1 Tuesday, 20 April 2004

2 [Closing Statements - Prosecution]

3 [Open session]

4 --- Upon commencing at 9.05 a.m.

5 [The accused entered court]

6 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. I take it, Mr. Ackerman and Ms. Korner, that

7 there are no objections as to the fact that you have got members of my

8 staff sitting behind you. Okay. Thank you.

9 Could you call the case, Madam Registrar, please.

10 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour. Good morning, Your Honours.

11 Case Number IT-99-36-T, The Prosecutor versus Radoslav Brdjanin.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. Mr. Brdjanin, good morning to you.

13 Can you follow the proceedings in a language you can understand?

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your Honour. I can

15 understand.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Thank you.

17 Appearances, Prosecution.

18 MS. SUTHERLAND: Good morning, Your Honours. Joanna Korner,

19 senior trial attorney, Ann Sutherland, Julian Nicholls, assisted by Denise

20 Gustin, case manager for the Prosecution.

21 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. And good morning to you all.

22 Appearances, Radoslav Brdjanin.

23 MR. CUNNINGHAM: Good morning, Your Honours. I'm David

24 Cunningham. I'm here with John Ackerman and Aleksandar Vujic.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Mr. Cunningham. And good morning to

1 you three.

2 So before we proceed, and I will only take two minutes of your

3 time, Ms. Korner. You know that there was the Krstic Appeal Decision

4 yesterday, which I read in the afternoon. And there is one point I should

5 like both of you to address in your closing arguments, and I'll quote from

6 the judgement itself. "The intent requirement of genocide under Article 4

7 of the Statute is therefore satisfied where evidence shows that the

8 alleged perpetrator intended to destroy at least a substantial part of the

9 protected group. The determination of when the targeted part is

10 substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of

11 considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is a

12 necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending

13 point of the inquiry."

14 Yes, my apologies to the interpreters if I have been reading. I'm

15 sorry.

16 So I am inviting both of you, Ms. Korner, Mr. Ackerman, to try and

17 assist the Trial Chamber in identifying what you consider to be the

18 evidence relevant to the requirement of substantiality of the part of each

19 of the protected groups allegedly intended for destruction. That's the

20 first point.

21 The second point is this: I do not insist on a clear-cut yes or

22 no. I can still leave you the option, say, the indictment is what it is,

23 and I stick by the indictment. What I would like to know or would like to

24 know is whether it's your case that also the Bosnian Croats were targeted

25 as a separate and distinct group in whole or in part in the ARK region.

1 MS. KORNER: Yes.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: For the purpose of this case.

3 MS. KORNER: Yes, Your Honour, it is.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: According to the indictment it is.

5 MS. KORNER: It still is. Clearly, there was -- there were

6 fewer -- I always wonder about fewer. There were fewer Croats within the

7 area, and therefore it has been less substantial evidence about it. But

8 it's still our case that they were a targeted group.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. Okay. All right.

10 Yes. And the rest you can come to -- I don't want to distract or

11 derail you from the beginning.

12 MS. KORNER: No, Your Honour. I was in any event intending to say

13 a few words about the Krstic judgement outside what's contained in our

14 legal submissions in the final brief, and I'll deal with Your Honours'

15 question tomorrow.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Fair enough. I spoke to Judge Janu and Judge Taya

17 before we came in, and I said I'm raising this now in anticipation that

18 you would probably ask to deal with it tomorrow. But at the same time,

19 Mr. Ackerman would also be alerted to it today in preparation for his

20 interventions tomorrow. So that's how we worked it out, and we were

21 right.

22 Yes, Ms. Korner.

23 Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, do you have a paragraph reference to

25 that section of the...?

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Yeah. Elena, if I could -- I have -- Yes, I have

2 the decision on my desk.

3 MR. ACKERMAN: You don't need to go through that. I can find it

4 fairly easily. I thought maybe you just had it there in front of you.

5 JUDGE AGIUS: But it's in the part dealing with genocide and the

6 initial -- page 12 I'm being told. Paragraph 12, paragraph 12.

7 Well, it dealt with the tangential aspect of men of military age

8 in relation to the substantiality of the group targeted or destroyed. But

9 anyway, let's not discuss it now.

10 Ms. Korner.

11 MS. KORNER: Yes. Your Honour, I'm just looking at the note I had

12 to deal with.

13 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: Your microphone.

15 MS. KORNER: Sorry.

16 Your Honour, I'll leave that until tomorrow.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, it's okay.

18 MS. KORNER: I think I'll take advice from my legal advisor on

19 this.

20 Your Honours, yesterday, we ended with the -- effectively the

21 membership of the ARK Regional Crisis Staff. Before I go on to my next

22 topic, which is the relationship between the regional and the municipal

23 crisis staffs, which has been a major issue throughout this case, can I

24 just go back to ask Your Honours to look at one document which I meant to

25 refer you to yesterday. It's now on the screen. Sorry. It isn't on Your

1 Honours' screens, it's on my screen, but not yours. It's going to come

2 up. It's in Sanction.

3 Your Honour, this is Exhibit P2719, and it relates to two issues.

4 First of all, it's one of the, as Your Honours can see, the Milos reports.

5 And if we just highlight, yes, the top part, there Milos is saying that

6 there is insufficiently verified intelligence, but that armed formations

7 of the SDS are intending to block all roads towards Banja Luka on the 3rd

8 of April in order to thereby force individual members of the government of

9 the autonomous region district of Bosnian Krajina to resign. And also, to

10 pressure the JNA to make personnel changes in the Banja Luka Corps, and so

11 on.

12 Your Honour, it may have been insufficiently verified, but

13 Your Honours may think it was stunningly accurate. And it's one of the

14 many reasons why we say the SOS was no wandering band of disaffected

15 soldiers, but an arm of the SDS and one of its methods of achieving the

16 Serbian leadership objectives. Thank you.

17 Now, Your Honour, can I come on to the relationship between the

18 ARK and the municipal crisis staff. The Defence start from the point in

19 their final brief that the Djeric instructions make no specific mention of

20 a regional crisis staff, and I dealt with that point yesterday. And

21 equally, that the decision made by Erceg or the apparent decision, the

22 document setting up the formal crisis staff is illegal and also I dealt

23 with that matter yesterday.

24 It is, however, clear from the evidence of every witness who

25 attended the crisis staff meetings, that is whether as secretaries or

1 functionaries of some kind or as leaders of municipalities, that the

2 presidents of the municipal crisis staffs did attend those meetings.

3 Clearly, some of them more regularly than others. Some more reluctantly

4 than others. Every witness who this Court has heard from saw

5 representatives present from Prijedor, which is the star renegade

6 municipality. And I'll come back to the use of that term "renegade" which

7 occurs throughout the Defence final brief.

8 We suggest that the Court may draw the inference from the evidence

9 that any reluctance was perhaps due to a number of factors. First of all,

10 of course, the regional level was relatively new - in fact, it was very

11 new indeed - as a level of authority, and relatively untested. Second,

12 Pale, of course, never issued any kind of official announcement or

13 document other than verifying the regional authorities in the November

14 1991 Assembly meeting and sending internal documents. It never seemed to

15 have issued any kind of proper public statement or proper document which

16 defined its powers. And of course, once the corridor access was secured

17 and communications had been properly re-established, the regional level

18 was abolished in September of 1992. And no doubt, for the very reason

19 that it was proving a difficulty to control matters when there was this

20 intervening level of authority.

21 And of course, before this regional level of authority, all the

22 municipal leaders had been, if I can put it that way, big fish in small

23 ponds. The municipalities were given a great deal of autonomy under the

24 old Bosnian system, and no doubt they were most reluctant to surrender

25 that autonomy to another level of authority. But the fact is that they

1 did attend those meetings, and they did deliver reports, and they did

2 receive instructions by way of decisions from the regional authority. The

3 rhetorical question is why, if as the Defence insist, this authority, this

4 level of authority had no competence and no function. As I say, the

5 municipal leaders or their nominees made requests, delivered reports.

6 They took instructions back to their own municipalities, and they

7 implemented them, particularly those instructions, in particular the

8 disarmament deadlines, which the evidence shows led to the most egregious

9 of crimes.

10 Now, Your Honour, we suggest that the Defence are well aware of

11 this, and that is why they have invented, and it really is invented, the

12 "renegade," as they put it, municipality. I say "invented." The word

13 "renegade" doesn't appear in the cites that they have given, but we

14 suggest that they -- totally spurious concept, if you look at the actual

15 evidence in this case. Because what they say at page 127 of their final

16 brief is this: "It is important to note that these renegade

17 municipalities included those municipalities where a large number of the

18 criminal acts charged were committed, such as Prijedor, Sanski Most,

19 Petrovac, Kljuc, and Bosanska Krupa." And in the following pages in that

20 brief, they attempt to support this proposition by reference to some of

21 the evidence showing that all the municipalities mentioned with the major

22 exception of Kljuc, which was simply abandoned once it had been named and,

23 Your Honour, I propose to ask Your Honours to look at a document in a

24 moment which will show why, but they say that these municipalities were

25 run by strong characters - and I'm summarising - who went their own way.

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1 It's also noteworthy that Kotor Varos which was the scene of some of the

2 more major crimes doesn't get a mention at all and that's simply because

3 there isn't one iota of evidence to suggest that they went their own way.

4 To the very contrary. Your Honour, can I just very briefly ask Your

5 Honours to look at a document which I'm going to ask to put on the ELMO

6 because it wasn't on my original list, and I only found it this morning.

7 P1010, which is, and I'll hand it up because I've marked some of the

8 copies, it's the report on the work of the crisis staff, war presidency of

9 the Kljuc Municipal Assembly in the period since the 15th of May.

10 Could you put the first page up on the ELMO. Your Honour, these

11 are the reports that as Your Honour knows were submitted to the assembly

12 before the decisions were verified, or it's one of the reports.

13 Your Honour, this contains a number of points. First of all, the crisis

14 staff that was set up by the Executive Board of the Kljuc Serbian

15 Democratic Party on the 23rd of December 1991. Now, Your Honour, of

16 course we can't say for sure, but it does appear that it wasn't unusual

17 for executive boards as opposed to main boards or municipal assemblies to

18 set up these crisis staffs. And there, Your Honour, you will see, I think

19 I mentioned it yesterday, it's being set up almost immediately after the

20 variant A and B instructions.

21 And then, it goes on in the third highlighted paragraph: "In the

22 period covered in the previous report, the crisis staff of the Kljuc

23 Municipal Assembly held four meetings before the war and 16 meetings

24 during and after the outbreak." And then three meetings of the war

25 presidency, and final sentence: "This does not include the earlier

1 meetings of the crisis staff while still an organ of the SDS."

2 Then could we move down the page. I'm not sure that I've

3 highlighted any other parts. No. Right. We look, please, then at the --

4 we see, Your Honour, and here we see as it were they are making a

5 distinction between the -- what I'm calling the covert crisis staffs

6 before the declaration set up through the SDS instructions, and those that

7 were then set up when the assemblies in Kljuc, there was the takeover at

8 the beginning of May, were Serbian assemblies.

9 If I could have that page back, and we can look, please, at page

10 3. Your Honour: "During the armed conflict, representatives of the Army

11 of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina regularly attended the

12 crisis staff and war presidency meetings. They commanded and carried out

13 the war activities for the defence of the territory and citizens of the

14 Kljuc Municipal Assembly against Muslim extremists. They cooperated and

15 coordinated everything very well with the Crisis Staff of the Kljuc

16 Municipal Assembly. All important and significant issues in the military

17 and police domain were not resolved outside the Crisis Staff of the

18 Municipal Assembly. This period could be described as a period of very

19 successful cooperation..."

20 Your Honour, again, this sums up what the Prosecution say is clear

21 as a bell - my bell is clear - from the evidence that the army and the

22 police weren't operating separately in a vacuum. This was a cooperative

23 effort with the political, and it was the crisis staffs' job, whether at

24 the regional or at the municipal level, to coordinate all that -- those

25 activities. And I'll come on a little later to some of the other clear

1 indications of the control that was being exercised by the crisis staff.

2 Your Honour, I think that's all that I've highlighted on that

3 page. Could we turn over. Your Honour, this is why Kljuc for some reason

4 was mentioned and then abandoned, we would suggest: "At every meeting the

5 crisis staff (war presidency) of the Municipal Assembly considered the

6 conclusions of the Banja Luka regional crisis staff which were binding as

7 regards all issues connected with the life and work in the municipality."

