Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 7267

1 Thursday, 22 May 2008

2 [Open session]

3 [The witness entered court]

4 [The accused entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 8.31 a.m.

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Registrar, could you call the

7 case, please.

8 THE REGISTRAR: Thank you and good morning, Your Honours. This

9 is case number IT-03-67-T, the Prosecutor versus Vojislav Seselj.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. Registrar.

11 Today, we are Thursday, the 22nd of May, 2008. I would like to

12 greet the witness, the Prosecutor, Mr. Seselj, Mr. Seselj's associates,

13 who honour us with their presence today. I would also like to greet all

14 the people assisting us in the courtroom today.

15 We need to resume the testimony of our witness this morning. He

16 is an expert witness.

17 We have a map here in the courtroom.

18 The examination-in-chief is about to begin, but before that,

19 Mr. Mundis, a housekeeping matter, to avoid having to address it at a

20 quarter past 1.00, at the end of the hearing.

21 Next week, what is your schedule? Rather, your schedule is as

22 follows: There shall be Witness 051 next week. He is a protected

23 witness. I will not give his name. We will start off our hearing next

24 week with Witness 051, as planned. Next week, we shall be sitting in the

25 afternoon, so we will have our next hearing next Tuesday at a quarter to

Page 7268

1 2:00 with Witness 051. Is that right, Mr. Mundis?

2 MR. MUNDIS: I believe we had the other perhaps hearing scheduled

3 first on Tuesday of next week.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] For the time being, 051 has

5 been officially scheduled. If there's another hearing, we shall see what

6 needs to be done when the time comes.

7 We shall meet again on Tuesday in the presence of Witness 051,

8 next Tuesday in this courtroom, at a quarter to 2:00.

9 MR. MUNDIS: That is certainly the plan, Mr. President. Again,

10 hopefully we'll be able to finish Mr. Riedlmayer's testimony today, in

11 which case --

12 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Under the condition that we do

13 finish today.

14 Without wasting any more time, I will give you the floor now,

15 Mr. Mundis -- Mr. Seselj. I said in order not to waste any time. I hope

16 that we shall save time, rather than the contrary.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I don't want to waste time

18 either, Mr. President, although yesterday, for two and a half hours, I

19 was kept here in the cell and only then transported to the prison. And

20 this morning, I was picked up at 7.15. That's just, for your

21 information, to illustrate the situation.

22 Before the examination-in-chief, I would like the Prosecutor now

23 to specify what the real title of the expert report of Mr. Riedlmayer is,

24 word by word, so that we know the real heading, because in this heap of

25 documents that I've received, and matters are quite contradictory there,

Page 7269

1 we have various titles, so I'd like to hear the proper one, the real one.

2 The last one says: "The destruction of Cultural Heritage in

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina," for example. Is it that latest title that holds

4 true or do the previous titles apply? So what is the exact title of the

5 expert report?

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Mr. Mundis, what is

7 the definitive title?

8 MR. MUNDIS: Mr. President, the definitive title of the report,

9 which bears 65 ter number 00463 is: "Destruction of Cultural Heritage in

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina." It is subtitled: "A Post-War Survey of the

11 Destruction of Non Serb Cultural Heritage in the Municipalities of

12 Bijeljina, Bosansk Samac, Brcko, Mostar, Nevesinje, Greater Sarajevo,

13 Ilidza, Ilijas, Novi Grad, Rajlovac, Novo Sarajevo, Vogusca and Zvornik

14 during the 1992-1995 War, with Specific Reference to the Period September

15 1991 to September 1993." It is indeed the one in the binder which the

16 Presiding Judge has, yes.

17 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] There it is, Mr. Seselj.

18 Mr. Mundis, you have the floor.

19 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you very much, and let me start by saying good

20 morning to the Trial Chamber, Dr. Seselj, his associates, and to

21 Mr. Riedlmayer, as well as everyone else in and around the courtroom.

22 WITNESS: ANDRAS RIEDLMAYER [Resumed]

23 Examination by Mr. Mundis:

24 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, could you please tell the Trial Chamber about

25 your educational background?

Page 7270

1 A. Yes. I'm a native of Hungary. I was educated in West Germany

2 and the United States. I attended the University of Chicago, where I

3 have an undergraduate degree, in history, bachelor's degree. I have a

4 master's degree from Princeton University in Near Eastern Studies, and I

5 have a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons

6 College.

7 Q. And, Mr. Riedlmayer, you briefly told us yesterday where you're

8 currently employed. Can you just give us a little bit of your

9 professional background following your education?

10 A. Yes. Since 1985, I have been employed as bibliographer in

11 Islamic art and architecture, directing the Documentation Centre for

12 Islamic Art and Architecture of the Aga Khan programme at Harvard

13 University. This is probably the largest documentation centre on the

14 subject of Islamic art and architecture in North America and one of the

15 largest in the world.

16 Q. And, sir, within this field of Islamic art and architecture,

17 what, if any, special expertise do you hold?

