1 Wednesday, 28th July, 1999
2 (Open session)
3 --- Upon commencing at 10.07 a.m.
4 JUDGE JORDA: Please be seated.
5 Mr. Registrar, will you have the accused brought in,
6 please?
7 (The accused entered court)
8 JUDGE JORDA: I hope the photographers have
9 finished, with the agreement of the Defence, of
10 course. I wish to bid good morning to the
11 interpreters, the counsel for the Prosecution, the
12 counsel for the Defence, the accused, General Blaskic,
13 and for the public, we are, this morning, finishing the
14 closing arguments of the Prosecution in the trial
15 against General Blaskic, who is here present, and which
16 has been going on for two years now.
17 Mr. Harmon, do you wish to continue?
18 MR. HARMON: Thank you, Mr. President. Good
19 morning, Mr. President and Your Honours. Good morning,
20 counsel.
21 Mr. President, I would like to return to the
22 topic we were discussing yesterday, and that is the
23 issue of the subordination of the Vitezovi to the
24 command of Colonel Blaskic. It is the Prosecutor's
25 submission that the Vitezovi were subordinated, not
1 attached, but subordinated to Colonel Blaskic since, at
2 least, the 19th of January, 1993.
3 Now, the Defence, in this case, has asserted
4 that Colonel Blaskic repeatedly complained to the main
5 staff about the Vitezovi, repeatedly complained to
6 General Petkovic about the Vitezovi, and about the
7 conduct of Darko Kraljevic. In support of that claim,
8 they have produced no documentary evidence to support
9 that claim, not a single document.
10 Now, if we turn to another Prosecutor's
11 Exhibit, which is Prosecutor's Exhibit 456/32, there is
12 a document in the context of the time that is very,
13 very important. This is a document that was issued on
14 the 7th of May, 1993 by then Colonel Blaskic, and it is
15 a special report on the situation in Central Bosnia
16 Operative Zone, and it is addressed to the highest
17 levels of power in the Croatian Community of
18 Herceg-Bosna. It's addressed first to Mate Boban, who
19 is the supreme commander. It is addressed to the chief
20 of the defence ministry, Bruno Stojic, and it is
21 addressed to the chief of the main staff, Milivoj
22 Petkovic. It is a document that is considered, on its
23 face, a defence military secret and strictly
24 confidential. In this document, which was sent by
25 Colonel Blaskic to those individuals I've just
1 identified on May 7th, there's not a single reference,
2 a single reference, to the Vitezovi causing any
3 problems. There's not a single reference to Darko
4 Kraljevic. There's not any complaints whatsoever in
5 this document. And bear in mind, Your Honours, that
6 this document was a document that was issued on the 7th
7 of May after the truck bomb occurred, after the attack
8 on Ahmici occurred, after human shields were taken from
9 the Dubravica school to go trench-digging. All crimes
10 in which the Vitezovi had a hand.
11 Now, the only reference to the Vitezovi in
12 this whole document is in the part of this document
13 that deals with the Central Bosnia Operations Zone HVO
14 forces, and there's a reference in paragraph 1 that
15 says: "The following forces are engaged in the defence
16 against MOS attacks," and it lists, among others, the
17 Vitezovi.
18 What does Colonel Blaskic say in this
19 particular document? Does he say he's having any
20 command problems? Absolutely not. Let me read to you
21 his conclusion in this document, and his conclusion is
22 as follows:
23 "Command and control function properly and
24 all missions proceed in a planned fashion according to
25 orders with detailed knowledge of the situation, full
1 coordination and control."
2 Now, let's go to another document that is
3 illuminating on the subject of whether or not the
4 Vitezovi was subordinated to then Colonel Blaskic.
5 Let's take a document that is Prosecutor's Exhibit
6 456/20, and this is a document that was issued by Darko
7 Kraljevic, the commander of the Vitezovi, and he issued
8 this document, Your Honours, on the 15th of April,
9 1993. What does this document say? In the second
10 paragraph of this document, it says: "The Vitezovi is,
11 as the name indicates, a special unit which is in the
12 unified system of command and control of Central Bosnia
13 Operative Zone and is also responsible to its superior
14 commands for its actions."
15 Now, the latter part is true. The Vitezovi
16 was a special purpose unit and it was ultimately
17 responsible to the highest levels of command, but what
18 does Darko Kraljevic say on the 15th of April? On the
19 15th of April, he says that the Vitezovi is a special
20 unit within the unified system of command and control
21 of the Central Bosnia Operative Zone.
22 Mr. President and Your Honours, I would -- we
23 have identified in our trial brief a number of orders
24 that were issued by Colonel Blaskic to the Vitezovi.
25 I'm not going to go through all of those orders. They
1 span a period of time, as I recall, from January of
2 1993 possibly as late as January of 1994. But let's
3 examine at least one of those orders because it also
4 sheds some light on the issue.
5 What I'm referring to is the Defence Exhibit,
6 and in this case, it is Defence Exhibit 549, and this
7 is an exhibit, Mr. President and Your Honours, you may
8 recall was an exhibit that is a certificate that was
9 issued by Darko Kraljevic on the 20th of June, 1993.
10 And you can see on the ELMO, this certificate
11 essentially confirms that an apartment occupied by a
12 Muslim should not be appropriated, and in the last
13 sentence, it says: "The certificate is issued for the
14 purpose of protection against eviction."
15 Now, let me remind Your Honours that the
16 Defence, in characterising this document, Colonel
17 Blaskic said at page 19,413 in response to a question
18 by Mr. Nobilo:
19 Q Could you explain to the Court how did
20 it happen that a special purpose unit,
21 the Vitezovi, or, rather, Colonel Darko
22 Kraljevic decided who would be evicted
23 and who would not be evicted from his
24 own apartment? Could you explain that?
25 General Blaskic answered:
1 A This was behaviour contrary to my
2 orders, and even this certificate is an
3 indication of his autonomy and
4 independence and the fact that he
5 engaged in activities beyond his
6 competence ..."
7 And the answer goes on. The next question
8 is:
9 Q What does such a certificate tell you
10 about the position of Darko Kraljevic
11 and how he was treated by the civilian
12 authorities?
13 And the answer is:
14 A It is certainly a reflection of his
15 power and his complete independence of
16 any other institution."
17 Mr. President and Your Honours, I would like
18 to put Defence Exhibit 549 into context, and if we
19 could turn next to Prosecutor's Exhibit 386. We'll
20 place that on the ELMO. One can see, in this
21 particular exhibit, this is a record of the meeting
22 with the joint command on the 19th of June, 1993, a day
23 before Darko Kraljevic issues his order. This is a
24 joint command meeting that took place at 10.00 in the
25 morning on the 19th of June.
1 If we go down to the second entry from the
2 bottom on this Prosecutor's Exhibit, one can see that
3 in paragraph 5, both commanders agreed to what is found
4 in "E". "Issue orders to all under their command
5 forbidding the expulsion of civilians from their
6 houses."
7 So as a result of the joint command meeting,
8 the commanders agreed to issue such an order.
9 If we now turn to Prosecutor's Exhibit -- I'm
10 sorry. It's Defence Exhibit 374A. If we turn to the
11 Defence Exhibit, we can see that on the 19th of June,
12 1993, at 16.20, the very same day that this joint
13 command met, Blaskic commanded the following:
14 "1. Concerning the HVO 3rd Operative Zone
15 area of responsibility, I forbid the violent moving out
16 of their family houses and apartments of the population
17 other than Croat."
18 Who does he distribute this to? He
19 distributes this to the Vitezovi, amongst other
20 groups. You can see that distribution in the lower
21 left-hand column.
22 What does Darko Kraljevic do the following
23 day? In Defence Exhibit 549, he issues a certificate
24 for the purpose of protection against eviction. Now,
25 does that sound to Your Honours like an order that is
1 being followed by a subordinate group? Our submission
2 is, Mr. President, that first and foremost, the
3 Vitezovi were subordinate to General Blaskic, and this
4 is only one small piece of the evidence to support that
5 conclusion.
6 Next, Mr. President, I have referred Your
7 Honours in the past to Prosecutor's Exhibit 456/37. I
8 won't go into it in detail, but it is an order also
9 issued and distributed to the Vitezovi where Colonel
10 Blaskic says that the Vitezovi are under his command.
11 Now, Mr. President, it is our conclusion,
12 therefore, and it is our submission that the Vitezovi
13 were subordinated to Colonel Blaskic from at least the
14 19th of January, 1993 through the remainder of the
15 period covered by the indictment.
16 Let me now talk to Your Honours about two
17 other groups very briefly, the Bruno Busic Brigade and
18 the Ludvig Pavlovic Brigade. I won't go into detail on
19 those, because my colleague, Mr. Kehoe, discussed both
20 those special purpose units yesterday, and as the Court
21 may recall, Colonel Blaskic said he didn't know
22 anything about those groups and how and why they
23 arrived in Central Bosnia, and yet the very day or the
24 next day, he issues them an order. But Mr. Kehoe
25 explained that, and I won't repeat.
1 I'd like to turn next, Mr. President and Your
2 Honours, to the military police. Your Honours will
3 certainly recall the lengthy discussions that we had in
4 respect of the regulations on the formation and work of
5 the military police administration, Defence Exhibit 523
6 and 523A bis, and you may recall in this particular
7 series of exhibits that these regulations make a
8 distinction, they make a distinction between what are
9 essentially daily police tasks and other duties, and it
10 is conceded by the Defence that Colonel Blaskic had
11 command and control over the military police in respect
12 of daily police tasks. If we go to Defence Exhibit
13 523A bis, one can see, under Article 10, a variety of
14 tasks that have been characterised, in fact, are
15 conceded to be daily tasks, and those include a variety
16 of described conducts, but they also include, among
17 other things, Article 8, which is participation in
18 combat against sabotage terrorist, outlaw, and other
19 enemy groups. That was a daily police task over which
20 Blaskic had command and control over the military
21 police.
22 Where the discussion then digressed was in
23 respect of Article 9 -- I'm sorry, part 9 of Article 10
24 which said the following: "Participation in carrying
25 out combat assignments along the front line ..." now
1 along the front line is important in this, "... on the
2 orders of the Minister of Defence of the Croatian
3 Republic of Herceg-Bosna," and the Defence contended
4 that Blaskic had no authority to send the military
5 police on a combat assignment to the front lines
6 without securing the permission of the Ministry of
7 Defence. It is our submission, Mr. President, that
8 while these particular regulations are of interest, the
9 realities on the ground are what the Court should focus
10 on. This section, Article 9, really is a section --
11 part 9 of Article 10 is a section dealing with the
12 permissive use of the military police. The reality on
13 the ground is quite different.
14 First off, Mr. President, we have submitted
15 in our brief, in our trial brief, book 2, from pages 46
16 to 51, a series of orders given by Blaskic to the
17 military police and responses from the military police
18 to Blaskic. Now, that set of orders clearly show that
19 Blaskic was directing the military police in a variety
20 of capacities.
21 Let's turn to see for a moment what it is
22 that the people who were military policemen had to say
23 about Colonel Blaskic's control over the military
24 police, and I first refer Your Honours -- can I have
25 just a moment, please?
1 Mr. President, I will have to go into private
2 session for this.
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22 (Open session)
23 Now, Mr. President, I would like to turn the
24 Court's attention to the words of Pasko Ljubicic.
25 Pasko Ljubicic was the commander of the 4th military
1 police battalion in the Central Bosnia region, and let
2 me read what Pasko Ljubicic has to say, and this is
3 found in Prosecutor's Exhibit 457 at page 65.
4 "I believe that the military police in
5 Central Bosnia was the most organised force in the
6 defence of those areas, made great sacrifices and, at
7 times, played a decisive role in the defence of the
8 area. Here I can mention Grbavica, Sivrino Selo,
9 Zabrdze, Kruscica, Ahmici, and several other places
10 which I'm sure and can prove that they were
11 successfully protected through the involvement of the
12 military police. I claim that the military police in
13 Central Bosnia was a military police least of all and
14 had transformed itself into a combat unit."
15 Now, Colonel Blaskic would have this Chamber
16 believe the following: That the military police, on
17 the morning of the 16th, were not attached to him until
18 11.42 in the morning of the 16th, and as Colonel
19 Blaskic testified in response to a question by my
20 colleague, Mr. Nobilo, when did you learn all of the
21 crimes in Ahmici had been committed? And Colonel
22 Blaskic said, "Before 11.42." Colonel Blaskic, it is
23 the Prosecutor's submission, controlled the military
24 police on the morning of the 16th of April, and his
25 attempts to splice and finely dice attachment and times
1 and everything else is an effort to conceal his command
2 responsibility over the military police.
3 Now, Mr. President and Your Honours, I'd like
4 to briefly conclude on what the Prosecutor's view is of
5 Colonel Blaskic's ability to command and control in
6 Central Bosnia. This Chamber, over the course of 25
7 months, has heard a significant amount of testimony
8 from third party witnesses, those witnesses who,
9 independent of either of the parties, operated in
10 Central Bosnia in the Vitez-Busovaca enclave and in the
11 Kiseljak enclave in close conjunction with
12 representatives at all levels of the HVO. The Court
13 has heard 19 professional soldiers, soldiers of high
14 rank in their respective national militaries. They
15 include 12 British soldiers, two Danish soldiers, three
16 Canadian soldiers and two Dutch soldiers. All of them
17 operated in the theatre with the HVO at every level,
18 and I'd like to just take a sample of these people and
19 what they said and what their conclusions were, because
20 their conclusions were virtually uniform.
21 First of all, I'd like to quote from the
22 testimony of Lieutenant-Colonel Remi Landry, a Canadian
23 officer with the Canadian Battalion, and here's what
24 Colonel Landry said:
25 "One thing is certain, is that no matter
1 what (inaudible) these people had or no matter what
2 uniform they were wearing, they responded to a very
3 military organisation. This military structure was at
4 all times an integrated part of the HVO. When I would
5 encounter local commanders in the Busovaca brigade, I
6 saw that these commanders would respond to the HVO
7 commanders. These people were not always wearing
8 military uniforms. Often, they were residents of
9 villages, but at no time at all did these people lead
10 me to believe they were part of a different military
11 structure."
12 And that, counsel, is found at pages 7853 and
13 7854.
14 Let me turn to the testimony of Major Michael
15 Buffini, who was an officer with the British Royal
16 Marines and he was an United Kingdom liaison officer.
17 He worked with the Busovaca joint commission, and he
18 worked directly on the ground with the subordinates of
19 Colonel Blaskic, with Blaskic as chief of staff, Franjo
20 Nakic, with Mario Cerkez, and others. Let me quote
21 what the opinion was of Major Buffini.
22 "Again, it was very clear that Colonel
23 Blaskic had full control of all the local commanders
24 and very much controlled those troops in Central
25 Bosnia. Certainly, in my opinion, of dealing with
1 these people on a day-to-day basis over almost a
2 three-month period, most of the commanders that I met
3 from the HVO were fairly scared of Colonel Blaskic.
4 They would not normally do anything in disagreement to
5 the orders they had been given."
6 Now, it's our submission, Mr. President,
7 based on the testimony that has been presented to this
8 Chamber that the command in Central Bosnia functioned
9 properly, that Colonel Blaskic could command his
10 troops, that there was an organisation that responded
11 to orders.
12 Now, lastly, I'd like to turn to what Colonel
13 Blaskic said about the HVO and his ability to command,
14 and if I could have the next -- Mr. Hooper, could we
15 place this on the board, please?
16 This, Mr. President and Your Honours, is a
17 series of exhibits that have been tendered by the
18 Prosecutor, Prosecutor's Exhibit 647, 456/32, and 380.
19 These three exhibits span approximately a year. The
20 first was an announcement, a report on the situation in
21 Novi Travnik on the 21st of October, 1992, and what's
22 interesting about this earliest insight into what
23 Colonel Blaskic thought about his ability to command
24 and control is found in part 6, and you'll notice,
25 Mr. President and Your Honours, there is a large
1 description of where his forces were operating within
2 the Novi Travnik area, and what does then Colonel
3 Blaskic conclude?
4 He concludes: "The activities of our forces
5 are fully organised, fully coordinated, and controlled
6 by the command."
7 Now, let's go to May the 7th of 1993,
8 approximately three weeks after the events in Ahmici.
9 In the confidential report that I have just, moments
10 ago, discussed with Your Honours that was sent to the
11 supreme commander, the head of the defence department,
12 and the chief of the main staff of the HVO, what does
13 Colonel Blaskic conclude?
14 "Command and control function properly and
15 all missions proceed in a planned fashion according to
16 orders with detailed knowledge of the situation, full
17 coordination and control."
18 Let's go to October of 1993, a year after the
19 first Prosecutor's Exhibit 647. What does Colonel
20 Blaskic say then? Now, this is an interview with
21 Colonel Blaskic that appeared in Danas, a news
22 magazine. I discussed this briefly yesterday in
23 respect of the separation of the municipalities of
24 Kiseljak from the Busovaca-Vitez municipality, and at
25 the end of this particular document, Colonel Blaskic
1 again sheds insight into the situation in respect of
2 command and control, and I will only read a portion of
3 this.
4 "Travnik is the first Operative Group,
5 Kiseljak the second, Zepce the third, and Sarajevo the
6 fourth. All Operative Groups are under my command, and
7 the chain of leadership and command functions
8 absolutely without interruption."
9 So we have, Mr. President and Your Honours,
10 some insight into Colonel Blaskic's thinking of how
11 command and control worked, and that insight is
12 absolutely consistent with the 19 independent witnesses
13 that we presented to Your Honours who came to the same
14 conclusions independently, and it's our submission to
15 Your Honours, therefore, that when Colonel Blaskic
16 discussed problems of a peasant army and when he
17 discussed problems of poor communications and when he
18 discussed a low quality officer corps, the fact of the
19 matter is that numerous third parties came to this
20 court and testified that command and control, in their
21 view, functioned properly, and Colonel Blaskic, over a
22 year period of time, concluded the same thing.
23 Mr. President and Your Honours, that
24 concludes my portion of the summation. I thank you,
25 Mr. President and Your Honours, and I would like to
1 turn over the floor to my colleague, Mr. Kehoe. Thank
2 you.
3 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. Thank you,
4 Mr. Prosecutor. Mr. Kehoe then? According to the
5 division that you have yourself made in the sharing of
6 roles, it is your turn.
7 MR. KEHOE: Yes, Mr. President.
8 Mr. President, Your Honours, counsel, good morning.
9 What I would like to discuss with you at the
10 outset is, in fact, the command and control or the
11 follow-up on the command and control as elaborated by my
12 co-counsel, Mr. Harmon.
13 Before I do that, there is, of course, always
14 an irony in looking at testimony such as Blaskic's and
15 see how it has been repeated in the past, and Blaskic's
16 testimony and position throughout this trial has been
17 that, "I don't have command of my soldiers, that I have
18 an inexperienced staff, that they're ill-equipped and
19 very weak." I would like to read you a brief quote
20 that sounds remarkably similar to the position elicited
21 and enunciated by the accused. "I have got an infamous
22 army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very infamous
23 staff." Those are words that were written by the Duke
24 of Wellington three days before his victory at Waterloo
25 in 1815. Quite similar, of course, to the words that
1 we heard from Blaskic through his rather lengthy
2 testimony.
3 The fact of the matter was that he had
4 control of his troops, that he had ordered his troops,
5 planned with his troops, and they responded to his
6 demands and his orders, as he himself conceded and as
7 just pointed out by my colleague, Mr. Harmon.
8 Of course, the command responsibility under
9 our Statute, and I say "our Statute," the Statute of
10 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
11 Yugoslavia, breaks itself into two sections under
12 Article 7: One under Article 7(1) and one under 7(3),
13 one being a direct orderly planning and another for the
14 punishment for failure to punish and prevent, which we
15 will talk about in seriatim.
16 Blaskic is charged under 7(1) for planning,
17 instigating, ordering, and aiding and abetting a series
18 of crimes set forth in the indictment. Much of the
19 actual theories on these are related, for instance, the
20 planning and the ordering. But let's just try to talk
21 about them in sequence, the first one being planning.