8 Your Honour, a very long time ago, somebody stood up, and then I can't

9 remember now whether it was Mr. Ackerman or Ms. Fauveau or one of the two

10 Frenchmen and said, well, you know, they can issue an instruction saying

11 their orders are binding, but so what if nobody follows them? Your

12 Honour, we say there is your classic example of a municipality accepting

13 that these were binding. And it is nonsense to suggest that this was a

14 renegade municipality. And the reason that they have to suggest that this

15 is a renegade municipality, as are the others, is because they know, Mr.

16 Brdjanin knows, that these crimes that were committed and these

17 municipalities were the ultimate responsibility of him and the regional

18 crisis staff.

19 Your Honour, I think that's all I want to look at on that

20 document. Your Honours, I want very quickly, though, to look at a series

21 of documents which are in Sanction, which show clearly or are a

22 demonstration of the nexus between the regional crisis staff and the

23 municipalities, those particular renegade municipalities. Your Honours

24 have got the original schedule attached to Mr. Treanor's report, and

25 Appendix C, that schedule would show the various documents. But we just

1 thought that it might help for Your Honours to have one more quick look at

2 them.

3 Your Honours will see, if I can just -- it has not been

4 highlighted unfortunately. If I look at my own copies... Yes.

5 Your Honours, that was the meeting of the 6th of May, and -- yes, thank

6 you very much. Yeah. And when we see the various conclusions there.

7 Then Your Honour if one looks at the next one, Exhibit P1630, this is

8 Sanski Most. Your Honour, I don't want to -- we appear to be having the

9 usual Sanction...

10 Your Honour, until the technicians arrive, Your Honour, perhaps I

11 can -- I'll ask it be put on the ELMO again. That's why I brought hard

12 copies with me.

13 That's not working either now. We're still stuck in Sanction it

14 looks like. Here we are. Yes. Now this is Sanski Most this following

15 day, the 7th of May, rather like the Banja Luka -- the regional crisis

16 staff at some stage they had been called war staffs. If we go down -- I

17 think the highlighting was done earlier. Can we just go down earlier to

18 the bottom of the thing -- no, can we turn over to the other side, please.

19 Thanks.

20 "In the spirit of the conclusions of the meeting of the war staff

21 of the Autonomous Region of Krajina held on the 6th of May 1992, the

22 Crisis Staff of the Sanski Most Serbian Municipality accepts and orders

23 the implementation of the following conclusions." And this was the sale

24 of oil derivatives which we saw on the -- it's actually the first

25 conclusion on the 6th of May. It's one of the perhaps less important,

1 although I think it may have been important for the purposes of the

2 economy.

3 Thank you. Usher, can I have that back. I'm just trying to see

4 if we can get to the next document. Usher? Thanks.

5 Sorry? Oh, I see, right. Are we able to use this or not? All

6 right. What's the next document? Yes, can we have 171. Is that going to

7 come up? Your Honour, I'm not going to, because I'm short of time, I'll

8 come back to this after the break when we've had a chance to repair this.

9 Your Honour, but what we -- we put together was a series of documents --

10 JUDGE AGIUS: You will have it repaired, but it will break down

11 again and again, Ms. Korner.

12 MS. KORNER: Sorry.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: You will have it repaired, but it will break down

14 and down and down again.

15 MS. KORNER: I think it's the story of my life. Anything

16 mechanical hasn't not worked when I wanted it to.

17 Your Honour, can I -- I'll come back to this -- the series of

18 documents because -- in any event, they are set out in the schedule, but I

19 thought it would be helpful to remind Your Honours of some of these

20 documents. Your Honour, can I also remind Your Honours that this is not a

21 question of the members of the crisis staff being remote from all the

22 crimes that were committed. Your Honours have heard evidence about the

23 participation of Mr. Rasula from Sanski Most when the killings were going

24 on in the partisan cemetery. Your Honours know from evidence that the

25 beatings that were going on both in Teslic and in Kljuc were heard by and

1 seen by members of the crisis staff who did nothing to stop them. And

2 Your Honours have seen in Kljuc how close the police station was to the

3 building where the crisis staff was holding its meetings.

4 Dubocanin, Your Honour, was physically involved, and I'm going to

5 remind Your Honours visually of that evidence, in the beating and we say

6 torture of a Muslim in Kotor Varos. His group, the intervention squad

7 was, in fact, responsible for the massacre at the hotel in Kotor Varos.

8 Stevandic, Your Honours know, the leader of the SOS also involved in the

9 intervention squad.

10 Now, Your Honours, the establishment of the individual crisis

11 staffs seems to have depended sensibly on the conditions which pertained

12 to each municipality. Where was it situated? Was it a Serb majority one,

13 a variant A? Or was it a mixed variant B municipality? Or even a

14 minority? Had some of the matters already been dealt with? For example,

15 mobilisation? In Petrovac, I think I'll remind Your Honour of that,

16 mobilisation had been dealt with at a much earlier stage because it was on

17 the border with Croatia. And certainly, the border municipalities seemed

18 to have established their crisis staffs a lot earlier. Petrovac was

19 established originally on the 24th of October 1991, and Krupa on the 24th

20 of December 1991; as we also saw, so was Kljuc.

21 Now, Your Honour, Mr. Radojko was asked, and this is at the

22 transcript page 20357 this: "You told Mr. Cunningham that effectively you

23 implemented those decisions of the regional crisis staff which you could

24 and which applied to your municipality. Do you have any recollection of

25 any decision of the crisis staff that you - and then correction - of the

1 regional crisis staff that you did not put into effect?" And this was

2 after he had gone through the list of decisions.

3 "Well, today, from that list, although that was the list of the

4 SDS," and he was referring there I think to the telex which I'll come back

5 to from Brdjanin under Brdjanin's signature. Yes, I think I better make

6 this clear because there has been a complaint about "under his signature"

7 does not -- I am intending, we are not intending to suggest he physically

8 signed it. What we are saying by that expression is his signature block

9 or Brdjanin or whatever appears on the document. We're not suggesting he

10 signed it; he may have signed it, he may not have signed it.

11 At any rate, in any event, going back to the quote. "For

12 instance, from the crisis staff of the ARK, we didn't implement things to

13 do with the mobilisation because it had already been implemented in

14 essence. That had already been done, and also in connection with the

15 dismissals, that we simply bypassed." And I'm going to come back to that

16 issue later on.

17 Now, Your Honour, the impression that the Defence wish and really

18 need to create is that Prijedor in particular was off on what one can

19 describe as a frolic of their own because of these as it were forceful

20 personalities who were at Prijedor. Your Honour, we suggest that's simply

21 not so. Your Honour, the Drljaca order which is heavily relied upon, and

22 that's Exhibit P1237, and we haven't got a hope of getting it up, so I'll

23 see if I put it here. Here. I've got it. It is. For some reason, we

24 can get that one up. Your Honour, this is the decision which deals with

25 the running of Omarska, and it's dated the 31st of May 1992.

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1 Your Honour -- sorry? All right. Your Honour, the Defence make

2 great play of the fact that this was him keeping it secret. If you look

3 at paragraph 15, please, which is on the third page, I think, and just

4 highlight that. "I most strictly prohibit giving any information

5 whatsoever concerning the functioning of this collection centre..." And

6 so on and so forth. There, says the Defence, Drljaca going his own way

7 keeping this secret, except that if you look at the bottom of the document

8 on the page, we'll see "copies to" and then over the page "crisis staff,

9 security services coordinators, Security Services Centre Banja Luka,

10 police chief, security chief, general manager of the Ljubija iron ore

11 mine, and a file copy."

12 Now, Your Honour, the strict prohibiting of giving information is

13 obviously, we suggest, on any common sense showing meant to stop members

14 of the public from knowing about it. I mean, it's not surprising, is it?

15 You would hardly want the public generally to know that you were running

16 what under any terms was a concentration camp in which people were being

17 imprisoned, beaten, killed, and everything. But not the official forces.

18 This went to the CSB. Zupljanin knew about it. And Zupljanin, a member

19 of the crisis staff, was, we know, attending meetings, and there was

20 reporting going on. Leave aside the fact that later on, there was a visit

21 to the very camp itself.

22 The secrecy was from the public. It was not from the Serbian

23 authorities who were concerned to destroy and get rid of the Muslims.

24 Your Honour, Exhibit P1254 is a report on the conduct of the Banja

25 Luka CSB, and it's sent -- it's addressed to the chief, Security Services

1 Centre, Banja Luka. And there is he, just in case there was any doubt

2 that Banja Luka knew all about it, he is describing about -- he's

3 complaining about yet again, not from him but from others, the special

4 unit who began arresting, interrogating and abusing various prisoners in

5 Omarska.

6 And finally, Your Honour, on Exhibit P717, if we can go to page 5

7 of that document, just to show that it wasn't just Prijedor on its own

8 that was involved in this camp, and we go to, yes, that paragraph. Thank

9 you. "Other authorised employees" - he's describing Omarska -- I'm sorry,

10 this is Keraterm and Omarska and Trnopolje - "other authorised employees

11 of the Prijedor public security station in addition to their regular tasks

12 carried out investigation and selection of captured persons alongside the

13 employees of the national and military security services, members of Banja

14 Luka SJB and CSB."

15 Your Honour, that's just a sample of some of the documents that

16 show that contrary to what's being asserted, Prijedor was not as it were

17 going its own way without any reference to the region. Certainly, there

18 is that odd document, and that's another one that's relied on, where they

19 say they're not going to follow any of the regional crisis staff decisions

20 before the 22nd of June. And the 22nd of June is clearly a major date

21 because that's the date, of course, when the decision that everybody is to

22 be dismissed. I'm summarising now. Is issued. And it seems rather odd

23 for them to say after the 22nd of June we're not following the decisions

24 that were issued before that. But, Your Honour, accepting the fact that

25 they were on any showing the most -- the municipality in which the worst

1 crimes were committed, and a municipality that had a degree of, as it

2 were, stubbornness, nonetheless they were not operating, as it were, in a

3 vacuum.

4 Now, as far as Sanski Most was concerned, Rasula, we suggest,

5 there is clear evidence, Rasula, the leader, the president, to show that

6 he was very closely connected indeed to the regional authorities. We

7 would invite Your Honours, please, to look at the evidence of BT-104,

8 transcript page 18503.

9 As far as Bosanski Petrovac is concerned, the Defence are doing

10 their level best, we suggest, to nullify the overwhelming evidence from

11 the documents and from the evidence of Mr. Radojko that these documents

12 that Your Honours saw and which I wouldn't have minded being able to show

13 a couple of examples, that these documents are both authentic and

14 accurate. And however reluctantly they were following the regional crisis

15 staff's instructions. Mr. Radojko said, and this is transcript page 20151

16 to 2: "I think you've already explained it - this was the question - but

17 in relation to that decision of the crisis staff, you gave the answer in

18 interview that the letter that you got from the crisis staff or the

19 decision didn't have the form of an order, but it was obligatory, it was

20 mandatory. Do you still adhere to that answer? You had given that answer

21 in interview."

22 And he said: "I still adhere to that answer. That's the way it

23 is. You can see for yourselves here from these documents that is exactly

24 the way it was. I've already said that a personal relationship vis-a-vis

25 certain office holders were one thing, whereas the observance of rules in

1 terms of what had been established is a completely different thing because

2 it would be very dangerous, for example, for the president or for the

3 entire crisis staff if they had not accepted and observed the decisions

4 that were formally binding on them."

5 Now, this quote appeared in the -- in our final brief, and the

6 Defence complained in the so-called motion to strike that this was taken

7 out of context. The context being that Mr. Radojko also said that

8 Mr. Novakovic, the president of the crisis staff, did not believe he was

9 subordinated. Now, whether that's right or not right, and we have no way

10 of knowing what Mr. Novakovic believed because, as Your Honours heard,

11 he's dead, Bosanski Petrovac Crisis Staff did what it was told. We've

12 seen that. And for the reason given by Mr. Radojko. A great deal of

13 space in the last motion by the Defence is devoted to his evidence, and we

14 suggest that is because it is so wholly inconsistent with the Defence

15 assertions about Petrovac being another completely autonomous

16 municipality, that they have to get round the evidence of Mr. Radojko

17 somehow.

18 Your Honour, we -- Your Honours, we invite you to read the whole

19 of Mr. Radojko's evidence. That is the only way to see whether the points

20 made by the Defence have merit. If Your Honours decide that they do,

21 well, then, of course you'll disregard whatever we have to say in relation

22 to him.

23 But can I remind Your Honours of one further quote from his

24 evidence, which is at page 20346. He was asked: "Why didn't you tell the

25 company" - and this was in relation to the dismissals which Mr. Radojko

1 was saying they had done with such reluctance and gone to a device to

2 avoid the actual total illegality of sacking people for ethnicity

3 purposes -- sorry, because of their ethnicity - "why didn't you tell this

4 company to do what you had been doing, namely to simply send the employees

5 home rather than outright dismissal as this order of the crisis staff

6 said?"

