Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 208

1 Thursday, 6 July 2006

2 [Motion Hearing]

3 [Open session]

4 [The accused Lukic entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 2.50 p.m.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, would the registrar please call the case.

7 THE REGISTRAR: Good afternoon, Your Honours. This is case number

8 IT-05-87-PT, the Prosecutor versus Milutinovic et al.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, this is a hearing into an application under

10 Rule 54 bis of the Rules of Procedure at the instance of the accused,

11 Sreten Lukic. And I'll take the appearance, first of all, for Mr. Lukic.

12 MR. IVETIC: Good afternoon, Your Honour, co-counsel for

13 Mr. Lukic, Dragan Ivetic, present before you, and by tomorrow we hope to

14 have Mr. Branko Lukic back on for it as well, on Defence team.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Tomorrow, did you say?

16 MR. IVETIC: Yes. Mr. Lukic will be back for the pre-trial so ...

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Tomorrow.

18 MR. IVETIC: Yes.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: All right, thank you very much. And I assume it's

20 the Republic of Serbia that's represented today. Can I take the

21 appearance for them also, please.

22 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, Your Honour. Vladimir Cvetkovic for the

23 Republic of Serbia.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you, Mr. Cvetkovic.

25 Are you going to conduct your part of the proceedings in English

Page 209

1 or in Serbian?

2 MR. CVETKOVIC: I will try in English, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: It's just for convenience from my point, just to

4 know whether to bother with the earphones or not. It doesn't matter.

5 Feel free whenever it's convenient.

6 MR. CVETKOVIC: Okay. Thank you.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: There has been an exchange filings in this case,

8 and from these I conclude that the issue is the availability and the

9 accessibility of the documents which are sought. And what I propose to do

10 is invite you to make submissions dealing with the individual items sought

11 rather than just make broad-ranging submissions. And it would, I think,

12 probably be best to hear first from Mr. Ivetic and then allow

13 Mr. Cvetkovic to respond to that.

14 So, Mr. Ivetic, would you care to address the individual items

15 that you are seeking, bring us up-to-date on what the state of play is.

16 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, pursuant to our filings, we have

17 specified specific types of documentation which have been requested. Some

18 of the documentation being requested as far back as late last year from

19 the various governmental organs of Serbia, and then Montenegro. Among the

20 items that we still have not received complete sets of are the archives of

21 daily and monthly official reports on the territory of Kosovo Metohija

22 from June 1998 to 1999. These would essentially be the reports issued and

23 kept in the ordinary course of business by the various police secretariats

24 on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija during the relevant time period

25 which would show the -- not only show the functioning of the various

Page 210

1 police units and police secretariats but would show what type of

2 information there would be available to persons within the police

3 structure arising from those activities.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, are these documents different from more

5 specific requests you've made or are they a global description of other

6 items which are referred to in greater detail later?

7 MR. IVETIC: These are specific categories of documents that we

8 have chronicled in our written submission, and some of these we have

9 received partial information on, and we have not received complete copies

10 of these. I can provide some information, but we basically still are

11 seeking many of the same things that were listed in our initial motion

12 filed pursuant to Rule 54 bis. Although, since the filing of the motion

13 we have received a bit more cooperation from the authorities of Serbia and

14 Montenegro; indeed, the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defence

15 have changed some personnel around and permitted us to meet with various

16 personnel to try and facilitate obtaining these documents. We still have

17 not been able to obtain all the documents we have been seeking for various

18 reasons, and the government authorities have indicated that for some of

19 the documents they have them but they cannot get them to us and that

20 they've been trying to find out how to get them to us. But, I submit,

21 that since six months have passed since the time that they first said it,

22 they were first going to get them to us, we can't wait any longer,

23 particularly with the impending trial date starting this next Monday.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: The response to this from Serbia says that it

25 doesn't have any archive of daily and monthly official reports published

Page 211

1 in Kosovo in Albanian language. Was your request for reports in Albanian?

2 MR. IVETIC: It was not. I would not expect them to have daily

3 records in Albanian. Our request was for records to be in the official

4 language, which I believe at the time was Serbian or Serbo-Croatian,

5 however it was designated at that period of time in question.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Now you've made it clear that these are police

7 records that you're looking for. It's not clear to me what you've

8 actually received. I mean, have you got any of what you're looking for

9 covering any particular period and can you then identify the missing

10 documents or are you not in a position to do that?

11 MR. IVETIC: We can -- well, Your Honour, we can say that we have

12 received a total of 21 criminal investigations, 261 copies of reports

13 given to the ORDB, that's the state security division --

14 JUDGE BONOMY: These fall under different categories, though,

15 don't they? I mean, the two categories you've just mentioned are not what

16 you're looking for under paragraph A.

17 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour. I'm telling you what we

18 have not received. We have not received the instance reports at all under

19 paragraph (A). I was going ahead and giving a list of the items that we

20 have under --

21 JUDGE BONOMY: There's nothing under (A). Is that -- I mean, it's

22 taken us a long while to get there, but are you saying that you've

23 received nothing under (A)?

24 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour. The initial instance

25 reports from SUPs, we have not received the documentation that we have

Page 212

1 sought.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: (B)?

3 MR. IVETIC: We have received some documents but we are told there

4 are certain other documents we have not received that they intend to get

5 to us, but we have not yet received.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, these are reports of -- and that's from the

7 Serb side, of their relations with the Kosovo Verification Mission and

8 other diplomatic missions. Now, have you received any other documents?

9 MR. IVETIC: Yes.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: You have.

11 MR. IVETIC: We have received various minutes of meetings with

12 officials from the KVM mission in 1998 but, as I indicated, I believe that

13 there are still certain ones which we delineated in our written request to

14 the government that have not yet been given to us.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, how are you addressing that? You see, the --

16 it would be -- it would be helpful to us if you had identified what was

17 still missing so that if an order has to be made today it can be in

18 specific terms.

19 MR. IVETIC: Well, we were hoping, Your Honour, that the order

20 would be for the state union of Serbia and Montenegro, now the Republic of

21 Serbia as the successor, to comply with the previously issued written

22 requests that were tendered by the Defence. We could chronicle those

23 requests by the dates that they were -- that they were made. I have

24 copies of the requests, the various dates that they were made, and they

25 have that in their possession and they have acknowledged receipt of those,

Page 213

1 so it should be fairly easy for them to comply with those written requests

2 that have already been made that we're not seeking --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: But you can't tell me if it's reports for a

4 particular period or block of dates that you've received. Are you able to

5 clarify that?

6 MR. IVETIC: Since we're talking about such a huge amount of

7 documentation, Your Honour, it would be impossible to go through each

8 individual document that is missing in that specificity. I mean, so far

9 they have -- we have received approximately 45.000 pages of documents, of

10 which we believe that that is approximately one-quarter of the

11 documentation that we sought.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, but under this heading -- let's concentrate

13 on these one by one. I invited you not to take a broad approach to this,

14 but let's try and get the details dealt with. And I really would like to

15 know if you can help me. If there's a particular period that hasn't been

16 covered by the reports you've3 received about the relationship with the

17 Kosovo Verification Mission.

18 MR. IVETIC: To be quite frank, that was one of your -- that was

19 not one of our major areas that is being sought, since we did receive some

20 of the minutes of the meetings between the various officials with --

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Are you still looking for anything under this

22 heading or not?

23 MR. IVETIC: I believe we still are, but it's not as much as the

24 other items that we're still missing. Of critical importance to us are

25 these daily reports from the various SUPs. Of critical importance to us

Page 214

1 are the --

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Let's stick with (B), Mr. Ivetic. Please, it's

3 important for our proper understanding of this and for us to be able to

4 deal with your application properly that we do it specifically. Now,

5 under (B) are you telling me you are still --

6 MR. IVETIC: I believe we are, although at this time --

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Don't you know? Don't you know? I mean, "I

8 believe we are" is not a satisfactory answer to that question.

9 MR. IVETIC: We are, but as I indicated, I cannot as of right now

10 give you specific dates or specific document IDs that we have not received

11 from them.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: All right.

13 MR. IVETIC: If you would like us to submit a table listing

14 exactly what we have received, what dates we received, and what we believe

15 we are still owed by the governmental authorities of the Republic of

16 Serbia, we could do that and we could probably do that in short order. We

17 could probably file something by tomorrow in that regard.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: All right.

19 Let's move to (C) then.

20 MR. IVETIC: We received, Your Honour --

21 [Trial Chamber confers]

22 JUDGE BONOMY: If you look at (C) now, you have received a certain

23 amount of material that falls within that call, as I understand it.

24 MR. IVETIC: In (C), Your Honour, we received on May the 31st,

25 material on three CDs primarily from the BIA which is the successor to the

Page 215

1 state security organ; however, of those three CDs, one could not be opened

2 at all and the other two are encoded with a log-in that doesn't work. The

3 documentation is there, but it is not chronicled or organised so that we

4 would have to print all the pages and manually try and sort through them

5 and put them together, including the Albanian language originals and the

6 Serbian language translations of these documents. So we submit that that

7 type of disclosure is not of assistance to us, and we would ask for these

8 materials to be re-disclosed in a manner that would be useful, in

9 particular CDs that can actually be opened. If there is a search software

10 or an index that would be usable, that would be greatly appreciated, but

11 the manner within which it was given to us at this time is of no use for

12 preparing the defence or for preparing for cross-examination insofar as

13 essentially there are thousands of pages of documents that are not in any

14 type of order and would have to be printed randomly and put together by

15 hand in order to make some sense of it. And again, the material is both

16 in Albanian and in Serbian.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: So I take it that it's possible that the material

18 you're looking for is there but there's no way for you to determine that?

19 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, okay. And then number (D)?

21 MR. IVETIC: I'm just looking through my notes for that one,

22 Your Honour. I apologise.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, there is no paragraph (D), sorry, my mistake.

24 It's (E).

25 MR. IVETIC: (E) is the next one --

Page 216

1 JUDGE BONOMY: (D) is missing, I'm afraid.

2 MR. IVETIC: Criminal charges against MUP officials. I can state

3 from my own knowledge and off the top of my head that in particular we

4 have not received all the documentation relating to criminal cases that

5 were brought by the organs of Serbia and Montenegro against alleged

6 perpetrators who were within the police structure in Kosovo and Metohija

7 that were alleged to be members of the so-called Skorpion group, and

8 there's certainly other documentation which, again, if need be, I could

9 produce to Serbia and Montenegro a specific list of what we believe they

10 have not given to us under this category, but I believe that there are

11 numerous documents such that going through them one by one would be

12 counter-productive at this stage.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Now (F) was the complete dossier of Kosovo and

14 Metohija.

15 MR. IVETIC: Well, that was the terminology used by the department

16 to cover a specific set of documents. That was called the dossier KiM,

17 which we asked for in November of 2005 and which has not been given to us

18 in its completeness. We did receive the parts of the dossier relating to

19 the case AVI 025 Racak. Those were received on February 31st [sic] 2006,

20 but we are still missing certain documentation relating to events in the

21 Slivovo village of -- from January 10th of 1999, and from Racak on January

22 15th 1999, which, I guess, has been confirmed that it exists but was not

23 given to us. We did receive case AV 118, Bela Crkva, Velika and Mala

24 Krusa; that was received on February 13th 2006. We did receive case

25 AV-129 Bela Crkva, Velika i Mala Krusa which was also received on February

Page 217

1 13th, 2006. And we received a total of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,

2 12, 13 -- 15 other cases dealing with Bela Crkva, Velika and Mala Krusa,

3 Suva Reka, Izbica, Meja, Vucitrn, Dubrava, and Kotlina, relative to the

4 events in the dossier but we are still missing, I believe, 3 of the

5 subcategories of documents from the dossier at this time, which again

6 would be a voluminous list which we could provide to the organs of Serbia

7 and Montenegro, as again this is a -- this is a collection of documents

8 that were organised by the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of

9 Serbia which is, for the sake of ease, referred to as the dossier KiM, and

10 is made of several parts all of which are outlined in a table of contents.

