 and this was clear to everyone. If people were taken

20 away in columns of trucks, they were not doing it

21 because they wanted that. It was because they were

22 pressured into doing so. That is when I asked the

23 mayor of Capljina, Pero Markovic. I asked him what was

24 the relations between Muslims and Croats there. I do

25 not know what the percentages were, but the percentage

1 of Bosniks in Capljina was, I think, maybe 5 or 6 per

2 cent. I may be wrong, but I know that it was a small

3 percentage.

4 He said we have no conflicts because we

5 cleansed them all. Cleansed in what way? It was

6 obvious that people left under pressure. I do not know

7 what the situation is there now.

8 Q. Thank you. Just a more general question.

9 You said that Mr. Tudjman was openly in favour of the

10 frontiers established in Banovina in 1938, if I

11 understood rightly, and this was reiterated in the

12 meeting of Karadordevo between Tudjman and Milosevic.

13 What was the place of the Lasva Valley in this map

14 which was already started in Banovina? Where would the

15 Lasva Valley go and what was the general idea about it?

16 A. Yes, Tudjman believed that this was the

17 greatest achievement the Croats had. That is, the

18 greatest achievement of the Croats were the borders

19 from the Banovina times. Whether that was true or not,

20 but that was what he said after Karadordevo, that

21 Bosnia could survive, that we would get the Banovina

22 borders, plus Cazin, Kladusa and Bihac. As for this

23 part, I think it was also encompassed by the former

24 Banovina. That is, it was within the Banovina borders,

25 the Lasva River valley.

1 Q. So it was supposed to belong to Croatia?

2 A. Yes. That is what I think when I look at the

3 map.

4 Q. And in that case, you would apply the

5 humane -- what you called the -- what was the word?

6 The humane transfer of people?

7 A. Yes. It is called humane transfer or

8 resettlement.

9 JUDGE RIAD: Thank you very much.

10 JUDGE JORDA: Judge Shahabuddeen?

11 JUDGE SHAHABUDDEEN: Mr. Mesic, would I be

12 right in supposing that in Croatia, there were other

13 Croats who, like you, opposed the use of force by

14 Croats against Muslims in Herceg-Bosna?

15 A. Yes, that is the main difference between the

16 opposition in Serbia and the opposition in Croatia.

17 The Serb opposition, or the relevant part. I must

18 admit, for the sake of truth, there are many honourable

19 people. There are groups that are against the

20 formation of a greater Serbia, against the war, against

21 Milosevic's policy. But the radical, the relevant

22 opposition, the radicals and how else they call

23 themselves, Draskovic's party, they are all reproaching

24 Milosevic for not having achieved his war goals. So

25 there is not any great difference amongst them. They

1 are attacking Milosevic because he failed to achieve a

2 Greater Serbia.

3 On the other hand, in Croatia, the opposition

4 is criticising the Government for allowing the conflict

5 to break out between the Croats and the Bosniaks. The

6 position was, let us not try and pinpoint the culprits,

7 but let us put an end to that conflict as soon as

8 possible and go forward.

9 People like me, who were against such a

10 conflict, are quite numerous, in my opinion.

11 Q. Now let us pass to this question as to

12 whether you personally witnessed the making of any

13 official decision for the use of force by Croats

14 against Muslims in Herzeg-Bosna.

15 Would I be understanding your position to be

16 this, that, no, you did not personally witness the

17 making of any such decision, but that you held

18 important positions and you were in touch with

19 important persons within the leadership, in that your

20 understanding was that they collectively understood it

21 to be the policy of Croatia to sanction the use of

22 force by Croats against Muslims in Herzeg-Bosna?

23 A. I must explicitly say that I was never

24 present when a decision was taken on the use of force

25 by Croatia against the Bosniaks, but I must also add,

1 that when the crime in Ahmici was committed, because I

2 was in touch with Mate Boban, I said to him, "Tell me,

3 because the crime is great. Have you conducted an

4 investigation to find out who did it?" He said, "Yes,

5 we did, and we established that the people who did it

6 wore black uniforms".

7 I then asked, "I did not ask you what colour

8 uniforms they wore, but who wore those uniforms?" And

9 he said, "They could have even been Serbs." As far as

10 I am familiar with that part of the country, he either

11 does not know or he did not conduct an investigation or

12 he was lying.

13 Q. Could I revert to one little aspect of my

14 question? That is, whether the impression you

15 collected from other members within the leadership was

16 that it was in fact the policy of Croatia to use force

17 against Muslims in Herzeg-Bosna.

18 A. One could have come to such a conclusion, at

19 least I did, on the basis of a number of events, but

20 one is particularly impressive. There was a military

21 formation in Bosnia-Herzegovina called HOS, H-O-S,

22 which included both Bosniaks and Croats and they fought

23 together against the aggressor.

24 At one point in time, an assassination was

25 organised of General Blaz Kraljevic, who was the

1 commander of those forces. His escort consisted of

2 almost half Muslims, half Croats. I do not know the

3 exact number. They were killed on a road. They were

4 ambushed and liquidated. I never heard who accounted

5 for that crime.

6 Q. Could I go to this other aspect? Defence

7 counsel -- and I am sure you appreciate this -- as was

8 his duty, examined you as to the relationship between

9 the statements you are now making in court and various

10 statements which you made while the conflict was in

11 progress. Now, would I be correct that in your

12 political experience, there is such an idea as not

13 rocking the boat. That is to say, that a senior

14 political figure would have to hold the balance very

15 prudently between allegiance to the policy officially

16 set and his private convictions. Have you encountered

17 that sort of feeling in the course of your political

18 life?

19 A. One thing is certainly true, that I

20 persistently advocated the Defence of Bosnia. Not only

21 by the Bosniaks, but by the Serbs and the Croats who

22 wanted Bosnia-Herzegovina, because that was the only

23 chance for it to survive. Because I was convinced that

24 if Milosevic succeeded in breaking up Bosnia, that

25 would be tragic for Croatia, because regardless of all

1 agreements, it is highly questionable whether Croatia

2 could have survived or whether Greater Serbia would

3 have been formed, even at the expense of our own

4 territories.

5 So that when I held a high position in the

6 HDZ and in the Government, I always apparently accepted

7 the official policies which were in favour of the

8 survival of Bosnia, but I also always underlined that

9 there has to be cooperation, that there must not be

10 anymore war, that we should have a joint command

11 between the HVO and the BiH army, which I think has

12 still not been fully realised, because only such a

13 single command can ensure a victory in a war with

14 minimum casualties, because if there are several

15 commands, the consequences are always tragic.

16 Finally, let me try and summarise. I was an

17 advocate of a united resistance against the aggressor.

18 I was for a unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, but as a senior

19 official, I could not directly clash, though it could

20 have been seen from my interviews so that President

21 Tudjman, in December 1993, proposed that I should

22 resign my post as Speaker of Parliament, that I should

23 go to Grenoble or to Spa for a couple of months, Spa in

24 Belgium, for additional study of the French language,

25 and to choose whatever ambassadorial post I wanted,

1 because he could not come to any kind of agreement with

2 Milosevic while I was at the head of Parliament,

3 because I had said that he had to hang.

4 Namely, this was something I told Milosevic

5 in his face, that the Serbs would hang him at the main

6 square in Belgrade at Terazije when they failed to

7 achieve their wartime goals, which he had advocated

8 because he had planned the war.

9 I also asked him, when hanging, to think of

10 me and that I would think of him. I stated that in

11 public, but obviously this bothered him so much that he

12 must have pressurised Tudjman to remove me from this

13 high position and after some time, I actually did

14 leave.

15 Q. Let me put it this way and as simply as I

16 can. In this closed session and before this court, do

17 you feel freer to speak your mind than during the

18 troubled years when there was conflict between Croats

19 and Muslims in Herzeg-Bosna?

20 A. Yes, certainly I feel freer here, but life in

21 Croatia in those days did not have a very high price.

22 Q. May I ask you this question, which may seem

23 redundant to you, but which is important to the court:

24 are you saying to the court that your testimony today

25 is the truth?

1 A. It is the truth.

2 Q. May I ask you a little question about what I

3 shall call the dual track policy of Croatia, which you

4 have described. That is, on the one hand, there would

5 be formal proclamations by the Croat authorities

6 respecting the territorial integrity of

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

8 On the other hand, there would be a policy of

9 seeking to divide that country. Should I understand

10 you this way, that in the judgement of the Croat

11 authorities, the successful implementation of the

12 policy of division depended on continued assertion of

13 the policy respecting the territorial integrity of the

14 country?

15 A. True. In that way, the Croat official

16 policy managed to side-step criticism of the

17 international community because it publicly supported

18 the survival of a sovereign state, whereas the other

19 track was in the opposite direction.

20 To take just one example, Fikret Abdic, who

21 was also trying to break up Bosnia-Herzegovina because

22 he proclaimed Western Bosnia as an autonomous region

23 without this having any grounds in the constitution of

24 Bosnia-Herzegovina. He spent most of his time in

25 Zagreb, but at the same time, he had contacts with

1 Milosevic and his regime. He would purchase vast

2 quantities of gas, allegedly for his own needs, from

3 firms in Zagreb, and it was clear that he was selling

4 that same oil to our common aggressor. So if we look

5 at this mosaic, then the whole picture appears quite

6 different from what it may appear and what it is

7 proclaimed to be in public.

8 Q. Let me ask you this other question which

9 concerns the transit of arms through Croatia and

10 Herceg-Bosna to Sarajevo.

11 Would I be understanding you correctly to

12 mean this, that from the perception of the Croat

13 governmental authorities, it was to the advantage of

14 Croatia that Bosnia-Herzegovina should continue to

15 resist the Serbs militarily?

16 A. Yes, this is a matter which has several

17 layers to it. It was impossible to stop assisting

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina because it would have been accused

19 by everyone who supported Croatia's independence, on

20 the grounds that it was not supporting another

21 sovereign state, and thereby its policies would be

22 compromised. But now that that aid was being given, it

23 had to be reduced to such a level that it would not

24 hinder the fulfilment of Croat political goals, so,

25 you see, a balance had to be struck and the aid came

1 from various quarters.

2 Q. Would I be correct in understanding you to

3 mean this, that to the extent that Croatia permitted

4 the transit of arms to Bosnia-Herzegovina, the transit

5 of arms so effected, accorded with the interests of the

6 Government of Croatia?

7 A. Yes. I would not say the Government. I

8 would rather say that part of the policy which had

9 double tracks, because it was possible to measure how

10 much aid should be given without damaging Croatia,

11 while at the same time being in contact with the

12 international factors which wanted the survival of

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina and which pinpointed the main

14 problems in those areas.

15 Q. You are quite correct in qualifying my

16 question by limiting it to the second of the two

17 tracks.

18 Here is my last question. It concerns your

19 position as Speaker. You remember Defence counsel was

20 asking you whether, as Speaker, it was not your duty to

21 put on the agenda of the House of Representatives an

22 item concerning the service rendered by Croat

23 soldiers within the Croat community across the

24 border.

25 I am a little unclear. You would understand

1 why I am unclear as to what exactly were the rules of

2 procedure in the House of Representatives. Would I be

3 right in supposing -- I may well be wrong -- that where

4 a substantive item was concerned, that item could only

5 be discussed on a motion made from the floor and not on

6 the initiative of the Speaker. As I said, I may be

7 wrong, but I do not know.

8 A. The actual procedure for putting an item on

9 the agenda was such that the initiative would come from

10 the Government, through the parliamentary commissions,

11 to the President of the Assembly, the Speaker. And,

12 after a certain time period, it was up to him to put it

13 on the agenda.

14 The other possibility would be for committees

15 of the Parliament to reach the conclusion to have an

16 item placed on the agenda and then again, with a

17 certain time period, if this is approved, that item

18 would appear on the agenda.

19 A deputy himself could propose something to

20 be put on the agenda, but then again, he had to go

21 through this procedure, either to go through the

22 Government and hear its opinion, or through the

23 parliamentary committees, who would then put it on the

24 agenda. But since in the parliamentary committees and

25 in the Government, the majority was held by the party

1 in power, they would halt such a procedure or such an

2 item if it were not quite in accord with the official

3 policy. Therefore, no matter how much we might insist

4 in Parliament that foreign affairs be placed on the

5 agenda, Croatia's policy towards Bosnia-Herzegovina,

6 events there, et cetera, things would not pass this

7 filter and it was simply not possible to put such items

8 on the agenda in this way because this filter, that is

9 the monopoly of power, prevented a public debate.

10 So, you see, to this day, the issue of the

11 state audit of financial expenditures of a number of

12 ministries has not been put on the agenda. It is

13 simply not possible. So the ministries have no control

14 over them and their spending.

15 JUDGE SHAHABUDDEEN: I am obliged to you,

16 Mr. Mesic. Thank you.

17 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Mesic, I am going to keep

18 you for a few more moments, not ask questions which

19 were already asked, but to make sure that you might be

20 able to leave before lunch time. So if you could answer

21 me relatively quickly. Of course, answer as you feel

22 you have to.

23 The Vance-Owen Plan was not ratified by the

24 Assembly. What was your opinion? What was your

25 influence over Mr. Tudjman? How do you see this? Could

1 you tell us this quickly?

2 A. The Vance-Owen Plan was not adopted by the

3 Serb side. They signed it, but the Serb Assembly

4 did not adopt it. There was a deadline by which they

5 had to sign it and they did not and the Croat and

6 the Bosnian side accepted it, but I think that it was

7 lucky for Bosnia-Herzegovina that it was not accepted,

8 because it had contributed to the grouping of

9 populations and their movement from one part to

10 another.

11 Q. What was your opinion? Did you think it was

12 a good thing? The plan, I mean.

13 A. I must say that I personally was against the

14 plan, because I forecast how it would end. Even though

15 I had hoped that the people would dilute the plan, in

16 the sense that all three peoples would remain

17 constituent peoples in all the cantons. That would be

18 a kind of control mechanism, because if in each of the

19 entities, all three were constituent, then this would

20 be salvation for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

21 Q. Thank you. In another area, you said that

22 there was no official budgetary envelope for any

23 assistance that could be given to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

24 Do you have any idea what the actual budgetary circuits

25 were, the parallel circuits were -- I suppose they were

1 parallel.

2 A. Since I personally was always very well

3 informed regarding the budget, because, after all, the

4 most important act of any state is the law and the

5 budget, because it determines how funds are spent. But

6 I can claim to this day that there is not a single item

7 in the Croat budget. At least I am not aware of it.

8 Q. I understood that. I was asking you

9 something else.

10 A. There was no evidence of any sums being spent

11 in Herceg-Bosna or anywhere else. The only possibility

12 was for the Defence Ministry to spend funds out of its

13 own budget, but that ministry was not under our

14 control. The Ministry of the Interior could be

15 financing the police. The Ministry of Health, the

16 health. The Ministry of Education, the education in

17 another state.

18 Q. You do not have to say anything else. I

19 would just like to say that in the position that you

20 occupied, that you should have known that the Ministry

21 of Defence would have to also vote the budget, like in

22 all budgets of ministries throughout the world. Well,

23 it does not really matter.

24 As regards the leaders of the Bosnia

25 Croats -- perhaps they worked with General Blaskic or

1 perhaps he was one of them. What did they come to do

2 and if they were coming for orders, was there an idea

3 of a joint command that was ever mentioned at the time

4 of the war?

5 A. They certainly came for orders, because that

6 was the only way to explain it.

7 Q. Was the question of a more official command

8 ever raised?

9 A. The command could only have been in Zagreb,

10 because we know that when joint operations were

11 conducted, everything was done within the framework of

12 the Croat leadership.

13 Q. In other words, are you now saying that

14 General Blaskic was getting his orders from the

15 Croat military command?

16 A. I do not know who General Blaskic received

17 orders from, but Mate Boban certainly received his

18 orders from Zagreb.

19 Q. You also said about an article in Globus that

20 at no point did we plan for a war against the Muslims.