22 The planning in this case, let us just talk about the
23 persecution case, there was planning on both the
24 military and the civilian level to persecute the
25 civilian population in the Central Bosnian Operative
1 Zone and throughout Herceg-Bosna.
2 Of course, the evidence shows that Blaskic
3 worked hand in glove with his political counterparts to
4 accomplish that persecution. They planned it. How do
5 we know they planned it? We know they planned it by
6 all of the political documentation that has been set
7 forth, consistent with the seriatum take-over of the
8 municipalities.
9 The most telling example of planning, of
10 course, is Exhibit 456/95, also Exhibit 456/106, which
11 is the same document. For reference purposes, that is
12 the minutes of the HVO municipalities from the 22nd of
13 September, 1992, where they talk about implementing the
14 HVO agenda throughout the CBOZ, where they talk about
15 marginalising and eliminating the power of the Republic
16 of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Croatian Community of
17 Herceg-Bosna, and they essentially talk about the
18 marginalisation of the Bosnian Muslim population, while
19 also telling the military, in the name of Colonel
20 Blaskic, to be prepared for war with the Muslims.
21 That's part of the planning.
22 Of course, as we move down to the more global
23 planning, there is the more fundamental military
24 planning. For instance, what did Colonel Stewart
25 discuss? The planning for the attacks on the 16th of
1 April of 1993. Certainly, we are talking about the
2 planning that is encompassed and needed for
3 simultaneous attacks to take place in so many different
4 locales. If Your Honours remember the testimony of
5 Colonel Stewart, what he noted for us was that given
6 the fact that there was conflict and attacks by the HVO
7 in numerous locales in the Lasva Valley commencing on
8 the 16th of April, 1993, not only was it mandatory to
9 have that planned, but it was also inconceivable to him
10 that Blaskic would not have been involved in that
11 planning.
12 That was, of course, a criminal plan directed
13 against the civilian population. Now, there are other
14 types of plans that can also be encompassed within the
15 law. One can plan a legitimate military operation that
16 brings with it illegal aims and illegal facets to it.
17 Let's take an example. Grbavica. Was the attack on
18 Grbavica and the planning of the attack on Grbavica
19 directed towards a legitimate military target? Of
20 course, it was. The ABiH was on a feature above the
21 road, and the HVO had a legitimate plan to attack
22 that. However, part of that plan also was to eradicate
23 the civilian population, burn their houses, and loot
24 the property that was conducted by HVO soldiers, to
25 once again give them the message, as they did
1 throughout Central Bosnia, "Bosnian Muslims don't come
2 back." So that's an example of a plan that had some
3 legality to it, that was engaged concomitantly with
4 illegal aims.
5 Instigated. What are we talking about,
6 instigated? Did the individual, in this case Blaskic,
7 do anything to contribute or to cause the conduct, or
8 did he do anything to bring about that conduct? Let's
9 look at a couple of orders he gave, and this goes to
10 not only instigation but it also goes to aiding and
11 abetting. If we can go to the next two boards,
12 Mr. Hooper, which are 299 and 300.
13 Mr. President and Your Honour, this is part
14 of instigation. It can also be part of aiding and
15 abetting. What we focus on here is the instigation in
16 this combat order, and this is the combat order issued
17 by Blaskic at 09.10, 09.00, on the morning of the 17th
18 of April, 1993, a preparatory combat order preparing
19 his troops in Kiseljak to attack Muslim villages. Look
20 what he writes in this order:
21 "1. The enemy is continuing the intense
22 attacks against the forces of HVO and is trying to
23 completely eradicate the Croats from the region and
24 destroy all the institutions of HVO in the valley of
25 Lasva."
1 While he goes through the attack itself, he
2 says:
3 "4. Keep in mind that the lives of the
4 Croats in the region of Lasva depend on your mission.
5 This region could become a tomb for all of us if you
6 show a lack of resolution."
7 Let us turn to the order that he issued later
8 on that day, if we could. I believe that's a 456
9 exhibit which is also D300. Thank you, Mr. Hooper.
10 Let us look at this particular document and see what
11 Blaskic writes in this document at the outset. This is
12 an order for combat operations later on on the 17th,
13 where he is getting ready to unleash the Ban Jelacic
14 Brigade in Kiseljak at 05.30 in the morning on the
15 18th:
16 "The enemy continues to massacre Croats in
17 Zenica where Muslim forces are using tanks to fire at
18 people, mostly women and children."
19 Of course, this is the order where he also
20 includes, "Maintain a sense of historic
21 responsibility."
22 This is an example of inciteful language. An
23 order is given, and what does Blaskic expect to bring
24 about by this inciteful language, when, in fact, he
25 knows full well that this is untrue? And Marin
1 testified, in fact, that Croats in Zenica on the 17th
2 weren't being massacred at all. So the question to be
3 asked is what is he trying to bring about by this?
4 He's trying to bring about an ultimate goal, that is,
5 remember my soldiers, remember my troops, keep in mind
6 your sense of historic responsibility, the one that we
7 talked about for some time, about this greater Croatian
8 state, when you are accomplishing your goals tomorrow
9 morning.
10 The next categories is, of course, orders.
11 That is somewhat simplistic. We look at the orders
12 that were given and, of course, the orders that were
13 given in this case, as we know, are both oral and
14 written. The Defence has produced three orders
15 concerning Ahmici, Exhibit 267, 268, and 269. We know,
16 of course, that those are not the only orders. We have
17 evidence that there were orders at least in Zenica,
18 evidence that there was orders to the civilian police,
19 evidence of orders to the Nikola Subic-Zrinjski
20 Brigade, and those are the ones that we know about. Of
21 course, the question remains, how many others were
22 given?
23 We have orders that there was direct evidence
24 to kill, that orders to kill civilians were given to
25 the troops that went to Ahmici on the morning of the
1 16th. Orders had to be given for the artillery fire
2 against the Muslim population at 06.45 on the 16th of
3 April, 1993. Who gave that order? The artillery piece
4 that was stationed in Mosunj? Blaskic, by his own
5 testimony, had control over those artillery pieces.
6 The orders can fall into a variety of
7 categories. Evidence of that can be both direct and
8 circumstantial. In this case, there are both. His
9 orders, orders that we don't know about but we know he
10 gave because his troops moved. We saw the end result
11 of the artillery fire, that he had to give an order
12 that he had to give, and, of course, we have the orders
13 that are articulated, the order that was presented to
14 Your Honour, that the one person identified to kill
15 civilians in this case, the one person identified as
16 giving that order is Blaskic. Nobody else. There is
17 not one shred of evidence that anybody gave an order to
18 kill from on high, and the only person that gave that
19 order in the evidence in the record is Blaskic, the
20 only one.
21 Of course, we have aiding and abetting.
22 Aiding and abetting is assisting in any fashion. Now,
23 given Blaskic's role as the commander of the Central
24 Bosnia Operative Zone, the concept of aiding and
25 abetting falls into many different categories. He is
1 planning and he is ordering and also, of course, he
2 supplies his troops. He garrisons his troops. He
3 makes sure that the logistical support is there and
4 there's medical support there. All those ingredients
5 that go into what we know as aiding and abetting. But
6 there's a more global concept of aiding and abetting
7 that needs to be addressed as it pertains to General
8 Blaskic, and that is the concept of psychological or
9 mental encouragement or some kind of moral support.
10 The moral support and encouragement that Blaskic gave
11 his troops is his continuous failure to punish the
12 troops for past misdeeds.
13 What is crystal clear from the evidence, Your
14 Honours, is that when Blaskic launched the operation on
15 the 16th of April, 1993, and his troops burnt, killed,
16 and eradicated the Muslim population, incarcerated
17 them, and forced them to do forced labour, his troops
18 knew that they were not going to be punished. That is
19 encouragement. As Your Honours noted, or as this
20 Chamber noted, in the Karadzic and Mladic Rule 61
21 hearing, the continuous pattern of failure to punish,
22 under 7(3), is tantamount to a 7(1) liability, and
23 that's the situation, in addition to the other factors,
24 that we find the accused.
25 The question, as Your Honours are grappling
1 and discussing and thinking about this issue is this,
2 and I leave the Court with this question: We know from
3 the Defence counsel and from the defendant that Zarko
4 Andric, Zuti, was a thief, he broke people out of
5 prison. We know from Lars Baggesen that he was
6 evicting Muslims from houses by Blaskic's own
7 testimony, he was stealing from convoys. He was a
8 thief that my learned co-counsel, Mr. Nobilo, quoted as
9 a mafioso boss. What kind of message did Blaskic send
10 to his troops when he promoted Zarko Andric, Zuti, to a
11 position in his headquarters? What message did that
12 send? Was it one, that those troops under my command
13 must abide by the mandates of international
14 humanitarian law and safe guard civilians, no matter
15 what the cost? Or was it something quite contrary?
16 Was it an official tolerance to the criminal activity
17 in which this man and other individuals engaged? I
18 submit to you, Your Honours, quite clearly, that the
19 message sent by Blaskic was quite clear, that the
20 conduct that was employed by his troops, the criminal
21 conduct, directed against the civilian population was
22 going to be tolerated and, therefore, encouraged.
23 Let us move to 7(3), and Your Honours, in my
24 time remaining, I, of course, don't have a lengthy
25 period of time to talk about these legal concepts. In
1 any event, we have discussed it in our brief at some
2 length. Nevertheless, I still would like to take us
3 through a few aspects of 7(3) which is the liability
4 that -- for which Blaskic has been indicted, and that
5 is the liability for Blaskic's failure to punish and
6 failure to prevent.
7 Blaskic, as a commander, has two
8 responsibilities under 7(3) of our Statute, and that is
9 he has to prevent violations of international
10 humanitarian law, and then once he knows about them, he
11 has got to punish them. Two different concepts. Of
12 course, the facts reflect that Blaskic failed on both
13 ends.
14 Now, before we actually talk about what he
15 should have done, what powers he had in his arsenal,
16 and what he didn't do, we need talk just globally about
17 the failure to prevent. In essence, he had more power
18 than anyone else to prevent violations of criminal
19 activity by his troops by one act and one act alone:
20 Not deploying troops that he knew had engaged in
21 criminal activity in subsequent combat endeavours. A
22 case in point: He knows, for instance, that the Jokeri
23 are involved in the massacre in Ahmici. Without any
24 attempt to cull out any of those troops that have been
25 involved in the massacre in Ahmici, he uses them again
1 in Grbavica in September of 1993. Surprise, surprise,
2 houses are burnt, civilians are driven off, and the
3 houses are looted. The Vitezovi, he maintains he
4 doesn't know they were in Ahmici.
5 He does know that members of the Vitezovi
6 engaged in the truck bomb on the 18th of April, 1993.
7 Again, the same unit, he has got the option. He
8 planned this operation, he said. He could have made
9 the decision to deploy the Vitezovi or to not deploy
10 the Vitezovi on the Grbavica feature. He chose to
11 deploy them, the same group that had done the truck
12 bomb at any number -- had been involved in any number
13 of crimes, according to Blaskic's testimony, yet again
14 he deployed them in Grbavica.
15 So before we go into the actual legal nuances
16 of what he could or couldn't do, he had the fundamental
17 right of a commander to deploy troops in combat
18 situations as he saw fit.
19 What other powers did he have at his disposal
20 that he, in fact, used? Well, with regard to his
21 commanders and soldiers, he had the power to appoint
22 and dismiss. Under Article 29, 30, and Article 34 of
23 the decree on the armed forces, which for the record
24 purposes is in Exhibit 38, tab 2, he had the power that
25 was delegated to him to appoint and dismiss
1 commanders. He used it. Your Honours can recall the
2 cross-examination of Brigadier Marin who maintained
3 that he had no such power, until, of course, we began
4 to examine the situation of Stjepan Tuka. If we can
5 move to the next board for Mr. Tuka, Commander Tuka.
6 Let me reference this factually for Your
7 Honours just briefly. If you recall, and I won't go
8 back to those exhibits, in Exhibit 299 and 300, which
9 was the combat orders that were executed for the
10 deployment of troops to engage in Kiseljak on the
11 morning of the 18th, there were assignments given to
12 the Fojnica battalion. The Fojnica battalion at that
13 point was part of the Busovaca brigade. But,
14 nevertheless, it was given combat assignments to assist
15 the Ban Jelacic Brigade in Kiseljak. In an act of
16 conscience after this combat order was given and after
17 Blaskic urged Tuka to engage and go in to combat, Tuka
18 writes the following letter back to Blaskic:
19 "Dear Colonel," and this is Exhibit 489 for
20 the record.
21 "Dear Colonel, I feel obliged to respond to
22 your warning to comply with orders.
23 "Two years ago, I took on the obligation to
24 organise and protect the Croatian people in the
25 municipality of Fojnica; I was aware of what I was
1 getting into."
2 As we move down, he notes:
3 "I cannot blindly carry out some of the
4 orders which directly introduce war into Fojnica and
5 which has been imposed on us without prior consultation
6 with those of us who know best the situation here."
7 Then he asks to be relieved of command.
8 Blaskic immediately upon receiving this dismisses Tuka,
9 and that exhibit, for the record, is Exhibit 456/52,
10 where on the same day as this letter, Blaskic notes:
11 "I hereby dismiss Mr. Stjepan Tuka," and he notes that
12 every act contrary to this command shall entail
13 criminal responsibility.
14 I'm sure Your Honours recall the debate that
15 came about in Fojnica where some of the civil and
16 religious leaders objected to the dismissal of Tuka.
17 They wrote letters, protesting about it, et cetera.
18 What did Blaskic do? He cut them off in a document
19 that he sent on the 7th of May, 1993. He essentially
20 said, "Enough of this. Tuka is out. If you do
21 anything else and don't abide my orders, there is going
22 to be disciplinary action and criminal action." I note
23 for you Prosecutor's Exhibit 493: "Pursuant to Article
24 34 of the decree on the armed forces of the Croatian
25 Community of Herceg-Bosna, Mr. Stjepan Tuka is relieved
1 of his post as commander of the 3rd Battalion of the
2 Nikola Subic-Zrinjski Brigade and a new person has been
3 appointed to perform the duties of commander."
4 In the latter part of this order, he notes:
5 "The actions and activities of the so-called command
6 and the self-proclaimed commander, Tuka, gives grounds
7 for disciplinary action to be taken and criminal
8 charges to be filed with the competent military
9 prosecutor with which will be done."
10 So Blaskic made a decision to dismiss. He
11 didn't care what the local municipality authorities
12 thought, and Tuka was out. So let's take that down to
13 what we're talking about vis-à-vis violations of
14 international humanitarian law. Any commander that he
15 knew had committed any type of international
16 humanitarian law, contrary to his orders or otherwise,
17 could have been dismissed by Blaskic without any
18 consultation with anyone, just as he got rid of Tuka
19 for failing to follow his combat orders.
20 Of course, the last question in this regard
21 is, did he ever do it? Was any commander dismissed for
22 failure to abide by the mandates of international
23 humanitarian law or failure to follow one of the alibi
24 orders of Blaskic calling for the following of
25 international humanitarian law? The answer is no. No
1 one, not Cerkez, not Rajic. Remember Ivica Rajic?
2 According to Blaskic, he never dismissed Rajic, he
3 never dismissed Cerkez. How about the trench-digging
4 that was going on in Busovaca? He never dismissed the
5 commander there. He never dismissed a soul for
6 violations of international humanitarian law, and he
7 had the power by his own pen to do so.
8 Let us move to the Rules of Military
9 Discipline, an issue that has been written much about
10 by parties on both sides of the well. Let us just talk
11 about Blaskic's powers vis-à-vis the Rules of Military
12 Discipline and what powers were at his disposal to
13 ensure that his troops abided by the mandates of
14 international humanitarian law and followed his
15 orders.
16 Now, the reading of the Rules of Military
17 Discipline as a whole, and again this is Exhibit 38 at
18 tab 2, there are certain precepts by which the Rules of
19 Military Discipline are guided, certain fundamental
20 premises which is natural for many statutory
21 structures, and there are two that are included in the
22 Rules of Military Discipline, and that is this: The
23 Operative Zone commander, among others, but clearly the
24 Operative Zone commander controls the disciplinary
25 structure in his area of command. What do we mean by
1 that? Well, first and foremost is if we look at the
2 court and we look at the prosecutor, he has both the
3 power to discipline and the power to supervise those
4 individuals who act within the military disciplinary
5 court, and he is the one that is given the order to
6 mete out punishment but also the one that can direct an
7 individual towards the military disciplinary courts.
8 There's another fundamental concept
9 throughout the Rules of Military Discipline, and that
10 has to do with the concept of territoriality. What do
11 I mean by that? As you read through the Rules of
12 Military Discipline, a commander, quite logically, an
13 Operative Zone commander, is given disciplinary rights
14 and the right to discipline over troops that are in his
15 area of responsibility, that are within his territory.
16 What are we talking about? Such as the Vitezovi, such
17 as the military police, which we've heard from several
18 witnesses Blaskic could, in fact, discipline. Those
19 individuals which are within his territory can be
20 disciplined by him, and there's nothing in the rules
21 that subtracts from that power by an Operative Zone
22 commander, and given the circumstances, how the Rules
23 of Military Discipline are set forth make perfect sense
24 for an individual such as Blaskic who is in the field.
25 Now, the Rules of Military Discipline
1 themselves, without getting too mundane, fall into two
2 categories, one of which is errors, one of which is
3 more serious, which is an offence which carries a
4 significant period of incarceration, but more
5 importantly, can carry with it a dismissal from the
6 HVO. He has got the power in referring somebody to a
7 military disciplinary court, and that military
8 disciplinary court has the power to dismiss an
9 individual from the HVO.
10 What powers does Blaskic have individually?
11 They are quite enormous, but given his responsibility
12 and given his position, they are quite logical. Under
13 Article 59 of the rules, he, of course, has got the
14 obligation to secure evidence, what he knows of a
15 disciplinary violation. Under Article 60, he's got the
16 right to initiate an investigation, and in Article 61,
17 he has the right not only to initiate the
18 investigation, but point the investigator and tell the
19 investigator how long a period of time he has to
20 investigate.
21 Now, in addition to the powers that we've
22 just set forth, the question comes up, who decides who
23 is going to go, who is going to be brought in front of
24 a military disciplinary court? Well, Article 67.2,
25 it's actually paragraph 2, of the military disciplinary
1 rules answers that for us. It's Blaskic, as an
2 Operative Zone commander. As I noted before, under
3 Articles 94 and 95, he has got disciplinary control --
4 he has disciplinary control over the court, and he, in
5 fact, supervises that court.
6 Now, the next issue that we talked about, and
7 I talked about at some length with Brigadier Marin, was
8 what types of issues fall within disciplinary rules,
9 the Rules of Military Discipline? Well, there are any
10 number of items that fall within the Rules of Military
11 Discipline, but the all-encompassing one is set forth
12 in Article 3, Section 8 of the rules, and that
13 discipline can be meted out "for all other illegal acts
14 damaging to the reputation of the armed forces." So
15 any violation that is damaging to the reputation --
16 illegal acts damaging to the reputation of the armed
17 forces can be the subject of the military disciplinary
18 courts.
19 What does that mean? I must say that there's
20 a divergence of opinions as I'm sure Your Honours could
21 guess. I would like to cite the divergence of opinions
22 by the Defence and then some subsequent testimony in
23 this regard, and I am reading from page 116 of the
24 Defence's brief which notes, in pertinent part:
25 "Blaskic's authority to sanction HVO soldiers was
1 limited to matters pertaining to military discipline,
2 such as desertion or lost weapons. With respect to
3 criminal acts, his authority was limited to his ability
4 to refer a matter to the military police for
5 investigation, who in turn could make a report to the
6 military prosecutor."
7 On page 22 of counsel's brief: "Although
8 Blaskic had power to commence disciplinary proceedings
9 against HVO soldiers, the regulations relating to
10 military discipline pertained to different infractions
11 than the criminal matters within the jurisdiction of
12 the district military courts, acts such as war crimes
13 or crimes against humanity constituted crimes rather
14 than disciplinary offences and thus would be heard by
15 district military courts rather than military
16 disciplinary courts. By definition, disciplinary
17 offences and disciplinary errors consisted of breaches
18 of rules or regulations or misconduct or neglect of
19 duty."
20 The difficulty, of course, with that
21 assessment by Defence counsel is, with all due respect,
22 incorrect. From the testimony of Brigadier Marin
23 himself, who was a prosecutor in the military
24 disciplinary courts, we get a completely different
25 reading, and if I may refer Your Honours to pages 13781
1 and 13782 of the testimony of Brigadier Marin, he was
2 asked this question:
3 Q Let me turn your attention briefly. Can
4 you go back to the Narodni Lists ..."