11 Therefore, it's pretty easy to determine what the total -- what the

12 totality of those documents would be and they should be able to,

13 therefore, determine what it is that they still owe to us that has been

14 requested. And again, these documents were na -- collected and should be,

15 we believe, in one specific location.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: But what are these -- or what do these documents

17 relate to?

18 MR. IVETIC: These documents are a series of documents that were

19 collected following the conclusion of the conflict in Kosovo that are

20 primary-source documents and then some secondary-source documents relating

21 to events in Kosovo-Metohija. There is a second section of the dossier

22 KiM that relates to crimes committed by the so-called KLA terrorist

23 organisation. There is documentation about those crimes. There is a

24 section of the dossier that relates to the work and functioning of the

25 police forces during the time of the conflict. There is a section that

Page 218

1 chronicles activities of NATO aviation during the conflict. There is a

2 section that chronicles internal investigations and criminal proceedings

3 that were undertaken against persons alleged to have committed war crimes

4 on the territory of Kosovo-Metohija, or regular crimes, and those are

5 also -- those dossiers within the dossier KiM that would be of critical

6 importance to us. And, so there were various categories of crimes that

7 were chronicled and these were documents that were culled from the

8 archives and put together in one place towards the end and following the

9 conclusion of the Kosovo air campaign and war which are now in the

10 possession of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and which we have received,

11 as I indicated, certain portions thereof but which we are still awaiting

12 other documents they're from. And that's probably the single largest base

13 of documents that we would be seeking -- that we are seeking from them

14 that we have not yet received would be from the KiM dossier.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: And is this an area where you can be more specific?

16 Because it's suggested in the response that you now will be granted access

17 to the archive, the whole archive of what's called the dossier KiM and

18 given the opportunity to identify what you really need.

19 MR. IVETIC: Well, Your Honour, we were granted permission to go

20 into the archive several months ago, and we identified documents that we

21 needed and we still haven't received those. So I don't necessarily see

22 that this would be a solution to the problem. I think that we need to

23 have a little bit more --

24 JUDGE BONOMY: We don't know which documents you have identified

25 which you have not been given, so ...

Page 219

1 MR. IVETIC: I apologise. As I indicated, that list could be

2 provided tomorrow, listing of the documents that this -- by the category

3 and the specific portion of the KiM dossier that is -- that is at issue.

4 That could be provided, indeed, in written form on short order.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay.

6 Now, paragraph (G) which is documents previously produced to the

7 Office of the Prosecutor.

8 MR. IVETIC: That's correct. We believe we still have not

9 received everything as -- by way of just a clear and drastic example,

10 there was documentation which the OTP gave to us via the EDS disclosure

11 system, which was very critical. It was a document that my client signed

12 that had been given to the Prosecutor's office by Serbia and Montenegro

13 which we had not received from them. So we don't know how many other

14 similar such documents there are in their possession, which curiously we

15 did not receive but which have a direct impact on our client.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Why are you not content to simply receive these

17 documents from the Prosecutor?

18 MR. IVETIC: Because the Prosecutor has put them all in EDS which

19 has several -- I think it's over a million pages of documents now which

20 are difficult to go through and locate, given the time period we have for

21 trial. I would much rather look through the 10 to 15.000 pages of

22 documents that I -- that witnesses have told us were given to the OTP than

23 look through a million pages of documents. It would be looking for a

24 needle in the haystack. Given the short time period that we have for the

25 commencement of trial and the fact that, of course, there are other

Page 220

1 Defence activities that we will be undertaking during the course -- during

2 the commencement and the course of the trial which would occupy the

3 Defence resources that we have on hand, including the personnel and the

4 time and logistics.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: I thought there was a folder in the EDS called the

6 Kosovo collection.

7 MR. IVETIC: There is.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: And does that extend to over a million pages?

9 MR. IVETIC: That is not -- I don't know the exact number of

10 documents in there. I would presume it is less than a million since I

11 think the whole EDS disclosure to us which consisted of, I think, 10 or 11

12 batches, was the million. So I would presume that the Kosovo folder would

13 be somewhat less than a million but I can tell you that the one document

14 we found was not in the Kosovo folder.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: And what do you expect to be the quantity of

16 documents that the government has already surrendered to the OTP of which

17 you would wish copies?

18 MR. IVETIC: I would think it would probably be several thousands.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, remind me what you said about the result of

20 having access to the archive.

21 MR. IVETIC: We previously have been granted access to the

22 archives, Your Honour, and we previously have actually identified

23 documentation that we wanted to have copied and given to us. At that

24 point in time some of the documentation was given to us and it was said

25 that they would copy the remaining and give it to us. We offered to go

Page 221

1 back in with our own copier to copy it and save them the effort, and we

2 were -- we still haven't received that documentation. It's been several

3 months. It has been, I think, five or six months since that has occurred.

4 So my submission would be, if we are going to back in the archives again

5 identifying the same documents that we sought originally, that does not

6 help us, particularly if we are going to be waiting another sixth months

7 and we won't get the documents until half way through the Prosecution's

8 case in chief.

9 JUDGE CHOWHAN: Please, excuse me if I ask you this question.

10 It's very difficult to locate all these documents from the record and the

11 archives, and it would be very fruitful if these were identified, and it

12 would be further fruitful if these were indicated in -- missing in the

13 list which may have reflected these documents at the time. These were

14 delivered to your good self. Now, if you had indicated there that it

15 would have been a lot of opportunity of time for them to go back and look

16 for the others and for us to categorically state, Well, here, these

17 documents out of the list have not been provided, because even if the

18 language of the rule wants some sort of exercise on the part of the person

19 demanding what documents they are really asking for. This way -- I mean,

20 this is not going to end. It will be a very open-ended matter. To clinch

21 the issue would be that the request -- if I request, if the Honourable

22 Bench permits, that these be identified in some respect from somewhere so

23 that we ask the Prosecution to provide these or give a categorical reply;

24 otherwise I think with all the time it will be an ocean looking for a

25 snail.

Page 222

1 MR. IVETIC: Well, Your Honour, I'm holding in my hand just the

2 requests that were made prior to the motion to Serbia and Montenegro, each

3 letter in B/C/S asking for specific documents, easily identifiable

4 documents. By way of example, the personal dossier of my client who was

5 an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which should be very easy

6 to locate since he was the assistant head of the department of public

7 security following the war, has not been provided to us in its

8 completeness. These are all the items asked for in the letters, and, like

9 I said, if need be, we could create a chart tonight, attached to it the

10 letters that they've already received in the past eight months which

11 specifically ask for specific documents and identify them so that they can

12 be located. We're not just asking for documents out of a hat. Each of

13 the documents that we ask for, from the dossier in particular, we're using

14 their own specifications and terminology as to what the particular case

15 number and category of the documentation that we're seeking is. So how we

16 can be more specific than that -- and as I indicated, we also went in and

17 sought and identified certain documents, individual documents that we

18 wanted, copied and we haven't gotten those. So how much more specific we

19 can get, I don't know.

20 [Trial Chamber confers]

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic, if we move now to (H), which is the

22 minutes of the meetings of the collegium of the Ministry of Internal

23 Affairs.

24 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour, and in there we

25 specifically asked for just the minutes from the calendar year 1998 all

Page 223

1 the way through to June of 1999. We specifically identified these

2 documents in a meeting that I had in April with Minister Jocic of the

3 police ministry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, at that point in time

4 they even identified the individual, the employee of the MUP who would

5 have been responsible for maintaining these records and they acknowledged

6 that such records are kept in the regular course of business. So we're

7 waiting a response for that.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, you've received some, I think, is that

9 correct?

10 MR. IVETIC: No, we have not, Your Honour. The collegium we have

11 not. The collegium we have not received. The minutes of the collegium of

12 the Ministry of Internal Affairs we have not received.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: The response indicates that you have received

14 minutes from the MUP headquarters' meeting, this is an example --

15 MR. IVETIC: If I can interrupt, Your Honour --

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Heads of secretariats. Is this something

17 different?

18 MR. IVETIC: That is something different, yes. That's not what we

19 asked for. What we're seeking is we're -- that there were regular

20 meetings held between the minister of the interior and the assistant

21 ministers and the heads of the two divisions or bureaus with the police.

22 We're talking about the higher -- highest level of the police structure in

23 Belgrade. These were regular meetings that were held that -- there were

24 minutes maintained, and at least for certain of these meetings there were

25 tape-recordings made, and we have neither received the tape-recordings nor

Page 224

1 the transcripts of these. And again, this -- I can speak from my own

2 personal meeting with Mr. Jocic that he was advised of this. And at that

3 point in time the -- it was discussed as to who exactly the ministry

4 employees who would have kept those documents were and the fact that they

5 were aware of what documents were being sought, what the nature of those

6 documents was.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, they go on to say that they have located them

8 and they were in the process of forwarding these to you, but you've not

9 received them?

10 MR. IVETIC: I have not received them and I start trial Monday,

11 Your Honour. These were first sought -- if I can have a moment. These

12 were first sought December 15th of 2005, Your Honour.

13 JUDGE CHOWHAN: There appears to be no dispute about these. If

14 these are available, these can be passed on and the matter ends.

15 MR. IVETIC: I would hope, but I -- I believe that would be one of

16 the purposes of Rule 54, to ensure compliance. I mean, we've had lots of

17 representations that we'd receive documents and we've let this go for

18 quite a long time and there has to be an end to it where we can be assured

19 that we are going to get documents or some other measures are going to be

20 taken that we can enforce. Given the fact that we have trial and we are

21 going to need to have these documents analysed, and if we intend to use

22 them for cross-examination purposes, they are going to have to be

23 translated. And from the information that I received -- we received this

24 morning from the translation department, we know that they need to get

25 that document soon to be able to have any prospect of translating those

Page 225

1 documents. And if we don't have those documents to cross-examine

2 witnesses then we are in a position where we cannot adequately prepare

3 a defend -- prepare a defence for our client and we might have to re-call

4 witnesses which would be a waste of time, money, and resources, and

5 aggravation for everyone. So we'd rather have a very firm guarantee, one

6 that can be enforced, to receive these documents, such that we can mount a

7 defence of our client in the face of the Prosecution's indictment in this

8 matter.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, the next section is Telexes and certain

10 submissions have been made by Serbia about encryption and de-encryption

11 and whether these are appropriate for release. But at the end of the day

12 they seem to be saying that it's just a question of going through the red

13 tape. Has anything further happened?