21 When you say "we", it was when you were part of the

22 most official structures. You said at least officially

23 we never planned for war. Was it ever planned

24 unofficially? Do you know something about that?

25 A. What I had meant was that the state

1 leadership consisting of the legislative and executive

2 power and also the political leadership, never had such

3 a topic on which we could officially voice an opinion,

4 but the only possibility was that talks and agreements

5 may have been made that I did not participate in,

6 because the people who came to Zagreb did not always go

7 to those addresses where it would have been logical for

8 them to go.

9 To be more concrete, if in 1992 I was

10 President of the executive board of HDZ and a

11 delegation of the HDZ is coming from --

12 Q. What month in 1992? What month was it?

13 A. The whole of 1992 until the very end. And a

14 delegation comes to Zagreb, they never came to see me

15 in the party, because I was there professionally. As

16 of January 1st 1992, I was physically on the premises

17 of the HDZ, but they never came to see me. They always

18 went to see President Tudjman. So I had this same

19 complaint when I was in Belgrade, when Jovic met with

20 representatives of Serbs in Croatia, especially with

21 Milan Babic, the President of the so-called Krajina.

22 He never came to see me. He always went to see Bora

23 Jovic.

24 Q. Exactly at what point do you situate your

25 change of political position? I am not talking about

1 Mr. Tudjman who in December of 1993 said that you would

2 be a wonderful ambassador in a country somewhere far

3 from Croatia. But at what point? You said, "All of a

4 sudden, I could no longer keep my position. I was not

5 in the official spheres. I was against the positions

6 there." At what point do you situate this profound

7 internal change?

8 A. It is a time that cannot be actually

9 pinpointed as a date. It is a period in which a

10 decision matures. Most people in other parties were my

11 friends even before the democratic changes. With some

12 of them, I had been in gaol. I had socialised with

13 some of them within opposition circles during the

14 former regime and they now belonged to different

15 parties, but I continued to be friends with them

16 regardless. However, such a structuring of the HDZ

17 developed as if those who were not members were not

18 good Croats, as if they were not patriots.

19 The HDZ started to become sufficient for

20 its. Everyone else was no longer just in opposition to

21 the HDZ, but they were enemies of the state. This is

22 something that I could not stand. I was also bothered

23 by the excessive centralisation. The Minister of

24 Police, for instance, would decide where the sheriff in

25 any outlandish municipality -- who would be there.

1 When the Minister of Health decides who the director of

2 a health centre will be; when the Minister of Education

3 decides who will be the principal in every school. All

4 of this bothered me, but the dot on the "i" was, after

5 all, the policy towards Bosnia-Herzegovina. I thought

6 that this was disastrous for Croatia.

7 That, in my view, was the line when I split

8 from the official policy.

9 Q. I have the feeling you always divided between

10 the official position. Mr. Nobilo showed this in all

11 the articles that he cited. Then this other position

12 which you yourself said was a kind of slow evolution.

13 Finally, what was your real contribution to

14 this underground position, the influence that became

15 less and less important. But do you have any specific

16 concrete facts or concrete things that can show us that

17 while you may have said to Globus that you supported

18 the official position, that actually you did not. Did

19 you have any concrete facts? It is important for the

20 Tribunal to know what is the profound credibility of a

21 testimony which is so difficult to perceive.

22 I am not trying to criticise you at all. I

23 understand that in this tragic situation it is easy to

24 make analysis after the fact than before or during, but

25 the Tribunal would like to know what you concretely

1 did, even for the Muslims. What did you do

2 concretely? Did you say at any point in private

3 discussions with Mr. Tudjman, "This is not acceptable.

4 It cannot go on like this. I am going to resign

5 publicly." Did you do something like that or was it a

6 kind of lofty influence that you might have had? If

7 you do not want to answer, you do not have to.

8 A. Not only subtle influence. There were many

9 debates with President Tudjman when he tried -- or,

10 actually, I was very popular, which I must say that I

11 personally did not like. And Tudjman wanted to have

12 him on his side, and that is why he kept persuading me

13 to stay on in politics, that politics needed me, but I

14 was parting ways with those policies. I had several

15 talks with him and he kept saying to me, how come I do

16 not understand the Bosnian situation? How come I

17 cannot understand what it is he wants in

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina?

19 In these debates of ours, each one of us had

20 his own threshold as to how far he could go. That I

21 did not stand by and watch is proven by the fact that

22 23 deputies promised to resign from the Parliament, but

23 only 11 actually did, which means that I tried to win

24 support from within to change the attitude towards

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1 This policy of mine was understood by

2 representatives of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They would meet

3 with me, both Silajdzic and Alija Izetbegovic, and many

4 representatives of Bosnia-Herzegovina, when they came

5 to, Zagreb, they would always come to visit me because

6 they realised that I was struggling for a different

7 kind of policy, for a different relationship towards

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

9 To be even more specific, before leaving for

10 his visit with the Pope, Alija Izetbegovic sent me a

11 message by telephone that he would like to meet with me

12 and that he would like me to organise a meeting with

13 President Tudjman for him. I said I would be glad to

14 do that, but President Tudjman is on a visit to China

15 and he is coming back tomorrow.

16 He said, "Fine, I will come with the Prime

17 Minister, Silajdzic, tomorrow to Zagreb and, please,

18 when you meet Tudjman, tell him I want to talk to him,

19 because you usually go and meet him." We ended that

20 telephone conversation. The two of them came to Zagreb

21 and together with my deputies, we sat down in my office

22 and he said the following: "I have three proposals for

23 Franjo Tudjman. One is that the Bosnian side replace

24 all those commanders in the Bosnian Army which is

25 requested by the Croat side in Bosnia, on condition

1 that the Croat side also replace the commanders who

2 have compromised themselves in Bosnia as requested by

3 the Bosnian side".

4 The second proposal was for Croatia to sign

5 an agreement and to do everything it can through the

6 preliminary proceedings for a confederation between

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. A third proposal was

8 that the Croat General, Martin Spegelj, should take

9 over command over the Bosnian Army to show that they

10 were not fundamentalists, but that they were struggling

11 for the survival of Bosnia-Herzegovina and they trusted

12 him as a professional.

13 So I am telling you this because these were

14 the kind of topics they came to discuss with me because

15 they recognised this double track policy.

16 Q. Thank you. I have a last question which

17 refers back to some of the questions that Judge

18 Shahabuddeen asked, but looking at things from a

19 different angle.

20 If you were to give an interview after this

21 testimony, once you have returned home, would you

22 consider that you failed in your obligations toward the

23 Tribunal? In other words, would you say, "I simply

24 will not give any interviews once I get back", having

25 to do with this testimony, of course.

1 A. My opinion is that my obligation to cooperate

2 with The Hague Tribunal should not have been

3 politicised. This was done by others, I must say at my

4 expense, but also at the expense of the convincingness

5 of Croatia. Since we have here agreed that I should

6 testify in closed session, it is my obligation not to

7 comment on what was said at this closed session. As

8 for what happens in open session, that I am free to

9 comment on.

10 JUDGE JORDA: I have no further questions,

11 but I believe that Judge Riad wanted to ask a

12 question. I would like to apologise to the

13 interpreters, but at the suggestion of my -- that is to

14 say we will begin again at 2.45.

15 I would like to thank you, Mr. Mesic. It was

16 important and historical testimony. You occupied very

17 important positions and the Tribunal must have as

18 complete as vision as possible about what happened in

19 respect of General Blaskic's responsibilities. These

20 are command responsibilities. You did this and the

21 Tribunal is appreciative to you for your cooperation

22 and hopes it will not turn against you, but that, on

23 your side, you will not provoke any possibilities that

24 this would turn against you. Each side has to do its

25 best. The Tribunal has assured you the best protection

1 as possible. You must do the same. Having said this,

2 the judges would like to thank you for your

3 contribution.

4 We will now suspend the hearing and resume at

5 2.45.

6 (1.30 pm)

7 (A short adjournment)

8 (Open session)

9 (2.52pm)

10 (The accused entered court)

11 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Harmon, who is the next

12 witness, please?

13 MR. HARMON: Good afternoon, Mr. President,

14 your Honours, and counsel. Our next witness is

15 Mr. Paddy Ashdown.

16 JUDGE JORDA: In accordance with what we

17 always do, please tell the Trial Chamber what the main

18 points of this testimony are, and how this testimony

19 fits into the principal counts in the indictment

20 against General Blaskic.

21 MR. HARMON: Mr. Ashdown will first of all at

22 my request testify about his professional background.

23 Mr. Ashdown is a Member of Parliament in the UK and he

24 is the Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in that

25 country. He will first summarise his experiences in

1 the Former Yugoslavia and then he will testify about a

2 conversation that he had with President Franjo Tudjman

3 on 6 May 1995. The Prosecutor will present as evidence

4 a copy of a map that was drawn by President Tudjman and

5 annotations that were made by Mr. Ashdown.

6 Mr. President and your Honours, his testimony

7 is relevant to paragraphs 5.0 and 5.1 of the

8 indictment, which allege the existence of an

9 international armed conflict, and it is relevant to all

10 grave breaches counts in the indictment, that is counts

11 5, 8, 11, 15, 17 and 19.

12 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. If I understood

13 what you have just said, the testimony will deal more

14 specifically with the conversations that the witness

15 had with Mr. Franjo Tudjman; is that right?

16 MR. HARMON: That is correct, Mr. President.

17 JUDGE JORDA: And that you will focus on

18 whether or not there was an international armed

19 conflict.

20 MR. HARMON: Correct, Mr. President.

21 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. If there are no

22 further questions from my colleagues, thank you, we can

23 have the usher introduce Mr. Paddy Ashdown, who, if I am

24 correct, has not requested any specific type of

25 protective measures; is that true?

1 MR. HARMON: That is true.

2 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you.

3 (The witness entered court)

4 JEREMY JOHN DURHAM (PADDY) ASHDOWN

5 JUDGE JORDA: Do you hear me?

6 THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.

7 JUDGE JORDA: Please, could you tell the

8 Tribunal what your name and your given name is?

9 THE WITNESS: My name is Jeremy John Durham

10 Ashdown. My -- I go by the nickname of Paddy Ashdown

11 normally; it is a pseudonym.

12 JUDGE JORDA: I am not going to call you by

13 your nickname right away. Please remain standing. If

14 you read your declaration, which will be given to you

15 by the usher.

16 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will

17 speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the

18 truth.

19 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you. Please be seated.

20 Mr. Ashdown, you have agreed to testify at the

21 request of the Prosecution as part of the trial before

22 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former

23 Yugoslavia against General Blaskic, who is in this

24 courtroom. The Prosecutor has given us a summary of

25 the main points of your testimony. You are very well

1 familiar with the type of procedures that are in effect

2 at this Tribunal, which to a large extent come from

3 proceedings which you are familiar with, so you will

4 not be surprised that you will be asked to answer the

5 Prosecutor's questions. However, the Tribunal would

6 very much like this testimony to be as spontaneous as

7 possible, and that of course the Prosecutor can ask you

8 for clarifications about this or that point.

9 This is the scope and context, and I suppose

10 that the Prosecutor will want to ask you a few

11 questions first.

12 Examination by MR. HARMON.

13 MR. HARMON: Thank you, Mr. President. Good

14 afternoon, Mr. Ashdown?

15 A. Good afternoon.

16 Q. Mr. Ashdown, could you first of all begin by

17 telling the judges about your background?

18 A. I was educated -- I am an Irishman by birth.

19 I was educated in the UK at what is known as a public

20 school, in fact a private school. I finished my

21 education at 18. I joined the Royal Marines as an

22 officer. I served in commando units and in the special

23 boat section, which was the waterborne equivalent of

24 the Special Air Service over a period of 13 years,

25 started off at a lieutenant and ending as a captain.

1 I saw active service in the Far East in the

2 Borneo campaign in the early 1960s, in the Middle East

3 in Aden, and in my own home town of Belfast in Northern

4 Ireland. During that period I studied Chinese and took

5 the equivalent to the first-class degree in Chinese and

6 so left and joined the Foreign Office in 1972, and was

7 posted as a First Secretary to the United Kingdom

8 Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva in

9 1974.

10 I stayed there until 1976, when I resigned

11 from the Foreign Service and went into politics. After

12 a period of eight years seeking to get elected and

13 working in local industry in my community, I was

14 elected in 1983 to Parliament, representing the

15 constituency of Yeovil in the south-west of England.

16 I was then elected, in due course, Leader of my Party

17 in 1988 and appointed a Privy Councillor to Her Majesty

18 the Queen in 1989 and have served as both Member of

19 Parliament for Yeovil and the Leader of my Party, the

20 Liberal Democrats, for the last 10 years.

21 Q. Thank you, Mr. Ashdown. Could you tell the

22 judges if, as a member of Parliament, you took an

23 interest in the affairs of the Former Yugoslavia and

24 whether you visited the Former Yugoslavia?

25 A. I did not, Mr. Harmon -- I began to take an

1 interest in, I suspect, July or early August 1992 when

2 this began to be a major crisis which was appearing in

3 British newspapers and indeed elsewhere as well.

4 Between 1992 and the end of the conflict, I paid, in

5 all, 10 visits.

6 JUDGE JORDA: Excuse me, if you could speak

7 a little bit more slowly, so that the interpreters

8 would have less trouble following you?

9 A. Between 1992 and the end of the Bosnian

10 conflict, I paid, in all, 10 visits to Bosnia,

11 particularly to Sarajevo, during the siege, my first

12 visit being in August 1992, my second visit being

13 shortly afterwards, when I was invited to go to Bosnia

14 by the Serbs, by Dr Karadzic, and at that stage

15 I travelled throughout the Serb -- what is now known as

16 Republika Srpska from Sarajevo through the Posavina

17 corridor through to Banja Luka.

18 At that time I was the first person to go

19 into the Manjaca camp, despite some threats we received

20 at the time from Serbs that we would be shot if we did

21 so and, on the following day, visited Prijedor,

22 Trnopolje. Over the subsequent eight visits,

23 culminating in a visit right at the end of the conflict

24 when the battle of Igman was going on, I paid in all 10

25 visits there, usually one during the summer and one

1 during the winter.

2 In December 1992, I visited the Vitez area

3 and saw a good deal of what was going on there at that

4 time and passed through Kiseljak, Visoko, Busovaca and

5 Vitez, so, all in all, I paid 10 visits there. I have

6 subsequently been back once to assist in the elections.

7 MR. HARMON: On 6 May 1995, did you have a

8 conversation with Franjo Tudjman?

9 A. I did, Mr. Harmon. I was invited to attend

10 the VE day celebrations in the Guildhall in London on

11 6th May 1995. It was a very large gathering --

12 I suppose there were of the order of 300 or 400 people

13 there, including many Heads of State, and I was placed,

14 presumably by somebody in the Foreign Office, because

15 they thought I knew something about Yugoslavia, next

16 door to President Tudjman at that time and I had an

17 extensive conversation with him.

18 Q. Could you relate that conversation to the

19 judges, please?

20 A. Well, I made a diary note of it at the time

21 -- it was made that night. I keep a regular diary,

22 and, if I may, I would like to rely rather on that, but

23 I sat next door to Mr. Tudjman. It would be fair, I

24 think, to say that a good deal of wine was flowing at

25 the time, and President Tudjman consumed a certain

1 amount of that. I entered pretty swiftly into a

2 conversation with him, and I asked him fairly early in

3 the conversation how he believed ex Yugoslavia might

4 look in 10 years' time, and I drew for him, on the back

5 of the menu, which I have here, some brief lines,

6 asking him to fill in the rest of the map as to what he

7 believed it would look like.

8 As I recall, I drew the --

9 Q. Let me interrupt you right there. I will

10 show you a copy of the map that you are referring to.

11 With the assistance of the usher, if I could have

12 Prosecutor's exhibit 275A and 275B placed next to the

13 witness, Mr. Usher, if you could place, first,

14 Prosecutor's exhibit, the 75A, on the ELMO. (Handed).

15 JUDGE JORDA: Does the Defence have this,

16 Mr. Harmon?

17 MR. HARMON: I was going to explain this is a

18 copy of an original document. Mr. Ashdown has the

19 originals of both documents in front of him and, prior

20 to the commencement of these proceedings, counsel for

21 the Defence had the opportunity to inspect the original

22 documents.