5 And he looks for Article 3.8, the article
6 that writes that all illegal acts damaging to the
7 reputation of the armed forces can be disciplined.
8 Q ... and that reads "Any act by military
9 personnel that contravenes the rules and
10 orders issued by superior orders shall
11 be considered a breach of military
12 discipline, in particular," and there
13 are numerous items there, if you go to
14 item 8, "all other illegal acts damaging
15 to the reputation of the armed forces."
16 A I see it.
17 Q And that includes in military discipline
18 all acts damaging to the reputation of
19 the armed forces. Do you see that?
20 A Yes, that is what it says.
21 Q Brigadier, would you agree with me that
22 a commission of a war crime by an HVO
23 against a civilian population would be
24 something that would damage the
25 reputation of the armed forces?
1 A Yes, but I'm not a legal man. As far as
2 I know, a war crime is a criminal act.
3 Q Brigadier, you're a soldier, sir, and
4 you assist in the military disciplinary
5 courts, and going along those lines --
6 JUDGE JORDA: Could you slow down because of
7 the interpreters, please? Could you slow down,
8 please?
9 MR. KEHOE: Sorry, Mr. President.
10 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you.
11 MR. KEHOE: I apologise to the interpretation
12 booth. I'm sorry.
13 Q Brigadier, you're a soldier, sir, and
14 you assist in the military disciplinary
15 courts, and going along those lines,
16 would the burning of houses by HVO
17 soldiers, burning of civilian houses by
18 HVO soldiers, would that be something
19 that would damage the reputation of the
20 armed forces?
21 A Yes. Not only would it damage the
22 reputation of the armed forces, but it
23 is outside the code of military
24 conduct.
25 Nevertheless, my learned colleagues across
1 the well note the following on page 117:
2 "The district military courts, rather than
3 the military disciplinary courts, or Blaskic were
4 responsible for adjudicating criminal matters. As
5 stated below, disciplinary matters included minor
6 matters, such as insubordination and failure to comply
7 with military regulations, and clearly did not
8 encompass violative acts which were criminal matters
9 within the jurisdiction of the district military
10 courts. Similarly, Blaskic did not discipline HVO
11 members for burning Bosnian Muslim houses since these
12 were criminal matters within the jurisdiction of the
13 district military court."
14 I ask Your Honours to focus on that last
15 sentence: "Blaskic did not discipline HVO members for
16 burning Bosnian Muslim houses since these were criminal
17 matters within the jurisdiction of the district
18 military court." The problem with that particular
19 sentence is that Blaskic disagrees with them.
20 If we turn to Defence Exhibit 347, Defence
21 Exhibit 347 is an order that is written on the 5th of
22 November, 1992 by Blaskic. This is after the conflict
23 in Novi Travnik when houses of eminent Bosnian Muslim
24 civilians were burnt. What does Blaskic say to us and
25 say to his troops?
1 "I command:
2 1. That all measures shall be taken to
3 prevent setting fire to houses of eminent citizens of
4 Muslim nationalities in your zone of responsibility."
5 And very importantly:
6 "2. All available forces and means shall be
7 employed to carry out this assignment and most rigorous
8 measures shall be taken against transgressors in
9 accordance with the military discipline regulations."
10 He has issued an order giving notice to his
11 troops that if they burn Muslim houses, they will be
12 subject to military discipline regulations. Not only
13 do the defendant and Marin disagree with the position
14 taken in this brief, it also undercuts the very
15 fundamental, logical approach that is taken within the
16 military disciplinary rules.
17 What is that logic? That logic is a dual
18 track that we have spoken about on several occasions
19 that is set forth most explicitly in Rule 29, and what
20 that says is that if a criminal matter is undertaken,
21 that criminal matter should be referred to the military
22 district courts, and also if that particular crime, in
23 the decision by Blaskic and the decision is given to
24 Blaskic, if that particular matter violates military
25 disciplinary rules, such as damaging the reputation of
1 the armed forces, that particular soldier can be
2 subject to the military disciplinary courts as well.
3 This violation can go the criminal route and
4 it can go the disciplinary route. Why is that
5 important? Why is it important to have this dual
6 chain? Because the disciplinary route allows the
7 commander, through the military disciplinary court, to
8 get rid of criminals, to use the structure to get rid
9 of criminals.
10 We have a case in point of Blaskic saying
11 that two HVO soldiers from Busovaca were charged
12 criminally for murdering two Bosnian Muslims in
13 February of 1993 while they were trench-digging. He
14 said they were subject to criminal penalty. I asked
15 him, and I believe, Mr. President, you asked him as
16 well, "Were they dismissed from the service?" "I don't
17 know," said Blaskic. He doesn't know. He didn't know
18 whether or not two murderers or anyone else was ever
19 dismissed from service.
20 There was a fundamental premise set forth in
21 these rules that "Not only do we want to charge
22 criminals, we don't want them in the HVO." Did Blaskic
23 ever, ever employ that method? No.
24 Last, but not least, Blaskic could refer this
25 matter -- yes, Mr. President -- could refer any matter
1 under Articles 29 and 69 to the military district
2 prosecutor, and we have heard additional evidence on
3 that, that he had the obligation and the option to
4 refer matters to the military district prosecutor who
5 have investigative powers as well.
6 Mr. President, I notice that you are looking
7 at the clock. It is break time. I will continue or
8 take a break, as Your Honour sees fit.
9 JUDGE JORDA: Yes. I think about the
10 interpreters, which you have mistreated a little bit, I
11 must say, Mr. Prosecutor. So we will give them a good
12 20-minute break. The hearing is adjourned.
13 --- Recess taken at 11.25 a.m.
14 --- On resuming at 11.50 a.m.
15 JUDGE JORDA: The hearing is resumed. Have
16 the accused brought in, please.
17 (The accused entered court)
18 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Prosecutor, you have a
19 little over an hour left, and please bear in mind the
20 interpreters, so don't hurry too much because of that,
21 because of the limited time you have. So please
22 continue.
23 MR. KEHOE: Yes, Mr. President. Thank you.
24 Again, I apologise to the interpreters for my rapid
25 pace, but I will slow down, I promise you.
1 Before we depart from this area of military
2 discipline and the application of the military
3 disciplinary rules, the issue has come up, not only
4 through the testimony of Blaskic but naturally through
5 the entire Defence case, concerning the ability of
6 Blaskic to discipline individuals such as Pasko
7 Ljubicic, the commander of the 4th Military Police
8 Battalion, or Darko Kraljevic, the commander of the
9 Vitezovi, the special purposes unit. We know now that
10 he, in fact, had those powers.
11 If we can just go to private session for a
12 moment, Mr. President, I would like to reference the
13 Court to the particular testimony in that regard.
14 JUDGE JORDA: Yes. Please, quickly.
15 (Private session)
16 (redacted)
17 (redacted)
18 (redacted)
19 (redacted)
20 (redacted)
21 (redacted)
22 (redacted)
23 (redacted)
24 (redacted)
25 (redacted)
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 (redacted)
8 (redacted)
9 (redacted)
10 (redacted)
11 (redacted)
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 (Open session)
17 JUDGE JORDA: Yes, we are going back into
18 open session now. Continue, please, Mr. Prosecutor.
19 MR. KEHOE: Yes, Mr. President.
20 Let us turn, in addition to the disciplinary
21 prong of punishment, let us turn to the criminal
22 prong. Did Blaskic have absolutely no powers in the
23 criminal arena? The answer to that is no, he did. On
24 a more simple level, we just address ourselves to the
25 decree of the military prosecutor, the military
1 prosecutor who, of course, in Article 3 has the
2 jurisdiction and the competence to conduct
3 investigations himself, but more importantly, under
4 Article 6, the district military prosecutor can receive
5 information from commanders such as Blaskic, as an
6 Operative Zone commander, and others.
7 In addition to the decree for the district
8 military prosecutor, Blaskic has some very, very
9 clearly laid out mandates when we consider the decree
10 on the military disciplinary courts -- I'm sorry, the
11 district military courts, as opposed to the
12 disciplinary courts. They go to some questions, Judge
13 Rodrigues, that you asked, and that is his mandates to
14 secure evidence, to make sure that evidence has been
15 secured and gathered and to gather all information
16 possible.
17 Significantly, he has a power to arrest, and
18 if I might read for you, this again is Article 27 on
19 the decree on the district military prosecutor, in
20 Article 27, the commander, Blaskic, is given the power
21 to arrest on several very compelling instances. When
22 the crime itself calls for the death penalty, then he
23 has an absolute obligation to arrest. It notes, and
24 what happened in the decree was that the laws in
25 Herceg-Bosna incorporated the procedural law of the
1 former SFRY, but it notes in part: "Custody shall
2 always be ordered against a person if there is a
3 warranted suspicion that he had committed a crime for
4 which the law prescribes the death penalty." The
5 prescription for the death penalty, there are many, for
6 attacks on civilians, for various types of war crimes,
7 crimes of that magnitude or crimes of genocide, that
8 there are some mandates within the statute where the
9 commander, if he has a warranted suspicion, must
10 arrest.
11 My colleague, Mr. Harmon, discussed this
12 particular matter with Mr. Tadic, who was a justice
13 ministry official called by the Defence, and I think as
14 we look at these powers to arrest, the question and
15 answer that I will go through briefly is instructive,
16 and this, for reference, is page 17371, and this is, of
17 course, Article 27 of the decree on the military
18 district court.
19 Q Under Article 27 of the document that we
20 are referring to, a commander could
21 arrest an individual. In fact, he was
22 required to arrest an individual if
23 there was a warranted suspicion that he
24 had committed a crime such as war
25 crimes, crimes against the civilian
1 population, the wounded and the sick,
2 prisoners of war, murderer of an enemy
3 who had surrendered or laid down his
4 arms; is that correct?
5 The answer by Mr. Tadic:
6 A Yes. If the person is known and if
7 there is nothing else concerned, because
8 then that person has to be handed over
9 to the competent authorities.
10 Q Colonel Blaskic was required to arrest a
11 person if there was a warranted
12 suspicion that that person had committed
13 one of those crimes which I just
14 described under this provision; isn't
15 that correct?
16 A He could have. But someone from the
17 crime investigation could have too,
18 because in this paragraph, reference is
19 made to both.
20 Q I understand. But I am asking you not
21 about the military police, I am asking
22 you about Colonel Blaskic.
23 A Could have.
24 So let us discuss Blaskic's state of mind, if
25 you will, when he said that he learned of the crimes in
1 Ahmici. He knew that the military police, commanded by
2 Pasko Ljubicic, was responsible for that. He clearly
3 had a warranted suspicion at that time, and given that
4 warranted suspicion, he had the authority to arrest
5 Pasko Ljubicic for war crimes.
6 Let us take this one step further. Supposing
7 he didn't have this warranted suspicion. What other
8 measures could he use to arrest people he believed to
9 be perpetrators of these crimes, such as Pasko
10 Ljubicic? Before we answer that, let us just look at
11 Blaskic's own comments as to why he wanted Pasko
12 Ljubicic removed as a military policeman.
13 A I wanted him released.
14 Q Why?
15 I'm reading from page 19546:
16 A There were several reasons, but the main
17 one was that I had insisted that it was
18 impossible to conduct a proper
19 investigation into the crime in Ahmici
20 for as long as the same command
21 structure remained within the military
22 police. One of the reasons also was
23 certainly my fear that the crime in
24 Ahmici could be repeated.
25 So he wanted Pasko Ljubicic removed because
1 he said that a proper investigation couldn't be
2 conducted, and he didn't want the crime in Ahmici to be
3 repeated.
4 Lo and behold, let us examine the procedural
5 powers at his disposal under the decree on the military
6 district courts and examine the powers that are given
7 to the commander.
8 "If there are grounds for suspicion ..." and
9 this again is reading from Article 191:
10 "If there are grounds for suspicion that an
11 individual has committed a crime but the conditions do
12 not obtain for mandatory custody, custody may be
13 ordered against that person in the following cases:
14 "2. If there is a warranted fear that he
15 will destroy the clues to the crime or if particular
16 circumstances indicate that he will hinder the inquiry
17 by influencing witnesses, fellow defendants, or
18 accessories after the fact."
19 So if he has got a warranted fear that the
20 inquiry into Ahmici is going to be hindered through
21 influencing witnesses, fellow defendants, or others, he
22 has got the ability under the law to arrest Pasko
23 Ljubicic, the guy that he says he wants out. Did he do
24 it? Of course not.
25 The next one. He can also arrest if
1 particular circumstances justify -- now, this is
2 grounds for suspicion.
3 "He can arrest if particular circumstances
4 justify a fear that the crime will be repeated or an
5 attempted crime will be completed or a threatened crime
6 will be committed."
7 He has got the power to arrest Pasko Ljubicic
8 if particular circumstances justify a fear that the
9 crime will be repeated. The same reason that he
10 testified to this Chamber as to why he wanted Pasko
11 Ljubicic removed as the commander are some of the
12 reasons given within the law of Herceg-Bosna that
13 allows Blaskic as a commander to arrest Ljubicic. Of
14 course, Ljubicic was never arrested in April, never
15 arrested in May, June, July, August, September, or any
16 other time to date, and all the while, Blaskic had that
17 power within his arsenal.
18 In addition to the powers that we discussed
19 under the Rules of Military Discipline, under the
20 arrest powers given to him by the decree of the
21 military district court, he had some very significant
22 de facto powers, and I ask the Court to examine some of
23 those. For instance, over the civilian police, he had
24 powers to order the civilian police, and we need only
25 look at Exhibit 456/38. He had the power to give
1 orders and did give orders to the military warden, the
2 warden of the military prison at Kaonik, Mr. Zlatko
3 Aleksovski, and that, of course, is an exhibit we've
4 heard much about it, Defence Exhibit 373. Last, but
5 not least, he gave an order and invoked his power to
6 execute soldiers who left the front lines. Blaskic
7 gave that order to execute soldiers, and that is set
8 forth in 456/77.
9 Let us turn, if we may, Your Honours, to the
10 duty of a commander to suppress violations of
11 international humanitarian law. Blaskic, as a
12 commander, any commander, has got to take steps prior
13 to the commission of any crime to ensure that such
14 crimes don't take place.
15 What steps need be taken? Certainly, a
16 disciplinary procedure that's in place that uniformly
17 and regularly disciplines troops under his command is
18 probably the most compelling method to ensure
19 subsequent violations of the law. Of course, Blaskic
20 didn't do that. He certainly didn't do it when crimes
21 were inflicted against the Bosnian Muslim population,
22 and those disciplines that we have seen, as set forth
23 in the Defence Exhibits, involve relatively minor
24 infractions and nothing on the scale of actual crimes
25 that we have seen during the course of this trial.
1 But in addition to that, he has other
2 obligations, and one of those obligations is
3 educational training, educational training to his
4 conscripts in international humanitarian law. Blaskic
5 was a graduate of a military academy, had been
6 instructed in the Geneva Conventions and Protocols, as
7 well as international humanitarian law, and he, more
8 than anybody else in Central Bosnia, knew the need to
9 communicate international humanitarian law to
10 conscripts.
11 As my colleague, Mr. Harmon, explained
12 yesterday and as Your Honours can examine as you review
13 the manuals that have been received in evidence, the
14 training schedules that have been set up by Blaskic,
15 and all of the other orders to train that are included
16 in Prosecutor's Exhibit 456, there is not one iota of
17 information or directive on international humanitarian
18 law. The only passing glance in that regard appears to
19 be an ICRC document that Marin said soldiers got in the
20 area and he didn't know if soldiers throughout Central
21 Bosnia had got it.
22 But clearly to his conscripts, if one
23 examines the testimony of Blaskic, the testimony of
24 Marin, and looks at the documentary evidence, they were
25 not teaching their conscripts fundamental rules of law
1 to protect the civilian population, an inexcusable
2 omission, an inexcusable omission on the part of a
3 commander which predictably led to results that,
4 unfortunately, we have seen here.
5 Let us examine, if you will, some of the
6 orders that he did give. The orders that Blaskic did
7 give for securing or safeguarding the civilian
8 population fall into some very interesting categories.
9 The majority of these orders, as you can review from
10 the record, are orders that he gave after being given a
11 similar order by the HVO main staff, and Your Honours
12 can examine the preambles in those orders and examine
13 that, in fact, he has been instructed to give those
14 orders by the main staff. Many of the orders that he
15 signed to protect civilians follow on the heels of
16 meetings with international organisations where such
17 orders were required to be issued, for instance, the
18 orders on February 13th of 1993 that were signed by
19 Blaskic and Hadzihasanovic. All those orders to
20 protect civilians emanated from a cease-fire meeting and
21 negotiation with ECMM and the U.N.
22 Another group of orders follows on the heels
23 of the Ahmici massacre when Blaskic knew full well that
24 the International Community was examining that horrific
25 event, and Blaskic knew full well that he needed to
1 find some paper at some time and some place to show
2 somebody about what he ostensibly was trying to do.
3 His pretenses in this score continued, not
4 just in April when he issued these orders in a flurry
5 after meetings with international organisations and in
6 a flurry after the Ahmici massacre. Let's look how
7 driven Blaskic was to issue orders to safeguard
8 civilians as we move into June, some two months down
9 the line.
10 I think an examination of Blaskic's orders
11 are instructive. He gave an order on the 19th of June,
12 1993, D374, and what does that order forbid? It
13 forbids the expulsion of civilians from their houses.
14 He gave that order, as he testified, because he wanted
15 to make sure, once again, that the civilian population,
16 and especially the non-Croat civilian population was
17 secure.
18 Did Blaskic do that on his own? Did all of a
19 sudden he wake up on the 19th of June and say, "I'm
20 going to write an order to protect the civilian
21 population"? No. No. He wrote this order after a
22 cease-fire agreement and meetings in the joint command
23 on the 19th of June, 1993, and the Court need only
24 examine a record of some of those issues presented to
25 this Court by Brigadier Duncan, and that is in Exhibit
1 386, where one of the demands in there was that Blaskic
2 and Hadzihasanovic issue orders to all under their
3 command forbidding the expulsion of civilians from
4 their homes. So Blaskic goes to this meeting in the
5 morning, goes back to his office, writes this order, of
6 course, it's in English so he can produce it to the
7 International Community, to show them how he abided by
8 what he was supposed to do. But do this on his own
9 initiative? No.
10 Let us stay with that particular day. There
11 are complaints in that meeting about getting
12 international humanitarian aid into various villages in
13 the Lasva area. Blaskic issues another order, in 372,
14 allowing international humanitarian aid to travel into
15 villages such as Kruscica. Did Blaskic do that on his
16 own? The answer is no.
17 Let us go back to Exhibit 386. Again an
18 agenda item at the joint command meeting chaired by
19 Brigadier Duncan, there was a requirement to assist
20 UNHCR and UNPROFOR in their movement and their
21 distribution of aid.
22 It doesn't stop there. Let us continue on
23 with his alibi orders on the 21st. He gave you, Your
24 Honours, an order, an order from the 21st of June,
25 1993, sent to the warden and sent to the brigade
1 commanders forbidding, forbidding the using of
2 prisoners of war to dig trenches. Incredible, isn't
3 it? The first order that we see specifically
4 forbidding prisoners of war to dig trenches was given
5 the 21st of June, 1993, months and months and months
6 after this practice was pervasive throughout the HVO
7 and, of course, continued after that because he didn't
8 do anything about it.
9 Be that as it may, the question that comes up
10 is, do we take Blaskic's testimony that he issued this
11 order, Defence Exhibit 373, in a spirit of benevolence
12 because he wanted to ensure that prisoners of war were
13 not used to dig trenches? The answer, of course, is
14 no.
15 Blaskic's testimony on this score was
16 disingenuous at best, and, accordingly, I submit to
17 you, it's simply not true. How do we know that?
18 Again, let us look at Prosecution Exhibit 387, the
19 minutes of the meeting of the joint command on the 21st
20 of June, 1993, the same day Blaskic issues this order
21 at 8.00 at night.