14 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, I can state that -- I wish my colleague,

15 Mr. Hannis, were here. He could provide more information on this, because

16 it's the OTP, it's my understanding, from both the Serbian authorities

17 that I met with in April this year and also from Mr. Hannis, that they

18 have been engaged in discussions over the release of these documents, the

19 manner in which they -- the code is to be removed so as to preserve the

20 integrity of the security organs of Serbia and Montenegro. These

21 discussions, I understand, have been ongoing for over a year with not a

22 single document being produced. So --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Anyway, you've received nothing?

24 MR. IVETIC: I've received nothing. It's my understanding no one

25 has received anything. I was told that even other accused who have

Page 226

1 requested those documents have not received them, because what's at issue

2 is the encoding, basically that somebody could break the security code if

3 they had access to these original documents which have the encryption code

4 somehow placed on them. And that was the best that they could do to

5 describe it to me without actually showing it to me which, of course, they

6 weren't in a position to do.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, under (J) it's said that you have received a

8 number of documents.

9 MR. IVETIC: Under (J), that's the PJP. We actually have not,

10 Your Honour. As a matter of fact, when I met in April with the minister,

11 at that point in time we had asked for not only the order sent to the PJP

12 units, but it was our understanding from having interviewed several

13 members of the police force during the -- that had been in Kosovo during

14 the time period of the indictment, that they sent regular reports up the

15 chain of command to the actual PJP commander, which would not have gone to

16 my client and which would therefore be of great relevance to our case and

17 particular -- in particular insofar as it appears, the OTP wishes to place

18 some blame on these units for alleged crimes that occurred. It's -- my

19 notes show that we have -- we have not received them. I know that I

20 personally brought it up at two meetings in April and my notes show that

21 my colleagues -- my Defence team in Belgrade have brought these up on

22 numerous occasions and that we have not actually received the --

23 the "personal reports" of the PJP and the orders that were sent to the

24 PJP, and for that matter the SAJ, too. We're not just talking about the

25 PJP, we're talking about the special anti-terrorist --

Page 227

1 JUDGE BONOMY: There may be confusion about what you're looking

2 for. The specification is for personal orders to commanders of the PJP

3 and SAJ units. Now, is that what you're actually asking for?

4 MR. IVETIC: That's one item. If you look at (K) as well, (K) is

5 also the reports by these same units --

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I'm trying to take it stage by stage --

7 MR. IVETIC: I appreciate that.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: -- as you know. So under (J) there's a list of

9 items according to the Government of of Serbia that have been given to

10 you.

11 MR. IVETIC: Correct.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: And is that accurate?

13 MR. IVETIC: I believe not, Your Honour, not -- we have not

14 received documents -- what we received is we received -- I know that there

15 is one document pertaining to the formation of the SAJ which has a table

16 of contents and has no additional documents attached. That's the one

17 document that I personally have seen out of the 40.000-odd documents --

18 pages that were submitted to us by the government authorities of Serbia

19 and Montenegro. We have not received a single PJP report, and it's my

20 understanding we have not received a single PJP order and the same would

21 hold through for the SAJ. The ones we're asking here for, specifically

22 from the period of 1998 and 1999 relating to the formation and

23 organisation and functioning of their units on the territory of Kosovo and

24 Metohija. And again, these items were set forth in much greater detail in

25 our written submissions to the state organs of the Republic of Serbia and

Page 228

1 at the federal level back when it was Serbia and Montenegro. And again,

2 if a chart would help, we could synthesise the hundred or so pages of

3 correspondence down to a chart and present that. But again, they should

4 have that, so they know what we are asking for.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, the dates which are given in the response

6 don't seem to match your request in a number of requests, but they do

7 refer to a report on activities during 2003 entitled "1.000 firm days."

8 MR. IVETIC: Correct, Your Honour, and that is another --

9 JUDGE BONOMY: And that relates to events in 2003.

10 MR. IVETIC: Correct. And that is another thing that we requested

11 and we did receive, and therefore we did not ask for it in this motion.

12 So there are items that we did request that we did receive from them, and

13 those are all events post the Kosovo conflict which show the functioning

14 and work of the police, and including my client, following that time

15 period and the efforts that were undertaken to investigate alleged

16 wrongdoing and crimes and to prosecute the same or to present information

17 to the Prosecutors -- for the prosecution of the same, I should say, since

18 the police does not have a prosecutorial role in all of those matters.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. And (K) is, you say, related to this,

20 and that's reports that were being transmitted in the oppose direction

21 back to --

22 MR. IVETIC: Back to the command in Belgrade, correct,

23 Your Honour. For the PJP, the SAJ, and the JSO, which would be the state

24 security special operations --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: And you've received nothing there?

Page 229

1 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: And then at -- under (L)?

3 MR. IVETIC: (L), one moment, Your Honour.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: That's disciplinary proceedings against MUP

5 personnel who refused to serve in Kosovo and there are --

6 MR. IVETIC: Correct, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: It is said that you've been given material on 85

8 cases.

9 MR. IVETIC: We received material on 85 cases, on 5/22/2006. It

10 is my understanding that we still had not received material -- all the

11 material relating to the so-called Skorpions who may or may not have been

12 within the police structure at the time of the events that -- that

13 transpired in Kosovo in 1999. And again, we could list the specific

14 proceedings that we are aware of, the domestic proceedings and cases that

15 we are looking for that we know of.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay.

17 MR. IVETIC: But we have received on March the 22nd the number

18 indicated. We just believe that not to be the complete set.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Now (M) is again Telexes and it's the same point

20 about encryption, right?

21 MR. IVETIC: Correct.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: And (N) is to do with the investigation of the

23 so-called refrigerated truck incident.

24 MR. IVETIC: That is correct, Your Honour.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Now --

Page 230

1 MR. IVETIC: We are still awaiting that and we have not

2 received -- I don't have any indication that we have received anything by

3 way of either promises that it's being gathered or that it's been located.

4 We just haven't received it. And that again is something that was sought

5 in December of 2005 initially, with several follow-ups.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Now (O), is (O) related to that?

7 MR. IVETIC: Pardon me, Your Honour.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Is (O), that's paragraph 12 (O), does that relate

9 to the same incident or is that a more general request?

10 MR. IVETIC: That relates specifically to statements that were

11 taken by this investigative team that was investigating --

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Same incident?

13 MR. IVETIC: Same incident, correct, Your Honour. And it's our

14 understanding -- I believe we may even have -- let me just take a look a

15 moment at my notes.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, they say they've given you 22 statements.

17 MR. IVETIC: I believe we did receive some statements on that.

18 I'm just looking at my notes to see if I have got that on there. We may

19 have those statements then. I don't see a specific reference to those in

20 the notes, but we have not received the other documentation related to the

21 refrigerated truck incident, the so-called Hladnjaca investigation. That

22 would have been sometime in -- following the formation of the operative

23 group in 2001. I believe it was from 2001 to 2003 or thereabouts.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: For (P) you've got nothing. For (Q) -- now, does

25 (Q) relate back to an earlier reference you made to Racak which was in

Page 231

1 paragraph (F)?

2 MR. IVETIC: Yes, it does, Your Honour. That is an instance where

3 we did receive partial documentation and then we -- in more greater detail

4 we went back and we told them specifically what had -- what we noticed was

5 missing from it. So that is again documentation where we've tried to be

6 as specific as we could possibly be, given their own -- and again this is

7 referring to their own designation or classification for a particular set

8 of documents relating to Racak. And when I say "Racak" in this sense, I

9 mean the municipality of Racak, not --

10 JUDGE BONOMY: You've been given some material, but there's

11 something called the reports of the intra-bureau still being searched for.

12 MR. IVETIC: Correct.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, number (R), what can you tell me about (R),

14 which are daily SUP and -- what's OUP?

15 MR. IVETIC: OUP are the smaller police stations. The SUPs are

16 the secretariats. The OUP are the smaller units which -- basically what

17 we're looking for is, we're looking for the daily reports of these

18 stations and units that occurred on the municipalities during the --

19 during the time period of the allegations in the indictment. The

20 indictment alleges certain events in certain municipalities, as I'm sure

21 Your Honour is aware, and we have asked for any and all police reports for

22 those time periods from those municipalities. And it's my understanding

23 that we have not received those from -- again, this would be from the --

24 from the MUP, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, the answer to this one is that because of the

Page 232

1 number of these stations, the task is immense in scale and presents an

2 enormous task for the Ministry of the Interior.

3 MR. IVETIC: Well, Your Honour, they're taken from the indictment

4 which, I submit, is indeed wide -- a very wide-reaching and far-reaching

5 indictment, but we're limiting it to what is charged against us. So how

6 are we to defend ourselves -- to defend our client if we can't have

7 documents relating to the specific time period and the specific

8 municipalities listed in the indictment?

9 JUDGE BONOMY: They ask for a more detailed and precise request.

10 MR. IVETIC: I could give it to them. I don't know whether it

11 would help. I would be much, much more reassured if I had an order.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Can you make a -- devise a more precise

13 request?

14 MR. IVETIC: I believe we have, and I believe we can condense that

15 to a table, if need be, but I know --

16 JUDGE BONOMY: No, but you're saying you've already -- what you're

17 saying is you've already done that, are you? Or are you saying you can

18 refine it further?

19 MR. IVETIC: I can refine it further, if need be, but I believe we

20 already have identified the municipalities and the time periods in our

21 previous written submissions to the government authorities. But for the

22 sake of finality we could prepare a condensed chart listing in one

23 document all these items so that they could, therefore, go back and find

24 exactly what it is we're looking for. But again, this is not something

25 that we're just asking for as of yesterday. We've been in constant

Page 233

1 meetings and communications with them since November of 2005 to try and

2 get this documentation. And to be quite frank, the first time that anyone

3 made that kind of a claim was in the response that we received just the

4 other day.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, that completes the paragraph 12 items.

6 MR. IVETIC: Correct.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: That takes us to paragraph 13.

8 MR. IVETIC: Paragraph 13 is basically more specific references to

9 the partial disclosure. You'll see again in 13 the reference to another

10 Racak case with a footnote showing that what we have received and then the

11 only other addition to this would be the personal dossier which I have

12 made reference to, and that would be the personal dossier of Sreten

13 Lukic --

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, that's the next item.

15 MR. IVETIC: Right.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: But you've been given a large quantity of material

17 in relation to Racak from the OTP, and that deals with events, the

18 identities of persons killed, and so on. And you must have been given

19 similar material in relation to all the incidents in the indictment, I

20 presume. Now, what is it you think is to be obtained from this request?

21 MR. IVETIC: This is a particular investigation conducted by the

22 organs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs relating to the municipality of

23 Racak, which we --

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, but 13 (A) is more general than that. 13 (A)

25 covers the whole of Kosovo.

Page 234

1 MR. IVETIC: I apologise. That's the -- that's a more general one

2 that we had asked --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: And the Prosecution --

4 MR. IVETIC: It's statistics.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: But a lot of Prosecution material relates to the

6 very things that you refer to in this particular heading. Now, what is it

7 you think that you will obtain from the records of the government of

8 Serbia on this?

9 MR. IVETIC: The results of the -- of investigations and

10 statistics kept by the official organs of the Republic of Serbia, which

11 may or may not be the same as the ones from the OTP. Once we receive

12 them, we'll know. But we have reason to believe that they're not. And

13 again, this is -- this is -- the documentation we're seeking is not just

14 documentation we surmise exists. I might point out again that my client

15 was the assistant chief of the department of public police following

16 Kosovo, which was a much higher position than he had at the time of

17 Kosovo. And therefore, he has personal knowledge of the existence of

18 certain documentation. And that is how we have phrased and framed our

19 request. So it's not merely a -- throwing a net out there and seeing what

20 sticks; we are asking for documents that we have strong reason to believe

21 both from my own client and from statements of witnesses that exist, and

22 we've told them --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Is the aim of this particular paragraph to get

24 information linking deceased people with the -- with the KLA?