7 "For two reasons" - was his answer - "the first one being because

8 in principle, they knew what we had done with our employees, and they

9 could follow in our steps." That is what the crisis staff had done. "And

10 the second reason is that if we had issued such an instruction officially,

11 they might have been disseminated, and then we could possibly suffer

12 consequences for trying to evade those instructions." In other words, the

13 instructions that went out were the instructions as per Mr. Brdjanin's

14 signed - and on this occasion although, again, there's agreement, he

15 apparently actually signed that decision of the 22nd of June. That's what

16 some of the evidence says, although another witness said no, that wasn't

17 his signature either. But that they should be dismissed. And although

18 Petrovac says, "Well, we weren't actually dismissing, we were just sending

19 them home. Nonetheless, we are instructing the companies to actually

20 carry out the dismissals, and we couldn't just say 'don't dismiss' because

21 then we would have been in trouble." And from there the -- "and that's

22 the truth, isn't it, as you told Mr. Cunningham, that you would be held

23 accountable if you tried to go against the instructions of the crisis

24 staff of the region?"

25 And he replied: "Yes, yes, the municipal leadership would have

1 been held accountable." Now, that answer, as the Defence reduced to

2 stating, that the enforcement of that accountability did not lie with the

3 ARK, and they use a wholly different part of the transcript in support of

4 this. It's T20140 when the same witness was asked: "What would you have

5 expected to have happened?" It was quite some time before this

6 re-examination, the earlier part. "Or what was the feeling at the time if

7 those decisions were not implemented?"

8 "Well, there is no doubt that we would have been removed from the

9 places which we held. There were two mechanisms that they used to bring

10 pressure. One was informal, through people, through population, and they

11 would simply -- they would apply various methods to start hounding us to

12 start protesting against what we did. On various occasions, armed men

13 broke into our offices, and there was also a different pressure constantly

14 brought through the army, and you can see it from the evidence"

15 So, Your Honour, what's used to justify the Defence assertion is

16 to then say if we didn't take the decisions that the ARK had ordered us to

17 do, what would have happened apart from anything else is that the people

18 would have protested and the army would have come in. So it has nothing

19 to do with who had the power to remove it. It may -- it almost certainly

20 it right, the regional crisis staff couldn't actually, didn't have the

21 authority to say to a municipal crisis staff leader "you are sacked." But

22 what they could do, and that's clear, and that's clear what these people

23 thought, was report them to Pale who did have the power to remove them.

24 And it matters not, we suggest, whether the power to remove came from Pale

25 or from the regional crisis staff because the failure to follow the ARK

1 decisions meant removal, according Mr. Radojko.

2 Now, Your Honour, that's all I want to say about the relationship

3 between the municipal and the regional crisis staffs. Your Honour, as I

4 say, has seen the schedule and it may well be after the break I can show

5 you some of the documents.

6 Can I move now to the relationship between the ARK regional crisis

7 staff and the police, which again is a matter that has been the subject of

8 really hot dispute in this case. The regional crisis staff issued a

9 number of decisions and conclusions to the police. Your Honour, as can be

10 seen from some of the examples which are listed below, those which I'm

11 going to come to, which are in addition to the decisions and conclusions

12 on disarmament, there was, we suggest, clearly authority over and

13 coordination with the police. I'm not going to take you through the

14 exhibits, but I can just mention them.

15 There is an order that organs of the JNA must immediately return

16 all military records to the municipal secretariats for National Defence.

17 At one stage, the ARK crisis staff - and I'm sorry, that's Exhibit P185 -

18 at one stage, and I won't take Your Honour to the document, Mr. Kupresanin

19 and Mr. Radic, because we have dealt with it, are authorised to deal with

20 all military and political issues on the territory of the autonomous

21 region. Presidents of the People's Defence Council to inform Colonel

22 Sajic of any military convoys, that really relates to the military. The

23 CSB in one of the ARK decisions is ordered to inspect the daily

24 certificates. The CSB is given the task of checking petrol certificates.

25 An order to make rational use of oil products. The senior officials of

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1 the CSB shall impose immediate, absolute, and unconditional controls over

2 the consumption of such profits. And Your Honours, so on and so forth.

3 Your Honour, the evidence demonstrates, we suggest, that through

4 the CSB and its chief, Stojan Zupljanin, the still-missing Stojan

5 Zupljanin, and through the municipal crisis staffs, the accused Radoslav

6 Brdjanin, through the medium of the regional crisis staff which he headed,

7 was effectively able to control the activities of the police.

8 Your Honour, there was in a telephone conversation that took place,

9 Your Honour, on the 31st of October. Your Honour it's in Sanction, but it

10 may not be, so I will give it out, I hope.

11 Your Honour, I'm sorry. We have it up. Yeah. Thank you. If we

12 can go, please, to -- in this exhibit, it's 2357, there are a number of

13 aspects -- sorry.

14 Your Honour, can we go to the third page, first of all. Can I set

15 the background. Brdjanin is speaking to Karadzic on the 31st of October

16 1991. And it appears that there's some problem about something called a

17 dancing club giving a performance. But it appears they are very anxious

18 to stop this. And we look at the third page. Brdjanin says:

19 "What do we need the army for when 28 of our boys were killed yesterday

20 and this very same army is running a dancing school." I feel a feeling it

21 must be Croatian, but anyhow.

22 A reply from Karadzic: "I know, Brdjo, but you have to bring it

23 to their attention carefully and wisely, and if that does not work, then

24 you declare a day of mourning." I will ignore the swear word.

25 "You keep calling me about every trivial matter, and I have 5.000 things

1 on my mind. If you are capable of governing Krajina, then do it properly,

2 damn it. Don't make me take care of everything. Besides, the civilian

3 government is in your hands."

4 Then, Your Honour, if we can go to the next page, 4, and I suppose

5 you ought to highlight the bit where he -- he -- he, Karadzic, in a fit of

6 irritation, yes. "The point is you keep calling me about every little

7 matter, and that proves you're incompetent." And we'll leave out the

8 swear word at the end.

9 Your Honour, any suggestion that Mr. Brdjanin was not closely

10 involved with Mr. Karadzic, we would say, is not one that is tenable. If

11 we go down to here. Thank you.

12 Brdjanin clearly responding says he's not going to call any more.

13 And then Karadzic says: "No, no. It's not that you can't. Call me about

14 something you cannot resolve. You have all the power in the Krajina, why

15 don't you exercise the power." And then at the bottom of the page this,

16 where he's talking about the police releasing the buses, and he says,

17 Brdjanin says: "I know what we could do. We could dismiss them all, let

18 go of the second floor - as written - and that's it." And Karadzic says:

19 "That's it, Brdo, if Stojan Zupljanin is no good, dismiss him."

20 Now, Your Honour, that goes into line with what we said in our

21 final brief, that this wasn't the rigid hierarchy in the beginnings of the

22 Serbian State in Bosnia that it may well have been in days of peace in

23 Bosnia where the police never did anything but report to their superiors

24 and accept instructions from their superiors. This was a hybrid system.

25 And indeed, one of the witnesses described how the municipal assembly even

1 in the days of peace and before any conflict did have certain powers over

2 the police. But Your Honour, it is clear, we say, on the evidence that

3 there was, as it were, a dual system of control running. Police reporting

4 to the minister of the interior in Pale, but also at the same time taking

5 instructions from the regional authorities. And that was what Karadzic at

6 that stage, even though it may have changed later, intended. He said in

7 one of his speeches in early 1992 "the police must come under the control

8 of the civilian authorities." The Defence say that just means the

9 authorities in Pale; we say not on the evidence of the documents that

10 Your Honours have seen.

11 Your Honour, in July of 1991, Mr. Brdjanin was saying that

12 Mr. Kesic, Your Honour knows was a member of the crisis staff on the

13 intelligence side of the CSB, should be appointed the chief of the State

14 Security Services sector. And then the famous document, P202. And I

15 think it's worth just having that up one more time. "Conclusions reached

16 at the expanded meeting of the centre council held on the 6th of May

17 1992."

18 And, Your Honour, present is the chiefs, if we can just highlight

19 the first paragraph, of just about every municipality in the ARK, the

20 chiefs of the SJBs, including Prijedor, Sanski Most, Kljuc, Petrovac, so

21 on and so forth.

22 And then, Your Honours, if we go to the part which is I think

23 we'll see on -- Your Honour, please, to the second page, or Ms. Gustin,

24 please, to the second page, paragraph 4. All right, could we have it on

25 the ELMO, please. I did ask if we could move to Court I today,

1 Your Honour.

2 Your Honour, "all my orders conveyed orally as well as those I may

3 forward by dispatch must be carried out; they are your law. The chain of

4 command commanding an execution are clearly distinguished in this

5 service." This is important from the point of view of Drljaca as well.

6 "If any one of your staff should refuse to act upon an order, just inform

7 him that he is fired. We have to get rid of the old ideology and concepts

8 not suited to the present moment." All my orders to be carried out. I

9 am -- I was going to say, I am God. But as far as the police are

10 concerned, that was what he was suggesting.

11 And then can we look, please, at paragraph 14. "The chief of the

12 CSB will arrange with the government of the Autonomous Region of Krajina

13 to make a decision in accordance with Article 510 of the law of criminal

14 procedure which will entitle the Banja Luka Security Services Centre to

15 acquire all confiscated ownerless property and to sell it and use the

16 profits for equipping of the service." At an early stage, we can see what

17 we on behalf of the Prosecution say was legalised theft, legalised in

18 inverted commas.

19 Finally, if we could turn over to the other side. Your Honours I

20 know you can probably recite this backwards now, but it is worth

21 emphasising. "In all our activities, we are obliged to observe all

22 measures and apply all procedures ordered by the crisis staff of the

23 autonomous region." What on earth, if there was no power for the regional

24 crisis staff to give the police orders or decisions, what was the point of

25 Zupljanin saying this to the chiefs of the local SJBs which came under his

1 command?

2 Yes, thank you, usher. I can have those back. Your Honour, there

3 is also mention of disarmament, but I'm going to deal with that as a

4 separate topic.

5 Now, Your Honour, there are numerous examples of the CSB passing

6 orders down to the local SJBs. Your Honour, I don't think we can work

7 Sanction, so I'll just remind Your Honours of the various... On the 14th

8 of May, and this is P195, Zupljanin sends a dispatch to all the local SJBs

9 ordering "in keeping with the decision of the Autonomous Region of Krajina

10 regarding the surrender of illegally owned weapons and ammunition, public

11 security stations must undertake the following." 31st of July 1992, he

12 forwards a dispatch to all the SJBs in the region ordering the

13 implementation of the ARK crisis staff decision of the 3rd of June which

14 prevented Muslims and Croats leaving the ARK from taking more than 300

15 deutschemarks with them. And that's P294.

16 I'm just going to check that for a moment. Yes.

17 Then on the 12th of June, so it's a bit out of order, that's why I

18 got a bit confused, Zupljanin forwards to all of the municipal police

19 chiefs the crisis decision of the 10th of June, and I might just put this

20 up because I've got this in hard copy. Could we put this one up.

21 Thanks.

22 This is P240. This is, as you will see, forwarded to the chief of

23 all the public security stations. "Crisis staff of the autonomous regions

24 adopted the following decision, 10th of June," "only children, women, and

25 old people may voluntarily, that is, of their own free will, leave the

1 Autonomous Region of Krajina."

2 The point being that, and some mileage is made of the earlier

3 decisions where they are talking about a voluntary movement of

4 populations. Your Honour, they weren't going to let out of the autonomous

5 region in June anyone who might have taken up arms against them. Women

6 and children can leave voluntarily; everybody else, no. You have to get

7 permission or they're in camps. As we know by the 10th of June in

8 Prijedor, they were. Yes, thank you.

9 And finally, on the 1st of July 1992, they sent out the "dismiss

10 everyone" decision of the 22nd of June, and that's P272.

11 Your Honour, Drljaca on the 5th of July referred to an order of

12 the crisis staff, and that's P1288. Can I just put that up very quickly.

13 And Your Honours will see the first paragraph: "In the wake of the order

14 of the Crisis Staff of the Autonomous Region of Krajina, rifles, pistols,

15 and rounds are being returned."