22 What do we have in here? In Prosecutor's
23 Exhibit 387, Ambassador Thebault sat down there and
24 complained about the use of prisoners digging trenches,
25 and there was a demand that this endeavour should stop,
1 and that if not already issued, commanders were to
2 issue precise orders on the treatment of the prisoners
3 and the punishment of those commanders who disobeyed
4 those orders. Commanders who disobeyed these orders
5 were to be removed from command and specific orders
6 were to be issued forbidding prisoners being asked or
7 made to dig trenches.
8 So Blaskic goes to this meeting on the
9 morning of the 21st, he goes back to his headquarters,
10 and he files this order, not on his own volition, but
11 because he was demanded to do that by the International
12 Community, and a further explanation of these meetings
13 on the 19th and the 21st of June is set forth in
14 Prosecutor's Exhibit 461.
15 Let us look at some of his orders, his alibi
16 orders. Is it sufficient for Blaskic, to comply with
17 the mandates of international humanitarian law, to
18 issue orders to comply with the law? Is that enough?
19 Does he meet his obligations under the law by issuing
20 these orders, telling his soldiers what they're
21 supposed to do? I submit to you, Your Honours, he does
22 not.
23 I refer Your Honours to the jurisprudence
24 emanating from the Tokyo tribunal, in essence, the case
25 of General Hitaro Kimura, and counsel for Kimura argued
1 that because Kimura had issued orders to his troops to
2 conduct themselves in a proper manner and refrain from
3 ill-treating prisoners, that he had met his obligations
4 under international humanitarian law.
5 The tribunal in Tokyo found to quite the
6 contrary, and I am reading from that particular case,
7 it is volume 200, and the official transcript is on
8 page 48444, and I'm quoting the court in the Kimura
9 judgement:
10 "The duty of an army commander in such
11 circumstances is not discharged by the mere issue of
12 routine orders. His duty is to take steps and issue
13 such orders as will prevent thereafter the commission
14 of war crimes and to satisfy himself that such orders
15 are being carried out. This, he did not do. Thus, he
16 deliberately disregarded his legal duty to take
17 adequate steps to prevent breaches of the laws of
18 war."
19 That, Your Honours, is exactly the best light
20 in which Blaskic's alibi orders can be viewed, the best
21 light. He issued orders and took no steps, no
22 follow-up, to ensure that those orders were being
23 complied with. Of course, the most effective way to
24 ensure that your orders are being complied with is to
25 punish transgressors, punish those transgressors so
1 they won't violate your orders. I'm sure Your Honours
2 agree, when several soldiers are punished for
3 transgressing and violating the law, the rest of the
4 soldiers in their ranks will follow suit. Blaskic, of
5 course, did not, and the rest, as we've seen, was quite
6 predictable.
7 The other prong under 7(3) is the obligation
8 to punish, and this case, as it pertains to Blaskic, it
9 is the failure to punish. He not only didn't punish
10 anybody, he promoted these guys who committed crimes.
11 In the most startling way to get a soldier's attention,
12 he promotes somebody into his headquarters that has, in
13 fact, committed criminal offences throughout the area.
14 Nevertheless, let us look factually at
15 Blaskic's failure to punish and what exactly he did.
16 Let us focus on the facts of Ahmici, because that, of
17 course, is the most instructive failure on his regard
18 because it encompasses not only a failure to do
19 anything about it, but concrete steps on the part of
20 Blaskic to conceal. His efforts to conceal were not
21 only an effort to conceal his troops' conducts, but it
22 was also an effort to conceal his own complicity.
23 Let's look at what Blaskic says. Blaskic
24 tells us that he does not find out about Ahmici until
25 the 22nd of April, 1993, in the latter part of the
1 afternoon when he gets this letter from Stewart. This
2 atrocity that takes place less than five kilometres
3 away from his doorstep, he does not know until some six
4 days down the line. That, of course, is nonsense. Why
5 is it nonsense? Because he knows that if he knows an
6 event like that had taken place on the 16th, it would
7 immediately trigger his obligations under international
8 humanitarian law.
9 What are those obligations? First and
10 foremost is to get those soldiers out of combat. If he
11 did nothing else on the 16th when he found out about
12 all those murders, he had an obligation to get those
13 soldiers out of combat immediately so they didn't do it
14 again. Of course, he didn't do it. He continued to
15 use them, as we can see from his own testimony.
16 What's startling from his testimony is that
17 in his testimony where he says he didn't know,
18 virtually everybody else did. Who knew? The nurses
19 that were in the hospital in downtown Vitez knew about
20 it, if you recall the conversation that they had with
21 Dr. Mujezinovic on the afternoon of the 19th of April,
22 1993. It was a very emotional conversation where these
23 ladies apparently were crying and talking about how the
24 HVO went into Ahmici and killed everything. They knew
25 about it.
1 Anto Valenta, a man who is an HVO official
2 that had an office in Blaskic's headquarters right down
3 the hall, right down the hall, told Stewart he knew
4 about it two days after the event. I reference Your
5 Honour to the diary by Stewart from the 4th of May,
6 1993.
7 Who else knew about it? Cerkez knew about
8 it, along with the other individuals that were at the
9 meeting on the 19th of April, 1993, when he brought
10 Dr. Mujezinovic into his headquarters and said to him,
11 "Do you know what we did in Ahmici?" He said that
12 conversation in the presence of several other HVO
13 commanders, in addition to the information officer for
14 the Viteska Brigade. This was not a piece of
15 information that people were trying to hide. This was
16 a piece of information that was well-known.
17 What does Stewart say? The question was
18 posed to Colonel Stewart: "When did Blaskic find
19 out?" "Well, he knew the same day," says Stewart. "He
20 was a good commander. I went to the headquarters at
21 10.00 in the morning and tried to find him. He, of
22 course, was out on the ground. He absolutely knew the
23 same day." In fact, individuals in his command knew
24 about it almost immediately and even those that weren't
25 in the same geographical area.
1 If I can just briefly go into private session
2 on this score, we can touch on some closed session
3 testimony, and I promise you, Your Honour, it will be
4 very brief.
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23 (Open session)
24 MR. KEHOE: Now, mind you, what did Blaskic
25 tell us? Blaskic told us that the first time he got
1 concrete information about what happened in Ahmici was
2 on the 22nd of April when he got Stewart's level.
3 Mr. President, you pressed Blaskic on that score, and
4 you asked him specifically, was this the first time he
5 had concrete information on this, and he said yes.
6 Well, let us listen to the rather emotional testimony
7 given by his chief of operations, Mr. Marin, who says
8 something quite different. This is on page 12507:
9 A There are some events that remain clear
10 in my mind during the time that General
11 Blaskic was in Zenica. I shall now go
12 on to General Blaskic's return. I have
13 already said that I actually met him
14 during the war, so I noticed on his face
15 that he was worried and depressed. And
16 he uttered only one sentence, and I
17 shall try to remember it fully: "I have
18 been informed that in the conflicts in
19 the territory of the Vitez municipality,
20 and especially in Ahmici, there were a
21 large number of people killed, among
22 whom there are civilians." That was the
23 information he conveyed. It was then
24 that I learned that in Ahmici a large
25 number of people had been killed, among
1 whom there were civilians.
2 Two days before Blaskic fesses up that he
3 found out about it, his own chief of operations said
4 that he told him. Now, why is Blaskic continuously
5 lying about that? Because it triggers his obligations
6 to do something about it, and he doesn't want to.
7 Let's look at his continuous shading of the
8 truth and prevarications on this issue, because it
9 continues throughout his testimony. Let us examine
10 this testimony that he couldn't get to Ahmici until the
11 27th of April of 1993. The fact remains that on the
12 21st of April, Colonel Morsink, with a member of the
13 HVO, a Mr. Jozic, were in Ahmici, and lo and behold,
14 the combat was so heavy that people were still living
15 there and they had their laundry hanging out, hanging
16 out in front of their house. That is, on the 21st of
17 April, an HVO representative was there. He couldn't
18 get there until the 27th?
19 Let us move on to the 23rd of April, 1993.
20 Witness K testifies that, in fact, members of the civil
21 defence were pulling bodies out of there on the 23rd.
22 In fact, there is a tape in evidence taken by an ITN
23 reporter, Dan Damon, who reflects on the 23rd and films
24 the removal of bodies from Ahmici on the 23rd of
25 April. Who ordered those bodies removed? And it isn't
1 remarkable that this body removal takes place a day
2 after Stewart's letter got in. Do you think they think
3 they got caught? Do you think that crossed their mind
4 that they got caught and they better do something about
5 it? If not, why all of a sudden on the 23rd did they
6 start removing bodies from there, because the film
7 reflects that they did. They start picking up bodies,
8 and they bring them to the school a couple -- about 150
9 metres behind Blaskic's headquarters, and in another
10 shading of the truth, he says that he ordered their
11 removal or the picking up of those bodies on the 29th
12 of April so that proper investigation could be
13 undertaken. That's also nonsense because the bodies
14 were buried on the 28th of April. There's a document
15 in evidence on the burial of those bodies in Stari
16 Vitez, and the body exchange that took place, and it
17 all took place before he ever gave an order to pick up
18 those bodies.
19 Now, he talks about the fact that he felt so
20 terrible about what happened to Ahmici, he went down to
21 this press conference and he spoke about what a
22 terrible crime it was at this press conference, and
23 that is what his true beliefs were. That is nonsense
24 too. What was going on? What was going on at that
25 time was the aftermath of a report that was issued by
1 Martin Bell that came on the 22nd or the 23rd of April,
2 1993. You will recall Mr. Bell's testimony that his
3 particular documentary was played on the air, and
4 international eyes were directed on Ahmici. That was
5 days before Blaskic walked up to the podium and
6 condemned what happened in Ahmici.
7 In addition to that, and we will turn to
8 exactly what Mr. Bell said, at this particular time, on
9 the heels of the Bell reports, there was an
10 international uproar being directed against the
11 Republic of Croatia, and they had to do something about
12 it. Your Honours, if you could examine P532, where
13 Mate Boban, in a meeting that took place on the 29th of
14 April, 1993, gives an accurate summary or a reflection
15 of what they were concerned about. This meeting took
16 place on the 29th. The uproar didn't take place on the
17 29th, it preceded this. Nevertheless, listen to what
18 Boban says: "Due to the events in Vitez, the village
19 of Ahmici, EU ministers have almost announced sanctions
20 against Croatia."
21 Let us turn to Mr. Bell, the BBC witness.
22 This is by my colleague, Mr. Harmon:
23 Q So this film footage we see taken on the
24 22nd of April, and it was transmitted on
25 the 23rd, the next day?
1 A Yes, sir.
2 Q Would you say that every Muslim house
3 that was in Ahmici had been burnt down?
4 A Burned or ruined in one way or another,
5 yes, sir.
6 Q Now, what was the effect of your
7 significant report that was aired on the
8 23rd?
9 A I think it had global effect. I was
10 broadcasting to tell the truth, but I do
11 believe it had a tremendous effect on
12 the outside world.
13 Turning over to page 17616:
14 Q All right. Would you agree with me that
15 the effect of those numerous reports,
16 Ambassador Thebault's and yours,
17 BritBat's report, brought a lot of
18 pressure to bear on the HVO in Central
19 Bosnia to account for this horrible
20 massacre that had taken place in
21 Ahmici?
22 A Yes, sir. That's why I believe that
23 Colonel Blaskic made the statement he
24 did at that press conference.
25 Bell testified that the reason Blaskic made
1 the statement that he did at the press conference was
2 because there was an international uproar, not because
3 there was any degree of commiseration or sympathy about
4 what happened, but because there was an international
5 uproar directed against the Bosnian Croats and the
6 HVO.
7 Let us turn to the actual subterfuge of
8 Blaskic's investigation. Blaskic's subterfuge
9 concerning the investigation and his testimony started
10 from the very beginning. As we noted, Blaskic
11 testified that he first found out about the events in
12 Ahmici based on a letter he received from Stewart on
13 the 22nd of April. That's Exhibit 456/56. He
14 responded that he wanted to send an investigating
15 commission to that locale, and that is on 456/57. He
16 then told us, Your Honours, that one of the most
17 compelling things that he wanted to do throughout all
18 this was to obtain international assistance in order to
19 conduct this investigation because he couldn't conduct
20 an investigation without the assistance of the
21 International Community, that every time he met members
22 of the International Community, he requested assistance
23 in this joint investigation. I need not paraphrase
24 this. Let me just read you a portion of his testimony
25 which is reflected on page 19165:
1 A In my letter, when I wrote it on the
2 23rd to Colonel Stewart, and in all
3 subsequent discussions with
4 representatives of the International
5 Community, I sought assistance in
6 carrying out the investigation, hoping
7 that international institutions at the
8 highest level, as well as
9 representatives of the BH army and the
10 HVO, would join in this investigation.
11 At 19167 by my colleague, Mr. Nobilo:
12 Q Did anyone that you addressed for
13 assistance, that is, the BH army,
14 UNPROFOR, European monitors, the
15 political and military leadership of
16 Herceg-Bosna, did any one of those give
17 you assistance in the investigation into
18 Ahmici?
19 A No.
20 The facts from those individuals bear an
21 entirely different story which highlights the lies that
22 Blaskic told during the course of that testimony while
23 he was under oath. Let us turn to those witnesses
24 seriatim.
25 The first, Colonel Stewart, and this is on
1 page 23713 of Colonel Stewart's testimony:
2 Q Again, Colonel, you were asking about
3 the commission of inquiry. Was this the
4 same commission of inquiry you were
5 asking about on the 24th?
6 A Well, it was, but I hadn't seen any
7 evidence of any commission of inquiry.
8 Q Was Blaskic again -- did he at any point
9 in this meeting ask you for help to
10 conduct this investigation? Did he ask
11 for any help to conduct the
12 investigation?
13 A No. Otherwise, I would have actually
14 jumped on the idea and the ambassadors
15 would have also backed me up. It is
16 clear to me, you know -- let's not beat
17 about the bush. Nothing happened.
18 Nothing had happened and you know
19 whatever way we put it, nothing had
20 happened by that time and nothing I saw
21 convinced me that anyone was going to
22 take action. And I saw the end of my
23 tour in Bosnia as this happening and
24 then it being forgotten about, but thank
25 goodness it hasn't been.
1 He is not alone. If I may go into private
2 session, just briefly, Mr. President, it will be very
3 brief.
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10 (Open session)
11 MR. KEHOE: This is the testimony of Colonel
12 Morsink, one of the individuals that was, on a daily
13 basis, at the Busovaca joint commission. This is his
14 testimony that most recently was admitted into evidence
15 through questioning by my colleague, Mr. Harmon, in the
16 rebuttal case. At page 24400, line 11:
17 Q Later, Colonel Morsink, while you were
18 an ECMM representative to the local
19 commissions, did Blaskic or any
20 representative of the HVO request that
21 any of the local joint commissions
22 conduct an investigation into the events
23 at Ahmici?
24 A No, they did not.
25 Q Had such a request been made, Colonel
1 Morsink, would ECMM have lent its
2 assistance to such an investigation?
3 A Yes, definitely, since we got the order
4 from the headquarters in Zagreb to
5 assist any investigation for war crimes
6 or possible war crimes.
7 The reality of the situation is contrary to
8 the testimony of Blaskic was he never asked for a
9 commission, he never wanted a joint commission, because
10 if he got a joint commission, it would reveal exactly
11 what was happening, who was guilty, and his complicity
12 in it. What was his response? Because his response to
13 the notification about Ahmici is the most telling
14 attribution of Blaskic's men rea during the course of
15 these events. If we can turn to the report,
16 Mr. Hooper, which is 456/58. That's it. Thank you.
17 This is a report that Blaskic sends on the
18 24th of April, 1993, the day he has the meeting with
19 Stewart where Stewart asks him, "What are you going to
20 do about this commission on Ahmici?" The first meeting
21 he has with Stewart after the exchange of letters. In
22 this letter that was dictated by Blaskic, that was
23 typed in his headquarters, and that was signed by
24 Blaskic, not withstanding this nonsense that something
25 was left out of the letter. Nothing was left out of
1 this letter. There is no expression of remorse for any
2 of the dead and any of the injured in Ahmici. What is
3 there an expression of? Mate Boban should come to
4 Central Bosnia and do something about the biased
5 reporting, the biased reporting by reporters that are
6 in the pay of foreign services. That's his -- that's
7 his expression of remorse, when he finds out about the
8 atrocities that occurred in Ahmici, not "Let's conduct
9 an investigation," not "Let's get our troops under
10 control." "Let's do something about the biased
11 reporting."
12 What does he also say that day? He says that
13 day he gave an oral order to SIS to commence
14 investigating. Do you recall that testimony, Your
15 Honours, that he gave this oral order on the 24th? His
16 chief of operations and his -- he wasn't acting at that
17 point, but he was his chief of operations, he knows
18 nothing about this order given to SIS. Nothing.
19 Doesn't know a thing about it. It's not written
20 anywhere. It's not referred to anywhere.
21 Interestingly enough, Blaskic also testified
22 that he ordered an investigation on the truck bomb.
23 Marin, his chief of operations, his right-hand man, he
24 doesn't know big about that either, nor does he know
25 anything about a request by Blaskic for a joint
1 investigation on the shelling of Zenica. He doesn't
2 know anything about this. This small, little group of
3 officers that are besieged in the Hotel Vitez, and this
4 guy doesn't know anything about this 24th order,
5 doesn't know anything about an investigation of the
6 truck bomb, and doesn't know anything about a request
7 for a joint investigation on the shelling of Zenica.
8 He doesn't know anything about it, because it didn't
9 happen.
10 When is the first articulation we see of any
11 orders, and that is the 10th of May, 1993. What has
12 happened by that time? We see an enormous convergence
13 of events prior to the issuance of this order by
14 Blaskic on the 10th of May. What are they? Martin
15 Bell, obviously, his reporting has caused an
16 international uproar. We had the meeting in Citluk
17 where Mate Boban acknowledges that the EU ministers
18 want to sanction for the Republic of Croatia. But,
19 more personally, he knows some very interesting
20 things. What are they?
21 1. He knows that ECMM, through Mr. McLeod,
22 has been down there looking into these atrocities.
23 2. He knows that the U.N., through the Human
24 Rights Commission, and Payam Akhavan and Thomas Osario,
25 were also down looking at these atrocities.
1 3. He knows that the U.N. has decided to set
2 up a war crimes tribunal, and he's got to paper the
3 file. He's got to paper the file because he has got to
4 show some paper to somebody, because he knew at some
5 point he might be sitting here.
6 But even after he did issue the paper, after
7 he did issue that order, nobody was ever punished, no
8 one was ever disciplined, and no one went to gaol. Lo
9 and behold, they were dismissed from the HVO. In his
10 zeal, in his zeal to complete this investigation, the
11 first chapter of which he received back on the 25th of
12 May, 1993, he waits, he waits until the 17th of August,
13 the 17th of August, to order a followup investigation,
14 to order a followup investigation. Over two months
15 after he receives it, he says, "Maybe we should do
16 something else about this" and pens another order.
17 Whether that's a real order or not, who knows?
18 Is that the act of a man who wants to get to
19 the bottom of a problem, that wants to find out who the
20 perpetrators are so that he can get them out of his
21 ranks? Or are these the acts of a person who wants to
22 cover his tracks? I submit to you it's the latter,
23 quite clearly.
24 Let's look at his further conduct in this
25 regard. The report that he issues or the order that he
1 issues in August for further investigation, for some
2 reason, he says SIS says -- the SIS representative,
3 Anto Sliskovic, the ever-present Anto Sliskovic, sends
4 the report down to Mostar, and he says Sliskovic tells
5 him, "It's no longer your concern." No longer your
6 concern.
7 Mr. President, you pressed him on that
8 issue. "What did you do to try and find out these
9 names? What steps did you take to remove the criminals
10 that you knew were in your midst from the ranks? What
11 did you do?" Nothing. Nothing. It was a matter that
12 was subject, according to his testimony, to SIS, and "I
13 don't see anything, I don't hear anything, and it's not
14 my problem." What a surprise that the burnings and the
15 killings and the evictions went on.
16 He had additional opportunities to do
17 something about it, and that came in Operation Pauk,
18 when he was the deputy chief of staff and ultimately
19 the chief of staff of the HVO, and you'll recall that
20 he took that position in the spring of 1994 and held
21 that position until November of 1995, when he was
22 elevated to a general position in the HV. But during
23 the spring, summer, and early fall of 1994, Blaskic
24 conducted an operation called Operation Spider or
25 Operation Pauk. He, by his own testimony, said that
1 that particular operation he expanded to include
2 investigations of war crimes, by his initiative,
3 according to his testimony.