18 A. My special expertise is in the methods of documentation and the

19 kinds of material that we acquire, catalogue, make available to

20 researchers and use in our own research, which ranges from published

21 information to unpublished photographs, architectural drawings, and

22 ephemera. In addition, I have a long record of publications which is

23 listed in my curriculum vitae in professional and academic journals,

24 concentrating largely but not exclusively on the history, art and

25 architecture of the Ottoman period in the Balkans.

Page 7271

1 Q. And can you tell us, sir, what research or work you've done with

2 respect to cultural property during periods of war in the Balkans?

3 A. Yes. For roughly the past decade and a half, I have been

4 researching the destruction of cultural property in the Balkan wars. I

5 have done so both in terms of academic research and field research. I

6 have done extensive fieldwork after the conflict, both in Kosovo and in

7 Bosnia.

8 Q. And can you tell us a little bit, Mr. Riedlmayer, about this, as

9 you've put it, extensive fieldwork? What did that entail, what did you

10 do?

11 A. The fieldwork entailed going into these areas in the aftermath of

12 conflict, visiting sites concerning which there had been allegations of

13 destruction, documenting what I found at those sites, collecting

14 documentation from sources deemed to be reliable, compiling this

15 documentation and making conclusions about it.

16 Q. And yesterday, in response to some preliminary questions from the

17 Presiding Judge, you told us that you had testified on a number of

18 occasions. Can you very quickly again indicate which cases you have

19 testified in?

20 A. I've testified about the destruction of cultural property in

21 Kosovo in the Milosevic-Kosovo and the Milutinovic et al case here at the

22 ICTY. I've testified about the destruction of cultural property in

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Milosevic-Bosnia case, in the Krajisnik case,

24 in the lawsuit brought before the International Court of Justice by

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina concerning the application of the Convention on

Page 7272

1 Genocide, and now in the current case.

2 Q. And, Mr. Riedlmayer, when you make reference to cultural

3 property, can you please give us a succinct definition of what you mean?

4 A. "Cultural property," in this sense, is the cultural heritage of

5 nations. It consists primarily in the areas studied of houses of

6 worship, historic architecture, and libraries and archives and museums.

7 Q. Let me turn, sir, to the specific task that you were given with

8 respect to this case. Can you tell us what it is that you were asked to

9 do with respect to the report that was produced in this case?

10 A. For the report in this case, I was asked to prepare a report, and

11 supporting documentation, on the destruction of non-Serb, that is, Muslim

12 and Catholic Croat, cultural property in a specified set of

13 municipalities. This included a subset of the municipalities that were

14 included in my report for the Milosevic and Krajisnik cases, plus certain

15 additional municipalities that were included in this indictment.

16 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us, please, what material you

17 produced as part of the task you were given in this case?

18 A. For this case, I produced, first of all, a database of 158

19 entries, one entry for each site documented, as well as a summary report

20 of roughly 30 pages, which you have before you. In addition, there were

21 other supplementary materials that were submitted as appendices to that

22 report.

23 Q. And I'd like to draw your attention, sir, to one of those

24 appendices in particular. That concerns what I believe is described as a

25 database. Can you tell us a little bit about this database?

Page 7273

1 A. Okay. The database is simply a useful way of tabulating

2 information about specific sites. It allows one to gather together,

3 first of all, photographs. When available, I always try to include a

4 variety of photographs, before and after shots of a building from

5 different angles and so forth. Secondly, it allows one to take textural

6 information that relates to specific questions, such as location,

7 condition, and other information about the building, and put it into

8 fields where one can tabulate it across the database, so one can easily,

9 with the help of the database, pull up answers to questions such as: How

10 many of the monuments that were damaged had been legally-protected

11 monuments? How many monuments were undamaged or severely damaged? How

12 many monuments were in a given municipality? So that is what a database

13 is. I believe every entry from the database has been printed out, and

14 each database entry was formatted to three A4 pages. Now, obviously not

15 the same amount of documentation was available for every site, so in some

16 cases the printed pages are blank.

17 Q. And those printed pages are one of the attachments, if you will,

18 to your report?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. And that database, was it primarily designed to be a printed

21 document or was it something that was to be used electronically?

22 A. It was primarily designed to be used electronically.

23 Q. And can you again just tell us why it is that the database was

24 designed to be used electronically?

25 A. Simply because it's not easy to navigate across 158 sites, and

Page 7274

1 more importantly, these ways of sorting it that I described.

2 Q. Now, Mr. Riedlmayer, I understand, from the time you spent with

3 one of my colleagues over the past few days, that you produced or

4 assisted in the production of a slide show, a Powerpoint slide show. Can

5 you tell us a little bit about that, please?

6 A. Okay. With the exception of a couple of maps --

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. That kind of leading

8 question is impermissible. We're not interested in what Mr. Mundis

9 understood from certain earlier conversations. He must ask a direct

10 question. And we're not interested in the proofing session of his

11 colleague with the expert witness, either.

12 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, you were just

13 explaining why you had this map; is that right?