25 MR. IVETIC: No. The aim of this is to get statistics which we

Page 235

1 could use with our expert witnesses to show in particular the status on

2 the ground in Kosovo-Metohija, casualties on all sides, and the particular

3 warfare that was ongoing, again, and battles that were ongoing to show

4 other reasons, other than those alleged in the indictment, for some of the

5 chaos and some of the persons leaving their homes, et cetera, and the type

6 of situation that was in place within that province under which the police

7 was operating.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, speaking for myself, Mr. Ivetic, this just

9 seems to me far too vague and unspecific to be a request that the -- you

10 could expect the Republic of Serbia to deal with. Now that you have

11 access to the archives it may be that this one could be made more

12 specific, but I suspect that you don't have a request at the moment that's

13 more specific than this.

14 MR. IVETIC: I may have one in the stack of documents. I wouldn't

15 want to take the court's time to look through them, particularly since

16 they are in B/C/S, so it would take me longer to --

17 JUDGE BONOMY: It's like saying, give us the history of Kosovo.

18 It doesn't even limit the period.

19 MR. IVETIC: But, Your Honour, again we know that following the

20 conclusion of hostilities on Kosovo and Metohija this type of information

21 was gathered in one place and was actually maintained.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Are you saying it's in this KiM dossier?

23 MR. IVETIC: This particular one I -- part of this should be in

24 the KiM dossier. I can't say with certainty that all of it would be, but

25 at least part of it should be.

Page 236

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, let's move from one extreme to the other.

2 That was a fairly vague request. The next one couldn't be more specific.

3 MR. IVETIC: That's correct.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: And what's the response been to that?

5 MR. IVETIC: We received partial documents, but we actually don't

6 even have documentation showing the full career of my client in the MUP.

7 That's something that I could provide a chart with my -- with my

8 colleagues in the office that would show exactly what we're missing. That

9 could be done. It has been done in the letters but we could condense that

10 to a chart for Your Honour's purposes. And again, that is the most

11 element of documents, so that's -- I don't know what else to say about

12 that and why we don't have that.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Now (C) is simply the case of Racak. So that's you

14 giving the specification of a dossier that should provide information on

15 events in Racak?

16 MR. IVETIC: That's correct.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: And the response to that has been?

18 MR. IVETIC: We have not received the complete one. We're still

19 looking for A/V-025. That's what we're missing.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: This is really a repetition of what you said

21 earlier.

22 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour, that's correct. As I

23 said, the most -- (C) and (D) are repetitions of what was previously

24 discussed and the only new item here would be the dossier of my client

25 during his service --

Page 237

1 JUDGE BONOMY: What about (D), document relating to the 12 most

2 serious incidents in the indictment. How do you decide which are the 12

3 most serious incidents in the indictment?

4 MR. IVETIC: That was a translation -- some words don't translate

5 well into English. It means -- "most serious," meaning very serious

6 incidents alleged in the indictment. Those are again the items where we

7 talk about the incidents alleged in the indictment by the OTP that we're

8 asking for reports from the municipalities --

9 JUDGE BONOMY: But in one view there are 72 or 78 incidents

10 mentioned in the indictment. I mean, which 12 is it?

11 MR. IVETIC: We have listed them. I could prepare that on a chart

12 as well.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Oh, you actually specified them?

14 MR. IVETIC: Yeah, we specified the incidents, but for the sake of

15 the motion we tried to be brief.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Can you read the first couple? Have you got them

17 there?

18 MR. IVETIC: I would have to find them, Your Honour. There's a

19 stack of documents. But I could provide a list for you, again, by

20 tomorrow morning, if need be, of the specific 12 that we've identified.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: I mean, this is actually of some interest to us

22 also in relation to the pre-trial conference, but -- anyway, that exhausts

23 the list of items. Is there anything else you want to say on the matter?

24 MR. IVETIC: Just generally, apart from the fact that the Ministry

25 of Defence, again most of those documents are the -- are the category of

Page 238

1 being encoded. The crypto-coded documents. Those are -- a large part of

2 the Ministry of Defence documents fall into that category. So we've

3 already discussed them.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, sorry. Oh, sorry, yes, paragraph 16.

5 MR. IVETIC: Yes. And I believe we tried to be fairly specific

6 here. In fact, we've identified specific minutes by date, specific

7 orders, and then again we've tried to ask them for documentation relating

8 to the incidents set forth in the indictment. So we have again limited

9 the scope of our inquiries to those areas that the Prosecution alleges the

10 criminal responsibility of our client.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, in relation to 16 (D), that's again the most

12 serious incident, you're saying a request has specified these already?

13 MR. IVETIC: That one asks for documents that -- from all the

14 incidents in the indictment, that's correct, Your Honour.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: All the incidents?

16 MR. IVETIC: Yes, this one does not relate to the 12 incidents

17 that were previous -- related to the municipalities set forth in the

18 indictment and the time periods in the alleged occurrences in the

19 indictment, as alleged by the OTP.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Now (D) -- oh, sorry (E), you have received

21 something under that call have you?

22 MR. IVETIC: I don't believe we have, Your Honour.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: No, no.

24 MR. IVETIC: I believe the response from the Ministry of Defence

25 has been to say we are preparing certain documentation that we will send

Page 239

1 to you which we have not received and, by the way, we are going to be

2 opening our archives to you. So I believe that's a much smaller category

3 of documents, but again I don't believe we've actually physically received

4 anything. We've just received just recently the invitation to go into the

5 archives and we have started to do that.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, the 16, the very last one, (G), have you not

7 actually got these from the OTP?

8 MR. IVETIC: We have unofficial copies and we don't know whether

9 they're complete. We're just asking for the government to confirm

10 they're -- that what was adduced at trial are official documents and

11 whether they are complete or whether there are any additional pages,

12 annexes, that are missing. That's pretty much the gist of that request.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, it looks as though there may be one more,

14 according to the response to -- there's one been identified of six pages

15 that's being processed at the moment. But you haven't received that, have

16 you?

17 MR. IVETIC: I don't believe we've received that, Your Honour, no.

18 But they have advised us that they are preparing documentation for us. So

19 I don't know if it's in the process of being sent or if it's in the mail

20 already.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you, Mr. Ivetic.

22 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, Mr. Cvetkovic, I'd be grateful if you followed

24 the same order and dealt with these matters as specifically as you can.

25 MR. CVETKOVIC: I will try, Your Honour, but it is very difficult,

Page 240

1 and I would like first to apologise, of course, that we haven't submitted

2 our further response. However, we couldn't actually do that because the

3 Defence completely ignored our annex (A), which was filed with our

4 response to their motion. And, as you could see, we needed this hearing

5 for the Defence to go through their requests and say what has been

6 produced and what haven't been produced. However, I will try, of course,

7 to go again through all the requests. And I hope that you have received

8 what is entitled "updated annex (A) to Serbia response." I gave it before

9 the hearing to the court officer. There were four copies of that, so --

10 okay. There are just --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we haven't got it yet, I don't think.

12 MR. CVETKOVIC: Okay. I see.

13 MR. IVETIC: I don't believe I've got a copy of that either,

14 Your Honour.

15 MR. CVETKOVIC: I hope they could be distributed before; however,

16 there are some additions there.

17 Before I begin with specific points, I would like to say just one

18 more general point. I do believe that the requests of the Defence are

19 very broad and they overlap a lot. And a lot of points here overlap with

20 other points. And if you, for example, take a look at the so-called

21 dossier KiM, I mean, that dossier encompasses all the other documents as

22 far as I can see or, for example, the point where they ask for documents

23 previously produced to the Office of the Prosecutor. Again, that point

24 encompasses a various range of other documents which are sought under

25 other points. And therefore, it is very difficult to answer this motion

Page 241

1 specifically and to say: Okay, we have produced this and we haven't

2 produced that. And I believe that specification of the Defence would

3 really be required, and especially having in mind our response and annex

4 (A) to our response a specification of what they still want, since we have

5 produced -- as was acknowledged today and in their reply, we have produced

6 some 45.000 pages of documents so far.

7 Now, if we start with this point (A) that was paragraph 12, I

8 believe, from the motion. Well, first, Your Honour, there is a problem

9 here with the translation. The translation -- their request in Serbian

10 and the request in English. In Serbian the request asks for archives --

11 and I will switch to Serbian: [No interpretation]

12 [In English] I'm going back to English. While in English it asks

13 for daily and monthly official reports. If you ask for the assistance of

14 the translator they will tell you that "casopis" is a magazine in Serbia,

15 in Serbian, and not "official report." Now, this request was sent

16 originally to the National Council in Serbian and I especially made an

17 inquiry -- as I am not here in Belgrade I am here in our embassy, but

18 before coming here I made an inquiry by the phone and I ask about this

19 Albanian-language thing, and I was told that the request, original request

20 specifically say "magazines" in Albanian language. That is what I was

21 told from the people -- from the National Council. Of course, if we

22 may -- perhaps Mr. Ivetic can assist us if we can take a look at that

23 request because I haven't been able to see it in Serbian and that original

24 request. Because if you -- I mean, if you take that these are official

25 reports, then these requests overlap a lot with other requests. For

Page 242

1 example, the request under (R), daily and regular evidence and activity

2 reports of the OUP and SUP stations in Kosovo. It's almost the same.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Sorry, it overlaps with -- did you say (R)?

4 MR. CVETKOVIC: I said (R), yes. (R) for example, but with a lot

5 of others.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Now -- just a second.

7 MR. CVETKOVIC: I mean, if they are official reports and not

8 magazines, as I said, because the Serbian word used here means magazines

9 or newspapers.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, but your response indicates that you

11 understood the words because it refers to the -- the documents as reports,

12 doesn't it?

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, it might be --

14 JUDGE BONOMY: I mean, I've got an updated annex. You've just

15 given me the document and it refers to them as daily and monthly official

16 reports.

17 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, and I honestly believe that the person who

18 wrote this just used the same translation as the Defence because I did ask

19 what was in the request. I asked that two days ago people by phone,

20 people from the National Council of Belgrade. I mean, I haven't seen the

21 request. I asked whether it relates to magazines or to report. They told

22 me magazines in Albanian, and this is what I received from Belgrade. So,

23 yes, the translation is like that, but that is why I think the -- sorry.

24 [Trial Chamber confers]

25 JUDGE BONOMY: But you've got here in annex (A) what's being asked

Page 243

1 for in Serbian. It's not as if whoever's dealing with it from your side

2 is simply accepting an English version of the request; it's there in

3 Serbian and English on your own document. And you have chosen to refer to

4 it as daily and monthly official reports. So I find it difficult to

5 accept what you're saying, that you don't understand what was requested as

6 being a report.