23 I would request, Mr. President, that the

24 originals be kept by Mr. Ashdown and that these copies,

25 which Mr. Ashdown will authenticate as genuine and true

1 copies, be entered into the record. The originals will

2 be available for the Defence at any time for further

3 inspection. I can explain, Mr. President, that 275A,

4 and I will pre-empt the witness a little bit, is the

5 first diagram about which Mr. Ashdown will testify.

6 This is a menu card on which is drawn a map, to which

7 Mr. Ashdown contributed some of the lines and Mr. Tudjman

8 contributed others.

9 275B is a copy of 275A done by Mr. Ashdown and

10 subsequently annotated by him on the following day.

11 But, with that having been said, Mr. President,

12 I believe 275A is placed on the ELMO, and, please, in

13 continuing your narrative form of testimony,

14 Mr. Ashdown, about your conversation with President

15 Tudjman, could you, first of all, identify this

16 document, what it is, and what lines you particularly

17 drew on it?

18 A. Well, this document, Mr. Harmon, is of course

19 the menu card for the dinner that night, and the back

20 of it is the area which was, as you rightly say, drawn

21 in a combination between myself and President Tudjman.

22 I drew in this line here (indicates) which is the line

23 of the coastline, and I marked in Sarajevo here

24 (indicates), Belgrade there (indicates), Banja Luka

25 here (indicates) and I put a dot over here for -- I beg

1 your pardon, Zagreb over here and Belgrade over here --

2 Zagreb where the cross is and Belgrade with the dot.

3 I put those in and said: draw for me how you

4 see the future picture of ex-Yugoslavia. The rest of

5 the lines on the map, including the two arrows, are

6 those of President Tudjman's. He drew, first of all,

7 this as the shape of Bosnia, that is, the Bosnian part

8 of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He then drew this line here

9 (indicates) which was the current front-line running, as

10 it were, to the east of Banja Luka, and then he drew

11 this line here (indicates), which is the key

12 determining line.

13 He said this was the division, as he saw it

14 ending up -- incidentally, taking in Sarajevo to the

15 west, including Banja Luka in the area belonging to the

16 Serbs and indicating that Tuzla -- I asked him about

17 Tuzla -- and that Tuzla would be in Serb territory --

18 that would be the division as it would then appear.

19 I asked him then what was this side? He drew the arrow

20 and said that side is Serbia and this side with this

21 arrow drawn is Croatia.

22 I asked him what about the Muslim area and he

23 said, "There will be no Muslim area, except as a small

24 element of the Croat State."

25 I asked him, in particular, did he really

1 expect that the Serbs would give up Banja Luka and that

2 they would accept in exchange Tuzla, which is a

3 predominantly Muslim community. He said yes, that is

4 what he saw the outcome of the situation being.

5 He then went on to say that it was his

6 intention at or around the time that the UN mandate

7 ended, to recapture Knin and the Krajina area around

8 Knin. We had a discussion about this and I said: from

9 a military point of view -- and I think I can judge

10 these things reasonably well -- I believed that would

11 be an exceedingly difficult military operation. This

12 is very good defensive territory. We had a discussion

13 as to how difficult that operation would be. He told

14 me he believed he could do it in eight days at a loss

15 of no more than 1,000 on his side. I recall betting

16 him a bottle of Croat white wine to say it would

17 take him longer and cost him more.

18 We then went on to talk about his relations

19 with the other two leaders, that is, Mr. Izetbegovic on

20 the one hand and President Milosevic on the other. He

21 was very dismissive of President Izetbegovic, who he

22 regarded as "a fundamentalist and an Algerian" were his

23 words. I have it in my diary he used the word "wog" as

24 well but he found it much easier to do business with

25 President Milosevic. He said President Milosevic was,

1 in his words, one of us whereas President Izetbegovic

2 was not, and I recall him saying that the Muslims were,

3 after all, only Serbs and Croats who could not stand up

4 to the Turks during the days of the Ottoman empire.

5 I found this a truly extraordinary conversation.

6 Q. Could you turn to 275B and can you just place

7 that on the ELMO and tell the judges --

8 A. I returned home that night, dictated my diary

9 as I always do, and discussed this with my wife and

10 said what an extraordinary conversation I had had,

11 and,, in order to make sense of this map, the following

12 morning I had a photocopy made, and the rest of the

13 annotations on here are annotations of mine. In order

14 to make it clearer for me and my records, I have

15 actually marked in the names so: this is the Dalmatian

16 coastline, this is Zagreb, this is the spot where

17 Belgrade was marked. I have marked in Serbia -- all

18 the annotations, all the writing on the map is mine --

19 in order to make it clearer and easier for me to

20 understand I also marked the Xs around here which was

21 the line President Tudjman drew indicating the current

22 State of Bosnia. I thickened this S line, because that

23 was the key line. I only in fact thickened it to there

24 (indicates). That was a continuation of the line that

25 he drew here. I did not thicken it that far.

1 Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Ashdown. I have no

2 additional questions.

3 Mr. President, with the court's permission,

4 I would move into evidence, Prosecutor's exhibits 275A

5 and B.

6 MR. HAYMAN: No objection to 275A. I would

7 ask that 275B be held in reserve until I conclude my

8 cross-examination.

9 JUDGE JORDA: Excuse me, Mr. Hayman. I do

10 not know quite why you want us to wait. Are your

11 questions going to determine the relevance? This is a

12 question of identification at this point. I do not

13 really know why this would not be entered into the

14 record as an exhibit. The witness not only recognised

15 it -- he is the source.

16 MR. HAYMAN: The question is, are there

17 portions of it that are inaccurate. For example, the

18 top of the document states "Lines drawn by FT". The

19 witness has testified certain of the lines on the

20 document were drawn by him. I think we need to clarify

21 exactly what it is. It may well be we have no

22 objection to the document, but I cannot state that

23 I have no objection yet until I have had a chance to

24 question the witness.

25 JUDGE JORDA: Let me consult with my

1 colleagues for a moment.

2 (Pause).

3 JUDGE JORDA: The judges agree that this

4 document should be tendered as an exhibit and you can

5 now contest it as you like. Please begin your

6 cross-examination.

7 Cross-examined by Mr. Hayman

8 MR. HAYMAN: Good afternoon, Mr. Ashdown.

9 A. Good afternoon.

10 Q. Were you seated across from Dr Tudjman or

11 next to him?

12 A. Alongside him.

13 Q. Who else were seated adjacent to either one

14 of you, or rather both of you?

15 A. I recall that the Croat ambassador was

16 there or thereabouts, but I am afraid I cannot recall

17 his position precisely.

18 Q. Do you remember who was across the table from

19 you, or was it a very wide table?

20 A. It was not a very wide table as I recall. It

21 was a standard-wide dining table. This is four years

22 ago. I am reluctant as you will understand to extend

23 my memory further than my diary notes, but I cannot

24 recall who was opposite me -- if I recall, they were

25 other Croats, but I cannot be certain of that.

1 Q. Did anyone else besides yourself and

2 Dr Tudjman participate in this conversation you have

3 related?

4 A. Not this conversation, as I recall, but,

5 again, my memory, if you will forgive me beyond the

6 bits that are on my notes is -- it is four years ago --

7 a little hazy, but beyond what is in my notes, I do not

8 recall anybody else participating in this conversation.

9 Q. Can you tell the Trial Chamber how long this

10 exchange lasted -- the exchange you have related

11 involving the creation of the map; the drawing on the

12 menu is what I am referring to?

13 A. Mr. Hayman, that is really very difficult. It

14 was a long dinner, there were speeches. Clearly, we

15 talked about other matters as well. I mean, you know,

16 small talk, and I must have talked to the person on my

17 other side, but I would have said that this portion,

18 that is the interesting portion of the conversation

19 contained in the diary notes, would have been of the

20 order of 20 minutes, perhaps half an hour.

21 Q. And in what language did the two of you

22 converse?

23 A. English.

24 Q. Do you speak Serbo-Croat?

25 A. No.

1 Q. Did you ask Dr Tudjman to draw a map relating

2 to Bosnia, or relating to the Former Yugoslavia as a

3 whole?

4 A. I asked him to draw -- to tell me how he

5 believed the situation in the Former Yugoslavia,

6 particularly of course pertaining to -- since that was

7 the issue at the time, to the Bosnia and Herzegovina

8 area, but it was about the area of Former Yugoslavia in

9 this region.

10 Q. Could exhibit 275A be placed and illuminated

11 on the ELMO, please?

12 You indicated that you drew certain items on

13 this map --

14 A. Correct.

15 Q. -- to initiate the exchange, if you will; is

16 that right?

17 A. Correct.

18 Q. Now, do you see within the upper left-hand

19 quadrant, if you will, of the circle, that you have

20 described as, to your belief, constituting Bosnia and

21 Herzegovina, do you see that there appears to be an X,

22 a small B and a box?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. Can you tell us first of all -- did you draw

25 any of those three markings?

1 A. I drew, as I said in my diary notes -- I put

2 a cross for Zagreb. I drew these lines, I drew the

3 coastline, I put a cross for Zagreb, a cross for Banja

4 Luka and a cross for Sarajevo and, if I recall, a dot

5 for Belgrade.

6 Q. Where is the dot?

7 A. The dot will be under the cross, that is here

8 (indicates) on the map -- I annotated the map the

9 following day.

10 Q. Is it on exhibit 275A, the dot?

11 A. Let me have a look. No, I do not see -- well

12 -- I suspect it is this point here, but I cannot be

13 certain (indicates).

14 Q. I am sorry, you are referring to the

15 original?

16 A. I am referring --

17 Q. If you could place the original on the ELMO,

18 then we can follow. Do you see on the original banquet

19 menu the dot, which you have related as indicating

20 Belgrade?

21 A. Mr. Hayman, of course we are not dealing here

22 with a precise piece of cartography, as you will

23 understand, but there is in the middle of the crease of

24 the menu at the point of the arrow a dot, and I think

25 if you look at this, you will be able to see it. It is

1 just about there at the point of the arrow (indicates)

2 I suspect -- I would have placed my pen there and said:

3 let us assume Belgrade is there.

4 Q. Can you place -- I do not know if the ELMO

5 will hold both these documents, but could you put

6 exhibit 275B next to the original menu map so hopefully

7 we can see as much as possible -- that is fine -- thank

8 you to the technical booth. Can you indicate on 275B

9 where Belgrade is marked?

10 A. It is marked there (indicates).

11 Q. Would you agree that is a bit of a distance

12 from the crease on the original banquet menu?

13 A. Yes, Mr. Hayman, I would be happy to agree

14 that. Remember, that I was drawing a map from a

15 conversation the following day. Inevitably, this was

16 not intended as a map that would be subject to detailed

17 cross-examination in a court like this. If you look on

18 the original of the photocopy the following day, you

19 can quite clearly see that the Belgrade that I have

20 marked, unlike the other crosses -- the other crosses

21 are in black but the Belgrade is in my ink of the

22 following day.

23 Q. I take it, though, that Belgrade was denoted

24 with a circle in the course of the banquet dinner?

25 A. Belgrade was not denoted with a circle.

1 I recall if I remember putting -- I recall drawing the

2 -- it is very difficult four years later, but I recall

3 drawing the left-hand crosses and saying: let us assume

4 that Belgrade is there, and resting my pen. It did not

5 seem to me that the position of Belgrade, which

6 presumably would be reasonably well known and far away

7 from the conflict, was something that was of great

8 importance. The importance of this was Sarajevo and

9 Banja Luka.

10 Q. Is it fair to say the next morning you

11 improved the map by putting Belgrade in a location

12 where you thought it should be in relation to the other

13 elements of the map?

14 A. No, I did not improve the map. I annotated

15 the map in order that I had a decent recollection of

16 the conversation as it took place -- I believed that to

17 be accurate.

18 Q. So is it your testimony that you did or did

19 not mark in a visible manner with a pen at the banquet

20 the location of Belgrade, sir?

21 A. I marked it by putting my pen on the menu

22 card and leaving behind as I recall a dot, and, when I,

23 in some hurry, and I suppose quite roughly the

24 following morning, made annotations, I may well have

25 put Belgrade in a different place --

1 JUDGE JORDA: The Tribunal is sufficiently

2 informed on this point, Mr. Hayman. Move on, please.

3 I believe that the witness has already answered.

4 MR. HAYMAN: I think he has, Mr. President. I

5 do not have another question about where Belgrade came

6 from on exhibit 275B.

7 Q. If you could direct your attention to 275A,

8 Mr. Ashdown, and perhaps we could focus in on that

9 document and remove 275B for the moment so that it can

10 be seen more clearly. Next to the cross, which you

11 have said indicates Banja Luka, do you see a small B?

12 A. I do.

13 Q. And do you recall who made that notation?

14 A. I did.

15 Q. To indicate?

16 A. To indicate it was Banja Luka.

17 Q. The small box next to the B, did you make

18 that notation as well?

19 A. I really cannot remember, Mr. Hayman, who made

20 that notation. You must forgive me. I do not think

21 the box has any significance. We were discussing

22 things at dinner with plates being moved around, dishes

23 being served, glasses of wine being filled. It may

24 well be a pen inadvertently on this very historical

25 document made a mark it should not have done. I really

1 cannot remember.

2 Q. Was it a very relaxed setting at the dinner?

3 A. No, it was a formal state dinner in many

4 ways.

5 Q. Did Dr Tudjman enjoy the hospitality being

6 shown to him at the dinner?

7 A. I believe so.

8 Q. And he enjoyed the wine?

9 A. I believe so.

10 Q. And did you enjoy the wine as well?

11 A. I did enjoy the wine.

12 Q. Would you say he became perhaps somewhat

13 intoxicated in the course of the evening?

14 A. If I am blunt with you, I can remember saying

15 that -- I can remember finding the conversation so

16 fascinating that he -- his wine glass appeared to be

17 full for a good deal of the time, yes.

18 Q. Would you agree that he appeared to become

19 somewhat intoxicated in the course of the banquet?

20 A. Mr. Hayman, he is a Head of State. I do not

21 want to use words which would be insulting. Suffice it

22 to say I think he enjoyed himself.

23 Q. And you, did you feel somewhat the effects of

24 the wine in the course of the banquet?

25 A. I enjoyed myself as well, Mr. Hayman.

1 However, I am --

2 JUDGE JORDA: Gentlemen, gentlemen, let me

3 bring us back to serenity in these proceedings. I did

4 not think that we would make inferences about the state

5 of inebriation of a Head of State in this courtroom.

6 This was an official banquet, and there was excellent

7 wine there. Please move to the next question.

8 MR. HAYMAN: If you could direct your

9 attention to 275B, please. At the top someone has

10 written "Lines drawn by Franjo Tudjman"?

11 A. Yes, that is me -- I drew those -- I made

12 those two annotations at the top.

13 Q. Very well. I take it you do not mean to

14 suggest that you drew the far -- the line to the far

15 lower left-hand corner?

16 A. Excuse me?

17 Q. You do not mean to suggest that Dr. Tudjman

18 drew that line. You drew that line?

19 A. As my diary records at the time, I drew that

20 line. The other lines there -- as far as I was

21 concerned when I made that annotation, the interesting

22 lines on this map were drawn by Franjo Tudjman and not

23 by me.

24 Q. You see these large lines, one coming from

25 Banja Luka in the upper left-hand corner. If you go

1 all the way up the upper left-hand corner and find in

2 Banja Luka in Croatia, you see there is a line dropping

3 down from that?

4 A. This is an arrow.

5 Q. So that is not a line?

6 A. No, it is an indicator. If you have a look

7 and see what -- I have done the annotations with an

8 arrow to indicate what they are indicating.

9 Q. All the arrows were not lines and they were

10 not drawn by Dr. Tudjman, they were drawn by you; is

11 that correct?