16 Thank you. That's all I want to do on that one. That's P1288.

17 And very similar in format from Sanski Most, everybody responding

18 to this, five days later -- Your Honour, I'm not going to ask to put it

19 up, but it's the Exhibit P699, from Sanski Most SJB, 10th of July,

20 following the order of the crisis centre, it's called, or translated of

21 the Autonomous Region of Krajina on disarmament these weapons were

22 returned to the army, TO, and SJB units. And it's worth noting the

23 so-called heavily armed Muslim extremists Your Honours saw in the last

24 document, that they managed to recover a couple of automatic rifles,

25 pistols, and 55 rounds. And in Sanski Most, a lot of ammunition and

1 explosions, but not many weapons. Did I say explosions? Explosives. And

2 there's a list breaking down what sort of weapons there were.

3 Your Honour, it's also worth remembering the evidence of the

4 Muslim police officer, Mr. Sadikovic, who, as Your Honours know, was

5 removed and then headed such resistance as there was in Kotor Varos until

6 he was allowed to leave through negotiation. At page 18215, he said:

7 "The police station in Kotor Varos received its instructions from the

8 public security centre in Banja Luka. That was the chain of command and

9 communication."

10 Question: "Now, did the municipal assembly have any authority to

11 issue instructions to the police?"

12 "No, no. Under normal circumstances, that is in peacetime, the

13 interior affairs law, because we have one such, the municipal assembly

14 could propose certain amendments or perhaps if problems arose, if things

15 happened, then they could submit their own proposals, suggestions, and

16 help us to overcome such problems in peacetime. But in wartime, under

17 emergency conditions, of course, the competencies, the terms of reference

18 of the assembly are different than in peacetime so that we were present at

19 meetings when relevant problems were discussed and cooperated and solve

20 all the problems jointly. And we always heeded proposals and suggestions

21 that the assembly had to make. All people employed in the municipal hall

22 in Kotor Varos."

23 Question: "You say in wartime, in emergency conditions. It was

24 different. What happened in respect when the assembly could not sit and

25 its functions were performed by a crisis staff? Could it, the crisis

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1 staff, issue such directions to the police?"

2 And he said: "Yes. In such instances, of course, the municipal

3 assembly ceased to function. The crisis staff assumes all its duties, and

4 the crisis staff has more jurisdiction, more competencies over other

5 bodies, that is. And it can have its say in army or police matters, too."

6 And that is an echo of what Mr. Djonlic had to say.

7 Question: "Was the chief of police a member of the crisis staff?"

8 "Yes, ex officio, his office makes him automatically a member of

9 the crisis staff."

10 And Your Honour, later on, and this was after he had been asked

11 questions in cross-examination -- I'm sorry, this was in

12 cross-examination, it was put to him -- he was asked about the law on

13 internal affairs. "Can you tell us" - this is at page 18 - I'm sorry, I

14 should read the whole quote. 18351.

15 "Looking into the law on internal affairs, you learned that the

16 chain of command of the Ministry of the Interior was from the local

17 police, through the regional CSBs, to the MUP in Sarajevo at that time,

18 and that the only civilian authority in the chain of command was at the

19 very top in Sarajevo. Correct?"

20 Answer: "Yes, that's correct.

21 Question: "Now, can you tell us where it is in that law of

22 internal affairs that that situation is any different in wartime or

23 emergency situations? Where in the law on interior affairs does it say

24 civilians can issue orders to the police in an emergency or wartime

25 situation? I think the answer that it doesn't say that. Isn't that

1 true?"

2 Answer: "There may be a misunderstanding here. The law is clear

3 and unambiguous. It only applies to normal situations when there is no

4 war. If there is a state of emergency, a different set of laws apply."

5 And, Your Honour, then in re-examination, that matter was dealt

6 with, and he was shown the document, the law of internal affairs and

7 Article 46.

8 Now, Your Honour, the evidence from BW-1 was different. And

9 indeed, there is again as with so many issues in this case conflicting

10 evidence from the witnesses about this matter. The persons who are -- who

11 gave evidence who are associated with either the regional or the municipal

12 crisis staffs were, with the exception of Mr. Radojko, adamant that there

13 was no power to issue orders to the police. It is suggested that in

14 Mr. Radojko's case, there was a difference because there, there was the

15 changeover from being under the Bihac area CSB to Banja Luka. But

16 Your Honour, if one looks at the documents that we do have from the

17 various crisis staffs, it is littered with orders and instructions to the

18 police, which the evidence shows were carried out. And Mr. Radojko said

19 in terms "it may be couched as an instruction or whatever, but it means

20 it's mandatory or direction." And Your Honour, we suggest that certainly

21 in these times of conflict, the regional and the municipal authorities

22 were able to exercise control and authority over the police.

23 Your Honour, can I come now to the relationship between the

24 regional crisis staff and the military. Can I say straight away, and

25 we've always said this, the regional crisis staff and Mr. Brdjanin, as a

1 civilian at that level, had no de jure authority over the military. That

2 is to say, to give an order to the military as to how to carry out an

3 action. The crisis staff in Kljuc, I think, explained rather well the

4 relationship between the civilian and military at that level. This is

5 Exhibit P208 where they -- and it was dated the 27th of May 1992. And

6 again, I'm sure Your Honours remember this. The relationship of the

7 military authorities to the civilian authorities should be such that the

8 military will execute the orders of the civilian authorities whilst the

9 civilian authorities will not interfere with the way that those orders are

10 carried out. It's the use of the term "order." One has to distinguish

11 between a direction to the military. We need this area cleansed. We need

12 this area attacked because it's full of Muslims who still have weapons.

13 And the order which sends into action the troops.

14 But, Your Honour, it is clear, we suggest, from all the evidence

15 that again, the military don't work in a vacuum. This wasn't a military

16 state. They didn't say "we're going to take control." They said: "We

17 will consult with the political. The political will explain to us what

18 needs to be achieved in a particular area or at a particular time so that

19 the goals which we, the military, have joined in; namely, the

20 establishment of the Serbian State, can be fulfilled."

21 The ARK regional crisis staff did coordinate, the evidence shows,

22 with the armed forces and saw its objectives and its policy being

23 implemented by the military. General Talic was a member of the crisis

24 staff, despite the assertions made by his counsel during the course of the

25 case, in writing and in paper, that he was not a member. There's no doubt

1 he was. People saw him, at least at the first meeting, maybe at one

2 other. His dying declaration, so called, the document that Your Honours I

3 think have admitted as DB300-and-something, 332, which purports to say he

4 wasn't a member of the crisis staff is clearly a lie, even at that late

5 stage. If he wasn't there, you've heard from witnesses that

6 Colonel Vujnovic or another officer was sent to the meetings to take notes

7 and to brief Colonel Talic. Why? If they had no authority and nothing to

8 do with the army?

9 It had, Your Honours, we suggest, the regional crisis staff, an

10 important coordinating function with the 1st Krajina Corps and the other

11 battalions of that corps in the same way as the municipal did with the

12 military and the paramilitary and the TO units. Your Honour, in the

13 excerpt from Mr. Djeric's instructions that we looked at yesterday, it

14 states in terms - thank you, I'm just reminded. Talic's document is

15 DB345.

16 The crisis staff coordinates the functions of authorities in order

17 to ensure the defence of the territories. And you heard from Mr. Brown

18 who explained how the crisis staffs became an important form of the

19 organisation ensuring that coordination took place, bringing together the

20 relevant civilians, military, and police bodies. Your Honour, the control

21 that was exercised by the municipal crisis staffs, which were, we say,

22 subordinated at this stage to the regional crisis staff, that was a strong

23 control over, in particular, the TO units who formed the backbone of the

24 military forces. And it extended well beyond coordination.

25 Your Honour, in April of 1993, the VRS published its report, which

1 Your Honours have seen. I think it's Exhibit P2419. It's a long one, so

2 I'm not going to put it up. On the analysis of the combat readiness and

3 activity of the VRS in 1992. And one of its paragraphs says this: "The

4 Army of the Republika Srpska has grown into the highest strategic

5 organisational formation of the Serbian People in the former

6 Bosnia-Herzegovina capable of realising the strategic and other objectives

7 assigned to it by the Supreme Command and the President of the Republika

8 Srpska as the Supreme Commander." There was the civilian body at the top

9 that did have the direct authority to give orders, real orders, to the

10 military.

11 Your Honour, what is interesting is, as we say, that when they

12 were formed on the 12th of May 1992, the objective of that formation of

13 the VRS was to carry out the objectives of the Serbian People.

14 Your Honour, the -- General Gvero, at the 34th Assembly meeting of

15 the Republika Srpska, amongst other things, saluted the SDS for the

16 initial arming of the Serbian people. This is in Exhibit P355.

17 Your Honour, again, any issue that there seems to have been about the

18 Serbs being armed is not one that seems to have been pursued by the

19 Defence in their final brief.

20 And he explained the strategy of allowing those armed forces to

21 operate outside the formal chain of command. He said: "Nor has anyone

22 rigidly insisted on the military organisation of the operative army since

23 that would surely dangerously impair our front-line strength. For that

24 reason, groups and groupings often of a purely local character which were

25 not suited and were often contrary to an efficient system of warfare

1 command and control, independent and with ideas of their self-sufficiency

2 and their exceptional importance were taken in, armed, and gradually

3 integrated into the army's system of command and control." Your Honour,

4 so much for these paramilitaries operating without any sort of control or

5 allowance from the army. And Your Honours will recall that

6 Lieutenant Milankovic, from being the head of the Wolves of Vucak, taken

7 into the regular VRS troops and decorated at some stage for his sterling

8 assistance to the goals of the Serbian people.

9 Your Honour, part of the control of the exercise which has been

10 well documented in Sanski Most, and in Kljuc and in other places. And

11 Your Honour, as far as Sanski Most is concerned, if one looks just

12 briefly, and perhaps this is the last document before the break, at

13 P637 -- Your Honour, maybe we ought to take the break. I'm told the

14 programme is simply not running at all at the moment.

15 JUDGE AGIUS: We'll have a 25-minute break. Thank you.

16 --- Recess taken at 10.30 a.m.

17 --- On resuming at 11.04 a.m.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Ms. Korner.

19 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I think Sanction is a dead duck.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: Still?

21 MS. KORNER: Yes, well we had the guru down and he can't make it

22 work. So, I'm going to have to, I think, probably skip some of the visual

23 documents and just show --

24 JUDGE AGIUS: The Chinese would have made something really good

25 out of a dead duck.

1 MS. KORNER: I don't think I'll go into that.

2 I don't know why it's always called "like a dead duck" either.

3 Your Honours, what I was about to deal with was the Sanski Most

4 conclusion of the 21st of May, which is P637, and it gave a whole series

5 of instructions, we say, to the army. It first of all instructed the

6 municipal staff of the Serbian Territorial Defence -- now, that did come

7 directly under the crisis staff -- to find a suitable commander of the

8 civilian defence. The commander of the 6th Brigade, Colonel Basara, and

9 the commander of the Serbian territorial force, Colonel Anicic, and I

10 think Your Honours remember about them, are hereby instructed to protect

11 vital facilities in the town, and so on. Then they give at the end of

12 this document the final deadline for handing in weapons is 2000 hours on

13 the 24th of May. And above that, as far as disarming paramilitary

14 formations in Sanski Most is concerned, Colonel Basara and Colonel Anicic

15 are charged with putting this into practice.

16 Now, Your Honour, this -- there was a plan drafted as a result of

17 this instruction, Your Honour, we say, which led to the attack and the

18 cleansing of Mahala. Your Honours, P638 is the exhibit. And the order

19 given was that the 6th Brigade in coordination with the TO units are

20 ordered to disarm what they call enemy forces. Then, Your Honour, on the

21 4th of June, the Sanski Most Crisis Staff said that Mr. Rasula,

22 Mr. Vrucinic, the chief of police, and Colonel Anicic in charge of

23 resolving the issue of prisoners and their categorisation and deportation

24 to Manjaca. And it's worth at this stage, Your Honour, and particularly

25 in view of the light of Your Honours' questions about genocide, that the

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1 first category designated is politicians, not fighters; not traitors, but

2 just politicians.

3 And the third category, people unwelcome in Sanski Most

4 Municipality. And the conclusion goes on to say that in view of this,

5 have a talk with Colonel Stevilovic from the 1st Krajina Corps. These

6 camps were run really as a sort of joint -- really a joint enterprise

7 between the civilian, the police, and the military. Whether Manjaca on

8 the face of it was a military camp, and on the face of it Omarska a

9 civilian camp, police camp, but nonetheless, there was this constant

10 coordination between them.