14 MR. MUNDIS: Not the large map, Your Honours, but we do have a

15 Powerpoint presentation that's based on the report. That would be a

16 useful aid for the Trial Chamber in terms of navigating the expert's

17 report and the attachments, and I simply wanted him to explain, before we

18 move to that demonstrative aid, how that was produced.

19 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. [No interpretation]

20 Let me repeat.

21 If I have understood you correctly, this Powerpoint slide show

22 was prepared in order to facilitate your work and the work of the expert.

23 This was addressed during the proofing session, and this is what you're

24 trying to tell us so that we better understand how this works; is that

25 right?

Page 7275

1 MR. MUNDIS: Well, Your Honours, let me try to explain what it is

2 we would like to do, and then perhaps the witness can explain a little

3 bit more about this Powerpoint presentation.

4 What we've done is taken the expert report and the hundreds of

5 pages of annexes and put it into a format that makes the presentation of

6 that evidence easier to comprehend in a short period of time,

7 highlighting, for example, conclusions, highlighting certain examples, so

8 that we don't have a situation where we're trying to go through 800 pages

9 of a printout of an electronic database here in court. It's simply a way

10 to expedite this.

11 This presentation that we would like to show, I would like to ask

12 the witness how it was created and then proceed by way of using this

13 Powerpoint presentation to bring out the salient points, if you will,

14 from the expert's report.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection.

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Who has prepared it; did you or

17 did the witness?

18 MR. MUNDIS: That was precisely the question I was trying to ask

19 the witness when the objection arose.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] So put your question.

21 MR. MUNDIS:

22 Q. Can you explain, Mr. Riedlmayer, how this Powerpoint [French

23 spoken] was produced?

24 A. Yes. The Powerpoint presentation is simply a slide show. For

25 the purposes of this Powerpoint, I took the images from the database and

Page 7276

1 selected images that would illustrate conclusions and certain points in

2 the report, and I worked with the Office of the Prosecutor to structure

3 it in such a way that it reflected the report. The only material shown

4 in the Powerpoint that is not in the database are three or four maps that

5 were included at the beginning just to orient the Court.

6 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, with that explanation, we would now

7 like to move into this Powerpoint presentation as a way of expediting and

8 efficiently presenting this material to the Trial Chamber.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have already said that I object,

10 and wanted to object again before Mr. Mundis asked this question,

11 Mr. President. I don't know if you'd noticed that I'd raised my hand to

12 object.

13 Quite obviously from all this, they prepared this presentation

14 together, that is to say, the expert witness and the Prosecution, and not

15 the expert witness himself alone, independently, because once he signed a

16 contract and agreement with the Prosecutor, it was up to him to prepare

17 his testimony in court independently. Of course, he could have had

18 preparatory discussions, but to have prepared the presentation together,

19 I don't think that has been seen in The Hague -- even in The Hague

20 Tribunal before. And nobody's explained to me what "Powerpoint" is, in

21 fact. It should have been explained to me previously, and if we're going

22 to have some accelerated presentation here, then I demand far more time

23 for the cross-examination than the Prosecutor was given for the in-chief,

24 because I have no Powerpoint and I have to ask questions about each and

25 every detail. And I am challenging a great deal from this expert

Page 7277

1 witness's report.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Expert, we have two

3 problems here. We have a problem of a technical nature. Since we don't

4 know what it is, nobody can challenge anything whatsoever, because we

5 don't know what this is about. But there is another problem which the

6 accused has just raised and which is more important.

7 You're an expert witness, and therefore, per se, you are

8 impartial. It's not because the Prosecutor has asked you to come that

9 you depend on the OTP. When you prepared this Powerpoint slide show, did

10 you do it independently or did the Prosecutor tell you, "You need to do

11 this, you need to do that," and so on and so forth, or, in light of the

12 subject matter, you said, "This is how things should be done"?

13 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, the Prosecutor provided primarily

14 technical assistance. All the material in the Powerpoint, Powerpoint

15 being, as a matter of explanation simply a presentation software that

16 allows one to project slides on a computer, it is in effect no different

17 than using photographic slides, only one can do it by computer. But all

18 the material in the Powerpoint presentation, it's all photographs, and

19 the photographs all come from my database. So this is not something that

20 was created out of new material, and the structure of it arises out of my

21 report. It is not something that was dictated to me.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. This software is a

23 software which is off the shelf; it's not something which the Prosecution

24 set up? It's a software package that anybody can get hold of; is that

25 right?

Page 7278

1 THE WITNESS: It is one of the most common softwares used in

2 business presentations.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Now, if you want to show your

4 holiday photographs, you can also use this software, is that right, if

5 you want to view your holiday photographs? You can.

6 Well, we'll have a look at it. If there are objects to the

7 effect that the Prosecutor is behind all of this, we shall notice it

8 pretty quickly, but first of all let's see the upside rather than the

9 downside first.

10 Mr. Mundis, let's start viewing this, because we are talking

11 about something which I find difficult to understand. But as soon as we

12 have the pictures on the screen, we will understand better, won't we?

13 And if Mr. Seselj then feels that the rights of the accused have been

14 violated, he will let us know. But for the time being, I don't know, so

15 let's begin.