4 Lo and behold, on the heels of that, he was
5 asked, "Was anybody punished, anybody in the HVO
6 punished for crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims,
7 civilians or non-combatants? Anybody?" No. No. His
8 excuse on Ahmici was, "Oh, I sent a SIS investigator
9 over there and he couldn't get the file." How about
10 everything else?
11 Let's not forget, the series of war crimes
12 above and beyond Ahmici, assuming you believe this
13 canard that was set forth by Blaskic that his SIS
14 investigator could not get that report, how about the
15 rest of them? How about all the other atrocities and
16 war crimes that he was made aware of? He was made
17 aware of the trench-digging that was going on, the
18 burning of houses. From down in Kiseljak, by his own
19 admission, he knew that the HVO had destroyed the
20 mosque. He knew that trench-digging was going on in
21 Kiseljak. He knew all of that.
22 In addition, he knew about the Stupni Do
23 massacre. That is the 21st, 22nd of October, 1993,
24 where the HVO, under the command of Rajic, his
25 subordinate, went into Stupni Do, a small village in
1 the Vares municipality, and killed everything in sight
2 and burnt everything down. Once again, the MO of the
3 HVO.
4 When he commanded Operation Pauk, did he do
5 anything about that? Did anybody go to gaol or be
6 punished for that? No. Ivica Rajic was tried for
7 murder, murder of HVO soldiers. Nobody was ever
8 charged, disciplined, sanctioned for the murder of
9 those innocent civilians in Stupni Do or for anywhere
10 else.
11 So the themes and opportunities for Blaskic
12 to do something and eradicate criminals and to bring a
13 reckoning to these crimes were many, and in every
14 opportunity that was laid at his doorstep, he failed to
15 do it. The question for Your Honours is why? Why?
16 None of this was justified by any military necessity.
17 No military necessity justifies the killing of
18 civilians or the burning of their houses to ensure that
19 those Muslims won't return. None of it.
20 There's a reason why he didn't do anything
21 about it. The reason he didn't do anything is because
22 he was involved in a plan with the political leadership
23 to eradicate and remove the Bosnian Muslim population
24 from Central Bosnia. That was his job, and he did it
25 well, and for his efforts, he was promoted. He was
1 successful in Kiseljak in the spring of 1992, and he
2 received the promotion as the Central Bosnian Operative
3 Zone commander on the 27th of June, 1992 in light of
4 his successes. In light of his successes in Central
5 Bosnia, this trusted ally of Mate Boban and Dario
6 Kordic was promoted to the deputy chief of staff in the
7 spring of 1994. Thereafter, in August of 1994, he
8 became the chief of staff for the entire HVO military,
9 and still nobody was punished for this.
10 Blaskic not only participated in this plan of
11 eradication and persecution, he thrived in it.
12 What he left in his wake? The next chart.
13 What he left was death and destruction, all to achieve
14 something, a political goal for the Bosnian Croats of
15 a uni-ethnic state. The price was too high.
16 In a quote by Voltaire, the eighteenth
17 century philosopher, he noted one thing: "We respect
18 the living, but to the dead we owe only the truth." We
19 owe these people the truth.
20 In light of that, Mr. President, the Office
21 of the Prosecutor asks for a verdict of guilty and with
22 a life sentence. Thank you.
23 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Prosecutor, that brings to
24 an end your closing arguments.
25 It is five to one. Mr. Hayman, I don't
1 expect you want to begin for five minutes. I assume
2 that you would prefer us to adjourn and that we resume
3 with yourself and your associates at 2.30 this
4 afternoon. I assume that is what you would wish.
5 MR. HAYMAN: We agree that's the most logical
6 way to proceed, Mr. President.
7 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. In that case, the
8 hearing is adjourned, and we will resume at 2.30 with
9 the closing arguments of the Defence.
10 --- Luncheon recess taken at 12.55 p.m.
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1 --- On resuming at 2.39 p.m.
2 JUDGE JORDA: The hearing is resumed. Have
3 the accused brought in, please.
4 (The accused entered court)
5 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Hayman, you have the
6 floor.
7 MR. HAYMAN: Thank you, Mr. President, and
8 good afternoon. Good afternoon, Your Honours.
9 We've now been joined by the assistant I
10 spoke of earlier, Mr. President, Mr. Ilias Guzman of my
11 office. He will be rendering technical assistance to
12 us during the remainder of the Defence presentation.
13 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. We bid him welcome
14 amongst us.
15 MR. HAYMAN: I'd like to thank,
16 Mr. President, you and Your Honours, for the patience
17 and insights that you, as well as Judge Riad while he
18 was sitting on this Trial Chamber, that you have
19 brought to the proceedings. This has certainly been a
20 unique professional experience for Mr. Nobilo and
21 myself, and you have contributed greatly to it. I also
22 thank our colleagues across the well for the courtesies
23 they have shown in this long and demanding trial. Of
24 course, we must thank the interpreters who have
25 faithfully interpreted so many, indeed, millions of our
1 words.
2 The Defence will proceed with our final
3 argument in several parts. Both Mr. Nobilo and I will
4 participate in delivering the argument. First I'll
5 make a few short remarks, and then Mr. Nobilo, I
6 expect, will make the presentation for the balance of
7 the day. He will address the origins of the conflict
8 in Bosnia, the legal structure and organisation of
9 Herceg-Bosna and the HVO, and, either late this
10 afternoon or tomorrow morning, the question of the
11 presence or absence of an international armed conflict
12 on the territory of Central Bosnia, both with respect
13 to the legal framework applicable and the relevant
14 facts.
15 Then sometime tomorrow, I will begin certain
16 comments, first on command and control issues and then
17 a chronology of certain key events, not all events,
18 Mr. President. It won't be possible to talk about each
19 and every event, but key events beginning in 1992 until
20 the end of the period charged in the indictment, and
21 then I will talk about four areas in a
22 non-chronological manner: Detention crimes, forcible
23 transfer, destruction of religious or educational
24 objects or institutions, and failure to prevent or
25 failure to punish.
1 I expect Mr. Nobilo will complete our
2 presentation with a few words about potential
3 sentencing issues, and then this long trial will be
4 over.
5 During our argument, certain charts and other
6 evidence will be presented on your video monitors. To
7 receive those materials, I believe the computer monitor
8 button will have to be pushed at the time. You don't
9 need to push it now. That's one of the three buttons,
10 if your set-up is the same as ours, "Transcript,"
11 "Computer Monitor," and "Video Monitor." When we get
12 to some of those visual presentations, you will need to
13 push "computer monitor" unless the technicians do it
14 for you, which I have to admit, after two years, I
15 still don't understand exactly how that works. All I
16 know is that they have done a great job as well, and we
17 thank them for helping all of us see the evidence, in
18 this case, in a better manner.
19 If, while we're showing you an image on the
20 computer screen, if we take it away too soon, if you
21 haven't had a chance to review it as completely as you
22 wish, please tell us. We will bring it back. It's
23 very easy to bring these images back. And, as always,
24 please tell us to slow down, as we tend to go too fast,
25 both myself and Mr. Nobilo.
1 We will be playing certain video segments for
2 which we don't have written transcripts. We apologise,
3 in advance, to the translators. It's not possible for
4 technical reasons, but if there's a problem in
5 interpreting a video segment, we would simply ask them
6 to let us know, and we will replay it. Most of the
7 segments are very short. And, of course, we invite any
8 substantive questions as well from any of Your Honours
9 during our presentation. We think that that would be
10 productive if you wish to intervene.
11 JUDGE JORDA: Thank you very much. I wish to
12 say hello to the interpreters who are behind this big
13 board, and we will be very careful to prevent them
14 against any excessive speed. You may begin, please.
15 MR. HAYMAN: Thank you, Mr. President. We
16 will complete our work with this large chart today so
17 that the interpreters can be fully with us again, both
18 visually and orally.
19 Sometimes in a long journey, it is important,
20 not only where you end up but how you got there. So I
21 initially ask Your Honours to think back to the opening
22 of this case, to the case that the Prosecution promised
23 you and then sought to prove. If you look at what they
24 promised and what they presented as their core theses
25 in this case, you will see that their case
1 progressively disintegrated as they encountered new and
2 critical facts which came to light long after they
3 sought an indictment of Tihomir Blaskic.
4 What are some of the key propositions on
5 which they based their case, either initially or even
6 today? Now, I don't know if all Your Honours can see a
7 message on your video screen; I hope you can.
8 Countless witnesses denied membership in the
9 BH army or the Territorial Defence only to be
10 confronted with their own membership card. Other
11 witnesses denied that there were Territorial Defence or
12 BH army units in various villages in the Lasva Valley
13 and Kiseljak Valley. As recently as last month,
14 General Hadzihasanovic testified that there were no BH
15 army units ever in Ahmici. This position advanced by
16 Prosecution witnesses began to crumble with one of
17 their very first witnesses Sefkija Dzidic, the
18 commander of the Territorial Defence in Stari Vitez,
19 and we will periodically come back to this theme during
20 our argument, and why it's an important point of
21 disagreement between the Defence and the Prosecution.
22 The Prosecution, at various times, has also
23 suggested that the violence and the conflicts that
24 occurred in this region were principally between
25 unarmed civilians and HVO soldiers, to be sure crimes
1 were committed on all sides, most regrettably, but in
2 the main, the conflict in this region was between armed
3 persons, armed villagers for the most part, as well as
4 other, more mobile armed units, such as the 4th
5 Battalion of the military police and the Vitezovi on
6 the HVO side and similar or parallel units on the BH
7 army side, such as the 7th Muslim Brigade and so
8 forth.
9 The Prosecution has also maintained, indeed
10 in the last two days, that the HVO had a well-defined
11 command structure subordinating all units in the
12 Operative Zone to the Operative Zone commander. This
13 was said to you in the Prosecution's opening statement
14 at page 18: "The HVO command structure had very clear
15 and direct lines of command." It appears the
16 Prosecution was not aware of the legal structure of the
17 military police administration, of the security and
18 information service within the Ministry of Defence, nor
19 of the special purposes unit when they brought this
20 case and when they even commenced this trial. They
21 have had to adapt and move to accommodate these new
22 developments. I applaud them for their versatility,
23 but it's instructive to keep in mind that these changes
24 have occurred long after certain core beliefs and the
25 decision to accuse Tihomir Blaskic were made.
1 The Prosecution has also laboured mightily to
2 try and establish that HVO units were, if not a
3 NATO-standard army, an army with trained officers, good
4 discipline, and an army in which everyone understood
5 and conformed to the principle of subordination. We
6 aren't going to spend too much time on this issue in
7 our case, but command and control is necessarily an
8 element of a command responsibility charge. Today, the
9 Prosecution spoke of 19 witnesses on whom they rely for
10 their position that command and control in the HVO was
11 adequate to support the types of inferences which they
12 seek you to draw from events on the ground up to a
13 commander many levels up from those units in the
14 field. We submit to you, and I will elaborate
15 tomorrow, that the Defence and Court witnesses who have
16 the most expertise in these matters have uniformly
17 testified that command and control in both the HVO and
18 the BH army was poor. That's not the end of the case.
19 That is not a defence per se. We have never suggested
20 otherwise. But it is an important factor for you to
21 consider in evaluating the rest of the evidence and
22 what types of inferences and deductions can be drawn
23 from evidence that is available to you.
24 You may recall, we presented certain experts
25 as well as the British battalion intelligence officer,
1 Chris Leyshon, and their testimony on this subject is
2 one we will review with you, however briefly. As you
3 know, Blaskic is charged with failure to punish as
4 well. The Prosecution bases this charge on the
5 prospect or principle that he had the legal authority
6 to impose criminal punishment on HVO soldiers. Now,
7 they have adjusted, in certain respects, to the
8 realisation that he did not have the authority to
9 punish, that is, to impose criminal sanctions, and now,
10 at this phase of the case, they're making a different
11 argument about perhaps arrest or preservation of
12 evidence. I'm not going to address now whether those
13 constitute imposition of criminal punishment for
14 purposes of either the sufficiency of the indictment or
15 international criminal law. But suffice it to say that
16 this issue was a foundation of their case, which has
17 largely eroded as we have all studied the rules and
18 regulations and so forth that were applicable on the
19 territory of Middle Bosnia.
20 In light of the fact that this principle is
21 not true, the Prosecution has retreated, it appears, to
22 a fallback position, and that fallback position, in
23 part, appears to be that even if Blaskic could not
24 punish criminal misconduct, he could discipline
25 soldiers, but there again, the Prosecutor has a bit of
1 a quandary, and that is, as he told you yesterday, the
2 fingerprints of the Vitezovi are on many of the
3 misdeeds in the Lasva Valley, that is, with the
4 exception of the military police and the Ahmici
5 massacre, which the Court now is well familiar with.
6 In light of these facts, the Prosecution must
7 also rely on the proposition that Blaskic had the legal
8 authority to discipline soldiers of the 4th Military
9 Police Battalion and of the Vitezovi Independent
10 Special Purposes Unit. I expect Mr. Nobilo will get to
11 that issue with you this afternoon, and it is very
12 important to this case.
13 Lastly, in terms of the structure of the
14 Operative Zone, the Prosecution has steadfastly
15 maintained, up until about a year ago, that then
16 Colonel Blaskic had a second headquarters in Kiseljak
17 and that he travelled there freely throughout 1993. I
18 think they have abandoned that position. We did not
19 hear it in their closing argument, and I haven't had
20 time to review their brief in its entirety. I don't
21 know whether it's still in there, but we will address
22 this briefly later on in our argument.
23 The Prosecution has also maintained in this
24 case that in January 1993, the HVO attacked Bosnian
25 Muslims in Busovaca in a "dress rehearsal" for the
1 April 1993 conflict. The term "dress rehearsal" was
2 used by the Prosecution in its opening statement at
3 page 36. Every informed observer to testify in this
4 trial disagreed with this position, that the January
5 conflict began with an attack by the HVO on Bosnian
6 Muslim positions or civilians. The fact is, and it has
7 been proven, that the BH army launched attacks in
8 January of 1993 and made important territorial gains,
9 particularly between Busovaca and Kiseljak. It was
10 hardly a dress rehearsal, and in any event, Blaskic
11 didn't receive an invitation, since he was isolated in
12 Kiseljak at the time.
13 The Prosecution has also relied, with respect
14 to the January conflict, on the proposition that
15 Blaskic was present in Busovaca in January 1993 and
16 directed HVO operations there. To support this, they
17 presented opinion evidence from one witness. I gather
18 from their closing argument that they now concede this
19 is not true and the testimony of the witness was
20 incorrect or worse, but we will review that with you,
21 because for purposes of the January conflict, it's very
22 important. Was Blaskic there directing activity, or
23 was he somewhere else without significant access to
24 information concerning what was occurring and without
25 the ability to exert operative control over the events
1 in Busovaca in January 1993?
2 In Vitez, the Prosecution continues to cling
3 to the theory that at 5.30 a.m. on the 16th of April,
4 the HVO attacked Bosnian Muslim civilians throughout
5 the Lasva Valley. I will review that with you, I
6 expect tomorrow, in some detail, because there's a body
7 of evidence on this question that was not discussed in
8 the Prosecutor's closing remarks, and it needs to be
9 brought to your attention, we believe. To buttress the
10 claim that these attacks occurred and that they were a
11 planned grand conspiracy in the way in which the
12 Prosecution has outlined over the past two and a half
13 days, they rely on a supporting proposition, and that
14 is that this attack was due to the expiration of an
15 ultimatum made and due to expire on the 15th of April,
16 1993.
17 Although several witnesses referred to an
18 ultimatum, usually through media reports or statements,
19 no witness actually present in the Lasva Valley during
20 the weeks preceding the 16th of April had heard of any
21 ultimatum. No one in the terrain, on the ground, knew
22 anything about it, the very people you would expect
23 would be bracing or taking other measures and steps
24 because of any ultimatum.
25 At rock bottom, the Prosecution has based his
1 case on the following:
2 (Videotape played)
3 MR. HAYMAN: That was Mr. Harmon in his
4 opening statement. This is a central issue in the
5 case, whether Blaskic, indeed, had, as the Prosecution
6 claims, a laissez-faire attitude towards crimes and war
7 crimes, or whether there is significant and material
8 evidence to the contrary such that they have not proven
9 their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Did he order an
10 attack on civilians in Ahmici on the morning of 16
11 April, 1993, as the Prosecution claims, and then fake
12 an elaborate investigation to cover up his crime? Or
13 did he learn of the crime afterwards, as everyone else
14 did, and I will review that evidence with you myself,
15 and try to learn the perpetrators and learn of the
16 perpetrators to the best of his ability, given the
17 legal powers and resources that he had in the Vitez
18 enclave.
19 I'm going to hand the baton to Mr. Nobilo.
20 Mr. Nobilo is going to, as I said, provide a brief
21 introduction to the war itself and then turn to the
22 certain technical, legal, and regulatory matters. He
23 will be referring to certain charts which, in our zeal
24 to include as much data as possible, there's some
25 rather fine print on them. So we have some hard copies
1 which I ask be distributed, although we will also be
2 showing them on the monitors for the benefit of the
3 public. I believe there are some, however, which we
4 cannot show the public due to the closed or sealed
5 nature of that material, and as has already been done,
6 we will, from time to time, be asking to slip into
7 private session to deal with those matters. We are
8 told that when that occurs, the monitors in the
9 gallery, as well as the monitor at the witness table,
10 will be shut off so that we can proceed in private
11 session, including using the video monitors, without
12 having to stop and put down the shades and go into a
13 closed session each time we do that.
14 Thank you.
15 MR. NOBILO: Your Honours, esteemed
16 colleagues. As my colleague, Mr. Hayman, has heralded,
17 I will go back a bit, not too far back, only a step
18 back. We will step back to the Yugoslavia that was
19 disintegrating in order to say what the causes of this
20 conflict were.
21 As for the causes of the conflict and the
22 roots of the conflict, that will make it easier for us
23 to follow developments in Bosnia-Herzegovina which were
24 a framework, first and foremost, for the war, and then
25 for the commission of, indeed, atrocious crimes.
1 Very briefly. The Second World War ended
2 disastrously for Serb and Croat nationalists. Serb
3 nationalists, led by Draza Mihajlovic, lost the battle
4 against Tito's partisans. They lost the battle against
5 the Germans in 1941. They lost the Karadjordjevic
6 dynasty, and Serbia was taken back to its borders
7 before the First World War. The Croat nationalists led
8 by Ante Pavelic also ended disastrously. They were
9 defeated by Tito's partisans together the Germans. In
10 disarray, they withdrew from Croatia. The leader of
11 the partisans, Tito, established the communist
12 Yugoslavia. In the beginning, he tried to copy
13 Stalin's regime from the Soviet Union, but in 1948,
14 there was a break-up between Tito and Stalin, and Tito
15 introduced a somewhat more democratic communist system
16 which, from an economic point of view, could be
17 described as socialist self-management and
18 ideologically as Titoism.
19 However, Tito, just like King Aleksander
20 Karadjordjevic who ruled Yugoslavia from 1914 onwards
21 until his death in Marseille, understood very quickly
22 that Yugoslavia was an untenable concept.
23 Twenty-eight years before the break-up of
24 Yugoslavia, in 1962, he told his associates that
25 Yugoslavia was untenable. The differences between the
1 most developed and the least developed parts of
2 Yugoslavia were greater than the differences between
3 the most developed and the least developed parts of
4 Europe after the Second World War. The inter-ethnic
5 contradictions were great as well. Tito understood
6 that in contrast to communist ideologies, nations were
7 not whitering on the way. On the contrary, they were
8 turning into modern industrialised nations, thus
9 becoming even stronger. And the strengthening of
10 nations in Yugoslavia, where inter-ethnic tensions were
11 also present, created problems, and this state became
12 unstable.
13 In order to salvage Yugoslavia, Tito did the
14 same thing that Karadjordjevic did. He tried to take
15 turns with democracy and hardline rule. He was
16 experimenting in order to keep Yugoslavia together. In
17 the '70s, he started with democratisation.