11 Your Honours, again, with the Prijedor Crisis Staff, Your Honours,

12 P1268, there was an intervention platoon ordered to be formed, which

13 dealt, of course, which fought with the military. Your Honour, I'm going

14 to come a little later to Brdjanin's visit as it were to the Kotor Varos

15 area. But, Your Honour, can I remind Your Honours of what Mr. Mayhew said

16 about the sort of control that was being exercised by the military and

17 political forces. He agreed with the assessment of the report that was

18 prepared after the visit at the end of August, beginning of September,

19 which said this: "Despite the existence of warlords, the bulk of the

20 evidence points to the responsibility of acknowledged leaders. The mission

21 believes that in general, leaders exercise effective control over their

22 military and civilian structures. Contrary to what is usually accepted,

23 the so-called uncontrolled elements are marginal. They exist, but their

24 importance has been exaggerated by the various leaders who find them a

25 convenient explanation for numerous barbarities." Your Honour, not only a

1 convenient explanation in 1992, but we suggest a convenient explanation

2 and one that has been attempted to put forward in 19 -- sorry, in 2002 to

3 2004 as an explanation for these crimes.

4 Your Honour, the municipal crisis staffs published --

5 JUDGE AGIUS: One moment, Ms. Korner. Sorry to interrupt you.

6 Where were you reading from? The reference, I know it's Mr. Mayhew.

7 MS. KORNER: I'm sorry, the reference I read is from the CSC

8 report which is 1 -- P1617/S217, because it was a Stakic exhibit

9 originally. And Mr. Mayhew agreed that was correct at transcript page

10 13575. And Your Honour, don't forget that -- sorry, don't forget. I

11 don't mean it quite that way. Can I remind Your Honours that Mr. Mayhew

12 had a lot of experience of the area. He had been there from, I think he

13 told us, the beginning of 1992 before he left, and then came back.

14 Whereas Mr. McLeod came to that particular area for the first time.

15 Your Honour, I'm going to come back to deal with as a discrete

16 topic of the disarmament aspect of matters. But Your Honour, can I deal

17 with some of the other evidence that shows the relationship between the

18 political and the military. Your Honours, the surrender of the resistance

19 fighters in Kotor Varos was achieved by Mr. Kupresanin. Now, this is

20 after I except entirely the period of the crisis staff, and we were then

21 back to the regional authorities as such. He forced the SDA president for

22 the region to take part in the surrender by threatening to have him put in

23 Manjaca. Your Honour, there was undoubtedly a visit by Mr. Kupresanin to

24 Manjaca during the period of this indictment where he went round the

25 buildings telling people that they would be freed. It wasn't true, in

1 most cases. But apparently, he felt no compunction about saying that in a

2 military camp. In addition, and appreciating, of course, Your Honour,

3 that this is in the period after the crisis staff, Mr. Kupresanin removed

4 Mr. Sejmenovic from Omarska. Now, it's not the question on whether that

5 was on the instructions of Karadzic or anyone else, but it does show that

6 the crisis staff, had they cared to use that authority, did have the

7 authority to remove people from camps run by the police and run by the

8 army.

9 Your Honour, in Donji Vakuf, the municipality was run by a

10 military administration until a crisis staff conclusion of the 17th of

11 June 1992 ordered that a civilian government be formed. That's P1725.

12 The military did not tell the ARK Crisis Staff what they could do with

13 that decision; but instead, agreed and yielded control of the municipality

14 to a civilian government. Your Honour, the military removed at the

15 request of the order or discussion or however one puts it, the military

16 removed from its officer corps the Muslims and the Croats. Your Honour,

17 it is suggested --, well, of course, they would do that, wouldn't they,

18 because these men were potentially saboteurs or traitors to the Serbian

19 army. But the fact is that the Serbian army by that stage had already

20 been up and running for well over a month, and although some had been

21 removed the authorities then running the army were perfectly content to

22 keep people like Colonel Selak and Colonel Kranjc in the army. But once

23 the ARK Crisis Staff and indeed the municipalities had expressed their

24 total dissatisfaction with that, the army again, instead of telling the

25 local authorities, the regional authorities what they could do with their

1 view, I'm not going to use the rather vulgar phrase that is sometimes --

2 is used in these circumstances, did, in fact, comply.

3 Your Honour, the other interesting aspect of the Sanski Unska

4 group, it is said by the Defence that clearly they were renegade, they

5 were going their own way, and as I said yesterday, they felt that the

6 regional crisis staff was not going far enough in achieving the goals of

7 the Serbian people. But what's absolutely fascinating, if they thought it

8 was an ineffective regional crisis staff, then why was it to the regional

9 crisis staff they were going with these demands instead of going directly

10 to General Mladic or to the republican government in Pale? Your Honour,

11 it's a theme that I've already referred to, that there's this, I suppose,

12 still resistance in a way to having the regional authorities imposed upon

13 them. But once imposed, however reluctantly, they accept that this level

14 of authority does have the power.

15 Now, Your Honours, finally can I deal with one last series on this

16 set of documents. In a conclusion dated the 18th of May 1992, the ARK

17 Crisis Staff issued the specific directive that illegally obtained weapons

18 will be taken away by members of the civilian and military police. That

19 is on Exhibit P227. It's the 18th of May. We're just going to see if we

20 can find it. No. Maybe.

21 Now, Your Honour, the disarmament process in Kljuc demonstrates

22 one of the many examples which confirm that the ARK decision was acted

23 upon by the military and the police. On the 28th of May of 1992, the

24 Kljuc Crisis Staff at 0800 hours, 8.00 in the morning, held a meeting, and

25 they ordered, and this is Exhibit P196, that citizens who own illegally

1 acquired weapons, and we say that means only Muslims and Croats on the

2 evidence, must hand them in between 1200 and 1400 hours with the

3 accompanying dire warning: "otherwise vigorous measures will be

4 implemented to carry out disarmament which could have disastrous

5 consequences for the security of both people and property." That's P921.

6 On that same day, the command of the 1st Infantry Brigade of the

7 1st Krajina Corps reported, and this is P924, "because of the situation in

8 Kljuc, the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Infantry Brigade was made fully combat

9 ready as ordered. If the Muslims - Muslims, not people illegally in

10 possession of weapons, Serbian paramilitaries or whatever - do not

11 surrender their weapons by the 27th of May at 1200 hours the battalion

12 will carry out" - a wonderful phrase - "a mopping up operation."

13 The very next day, the 29th of May, General Talic reported to the

14 Main Staff of the VRS. This is in P654. There is still some weak

15 resistance to the confiscation of weapons in the wider area of Prijedor,

16 Sanski Most, and Kljuc. And he further reported under the heading"combat

17 dispositions of the units" that "cooperation with the MUP in mopping up

18 the terrain and confiscating weapons from illegal formations in the area

19 of Prijedor, Sanski Most, and Kljuc continues."

20 And Your Honours know from the evidence exactly what happened in

21 Prijedor, Sanski Most, and Kljuc.

22 Now, Your Honour, those are just some of the issues and some of

23 the documents which we have gone into at far greater length in the written

24 final brief that show, we say, the authority, the coordination between the

25 regional authorities, the crisis staff, the police, and the army.

1 Your Honour, can I now move to, as it were, a quick canter through

2 some of the evidence of the implementation of the criminal plan in the

3 autonomous region. Your Honour, the events which took place in the

4 municipalities, in particular, of the variant B type, Prijedor, Sanski

5 Most, Kljuc, Kotor Varos, all of them reveal an identical pattern of

6 events which led directly to the commission of the crimes. Your Honour,

7 in our original pre-trial brief, we said this: "The events which took

8 place were not spontaneous or haphazard, but were part of a carefully

9 planned and executed enterprise. It is the case for the Prosecution that

10 the ferocity of the methods used by death or deportation of the non-Serbs

11 and all vestiges of their existence, culture, and religion indicate an

12 intention which it is submitted was to destroy in whole or in part the

13 Muslim and Croat peoples living in the ARK."

14 "It is," we said, "the Prosecution's case that the crimes

15 committed in the various municipalities did in some areas result in the

16 destruction of almost all the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat peoples who

17 had resided there." And Your Honour, tomorrow we'll remind Your Honours

18 of what the evidence was. "The methodical, systematic, widespread and

19 repetitive nature of the crimes which included many large-scale killings

20 leads to the irresistible conclusion, we said then, that what was planned

21 and intended was the destruction of these peoples because of their

22 ethnicity." Your Honours, that's what we said we hoped to prove.

23 Your Honour, we would submit now that on the evidence, we have

24 proved those allegations because taking that evidence in its most summary

25 form, the pattern of events in the municipalities was as follows: It

1 started really in most places with persecutions through the dismissals of

2 Muslims and Croats, a persecution which continued steadily and increasing

3 in its ferocity throughout the period of the indictment.

4 Contrary to the assertions made by the Defence in their final

5 trial brief, these dismissals did not just affect those who occupied jobs

6 which could be said to be sensitive in terms of the security of the

7 Serbian State. One of the matters they rely on, the Geneva Conventions

8 which says that in times of emergency, you can dismiss people. But

9 Your Honour, they didn't just dismiss people who were in charge of

10 companies that were important for production or in the telegraph offices.

11 They dismissed everybody who was a Muslim or nearly everybody who was a

12 Muslim or a Croat. Factory workers. Road workers. Your Honours have

13 heard a myriad of description of those who were actually dismissed, and I

14 remind Your Honour this morning of some of the evidence of Petrovac. A

15 company who had been told to lay people off because they were Muslim or

16 Croat.

17 In any event, Your Honour, after being dismissed, those not

18 imprisoned or expelled were, in fact, still forced to work under work

19 obligation. They just didn't get paid for it. They didn't have any job

20 security. They didn't have any homes. They were attached to the work.

21 Would Your Honour forgive me a moment.

22 Your Honour, I think it's worth just playing what Mr. Brdjanin

23 himself said about that, which we have on video. It was a video clearly

24 reported -- it was a report around the discovery of the camps in August.

25 We're just going to see if we can play it. Yes, it's going to be in

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1 small.

2 [Videotape played]

3 MS. KORNER: "No place in leading jobs for people who are not

4 loyal to Serb policies." But as the reporter himself said, by 1992, or

5 August of 1992, nearly all persons had been sacked.

6 Now, Your Honour, the disarmament order which as I say I'm going

7 to come back to is, again, one that has been the subject of dispute. It

8 is alleged that the order was applicable to all, Serbs, Muslims, and

9 Croats alike. Your Honours have heard from many Muslims about the

10 disarmament and fewer Croats. Your Honours, I would ask Your Honours to

11 look at what BT-95 had to say in respect of Teslic. That's at transcript

12 page number 19532 to 3.

13 Colonel Sajic said this, or this was what he said in interview of

14 which he was reminded. "During your interview with us, you talked

15 honestly about who was disarmed. You were asked talking about the order

16 on mobilisation and disarmament, but the effect was this, wasn't it, that

17 it was only the Muslims and Croats who were having their weapons removed

18 from them?" And his answer, or as it was put in the transcript, your

19 answer: "Mainly, you can't it was a hundred per cent like that. But this

20 statement can stand." That's at T23683. Your Honour, when one looks at

21 that page, he went on to explain how we had a Muslim friend who wanted to

22 keep his weapon, but even with his intervention, the weapon was removed.

23 Your Honour, as far as Sanski Most is concerned, would

24 Your Honours care, please, to look when you consider the matter at BT-104,

25 transcript page 18513.

1 Now, Your Honour, the Defence in their response at page 4 are

2 still trying, we say valiantly, to persuade this Trial Chamber that you

3 should reject the compelling evidence that disarmament was only enforced

4 against the Muslims and Croats. And at page 4, they say this: "There

5 simply was no order of the ARK Crisis Staff aimed solely at non-Serbs in

6 possession of weapons." And dealing with one of our cites, I think that

7 was BT-104, the one I've just put before Your Honour. "The cite is to the

8 unique situation in Sanski Most, a renegade municipality."

9 Your Honours, this is simply on the evidence not right.

10 Your Honour, of course not one of the orders says from the ARK Crisis

11 Staff "disarm by the 11th of May or the 14th of May" or whatever, it is

12 only "only Muslims and Croats." But that is the effect of the

13 enforcement. And Your Honour, there are five ARK Crisis Staff conclusions

14 between the 8th and the 18th of May, averaging one every two days, which

15 demand that weapons be surrendered. And the language used includes, for

16 the 14th of May, "the strictest sanctions would be applied" I'm sorry, for

17 the 8th of May -- would be applied to those who refused. And on the 14th

18 of May: "Severe sanction would be imposed on those who ignore the call of

19 the crisis staff."