7 There's a separate issue, and that is whether somewhere there is a

8 reference to Albanian language. But where do you get reference to

9 Albanian language?

10 MR. CVETKOVIC: As I already said, Your Honour, I made an inquiry

11 about this in Belgrade, I asked the people from National Council, I asked

12 them how was the original request in Serbian language written. The answer

13 was that they asked for "casopis," magazines, and magazines in Albanian

14 language and that's why --

15 JUDGE BONOMY: But casopis is a word which appears on this

16 document.

17 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: And you've translated that as "reports."

19 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, I --

20 JUDGE BONOMY: And where does the --

21 MR. CVETKOVIC: It might be a mistake from the person in Belgrade.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: And where is the reference to Albanian language in

23 this statement in Serbian?

24 MR. CVETKOVIC: There is no reference in --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, you'll not be surprised that I'm not

Page 244

1 persuaded at the moment by what you're saying.

2 MR. CVETKOVIC: Not surprised. I guess you're right, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I mean, you understand that -- let me explain

4 in a little more detail why we're doing this today. There have been

5 occasions in the past where particularly the Office of the Prosecutor has

6 claimed to have had great difficulty in dealing with the government of the

7 Republic of Serbia and has alleged that there's been a lack of cooperation

8 and that some of the responses have been less than frank. Now, I am

9 extremely anxious before this trial starts to be sure that that is not the

10 situation, that in fact we are being assisted by the government of the

11 Republic of Serbia, particularly in the interests of the accused in this

12 case, and it -- and here we have an application made by one of the

13 accused. I'm not prepared to sit here and bandy this sort of exchange

14 around about the language that's being used because that certainly gives

15 me the impression that there's an attempt being made to evade the

16 obligation to cooperate. And it seems to me that in this particular

17 instance there is no substance in what you're saying. However, that

18 subject I think was a perfectly reasonable request on your part, and that

19 is that Mr. Ivetic should produce the original request. Now, I wonder if

20 he can do that.

21 MR. IVETIC: I'm trying to look through the documentation myself,

22 Your Honour, to find that particular request. And if I find it, I'll be

23 able to read it in Serbian. But that was one of our earlier requests. As

24 I indicated we have in addition to this stack much more documentation

25 linked to requests that I would have to go through. I did find the 12

Page 245

1 incidents so I could recite those.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: But I think if there is to be greater specification

3 provided, it will be done after this hearing is over. I just, at the

4 moment, want to be sure that we've explored the issues as far as we can in

5 a hearing before making a decision about how to progress further. And it

6 would be helpful if you were able to locate that document and let us have

7 a look at it, although at the -- in the absence of it then there may be

8 little reason to doubt that it contains the words that are set out in the

9 Republic of Serbia's own annex.

10 MR. IVETIC: And if I can add some clarification. All the

11 requests were written in Serbian by my Serbian staff in Belgrade. So the

12 requests were done in the native language, as were all the meetings that

13 were held. So the issue of translations I don't believe should be that

14 much of an issue, but I will endeavour to find that request if you want to

15 continue with any further. If I find it I'll bring it to Your Honour's

16 attention.

17 JUDGE CHOWHAN: I have a suggestion to make, with Your Honour's

18 permission. Now is it possible for both of you gentlemen - as I see from

19 you, you both have a desire to resolve the issue - to kindly sit down

20 together and between yourselves find what documents are required, what are

21 not required, and then you prepare a list of what is really the residual

22 part. After you have received whatever you have received and after

23 whatever essential is the residual part, and he has an acquaintanceship

24 with that so that when he goes back or refers it back to the concerned

25 authorities for getting those documents, it should be -- it will be a

Page 246

1 smooth exercise. Otherwise, I think we'll be rather lost quite a bit.

2 Everybody will be looking and asking what to do and what not to do. Can't

3 you have a conference on this? I mean there's nothing. It's on the

4 documents.

5 MR. IVETIC: I would be more than happy to have a conference with

6 them. We've had 23 conferences with the government of Serbia and

7 Montenegro about these documents.

8 JUDGE CHOWHAN: This conference will be under our supervision,

9 because conferences you may have had is a different thing. But it will be

10 right in our supervision and we can inquire tomorrow and later on what

11 have you done and decide this issue so that we proceed further.

12 MR. IVETIC: As Your Honours know, I'm here through the end of

13 next week, so I've got plenty of time to sit down and discuss with them if

14 that's something they're inclined to do. We -- like I said, I could

15 prepare a list and bring copies to them of the original Serbian-language

16 requests and we could sit down with them and go through with them item by

17 item, but I'm just afraid that at that point in time we are extending so

18 many efforts away from other trial preparations that, of course, we have

19 to undertaken given the pre-trial and the trial on Monday. But on this

20 particular issue I would be more than happy to. I'm sure I can locate the

21 request, if not tonight by sometime tomorrow and if the gentleman would

22 like to sit down and look at the requests -- is.

23 JUDGE CHOWHAN: What is your view on what I have said? Would you

24 not like to sit and have it resolved?

25 MR. CVETKOVIC: Your Honour, I -- as I already said, I believe

Page 247

1 that the Defence should have made further specification after we filed our

2 response with their reply. And for that reason, we perhaps would have

3 avoided an hour of Mr. Ivetic going through every point led by His Honour

4 Judge Bonomy in the beginning of this hearing. So I do believe that a

5 further specification would be very useful. In a way, I don't think that

6 I am in a position to do that here, from the embassy of Serbia here,

7 because it's -- the National Council is in Belgrade who deals with the

8 requests and who -- and which has access to the material. Then I'm

9 willing --

10 JUDGE CHOWHAN: I apologise for interfering. Would you be kind in

11 getting the right person immediately so that he answers the query, because

12 otherwise to a remote working of these documents may we not -- and we may

13 have to take some measures then. The question would simply be, why can't

14 you can kind enough in asking somebody, the person responsible, to come

15 over here and sit with the learned counsel from this side and both should

16 resolve this. This has been happening or it happened in other areas where

17 other jurisprudence were. And we have the alternate dispute resolution

18 and so on, and this can be done outside instead of our taking up every

19 little thing. I mean, you know what is to be given, what has been given;

20 there must be a receipt about that. There must be documentation of what

21 is given and what is left out. We should be -- with permission of the

22 chair we should be available to be even interrupted if there is a

23 difficulty on this, even at our chambers.

24 MR. CVETKOVIC: Your Honour, I'm ready to sit with Mr. Ivetic, if

25 you want today or tomorrow and to go through this. I'm not sure that I'm

Page 248

1 the one person to resolve it. However, for someone to come from Belgrade

2 here, I guess it's not possible to have it done tomorrow, but for the next

3 week I will write today or tomorrow morning to Belgrade and tell them

4 about your request and ...

5 [Trial Chamber confers]

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, Mr. Cvetkovic, it seems to come to this in

7 relation to (A), that there's been no search made for documents in Serbia.

8 Is that right?

9 MR. CVETKOVIC: I'm sorry. I don't understand.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Paragraph (A).

11 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: If you look at the very first item on your annex.

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: The updated version is exactly the same as the

15 previous version.

16 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: It comes to this, that no search has been made for

18 documents in Serbia.

19 MR. CVETKOVIC: In Serbian language, you mean. Yes, well, I mean,

20 this is the answer which I have received from the National Council. As

21 I -- I would like to say one thing, Your Honour, because you made

22 reference to the 54 bis proceedings in the Milosevic case and I have to

23 say that I'm glad that you have been involved in those proceedings because

24 you have the experience from which we can benefit. And I'm sure that you

25 are aware of the way in which the Office of the Prosecution filed their

Page 249

1 requests. In those proceedings they were very precise, usually, although

2 the requests themselves might have not been that precise, but at least

3 they were precise in what they asked this Trial Chamber to order. And

4 they usually had annexes with their requests, and those annexes were those

5 specific requests for assistance from which the Trial Chamber could see

6 what was actually requested and of course we could see and -- what to

7 reply to. All this is missing here. And we are speculating -- now we are

8 speculating on what is written in the original submission of the Defence

9 when there is an obvious mistake in translation of the word "casopis,"

10 "magazine," from Serbian to English. And of course we have our response

11 which, in my opinion, is also a mistake which I have received from

12 Belgrade and I haven't drafted it. I do apologise. I believe that we are

13 missing key elements to decide here and I believe that those key elements

14 which we are missing is a further specification from the Defence what is

15 that they want. And then we can reply.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, show me where in your response you take the

17 line that there is not sufficient specification for you to deal with

18 these. I know that you say they're far too -- they cover far too much

19 ground or too cumbersome.

20 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, that is it. For example, paragraph 8, the

21 Defence of the accused Lukic did not identify the particular document.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Paragraph, sorry?

23 MR. CVETKOVIC: Paragraph 8 it says from what I can see.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: This is in your response?

25 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes. This is our response, yes. For example, it

Page 250

1 relates to the documents previously produced to the Office of the

2 Prosecutor. And here we said: The Defence of the accused Lukic did not

3 identify the particular documents which were not produced to the Defence

4 team.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: But that request is for everything that you've

6 given to the Prosecution.

7 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, Your Honour, and that is a problem because,

8 as you know, in Kosovo and Metohija, I mean the OTP has been requesting

9 documents since 2001 and there have been various bodies dealing with the

10 cooperation with the ICTY and with the OTP. And we have produced a number

11 of documents to the OTP from 2001 until now relating to Kosovo and

12 Metohija. It's very difficult now to go through all those documents.

13 It's almost impossible because our people have changed. For example, in

14 the beginning it was the Ministry of Justice of the then-Federal Republic

15 of Yugoslavia, which does not exist anymore, which dealt with those

16 requests. It's almost not possible to answer this request in whole. On

17 the other hand, it is covered more or less by the other answers. I mean,

18 the dossier KiM which they ask, dossier Kosovo and Metohija, it covers

19 everything from what I could see. It covers all documents ever issued

20 which is in connection with Kosovo and Metohija from what I can see here.

21 And if that is not on over-broad request, I don't know what is.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: From the outset I indicated to you that the essence

23 of this dispute is availability and accessibility and that is what you're

24 confirming just now, that there are certain difficulties associated with

25 locating material here and making it available. But it's, to be sure,

Page 251

1 just to what extent these difficulties are going to inhibit the process of

2 recovering the documents that we've been having this hearing. And I want

3 to continue to deal with these items specifically. And it may be that we

4 have to enter up a while before we continue with that.

5 Mr. Sabbah, what is the position. We've been here for an hour and

6 a half?

7 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour. I believe that the interpreters

8 would need some time for a little break.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, if you just give us five minutes, then we'll

10 have the break in a moment.

11 If you take the second item, Mr. Cvetkovic, item (B) ...

12 MR. CVETKOVIC: Do you want my response? Well, first we heard

13 from the Defence that documents were partially produced. And here I also

14 have the information in this updated annex (A) that 130 pages of documents

15 were forwarded to the National Council and they are awaiting decision from

16 the government of Serbia. I know that there is -- today there is a

17 session of the government of Serb. I don't know whether the government

18 had adopted the adequate decision for -- to pass those documents. But

19 I --

20 JUDGE BONOMY: What could be the problem?

21 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, I don't see any problem. The only problem

22 might be that, for example, it's not on the agenda but on the other hand I

23 don't see any reason why it wouldn't be on the agenda. It's just that I

24 cannot guarantee that the government adopted this because I'm not there in

25 the government. But I know it has been sent to the agenda of the

Page 252

1 government so it should be in the procedure.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: So it's specific enough. In, of all places,

3 Belgrade, it should be appreciated just how urgent it is to get this

4 material because it's been known for some time that this trial would start

5 on Monday. And the material's been available since the 26th of May, and

6 still not available to the Defence. Now, do you think that's a reasonable

7 position to be in?