18 Nationalists passions were high. The nationalistally
19 oriented leaderships of the republics threatened to
20 have the country disintegrated. Tito resorted to
21 arrests and also to trials of student and nationalist
22 leaders in Croatia, in Slovenia. However, he realised
23 that a unitary Yugoslavia could not be sustained, and
24 in 1974, he adopted a constitution which was based on a
25 confederacy, making the republics so autonomous that
1 this would eventually lead to independence.
2 After Tito's death, processes were initiated
3 that led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Serbia
4 was the first to rise. Tito took away Serbia's control
5 over Kosovo and Vojvodina, which they believed was part
6 of Serbia. He returned Serbia to its dimensions before
7 the First World War, during the Balkan wars, during the
8 Turkish Empire. That was the so-called Serbia proper.
9 The Serbs, under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic,
10 starting revising the 1974 constitution, according to
11 which Kosovo and Vojvodina were practically federal
12 units, rather than being only a part of Serbia.
13 As the Berlin wall collapsed, a multiparty
14 system was being introduced in Yugoslavia, and in all
15 the republics except for Serbia, it is nationalist
16 leaders that won the elections. In Serbia, the
17 communists turned into nationalists. Slobodan
18 Milosevic, former communist leader of Serbia, came to
19 the helm of the nationalist movement in Serbia and
20 embarked on a process which lasted until this weekend
21 and the meeting that is just being held in Sarajevo
22 right now, and that is the process of the
23 disintegration of Yugoslavia and the creation of a
24 greater Serbia.
25 There are two levers aimed at this: One was
1 the Yugoslav People's Army, which was in his hands, and
2 the other was the Serb Nationalist Movement which would
3 soon create paramilitary units that would culminate in
4 terrible crimes in Croatia and in Bosnia. However,
5 parallel to these processes, a bit earlier in 1985, the
6 JNA, which was supposed to be the army of all the
7 Yugoslav nations, turned gradually into a Serb
8 imperialist force, and it was used to perpetuate the
9 interests of Slobodan Milosevic and the leadership that
10 he represented.
11 Until 1995, the Yugoslav People's Army was
12 organised according to a military territorial principle
13 as follows: Certain military districts coincided with
14 republican boundaries. Then came a reorganisation. A
15 big military coastal region -- district was established
16 in Belgrade which included a large part of Bosnia and
17 Croatia, and most importantly, on the one hand, it
18 ended at the boundaries of the so-called greater
19 Serbia. These are the so-called western boundaries of
20 Serbia that the Serb nationalists, already in the
21 Second World War, conceived as their own, and it goes
22 through considerable parts of Croatia, that is to say,
23 Virovitica, Karlovac, and Karlobag.
24 Another interesting point of this new
25 military district was that in this military district,
1 during ten years in the former Yugoslavia, all battles
2 would be waged, all battles in Bosnia, all battles in
3 Croatia would be waged in this new military district
4 that they had set up.
5 The third line is the Serb academy of
6 sciences and arts, which came out with its memorandum
7 based on a programme of Serb nationalist objectives,
8 and they are quite clear. Wherever Serbs live, that is
9 where Serbia's boundaries are, that is to say, if there
10 are Serb minorities in Croatia, for as long as Serbs
11 live there, that is as far as Serbia has to go. If
12 Yugoslavia is disintegrating, then it is the peoples,
13 the nations that can constitute their own states, that
14 is to say, that all Serbs should remain within
15 Yugoslavia.
16 In order to make it possible for the Yugoslav
17 People's Army to take part in this nationalist
18 programme, the law had to be changed, namely, according
19 to rigid legal and constitutional rules of Tito's
20 Yugoslavia, the JNA could be used only for external
21 defence, from an attack that came from the outside. In
22 1987, the law was amended. It became permissible to
23 use the Yugoslav People's Army for suppressing dissent
24 at home. The first conflict occurred in Kosovo. Our
25 client, General Blaskic, at that time, he was a captain
1 in the JNA, he refused to go there, and that was used
2 as a touchstone, a testing point to see how efficient
3 the Yugoslav People's Army is in suppressing internal
4 dissent among the people themselves.
5 Lastly, in this great battlefield, and with
6 Bosnia-Herzegovina at its heart, as Admiral Domazet
7 said, for a few years, from 1985 to 1990, every year,
8 there was this same exercise going on, the same
9 programme of defence. From an alleged attack that
10 would come from NATO, from the Adriatic Sea, and we
11 will see that in accordance with this same plan,
12 ultimately, Bosnia-Herzegovina was occupied.
13 On the 3rd of January, 1992, the
14 international forces of the United Nations came to
15 Croatia in the rebellious provinces of Croatia where
16 the Serbs organised an uprising with the assistance of
17 the JNA, and after that, the JNA moved into Bosnia.
18 From January until March 1992, personnel, equipment,
19 weapons of the JNA, enormous quantities were
20 transferred to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
21 We can turn the ELMO on now. Now we come
22 more or less to the events that become relevant to this
23 indictment. Please, could we have the ELMO on, if
24 possible? We have an amateur map, which is not exactly
25 brilliant, I'm the author, and I'm not very talented,
1 but we'll make due with it during the course of this
2 presentation.
3 The plan that I told you about was
4 two-pronged. Where these red arrows end, on the one
5 side, on the right-hand side, is Neretva, Mostar, and
6 Stolac, and on the right-hand side is Livno and
7 Kupres. What happened? From the east, that is to say,
8 the right-hand side of the map and -- that is to say,
9 the west, the Yugoslav People's Army encircled the
10 area, and where this arrow begins, they want to seal
11 off the entrance to Bosnia-Herzegovina, because let us
12 not forget that all other borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina
13 were already under JNA control. This happened in the
14 spring of 1992, that is to say, around April 1992.
15 We come to a key, dramatic moment. If the
16 JNA seals this off, Sarajevo and all of
17 Bosnia-Herzegovina practically is occupied, because no
18 one, Croatia included, can provide any assistance, aid
19 in food or weapons, and there is practically no army
20 that is defending it. There were very small quantities
21 of arms. It is practically peasants in villages who
22 were armed from both ethnic groups, Muslims and
23 Croats.
24 In this dramatic situation, when 75 per cent
25 of Bosnia-Herzegovina was occupied by the Yugoslav
1 People's Army and Bosnia was practically about to fall,
2 and then what happened? Something that we heard quite
3 a bit about over here and something that was completely
4 misinterpreted.
5 Then, on the 10th of April, 1992, General
6 Bobetko got orders from Franjo Tudjman, the president
7 of Croatia, and, indeed, Croatian troops entered
8 Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Defence admits that and we did
9 not contest it. Croatian troops, that is to say,
10 troops of the Croatian army, entered Bosnia-Herzegovina
11 and opposed the JNA where these arrows are. On the one
12 side is the River Neretva, Mostar, and Stolac, and on
13 the left-hand side is Livno and Kupres. These scissors
14 were about to close and lead to the death of
15 Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, the Croatian army
16 intervened from the outside, indeed, they did enter the
17 territory, but this was prevented in that way, on the
18 one hand, to defend the south of Croatia, that is,
19 Dubrovnik that was threatened, but on the other hand,
20 in order to save Bosnia-Herzegovina.
21 This intervention made it possible to
22 establish free territory, made it possible for the road
23 that is practically a lifeline that goes from Split
24 towards Sarajevo and Tuzla, Zenica, that is the
25 well-known road of hope, the road of hope, salvation,
1 whatever we call it, that this road remain in Croat and
2 Muslim hands. Along that road, during the next few
3 years, until the Washington Accords and the Dayton
4 Agreement, all assistance would come in to
5 Bosnia-Herzegovina, to Croats and Muslims. Every
6 bullet that got into Bosnia-Herzegovina would come in
7 along that road. That is the black arrow that I drew
8 in such amateur fashion.
9 Before each and every bullet got into
10 Bosnia-Herzegovina, along this arrow, it would pass
11 either on land or sea or through the airspace of
12 Croatia. Nothing, except for minimum quantities that
13 arrived by air to Sarajevo Airport, which was
14 constantly being shelled by the Serbs, nothing got into
15 Bosnia-Herzegovina without having gone through Croatia
16 first and Croatia having allowed this.
17 So it is thanks to the intervention of
18 Croatian troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina that
19 Bosnia-Herzegovina was saved. The intervention was a
20 short one. From the 10th of April, 1994 (sic) when
21 General Bobetko received orders, and on the 14th, he
22 entered with his troops until July 1992. After that,
23 he went down to Dubrovnik, to the south, and left the
24 territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
25 In that period, when the troops of General
1 Bobetko entered, there was no Territorial Defence,
2 there was no HVO. The HVO was formally established by
3 a document, but in organisational terms, it did not
4 exist.
5 There was something called the main staff,
6 but that main staff did not have operative zones, as we
7 will see later on this chart, it did not have combat
8 units, brigades, but rather in the municipalities,
9 crisis staffs were formed, consisting mostly of
10 politicians preparing for defence.
11 Both among Croats and Serbs -- no, I beg your
12 pardon -- Muslims, there was no organised army to
13 resist the Yugoslav People's Army, and it was in that
14 situation that Bobetko organised the Territorial
15 Defence, giving it certain instructions, and the HVO.
16 You will find in the documents, tendered either by the
17 Prosecution or the Defence, excerpts from his book
18 where Bobetko is giving instructions to the HVO but
19 also to the TO, because at that time, as I said, there
20 was no HVO or Territorial Defence.
21 I will read two brief quotations from General
22 Bobetko's book, "All My Battles," which was a source
23 used by the Prosecutor to prove the existence of an
24 international conflict, which I will be coming back to
25 tomorrow, but for the moment, it is important to know
1 that General Bobetko was not fighting the Muslims but
2 the Yugoslav People's Army, that this was a conflict
3 between the JNA and the Croatian army, and this,
4 therefore, cannot be an argument to allege that the
5 conflict between the Croats and the Muslims in Bosnia
6 was an international conflict.
7 Exhibit D577, on the 267th page of Bobetko's
8 book, I quote, and he talks about the results of his
9 military campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and he says:
10 "First, we have definitely and forever
11 defended and preserved the Croatian people in
12 Herzegovina.
13 "Second, we have created favourable
14 conditions for the establishment of an army, and in
15 connection with what is happening today regarding the
16 formation of a federation and confederation, it is
17 highly questionable what our position would be locally
18 and internationally had it not been for these
19 victories."
20 The federation mentioned by General Bobetko
21 is the federation between the Croats and the Muslims.
22 Later on, we will be discussing these orders
23 in greater detail when we come to the issue of an
24 international conflict. But let me now just present
25 you with a few data, including the fact that the decree
1 on the armed forces of the Croatian Community of
2 Herceg-Bosna, Prosecutor's Exhibit 38/1, was issued on
3 the 3rd of July, 1992, which means in April, May, and
4 June, there was no legal basis for regulating the armed
5 force of the HVO in Herceg-Bosna. The legal basis was
6 adopted later, and it emerges from many witness
7 statements that neither the TO, nor the HVO, in the
8 summer of 1992, had been established.
9 In the spring of 1992, the Croatian Community
10 of Herceg-Bosna was formed. This was discussed in
11 great detail, and the Prosecutor has referred to that
12 document and that organisation as something criminal,
13 saying roughly that the Croatian Community of
14 Herceg-Bosna, and I am paraphrasing, of course, was
15 created to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina and in order, at a
16 later stage, for it to secede from Bosnia and be
17 annexed to Croatia and to be ethnically cleansed of
18 Muslims in the meantime. But is that really so?
19 The reasons for the formation of Herceg-Bosna
20 can be fathomed from its founding document. Also, we
21 have to see the historical period when it was formed
22 and what the founders of Herceg-Bosna really wanted to
23 achieve, what was their goal.
24 The Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna,
25 formally and on paper, was founded on the 18th of
1 November, 1991, but it was amended on the 3rd of July,
2 1992, and in the Official Gazette of Herceg-Bosna, it
3 was not published before September 1992. That was also
4 when the various institutions of the Croatian Community
5 of Herceg-Bosna began to be formed.
6 The reasons for the establishment of
7 Herceg-Bosna are mentioned in the Official Gazette
8 number 1, this is a Prosecution Exhibit, P38.
9 "Confronted with the unscrupulous aggression of the
10 Yugoslav army and the Chetniks against the Republic of
11 Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia causing
12 great human casualties and suffering and laying claim
13 on age-old Croatian lands and property, as well as the
14 destruction of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and
15 its legally elected bodies, the Croatian people of
16 Bosnia-Herzegovina in these difficult times in its
17 history when the last communist army in Europe in
18 cohorts with the Chetniks is threatening the very
19 survival of the Croatian people and the Republic of
20 Bosnia-Herzegovina.
21 "They are deeply aware that their future is
22 linked to the future of the entire Croatian people.
23 The Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, through their party,
24 the HDZ, and their legally elected bodies of authority
25 in this republic, have advocated a sovereign
1 Bosnia-Herzegovina, but they have always pointed out
2 that they would do so defending their own historical
3 lands and the interests of the Croatian people as a
4 whole.
5 "Proceeding from the constitution of
6 Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which Bosnia is established as a
7 community of three constituent peoples, the Croats,
8 Muslims, and Serbs, and from the generally recognised
9 principles of the contemporary world on the
10 inalienable, non-transferrable and non-consumable right
11 to sell determination and sovereignty of peoples,
12 including the right to association as well as the fact
13 that a unitary model of state organisation in
14 multi-ethnic communities is unacceptable, the Croatian
15 people of Bosnia-Herzegovina are confronted with a
16 danger that is threatening them and is fully aware of
17 its historic responsibilities in defending the Croatian
18 ethnic lands and interests through their legally
19 elected representatives in the Republic of
20 Bosnia-Herzegovina, has founded the Croatian Community
21 of Herceg-Bosna."
22 If we look more closely at this text and
23 eliminate from it all emotional attributes, which,
24 believe me, are customary in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
25 many people will use the term "historic
1 responsibilities," "historic events," we talk about
2 them very often, it's a manner of speech in
3 Bosnia-Herzegovina, but if we purge the emotion from
4 this text or the nationalism from the text, we will see
5 that Herceg-Bosna came into existence in a situation,
6 and I quote, "when the people were confronted with the
7 unscrupulous aggression of the Yugoslav People's Army
8 and the Chetniks again from the republic of
9 Bosnia-Herzegovina."
10 Under those circumstances, the political
11 leaders of the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina decided to
12 resist the aggression of the JNA by setting up a
13 community of this kind and to prevent what they called
14 the destruction of the Republic of Croatia. Whether
15 this was a naive political move, whether this could
16 have been done in another way, that's another matter.
17 But I think that it is noteworthy that we should know
18 the purpose behind the establishment of the Croatian
19 Community of Herceg-Bosna.
20 In order to understand why the Croats made
21 this political move, whether we approve or disapprove
22 of it, let us try and look at it from a distance. We
23 need to go back to the beginnings, to early 1992 and
24 even 1991 when the war in Croatia was still going on.
25 Actually, when the JNA attacked the northern-most
1 republic of Yugoslavia, Slovenia, all people who knew
2 how to think knew that the red line had been crossed
3 and that a war was about to break out in Yugoslavia.
4 It was just a matter of time. After the attack on
5 Slovenia came the brutal war in Croatia. Anyone who
6 wanted to see the truth understood that the most brutal
7 war would be the one in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The
8 leaders of the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina realised
9 that. However, what actually happened?
10 The political leadership of the Muslims,
11 headed by Alija Izetbegovic, pursued a peace-loving
12 policy, which is admirable, but it was disastrous for
13 the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina and, in the first
14 place, for the Muslims, because that peace-loving
15 policy, under wartime conditions, prevented the timely
16 organisation and arming of the Muslim people, which, in
17 error, the Muslim paid for with enormous casualties.
18 When in 1991 the JNA attacked a Bosnian
19 village called Ravno, which has an important strategic
20 position and which happened to have been inhabited by
21 Croats, the president of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic,
22 said, "This was not our war." Contrary to that, in
23 this situation of hesitation, when Croatia was becoming
24 independent, the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina felt
25 endangered. They were left behind in what was then
1 known as the rump Yugoslavia, Serbia, Montenegro, and
2 Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croats do not wish to remain
3 in that rump Yugoslavia. They want to respect the
4 sovereignty and independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina on
5 condition that Bosnia-Herzegovina is separate from
6 Yugoslavia, and that is what they wrote in their
7 founding document. They say in Article 5: "The
8 community ..." and the reference is to the Croatian
9 Community of Herceg-Bosna. They say, "The community
10 will respect the democratically elected authorities of
11 the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina for as long as
12 Bosnia-Herzegovina is an independent state in relation
13 to the former and any future Yugoslavia."
14 Therefore, the Croatian Community of
15 Herceg-Bosna sees itself in Bosnia-Herzegovina but not
16 in the rump Yugoslavia without Slovenia, Croatia, and
17 Macedonia. That Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna
18 never broke off its state relations with
19 Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that's evident from all the
20 documents. If we call Dr. Zoran Pajic, a Prosecution
21 expert witness, who came here to make an analysis of
22 the numerous documents of Bosnia-Herzegovina, never
23 once was there a decision taken separately by the
24 Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna. Never is it stated
25 that it would secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1 Then the Prosecution keeps offering, as a
2 ready-made fact, that the Croatian Community of
3 Herceg-Bosna was founded with a view to secede from
4 Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in support of this mission,
5 they are offering virtually nothing, two pieces of
6 evidence which are not real evidence, in fact, so that
7 throughout this long-lasting trial, we have the Exhibit
8 243, a videotape, on which Dario Kordic and Ignac
9 Kostroman speak in January 1992 on the occasion of the
10 proclamation of the independence or, rather, the
11 recognition of the Republic of Croatia as an
12 independent state. There too we hear some emotional
13 speeches, slogans, saying, "This is Croatia. The
14 border will be very close by, near Zenica," and so on.
15 All that is true.
16 But let us go back and place that speech and
17 that event within a historical context, and we will see
18 that both Dario Kordic and Ignac Kostroman refer to the
19 Serbo-Chetnik Yugoslav People's Army, as they call it,
20 as their opponent, and they are demanding that the JNA
21 should go from Busovaca to Serbia. That was a time
22 when Croatia had become independent, and the Croats in
23 Bosnia are fearful. They don't know whether they will
24 remain in Yugoslavia together with Slobodan Milosevic.
25 Do not forget that in January 1992, Alija Izetbegovic
1 had still not called a referendum on the independence
2 of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Do not forget that the Muslim
3 leadership is still negotiating with Slobodan Milosevic
4 on Bosnia remaining in Yugoslavia.
5 So all options were still on the table. In
6 January 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina does not exist as a
7 state, only the rump Yugoslavia exists without Slovenia
8 and without Croatia.
9 The Yugoslav People's Army, according to the
10 constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of
11 Bosnia-Herzegovina, is a legal entity in
12 Bosnia-Herzegovina at that time. And in such a
13 situation, there was a real danger that Bosnia would be
14 annexed by Serbia and Montenegro, and it was to this
15 backdrop that you heard that speech, a backdrop when
16 Bosnia-Herzegovina had still not been established, nor
17 had the referendum been called. I'm talking about the
18 referendum which preceded the proclamation of
19 Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state in April. It should be
20 noted that the Serbs boycotted the referendum. The
21 Croats and Muslims participated and voted in favour of
22 an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croats, under
23 the political leadership of the same people who had
24 already founded the Croatian Community of
25 Herceg-Bosna. And simply, it is impossible to link
1 these things logically together. If the political
2 leadership of Herceg-Bosna is intent on dividing
3 Bosnia-Herzegovina, why were there instructions to
4 Croats to vote in the referendum, which they did and
5 voted in favour of the independence of
6 Bosnia-Herzegovina? Why didn't the Croats act like the
7 Serbs who boycotted the referendum and called in
8 question its very validity?
9 So an unproven thesis permeates this trial,
10 and that is that the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna
11 was formed to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina. No evidence
12 has been produced in this trial to prove this. With
13 the exception of that videotape, the Prosecutor is
14 offering us another would-be piece of evidence, and
15 that is that from January 1993, and almost throughout
16 the whole of that year, the main plan, according to the
17 submission of the Prosecution, which guided the
18 behaviour of the Croats, was the Vance-Owen Plan, as a
19 result of which they wanted to gain control of Province
20 10.