12 A. That is correct.

13 Q. With respect to the S and the division, did

14 Dr. Tudjman in your discussions say that there would be

15 a Croat Federation?

16 A. No. You will see that he drew very clearly

17 the two arrows, and I said, "What is this side?" He

18 drew an arrow and said: that is Serbia. I said: and

19 what is this side. He drew an arrow and he said: that

20 is Croatia. He said that the Muslim State, Bosnian

21 State, would not exist; it would be an insignificant

22 part, as I recall -- my diary notes -- an insignificant

23 part of the Croat Federation.

24 Q. Of the Croat Federation. What did you

25 understand that to be referring to, the Croat

1 Federation?

2 A. Well, I meant that it would be -- what would

3 be essentially Croatia with a dominant Croatia in

4 control.

5 Q. Not part of the Republic of Croatia, but some

6 element of territory in some Federal or federation

7 relationship with Croatia, perhaps?

8 A. The words in my diary are the ones that

9 I would wish to fall back on here, because they are

10 exactly what he said as I recall them. He said they

11 would be an insignificant part of the Croat Federation.

12 Q. My focus is on "Croat Federation" and whether

13 he told you that the Croat Federation would be in

14 federation with Croatia, or in federation with other

15 component parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina?

16 A. I got it absolutely clearly that it would be

17 in federation with Croatia. As far as I was concerned,

18 this was going to be -- the impression I got was this

19 would be Greater Croatia.

20 Q. Did he say that to you -- that was your

21 impression. Did he say that?

22 A. No, he did not say that, Mr. Hayman, as

23 I recall, but I think the arrow and the indication

24 shows perfectly clearly that he sees two elements here,

25 a Serb element and a Croat element, and that

1 Croat element would be of a single unitary nature

2 and it would be with Croatia.

3 Q. Did he refer to those elements as cultural in

4 nature, or as constituting a State, one State on each

5 side of the S, or did he not specify, sir?

6 A. He only referred to it -- I mean cultural

7 I suppose, Mr. Hayman, and I am trying -- this is a

8 dinner-table conversation -- the only indication

9 that I would have had that he saw that as being

10 cultural, was that there was a very strong racist

11 overtone in his approach to Muslims, and I think he

12 regarded the Muslim element as an inferior element, who

13 basically did not matter in the outcome; they were

14 going to be part of Croatia. The only cultural element

15 I can think of was in his very insulting, almost racist

16 approach, to Muslims.

17 Q. But I take it he did not specify beyond that?

18 A. No.

19 Q. Whether he was referring to Croat

20 territory as culturally Croat, or being inhabited by

21 ethnic Croats versus part of the Croat State, that

22 is, the Republic of Croatia?

23 A. No, the significant point was that he said

24 that he regarded the Muslims as having a very small

25 part to play and of no significance and this was a

1 matter between himself and President Milosevic. This

2 was going to be settled as between Croatia and Serbia

3 and I got the firm view, in the conversation, that this

4 was an already done deal, that this was an agreement.

5 I mean, we all, of course, know that there is

6 some suspicion about such a deal being in existence and

7 the famous Tito Hunting Lodge Agreement. The clear

8 indication I got was the result of the offensive that

9 would be launched at or around August or September of

10 that year would be in settlement of the outstanding

11 Bosnian/Muslim problem and that settlement would be a

12 division between Croatia on the one hand and Serbia on

13 the other. I can draw no other conclusion but that

14 conclusion from the two arrows that are drawn on the

15 map and indeed from his conversation.

16 Q. Well, he told you, did he not, that he would

17 launch a military action to retake the Krajina in the

18 late summer or fall of 1995; correct?

19 A. As I recall, he linked this to the end of the

20 UN mandate, and of course, at that time, the UN mandate

21 would have been known to end around about the end of

22 the summer -- at all events, the following morning when

23 I got my diary notes back -- and I always ask for my

24 diary notes back -- they are typed by my secretary -- I

25 entered into the diary that he told me that, quite

1 bluntly, at the end of the UN mandate, they would then

2 take the Knin/Krajina probably in August or September.

3 When that subsequently happened, I felt it was right

4 and proper to make sure this conversation and this map

5 was released into the public domain, because I wanted

6 the international community to know what I believed his

7 intentions were, how they had been pre-planned.

8 I believe it is fair to say, by so doing, we may well

9 have limited the achievement of those ambitions.

10 Q. To return to my question for a moment, he

11 told you then that he intended, when the UN mandate

12 expired in the Krajina, to retake the Krajina by force

13 with the Croat military -- correct?

14 A. That was the indication.

15 Q. In fact, that subject was the subject of a

16 wager between the two of you?

17 A. It was.

18 Q. Did he tell you, at any time during the

19 dinner, that he planned to undertake a military action

20 to take any part of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

21 A. No, he did not say that, but it must be

22 perfectly clear from the map that he drew, because the

23 clear implication was that the Krajina operation was

24 the first stage of an operation to bring about the

25 situation which he described when he drew the map.

1 Q. That was the inference you drew; is that

2 right?

3 A. That was the inference I drew. My own

4 military experience tells me that, when you start these

5 things, it is best to continue, especially if you are

6 on the kind of roll he thought he was going to be on.

7 Q. Is it your testimony that, when you left the

8 banquet, you believed some kind of agreement between

9 Tudjman and Milosevic was in place -- was that your

10 belief at the time?

11 A. That was never discussed, but it was my

12 belief that this was the fulfilment of an

13 understanding as between President Tudjman and

14 President Milosevic. I concluded that, if he was

15 serious about retaking the Krajina, then it would have

16 been impossible for him to do so, militarily, without

17 extraordinary loss of life and huge military campaigns,

18 unless there had been a tacit understanding about the

19 release of the Knin Krajina.

20 Q. Are you stating you believe there was a deal

21 regarding the Krajina or a deal involving

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina?

23 A. The deal is the map. The deal is the S on

24 the map -- that is the deal.

25 Q. Did you believe that that deal existed when

1 you left the banquet?

2 A. I left -- I left believing that such a deal

3 was likely to be in existence. I have no proof of it

4 but I left believing that that was a strong

5 probability.

6 Q. Now, you got your typed notes back fairly

7 shortly?

8 A. Yes. I mean, forgive me, I cannot remember

9 exactly how long, but the normal routine is I will

10 dictate my diary on the night. Very, very occasionally

11 I will do it the following night but within usually a

12 few hours -- I dictate them at the end of the day, they

13 are given to my secretary, they are typed up. I would

14 have had these back within I suppose six days,

15 something like that. That would be the normal --

16 Q. When you got the notes back, and you of

17 course had your map, did you believe you were in

18 possession of information potentially of diplomatic or

19 intelligence significance?

20 A. No, I could not believe that it was likely

21 that what President Tudjman said he was going to do he

22 would actually do. I had a document which I regarded

23 as being of historical information, but I would not go

24 further than that.

25 Q. Would you agree that, at the time, in June of

1 1995, it was a matter of public record that President

2 Tudjman and the Republic of Croatia took the position

3 that, unless there was a political agreement by autumn,

4 Croatia would launch a military campaign to recover the

5 occupied areas of Croatia, where rebels had proclaimed

6 a breakaway republic of the Serb Krajina -- would

7 you agree that was a matter of public record at the

8 time?

9 A. Mr. Hayman, forgive me, I cannot either agree

10 or disagree to that. I do not recall such a matter

11 being in the public record at the time. You must

12 forgive me. My recollection -- my recall of what

13 happened in June and precise chronology beyond that is

14 not something I can comment on here.

15 Q. Did you think the information you had

16 received regarding a military intention to launch an

17 action in the Krajina was something confidential, or

18 information that was not in the public domain at the

19 time you received it in June 1995?

20 A. Well, received it in May, but --

21 Q. Excuse me, yes?

22 A. I did not believe the information he gave me

23 was in the public domain, no. I certainly did not

24 believe that.

25 Q. I take it, in May, you did not release the

1 map or grant any interviews?

2 A. No.

3 Q. What caused you to change your mind and

4 release this information to the news media?

5 A. As I believe I have already said, it was the

6 fulfilment of what President Tudjman had told me, and

7 the Serb assault on the Krajina in, I think I am right

8 in saying, 6th or 7th August of that year, and as

9 I watched that unfold, and I watched indeed the Croat

10 troops taking Knin, which is something I thought they

11 could not do without huge loss, I became very concerned

12 indeed that what I was seeing was the de facto

13 partitioning of this area between Croatia and Serbia

14 and I believed it therefore right that I should place

15 the information that I had in the public domain,

16 because I believed that would be one way of alerting

17 the international community about what President

18 Tudjman's intentions were, and I think it is fair to

19 say, given the reaction to that, that it may well be

20 that certain members of the international community

21 were alerted to his ambitions as a result of that, and

22 that they were not therefore fulfilled.

23 Q. I take it the Croat military did not enter

24 Bosnia Herzegovina as a part of Operation Storm -- is

25 that right?

1 A. I am sorry, Mr. Hayman, I really cannot

2 comment on that. I do not know whether they entered

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina or not at that stage.

4 Q. Do you have any information suggesting that

5 they did?

6 A. None at all, but I do not have any

7 information suggesting they do not. I am not an expert

8 on exactly how far they got on that operation. Well,

9 I can --

10 Q. When you granted these interviews in August

11 of 1995, how many interviews did you grant?

12 A. Well, as I recall, I considered the best way

13 to try and release this, and I believed it was best to

14 try and release it as an exclusive to The Times

15 newspaper, and I suppose that parlance is "leaked" it

16 to The Times newspaper, as a result of which I was

17 asked to do some interviews, and I did them. I really

18 cannot recall how many. I do not think they were --

19 I can do 8 or 10 interviews a day quite often if the

20 story is a big one. I do not think there were as many

21 as that.

22 Q. In one of those interviews, were you asked,

23 if you believed there was a secret deal between Croatia

24 and Serbia with the ultimate aim of carving up Bosnia

25 and did you reply, "I do not know. All I do know is

1 that what President Tudjman told me at that dinner has

2 proved to be accurate so far"?

3 A. I really cannot remember how I responded to

4 every question that was asked. It would not, however,

5 be unreasonable -- I mean, if I am to make a public

6 statement about a private suspicion, you can sometimes

7 get yourself into a position where you have to justify

8 that in very precise and very detailed terms. It is

9 one thing to have a private suspicion about something.

10 It is another to voice that private suspicion in a very

11 public way. So, it could be that I answered in those

12 terms. It would not in any way diminish the strength

13 of my private suspicion about such a deal being in

14 existence.

15 Q. Do you agree with the statement, "I do not

16 think the map should be seen as a plan or an

17 intention. Maybe it is only a prediction" -- do you

18 agree with that statement with respect to the map from

19 the dinner?

20 A. When this map was drawn, I saw this as a

21 prediction, yes.

22 Q. And even in August of 1995, after Operation

23 Storm had been launched, would you still have agreed

24 with the statement that the map should not be seen as a

25 plan or an intention?

1 A. I think it is perfectly possible for this to

2 have been a prediction of a further operation beyond

3 Operation Storm, so I do not have any difficulty about

4 that statement. Operation Storm may well have been one

5 which was confined for instance to the Krajina, but

6 I certainly believed if that was going to succeed that

7 was at least the first element of something that may

8 have gone further.

9 Q. If an article, Mr. President, could be

10 provided to the witness, there is a French translation

11 of it as well for the record -- this is a Press

12 Association news file story dated 7 August 1995,

13 headlined "I Saw Bosnia Carve-up Map says Ashdown".

14 (Handed).

15 It is fairly short, I think, Mr. Ashdown. We

16 should give you a chance to read it quickly, with an

17 emphasis on the bottom half of the one-paragraph story?

18 A. Fine.

19 Q. Do you recall making statements in substance

20 equivalent to these in the course of the interviews you

21 gave in August of 1995?

22 A. To be honest, Mr. Hayman, I do not recall it

23 but I have no reason to believe it inaccurate.

24 Q. Do you agree with the statements attributed

25 to you herein?

1 A. I have no reason to believe the statement is

2 inaccurate.

3 Q. As you sit here today?

4 A. Absolutely. Nor is it inconsistent, it seems

5 to me, with what I believed was then under way.

6 I wanted people to know. One of the purposes as

7 I quite clearly say here is to ensure that the Krajina

8 operation, if it were to go further -- and I had reason

9 to believe it might have done -- if it were to go

10 further was to make sure it did not step into Bosnia.

11 Q. And that was your purpose?

12 A. My purpose --

13 Q. Excuse me -- that was your purpose in leaking

14 the map, providing the map, and granting interviews;

15 correct?

16 A. Mr. Hayman, my purpose was to alert the

17 international community to what I believed were the

18 intentions, long or short term, of President Tudjman

19 based on the information he gave me at that dinner and

20 on the map.

21 Q. Again, if exhibit 275B could be placed on the

22 ELMO, it may still be up there. If so, if the ELMO

23 could be activated. B is the map including

24 annotations.

25 I take it that it was your understanding from

1 this map that everything to the right of the S would be

2 ceded to Serbia as part of an agreement between Croatia

3 and Serbia; is that right?

4 A. Mr. Hayman, I can go no further than the words

5 I have used to you. I can only tell you that President

6 Tudjman drew the S along with the other lines I have

7 talked about. I concluded from the conversation that

8 he regarded everything to the left of that map as

9 Greater Croatia, and everything to the right of that

10 map, as, as it were, Greater Serbia. My private

11 suspicion, strong private suspicion, at the time was

12 that that conversation and this map indicated -- I will

13 not go any further -- that there was a possibility of

14 an agreement between them.

15 Q. Directing your attention to 275B, is there a

16 portion to the north, if you will, or to the upper part

17 of the page, from the boundary of Bosnia and

18 Herzegovina?

19 A. Here (indicates)?

20 Q. Yes, namely Territory of the Republic of

21 Croatia, that is within the right-hand portion of the

22 S?

23 A. You must forgive me, Mr. Hayman, I am not yet

24 terribly clear exactly what your question is.

25 Q. In other words, above, if you will, the

1 barbed wire line?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. But below and to the right of the heavy S,

4 the top of the S, there is a slice of territory;

5 correct?

6 A. You mean in this area here (indicates)?

7 Q. Correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And your understanding of the map is that

10 that territory would constitute part of Greater Serbia;

11 correct?

12 A. Yes, I mean I will tell you how I believe it

13 to be. Do please remember this is not an Ordnance

14 Survey map; this is a map written at a dinner. As

15 I recall it, I would have seen this as being the line

16 of the Savja River here, and the area between the Savja

17 River and the barbed wire as being the Posavina

18 corridor, with Brcko about here. It does not actually

19 match up with the map, because we all know perfectly

20 well that the Savja River is the line of the Bosnian

21 border and the barbed wire is the line of the Bosnian

22 border. This was a minor inaccuracy in what I think is

23 the main point of this map, which is the line of the S

24 drawn in relation to Greater Serbia and Greater

25 Croatia.

1 Q. Did you ask Dr. Tudjman about that piece of

2 territory?

3 A. No. The important point was not have we got

4 this cartographically absolutely perfect -- the

5 important point was that in this map there was no place

6 for Bosnia and a minor place for Muslims in what

7 I regarded to be a Greater Croatia.

8 Q. Would you agree that, if the barbed wire line

9 is the boundary of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then the

10 territory --

11 A. To the north of it?

12 Q. To the north of it constitutes, in part at

13 least, the area of Western Slavonia and Eastern

14 Slavonia, which is within the Republic of Croatia?

15 A. Correct, I agree with that, but I do not

16 think the map was that accurate. I took this line here

17 of the S to be the line of the Savjo River. This was

18 written -- drawn by a man who had had a couple or three

19 glasses of wine, and was enjoying a good dinner, and I

20 do not suppose that the precise position of the Savja

21 River and the precise position of the Bosnian border

22 was necessarily known to him. It was not an issue we

23 discussed. The important point of this map is: how

24 does it divide up Bosnia and what does it do to the

25 Muslim community.

1 Q. It is fair to say then the map was hastily

2 drawn?