8 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, I would say it is a little longer than

9 usual, even -- usually the time is, let's say, two to three weeks from the

10 production of the documents to the National Council until the documents

11 are passed to the Defence or to the OTP because that's the time required

12 for the session of the National Council and of the government to take

13 place, from what I remember when I was working there in Belgrade in the

14 National Council. So I would say, yes, in this time it is a little longer

15 than necessary, but usual time -- little longer than usual, but usual time

16 is around three weeks.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: We'll have a break and we'll resume at quarter to.

18 The -- you can take it that we accept that certain things have to be made

19 much more specific than they are, and that's particularly in light of what

20 Mr. Ivetic has already acknowledged and undertaken to improve upon. So

21 that part you need not be too concerned about. But there are still

22 elements in the responses that do need to be clarified before we can make

23 an adequate order that does justice to both parties' requirements and

24 difficulties. For example, I need to -- I for my own part need to hear

25 more about the difficulties of the codes that have been used for some of

Page 253

1 the documents. And there may be other matters. So we will look at these

2 and other relevant matters when we return at quarter to.

3 --- Recess taken at 4.22 p.m.

4 --- On resuming at 4.48 p.m.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, Mr. Cvetkovic, you've managed scare off

6 Mr. Ivetic. That's one way of achieving your objective.

7 MR. IVETIC: [Microphone not activated]

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, Mr. Cvetkovic, the next item is item (C), and

9 the -- the submission made by Mr. Ivetic on that was that the material

10 supplied was inaccessible. He's been given CDs that -- to which he cannot

11 get access.

12 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, Your Honour, I haven't seen the CD. From

13 what I heard, it is true that some of the documents are a little difficult

14 to open on the CD, but that's the minority of the documents, while the

15 majority may be opened. However, I believe this is purely a technical

16 matter and I really don't think that someone from the BIA would just give

17 that CD to mock at the Defence, I mean give them the CD with documents

18 which cannot be opened. So perhaps it's a technical matter, and I think

19 it can be solved very easily in Belgrade. I don't think we can solve it

20 here because the documents are back in Belgrade. But I don't think that

21 an order from the Trial Chamber would be necessary for that.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic, remind me the paragraph in your

23 response that deals with this -- or your reply, rather. Can you remind me

24 of the paragraph --

25 MR. IVETIC: Paragraph in the reply --

Page 254

1 JUDGE BONOMY: -- that deals with that. Yeah, that was Paragraph

2 6.

3 MR. IVETIC: That's the BS -- CDs of which one couldn't be opened

4 at all.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Do you actually set that out in the reply?

6 MR. IVETIC: That's correct, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Which paragraph?

8 MR. CVETKOVIC: Paragraph 9, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Paragraph 9.

10 MR. IVETIC: That sounds about right.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: So the first point -- are you able to deal with it,

12 Mr. Cvetkovic, that there's missing software?

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Your Honour, I am not aware of any particular

14 software which opens -- some special software which opens documents. And

15 if such software exists with B, I don't think they would just give it away

16 like that. So it may be that some documents are not burned properly on

17 the CD or that there is something wrong with some documents that it cannot

18 be opened. But from the information I have it doesn't relate to all the

19 documents -- actually, to the minority of the documents.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, the second point that's made is the ones that

21 he has been able to get access to are all in Albanian.

22 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes. Well, we heard something differently today

23 from what I heard from Mr. Ivetic because that -- or that's not what we

24 heard, that those documents which can be opened are only in Albanian. We

25 heard that there are documents which are Albanian -- in Albanian and that

Page 255

1 there are Serbian translations but that is too much of a trouble for them

2 to match them and to make -- I don't know, to put them in some order. We

3 could maybe -- we could maybe look that up or ask Mr. Ivetic to clarify

4 it.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: So who is the person he should make contact with to

6 evolve this?

7 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, he should make contact with the National

8 Council, and actually I was informed that some people who worked for the

9 Defence of the accused have already contacted the National Council. And I

10 think that the matter is being looked at -- not at this very moment

11 properly because it's after working hours there, from what I know these

12 day. So I think that they already contacted the right people in Belgrade;

13 I think we can just expect for it to be resolved.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, your response lists 25.000 documents as the

15 first item -- in fact, I think that is the total, is it, 25.000 and then

16 you break it down?

17 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, yeah, that's what it says there, yes.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: And these -- are you saying that these are on the

19 CDs?

20 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes. Well, according also --

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Well --

22 MR. CVETKOVIC: If I may just say, according to this new version

23 of this annex (C), there are now 24 DVDs which are -- which have been

24 delivered to the National Council and which are waiting for the decision

25 of the National Council and the government to be passed to the Defence.

Page 256

1 They've been delivered on June 28th --

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Where is that?

3 MR. CVETKOVIC: That's towards the end, close to the end of this

4 annex A under (C), under documents sought from the Army of Serbia and

5 Montenegro, since the documents sought are more or less the same. I mean,

6 it says just relevant investigative documents on the organisation,

7 operation, structure, command, financing, army --

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we'll come to that. We'll come to that.

9 That's when we deal with the army. What we're dealing with is the

10 Ministry of the Interior at the moment.

11 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, Your Honour, however there are documents

12 which have been, for example, communicated both to the army and the

13 Ministry of the Interior and there is certainly a large number of the

14 documents which were shared between the two -- the two structures. So

15 I --

16 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, for clarification, the BA is now a

17 separate agency so it's not technically the Ministry of the Interior, it's

18 the BIA that provided these CD-ROMs that, again, on of them could not be

19 opened at all, and the ones that could be opened had instructions for

20 running an operatable programme which was supposed to allow us to view and

21 print the documents and when you try to click on it, it asks -- it says

22 that the file is missing and cannot open.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes -- just while you're on your feet can you

24 clarify one other thing. There's reference in the response to a number of

25 documents and there are a number of dates. So there must be more here

Page 257

1 than is said to be on the CDs.

2 MR. IVETIC: I would imagine there was -- I believe there was a

3 reference to some DVDs that have been sent to the National Council that

4 have not yet been --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: That's separate. If you look at the updated

6 response, you'll see that it refers to 25.000 pages relating to the KLA

7 activities passed to the Defence team on the 31st of May. Now, have you

8 got that?

9 MR. IVETIC: I don't know. As of right now, whether that's on the

10 CDs or not, Your Honour.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay.

12 MR. IVETIC: Because I just received this while we sat here.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: The next refers to a date, the 20th of April,

14 photocopies of statements. Did you get these? That's two different

15 dates, you see, the 31st of May and 20th of April. Now, did you get all

16 your CDs on the one date?

17 MR. IVETIC: The CDs I believe were on the one date. I believe

18 this other -- this other material, I believe, is material that we have

19 received. But the CDs was what was the main concern of --

20 JUDGE BONOMY: So it's the 31st of May, the CDs, is it?

21 MR. IVETIC: I believe that sounds accurate, Your Honour.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: And do you accept that you've got everything else

23 here that's specified?

24 MR. IVETIC: Well, having just received this during these

25 proceedings and without having the entire file here, I can't 100 per cent

Page 258

1 verify it, but as I indicated we received some cooperation following the

2 filing of our motion and had begun receiving material from them but there

3 is a large volume of material that, it's my understanding, is waiting to

4 be sent to us and has been in that state for at least over a month.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Where are these CDs at the moment?

6 MR. IVETIC: I believe that they're at Belgrade at the office of

7 our investigators.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: And do you have an investigator there?

9 MR. IVETIC: Yes, I do.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Is there any reason why contact can't be made with

11 the National Council with a view to having this resolved?

12 MR. IVETIC: It's my understand that contact's already been made.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, well --

14 MR. IVETIC: There's nothing prohibiting that, I agree.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: We've been told it's a technical issue. Surely we

16 are not expected to resolve technical issues.

17 MR. IVETIC: I hope that it is something that can be resolved. As

18 indicated we have contacted them and informed them of the CDs. I know I

19 personally reviewed the CDs and the defects in them when I was in Belgrade

20 just two months ago, and I believe at that time we had already contacted

21 BIA to complain of it and subsequently we have contacted the National

22 Council. But indeed if that is all that they have relative to our

23 request, that is something we would expect that they should be able to

24 correct by just issuing new CDs. We're not talking about a huge number of

25 CDs. We just believe that there might be other documentation in addition

Page 259

1 to that, given the types of responses that we've been hearing from them

2 with respect to this request.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

4 Now, Mr. Cvetkovic, the next item is one, that's (E), is one in

5 which Mr. Ivetic said he would be more specific. Number (F), however, was

6 one where he mentioned a number of specific items that had not been

7 supplied. Are you able to deal with these?

8 MR. CVETKOVIC: With (F), Your Honour, right?

9 JUDGE BONOMY: (F), yeah.

10 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, Your Honour --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: He mentioned that, for example, that Slivovo was

12 one which had not been dealt with. He mentioned Racak and he mentioned

13 material on KLA crimes, on the functioning of the police during the

14 conflict, on NATO activities during the conflict, on the investigation of

15 alleged war criminals. Are you able to say where there are documents that

16 fall into these categories available but have not been provided yet?

17 MR. CVETKOVIC: I don't know whether there are documents which are

18 still available and have not been provided with.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Well, he again has said he'll be more

20 specific on that, so we'll pass over it.

21 On (G), which is this request for all that you've given to the

22 OTP. The explanation -- I mean, it seems to me an inappropriate request

23 at first reading this document. But the explanation given is that it's

24 more manageable than trying to find the material among all the documents

25 that are disclosed to the Defence by the OTP. Now, your answer, I think,

Page 260

1 earlier was that these documents will all be somewhere in other requests

2 here.

3 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, more or less, yes.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: So it goes back to the same problem, I suppose, of

5 trying to get it from the OTP. It's -- if it was readily available in the

6 form that it's sought here, then obviously that would be helpful. And the

7 response you initially made indicated the possibility of that, that only

8 one -- there had been one copy made but that was the copy given to the

9 OTP.

10 MR. CVETKOVIC: It really depends, Your Honour -- I mean,

11 unfortunately, as I said, there have been various bodies dealing with

12 requests of the OTP since 2001. And, for example, when Ministry of

13 Justice of the then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was dealing with those

14 requests, from what I know they haven't made any copies of the documents

15 that they then sent to the Office of the Prosecutor. They don't even have

16 a very good register of what they sent. Okay. Then it was the Ministry

17 of Foreign Affairs which was in charge. Now things were already better

18 and I think that the archives of the requests definitely exist; however,

19 I'm not sure whether all the documents which were produced to the Office

20 of the Prosecutor exist in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They sure

21 exist in the Ministry of the Interior or the Ministry of Defence who

22 passed them on to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now for some two years

23 or a little less, it is the National Council for cooperation which is

24 solely competent of answering the requests of the Defence, while for the

25 requests of the OTP the competence is divided between the Ministry for

Page 261

1 Foreign Affairs and the National Council.

2 Basically, in order to answer this request of the Defence in

3 total, you would have to go through all requests made by the OTP and see

4 that all the documents that have ever been for the last five years

5 produced to the OTP and all -- I'm not saying that we are not doing that

6 back in Belgrade. All that I'm saying is that it is not possible, I

7 think, to answer that request completely and just to say: Okay, this is

8 all that has been produced to the OTP and we guarantee that there is

9 nothing else that you may find on the EDS that has been produced by Serbia

10 to the OTP. That is just very difficult to guarantee that. But we are

11 definitely doing our best to comply with this request of the Defence and

12 we have produced a large number of documents which have been produced to

13 the OTP before.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. If you move then to (H).