16 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

17 We do have handouts of these Powerpoint slides that were produced

18 and distributed to Dr. Seselj yesterday. I do have I believe extra

19 copies here that may be helpful either now or at the conclusion of the

20 presentation. I'm in the Trial Chamber's hands, but we do have

21 sufficient copies for the Chamber.

22 [Trial Chamber confers]

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Everything that I was

24 disclosed and perhaps represents a Powerpoint is in my cell because it's

25 exclusively in English. What I received is this [indicates] in Serbian,

Page 7279

1 one binder. It's quite thin, as well, and in English two much longer

2 binders, perhaps twice as much as this, so four times the amount of

3 material. But as I say, anything in English, I cannot use. I see that

4 there are colour photographs there and whatever else, but what do

5 photographs in English mean to me? Nothing.

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, I understood what

7 you said, Mr. Mundis. On the screen, we see one photograph which

8 represents Bosnia-Herzegovina. We see the names of the countries, which

9 are in English. Perhaps Mr. Seselj would like all of this to be

10 translated into Serbian. Maybe that is not required that Belarus be

11 translated into Serbian, or Poland or Germany, be translated into

12 Serbian, unless he doesn't know his geography so well. So I don't think

13 that's a problem.

14 As far as the photographs are concerned, are there any captions

15 in English, Witness?

16 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, all the photographs are captioned both

17 in English and in B/C/S, in Serbian.

18 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] So that settles the issue.

19 Let's proceed.

20 MR. MUNDIS: I should also note for the record that this slide

21 show is in e-court, and it bears 65 ter number 00463A.

22 If we could then turn to the slide, Mr. Riedlmayer, that you see

23 on the screen.

24 Q. Can you tell us what the purpose of this slide was, please?

25 A. The purpose of the first three slides is just brief geographic

Page 7280

1 orientation as to which areas I covered in my survey. So we can go to

2 the next slide. Obviously, the blue-outlined area is Bosnia-Herzegovina,

3 and these are the municipalities that are related to the indictment.

4 And the next slide. And these are the municipalities that were

5 covered in my report. If you count the municipalities, you should take

6 account of the fact that what's labelled "Sarajevo" is actually Greater

7 Sarajevo, which is five municipalities.

8 Q. Now, before we move further, sir, can you just tell us a little

9 about --

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, the

11 witness has assisted us a lot now. I think that the Prosecutor should

12 first state to the Trial Chamber why the expert report does not include

13 all the localities that are covered by the indictment, or perhaps the

14 Prosecutor has another expert in store that would deal with other

15 localities and we don't know about this expert because he's not on the

16 list, he hasn't been announced. Why is a selection of localities listed

17 in the indictment done? The Prosecutor has failed to explain that.

18 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, could you answer?

19 According to Mr. Seselj -- I haven't counted everything, but it seems

20 that there are localities which were omitted.

21 MR. MUNDIS: Mr. President, these are all issues that could be

22 raised, first of all, during cross-examination, but I can ask the witness

23 why he was tasked with looking at these 11 municipalities. That would

24 certainly be something that the witness could answer.

25 The larger issues as to why or how the Prosecution structured its

Page 7281

1 case are not issues that we need to go into at this point in time.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, the question raised is

3 a question that I had asked myself earlier on, and I wanted to ask it

4 right away. I did not, and maybe I should have.

5 In your report, I noted that there were 11 municipalities. It

6 starts with Bijeljina, Bosansk Samac, and Nevesinje and Zvornik. Then I

7 noted -- I wondered whether Vukovar was included, since Vukovar was part

8 of the indictment, but it is not included in your report, so I thought

9 about this. We have had witnesses here who came and testified and gave

10 us their version of the events which, after all, were a bit different

11 from what you could have thought from reading the indictment. In

12 Vukovar, as an example, we noted through witnesses that before the JNA

13 entered Vukovar, there had been conflicts, conflicts against the Croats

14 and the Serbs.

15 Given this, if even before the JNA enters there is already a

16 conflict, one can already justly wonder whether Croats -- well, this is

17 just, you know, an assumption -- whether Croats wouldn't have destroyed

18 Orthodox churches. That's the first question that one could put.

19 And then I'll come to Zvornik, because you have also studied

20 Zvornik. Well, through witnesses, we've noted -- we've found out that in

21 Zvornik there had been incidents before large-scale operation were

22 carried out, incidents had occurred. This is what the evidence seems to

23 indicate. So if there are incidents, one could really go through the

24 following logic: There is incidents pitting community A against

25 community B, so community A is going to destroy property belonging to

Page 7282

1 community B. And after a while, people from community B will destroy

2 properties from community A.

3 But in the first step, you know, when the As destroy property

4 from the Bs, if this does not appear in the expert report, this could

5 lead to misunderstandings.

6 And with this in mind, when I studied your report, I noted it

7 said the following: You took photographs of churches and mosques that

8 had been destroyed, but I really wondered why you had not destroyed

9 [as interpreted] the orthodox churches that could have been destroyed in

10 exactly the same picture --

11 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction, I really wonder why

12 you had not have taken pictures of the Orthodox churches that could

13 have been destroyed.