3 A. It is perfectly fair to say. You do not have

4 to be a brain surgeon to look at this map and to know

5 that it was hastily drawn.

6 Q. And that there was no discussion concerning

7 exactly what was what, other than the arrows you have

8 indicated, such as the territory which appears to be

9 Western and Eastern Slavonia on this map?

10 A. My diary notes at the time said this, "He

11 took his pen and drew a broad S-shaped line starting in

12 Slavonia and then running along the lines of the Savja

13 River" -- that is why I presume this is the line of the

14 Savja River, which is the Bosnian/Croat border, and

15 then along the lines -- "including Tuzla and then back

16 to the east of Sarajevo", down here, "and back to the

17 sea", so that is what -- that is my diary note. "I drew

18 the coast in for him, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, then

19 left the rest to him. He took his pen and drew a broad

20 S-shaped line starting in Slavonia" up here "and

21 running along the lines of the Savja River" which is

22 the Bosnia Croat border "including Tuzla", so Tuzla was

23 here, "including Tuzla, east of Sarajevo, and then down

24 to the sea". I think that is pretty clear.

25 Q. At the time, did the Serbs hold Slavonia,

1 that is, they held that portion of Croatia?

2 A. The Serbs, at the time, if I recall held West

3 Slavonia -- I beg your pardon.

4 Q. Vukovar, did they hold Vukovar?

5 A. If I recall -- forgive me, I cannot remember

6 at that time what the Serbs held and what they did not

7 hold.

8 Q. So at least, with respect to the top of the

9 S, the map more accurately reflects what land was then

10 held by the Serbs -- it accurately reflected that with

11 respect to territories within the Republic of Croatia?

12 A. I am sorry, I do not understand -- I do not

13 understand your question, Mr. Hayman.

14 Q. I will ask another one.

15 A. Let me see if I can clarify absolutely.

16 I took this to be (indicates) the Savja River, this

17 point here. I took this area here, the line between

18 the barbed wire, as you put it, and the Savja River was

19 what you and I both know is the Posavina corridor, with

20 Brcko at one side and that seemed to be a reflection of

21 what was the position on the ground.

22 Q. With respect to the northern part of the

23 boundary, which is marked as "Present

24 Bosnia-Herzegovina border" --

25 A. Yes, if you are asking me: was there anything

1 indicated in our conversation that there was a deal for

2 the Krajina on the one hand and Eastern Slavonia on

3 the other, I do not believe anything in our

4 conversation indicated that deal.

5 Q. In fact, you would agree it would be

6 preposterous to suggest that Croatia would deal

7 away --

8 A. No, I do not.

9 Q. -- Eastern Slavonia?

10 A. You must forgive me, I do not agree with that

11 at all. We all know that that is reported to be the

12 current Karadordevo exchange. I know that and you know

13 that. All I can tell you is the bit we were talking

14 about at the time was perfectly consistent with, as it

15 were, the Bosnian element of what is reported to be the

16 Hunting Lodge Agreement. And, you know, if it is the

17 case that, for instance, Serbia at that stage was

18 prepared -- I grant you that is contentious -- to give

19 up the Knin and the Krajina -- and, looking at the

20 military operation, one has to conclude they did not

21 fight very hard for it at the time -- then it seems to

22 be perfectly possible that there could have been an

23 exchange along the lines you suggest.

24 Q. And this map would dictate such an exchange;

25 correct?

1 A. No, I do not go any further than this map

2 showed me what he told me that night in respect of

3 Bosnia and the division of Bosnia. We did not talk

4 about Eastern Slavonia at the time as I recall it.

5 Q. You would agree we know as we sit here today

6 that Eastern Slavonia was not ceded to Serbia as part

7 of any deal or agreement; correct?

8 A. Whether you know that, or whether you do not,

9 there are those who have a view that it may well have

10 been part of the plan. But all I can tell you is what

11 this map tells me about what happened that night, and

12 it is exclusively concentrated on the area of Bosnia,

13 and in particular the positions of the Muslims.

14 Q. Would you agree that Eastern Slavonia is

15 part of Croatia today?

16 MR. HARMON: I would object to additional

17 questions about Eastern Slavonia. The witness has

18 testified repeatedly what this map represents and what

19 his understanding of the map is.

20 JUDGE JORDA: I think that is a valid

21 objection, Mr. Hayman. You are emphasising a great deal

22 on that point even though the witness is telling you

23 what he saw, what he talked about, about the map.

24 I think he said it already.

25 MR. HAYMAN: Did you write in your notes, the

1 evening of the dinner, that it was clear to you what

2 the game plan was? "He", presumably referring to

3 Dr. Tudjman, "will try and come to some kind of an

4 agreement with the Serbs as soon as they have taken

5 militarily as much as they can from each other."

6 A. I do not know where you are quoting on that.

7 Q. This is the second line of the last full

8 paragraph.

9 A. It is perfectly clear -- yes, fine, that was

10 my recollection at the time, yes.

11 Q. In other words, that there was no agreement,

12 but that you thought there might be an intention to

13 reach an agreement after the Croats and the Serbs had

14 battled to a standstill; is that correct?

15 A. I think that the line he drew was a line

16 which he believed would produce -- whether by agreement

17 or not -- an acceptable position for both sides, that

18 is, Croatia -- Greater Croatia on the one hand and

19 Greater Serbia on the other, which would allow them

20 adequately and with satisfaction on both sides to

21 divide up the territory of Bosnia.

22 Q. But you came away from the dinner,

23 Mr. Ashdown, believing that there was no such agreement

24 in existence at that time; correct?

25 A. I came away from the dinner exactly as I have

1 said, strongly suspecting that such an agreement could

2 well be in existence.

3 Q. But that is not what you dictated in your

4 notes that night; correct?

5 A. That is not what I have dictated here, but

6 that is what I believed at the time.

7 Q. Since the dinner, after you made your

8 annotations, did you send a copy of the map to

9 Dr. Tudjman -- has he seen it again?

10 A. No.

11 Q. Have you talked to him since?

12 A. No.

13 Q. Did you take an intense disliking to

14 Dr. Tudjman in the course of the dinner?

15 A. I cannot say I find him a very pleasant man,

16 no.

17 Q. And that is how you felt at the time?

18 A. That is how I felt at the time. Yes, that is

19 how I felt at the time, and -- yes.

20 Q. If the usher could assist, Mr. President.

21 This is an English language news article consisting of

22 two pages, if it could be provided to the witness,

23 dated 10th June 1995, The Financial Times, London,

24 headline "Croat Threat of New War Against Serbs".

25 It is two pages -- there should be a second page. You

1 have two pages front and back on your copies: if

2 I could direct your attention to the third and fourth

3 paragraphs from the bottom of the first page beginning:

4 "In Croatia, rebel Serb aircraft..." I will read it

5 so we can have a sight translation; my apologies to the

6 translating booths:

7 "In Croatia rebel Serb aircraft --"

8 JUDGE JORDA: Tell us the context of this

9 article.

10 MR. HAYMAN: This was about five weeks after

11 the dinner, prior to the witness's decision in August

12 to share his experience, his encounter with the news

13 media, so it is during the intervening time period.

14 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you.

15 MR. HAYMAN: Reading the third and fourth

16 paragraphs from the bottom:

17 "In Croatia, rebel Serb aircraft bombed Croat

18 positions, and President Franjo Tudjman threatened to

19 recover control of all Serb-controlled areas of his

20 republic by force.

21 He said that unless there was a political

22 agreement by autumn, he would launch a military

23 campaign to recover the occupied areas of Croatia,

24 where rebels have proclaimed a breakaway `republic of

25 the Serb Krajina'."

1 My question for you, Mr. Ashdown, is: with

2 respect to Dr. Tudjman's comments of a political

3 offensive in the Krajina, are they in substance the

4 same as those related in the paragraphs I have read?

5 A. You are asking me for an opinion, Mr. Hayman.

6 You know, I really am not able -- I am able to give you

7 the conversation I had with him and the conclusions

8 I reached. I am really not able -- you must forgive me

9 -- I do not regard myself to be an expert of this

10 period and what went on there -- to give an opinion

11 about a Financial Times article published a month later

12 which I have not seen until now. Whether or not this

13 represents an accurate report, for instance, of what

14 happened at the time, or accurate intentions, I really

15 cannot, I am afraid, comment.

16 Q. Your decision to release the map, share it,

17 whatever, was motivated by your concerns at the time of

18 Operation Storm. Do you recall whether at the same

19 time you were receiving information that a military

20 build-up around Eastern Slavonia was occurring with

21 respect to some approximately 150 Serb tanks as well as

22 Croat military elements?

23 A. Forgive me, Mr. Hayman, I just cannot recall

24 such information. There were reports and

25 counter-reports and lots of them all over that period.

1 It may or may not have been the case that I noted such

2 information but I cannot recall whether I did or not.

3 What I saw was -- what I saw was, it seemed to me, a

4 prediction made by President Tudjman now coming true

5 before my eyes.

6 MR. HARMON: I am going to object to this line

7 of questioning. The questioning which was taken by the

8 Prosecutor on direct examination was very focused,

9 particularly about a dinner conversation. We are now

10 going into the military history of various campaigns in

11 the Former Yugoslavia, and I would object.

12 MR. HAYMAN: The issue, Mr. President --

13 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Hayman, I sustain the

14 objection. This witness was called by the Prosecution

15 to speak about what happened at a banquet on 6th May

16 1995. He said everything that he knows about the

17 dinner. If you are asking questions to see to what

18 extent the information he is bringing about that

19 conversation might relate to the proceedings relating

20 to the Defence and Croatia's position, that is

21 something that the judges do understand, but we cannot

22 get into a Chief of Staff conference in order to know

23 whether he could know this or he could know that.

24 This is somebody who was at a banquet, with

25 Mr. Tudjman. Perhaps you could move to another

1 question. Having said this, you have shown a

2 document. I would like us to complete the questioning

3 about that document, but quickly, please.

4 MR. HAYMAN: Your Honour, I will withdraw the

5 document, but I would ask, if I am not allowed to go

6 beyond matters of fact, then expert opinions and

7 political opinions and military opinions that the

8 witness has given should be stricken, because he was

9 not a fact witness; he did not limit himself to matters

10 of fact that he personally experienced. That is the

11 reason that we find it necessary to ask him about, for

12 example, the logic or lack of logic of a deal involving

13 Eastern Slavonia, which I have left.

14 JUDGE JORDA: With all the respect that

15 I have for the Defence's position, Mr. Hayman, I do not

16 quite agree with you. In this trial, like in all

17 trials, there is a witness who is called by one of the

18 parties -- called on a very specific point, Mr. Harmon,

19 and that is why we ask for a resume before the witness

20 comes in. The summary was very clear. The

21 cross-examination must be limited to the main points of

22 the examination-in-chief.

23 It is natural for you to try to show to what

24 extent the credibility of the opinion expressed by the

25 witness can be tested and you must recognise that the

1 judges have shown a great deal of latitude on this

2 point. Please, complete what you have to ask about

3 that point. I am not trying to stop you from asking

4 questions, but you have to understand that we have been

5 dealing with this political issue for a long time --

6 whether this is fiction or not, but we cannot say that

7 this person played an active role in the politics of

8 that area. If you could please finish quickly and then

9 move to another question, thank you.

10 MR. HAYMAN: If I may have a moment,

11 Mr. President. (Pause).

12 Mr. President, there are a few items that

13 I think should be covered in closed session --

14 sensitive items which the witness has said are

15 sensitive, and we respect that, and, beyond that and

16 offering I believe one or two articles that I have

17 tendered, I have no further questions in open session.

18 MR. HARMON: Mr. President, I have one question

19 on redirect examination.

20 Re-examination by MR. HARMON.

21 MR. HARMON: If you would refer to your diary

22 note, Mr. Hayman he read a certain portion of a sentence

23 starting on the second paragraph from the bottom second

24 line. Mr. Hayman read the following portion to you:

25 "He will try to come to some kind of

1 agreement with the Serbs as soon as they have taken

2 militarily as much as they can from each other."

3 Can you read the remainder of that sentence,

4 the rest of that sentence that Mr. Hayman did not read?

5 A. "Then they will both turn on the Muslims and

6 wipe them out."

7 MR. HARMON: Thank you, I have no additional

8 questions.

9 JUDGE JORDA: I would like to ask your

10 opinion, Mr. Harmon, about the issue of the private

11 session. As far as I am concerned, I thought that we

12 had completed this testimony.

13 MR. HARMON: It is hard for me to comment on

14 points that the Defence counsel wishes to raise with

15 the Chamber. I thought we had concluded as well but

16 I think counsel, if he has some points that he needs to

17 raise with the Chamber, should raise those points and

18 perhaps if they are sensitive enough, they should be

19 raised in closed session.

20 MR. HAYMAN: I can do so in private session,

21 Mr. President. I do not think there is any need to

22 lower the blinds. I think it will be brief.

23 (Pause)

24 JUDGE JORDA: The Trial Chamber has agreed

25 to a private session for the few questions which have

1 to supplement the cross-examination.

2 Mr. Registrar, could have we have a private

3 session arranged, but quickly, Mr. Hayman.

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13 (Open session)

14 JUDGE JORDA: I think that the

15 examination-in-chief and cross-examination are now

16 completed. I would like to turn to my colleagues.

17 JUDGE RIAD: Good afternoon, Mr. Ashdown?

18 A. Good afternoon, sir.

19 Q. You had this opportunity of having an

20 uninhibited dialogue with Dr. Tudjman, and perhaps the

21 flow of wine made it vino veritas. Perhaps you can

22 help me understand more of the concrete implication of

23 some of the statements, and of the map. Could you

24 agree that this map is just an indication that Bosnia

25 should not exist any more?

1 A. I believe that is what he meant. I am sure

2 President Tudjman is extremely used to banquets and

3 indeed I am. Alcohol is not unknown in these matters.

4 I still believe that he was reflecting perfectly

5 accurately, perfectly sanely, and perfectly logically

6 what his intentions were and what he believed was the

7 answer that he felt most accurate to the question

8 that I put to him, which is: how do you see

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina in 10 years' time, and his answer

10 was, basically, it will not exist.

11 Q. Cut it into half and each one -- Serbia and

12 Croatia will annex what they have won?

13 A. That, sir, is the clear implication of the

14 map and the conclusion that I reached that night, yes.

15 Q. Now, did he in one way or another indicate

16 what he would do with the citizens, with the Bosniaks,

17 where will he send them, what will he do with them?

18 A. No, he did not. He said he believed the

19 Muslims would be a very small and insignificant part of

20 the Croat State, but there was no indication in what

21 he said that he was intending genocide or anything like

22 that. I am not saying that that would not have been

23 actions that his subordinates might have taken, but he

24 gave me no indications along those lines, but he

25 certainly showed an attitude to the Muslim community,

1 which I regarded to be -- well, it is a very strong

2 word to use, but which I regarded to be racist.

3 Q. I beg your pardon?

4 A. Which I regarded to be racist -- it is a

5 strong word, but, I think not an inaccurate --

6 Q. You said he said clearly that "Milosevic is

7 one of us"?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. But "Izetbegovic is not one of us"?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. This must not only have applied to Milosevic;

12 it must have applied to his people, too, or Izetbegovic

13 as a person?

14 A. I do not think he showed any particular love

15 or regard for Mr. Izetbegovic as a person, but I am

16 bound to say that his general comments seemed to me to

17 indicate that his approach to this was one based rather

18 more on race than individuals.

19 Q. On race?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. And he thought that this race does not

22 constitute part of the nation -- they are not part of

23 this territory?

24 A. Yes, if I may read it to you, I think the

25 most interesting comment was: "The Muslims are, after

1 all, only Serbs and Croats who were too weak to stand

2 up to the Turks and the Ottoman Empire.". I think that

3 gives the very clear indication of the fact that he

4 believed that Bosnia was a strange creation which ought

5 not to have existed and really what we are talking

6 about is Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia.