20 Now, Your Honour, it wasn't just that Brdjanin as president of the

21 ARK Crisis Staff, his signature was on the bottom of these decisions, he

22 made public statements throwing his weight behind those decisions and

23 demanding that weapons be surrendered. On the 9th of May, reported in

24 Oslobodjenje, that's P180, under the title "weapons must be returned,"

25 "members of paramilitary units and individuals from the autonomous region

1 Bosanska Krajina must return all weapons and other means of combat in

2 their illegal possession by the 11th of May" stated today, Radoslav

3 Brdjanin, the commander of the war staff of Bosanska Krajina.

4 Same day, in Glas, I think probably the same press conference,

5 P181. It's under the title "no more beating under around the bush."

6 "Speaking about the order disarm individuals and illegal formations,

7 Brdjanin warned that he expected most of them to return their weapons to

8 the municipal staffs of the TO by the 11th of May, adding that weapons

9 would be taken by force by those who refused to do so." Your Honour, the

10 suggestion that Mr. Brdjanin was not wholeheartedly behind and involved in

11 the force behind the Autonomous Region of Krajina is, we say, completely

12 misconceived.

13 Your Honour, the order from the CSB that we just looked at

14 included the part relating to disarmament with regard to decisions -- with

15 regard to disarmament when the deadline for weapons surrender expires on

16 the 11th of May, we should take no action until the crisis staff makes the

17 relevant decisions. And they made a relevant decision. They extended the

18 deadlines. And Your Honour, when Mr. Sajic dealt with that passage, he

19 agreed that the crisis staff was in control of what happened.

20 Your Honour, one can see that at transcript page 23720 to 21. I'm

21 summarising, because it was quite a lengthy passage.

22 Now, Your Honour, those decisions were vital because they served,

23 we say, as the pretext for the attacks on the Muslim and Croat villages.

24 Your Honour has heard testimony, and again, I'd invite you to look at

25 BT-104 at page 18514, that the pretext of disarmament was used for the

1 excuse to attack and cleanse the Muslim neighbourhood of Mahala in Sanski

2 Most. It was the achievement of the strategic goal number 1.

3 The accused and the ARK Crisis Staff, in fact, provided a

4 ready-made justification for the attacks by the military and police, which

5 they said would be the people carrying out the disarmament operation. And

6 as we say, the contention that these apply to anyone other than Muslims

7 and Croats is wrong.

8 The -- in the -- on May the 12th, as we reminded you yesterday,

9 Mr. Vjestica was already talking about that disarmament process going on

10 in Bosanski Novi, and it was about to start in Sanski Most. And the

11 reports from the Sanski Most police, P680 and P - I'm sorry, I've lost my

12 note here - but certainly P680 shows that Serbian Army units and

13 Territorial Defence units and the SJB have for some time been disarming

14 paramilitary Muslim and Croatian formations. 15th of June, that is.

15 Your Honour, in Hambarine, in Prijedor -- sorry, I've just lost my

16 place in my note for a moment. Yes, Your Honour, in Hambarine, the

17 incident involving the checkpoint was used, we say, as the pretext. In

18 Kljuc, the incident around the Pudin Han area in which Omer Filipovic

19 became involved. All of these small incidents, we say, were then used --

20 the incidents ariding -- arising, I'm sorry, as a result of the

21 disarmament process when Muslims were actually saying "we know what's

22 going to happen. We're not going to hand over our arms," the forces, the

23 overwhelming forces of the Serbian government was sent in.

24 Your Honour, in Sanski Most, amongst the crisis staff there, there

25 was a person who was then involved in the killings, Mr. Danilusko Kajtez.

1 The SOS in Sanski Most was involved in that. And he then became a member

2 of the 6th Krajina Brigade under Colonel Basara. I'm sorry, I said he was

3 a member of the crisis staff. He was a member of the SOS. And I'm sorry,

4 it's my fault. He was a member of the crisis staff -- now, I'm doing it

5 again. He was a member of the SOS in Sanski Most. There was a reference

6 to him in Rasula's diary entry for the 6th of May, which is P759.

7 Now, Your Honour, as records other areas, in Lisnija, the

8 population was attacked by the members of, I think, the VRS. And there's

9 a report from General Talic, P657, that talks about the expelling of the

10 Muslim population in the area of Lisnija. Lisnija was, in fact, attacked.

11 Your Honour, those attacks were carried out sometimes with

12 warnings, sometimes without any warning whatsoever. Brisevo was attacked

13 twice. That's the evidence of Mr. Atlija. The first attack was in May,

14 and that's at transcript page 1193. It was put to him, because he had

15 given evidence in Stakic, and his transcript was being gone through: "You

16 described at some length the actual attack on Brisevo." I'm sorry, I'm

17 doing the attack in July. "Which began at half past 3.00 on the 24th of

18 July. Is that right?" "It is." "And this is an attack which took place

19 without any warning whatsoever?" "That's right."

20 Brisevo was a Croat village. By July of 1992, the Prijedor area,

21 municipality, was under the complete control of the Serbian forces.

22 Having been attacked in May, it's then attacked again in July. It is

23 filled with women and children. It is shelled. It is then attacked,

24 looted, and indeed I think no longer exists as a village.

25 Your Honour, that happened not just there but in villages and

1 areas all over the Autonomous Region of Krajina. After the shelling took

2 place, troops entered, killings took place of unarmed survivors of the

3 shellings, homes were looted. They were set on fire. And mosques and

4 churches were destroyed. In a minute, we're going to look at a videoclip

5 about mosques and churches, but it is suggested that the Prosecution have

6 failed to prove that these mosques and churches were not being used for

7 military purposes. Leaving aside the fact that not to one single witness

8 was it ever suggested that they were being used for military purposes,

9 accepting the Defence don't have to put things that aren't part of their

10 case. Your Honours, the overwhelming descriptions that you have had of

11 how these mosques were destroyed and the churches as well has been through

12 shelling, through deliberate destruction once troops are in the village.

13 The public prosecutor in Teslic had no doubt about it. He sent in a

14 report saying the destruction of these mosques and churches are a war

15 crime.

16 No, as I say, not even no suggestion, it's clear from the evidence

17 that Your Honours have heard that the mosques were not being used for any

18 kind of military purpose.

19 Your Honour, destruction of cultural, religious edifices and the

20 like is not in itself genocide. The authorities are quite clear on that.

21 But it can be used as a pointer to the intent of those involved to destroy

22 the Muslims and Croat peoples. And Your Honour, we would suggest that --

23 JUDGE AGIUS: It was addressed yesterday in the Krstic as well.

24 MS. KORNER: Yes, absolutely right, Your Honour. And I think they

25 have exactly dealt with that. Your Honour, I was going to deal with that

1 as a matter.

2 Your Honour, those not killed during or immediately after the

3 attacks were rounded up. The men, and in some cases the women, were taken

4 to camps where killings and ill treatment occurred. In the most part, the

5 women and children were separated, and they were taken, to begin with, to

6 temporary camps. In many of those temporary camps, the women were raped.

7 After that, they were deported using the word in its most loose frame, as

8 opposed to the difference between deportation and forcible transfer.

9 Your Honour, those Muslims and Croats not in areas where the major

10 attacks took place were forced out, often in huge convoys, with the

11 totally unwilling cooperation of the humanitarian organisations. But we

12 could simply see, and this is particularly true of the evidence

13 Your Honours heard in respect of Bosanski Novi and Bosanski Petrovac, that

14 if they did not assist, these Muslims were at risk of being killed or put

15 into camps.

16 Your Honour, in more than one municipality, but in particular, in

17 Petrovac, witnesses agreed the Muslims posed no serious threat.

18 Mr. Radojko said that, or any threat at all, at transcript page 20069. In

19 Prijedor, Your Honour, there was a document produced, and I'm going to put

20 it up. It's P1379. Sorry, Your Honour, I'm just going to find it for a

21 moment.

22 Your Honour, again, this was a document that I... Your Honour,

23 this was a security assessment for the Prijedor Municipality, and it's

24 dated the 23rd of October 1992. Can we put page 1 on the ELMO.

25 Can we turn over to the next page, please. Your Honour, now this

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1 is a description in October of what happened earlier on. "The situation

2 in the Prijedor Municipality started deteriorating in May 1992." Tension

3 could be felt. Relations between the ethnic groups became very tense.

4 The national division reached its climax in armed conflicts between the

5 Serbian people which had taken power and Muslim and Croatian extremists on

6 the other. From then until today, the consequences of these conflicts can

7 be felt everywhere. Dozens of villages have been almost completely

8 destroyed and left uninhabited. And Your Honours can see the list, or

9 partly destroyed.

10 This destruction saw the beginnings of the mass exodus of both

11 Muslims and Croats. According to estimates, roughly, and this is October,

12 by October 1992, 38.000 Muslim and Croat citizens have left the

13 Municipality of Prijedor so far. How they left. As they people left,

14 there began a massive looting of their property which was left entirely

15 unguarded by either the owners or the municipal authorities.

16 Then we can move the page up slightly. Then it deals with the

17 worry that they may get involved. I would say that was probably more than

18 a worry. Once they had left in hostile activities against the Republika

19 Srpska. The remainder of the Muslim and Croat population, at least, the

20 more extreme ones amongst them, must be treated with extreme caution as

21 they refuse to accept the present situation.

22 The entire period is characterised by the blowing up and

23 destruction of buildings owned by Muslims and Croats, as well as of places

24 of worship. This represents a direct threat to the life and property of

25 all the citizens of the municipality. The harassment of other nationality

1 by individuals wearing military uniform is also evident. Such individuals

2 are increasingly becoming a threat to all the other citizens of the

3 Municipality of Prijedor. And again, there's that corollary of what

4 happened in Teslic with the Mice. Some terrorised Serbs. And the

5 military police in the town are doing almost nothing about this problem.

6 Thank you.

7 I think I did say the exhibit number, but if I haven't,

8 Your Honour, it's -- yes, I thought I had.

9 Your Honour, as well as being, as we saw from that report,

10 deported, looted, the municipalities then engaged in -- with the --

11 through the, effectively the orders again of the crisis staff in legalised

12 theft by insisting that people who were leaving "voluntarily" couldn't

13 take more than 300 marks with them. And that they had to sign over, if

14 they were any owners of property, they had to sign over that property to

15 the Municipality. Your Honours, it's all too easy to forget as I have

16 been going on for the last day, and effectively for the last few months,

17 what we're talking about here. We're not talking about names on a piece

18 of paper, names of villages, but of real, live people, some of them from

19 whom Your Honours have heard. And, Your Honours, these cases are brought

20 for a number of reasons. The first is, and the most important, that if

21 people commit criminal offences, they should be brought to book for them.

22 But as I think Your Honours have said on a number of occasions, it's also

23 to try and achieve some kind of peace and reconciliation in Bosnia.

24 But of course, it's also right that the victims of these crimes,

25 and we say in this case, these undisputed crimes, are heard. And

1 Your Honour, I think it's right to remind Your Honours just very shortly,

2 although one clip is a bit longer than normal, but it's important that

3 Your Honours hear it, and that is of some of the evidence that we've heard

4 about the attacks and the killings and the beatings. And Your Honours, I

5 want to start with the evidence of Dr. Merdzanic about the attack on

6 Kozarac, which is Exhibit P...

7 [Videotape played]

8 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, the next --

9 JUDGE AGIUS: One moment, Ms. Korner. You were about to tell us

10 what was the exhibit number.

11 MS. KORNER: This is video -- this is testimony, Your Honour. It

12 has no exhibit number. Instead of reading you, we've taken some of --

13 JUDGE AGIUS: You said which is Exhibit P, and then you stopped.

14 MS. KORNER: No -- I -- that was -- there's another -- the next

15 exhibit is going to be a P exhibit.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay, thank you.

17 MS. KORNER: That, of course, was Kozarac and Prijedor. Your

18 Honour, the next video is the short -- Kotor Varos from the attack, that's

19 P510. There's also one that goes on, and I think we will play the whole

20 part, although it deals with a slightly different point that I want to

21 make later.

22 Just a moment, Your Honour. I'm sorry about this. Yes, that's

23 it. Thank you.

24 [Videotape played]

25 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, there is no sound on this. Unless

1 Your Honour is getting any sound.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: We are getting nothing.

3 MS. KORNER: No. Your Honour, I -- this -- it's important

4 Your Honours hear sound on this one.

5 [Videotape played]

6 JUDGE AGIUS: We are not hearing any sound, Ms. Korner.

7 MS. KORNER: No. Your Honour -- this is taking too much time.

8 I'm pressed for time. I think what I'll do is I'll come to that later

9 because I want to deal with it when I come to Mr. Brdjanin obviously. So

10 we'll -- I'll get the actual videoclip as opposed to this, which isn't

11 working.