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] So I was wondering why you

15 decided to select a number of cities and why, in your report, you did not

16 also take pictures of Orthodox churches which may have been destroyed

17 maybe before, during or after the event, so that we would have the entire

18 picture of what exactly happened.

19 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I did not set the terms of the

20 mission. When I was first approached to produce a report, they asked

21 whether I would be prepared to do one for the Croatian municipalities as

22 well, such as Vocin or Vukovar. However, I informed the Office of the

23 Prosecutor that I had done no fieldwork in Croatia, and so they decided

24 that I should limit it to Bosnia, where I had done fieldwork.

25 As to the decision not to include Serb heritage in the survey,

Page 7283

1 that again was not mine. Due to limitations of time, the total amount of

2 time I had available for the most systematic fieldwork that I did was

3 slightly under a month, and in that survey I covered more than 4.000

4 kilometres and worked very long days. And so in order to cover the

5 maximum amount of territory, it was decided by the Office of the

6 Prosecutor to make the assignment the destruction of non-Serb cultural

7 property.

8 However, I should say that I made observations and, indeed, took

9 some photographs of the Orthodox churches that I encountered that had

10 suffered damage in the war, and so I'm aware of them.

11 And in another report that I did for this Tribunal for Kosovo, I

12 did cover the Serb property, so the decision not to include it in this

13 report was not my choice.

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. We understood you

15 well. You told us that you were on the field, you went to

16 Bosnia-Herzegovina. I myself went there also, and it's true that once

17 you're there, you're really struck in a number of cities or localities of

18 the number of religious buildings belonging to different religions. This

19 is really striking when you're a foreigner.

20 Now, if an expert comes and is interested only in the destruction

21 of Catholic churches, when the mosque is also destroyed or the Orthodox

22 church is also destroyed, it only takes a picture of the destroyed

23 Catholic Church, without taking pictures of the other churches or

24 mosques, do you belive this is a correct way of working, independently of

25 the fact that you were commissioned only to do this? I would like to

Page 7284

1 know whether, as a scientist, you should not tell the person

2 commissioning the work that it might be too limitative [as interpreted]

3 to only take pictures of a Catholic Church when next to it there is a

4 destroyed mosque or destroyed orthodox church.

5 THE WITNESS: Well, I noted all my observations, and when

6 examples come up, I'm willing to answer about those.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. I tried to shed

8 some light on this. You can continue.

9 Mr. Seselj, I belive I have taken stock of the problem. I don't

10 see what you may add. Well, go ahead, it might be interesting.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, it is interesting to note,

12 Mr. President, what kind of a lawyer would I be if you were able to

13 anticipate every objection that I might make? That would make me a

14 despicable lawyer, and that's not what I am.

15 You can see that I was completely right when I asked that this

16 explanation be made by the Prosecution and not the witness. Why the

17 Prosecution did not tell the witness to deal with all the cultural

18 heritage and monuments that have been destroyed?

19 Secondly, if the expert was tasked with dealing with all the

20 religious monuments and cultural heritage in Kosovo, Serbs and Albanian,

21 that is, mostly Muslim, because most of the cultural heritage belongs to

22 Albanians, if he dealt with that report, although we're not going to deal

23 with that report, although I received the report fro Kosovo and Metohija

24 then why the same methodology was not supplied here in the indictment

25 against me. Why one methodology for the Kosovo indictment against

Page 7285

1 Milosevic and the indictment against Milutinovic et al, and why another

2 methodology for the indictment against me, Krajisnik and Milosevic in the

3 Bosnia case.

4 JUDGE LATTANZI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, you have told us on

5 many occasions that you have chosen your own Defence strategy, so why

6 couldn't the Prosecutor also choose his own Defence strategy, so why

7 couldn't the Prosecutor also choose his own prosecution strategy?

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I have to respond,

9 Madame Judge, if you allow me. I have to know about the strategy of the

10 Prosecution. That's why I received the indictment, the pre-trial brief

11 of the Prosecution. That's why I received all the evidence gathered by

12 the Prosecution. I suppose that I got that. I hope. That's what I was

13 supposed to, because I have to be aware of the Prosecution's strategy,

14 and I think that you will admit that the Prosecution's strategy is not

15 clear to you and your colleagues, because they announced they would be

16 calling experts -- an expert for just one segment of the charges against

17 me, and they did not call any experts for other segments. I'll tell you

18 why. Because in Croatia, more Serb Orthodox religion buildings were torn

19 down than Catholic ones. Unfortunately, in Bosnia, the situation is

20 different. There was more destruction to Bosnia religious buildings than

21 the Serb ones, but you should not neglect the Serb building, because it

22 was a civil war with a pronounced religious component. And these are not

23 questions for the cross-examination of the witness. The witness stated

24 his position, and it is not his fault. He was given a task as an expert.