7 Q. He did not indicate what he would do with

8 these foreign element?

9 A. They would be simply an insignificant part of

10 the Croat Federation, by which I took him to mean

11 the Greater Croat Federation.

12 JUDGE SHAHABUDDEEN: Mr. Ashdown, as you

13 mentioned in the course of your career, you have sat at

14 many dinner parties and you have acquired experience of

15 people speaking in circumstances in which wine was

16 flowing. Would I be understanding you correctly to say

17 that, in the course of that experience, you yourself

18 have retained your ability to judge the words spoken or

19 things said or done, whether they represent the

20 considered views of your interlocutor or represent the

21 influence of alcohol?

22 A. As I am sure you are aware, both the life of

23 a politician and the life of a diplomat revolve a good

24 deal on having private conversations which are off the

25 record but which are nevertheless regarded as very

1 revealing, because they show intention. I must have

2 done this now professionally -- by which I take my role

3 as a diplomat and as a politician -- for 25 years now.

4 It is usually the case that such conversations take

5 place over dinner and sometimes over lunch. It is

6 normally the case that alcohol will be present.

7 It is also the case that your professional

8 ability and standing depends on you making appropriate

9 judgements as to whether what you have been told is the

10 truth or not. In many previous circumstances similarly

11 as a diplomat I will have sat next door to Heads of

12 State, senior other diplomats, at long dinners which

13 have included a certain consumption of alcohol and had

14 to write telegrams home the following day, upon which

15 my Government would have, at that time, determined

16 foreign policy and certain aspects.

17 This was to me an event both in terms of its

18 nature, and in terms of its alcohol consumption, since

19 that is a point that seems to be of some importance,

20 and in terms of -- the nature of the private

21 conversation is one I am well used to. I think it

22 would be fair to say of all the private conversations I

23 have had in these circumstances, this must rank amongst

24 the most historically interesting, as far as I am

25 concerned, but this is not an unusual experience for me

1 over the last 25 or 30 years.

2 Q. Should the court take it that, in the

3 judgement which you made at the time, the lines drawn by

4 President Tudjman and the things which he said about

5 the likely shape of the political geography of the area

6 in 10 years' time represented his views?

7 A. I believe they represented both his

8 considered views and his hopes.

9 Q. Thank you.

10 JUDGE JORDA: I would like to ask two

11 questions of the witness.

12 The first has to do with the map that you

13 drew -- I think this is a question that was already

14 asked -- excuse me for asking it again but I want

15 further clarification. Do you think that what was

16 reserved for the Muslims was part of a Croat/Muslim

17 Federation or did you think that it was really a

18 cutting up of Bosnia, that Bosnia would no longer exist

19 and that there would be a Greater Croatia? I believe

20 you answered the question but, excuse me, I would like

21 for my own sake, to form an opinion about what you

22 said?

23 A. Yes, Mr. President, I take that firm view,

24 that what we were talking about here was a Greater

25 Croatia, and a Greater Serbia. It was not about a

1 Bosniak Federation as between Bosnia and Herzegovina,

2 or the Muslims and the Croats. It was a Greater

3 Croatia and a Greater Serbia and I believe, sir, that

4 that is quite clearly indicated on the map by the two

5 arrows -- the two arrows -- I do not know if I can

6 actually use this -- the two arrows here (indicates)

7 these are arrows which extend well beyond the borders

8 of the Krajina into Croatia and on this side clearly

9 beyond the borders of Bosnia, the border of Bosnia

10 being indicated by what Mr. Hayman called the barbed

11 wire. I took it --

12 JUDGE JORDA: Are you the one who put the

13 arrows in?

14 A. No, these two arrows were drawn by President

15 Tudjman, and it is very clear from that that in fact

16 what he saw was a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia.

17 Q. Thank you, you were very clear. My second

18 question has to do with the way you managed this secret

19 or at least this diplomatic confidence. Rest assured

20 that I am not speaking about the quantity or quality of

21 the wine that was or was not served at that dinner, but

22 I would like to ask why you did not speak about this to

23 the official authorities of your country.

24 You felt that it was very important --

25 I think John Major was the Prime Minister at the time

1 -- that you did not go to speak to the Minister of

2 Foreign Affairs. You are a politician, you know many

3 people, you are familiar with the territory, but in the

4 end you chose to go to the media to speak about what

5 you were present at, whereas you yourself said it was

6 of a significance which appeared to you to be at that

7 time to be historical, but you did not rush to speak to

8 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or to John Major and

9 say -- I do not want to say 'scoop', but "I have

10 information which is very important." Perhaps it is a

11 question which is not discreet and if you find it to be

12 indiscreet, please do not answer it?

13 A. Mr. President, I apologise, but I have to give

14 you a somewhat equivocal answer here. I seem to

15 recollect, and please forgive me for not being able to

16 be clear about it but I will be able to be clear after,

17 I seem to recollect that I did consider this

18 conversation sufficiently important to report it to the

19 Foreign Secretary at the time. I certainly passed on

20 to the Foreign Secretary at the time several reports

21 that I had had from -- when I was visiting

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina, and it was my normal practice to

23 submit reports to the Government on a confidential

24 basis when I returned.

25 I seem to recollect, but I can confirm that,

1 if you wish later, that I did pass this on, but at the

2 time, this struck me as being such an extraordinary

3 conversation, I found it difficult to believe that a

4 head of State, frankly, could be so indiscreet, and the

5 reason why subsequently -- whether or not I informed my

6 Government, and I apologise for not being able to

7 answer that directly -- the reason why subsequently

8 I released this into the public domain was the reasons

9 that I gave -- I wanted to alert the international

10 community to what I regarded to be the long-term

11 intentions of President Tudjman based on this

12 conversation. I am sorry I cannot answer your first

13 question as plainly as I would like. If the court

14 wishes, I could certainly discover if I did that, if it

15 is material to this and let you know.

16 JUDGE JORDA: So could I then conclude,

17 without extrapolating your thoughts, that you did not

18 inform the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Foreign

19 Affairs of the United Kingdom?

20 A. No, forgive me -- I am having to give an

21 indeterminate answer here, but I seem to recollect

22 that I did, but at this distance I cannot remember. It

23 was certainly the case that I was passing many pieces

24 of information back to the Government when I visited

25 Bosnia -- I would normally do a report when I got back

1 of a confidential nature and I seem to recollect

2 that I passed this information on to the Foreign

3 Secretary at the time, but I cannot be absolutely clear

4 about that, Sir.

5 JUDGE JORDAN: Any further questions?

6 JUDGE RIAD: You just mentioned something

7 interesting. You said that you were rather surprised

8 that Dr. Tudjman was so indiscreet. Now, he is a public

9 figure and accustomed as much as you are -- or more --

10 to talking at dinner with the flow of wine. Do you

11 think this indiscretion was meant to convey a message

12 to you?

13 A. No, I do not.

14 Q. Or was it just a little talk?

15 A. I have heard it subsequently said -- forgive

16 me, I do not wish to be rude about a head of State, but

17 I have heard it said since that President Tudjman can

18 be quite frank in such conversations. I was

19 surprised. I certainly had not met him before,

20 I certainly had not had a conversation of this nature

21 with him before. I am absolutely certain he was

22 speaking to me at the time about what he believed at

23 that time was going to happen. I certainly do not

24 believe he had any intention that this should be sent

25 as a warning.

1 JUDGE JORDA: A last point. Have you heard

2 anything from Mr. Tudjman since then expressing his

3 regret that you had given out that information? Did he

4 call you up; did he say anything to you?

5 A. No, Sir, but I certainly have been told by

6 the Croat Ambassador that Croatia was very

7 displeased at the time when this map was leaked.

8 Perhaps it would be worthwhile explaining -- I do not

9 make a habit of putting conversations such as this in

10 the private domain. I took my own personal decision on

11 that. I take responsibility for that decision. Others

12 may wish to criticise it. I believe that, at the time,

13 it was the right thing to do, because I was very

14 concerned that an extremely delicate situation in

15 Bosnia-Herzegovina -- peace was just beginning to

16 become possible -- could have been disrupted, if apart

17 from taking the Krajina, there had been an attempt to

18 cross over the border and complete this map on the

19 ground.

20 I did not take that decision lightly --

21 I took it after very considerable consideration. If

22 President Tudjman believes that, you know, this may

23 have been a confidence betrayed, I would understand

24 that. I still believe, on balance, the decision I took

25 very seriously at the time to put this in the public

1 domain was the right decision. I believe that is

2 vindicated by the fact that the Krajina operation was

3 -- that the international community did take action to

4 ensure that the Krajina operation did not go further

5 and therefore disrupt the possibilities of peace in

6 Bosnia.

7 JUDGE JORDA: Have you had the opportunity

8 of going back to Zagreb?

9 A. No, sir.

10 Q. Were you given a visa?

11 A. No, sir. I have not -- I passed through

12 Split shortly after the peace and went to try and help

13 my colleagues in the Bosnian Liberals, for whom I have

14 a huge admiration. They are very highly courageous.

15 They are the ones who smuggled me across Igman and put

16 me through the underground tunnel into Sarajevo during

17 the battle of Igman in a Renault 5. I went back as an

18 act of gratitude to help them with their election

19 campaigning. At that stage, briefly, I passed through

20 Croatia, but I have not been to Zagreb since.

21 JUDGE JORDA: I would like to conclude this

22 hearing, to tell you on behalf of my colleagues, how

23 sensitive we are to you having coming here, to have

24 testified, in such a way -- about things which you

25 considered very important. As a parliamentarian of a

1 great nation, I would like to let you know that the

2 Tribunal is very appreciative of what you have done.

3 It needs the cooperation of all states, and it is very

4 sensitive to the fact that you agreed to testify

5 without any protective measures during a particularly

6 transparent testimony, vis-à-vis the public in an

7 institution which wishes to be as transparent as

8 possible.

9 The Registrar will escort you from the

10 court. We will take a 20-minute pause and then resume

11 in 20 minutes.

12 When we resume I would like Mr. Harmon to tell

13 us what is going to happen.

14 (4.26 pm)

15 (A short break)

16 (4.55 pm)

17 (Open session)

18 (The accused entered court)

19 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Cayley, the following

20 witness is protected?

21 MR. CAYLEY: Yes. Mr. President, your

22 Honours, learned counsel, good afternoon. The next

23 witness is a protected witness. I have conferred with

24 Mr. Nobilo, and he has no objection to that.

25 JUDGE JORDA: Could you explain what the

1 testimony is going to be about, please? Mr. Nobilo, do

2 you have any objection?

3 MR. NOBILO: No, Mr. President, I do not.

4 JUDGE JORDA: Very well, Mr. Cayley, you can

5 proceed, please.

6 MR. CAYLEY: Mr. President, your Honours, the

7 next witness, who will be known as Witness JJ, is a

8 Muslim male from the municipality of Kiseljak. His

9 testimony will be divided into five discrete but

10 interconnected sections. In the first section of his

11 testimony he will speak to you briefly about the

12 location of his village in the municipality of

13 Kiseljak, the number of inhabitants prior to this war,

14 the ethnic mix of the village. He will talk briefly

15 about his membership of an organisation called the

16 Patriotic League. He will explain the function and

17 indeed the disorganisation of that particular

18 institution. He will then speak to you about a brief

19 membership of the Bosnian military police, his reasons

20 for leaving, and all of this will be connected to a

21 general description of the situation in Kiseljak in the

22 early part of 1993.

23 He will explain how it was common knowledge

24 there were two streams of the HVO in Kiseljak.

25 Finally, in this section of his testimony he will talk

1 about increasing tension in the area and how ultimately

2 cooperation between the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosniak

3 Croats in his village ceased.

4 The second section of his testimony will deal

5 with a number of attacks that took place on 18th April

6 1993, in the municipality of Kiseljak. He will say how

7 he saw the villages of Visnjica and Gomionica burning.

8 He will speak about the attempted defence of his

9 village and how, with agreement from the HVO not to

10 burn any of the houses down in his village or kill any

11 of the women and children, all the men of the village

12 surrendered. He will explain how the HVO used the male

13 members of his village as human shields in order to

14 clear the rest of the village. He will explain how

15 buses arrived in an organised convoy to remove all of

16 the Muslim residents from his village, how an agreement

17 was made between the HVO and a sympathetic Croat in his

18 village for the Muslim residents to stay and how

19 subsequently the members of the village were

20 effectively prisoners in their own home.

21 He will explain how on a regular basis he and

22 other male members of the village were forced to dig

23 trenches, how HVO soldiers came on an almost nightly

24 basis, with black masks over their faces, robbing

25 people's houses. He will explain what happened to one

1 of the most valuable commodities in these villages, to

2 the livestock, in these villages, in his village in

3 particular.

4 The third section of his testimony will deal

5 with events that occurred a couple of months later,

6 when all of the villagers were in fact forcibly removed

7 and taken to a village (redacted). You will hear in

8 subsequent testimony about that village. He will

9 describe the rounding up of all the villagers. He will

10 describe how people were led to believe by the HVO how

11 they were to be exchanged, how members of the village

12 were forced to hand over the keys to the domestic

13 property, their housing and cars.

14 He will then describe how people were tricked

15 and in fact taken to the village of (redacted). He will

16 describe the conditions to you in what can only be

17 described as an HVO-created Muslim ghetto, a cross

18 between a ghetto and a camp -- a camp without walls.

19 He will describe the overcrowding in the ghetto. He

20 will describe the chronic lack of food, how Muslims

21 were regularly robbed on their way back from the town

22 in Kiseljak in attempting to bring food to sustain the

23 Muslim -- what can only be described as prisoners in

24 the village. He will describe how soldiers came in the

25 middle of the night to rob people in the village, how

1 he went daily to dig trenches from 7.15 until 4 every

2 day. He will describe the reasons why nobody tried to

3 escape from this camp, this village without walls.

4 The final part of this part of his testimony

5 he will describe how he observed the mosque in his

6 village -- a number of days after his arrival in

7 (redacted), on a journey to dig trenches, he drove past in

8 a truck the mosque in his village which he noticed had

9 been destroyed. Finally he will speak of the main

10 mosque in Kiseljak and how he noticed at the same time

11 how that mosque had been destroyed.

12 The penultimate part of his testimony will

13 deal with a time when he was taken along with a large

14 number of other males to the town of Kiseljak. That

15 will deal generally with his imprisonment in the

16 Kiseljak barracks, the absolutely appalling treatment

17 meted out to male Muslims in those barracks, regular

18 torture, beatings of prisoners, trench digging and the

19 conditions while digging those trenches. He will

20 describe how he was taken on a daily basis past the HVO

21 main military headquarters in the barracks, to dig

22 trenches.

23 He will describe how, when UNHCR

24 representatives came to the prison, prisoners were well

25 fed for a couple of days before their arrival and moved

1 between cells in order to create a situation which

2 appeared to the international community was one of

3 greater humanity, but in fact it was an illusion

4 created by the HVO for international observers.

5 Finally, he will speak of a particular task

6 he was given of removing a number of the corpses of

7 Bosnian soldiers, two of which had been decapitated,

8 and a gruesome game of football was played with these

9 heads in the town of Kiseljak. Eventually those heads

10 ended up on stakes in the town.

11 He will speak again of his time in the

12 Kiseljak prison, of regular stealing of property from

13 prisoners, how wealthier prisoners were taken away from

14 captivity in order to show HVO soldiers where their

15 valuables were hidden.

16 Lastly, he will deal briefly with his

17 exchange in November of 1993, and his return in fact on

18 a visit -- he was not allowed to stay – (redacted)

19 where he spoke to the Croat man who is now occupying

20 his house where he and his family lived for many

21 years. Finally he will talk about his opinions about

22 the organisation of the campaigns against the Muslim

23 population in the town and municipality of Kiseljak.