12 Your Honour, what it will deal with is the attack on Kotor Varos.

13 And can I at this stage remind Your Honours, because that's also when we

14 see Mr. Brdjanin explaining about visiting the areas, of the evidence that

15 Zoran Jokic the air force man gave about these attacks. He watched that

16 video which was then -- it's the same as 1598, or the clip was, and I may

17 get that during the break. And he was asked then: "What kind of missiles

18 were being dropped that we saw in that video? What kind of bombs?" And

19 he said: "On this footage, if I can see that precisely," and he described

20 the aircraft, so it's something, an Orao [phoen], I think, "it would be

21 dropping napalm bombs, fire bombs as far as I know. So I think it is

22 these bombs that are being used here."

23 And Your Honour, later he was looking at the part of the video

24 that was taken in the town of Vecici, which is P2431, and he was asked

25 about cluster bombs. And he said: "A cluster bomb I repeat again is a

1 classic bomb. It does not contain any other chemical agents, other than

2 besides classic explosive. So it's a bomb containing exclusively classic

3 explosives." I think this was dealing with what he dealt with in chief.

4 And Your Honour, I forgot to give the reference. This part is transcript

5 24048, and the previous was 24045.

6 He was asked: "Designed to cause maximum injury and damage.

7 That's right, isn't it?"

8 And he said: "All bombs are designed to cause as much injury as

9 possible, and destruction."

10 "And so one of those types of bombs is a cluster bomb. And to

11 drop such a bomb on a hospital would be clearly a war crime, wouldn't it?"

12 And he said "I absolutely agree, that it would be a war crime to

13 drop such a bomb on a hospital." And Your Honour, later on in that video,

14 there was a clip of the hospital in Vecici and the bomb which had been

15 dropped.

16 Your Honour, just on the topic of these attacks, the overwhelming

17 superiority of the VRS is something I referred to yesterday against the

18 hunting rifles and the limited weaponry that the Muslims and the Croats

19 had in 1992. It was put to Jokic, page 24029 of the transcript, "it's

20 right, isn't it, that at this stage, 1992, 1993, indeed for most of the

21 war, the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina had no air force?" And he said:

22 "Not an air force of this kind, but according to my information, it did

23 have some light sports aircraft which they adapted and made into small

24 fighter planes. The types of planes which we had in the Army of the

25 Republika Srpska and which we still have, they didn't have at that time,

1 and they don't have them now."

2 Question: "You inherited, you the VRS, inherited the fly power of

3 the JNA. That's right, isn't it?" And he replied "yes." And Your

4 Honour, again when one is considering the credibility of witnesses, just

5 to remind Your Honours, this is the witness who destroyed military

6 notebooks, the notebooks he had to carry himself, after the Dayton

7 Agreement in 1995 which among other information, he agreed, would have

8 shown the dates and the times he attended the meetings of the crisis staff

9 of the region. Another set of missing documents, although this time we

10 actually know what happened to them. And he was the man who said that he

11 was an acquaintance of Stevandic, and that his invitation to attend the

12 crisis staff had come from Mr. Dubocanin.

13 Now, Your Honour, I now want to move in the hopes that this will

14 work - I think it will - to evidence of some of the killings that

15 Your Honours heard, or one of the killings, and it comes from Mr. Nasic.

16 And Your Honours, I think that's in the booth. With luck, we can hear

17 that. It's a lengthy excerpt, but I think it's worth it.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: I just want to make sure that any videos of direct

19 testimony that we have heard, you've checked to make sure that they were

20 not testifying in closed session.

21 MS. KORNER: Yes, we have.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: You have, okay.

23 MS. KORNER: That's been one of the problems.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: It's okay. I just wanted to make sure, Ms. Korner.

25 MS. KORNER: No, we have done that.

1 If we could have that of Mr. Nasic, please.

2 [Videotape played]

3 MS. KORNER: We can -- I think it has stopped now anyhow.

4 Your Honour, I think the reason that it's important for

5 Your Honours to be reminded of the evidence of people like Mr. Nasic is

6 because the major killings, that of Mount Vlasic, Grabovica school, the

7 Velegici school are probably engraved in everybody's minds forever. But

8 there were -- there was evidence of numerous killings like this man

9 described to you. And those killings that he was talking about that took

10 place in Kipe, Redak, some 90 men, unarmed civilian men were killed by the

11 military. And Your Honour, his evidence was corroborated, you may recall,

12 by the evidence we heard from the exhumations, the Redak exhumation. You

13 heard from Mr. Sebire, and you have the documents. And it's a place I

14 think that Your Honours may recall seeing when the site visit was taking

15 place.

16 Your Honour, that's some of the evidence of the killings, and that

17 was, of course, the Prijedor Municipality as well. Your Honour, now what

18 of the beatings? I'm going to ask Your Honours to remind yourselves of

19 the evidence Mr. Biscevic from Sanski Most, because it's quite a short

20 excerpt, this.

21 [Videotape played]

22 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I should remind Your Honours that what

23 then transpired with Mr. Biscevic was that he forced to the radio station

24 to make that announcement. And I'm not going to take you through that,

25 but it was the Radio -- the broadcast is Exhibit P827, with the transcript

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1 827.1.

2 Your Honour, I have a few more clips to play, but I think we're

3 going to have to have the break.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, we'll have a 25-minute break. Is that

5 convenient for you, Ms. Korner, because you have been speaking already for

6 about three hours? Do you require a longer --

7 MS. KORNER: No, Your Honour, if possible, a shorter break. The

8 trouble is I keep forgetting what the slowing down does. But Your Honour,

9 25 minutes.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. That's fine. Thank you.

11 --- Recess taken at 12.30 p.m.

12 --- On resuming at 1.03 p.m.

13 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, there's a second part. It's a take -- a

14 second section on that Biscevic testimony which is taken from a slightly

15 different point, which I'm just going to ask - it's very short - that the

16 video booth plays for us.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: The section about his son, or?

18 MS. KORNER: That's right.

19 [Videotape played]

20 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, the second clip that I'm going to ask to

21 be played is that of (redacted). Now, can I say straight away, I

22 appreciate that for the reasons that Your Honours know about, he was never

23 cross-examined, but Your Honours, it's clear that the Defence very

24 properly were not cross-examining on the details of what happened to them.

25 I would ask that that video now be played.

1 I'm sorry, can I just -- it was corrected afterwards, but I

2 mispronounced the name. It should be (redacted), but I said (redacted).

3 [Videotape played]

4 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, from there, can I move to some short

5 clips of the destruction and just remind Your Honours of some photographs.

6 First of all, the video that Your Honours may remember of what Kozarac

7 looked like in 1992 when ABC News went in. The number of the video is

8 P1511.

9 [Videotape played]

10 MS. KORNER: Your Honour may think it's remarkable having seen

11 what Kozarac looks like today, that the town was able to recover.

12 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please. Microphone for Ms. Korner.

13 MS. KORNER: Thank you.

14 May I remind you of the photographs that were taken by Charles

15 McLeod in the end of August beginning of September 1992 of what the area

16 around the Prijedor-Kozarac Road looked like. Again, I'm afraid we have

17 the problems with Sanction. I'm just going to ask they be put on the

18 video. They are numbered P84 -- on the ELMO. P842.2, .3, .4. Yes,

19 it's -- it's 842.2 to .7. Usher, you'll need to put them on -- up. Turn

20 them around very quickly. Not this one, just the next lot. Start with

21 .2, please. Yes. And we can then move to the next one. And the next.

22 Yes. Numbers 6 and 7, please.

23 Yes, that's slightly different, Your Honour. That was actually, I

24 think, going over the border. Thank you very much, usher.

25 Your Honours, I think, can I now go back to the video I was trying

1 to play earlier. We obtained a copy. The sound is not very good. I

2 don't know what the number is. It's 510, P510.

3 [Videotape played]

4 MS. KORNER: Yes. That's the wrong video. I'm going to give that

5 up, Your Honour. I'll come back to that tomorrow when I've sorted it out

6 properly.

7 Your Honour, can I however -- that brings me on to the question of

8 the camps. I don't think Your Honours will need reminding any more of the

9 Paddy Ashdown visit to Manjaca, or indeed the Penny Marshall visit to

10 Omarska and Trnopolje. I think Your Honours have that well in mind. And

11 the photographs taken by Dr. Merdzanic of the blood-spattered walls and

12 the people or the person -- the particular person who was beaten.

13 Your Honour, it's worth, however, perhaps, just having a look at

14 the beginning of one of the videos, which is P2727. It was a very recent

15 video. And at the beginning, Your Honours will recall that everybody in

16 Manjaca described how there were, apart from anything else that happened

17 in Manjaca camp, forced to walk head bowed, not looking at the guards, and

18 which struck very much the two ex-military officers, Mr. McLeod and

19 Mr. Mayhew. I hope that's on. I just want to play the beginning of that.

20 Your Honour, we may play --

21 [Videotape played]

22 JUDGE AGIUS: We are not receiving any interpretation in English.

23 I see, it's coming up.

24 [Videotape played]

25 MS. KORNER: All right. Can we stop it, please. Thank you.

1 Your Honour, it may well be -- I do want a translation. I do want

2 a translation. It's not being translated. Maybe because the interpreters

3 haven't got the transcript. I'm going to come back to it tomorrow in any

4 event, but I just wanted to remind Your Honours of how these men at

5 Manjaca looked.

6 Your Honours, I have no doubt Your Honours remember, and there is

7 no need for me to go through it again, the evidence that you heard of the

8 conditions, not only in the major camps, like Omarska, Keraterm, Manjaca,

9 but also in the so-called smaller ones, Betonirka and Sanski Most, the

10 various police stations that were used in the various areas, and the types

11 of conditions in which people were kept.

12 Your Honours asked me to ensure that the videoclips I chose of

13 testimony were not in closed session. And regrettably much of the

14 evidence that related to the major killings, the survivors of those

15 killings, was given in closed session. But I have no doubt that

16 Your Honours will read the evidence of the survivors of those killings, in

17 particular, the massacre of approximately 80 unarmed men in the front of

18 the school in Velegici, the massacre of between 150 to 200 unarmed men in

19 the village of Biljani, in Kljuc, as was Velegici, Kljuc, as the Defence

20 rightly point out being a scene of major, major crime.

21 The massacre of between 150 and 200 unarmed men in the Keraterm

22 camp in July of 1992. The killing of around 120 unarmed men on the 5th of

23 August in Keraterm. The Vlasic Mountain massacre of approximately 150 to

24 200 unarmed men, again, from Prijedor on the 21st of August. And

25 Your Honours will recall what that area looked like. And finally, on the

1 major ones, or it seems, wrong in a sense to reduce killings such as the

2 one that Mr. Nasic described to less than major, but the Grabovica school

3 massacre of approximately, again, 200 unarmed men in early November.

4 Your Honour, of course that was after the winding up of the crisis

5 staff, but, Your Honour, the process which was started way back in October

6 1991 and increasing in escalation all the way through 1992 was one to

7 which we say on the evidence Your Honours can be sure that the defendant

8 was a party, and it was apparent to anyone that things were suddenly just

9 going to stop like that and that the killings and the imprisonment and the

10 beatings would go on until the purpose was achieved.

11 Your Honour, the killings aren't disputed, but when one looks at

12 the scale of them and the type of people who were killed, it wasn't just

13 the men and the men of fighting age, but old men, babies, as in the

14 Hrustovo garage killings which took place. Your Honours may recall,

15 because you visited the site, where the Velegici school took -- was stood,

16 but stands no longer, and the graveyard that now stands there. I'm going

17 to, Your Honours, just to look at one photograph that was taken. I know

18 that Your Honours walked around it and saw the grave. It should be added

19 that the bodies were not recovered there. They were recovered from other

20 exhumation sites, and reburied at a later stage.

21 Your Honour, it's not the clearest, but you can see that one of

22 the stones relates to a Mr. Arif Pasic who was born in - as I say, it's

23 not the clearest - but actually 1912, and died in 1992 at the age of 80.

24 Thank you.

25 Thank you, usher. You can take that away.

1 Your Honour, evidence of the rapes was all given in closed session

2 or by way of transcript evidence or statement under the provisions of Rule

3 92 bis. Your Honours, may I simply ask Your Honours perhaps to read the

4 evidence of BT-33, who testified, and the statements of BT-71, 74, and 75,

5 in particular, the last.

6 Your Honours, the repetition of all these events across the 13

7 municipalities from which the Prosecution has called evidence, we submit,

8 cannot as a matter of experience and of common sense come about through

9 coincidence, through happenstance, through individual renegade

10 municipalities off on a course of their own without any sort of

11 coordinating and background plan and instruction. We would invite

12 Your Honours to look at what BT-19, who we commend to Your Honours as the

13 most impressive of the witnesses who came from outside the area, the

14 so-called internationals, what he had to say about this, at pages --

15 transcript pages in particular T20635 to 7. And, Your Honours, to have a

16 look at the chronology that has been prepared for Your Honours where you

17 can see the events set out across each municipality, in particular, as we

18 commend to Your Honours what you can see on pages 28 and 29. We would

19 have put it up, but it's -- it's too big.