25 It is the fault of the Prosecution. It's a procedural objection.

Page 7286

1 JUDGE LATTANZI: [Interpretation] So you will call an expert that

2 will tell us about the Serb cultural property destroyed. Just do that.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, what you have just

4 said is highlighting the procedural questions that are enforced in this

5 Tribunal. If the Pre-Trial Judge or the Judge had appointed the expert,

6 then this Judge would have taken into account all the elements that you

7 have told us and we would not have this debate now that is wasting so

8 much time, because an expert commissioned by a Judge would have taken

9 into account all the different aspects, and this expert would have been

10 completely independent from the parties.

11 Unfortunately, this is not the procedure enforced in this

12 Tribunal, with its 1994 rules. It is another kind of procedure that is

13 in force. In this procedure, the Prosecutor can choose his own expert,

14 commission him, give him an assignment, with everything you have just

15 told us.

16 But as my colleague just told you, justly, you are also entitled

17 to call your own expert who can highlight the fact that in Croatia, there

18 was a great number of Serbian buildings, religious buildings, who were

19 destroyed. When the Prosecutor, through his own expert, is going to

20 highlight a number of elements which could lead one to believe, according

21 to what you're saying, that it is only the Catholic or Muslim buildings

22 that were destroyed.

23 We are under a common-law procedure. The Prosecutor has his own

24 experts, and you will call your expert, and this is why we have, after

25 that, an adversarial debate. Of course, you are protesting very well,

Page 7287

1 it's very clever. It is wasting time, but you could have done this

2 during the cross-examination or during the presentation of your Defence

3 case with your own expert, because you can call your own experts, of

4 course, and this expert can demonstrate what you are now telling us

5 through your objection. This is how it's supposed to work here.

6 Of course, I understood what you had thought, which is why I

7 asked the question about the expert. Maybe I was a little bit

8 anticipating your own words, and this is why I asked the expert why he

9 did not ask the person commissioning him to have an extension of his

10 assignment, and the answer was, "Well, I was asked to do a specific

11 assignment and this is what I did." That's the way things work.

12 Now, you raised another problem. I was not a member -- I was not

13 on the Bench in the Milosevic or the Krajisnik trials, where you told us

14 that the Prosecution had a different strategy. Very well, you can tell

15 us about this during your own Defence case.

16 We took due note of what you have said, everything is now on the

17 transcript, but we would like to move on, move forward, keeping in mind

18 the observations that you have said.

19 Mr. Mundis, could you please proceed.

20 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So you don't allow me to ...

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Well, if you want to reply,

23 please do so, but I think I've been -- I've said everything. What do you

24 want to add, Mr. Seselj?

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. President, you said

Page 7288

1 yourself that I stated that this witness had applied a different

2 methodology for Kosovo, and I have to tell you this is not correct.

3 That's what the first witness here said, and that was what prompted me to

4 object. I am not going to be calling an expert to explain to us here in

5 the courtroom why Mr. Riedlmayer used a different methodology in Kosovo

6 and why he was given this task by the Prosecution. The witness -- or the

7 Prosecution has to explain to you why different methodologies were

8 applied and why this witness was given such a limited brief. What is the

9 essence of it, what is behind it? And this is not something that my

10 experts should explain.

11 I am really quite flabbergasted that you are willing to overlook

12 this major procedural error.

13 MR. MUNDIS: Mr. President, with all due respect, the issue is

14 actually quite simple. Dr. Seselj is not charged with the destruction of

15 orthodox, religious or cultural facilities. If we had evidence that he

16 was involved in destroying Serbian orthodox religious or cultural

17 facilities, we would have charged him with that and our expert would have

18 examined that. The fact of the matter is the expert was tasked with

19 producing a report which relates directly to the charges in the

20 indictment against this accused. That's what the issue is all about,

21 with all due respect, and that explains why this methodology was used;

22 because the focus of this case is on destruction of religious or cultural

23 property in the context of the indictment against this accused, and that

24 cultural and religious property in this case, with respect to this

25 accused, relates to Catholic and Islamic cultural property. That's the

Page 7289

1 simplest explanation that I can give.

2 If we had evidence that Dr. Seselj was involved in destruction of

3 orthodox cultural property, we would have charged him with that, and

4 Mr. Riedlmayer would have been asked to examine that as well.

5 Let us --

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Please proceed. You

7 answered -- you replied to Mr. Seselj.

8 Very well, please proceed.

9 MR. MUNDIS:

10 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, would you please, in a nutshell, tell us about

11 the process by which damage assessment was conducted with respect to your

12 report?

13 A. In my -- in all of the reports I've done for this Tribunal, I

14 have used a five-point assessment scale in order to be able to say

15 something standardised about, say, a monument like the one you see on the

16 screen to the right. It is a mosque near Bijeljina, in a village called

17 Atmacici, and it falls into the most serious damage level. But let me

18 please review the damage levels and explain what the criteria were for

19 each one.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, please, in order to

21 prevent objections, when there is an image with the title written in

22 English, please read the title also so that the interpreters can

23 translate for Mr. Seselj what is written on the screen.