21 As evidence of this, they offer the aims of
22 Herceg-Bosna to split Bosnia-Herzegovina, while
23 omitting to mention a very important fact, and that is
24 that the Vance-Owen Plan was a plan of the
25 International Community regulating the internal
1 structure of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Vance-Owen Plan,
2 just as any other plan of the International Community,
3 and there were several, and the Croats signed all of
4 them, always preserved the sovereignty and territorial
5 integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The problems arose
6 over the internal organisation and the division of
7 power; that is what provoked conflict, not the
8 implementation of the Vance-Owen Plan because the
9 implementation of that plan would mean the division of
10 Bosnia-Herzegovina.
11 On the contrary, the implementation of that
12 plan meant the preservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but
13 the reason for conflict, we would agree, was the
14 internal set-up, whether it would be a unitary, a
15 federal entity, who would have which power in which
16 province. So the conflict was provoked by internal
17 reasons, not the desire to divide Bosnia. Those are
18 the two pieces of evidence proffered by the Prosecution
19 in order to prove that Herceg-Bosna was founded with a
20 view to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina.
21 Did some individuals or groups perhaps have
22 some secret plans? That, we do not know. But the
23 Prosecutor did not prove that. The least of all that
24 the Prosecutor proved was that Blaskic acceded to some
25 kind of secret plans aimed at the breakup of
1 Bosnia-Herzegovina. We are here presenting the
2 behaviour of institutions of the Community of
3 Herceg-Bosna, and we believe that there is no proof
4 that Herceg-Bosna was established with a view to
5 dividing Bosnia-Herzegovina.
6 Another thing that the Prosecutor talked
7 about was the take-over of power in municipalities where
8 Herceg-Bosna had been proclaimed. And what did this
9 take-over boil down to, if it existed at all? In
10 certain municipalities, the HDZ had won, and in other
11 municipalities, the SDA, a predominantly Muslim party,
12 had won. And in all municipalities, sooner or later,
13 dual municipal governments were established. Where the
14 SDA, the Muslim party, had won in the elections, there
15 were war presidencies predominantly, and in those
16 municipalities where the Croats had won, the Croat
17 defence council was established as a civil organ of
18 authority, and in most places, there was a parallel
19 civilian authority where everyone in these times of war
20 was governing their own people.
21 Let's not forget that this was a war, that
22 there was no peace, and the development of democratic
23 institutions is not easy to achieve. War presidencies
24 are not a constitutional category, according to the
25 constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, just like the
1 Croatian Defence Council is not. Then now that the
2 Prosecutors say that when the HVO took over the
3 civilian authority, that there was discrimination
4 against the Muslims which can be defined with a few
5 things.
6 First of all, the Croatian language is being
7 introduced in schools, Croatian curriculum, Croatian
8 textbooks. Let's have a look at that. What's all this
9 about? The Croat language. In Bosnia-Herzegovina in
10 1992, in 1993, and throughout, that is to say, from the
11 end of the Second World War until 1994, according to
12 the constitution, according to school and university
13 programmes, there is a single language, it is called
14 the Serbo-Croat language. There is not a Bosnian
15 language as an official language, as a literary
16 language.
17 In the situation that I described, a conflict
18 with the Serbs, in the schools, part of this adjective
19 was dropped, that is to say, it was no longer the
20 Serbo-Croat language but the Croat language, but the
21 language itself was one in the same throughout. The
22 Croats could not have prevented the use of the Bosnian
23 language in a nominal sense, and why? Why? Because
24 the Bosnian language, at universities that educate
25 teachers, train teachers, the first department for the
1 Bosnian language was established in 1994 in Sarajevo.
2 In 1992 and 1993, there was no department that taught
3 the Bosnian language, so the language that was being
4 used was officially called Serbo-Croat, and because of
5 war emotions, the part of the name that referred to
6 "Serb" was dropped, and that's all.
7 The Prosecutors say that the Croat curriculum
8 and textbooks were imposed upon all forcefully.
9 Gentlemen, this is a case of war, and the government in
10 Sarajevo operates from the basements of the most solid
11 buildings in Sarajevo. No one was printing books in
12 the Bosnian language in 1992 and 1993 with the
13 curriculum of the new Bosnia-Herzegovina. No one. And
14 the old textbooks taught children that Yugoslavia was
15 our homeland, and that the Yugoslav People's Army was
16 our army, and that Yugoslav People's Army, on behalf of
17 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was attacking these
18 very same children in Sarajevo and in other parts of
19 Bosnia-Herzegovina.
20 Of course, if you empathise with the war
21 situation and emotion that is prevailed, it was
22 difficult to give children such textbooks. The
23 government in Sarajevo did not adjust textbooks at that
24 point. It was isolated. It was sealed off. The state
25 did not function as such. And somebody imported
1 Croatian textbooks, and that's the long and the short
2 of it.
3 Things were similar with the currency.
4 JUDGE JORDA: Would this suit you? Is this
5 an appropriate time to break for you?
6 MR. NOBILO: Yes. Yes, that's fine. That's
7 fine.
8 JUDGE JORDA: Very well. We're going to have
9 a 20-minute break.
10 --- Recess taken at 3.47 p.m.
11 --- On resuming at 4.17 p.m.
12 JUDGE JORDA: The hearing is resumed. Have
13 the accused brought in. Please be seated. We are
14 resuming work.
15 (The accused entered court)
16 JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Nobilo has the floor.
17 MR. NOBILO: Thank you, Mr. President, Your
18 Honours.
19 We were talking about the reasons for the
20 establishment of Herceg-Bosna, and I wish to point out
21 that the position of the Defence is that Herceg-Bosna
22 was probably established against the constitution, and
23 from a formal and legal point of view, the ruling of
24 the constitutional court was not right when they said
25 that it was an anti-constitutional matter. However, we
1 have to point out that in Bosnia-Herzegovina, at that
2 time, the constitution from 1989 was in force, that is
3 to say, the old socialist constitution which defined
4 Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Yugoslavia, and that the
5 Yugoslav People's Army was still legal, according to
6 that constitution.
7 Certain amendments were passed in 1990 and in
8 1991, but they were never officially promulgated. So
9 from a formal and legal point of view, the constitution
10 of Bosnia-Herzegovina, at that time, was rather
11 troublesome, I should say, in the whole situation was
12 certainly anti-constitutional, not only the
13 establishment of Herceg-Bosna, because the army that
14 was a constitutional and legal category, that is to
15 say, the Yugoslav People's Army, it had practically
16 attacked its own people.
17 In order to prove that there was an
18 international conflict, and we are probably going to
19 speak about that tomorrow, and also in term of
20 Blaskic's criminal responsibility, the Prosecutor is
21 offering us a logical syllogism, and let us see what
22 the Prosecutor is actually saying. The first premise
23 being that there was a policy to split up
24 Bosnia-Herzegovina that was created in Zagreb by Franjo
25 Tudjman. The other premise, that the Croatian
1 Community of Herceg-Bosna is pursuing that policy.
2 Thirdly, this policy is a crime. There is a plan
3 within it according to which the Muslims should be
4 expelled and destroyed. The fourth premise: Blaskic
5 is an instrument of that policy because he was a
6 colonel in the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna. And
7 then the conclusion, of course, is that Blaskic was an
8 instrument of a criminal policy; therefore, Blaskic is
9 a criminal.
10 However, in this logical syllogism, there is
11 little logic and even less fact. Tomorrow, we are
12 going to say whether it was proven that the policy of
13 the Republic of Croatia was to break up
14 Bosnia-Herzegovina. I said today already that it was
15 not proven that Herceg-Bosna was established in order
16 to assist the breakup of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was
17 not proven that the policy of Herceg-Bosna was
18 institutionally based on the establishment of a plan,
19 either public or secret, which was a criminal plan. No
20 proof has been rendered for that whatsoever.
21 If we take into account the fact that Blaskic
22 was a soldier, and, from his own point of view, he
23 rightly says that he was not involved in politics,
24 because the law on armed forces prevented him from
25 being involved in politics. Nevertheless, everyone who
1 works for a state or for parastatal agencies, do
2 pursue, in a very general sense, a policy. Blaskic
3 said that he carried out laws and orders. Laws and
4 orders are an expression of some kind of policy. So if
5 Blaskic carried out laws and orders from the Croatian
6 Community of Herceg-Bosna, he pursued a policy which
7 was based on the norms of these laws and orders, and
8 not in a single law or order of Herceg-Bosna is there a
9 trace of racism or is there a trace of a plan aimed at
10 war crimes.
11 Even if Blaskic was an instrument of some
12 policy, in a figurative sense, he could have been a
13 instrument of the defence of the Croat people in
14 Bosnia-Herzegovina. He said himself that that is why
15 he came to Bosnia-Herzegovina, that that is why he
16 joined the HVO, and that was the only thing he did,
17 that is to say, serve the defence of his own people in
18 Bosnia-Herzegovina against attacks by the aggressor.
19 Your Honours, now I would like to move on to
20 the organisation of the Croatian Community of
21 Herceg-Bosna.
22 During the introductory remarks and during
23 the trial itself and these past few days during the
24 summation, the Prosecutor has practically blamed our
25 client for all the evil things that happened in
1 Bosnia-Herzegovina. They showed burned houses, and for
2 most of them, we don't even know when they were
3 burned. These pictures are from 1995 and 1996. We
4 don't even know who burned them, whether it was members
5 of Blaskic's unit, units that were under Blaskic's
6 command and control, or whether they were torched by
7 civilians. Not to such an extent did they do this in
8 the summation, although this was present in the closing
9 arguments. Also, he was presented as the military
10 commander of an area who embodied all authority within
11 him, that is to say, civil and military authority, as
12 if he were governor, as if he had all powers in his own
13 hands to punish, to prevent, that he was in charge of
14 all events, and that, therefore, he was responsible for
15 all events in a functional manner. However, we have to
16 look into this and see whether it is actually so.
17 Before we move on to Central Bosnia and
18 before we define the authorities that actually
19 functioned, operated, in Central Bosnia, in order to
20 define the powers of each and every authority, in order
21 to delineate between them, and to see what Blaskic's
22 powers actually were, and it is only on that basis that
23 we can say what his responsibilities were, I would like
24 to say by way of introduction, that the set-up of the
25 supreme authority of Herceg-Bosna is defined in the
1 decrees of Herceg-Bosna, Prosecutor's Exhibit 38. The
2 supreme authority is the president of the Croatian
3 Community of Herceg-Bosna, and the presidency of the
4 Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna.
5 Since the presidency of the Croatian
6 Community of Herceg-Bosna passes laws, we can call it a
7 legislative body, a quasi-parliament, and this
8 legislative body of the Croatian Community of
9 Herceg-Bosna appoints the Croatian Defence Council.
10 That is a civilian executive government. In order to
11 understand it more easily, perhaps we should call it a
12 government, but I would prefer calling it a
13 quasi-government, because by its very nature and
14 definition, the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna was
15 not a state and was not supposed to be a state, so we
16 are going to call it a quasi-civilian government.
17 The fact that the civilian authority was
18 called the HVO, just like the armed forces, was
19 exploited from the very beginning of this trial until
20 this was finally cleared up. During the
21 examination-in-chief, Dr. Zoran Pajic, an expert
22 witness of the Prosecution, even tried to say that this
23 was a military dictatorship, that it was called the HVO
24 because the armed forces held all the power in their
25 hands. However, the decrees on the establishment of
1 the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna and all
2 regulations from D38/1, it is evident that this was a
3 civilian organisation, that these were politicians,
4 that they held sessions, that they voted at these
5 sessions, and that military personnel was not involved
6 in this government.
7 That government had departments. In order to
8 follow this more easily, we can call them ministries.
9 They had the characteristics of ministries, and in the
10 second half of 1993, that is what they were called
11 too. So there was the interior, defence, finance, the
12 judiciary, economic affairs; you can see all of this in
13 the second line.
14 The Croatian Defence Council was a term that
15 was frequently used. The central quasi-government was
16 called the Croatian Defence Council. The municipal
17 civilian authorities were called the Croatian Defence
18 Council. However, the army, the armed forces of the
19 Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna, were called the
20 Croatian Defence Council as well. Officially, they
21 were called the armed forces of the HZ HB, but
22 colloquially, the HVO once again. The armed forces
23 were established by the decree of the 3rd of July,
24 1992, and the chain of command was as follows: The
25 president of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna was
1 the commander in chief. The commander in chief,
2 together with the quasi-government of the Croatian
3 Defence Council, in the ministry, in the defence
4 department, which is part of the quasi-government of
5 the Croatian Defence Council, established an expert
6 body, that is to say, the main staff of the HVO and
7 appointed its members. The main staff of the HVO was
8 responsible to its minister and the defence department,
9 but it was also held accountable by the prime minister
10 and the supreme commander, that is to say, that in the
11 top echelons of military power, there was a dual
12 command: On the one hand, there is the commander in
13 chief, and on the other side, there is the Minister of
14 Defence.
15 Now, from the defence department, we have a
16 few entities that are the same level, that is to say,
17 the main staff, as we said, and then the administration
18 of the military police, the SIS administration, and
19 some other administrations which are not of such
20 relevance to us right now.
21 As I said, in Article 25 of the decree on
22 armed forces, all political activities in the Croatian
23 Defence Council are band. Now, we are going to move on
24 to bodies that were functioning in Central Bosnia.
25 It is frequently said that the territory of
1 Central Bosnia, consisting of the municipalities of
2 Vitez, Busovaca, Kiseljak, and so on, was the area in
3 which Blaskic was the most important person and where
4 he had full authority. Is that quite so? These were
5 wartime conditions, and within the same territory,
6 absolutely the same territory, there was the military
7 authority of the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia, then
8 within that same territory, the authority of the 3rd
9 Corps, again, we're talking about the identical
10 territory, with two armies, then the authority of the
11 civilian bodies, the HVO, the civilian bodies, the
12 Croatian bodies, and then the authority of the war
13 presidencies. This is these other Muslim civilian
14 authorities. So four different authorities.
15 Then UNPROFOR also had some powers. This was
16 another armed force that was active in one way or
17 another in that area, and as the front line was nearby,
18 then the whole territory was a zone of interest and a
19 zone of combat activity by the army of Republika
20 Srpska. At the same time, in this same territory,
21 representatives of the federal government are acting,
22 the federal government in Sarajevo, as well as
23 representatives of the supreme authorities of
24 Herceg-Bosna, such as Kordic and Kostroman. Each one
25 of them had some authority, and all of them, and I
1 forget now how many I have listed, cover this same
2 territory which we are led to believe was fully under
3 the control of General Blaskic.
4 Let us leave aside, for the time being, the
5 Muslim civilian and military authorities, UNPROFOR and
6 the Serbs as well. Let us leave aside the authorities
7 in Sarajevo, the federal authorities, the political
8 authorities in Mostar. Let us examine in Central
9 Bosnia which were the bodies that were operating and
10 what their jurisdiction was.
11 Could we see the computer monitor, please?
12 Could it be switched on?
13 Your Honours, in the tables that you have
14 received, this is the first one headed "HVO (Civilian
15 Quasi-Government)." As you can see, the lower row of
16 bodies are bodies operating within the Croatian
17 Community of Herceg-Bosna in Central Bosnia, and in
18 yellow lines is the chain of command towards high level
19 bodies. So in Central Bosnia, we have operational in
20 the relevant period for this indictment the municipal
21 authorities of the HVO, the military court, the
22 military prison, the SIS, the 4th Military Police
23 Battalion, the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia, the
24 Vitezovi, and the civilian police. We will see how
25 they related to one another, but we can say
1 straightaway that the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia
2 had certain competencies in certain periods of time
3 over the Vitezovi, the military police, and the SIS,
4 that is, it had some competence only over three of
5 those columns.
6 We shall first be speaking about the
7 municipal civilian authorities on the left-hand side.
8 Prosecutor's Exhibit 38/1 contains the statutory
9 decision of the municipal authorities and the municipal
10 administration defining the civilian authorities in the
11 municipalities and their competencies. It says, among
12 other things, that those authorities regulate economic
13 and other social relations within the framework of the
14 rights and duties of the municipalities and is
15 responsible for the implementation of decrees issued by
16 the government of the HVO. This doesn't mean much, but
17 basically it refers to the administration over former
18 socialist enterprises, the collection of taxes, because
19 the central system had collapsed, the work of schools,
20 business premises, and so on. We will see later on
21 what that authority turned into outside the
22 institutional framework.
23 But now first let us look at the legal
24 provisions. Within the civilian authorities, it is
25 interesting for us to focus on the defence department.
1 The work of the defence department is regulated by the
2 decree on the armed forces of Herceg-Bosna,
3 Prosecutor's Exhibit 38, and the defence departments
4 are, on the one hand, within the civilian authorities
5 and, on the other hand, they are an outpost of the
6 defence division.
7 From Article 3 of the decree, it follows that
8 the defence administrations perform enlistment and
9 mobilisation of armed forces and also provide the
10 sources of wartime locations, take measures to regulate
11 areas for the needs of defence, and it follows from
12 this decree that they keep military records of military
13 conscripts and obligatory labour conscripts.
14 So I come to Prosecutor's Exhibit 442, which
15 is the decree on obligatory labour, which says that
16 units, work squads, that we have been discussing at
17 length, are organised by orders of the competent organ
18 of authority. And these units, labour units, may be
19 deployed for fortification and obstacle building, for
20 the building and maintenance of secret shelters and
21 dugouts, and a very important part, in the carrying out
22 of other work duty in the areas of combat operations to
23 promote the success of those operations.
24 Then in Article 7, it says: "At the request
25 of the competent military commander, submitted to the
1 competent municipal body, the municipal body organises
2 these work units, appoints the leader of those units,
3 and sends those work units to appropriate locations."
4 Therefore, the organisation of the system of
5 work squads and their deployment in areas of combat
6 operations, as well as a form of obligatory labour,
7 because there was this twofold obligation, to serve in
8 the army and to participate in these work squads, and
9 this was organised by the civilian authorities in each
10 municipality.
11 On the right-hand side of this table, we can
12 see the civilian police. Defence Exhibit D584 is a
13 decree on internal organisations in times of war or
14 imminent threat of war. The civilian police, as can be
15 seen on this table, is within the department of
16 internal affairs, and that internal affairs division,
17 on this big chart, is a part of the quasi-government
18 and represents the civilian police. The civilian
19 police, in accordance with the decree whereby it is
20 founded, from Articles 14 to 29, it is explicitly
21 stated, has an autonomous system of disciplinary
22 sanctions, its own accords, its own rules. They have
23 an autonomous system of disciplinary measures.
24 It is now important to establish what the
25 civilian police engaged in, which is very important,
1 and we will see that it did engage in some key matters
2 that we have been discussing and which our client,
3 General Blaskic, is being charged of. I will go back
4 into the details, because as the Prosecution has said,
5 the Law on Criminal Procedure, according to the former
6 SFRY, anyone could file criminal reports, but as Mate
7 Tadic said, the former minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
8 as a rule, these charges were filed by the police.
9 When we asked Mate Tadic who could give
10 orders to the civilian police, his answer was, a senior
11 police official in line with the internal regulations
12 of the civilian police and in accordance with the Law
13 on Criminal Procedure, the prosecutor and the court.
14 Colonel Blaskic, according to Mate Tadic, and
15 according to Defence Exhibit D584, the decree on
16 internal affairs during times of war, did not have
17 authority over the civilian police.
18 The question now is: What were the powers of
19 the civilian police in times of war? What did it
20 actually do? In order to define that, and it is very
21 important to do so, the Defence has tendered a series
22 of exhibits. One of those is an extensive one, D450,
23 letters A to K, these are documents from the Busovaca
24 police station, and by a method of reconstruction and
25 review of those documents, we can see what the civilian
1 police engaged in. We will see that their main sphere
2 of activity was to discover criminal offences committed
3 by unknown perpetrators. In the first place,
4 explosions, arson, murders. And with excerpts from
5 criminal files, we have submitted them in the form of
6 Exhibit D450, and it can be seen from those exhibits
7 when the perpetrator is unknown, the civilian people do
8 the investigation. When something is mined, when an
9 explosion occurs, the civilian police goes there. We
10 heard the testimony of Slavko Katava, a policeman from
11 Busovaca, who explained in detail what their duties
12 were.