20 Your Honours, the size of the operation required, as we say,

21 control and coordination between the political authorities, the police,

22 and the military. We say the evidence shows it required it, and it got it

23 through the regional level of authority headed by Radoslav Brdjanin. And

24 finally, Your Honours, so that one can see in visual form the

25 implementation we say of the plan, can I just very quickly put up the maps

1 that were prepared showing the various forms of destruction. Can I start

2 with the killing sites, which is Exhibit P2650.

3 Your Honour, these are dealing with the killings connected with

4 the detention camps, the two coloured dots refer to the different types.

5 And as one can see, and I repeat, Your Honour, that is why we suggest the

6 Defence is so anxious to say these were renegade municipalities, the

7 worst -- the largest numbers occurred in Prijedor, in Sanski Most, in

8 Kljuc, Kotor Varos doesn't get a mention, and up in Novi. Thank you.

9 Then next, could we look, please, at the exhumation sites, because

10 that gives us some idea of how difficult it was to recover the bodies.

11 This is P2648.

12 As Your Honour knows, even today, as you heard Mr. Biscevic say a

13 few minutes ago, many bodies have not been recovered. Your Honours heard,

14 and we've set it out in the final brief, the number of bodies that have

15 been recovered and from which sites. Perhaps the most unanswered question

16 of this whole period in this area is where the bodies are of the men who

17 were killed in the Grabovica school. Yes, thank you.

18 Your Honours, can we then look, please, briefly as I say again at

19 P2649, which is where the camps were situated. And there, we can see that

20 each and every municipality, with the exception of Celinac, for reasons

21 which I think we'll come to tomorrow, had its camps. The largest number,

22 again, in Prijedor. Thank you.

23 And finally, P2647, the destruction of religious or the damage,

24 destruction, to religious property. Not one municipality escaped. In

25 Banja Luka, it's right to say that the major destruction took place in

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1 1993, the destruction took place in 1993. In 1992, it was pure -- it was

2 merely damage, if that can be put that way, as "merely." Your Honour, one

3 can see, we suggest, from this map why Dr. Kaiser, when he gave evidence,

4 the expert, described this as a systematic approach to the destruction.

5 Yes, thank you.

6 Your Honour, I was going to deal, in fact, because it led into the

7 genocide thing, but I will leave that until tomorrow, the few words I want

8 to say about genocide, once we have dealt with the question that

9 Your Honour has. I want to deal briefly if I may before I come on to

10 Mr. Brdjanin himself, the question of media and propaganda in general

11 terms. Your Honour, in order to persuade the ordinary Serbs of the

12 threat, the so-called threat, posed to them by their Muslim and Croat

13 neighbours with whom they were living up until 1991 on good terms, that

14 they had to make sure, the Serbs, that the propaganda went out as far as

15 was possible unopposed by the propaganda which we accept entirely was

16 being put out on behalf of the Muslim and Croat populations. And also, to

17 ensure that their official pronouncements were circulated not only as and

18 when required, but also accurately. Your Honour, we say that the evidence

19 shows that within the Autonomous Region of Krajina, this accused,

20 Mr. Brdjanin, together with his cohort, Dr. Vukic, of the SDS, were the

21 leading proponents of the strategy of -- to try and take control of the

22 media.

23 Your Honour, we have already dealt with the takeover of the Kozara

24 transmitter by Veljko Milankovic's group. And according to witnesses,

25 this did cause an enormous change in the type of programming because the

1 programmes they were receiving came not any more from Sarajevo, but from

2 Belgrade and Novi Sad. Your Honour, on the 6th of March 1992, there was a

3 press conference when Vukic made a statement about Radio Banja Luka

4 stressing that the editorial policy to date has not served sufficiently

5 the interests of the ruling party and that it should be changed as soon as

6 possible. And about ten days later, he said that Radio Banja Luka should

7 broadcast reports from the battlefield every day.

8 Your Honours may recall that there was a witness who dealt with

9 the events of Banja Luka -- sorry, Banja Luka Radio at some length, and

10 I'm not going to go into that. But Your Honour, one of the things that

11 the Defence have said in their response, and this is at page 2, they say

12 "there is no evidence of the Autonomous Region of Krajina Crisis Staff or

13 Radoslav Brdjanin giving instructions to radio stations." Well, I suppose

14 if you read that simply as Banja Luka Radio must do this, that is right.

15 But from its beginnings, it issued decisions and conclusions concerning

16 the media. On the 6th of May 1992, the media, in the autonomous region,

17 are to furnish maximum information. Your Honour, I should say all of what

18 I'm now going to read comes from P227, the Gazettes.

19 On the 8th of May 1992: "In future, Krajina media are to operate

20 according to wartime schedules." And what does that mean? "That is, they

21 must promptly inform all citizens about all orders and decisions of the

22 war staff of the ARK." On the 18th of May, because you can issue whatever

23 orders you want, but if the technical equipment is not working, they

24 sent -- they said that "TV Banja Luka is to send technicians immediately

25 to maintain the relay at Vlasic." So there we have a direct order to the

1 actual station itself.

2 And then on the 4th of June, the announcement of the establishment

3 of the radio/television Krajina. And Your Honour, the many documents

4 which have come from the Banja Luka railway station -- railway station.

5 Television station and radio station -- I'm sorry, radio station, do show

6 that those decisions were being read out as requested, apart from what we

7 see in the newspapers, because you have the actual copy of the decision of

8 the crisis staffs with the radio announcer's written -- when it's to be

9 played and who is going to deal with it.

10 Your Honour, the municipal crisis staffs also played their part in

11 implementing the instructions that they were getting about the -- from the

12 ARK about radio programming. Petrovac, on the 18th of June 1992, it sent

13 a clear direction on the type of programme to be broadcast. That is

14 Exhibit 1834. And on the subject of the type of propaganda that was being

15 broadcast, if one looks at Exhibit 1811, they were broadcasting an

16 announcement starting "Serbs, and all upstanding people of Krajina, let us

17 stem the tide of fascism. Our houses, towns, and villages are again being

18 torched and destroyed. We are fighting against Ustasha and Islamic

19 fascists." It makes the point, Your Honour, very clearly: You have to

20 terrify your people into believing that you are going -- that they are

21 being attacked by the Ustasha and Islamic fascists in order to persuade

22 them either to condone or to take part in the crimes that are going to be

23 committed. And the radio stations were vital, as Your Honours know, in

24 broadcasting the demands for the surrender of the weapons and for the

25 surrender of people. In Kljuc, with the incident in the Pudin Han area,

1 when Omer Filipovic was being ordered to surrender, when he had gone to

2 negotiate.

3 And in P28 -- I'm sorry, P928, which again was Kljuc Radio -- I'm

4 sorry, again it was Kljuc Radio of the 29th of May 1992, and for some

5 reason we can get that up. This was one of the ultimatums being issued in

6 respect of Kljuc, and we see there: "We hope that the leadership of the

7 so-called Muslim Territorial Defence has finally realised that what it is

8 doing is political and real suicide of its own people. In other words, a

9 crime against its own people against which it has no right, and we hope

10 the attack is on the police patrol" and so on and so forth.

11 Your Honour, Glas was perhaps the only newspaper that was not

12 fully at all times subservient to the wishes of its political masters, and

13 it may well be that that came about because Mr. Mladjenovic who was the

14 editor was a close associate - he had been a member of the ARK Assembly

15 and had been concerned with the takeover of Kozara - of the governing

16 bodies, the men on the governing bodies. But even he went one step too

17 far. He wrote in March of 1992 an article entitled "all authority is from

18 God," and, Your Honour, that is Exhibit P482. And in that article, he

19 stated that he had no intention of editing the newspaper of the SDS except

20 in a context that would ensure the mutual respect of all nations. So on

21 the 7th of July, the Banja Luka War Presidency dismissed Mladjenovic.

22 On the 11th of July, Glas published a report on a press conference

23 that was given by Brdjanin and Kupresanin, and one that was given on the

24 same day by the SDS Municipal Board with dealt with the dismissal of

25 Mr. Mladjenovic. And it was stated that this was a decision of the ARK

1 Crisis Staff, confirmed by the Banja Luka Municipal Assembly. And on the

2 17th of July, at a meeting of the municipal assembly, again, according to

3 Glas, Radic confirmed that indeed the original decision had been made at

4 the ARK War Presidency meeting. Your Honour, those exhibit numbers are

5 Exhibit P498 and 2696. Your Honour, Mr. Radic, indeed, when he gave

6 evidence, went slightly round the houses about this matter, but you will

7 recall there was this long discussion because he was saying he had

8 taken -- he had no minutes, but he was apparently waving minutes at the

9 session of the municipal assembly relating to the ARK Crisis Staff.

10 Your Honours, we're going to come on to what we say Mr. Brdjanin's

11 part in all of this was. But we say that one of the -- one of the major

12 ways that he promoted the goals of the Serb leadership was not only by the

13 decisions he made as head of the organisations, of which he was the head,

14 in particular the crisis staff, but by his inflammatory speeches.

15 Mr. Radic said: "As deputy and as president of the crisis staff, he had

16 access to the media, to the TV, to the newspapers, to the radio."

17 Your Honour, that's at page 22308.

18 In our final brief, we added this comment, that he only had this

19 access because the media was strictly controlled and used as a tool of the

20 Serb leadership. That again, has attracted criticism from the Defence who

21 state in their -- I think it must be their response, at page 2, that

22 common sense tells us that politicians everywhere have media access

23 irrespective of media control. Well, I don't know, Your Honour, whether

24 common sense would tell us that or whether some of the politicians might

25 complain that unfair access was provided. But that, Your Honour, with

1 respect, is not the point. The point is whether politicians everywhere

2 may or may not have that. The ARK Crisis Staff and the municipal crisis

3 staff were doing their best to ensure by a series of decisions and orders

4 and their power to remove the editors of newspapers, not to mention the

5 editors of television programmes, if they were not going to follow the

6 instructions that were being given to them.

7 Your Honour, it wasn't just TV -- well, Your Honour, I see the

8 time. There were two documents I want to look at, but I'll deal with that

9 tomorrow and then move to Mr. Brdjanin.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

11 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I just want you to know that even

12 though the next two days are reserved for the Defence, that we have,

13 because of the delays on the first day, on Monday, we have yielded the

14 first session tomorrow, an hour and a half of our time, to Ms. Korner just

15 as a matter of fairness.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. But would the rest be enough for your

17 purposes?

18 MR. ACKERMAN: We think it will be, Your Honour.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: All right, okay.

20 We have in the meantime, between -- since yesterday discussed

21 amongst ourselves the merits of your two motions, the one to strike off

22 the entire final brief of the Prosecution, and the other one, to strike

23 off Appendix C. We will be handing down our decision first thing tomorrow

24 morning when we reconvene. However, we thought it fit to tell you what

25 the decisions are so that both of you will be prepared. Ms. Korner,

1 because she will be concluding her submissions, and you, because you have

2 to start.

3 Both will be oral decisions. We're trying to economise on

4 resources at this present moment, and I'm trying to have my staff -- our

5 staff concentrate on several issues related to this case. Both motions

6 are going to be rejected. However, there will be reasons given, and also

7 statements regarding some of your allegations and what the consequences of

8 your submissions ought to be in the view of the Trial Chamber. But that

9 would put you both in the picture as far as -- yes, Ms. Korner.

10 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I'm taking it that won't be, though,

11 until the speeches are concluded.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: No, no. You will finish your closing argument now.

13 MS. KORNER: Yes.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: And then there will be the decision.

15 MS. KORNER: The Defence.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Yeah.

17 MS. KORNER: I'm sorry. In England, we call them closing

18 speeches.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: Closing speeches, yes.

20 MS. KORNER: So Your Honours will give the ruling at the end of

21 both --

22 JUDGE AGIUS: We can give the ruling straight away when we start

23 tomorrow morning. But I don't want to take any of your time.

24 MS. KORNER: Thank you very much, that's what I was going to say.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: This is the whole issue. So basically, you are both

1 advised what the conclusions are going to be. And then it's not that much

2 important as to the timing when the oral decisions will be handed down.

3 But they will be handed down tomorrow. Okay? Thank you.

4 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.52 p.m.,

5 to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 21st day of

6 April, 2004, at 9.00 a.m.

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