24 THE WITNESS: What is written on the screen is: "Damaged

25 assessed on a five-level scale," and unfortunately, for technical reasons

Page 7290

1 which I don't understand, the caption under the mosque could not be

2 printed, but it is "Dzamija u Ahmadzici," "The mosque at Atmacici, near

3 Bijeljina." Thank you.

4 Q. If you could, Mr. Riedlmayer, just tell us what these five levels

5 are and how they are defined or characterized.

6 A. Okay. The first level is "in good condition," which would have

7 been applied to any building that shows no sign of war damage or of

8 recent reconstruction. And in the municipalities surveyed for this

9 report, I didn't find any monuments that fit that category, any religious

10 monument.

11 Okay. "Lightly damaged" was the least-severe damage category.

12 It covers any damage that does not visibly compromise the main structure

13 of the building. The damage can range from vandalism or small fires set

14 in the building to bullet holes in the walls, which you see on this

15 picture here, or sometimes fires in the building, even shell holes in the

16 walls or the roof. As long as the principal part of the building appears

17 to have survived structurally intact.

18 This is a Catholic church in the town of Brcko. You can see that

19 a large projectile has made an impact next to the door. There are some

20 bullet holes. I went to the interior and it had been vandalised, all the

21 saint's statues had their hands chopped off, but the building was clearly

22 structurally still sound. So that is an example of a lightly-damaged

23 building.

24 Okay. This is a heavily-damaged building in a village near Brcko

25 called Gorice. When I went there, I found, first of all, that the

Page 7291

1 steeple was gone. It was a 35-metre-tall steeple. The apse and the

2 alter area had collapsed and the roof was gone. Only three of the

3 perimeter walls were still standing. When I talked to an informant, a

4 gentleman living in the house next-door who had witnessed the attach, he

5 said that the damage had been caused by a missile fired from a JNA

6 aeroplane.

7 Q. Can you just describe for us, sir, because we do see on this

8 slide two photographs, can you --

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Just a minute. This is the

10 first time we're hearing this.

11 This church, you say that a neighbour told you that he saw a

12 missile being shot from a JNA plane, so an air attack?

13 THE WITNESS: [Previous translation continues] ...

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

15 THE WITNESS: And just for the transcript, on the left, there is

16 a shot taken in the 1980s, before the war. On the right is a photograph

17 I took in 2002.

18 MR. MUNDIS: Perhaps go to the next slide, please.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, this is

20 allegedly an expert for the destruction of cultural heritage, but here he

21 says that he talked to a man, and that this man told him that the church

22 had been destroyed by missiles fired from the air. What does that sound

23 to you Judges? He was told by this man. He is an expert. Was an

24 inquiry -- an investigation carried out? Was there a forensic expert who

25 determined that this was destroyed from the air?

Page 7292

1 I'm just making procedural objections as to why this source is

2 used here. This man told me --

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well, proceed.

4 MR. MUNDIS: These are all issues that can be raised in

5 cross-examination, Mr. President. I would just ask that we move on,

6 please.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Absolutely, let's move on.

8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] This is another example of a

9 heavily-damaged building. It is in the town of Mostar. It's the mosque

10 of Sevri Hadzi Hasan, built in 1620 and a registered monument.

11 In the slide to the right, and to orient the Court, please

12 observe that on the intact picture, the one on the left, the darkened

13 wall, the one next to the minaret, that is the wall that we're looking at

14 in the "after" picture. The "after" picture is 90 degrees turned to the

15 Left. So on the left-hand side of the picture, you see the shattered

16 base of the minaret --

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I'm not receiving interpretation.

18 I haven't received any interpretation since the witness started answering

19 the question. I haven't touched anything.

20 Yes, I am receiving interpretation now.

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

22 Witness, could you please repeat what you said, because

23 Mr. Seselj had not received the interpretation for the rest of your

24 answer.

25 THE WITNESS: Here you see before-and-after photographs of the

Page 7293

1 Mosque of Sevri Hadzi Hasan in Mostar. It is one of the protected

2 monuments in Mostar. If you take a look at careful look at the "before"

3 shot, you see on the left-hand side of the mosque and next to the

4 minaret, that facade is the one you see in the "after" photo. The

5 "after" photo was taken in the summer of 1992. It is a published

6 photograph, so I know the timing. And what you see on that photograph is

7 the shattered base of the minaret at left, and you can see that the

8 minaret, when it was decapitated or severed at the base, fell into the

9 mosque, and the mosque is heavily damaged. The roof is smashed, the

10 interior is totally wrecked, and parts of the perimeter wall are gone.

11 Next.

12 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, please, the right-hand

13 picture, when was it taken, please?

14 THE WITNESS: It was taken in the summer of 1992. It comes from

15 a documentary book prepared by the Association of Architects of Mostar,

16 "Drustvo Arhitekata Mostar," and published in 1992. The photograph

17 showing the destruction from the first siege of Mostar from April to June

18 of 1992.

19 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. The photograph on

20 the right-hand side -- we have two photographers here, one on the

21 left-hand side where we see the minaret, and the one on the right-hand

22 side, where it's destroyed. The right-hand picture, this was taken when,

23 in the summer of ...