15 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, I don't have a follow-up on (H),

16 unfortunately. There is this last sentence here saying that Ministry of

17 the Interior informed National Council that it did find -- okay,

18 there's --

19 JUDGE BONOMY: It's a pity that it's taking so long once they are

20 found.

21 MR. CVETKOVIC: I agree. Obviously they haven't been transferred

22 to the National Council either, so I don't have a follow-up on that. I

23 think -- I believe that they are still -- according to this at least, in

24 the hands of the Ministry of the Interior, these remaining minutes.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, number (I) is the first where we encounter

Page 262

1 this problem of encryption and response deals with this. Now, you

2 initially referred to paragraph 15 which talks about the procedure for

3 releasing documents which have been crypto-protected Telexes, but you have

4 now moved on to a different position which is that on the 2nd of June the

5 ministry told the National Council it doesn't possess Telexes from the

6 minister of the interiors for the period May and/or June 1997. Now --

7 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, yes, that's the latest information I have

8 received from Belgrade on the status of this particular request. Of

9 course, Your Honour, there is here again the question of translation

10 because in Serbian it's singular, it's one document, while in English it's

11 plural and it's like Telexes sent with an unspecified number, while in

12 Serbian it is singular and it is one Telex, one document.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic, is this request designed to obtain one

14 particular document?

15 MR. IVETIC: It's our understanding that there is at least one

16 document and we thought it was either May or June. It could have been two

17 documents, one in May and one in June, but we are talking about either one

18 or two documents in this particular section talking about the organisation

19 and in particular the duties of a police general, which we believe should

20 exist in the archives somewhere. We were about as precise as we could be

21 with the date. We -- our client recalls it being issued and existing, but

22 of course -- I don't know where to go with the initial response saying it

23 is encoded and now saying that they don't have it. That leaves me at a

24 loss for any kind of follow-up.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, thank you.

Page 263

1 It is one of these things that makes you concerned about this,

2 Mr. Cvetkovic, that there's a response about encoding and then a statement

3 that there isn't such a document.

4 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, well, from what I can see from paragraph

5 15 -- I mean, I've read -- read it, of course, before but I didn't expect

6 this particular question to be raised here. This document, our response

7 paragraph 15 does not say specifically that we have the document. And now

8 suddenly we don't have it. Paragraph 15 deals in general with the

9 requests for crypto-protected documents and there is not only one request

10 of that kind. And I'm sure that crypto-protected documents may be

11 found -- well, more or less under most of the points of the requests of

12 the Defence.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: So does that mean every Telex that is sent is

14 crypto-protected?

15 MR. CVETKOVIC: No. There are specific -- I mean, there are

16 cables. I'm sure you are aware of -- for different -- they are used in

17 diplomatic practice, but they are also used, the ministries of internal

18 affairs use those cables when they want to send some information which is

19 strictly confidential. So they use it for their internal communication.

20 The problem which we are facing here is that there is this special code

21 which is used for encrypting those cables --

22 JUDGE BONOMY: But you're perhaps missing my point, that in

23 paragraph (I) of your annex you say: See paragraph 15.

24 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, paragraph 15 deals with encryption of

Page 264

1 cables -- of Telexes. Why would you refer to paragraph 15 unless you were

2 saying: Documents that fall under this head are crypto-protected?

3 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, because the word used in Serbian "depese" is

4 a word used exclusively for cables, for crypto-protected cables. I've

5 been working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for four years. I know

6 what is the word used for cables and this word "depese" is used for cables

7 or -- at least to my knowledge that's the word we use for -- exclusively

8 for crypto-protected cables. So I believe that that is what made people

9 who wrote this response of Serbia and Montenegro refer to paragraph 15.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: All right.

11 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, just one point. When I met with members

12 of the MUP and members of the Ministry of Defence, there was a clear

13 distinction between depese and sifrovane depese, coded Telexes and regular

14 Telexes. I don't know whether that helps any, but that was my

15 understanding and my understanding is we are asking for a telex, which we

16 at that time would not know whether it was coded or a regular Telexes.

17 But there are Telexes that exist that are not encoded by this

18 cryptographic system.

19 MR. CVETKOVIC: Again, my understanding is different from you.

20 When this particular word is used, it's crypto-protected communication.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, item (J) the complaint is that the documents

22 delivered don't relate to the relevant period, which is 1998 and 1999.

23 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yeah, well, our argument is that they relate to

24 relevant period and -- well, having here heard much from the Defence

25 explaining why that it is they don't relate and we haven't heard much from

Page 265

1 him in answer to what was written in our annex (A). So I believe it's up

2 to them to specify what is missing.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, show me where you refer to documents for 1998

4 and 1999.

5 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, they are in the first one, the first

6 paragraph, information about special operations unit, organisations,

7 systemisation, which are describing the state security service internal

8 organisation statute from April 1996 which were valid until November 22,

9 1999.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: That would be -- fall within the category of

11 personal orders to commanders, would it?

12 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, again, it's not personal orders to

13 commanders. Again, it's a wrong translation. It's personalno resenje,

14 which are -- I cannot find an English word, but perhaps the translator --

15 THE INTERPRETER: Personnel solutions.

16 MR. CVETKOVIC: -- when you are -- when you receive a certain job,

17 when you are given certain jobs. So that's an order what to do. It's

18 order of appointment, if you want to -- I believe that's the correct

19 translation. Again we have a problem with translation here. And of

20 course we have -- we have documents which are used for appointment of

21 those people. They say: Documents on criterions used to appoint those

22 people in certain units and this is the document, the one which I quoted

23 was the one which referred to that.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

25 Now, under (K) --

Page 266

1 MR. CVETKOVIC: Excuse me, Your Honour, if I may just add. At the

2 end of this long column you have state security service -- under the

3 previous -- the previous point. State security service personal data

4 relating to lists of personnel stationed in special units for period from

5 1992 to June 1999 as well as 12 separate resolutions and situating state

6 security personnel. So basically that's it, that's what this request is

7 about and not orders to members of these units what to do.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, but you'll see at the beginning of the

9 request it's talking about the operative acts on their formation and

10 organisation and functioning. However, I agree with you that most

11 verification is required of what's missing. I don't think you need to

12 address this further. Item (K) --

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, well I don't have anything from what is

14 written.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: But the explanation is not very satisfactory, is

16 it?

17 MR. CVETKOVIC: I agree.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: These are well-known bodies and you would expect

19 reports on their activities to be easily located.

20 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, yes and no because in a way if they are, for

21 example, now under -- under -- if BIA is their successor. As far as I

22 know BIA is successor of some of these units. So perhaps the documents

23 are not in the Ministry of the Interior. Perhaps they are with BIA.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Now --

25 MR. CVETKOVIC: I'm not sure how easy it is to locate them, but

Page 267

1 anyway I agree that the response is not satisfactory.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: In -- even though there's been a change in the

3 organisation, this request, at least, is clear enough for even me sitting

4 here in The Hague to understand very clearly what it's about. It's not

5 one that depends on special -- particular special knowledge that's never

6 emerged in general within the Tribunal. So you would expect that it would

7 be possible to say what had happened to these records if they are not

8 available or, alternatively, to have found them.

9 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, Your Honour. I would

10 like to say that I still think that this request is also rather broad.

11 For example, if those units were there every day, then you must have

12 thousands of reports on their activities. And it is also -- I'm --

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, you can't have it both ways, Mr. Cvetkovic.

14 You can't tell us that we haven't got anything at all or we're still

15 looking and then tell us there must be thousands of them.

16 MR. CVETKOVIC: I'm telling you what is my opinion and it doesn't

17 relate on the answer of the Ministry of the Interior. I'm trying to help

18 you with my personal -- in this case it's my personal opinion, from my

19 personal experience in working -- working for the National Council and for

20 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and processing the requests of -- by the

21 OTP and the Defence. For example, you have under -- under (F). Under

22 (F), the documents which were provided by BIA, you have, for example, his

23 discipline procedures, but then they have summary of important events from

24 Kosovo and Metohija of July -- then from June 1st to June 10th on 3.713

25 pages. I'm sure that there you can find some reports on the activities of

Page 268

1 the special units here and there. So -- and it has already been produced

2 to the Defence.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I think we're maybe speculating a bit on

4 that.

5 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, but I think the Defence has been speculating

6 even more with their requests, which are too broad, in my opinion, and --

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I, for one, don't agree with you that this

8 one's too broad and it's disappointing to see that there is no clear

9 explanation.

10 Now, on the next one, (L), it's difficult for me to follow what

11 exactly's being said in the latest document.

12 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes. Well, from what I can hear -- from what I

13 can see here and the way I understand this is that these 85 cases which

14 have been -- which have been produced to Defence, they relate to

15 disciplinary proceedings against the personnel of the -- of the MUP, but

16 not for these reasons that they are particularly requested that they

17 refuse to serve in Kosovo but for some other offences, whatever they

18 were. While they now informed, from what I can see on the 2nd of June,

19 that they do not possess that particular information on disciplinary

20 proceedings against MUP personnel who refuse to serve in Kosovo in 1998

21 and 1999.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Do you know if that means there were no such

23 proceedings?

24 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, I -- there is one more -- one more thing

25 here, Your Honour, again. Because this is again a single document and

Page 269

1 this is, again, a single document in Serbian. When you read this, it's

2 one single document and the Ministry of the Interior replied that they

3 don't possess that single document. Now --

4 JUDGE BONOMY: What do you say refers to a single document?

5 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, because in Serbian when you use a particular

6 case, like this, "informaciju," [B/C/S spoken], that relates to a single

7 document.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, it's been translated as information and

9 documents.

10 MR. CVETKOVIC: Oh, well, there is no "information" and

11 "documents" in Serbian. It's just information on and documents is

12 completely missing from Serb -- from the Serbian original in which - and

13 we heard that also from Mr. Ivetic - all the requests were made. This is

14 just one of the points of translation. I had a lot of them, as you could

15 see during this hearing that ...

16 JUDGE BONOMY: So why would you pass 85 cases over if it's one

17 document that you think is being sought?

18 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes. Well, these 85 -- same 85 cases you can find

19 under (E).

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah, that's not my question. Why would you hand

21 over these 85 cases or mention them under this section if you consider

22 that it's only one document that's being --

23 MR. CVETKOVIC: Because the person who wrote this also didn't

24 understand at the time when they wrote this. We make mistakes.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Now -- so we have documents under (M) which are

Page 270

1 again the subject of --

2 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: -- the National Council.

4 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, well, for -- from what I can see here and

5 from the information I have received, they have been forwarded yesterday

6 to the National Council by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and they will

7 be on the session of the National Council tomorrow and the only reasonable

8 expectation is that the National Council will recommend that they be

9 transferred to the Defence. And then we need the decision of the

10 government of the Republic of Serbia to do that.