24 His testimony, if I can relate it briefly,

25 for your Honours to the indictment is relevant to

1 count 1, persecution count, paragraphs 6 to 7, counts

2 8, 9 and 10, the causing of serious injury, both

3 physically and mentally, to civilians (that is

4 paragraph 9 of the indictment); counts 11 to 13,

5 destruction and plunder of property, that is paragraph

6 10 of the indictment; count 14, destruction of

7 institutions dedicated to religion and education, that

8 is paragraph 11, and, finally, counts 15 to 20, which

9 is inhumane treatment, the taking of hostages and the

10 use of human shields -- that is paragraphs 12 to 16 of

11 the second amended indictment.

12 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you, Mr. Cayley. You

13 gave a very clear summary. If we could have Witness JJ

14 brought in, please.

15 (The witness entered court)

16 WITNESS JJ

17 JUDGE JORDA: Do you hear me.

18 THE WITNESS: Yes.

19 JUDGE JORDA: Please identify your name --

20 do not state your name, just nod if this is correct.

21 (Handed).

22 THE WITNESS: Yes.

23 JUDGE JORDA: Now, be seated. You are being

24 covered by protective measures. You are going to make

25 your statement, which is your oath, according to a

1 sentence which is going to be given to you by the

2 Registrar. Please read the statement.

3 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will

4 speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the

5 truth.

6 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you. Excuse us for

7 calling you, Witness JJ, but it is for your benefit.

8 You agreed to come to testify in the trial, which is

9 here at the International Tribunal, of General Blaskic

10 who is in this courtroom. Speak without fear. You are

11 being protected by international justice. The

12 Prosecutor told us what the main lines of your

13 statement will be, which will make the proceedings go

14 more smoothly. You will speak freely, and you will be

15 guided by the Prosecutor's questions.

16 The Prosecutor in this case is Mr. Cayley.

17 Mr. Cayley, I give you the floor.

18 Examined by MR. CAYLEY:

19 MR. CAYLEY: Thank you, Mr. President.

20 Q. Witness JJ, you are of Bosnian nationality;

21 is that correct. Could you repeat the answer to that

22 question? You must speak up in order to be heard.

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. I believe you are a former resident of the

25 village of Hercezi, which is in the municipality of

1 Kiseljak; is that correct?

2 A. That is correct.

3 Q. If the witness can be shown exhibit 276.

4 Mr. Usher, if you can place that on the ELMO (Handed).

5 If the ELMO could be illuminated.

6 Witness JJ, can you point, please, on that

7 map to the location of your village?

8 A. My village is over here.

9 Q. And if you could just point to the town of

10 Kiseljak?

11 A. Kiseljak is here (indicates).

12 Q. And the two arrows indicate the roads to

13 Busovaca and Sarajevo?

14 A. Yes, this one is the Busovaca and this one is

15 to Sarajevo.

16 Q. Witness JJ, prior to the war, approximately

17 how many inhabitants were there of the village of

18 Hercezi?

19 A. About 100 to 120 inhabitants.

20 Q. And what was the ethnic composition of the

21 village prior to the war?

22 A. It was mixed, both Croats and Muslims lived

23 there. We had no Serbs.

24 Q. Now, if you could just briefly tell the

25 judges of the time commencing with your membership of

1 the Patriotic League, through to the attack on your

2 village on 18th April -- if you could stop at that

3 point, and deal with a description of the Patriotic

4 League, your time in the Bosnian Army military police

5 and your reasons for leaving and generally describe the

6 situation in Kiseljak during that time as you perceived

7 it?

8 A. I joined the Patriotic League because the JNA

9 called up recruits to join the campaign in Croatia.

10 However, we did not accept that, so I joined the

11 Patriotic League, and, as the war spread in Bosnia,

12 mostly in Sarajevo, which was close enough, I moved to

13 the military police. I transferred there to the sector

14 of Lepenica in order to protect the Muslim and the

15 Croat population as well, because, at that time, at

16 Koscari there were a lot of them alongside us.

17 I left the military police, because the

18 situation between the Croat and Muslim population

19 was getting ever more tense. The HVO in Kiseljak did

20 not allow passage through Kiseljak. There was some

21 mistreatment, there was some taking away of the weapons

22 from the Muslims, and so, out of these security

23 reasons, I left the military police and returned to my

24 village. In the village, we were on guard duties,

25 night watches in order to protect ourselves against the

1 Serbs and their possible raids at night.

2 As far as the weapons are concerned, we had

3 some hunting weapons. I had a pistol that I got from

4 my father, and then we had some makeshift weapons like

5 some explosives and such. Later, we received some

6 weapons from the HVO after they broke into the ex-JNA

7 barracks, collected all the weapons they found there;

8 they gave us three or four rifles and that is what we

9 used.

10 Q. Witness JJ, how would you describe the level

11 of organisation of the Patriotic League?

12 A. There was no particular organisation there.

13 It was a man from the village. We just put together a

14 list of who was going to be on guard duty and the next

15 day we would again agree on who was going to guard the

16 village and that was it.

17 Q. Now, you said that the situation in Kiseljak

18 between the Muslims and the Croats got steadily worse.

19 Were you aware in your own mind of two streams of the

20 HVO in Kiseljak and, if you are, or were at the time,

21 can you explain those two streams to the judges?

22 A. There were two streams or factions. One was

23 led by Raic and the other by Lujo. However, those two

24 factions came into conflict, because Lujo's faction

25 helped the Muslim population quite a bit -- they

1 protected the Muslim population, so that I know that.

2 When Lujo was killed and Marko Pecirep who was together

3 with Lujo, and they were killed by some of Raic's

4 soldiers, who were special units.

5 Q. What was the attitude of Ivica Raic's faction

6 to the Muslims in Kiseljak, in the municipality?

7 A. The position was that they did not allow us

8 to pass through Kiseljak. When a larger number of

9 soldiers would come to go to Koscan, individual

10 soldiers would be disarmed, the uniform would be taken

11 away from them, in case they had been able to acquire

12 one.

13 Q. Now, you described nightly patrols in your

14 village to guard against attack. Were these initially

15 joint patrols with the Croat residents of Hercezi?

16 A. At first, there were joint guards with --

17 guard duties with the Croats, but as the situation in

18 Kiseljak worsened, they separated out, but occasionally

19 we would meet at the bridge -- we would talk, we would

20 exchange news and things like that.

21 Q. We can now move to the second section of your

22 testimony. I would like you to describe to the judges

23 the events of 18th April 1993 -- what occurred in your

24 village and then, if you could move on through to the

25 time when all of the residents of the village of

1 (redacted)

2 A. On the night of 17th and 18th April, I was on

3 guard duty until about 2 am and then went home to

4 sleep. In the morning, my mother came in and said that

5 the war had started, but there was Easter -- it was a

6 Croat holiday and I thought there was some

7 celebration going on. However I saw that Gomionica was

8 already on fire, I saw that the shooting had started

9 and I realised that it was no celebration, that the war

10 had actually begun.

11 We organised ourselves in the village. There

12 were about 15 able-bodied men there. We split between

13 two ends of the village; we knew what we needed to

14 protect. However, we lost our communication with both

15 Gomionica and Visnjica, so we did not know what was

16 going on. As the day wore on, there was more shooting

17 and more houses were on fire, so we gave up any

18 resistance and we withdrew in the forest.

19 The first two days nobody came to the

20 village, but the third day, the HVO army arrived in the

21 village, and we were told to surrender all weapons so

22 that they would not torch the village, they would not

23 kill women and children, and us as well. So that is

24 what we did.

25 Without firing a single bullet we surrendered

1 all the weapons, so there was no torching and no

2 killing.

3 Q. When the HVO entered your village, did they

4 in fact clear the houses in the village and did they

5 use the male members of the village to assist them in

6 that? Can you explain to the court what happened?

7 A. All able-bodied men were detained in the

8 house of (redacted). We were told -- we saw a

9 bus that was supposed to take us to the Kiseljak

10 barracks. However, the HVO commander at that time,

11 Pero Vucic, nickname Madjar, guaranteed -- he said that

12 we had surrendered weapons, that there would be no

13 problems and we could stay at home.

14 So we spent two to three nights in (redacted)

15 (redacted) house. After that, we were released to

16 our own homes but with the proviso to report three

17 times a day to (redacted)

18 (redacted). I do not know -- we were supposed to report

19 maybe so, I guess, we would not escape from the

20 village.

21 The rest of the time we had to be inside our

22 houses for our safety, because a lot of the military

23 passed through and this pair could not protect us out

24 in the street, in the open, so we had to stay within

25 the house -- the houses.

1 Q. Were the Muslim residents of the village, in

2 effect, prisoners in their own homes?

3 A. Yes, exactly.

4 Q. Were you taken by the HVO, the male members

5 of the village on a daily basis to perform forced

6 labour?

7 A. Every day we were taken to the forced labour.

8 Q. Can you explain to the court where you

9 performed that forced labour during this time, and what

10 that forced labour was -- what you had to do for the

11 HVO?

12 A. While we were under house arrest, we went to

13 dig in the village of Mrakovi. We dug fox holes and

14 trenches -- the canals which were helping them either

15 to defend or better attack the Muslims.

16 Q. While you were still residing in Hercezi, did

17 HVO soldiers come in the middle of the night to the

18 village?

19 A. They came both at night and during the day.

20 There were robberies, there were all kinds of things.

21 Only if a neighbour would come and would not want to be

22 recognised, he would put over his head a kind of a sock

23 and then rob his neighbour that way and take away

24 whatever he wanted.

25 Q. Were these individuals wearing HVO uniforms?

1 A. Yes, they wore uniforms and the HVO insignia.

2 Q. You say they wore a black stocking over their

3 head in order for them not to be recognised by members

4 of the village?

5 A. They surely did it for that reason, and maybe

6 they were ashamed, too -- they were embarrassed,

7 otherwise I do not know why else they would have put it

8 on.

9 Q. What happened to all of the livestock in your

10 village?

11 A. All livestock that was in the village was

12 taken to Kiseljak and we were told that there were

13 strict orders from Raic that the livestock was needed

14 for the HVO soldiers as food.

15 Q. And in order to make it clear for the judges,

16 can you just tell them from your understanding, who was

17 Ivica Raic?

18 A. At that time, he was a superior of the HVO --

19 he was the commander.

20 Q. In the Kiseljak municipality?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Can the ELMO be switched on again and if you

23 could just indicate the villages that you observed on

24 the morning of 18th April that were burning, as you saw

25 it from Hercezi?

1 JUDGE RIAD: Can I ask what was his grade in

2 the army, can the witness tell us?

3 MR. CAYLEY: Do you know the rank of Mr. Raic,

4 Witness JJ?

5 JUDGE RIAD: Officer, soldier, general?

6 A. I do not know his rank, but he was the

7 superior person there. He led and commanded -- I do

8 not know exactly what rank he held.

9 JUDGE RIAD: He was the commander of a

10 division -- of a whole division, or he acted on his

11 own?

12 A. I think he must have had someone who was

13 commanding him, but I know that he was commanding all

14 the units who were there in the municipality of

15 Kiseljak.

16 JUDGE RIAD: Thank you very much.

17 MR. CAYLEY: Witness JJ, if you could just

18 indicate to the court the villages that you observed

19 burning on 18th April, just by simply pointing to those

20 villages and naming them?

21 A. Visnijca and Gomionica, those two villages .

22 Q. Thank you. You briefly mentioned that a

23 message was transmitted by the HVO, that if all the men

24 from the village surrendered the village would not be

25 burnt down and the women and children would not be

1 killed. Did you receive that message directly or did

2 you hear that from somebody else?

3 A. We got this message from Vehid Turcinovic,

4 who at that time, was, how shall I put it -- was our

5 commander, kind of commander of the 15 of us, the

6 (redacted), gave

7 that message. He was the commander of that unit who

8 came to cleanse the village and told us to surrender

9 weapons.

10 Q. And the unit that had come to cleanse the

11 village was an HVO unit; is that correct?

12 A. Correct, that was an HVO unit. They were all

13 (redacted).

14 We knew all of them, we knew them well.

15 Q. If we could now move to the third segment of

16 your testimony. If you could describe the time, a

17 couple of months after 18th April when the HVO arrived

18 in your village and rounded everybody up and took you

19 to the village of (redacted). I would like you to describe

20 to the judges that rounding-up process. I would like

21 you to describe the conditions in (redacted), and I would

22 like you to explain why you did not try to escape from

23 that place, and, finally, if you could end that portion

24 of your testimony at the point where you were taken to

25 the Kiseljak barracks?

1 A. One morning, when the able-bodied men from

2 the village were out digging, I stayed home. I asked

3 Pero to let me stay, because I was sick. A bus came

4 and several small cars with the civilian and military

5 police of the HVO police inside. They told us that we

6 had five minutes' time to get ready, that we were going

7 for a private, that is, that we would be taken to the

8 Muslim side.

9 Of course, we were glad to get out of this

10 arrest -- house arrest -- and, if nothing else, to be

11 spared from the daily digging. However, we could not

12 all fit into one bus. We were told we had five

13 minutes, but there was a policeman in front of each

14 house, and he was hurrying us up, so we did not even

15 have five minutes. We were boarded on the bus and

16 driven to Kiseljak, and we moved on towards (redacted).

17 The bus stopped, and we were told, in front of a

18 cafeteria called Konak, that we should go to (redacted)

19 and that we would be staying in (redacted) -- it was up to

20 us to find accommodation, and we saw that nothing would

21 come of the exchange, that we had been cheated.

22 From there, with our bags, we went to (redacted),

23 we found some small houses that were abandoned, so that

24 the next day we saw that new buses -- fresh buses were

25 coming from other villages such as Topole, Brnjaci,

1 wherever there were any Muslims, they were brought

2 there, and we realised that nothing would come of the

3 exchange and that we would have to stay there in

4 detention.

5 Q. (redacted), what

6 did the HVO military police say to you in respect of

7 your vehicles and the housing in the village?

8 A. We were told that we had to give them the

9 keys of our houses, and our cars, which of course we

10 did -- we gave them our keys of houses and cars.

11 Q. If the ELMO could be illuminated again,

12 please, could you point out for the judges the village

13 of (redacted)?

14 A. It is here (indicates).

15 Q. Now, when you were putting the marks on this

16 map for me, you also put two broken lines at the end of

17 the village nearest the road. What do they represent?

18 A. We marked a part of the road from Kiseljak to

19 (redacted), which had been cleansed of Muslim inhabitants.

20 Everything was burned and destroyed. There was no-one

21 living there, everything had been destroyed and

22 torched.

23 Q. So, the Muslims were concentrated in the far

24 end of the village of (redacted)?

25 A. Yes, at the end of the village, in a valley.

1 Q. Can you explain to the judges and describe

2 the conditions in (redacted)?

3 A. The conditions were difficult of course,

4 because we did not have time to take with us any food

5 or clothing, so, for my child, which was small -- it

6 was a baby of a few months -- I did not have time to

7 take powdered milk and of course we did not have any

8 real milk, because there was no livestock, so that it

9 was indeed difficult.

10 Q. How many families occupied the house in which

11 you were placed by the HVO?

12 A. It was not the HVO that placed us there. We

13 put ourselves up. We just depended on what we found.

14 In the house that I was in, there were three families,

15 and there were, I think -- no, exactly, there were 14

16 of us in that house.

17 Q. Were the conditions generally in the village

18 of (redacted) overcrowded?

19 A. Yes, overcrowded. As the houses were full,

20 people could not find any others, so they stayed in a

21 small mosque, so that was full, too.

22 Q. Did the Muslims who were placed in (redacted)

23 attempt to purchase food in Kiseljak?

24 A. Yes, we were told that we could go to Caritas

25 and that they would give us food. People went there,

1 but what happened was that, very often, we suffered

2 badly because some HVO soldiers would beat up a woman,

3 take away the food, so that people preferred to go

4 hungry than go to Caritas to get some aid from them.

5 Q. Were you required to perform forced labour in

6 (redacted)?

7 A. We did not go for forced labour that first

8 day only. After that, every day we had to go digging

9 from 7 in the morning until 4, half past 4, in the

10 afternoon.