13 From Exhibit D450/F, it follows that the
14 civilian police was responsible for the movement of the
15 civilian population. For instance, if someone, be he a
16 Muslim or a Croat, wanted to leave Busovaca, the
17 civilian police would investigate the case to establish
18 whether he was doing so under pressure or not, and it
19 would allow or not allow leaving Busovaca, because
20 freedom of movement was not ensured, as it was in
21 peacetime, and we have documents in that Exhibit D450
22 which clearly shows that the civilian police concerned
23 itself with the movement of civilians.
24 The civilian police is a unified
25 organisation, and if that is how the police worked in
1 Busovaca, then we are confident that the police in
2 Kiseljak, Vitez, Travnik, or anywhere else worked in a
3 similar way, that is, any police organisation of the
4 Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna.
5 In reconstructing the work of the civilian
6 police and their competencies, the Defence went a step
7 further. Exhibit D211 is one that we should like to
8 draw your attention to. I beg your pardon. We should
9 like to refer to Prosecution Exhibit P457/2 which
10 represents a report of the civilian government of the
11 Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna, 492. That is the
12 HVO at the top of this big chart. Within that
13 government report, various divisions or
14 quasi-ministries of that quasi-government report about
15 their work, and by reading those reports, we can see
16 what the responsibility of each of those divisions
17 were.
18 So in Prosecution Exhibit 457/2, we will find
19 that the first responsibility of the civilian police
20 was public law and order. Then they list the various
21 offences, disturbances of the peace, and what they did,
22 but I won't go into that.
23 I apologise to the interpreters. I seem to
24 have gained pace.
25 So I won't go into the numbers and the
1 statistics, but I'm using that report just to
2 reconstruct what the civilian police did.
3 So the first area of its responsibility was
4 public law and order.
5 The second area is suppression of crime, but
6 the most important of all the civilian police's
7 responsibilities was the pursuit of perpetrators of
8 criminal acts when the perpetrator was unknown. So it
9 is what we found in the documents of the Busovaca
10 police station that I have already referred to. The
11 same is to be found in Prosecution Exhibit 457/3, which
12 is a report of this quasi-government of the Croatian
13 Community of Herceg-Bosna for the first six months of
14 1993, and it can be deduced from this, without any
15 question, that the civilian police was responsible for
16 discovering unknown offenders of criminal offences.
17 Furthermore, in that same exhibit of the
18 Prosecution, 457/2, on page 24 of the Croatian text, we
19 come across another activity of the civilian police,
20 and that is to disclose perpetrators of war crimes,
21 both in 1992 and in 1993.
22 On the next page of the same exhibit, on page
23 25, we find a description of their activities in the
24 case of the discovery of perpetrators of various acts
25 of arson and explosions, that is, torching of houses
1 and planting of mines. So it can be concluded from
2 this that the civilian police was responsible for this
3 area too.
4 For example, talking about arson and
5 explosions, what do the civilian police say in its
6 report for 1992? It says, first of all, that the
7 situation in terms of protection against arson and
8 explosions is very serious, and I quote: "Such a
9 situation has been worsened by intentional burning and
10 planting of mines by certain perpetrators who are
11 probably trying to conceal crimes committed earlier
12 on."
13 Your Honour, we have heard, and we will be
14 talking about that again tomorrow and the next day,
15 that most houses were burnt in secrecy overnight by
16 individuals or groups that set them on fire. With the
17 exception of Ahmici, no where else in Central Bosnia, I
18 mean in Vitez and in Busovaca, in this enclave, did a
19 military unit come in an organised fashion and set fire
20 to a village. No where. There was burning carried out
21 in battle, but most of these acts of arson were
22 committed by unknown perpetrators, and it follows from
23 everything that I have said so far, that the civilian
24 police was the body responsible for these offences.
25 The Prosecutor argued that the real state of
1 affairs was different from what the law provided and
2 that it was Blaskic who was in command of the civilian
3 police. However, that is not true.
4 Let me refer you to Defence Exhibit 211,
5 dated the 17th of November, 1993. It is an order
6 issued, among others, to the civilian police and the
7 defence administration of Travnik, two civilian bodies,
8 therefore. Together, with the units subordinated to
9 Blaskic, you find it on the right-hand side, the
10 addressees. However, it emerges from the text of the
11 order, points 1 to 6, that Blaskic is issuing orders to
12 his military units and not the military police, and
13 especially from point 5, he is making accountable for
14 the implementation of that order the commanders of
15 military units and not the civilian police.
16 What is this all about? Actually, Colonel
17 Blaskic applied a method which may not have been quite
18 correct formally. On the right-hand side, he would
19 list all the people to whom he was sending his orders,
20 regardless of whether he was in command of them or was
21 simply doing so for the sake of information, though it
22 would be correct to put those whom he wishes to inform
23 at the end of the text.
24 That is so, we should like to refer Your
25 Honours to Defence Exhibit 32, when Blaskic issues an
1 order in this way, addressing it to the 3rd Corps of
2 the BH army, the European Monitors, UNPROFOR, and, of
3 course, to his own units of which he is, in fact, in
4 command. So the list of the receivers of orders does
5 not mean that he is in command of them. We need to
6 look at the text to see who Blaskic is in command of.
7 So I think that in this way, we have clearly
8 defined the powers of the civilian police, which are,
9 first and foremost, in terms of what is relevant to us,
10 the preservation of law and order, discovering the
11 perpetrators of crimes when it is known that it is a
12 civilian who committed a crime, and, notably, which is
13 of particular relevance to us, is when the perpetrator
14 of a crime is unknown, then it is the civilian police
15 that acts first. It is the one who starts dealing with
16 the case, and only if it is discovered that the
17 perpetrator is a military man, then this information is
18 handed over to the military.
19 Why is this so? That's the way it was in
20 Croatia and that's the way it was in Bosnia because the
21 civilian police was an old organisation that operated
22 well. The military police was an institution that was
23 just being established, and it was more of a combat
24 unit. So it is the civilian police that did most of
25 this work, and the civilian police obviously discovered
1 war crimes, arsons, and explosions, or, rather, the
2 perpetrators of these crimes, and that is very
3 important, and that is what we can see from all these
4 documents.
5 The decree regulating the work of the
6 civilian police and in accordance with Mate Tadic's
7 witness statement, the former Minister of Justice of
8 Bosnia-Herzegovina and former prosecutor, Blaskic did
9 not have any authority whatsoever over the civilian
10 police.
11 What I would like to speak of next is the
12 military court and the military prosecutor's office.
13 In this chart, we only mentioned the military court.
14 This is done for technical reasons, but obviously it is
15 both the court and the office of the prosecutor.
16 The military prosecutor's office, according
17 to the decree issued by the Croatian Community of
18 Herceg-Bosna, that is, D521, these courts were
19 established by the decree on district military courts
20 in the territory of the Croatian Community of
21 Herceg-Bosna. This decree was in force in situations
22 of war and immediate threat of war. In Article 25, it
23 is stipulated that it will apply to the work of
24 courts -- rather, that the Law on Criminal Procedure
25 that was in force in the former Yugoslavia would be
1 applied in all these courts.
2 That decree equated military and civilian
3 courts in terms of their rights, and it says,
4 approximately, that when, in the Law on Criminal
5 Procedure, a court is mentioned, it pertains to a
6 military court. Where the Law on Criminal Procedure
7 mentions the police, in a situation of war, it all
8 pertains to, as they say, security organs within the
9 armed forces, and the organs of security of the armed
10 forces are the military police and the SIS, that is to
11 say, that the military police and the SIS have all the
12 same powers as the police have, according to the Law on
13 Criminal Procedure.
14 When speaking of the office of the
15 prosecutor, Mate Tadic said that the police has the
16 authority to be in charge of the so-called pre-trial
17 criminal proceedings, that is to say, they collect
18 preliminary information, and then the entire file is
19 handed over to the prosecutor. The prosecutor, if he
20 so wishes, can reject this criminal report, and if they
21 wish, they can refer this back to the police in order
22 to obtain supplementary information. But also the
23 prosecutor can bring forth an indictment or submit a
24 request to initiate an investigation.
25 We are going to look at the chart now where
1 all of this has been put together in a concise manner.
2 This is precisely the procedure on the basis of the Law
3 on Criminal Procedure. When the investigating judge
4 receives the request for an investigation from the
5 prosecutor, he decides whether he is going to institute
6 criminal proceedings formally or not. If he does
7 institute criminal proceedings, then he is in charge of
8 the investigation. He collects evidence, he questions
9 witnesses, suspects, et cetera. After the end of the
10 investigation, then he returns the entire file to the
11 prosecutor, who can request a supplementary
12 investigation, who can give up on the criminal
13 proceedings altogether, and who can also bring forth an
14 indictment. If he issues an indictment, then it is the
15 court that handles the matter, and the indictment is
16 represented by the prosecutor, similarly as in this
17 Tribunal. Afterwards, both parties are entitled to
18 appeal the ruling of the court, and then that is
19 addressed by an appellate court. When the verdict
20 becomes legally valid, if a sentence is passed, then,
21 like in all other systems, the accused goes to serve
22 his sentence.
23 This was quite clear, and also the statement
24 of Mate Tadic was quite clear. The commander of the
25 Operative Zone did not have any role whatsoever in
1 reaching any of the mentioned decisions. This was
2 solely in the hands of the prosecutor and the court,
3 and the military commander of the Operative Zone could
4 not and should not have influenced their decisions.
5 You have here a few relevant provisions from
6 D521, which establishes a court on the territory of the
7 Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna. You can see how
8 the court is established. It seems to me that the
9 English text doesn't work.
10 JUDGE JORDA: I'm very sorry.
11 MR. NOBILO: So it is the same exhibit, D521,
12 but let's have equality of rights of all languages, so
13 let's have it in English and in French.
14 The deputy republican prosecutor, in a
15 situation of war or in the immediate threat of war, is
16 appointed by the presidency of the Croatian Community
17 of Herceg-Bosna, the quasi-government, and this is done
18 at the proposal of the head of the defence department,
19 and this is in keeping with Article 4.
20 On the other hand, as far as the supreme
21 court of Herceg-Bosna is concerned, again, the
22 presidency of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna,
23 the quasi-parliament, appoints this person, and the
24 same decree stipulates that the courts are independent
25 and rule on the basis of the constitution and laws.
1 This is Article 2 of the decree.
2 So these were brief quotations of D521, and
3 it shows that it is not only that Blaskic did not have
4 any influence on criminal procedure, but he did not
5 have any influence over the appointment and election of
6 judiciary bodies that were completely independent from
7 the Operative Zone. It is the quasi-parliament that
8 would appoint them at the proposal of the minister of
9 defence, and they were not within the composition of
10 the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia. Of course, they
11 ruled independently on the basis of the law.
12 According to Tadic's statement, and it is
13 quite clear and it is based on the law, Blaskic could
14 not influence either the procedure of reaching
15 decisions, in terms of criminal procedure, or the
16 election and appointment of the court and judges.
17 The Prosecutor talked about Article 27
18 specifically of the decree on military courts in the
19 territory of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna,
20 and he tried to quote this article and thereby show
21 some kind of powers that Colonel Blaskic had in terms
22 of criminal procedure and punishing perpetrators of
23 criminal offences. However, Witness Tadic, a highly
24 qualified person, as I said, the former Minister of
25 Justice and a former prosecutor, he said that that
1 article is based on a fundamental postulate, that the
2 perpetrator of a crime is known.
3 Then cites an example. When somebody commits
4 a murder in the unit of a certain commander, and if
5 anybody knows who the perpetrator is, then the
6 commander is duty-bound to detain the perpetrator and
7 also to secure the crime scene. However, the commander
8 also has to wait for the police to arrive, the
9 investigating judge, and the military prosecutor, and
10 to hand over the matter to them entirely.
11 As for this article, on page 17365, Mate
12 Tadic says that the commander is duty-bound to collect
13 information if a perpetrator is known, and when the
14 perpetrator is unknown, then he is duty-bound to hand
15 the matter over to the organ in charge to discover the
16 perpetrator. On the basis of Article 27, the commander
17 can only temporarily detain a perpetrator when he knows
18 who this perpetrator is.
19 The attempt that was made by the Prosecutors
20 today here, namely, to link Article 17 to Article 191
21 of the Law on Criminal Procedure, which speaks on the
22 conditions of criminal detention, that is something
23 that is unheard of. Because the commander can keep
24 temporarily, detain temporarily, the perpetrator, the
25 known perpetrator of a crime, whereas Article 191
1 speaks about the detention of persons against which
2 criminal proceedings have been initiated.
3 According to the Law on Criminal Procedure,
4 it is only a judge that can order detention, either an
5 investigating judge or a trial judge, that is to say,
6 that Article 27 of the decree on district military
7 courts and Article 191 of the Law on Criminal Procedure
8 have nothing in common whatsoever. Article 27 of the
9 decree gives authority to a commander to detain the
10 perpetrator of a crime briefly, whereas Article 191 of
11 the Law on Criminal Procedure speaks about the powers
12 that only a judge has.
13 When the Prosecutor gave examples, saying
14 that Blaskic thought that Pasko Ljubicic was hindering
15 his investigation so why didn't he detain him, that
16 example was simply wrong. Because a person can be
17 detained, according to Article 191, if there is a
18 danger of jeopardising an investigation, only if
19 against that person an investigation has already being
20 carried out. So a third party, a third person, cannot
21 be detained on that basis.
22 In order to carry out an investigation, there
23 has to be a request of the prosecutor in charge and
24 also the decision of the investigating judge, and the
25 legal precondition is prima facie evidence that someone
1 had committed a crime, and only if there is a danger of
2 this suspect hindering justice, then can this person be
3 detained.
4 Let us conclude. As for criminal procedure,
5 judges, courts, and prosecutors, Blaskic did not have
6 any powers in criminal procedure whatsoever, except for
7 one, to detain temporarily the known perpetrator of a
8 crime and then hand him over to the prosecutor and the
9 police. He could not interfere in any stage of the
10 criminal procedure, and he did not have legal authority
11 to do so, nor could he influence in any way the
12 appointment of judges and prosecutors.
13 Courts and offices of the prosecutor, as is
14 shown here on our first chart -- something seems to
15 have gone wrong with this. As the first chart shows,
16 courts and offices of the prosecutor are linked to the
17 justice ministry and civilian structures, and they are
18 not within the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia.
19 The next thing I would like to speak about
20 are prisons and prisoners of war. That was discussed
21 extensively, and in this chart, you can see that the
22 prison was under the Ministry of Justice and the
23 Ministry of Defence; namely, in conditions of war in
24 the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia or in the
25 territory of the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia,
1 there was one single prison, and that was Kaonik.
2 Civilian persons were sent to Kaonik who were held in
3 detention during investigation or who were sentenced by
4 judges, so this was a civilian prison. But at the same
5 time, it was a military prison as well because military
6 personnel were sent to that prison under instructions
7 of courts. Then it was also a disciplinary prison
8 because that is where disciplinary action was taken
9 against persons who committed disciplinary
10 infractions. That is also where prisoners of war were
11 sent, so it was also a camp for prisoners of war.
12 Regrettably, there would be civilians there too or,
13 better to say, men, military-aged men, regardless of
14 what status they may be accorded.
15 Again, on the basis of a statement made by a
16 relevant witness, Mate Tadic, it is clear that
17 Bosnia-Herzegovina, while it was still part of
18 Yugoslavia, had its own law on criminal sanctions, and
19 the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina had passed a
20 decree on the enforcement of that law on criminal
21 sanctions in cases of war and immediate threat of war.
22 In accordance with this decree, within
23 civilian prisons, there were military divisions, that
24 is to say, military prisons that were part of civilian
25 prisons. Civilian prisons, that is to say, the part of
1 the prison where civilians were, were under the
2 Ministry of Justice, according to Witness Tadic,
3 whereas the military part of prisons was under the
4 defence department.
5 According to former Minister Tadic, Colonel
6 Blaskic had no powers whatsoever over military or
7 civilian prisons because they were directly
8 subordinated to the Ministry of Justice or, rather, the
9 Ministry of Defence, and they did not constitute part
10 of the Operative Zone of Central Bosnia or any other
11 Operative Zone, for that matter.
12 What was the situation like with prisoners of
13 war? This is a special category relevant to us. The
14 decree on treatment of prisoners from armed conflicts
15 in the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna, that is,
16 Prosecutor's Exhibit 38/2, and this is called "Sites
17 Where Prisoners of War Are Held." This decree says
18 that the head of the justice department, in cooperation
19 with the head of the defence department and head of the
20 department of the interior, that is to say, the three
21 ministries together, determine which location will be
22 set aside for prisoners of war. These camps for
23 prisoners of war are taken care of by the department of
24 defence, the administration of the military police,
25 that is, P38/2.
1 Mate Tadic says that the commander of the
2 Operative Zone had absolutely no authority over camps
3 for prisoners of war or, generally speaking, people
4 arrested during military conflicts, as indicated in his
5 statement on page 17313. He goes further than that and
6 says that if prisoner of war camps were formed ad hoc
7 without a decision by the three ministries of justice,
8 internal affairs, and defence, in those case, by
9 analogy, the military police should be in charge; that
10 prisoners of war and the camps where they were held
11 came under the authority of the military police, and
12 this is evident from another Prosecutor's Exhibit,
13 457/1, which is a brochure headed "Three Years of the
14 Military Police."
15 On page 14 of the Croatian text, it says:
16 "The establishment of a truce with the BH army that
17 occurred after the Washington Agreement, through an
18 exchange and release of prisoners of war, as well as
19 the formation of the judicial police in June 1994,
20 resulted in the disbanding of the prisoners of war
21 camps," and in this way, the military police was
22 reduced to a total of two companies.
23 In this same exhibit, on page 20, it says:
24 "The company for the security of prisoner of war camps
25 is responsible for the security of prisoners of war,"
1 and it follows from this that this is a military police
2 company. This is taken from the brochure on the
3 military police. There are other quotations which I
4 need not quote from, but it can clearly be seen that,
5 in accordance with the decree dated the 3rd of July
6 1992, the places where prisoners of war were kept came
7 under the authority of the military police
8 administration and the defence department because the
9 military police was, in terms of structure, outside the
10 Operative Zone.
11 This is a duty that is not listed in the list
12 of daily duties of the military police over which
13 Blaskic, as the commander of the Operative Zone, had
14 some authority. So this was regulated by a separate
15 decree in which it is seen that Blaskic had no
16 authority over them at all. Regardless of whether we
17 are talking about a civilian prison, a military prison,
18 or a place for keeping prisoners of war, in all three
19 cases, Blaskic did not have under his own chain of
20 command those prisons. Prisons were not part of the
21 Operative Zone of Central Bosnia, and, therefore,
22 Blaskic was not in command of the prison in Kaonik,
23 regardless of whether we are talking about its military
24 section, its civilian section, or the section where
25 prisoners of war were kept.
1 If Blaskic intervened, and he did, with
2 certain orders addressed to Kaonik, he did so of his
3 own initiative, using the authority of the commander in
4 order to request humane treatment of prisoners and to
5 underline the need to observe the Geneva Conventions.
6 Only in those cases did he address any correspondence
7 to Kaonik and the prison there.
8 The next area which is, in my view, a highly
9 relevant one is the professional unit, the Vitezovi.
10 The Prosecutor said today or, rather, yesterday and he
11 repeated it today, something rather interesting, and
12 the Defence might even agree with him, that is, that
13 the fingerprints of the Vitezovi was visible virtually
14 in each crime committed against Muslims in Central
15 Bosnia. That is true.
16 General Blaskic enumerated a number of
17 A-category professional units, Vitezovi, Busici,
18 Pavlovici, and the punitive battalion. These were
19 professional units linked to the defence division by
20 professional agreements or contracts. In command was
21 the head of the defence division and the head of the
22 main staff, and Blaskic claimed that the Vitezovi were
23 not attached to him, and this was also claimed by
24 Brigadier Marin.
25 We have another ten minutes left, and as I
1 shall now go into an analysis of the testimony of
2 General Petkovic, I should like to ask for a private
3 session.
4 JUDGE JORDA: Yes, please.
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9 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at
10 5.30 p.m., to be reconvened on Thursday,
11 the 29th day of July, 1999, at
12 10.00 a.m.
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