11 Now, that's just the -- but of course they would be produced in a

12 form which would not endanger the code, and that form means that certain

13 part of the document which does not contain the text of the document but

14 some information which are important for the code -- I don't know

15 understand that either, that much, that -- because the people who work on

16 that who understand that who are experts for crypto-protection. But

17 however, that one part of the document has to be blackened while of course

18 the substance of the document remains intact. And documents will be

19 produced in that form, both to the OTP and to the Defence.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: And (N) is another that's been -- well, do you know

21 what the discussion -- does the National Council publish what it decides

22 or is it private, confidential advice it gives to the government?

23 MR. CVETKOVIC: National Council does not publish its decisions,

24 no, no, it doesn't. Not available to the public, anyway, does -- it

25 writes reports on its decisions and there's usually a press communique

Page 271

1 saying in general what has been decided by the National Council, but it's

2 not published in the Official Gazette or something like that.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Now (O) we can pass over. (P), reports on how NATO

4 aggression disrupted communications.

5 MR. CVETKOVIC: I have nothing new. This is what was said.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: I mean, that's another one that's surprising, isn't

7 it? That it wouldn't be easy to either identify where it is or explain

8 why it's not available?

9 MR. CVETKOVIC: I agree. I have no -- I have no explanation why

10 they haven't found it.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay. And (Q), now what does the response in (Q)

12 mean, the reports of the intrabureau are still in search procedure?

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, it means the same as under (P) above. That

14 means that they are still being searched for.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Does it follow from that that there is a -- there

16 was an intrabureau working-group investigating Racak?

17 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, I guess it does. I haven't seen the

18 communication from the Ministry of the Interior, but I believe that what

19 people who wrote this admission did and that they used the information

20 that the Ministry of the Interior had used before then. So I believe they

21 are being searched. That doesn't mean, of course, that they exist, but

22 you could say that. I cannot say one way or the other because I don't

23 know something.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: And (R), (R) is one in which Mr. Ivetic would be

25 more specific. Can I take you now to 13 (D) -- oh, before we do that,

Page 272

1 sorry -- yeah, sorry, yes, 13 (D). It's said by Mr. Ivetic that there was

2 this specification of 12 incidents.

3 MR. CVETKOVIC: Excuse me, Your Honour, should I answer to that

4 because --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Before -- I'm just trying to be clear in my own

6 mind about this. No, I think -- sorry, I think I'm looking at the wrong

7 one. Is that 6 -- do you jump from 12 to 16 in your response?

8 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes. Yes, we do. Yes, there is one more mistake

9 here because I can see here that point (D) is missed completely in the

10 annex, so what is (D) here should be (E), and then it goes (E) (F) (G),

11 and we missed (D). I just noticed that, unfortunately.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: So we're now looking at -- is it 16 rather than 13?

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: In our annex, yes, but if you want to go through

14 13, we can do that.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. If you look at 13 (D).

16 MR. CVETKOVIC: 13 (D), yes, 12 most serious incidents.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: What is the problem there?

18 MR. CVETKOVIC: What is the problem there? Well, I don't see that

19 there is a problem, but I believe that most of the documents have been

20 produced and they have been produced -- I mean, first of all, as far as I

21 know that when the original request was made those 12 most serious

22 incidents were not specified. They might have been specified later, so

23 somebody expected the minister of the interior to decide which are 12 most

24 serious incidents from the indictment. However, I -- maybe they have been

25 specified later. But if you go back and look at point (F), which deals

Page 273

1 with dossier of KiM. You can see there Izbica, Suva Reka, Krusa,

2 Vucitirn, may all these places in Kosovo and the documentation have been

3 produced. Perhaps not everything. Perhaps they're still missing

4 something, but it's not like nothing here has been produced. That is what

5 I said in the beginning, that these requests overlap a lot.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah. And looking at 16 (E), which you've numbered

7 as (D).

8 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: It's quite specific.

10 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: And what you have discovered will be dealt with

12 tomorrow. Is that what you're saying?

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yeah, since I don't have an update in here, but if

14 it's at the National Council, I believe it will be dealt tomorrow. I

15 don't have an update here in this -- in this annex, but I believe it will

16 be --

17 JUDGE BONOMY: In your life, what does the word "shortly" mean?

18 MR. CVETKOVIC: Shortly.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: "Will be forwarded to the Defence team shortly

20 after the next session of the National Council."

21 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, the next session of the National Council I

22 think was held 19th of --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you said it normally meant two or three

24 weeks.

25 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

Page 274

1 JUDGE BONOMY: But in some instances we've seen here we are

2 approaching two or three months without any action.

3 MR. CVETKOVIC: Well, in this case if -- it was produced to the

4 National Council on the May 26th. From what I know the first session of

5 the National Council was on the June 19th and the first session of the

6 government of Serbia since that is today. So if this document -- and I

7 think it has -- it was on the National Council -- it should be on the

8 government of Serbia today and which means it can be produced Monday, for

9 example, to the --

10 JUDGE BONOMY: But the response says: The document is being

11 processed and will be forwarded to the Defence team shortly after the next

12 session, not of the government but of the National Council.

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: As if it's still there.

15 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes, that's what the document says, which I

16 believe is not entirely correct.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: And I presume -- so paragraph (D) is actually (E),

18 and then if we go to (F).

19 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: This is the material previously sought from the --

21 we've been over that already, yeah. And it will -- lastly numbered --

22 what is (F) must be (G). Is that right?

23 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Or is it? No, I don't think it is, Mr. Cvetkovic,

25 let's have a look.

Page 275

1 MR. CVETKOVIC: 16 documents of the Joint Command.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: 16 is -- 16 (B) -- paragraph 16 does have a (D), so

3 there's no need to change these numbers.

4 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yeah, it has (D), which we have missed. It does

5 have (D), yeah.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: But you have actually dealt with it. So they are

7 correctly numbered here. But you haven't dealt with (G). That's the

8 joint -- oh, but you have, actually, so you'll called it (F). We're quite

9 confused now. If this is paragraph 16.

10 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, the way I read it, it looks as if they

11 have not responded to my 16 (D).

12 JUDGE BONOMY: They've missed (D), sorry, my mistake.

13 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yes.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: (E) (F) -- so when they talk about (F) here, they

15 really mean (G). Is that right? Is that right, Mr. Cvetkovic, you --

16 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yeah, when -- what is written here (F), that's

17 (G), yes, 16 (G).

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, this document, it says is being processed at

19 the present and will be forwarded at the next session of the National

20 Council. That's similar to a request a moment ago, which you said wasn't

21 up-to-date. What about this one?

22 MR. CVETKOVIC: Yeah, well, that's another of the document. I

23 mean, first of all, I would like to go back to the 16 documents because we

24 have the request for 16 documents plus two documents which are, by the

25 way, included in those 16 documents which Mr. Delic brought to Milosevic

Page 276

1 case. So it's these 16 documents which, according to this information,

2 have been passed to the Defence team on 10th of February, 2006, and still

3 we have a request for binding order for those 16 documents. Now it seems

4 there has been found this -- another document of the Joint Command from

5 1998 and I sincerely hope that this document will be passed up to today's

6 session of the government of Serbia, but I don't have anything more on

7 that.

8 I would, however, if you allow me, like to add one general

9 observation with -- well, with respect to all of the requests of the

10 Defence, since we don't know when exactly have these requests been made

11 and for how long have they been searching for -- for particular documents.

12 Because what they say in their submissions that they are asking for those

13 documents since November 2005; however, if you take a look at their list

14 which is paragraph 23 of the motion, you can see a number of

15 communications, and from what I -- from what I've been informed the

16 communications are still arriving in the National Council. They are

17 requesting documents all the time. So we don't know for how long have

18 certain search being going on. So when you ask me: How can I explain

19 that certain documents have not been found, it doesn't mean that they have

20 not been found from November. Some of them have been requested in April

21 or May. The Defence didn't make it clear in their submission when is that

22 they first asked for a specific document. That's another -- well, I think

23 what we miss in their submission.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you, Mr. Cvetkovic.

25 [Trial Chamber confers]

Page 277

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Two things are plain from this hearing, and we will

2 reflect on them in a brief written decision. One is that the requests

3 need to be updated and need to take account of what's actually been

4 received and be more specific in many instances about what is still

5 sought. And the second thing that's clear is that some - I don't by any

6 means say all - but some of the answers to these requests appear on the

7 surface to be unsatisfactory and Mr. Cvetkovic was unable to amplify these

8 explanations in a way which left us entirely satisfied with them. It's

9 for us, I think, in that order to identify these particular areas. We're

10 likely to follow a course which was followed earlier in this case in

11 relation to another 54 bis application which is to give the applicant some

12 time to present a fresh -- or at least to amend the application in a way

13 that focuses it better.

14 Now, Mr. Ivetic, it seems to me that you were -- or you felt

15 earlier in the day that you would be in position to do this very quickly.

16 Is that still the case or are you missing some of the material necessary

17 to do that?

18 MR. IVETIC: Although some of the material is in Belgrade, I am in

19 contact with our staff in Belgrade. And so I think -- with respect to

20 outlining the specificity of what has been sought and what has been

21 received, I can do most of that here with my staff here just by going

22 through the requests that we actually sent to the government organs that

23 have much of the specificity asked for and the dates they were requested,

24 et cetera. And then in terms of determining what exactly was received, I

25 should, I think, be able to communicate with my staff and be able to get

Page 278

1 something by the end of the day tomorrow.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: I'm not so concerned now to have a complete

3 procedural history of all that's happened, and I don't think Mr. Cvetkovic

4 was making the point for that purpose. He was simply explaining that it's

5 not clear in some instances how long the requests had been outstanding.

6 But now we've got to this stage. How long they've been outstanding isn't

7 terribly material. It's material to some extent when searches are going

8 on, but beyond that it's not terribly material. So I'm more concerned

9 that you tailor your requests to recognise what's been produced and to be

10 more specific about what you seek and to try to be more economic about

11 what you seek because there is so much repetition -- not repetition, but

12 duplication and overlap here. We really need to cut that down. And I am

13 concerned, just as an example, about the request about all the material

14 that was given to the OTP. The explanation that it's been given to it's

15 coming from so many sources does sound authentic and does sound like --

16 makes it sound like a request it would be very difficult to satisfy,

17 whereas there are other ways of getting the material and you've enumerated

18 a number of them already in separate requests. So if it's possible to

19 combine it all into one more, as I said earlier, refined request, then

20 that would be helpful. And I would like to think you could -- are you

21 saying it will be available tomorrow or --

22 MR. IVETIC: I can try and do that. I don't know how long the

23 pre-trial is intended to last. I notice we're scheduled through the day

24 from 9.00 to --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: It could be lengthy depending on the issues that we

Page 279

1 try to address. So if you're relying on tomorrow I can't expect you to

2 have it done necessarily by tomorrow. But we're talking about a fairly

3 brief period of time, and that will be reflected in the written order that

4 we issue.

5 MR. IVETIC: Fair enough.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: We will do what we can do to issue that tomorrow.

7 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Anyway, thank you for your assistance. The hearing

9 is now adjourned.

10 --- Whereupon the Motion Hearing

11 adjourned at 5.54 p.m.

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