11 Q. And what did you have to dig on behalf of the

12 HVO?

13 A. Again, we had to dig trenches, dugouts --

14 mostly, it was just digging.

15 Q. If the witness could now be shown exhibit

16 68(1), 68(2) and 68(3). (Handed).

17 Now, a number of days after you arrived in

18 (redacted), I think you were taken to Mrakovi to dig

19 trenches and I think you passed by the village of

20 Hercezi; is that correct?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And did you see the mosque?

23 A. Yes, we passed right by the mosque -- maybe

24 at a distance of 50 metres, the mosque is about 50

25 metres from the road.

1 Q. Does this photograph represent what you saw

2 at the time?

3 A. Yes, that is the mosque, in the village of

4 Hercezi.

5 Q. And it had been destroyed, as is shown in

6 this photograph?

7 A. Yes, both the mosque and the house next to

8 the mosque, in which the haja lived.

9 Q. Mr. Registrar, if you could lift that

10 photograph off, because the witness made a comment

11 about the house.

12 Could you point to the house of the Muslim

13 priest?

14 A. Yes, this is the house of the Muslim priest,

15 right next to the mosque.

16 Q. If the final photograph could be shown. .

17 This is the interior of the mosque, although

18 you would not have been able to see it from the road,

19 but do you recognise that as being the interior of the

20 mosque in your village?

21 A. I can recognise it. I want to say that, two

22 years ago, I entered the mosque and I buried my father

23 there, so I actually visited the ruins -- these ruins.

24 Q. If the witness could now be shown exhibit

25 277. (Handed).

1 Do you recognise this photograph?

2 A. Yes, this is the mosque in the municipality

3 of Kiseljak.

4 Q. And did you see this structure shortly after

5 you arrived in (redacted) whilst being taken by the HVO to

6 dig trenches?

7 A. We passed by this mosque on a daily basis

8 when we were taken to dig trenches. The first time

9 I saw it in this condition was when we were taken to

10 (redacted) for what was supposed to be an exchange, but,

11 really, they just changed the village in which we were

12 staying. In no way did our way of life change.

13 Q. So, it would be correct to say that a couple

14 of months after 18th April 1993 the mosque in Kiseljak

15 was in this condition, because you saw it like this at

16 that time?

17 A. At the time, it was in this condition,

18 whereas now it is even in a worse condition.

19 Q. Whilst in the village of (redacted), were Muslims

20 again visited on a nightly basis by HVO soldiers?

21 A. I cannot really say that it was every night,

22 but, on 90 per cent of the evenings, we were

23 mistreated; our jewellery or money, whatever we had,

24 depending on what one had, was taken away from us.

25 Q. Why is it that you did not try to escape from

1 the village of (redacted)?

2 A. A man in such a position did think about all

3 kinds of things, even about suicide, but we were told

4 if we were taken digging and somebody tried to escape,

5 his wife or child would be killed, and anyway, it was

6 impossible to escape from (redacted), because its position

7 is such that it is surrounded by hills, surrounded

8 again by HVO front-lines. It was impossible, and we

9 were also threatened that, should anyone escape from

10 trench digging, then his wife, child or mother --

11 whoever was left behind, whoever one had -- would be

12 killed.

13 Q. Now, if we can move to the fourth section of

14 your testimony. If you can tell the judges about the

15 time when you were taken from trench digging to the

16 barracks, the HVO barracks at Kiseljak, and if you can

17 describe the conditions that you suffered in those

18 barracks, the treatment meted out to the Muslim men

19 kept at the barracks and the work that you were

20 required to perform for the HVO whilst you were there?

21 A. One day, I was digging, as usual, every day,

22 at Mrakovi and three HVO policemen came -- I knew one

23 of them -- his name was Zeljo Pravdic, who called me

24 and told me that we had to go to the barracks. He was

25 looking for a relative of mine, to go as well, as he

1 was not digging. We found him at (redacted) -- he was ill

2 -- and we were taken together to the barracks. We

3 were taken into a room, where a man was lying on the

4 floor immobile. Later, when we asked him what was

5 wrong, he told us that he had been beaten up and

6 I could see that he was telling the truth, because a

7 short while later I was taken to an office, where the

8 prison commander was waiting -- Miro Biletic and

9 another two HVO soldiers. Miro Pravdic asked me

10 questions -- he was looking for weapons which we did

11 not have, but that was an excuse for them to beat me,

12 so I went through the same procedure as the man in the

13 room -- I was kicked, I was hit with sticks, with

14 fists, I fainted there in that room.

15 When I came to, I saw that Dzemo was no

16 longer there, so I knew that he was going through the

17 same treatment as myself and that was in fact what

18 happened.

19 Q. If you could tell the judges about the work

20 you were required to perform on behalf of the HVO

21 whilst you were at the Kiseljak barracks?

22 A. We did all kinds of work -- the main thing

23 was the digging, but we also had to clean the premises

24 where their police were -- the toilets. We had to work

25 on a daily basis.

1 Q. If the witness could be shown exhibit 278?

2 (Handed). If it could be placed on the ELMO, please.

3 Witness JJ, do you recognise this photograph?

4 A. I do.

5 Q. Now, you made certain marks on this

6 photograph for me and I would be grateful if you could

7 explain to the judges what the circles represent and,

8 if you could, whilst identifying them, state the number

9 of the circle at the same time?

10 A. Circle number 1 is the building which had

11 cells inside, where we were imprisoned and where the

12 HVO military police was. Circle number 2 is the

13 headquarters of Ivica Raic and circle number 3 is the

14 place where we were loaded on to buses and driven to

15 work, and this dotted line is the road along which we

16 entered the prison and along which we went out, and we

17 were loaded at number 3 on to trucks, and taken for

18 forced labour.

19 Q. And how regularly were you taken to perform

20 forced labour while you were imprisoned at the Kiseljak

21 barracks?

22 A. I was taken every day, with the exception of

23 five or six days, when I was beaten up so badly that

24 even they knew that I could not go to work.

25 Q. And, if you can recall, how many men gathered

1 at that point prior to going to dig trenches?

2 A. In the cell, where I was, there were between

3 60 and 80 of us.

4 Q. If you can recall, how large was that cell?

5 A. They were not large. I believe, under normal

6 conditions, the area would be sufficient for 20

7 soldiers, or 20 prisoners -- I do not know how to

8 express myself.

9 Q. You are expressing yourself just fine. Now,

10 can you describe to the judges the hygiene conditions

11 in this prison?

12 A. The hygiene conditions were such that we did

13 not have water, we did not have a toilet -- we used

14 3-litre cans for urination and, when we needed to go to

15 the toilet, if we did not do it while digging,

16 sometimes people would have their bowel movements in a

17 peace of paper, wrap it up, and then the next day, when

18 they were taken trench digging, they would throw it

19 away.

20 Q. How much food did you get while you were

21 imprisoned in the Kiseljak barracks?

22 A. We got a loaf of bread, which was less than

23 one kilo and it had to be shared by 20 men.

24 Q. Now, you described to the judges at the

25 beginning of this segment of your testimony, that you

1 were beaten. Did there come a second occasion when you

2 were more seriously beaten by the HVO and, if so, can

3 you describe that occasion to the judges?

4 A. After this first time, I was beaten again

5 very badly another time. It was about 2 after midnight

6 when a guard, a policeman, called me out by name. He

7 told me I had to go out to wash some cups that had been

8 used for coffee. However, when I got outside into the

9 corridor, the order was to: put your hands on your

10 back, to bow your head. That same policeman, closing

11 the door -- I was the first one, he jumped on me from

12 behind, he kicked me in the back. Of course,

13 I stumbled and I saw there were another five or six of

14 them in the corridor. They started kicking me and

15 hitting me with sticks. Then they took me into a dark

16 room, and, when I fell to the floor, Ivo Medic, an HVO

17 policeman, felt me along my spine, and he was hitting

18 me, and saying that, after this, I would be -- I would

19 have to live in a wheelchair. They went on beating

20 me. I do not know how long this lasted, but not one of

21 the prisoners approached me, and I could understand

22 this, because if a prisoner helped a beaten colleague,

23 he would be the next victim, and nobody dared to help

24 anyone.

25 Q. Is it the case that in fact all of those 60

1 to 80 men in your cell were beaten at some time while

2 you were in the Kiseljak barracks?

3 A. There was not a single person detained, be he

4 young or old, a minor or an elderly man, a woman or a

5 child, that was not beaten -- not once, but several

6 times.

7 Q. If the witness can be shown exhibit 279 --

8 Mr. President, if the interpreters are prepared to work

9 for 5 or 10 minutes extra, I believe I can conclude the

10 examination-in-chief this evening?

11 JUDGE JORDA: We will ask them. I know they

12 are very tired; I know they began at 11 o'clock.

13 I am a bit bothered by all this. I do

14 understand their problems, and I have empathy for them,

15 but what I do not understand, when we have a team of

16 interpreters who are supposed to start at 14 hours and

17 finish at 9 o'clock, why this team began at 11. It is

18 not their fault, but of course it does disturb our

19 work. We would have to resume tomorrow. I have

20 received a note from the legal officer of the Trial

21 Chamber -- you know tomorrow the whole morning is taken

22 by the plenary session (redacted)

23 (redacted), together with the

24 Presiding Judge of this Trial Chamber.

25 We decided that we could start at 2.30 and we

1 will vacate the Trial Chamber at 4 o'clock. In the

2 meantime, we have to finish the examination of

3 Witness JJ and hear the cross-examination by the

4 Defence, which I suppose will not be too long, and also

5 there is the ex parte hearings that have to be heard.

6 I do not suppose they will go on too long. I assume

7 that they are just some comments to be made.

8 I suppose we would start at 2.30 tomorrow and

9 go on until 4. This causes a lot of constraints for

10 everybody, for the judges, for the interpreters and

11 I do understand the interpreters are tired.

12 Are the interpreters prepared to work for

13 another 5 or 10 minutes, at least to finish with the

14 examination-in-chief? Once again, I would like to

15 thank you, but I would point out to the Chief

16 Interpreter, that when teams are being set up, they

17 have to try to keep the scheduled -- try to stay within

18 the five or 10 minutes, preferably five, but do what

19 you have to do and then we will start again tomorrow at

20 2.30.

21 MR. CAYLEY: I promise the interpreters it

22 will be five.

23 Q. Witness JJ, do you recognise this photograph

24 that is in front of you?

25 A. I do, and very well -- it is the building of

1 the military police, where we were detained -- rather,

2 I was detained with others.

3 Q. And, indeed, there is a sign on the side of

4 the building which states "HVO Military Police,

5 Kiseljak"; is that correct -- can you say "yes" or

6 "no"?

7 A. Yes, yes, that is correct.

8 Q. How much weight did you lose while you were

9 imprisoned at the Kiseljak barracks?

10 A. 10 to 12 kilograms.

11 Q. Can you explain to the judges what happened

12 when representatives of the UNHCR visited the prison?

13 A. What happened was that we figured that this

14 was a different world -- the food was better, but this

15 was only that one day, and, after that, it reverted to

16 the old ways.

17 Q. And were prisoners moved in between cells in

18 order to create an impression of more comfort --

19 perhaps "comfort" is not the right word but certainly

20 to reduce the impression of overcrowding?

21 A. We were about 70 at that time -- about half

22 of them were moved to another room, which was adjacent

23 to this room, but this was done, of course, just to

24 show that we had enough space there, that we were not

25 packed like sardines, but, by the night-time, they were

1 brought back to our room.

2 Q. If the witness could be shown exhibit 280?

3 (Handed). .

4 Do you recognise the men in this photograph?

5 (redacted)

6 (redacted)

7 (redacted)

8 (redacted)

9 Q. Can you explain to the judges why their

10 trousers are so filthy dirty and ragged?

11 A. I think that this is the best proof of the

12 state of hygiene there and how much we had to work.

13 I do not think that any further comment is needed for

14 this picture.

15 Q. Prisoners who remained in the Kiseljak

16 barracks, did you have your personal property stolen

17 from you?

18 A. They were taking everything -- jackets,

19 watches, money -- simply whoever had good quality shoes

20 or sneakers -- they would force men to take them off

21 and he would force you to take off the shoes that

22 belonged to a killed Muslim fighter and you had to wear

23 those.

24 Q. Now, if there were any particularly wealthy

25 prisoners that were held in the barracks, what happened

1 to them?

2 A. Would you please repeat this question?

3 Q. Those prisoners who were known by the HVO to

4 be wealthy or rich, what would the HVO do to them?

5 A. There were cases when they were taken out of

6 the prison for a few hours, they would take them to his

7 house and they would pressure him into telling them

8 where he kept his belongings, where the money was, the

9 gold, or valuables and, of course, after that, he would

10 then be returned to the prison.

11 Q. And this was the HVO military police?

12 A. It was both the military police and I was

13 also in a situation -- I saw when an older man was

14 taken by a soldier in his car. He took him with him

15 home, asking him for money and gold and then beat him

16 up.

17 Q. Can you tell the judges briefly about when

18 you were required to move a number of corpses of

19 Bosnian soldiers from Kiseljak to Kresevo?

20 A. This was at Cimburov Brijeg. That was a hill

21 -- since the HVO had taken a good portion of that

22 territory around Kresevo, the prisoners up there were

23 not able to really service that new front-line, so we

24 were all taken up to Kresevo. I stayed for about 15

25 days whereas another group stayed for a full month.

1 The first morning we dug all day, and that night we

2 took six bodies down to Kresevo -- three of them were

3 headless and they kicked them around like a football --

4 they played soccer with those heads.

5 Q. These were Bosnian soldiers?

6 A. Bosnian soldiers, yes.

7 Q. If the witness can be shown exhibit -- the

8 final exhibits 281 and 281A -- if that could be placed

9 in front of the witness rather than placing it on the

10 ELMO. (Handed).

11 This is a map that you marked for me,

12 Witness JJ. If you could explain to the judges each of

13 the locations and what the marks represent?

14 A. The marks on the map are the places, that is,

15 the locations where I was taken to this forced labour.

16 Number 1 is the village of Mrakovi; number 2 is Palasko

17 Brdo; number 3 is Cimburov Brijeg; number 4 is Dubrave,

18 number 5 Duke; number 6, Umjece; and number 7 is going

19 to be the Palasko Brdo and number 2 is Kiseljak -- that

20 is beyond Kiseljak, that is in the direction of

21 direction of Crvene Stijene, that was towards Visoko.

22 Q. All those marks indicate where you were

23 required to dig trenches until you were released in

24 November 1993?

25 A. Yes, those were locations where I had to dig

1 while I was imprisoned.

2 Q. Now, I think I am correct in saying you were

3 exchanged in November 1993?

4 A. Yes, this was on 6 November 1993. I was

5 released in such a way that I was digging at the

6 front-lines. The food was such that I collapsed from

7 exhaustion. I could not dig any more. I was

8 transferred to the military hospital in Kiseljak, and

9 they figured that I was not -- that I would not survive

10 so I was taken to Visoko to be treated -- they thought

11 I would need surgery, the surgery was not needed, and

12 I just stayed on, on the Bosnian side.

13 Q. You have in fact been back to Hercezi, have

14 you not?

15 A. No, it is impossible to return to Hercezi.

16 I have not been back to date. I live in Visnijca.

17 Q. Would you like to return to Hercezi?

18 A. The desire is there, and it is great.

19 However, I am not sure that it will be realised.

20 MR. CAYLEY: That is the end of my

21 examination-in-chief, Mr. President.

22 If I could apply for admission into evidence

23 of all of the exhibits 276, 277, 278, 279, 280 and 281

24 and 281A.

25 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you, Mr. Cayley.

1 I would like to tell Witness JJ that he will

2 come back, ask him to try to rest tonight, to relax a

3 bit. You will be asked some questions tomorrow,

4 rapidly, by the Defence, perhaps some from the judges.

5 This will be at 2.30 tomorrow afternoon.

6 The court stands adjourned.

7 (At 6.12pm the hearing adjourned until

8 Friday, 20 March 1998, at 2.30 pm)

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