24 THE WITNESS: 1992.

25 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I'm asking you this question

Page 7294

1 because there was fighting in Mostar that pitched the Serbs against the

2 Croats and the Muslims, and then there was fighting between the Muslims

3 and the Croats. So when something is destroyed, it's important to know

4 which period we're talking about.

5 So you have just said that this photograph taken on the

6 right-hand side was taken in the summer of 1992.

7 Mr. Mundis, you have the floor.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, in the subtitle of

9 this report, it says that it comprises the period from 1992 to 1995, with

10 specific reference to the period from 1991 to 1993. Now we've seen two

11 buildings, and the witness failed to give us the date when these

12 buildings were destroyed.

13 And, secondly, well, I don't have the possibility of using this

14 Powerpoint of yours in the cross-examination, no possibility to do that

15 at all, and I have to draw your attention to the fact that these are not

16 the same buildings. Look at the type of wall or fence around -- or the

17 fence around the destroyed buildings and the wall around the other one,

18 and take a look at what the building that looks like which is intact and

19 the other one.

20 Now, there's never a minaret built in front of the main entrance

21 to the mosque, so I don't know how that slipped your attention. I don't

22 have the technological possibilities of using the same Powerpoint

23 facilities that the other side does.

24 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Expert, are you quite sure

25 that the right-hand photograph coincides with this mosque that was built

Page 7295

1 in 1620? I didn't need Mr. Seselj to tell me, because I could see this.

2 I was looking at the wall surrounding the mosque, and on the left-hand

3 side there is no fence. Perhaps it's difficult to see. Are you positive

4 about this?

5 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour, I am positive. The "before"

6 picture was taken quite some period before the war, at the beginning of

7 the 1980s. If I consult the printout, I can probably find the exact

8 date. And in the 1980s, there was extensive restoration of the old town,

9 and the fence was replaced.

10 With regards to minarets, the minaret which is the equivalent

11 functionally of the steeple of the Christian church, in almost all

12 mosques in Bosnia is to the right of the entrance. This was also to the

13 right of the entrance. What you see are the windows on the side of the

14 mosque there that is darkened. The windows that are in the "before" shot

15 are facing the viewer or have a different pattern because they are on the

16 so-called "mihrab" wall, that is, the sanctuary wall, the direction of

17 prayer pointing towards mecca, and they have a little lattice screens.

18 But I'm absolutely certain it is the same mosque, and in fact I visited

19 it in 2002.

20 With respect to your question, Your Honour, about the two sieges

21 of Mostar, the one in April through June of 1992 by JNA and Serb forces

22 and the second one in 1993-1994 by Croat forces, I was very much aware of

23 the difficulty of sorting out damage from the two sieges, and therefore I

24 made very sure, unlike in all of the other municipalities, although I'm

25 very familiar with Mostar, I only used securely-dated photographs taken

Page 7296

1 before the beginning of the second siege.

2 In addition, I had the advantage that a UNESCO and Council of

3 Europe mission, headed by Dr. Colin Kaiser, who is now the UNESCO

4 representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, went to Mostar at the end of 1992

5 and did a very detailed survey of the damage, and this is cited in the

6 entries in my database.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I have an ancillary question.

8 You were an expert and you testified before the International

9 Court, the ICJ. Who had asked you to come to testify? Was it the ICJ or

10 was it one of the parties?

11 THE WITNESS: It was one of the parties, it was

12 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Bosnia-Herzegovina?

14 THE WITNESS: I believe they have [indiscernible] expert

15 witnesses and the agent for Serbia-Montenegro had a slightly larger

16 number. The Court did not call any witnesses of its own.

17 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Serbia and Montenegro also

18 called witnesses to discuss those buildings that had been damaged?

19 THE WITNESS: No. They called them on other matters.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I'd just like to

22 draw your attention to the fact that the witness said that in front of --

23 that the minaret's on the right-hand side, and you see that this

24 destruction is on the left-hand side. The right [indiscernible] is

25 intact, and you see the central entrance to this building and that's

Page 7297

1 where the rubble is. Maybe it is a destroyed mosque, but obviously not

2 the same one. And when cultural monuments are restored, they must be

3 identical, the same as they were before.

4 Now, if you look at the mosque on the left-hand side, the

5 "before" mosque, it's in a very good state, and nobody would have the

6 right to do away with the original stonewall that you can see there and

7 place a metal railing here. This metal railing wasn't usual in the 17th

8 century. You would have a stone wall in the 17th century. So where

9 would they have had wrought iron in such large quantities to be able to

10 use wrought iron for a railing in Herzegovina in the 17th century?

11 Obviously, this is not the same thing, but if you are going to tolerate

12 that, what can I do?

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, your language is

14 extremely concise, like the French language. You're using words which I

15 cannot accept. This trial is broadcast to the outside world. When you

16 are using words which are offending, I say so. No, I do not tolerate

17 anything. This is word you used, you said "tolerate."

18 The Prosecution is putting a question, and the Prosecution

19 witness then answers, and you challenge this. All of this is on the

20 transcript. We put our questions, but we do not tolerate. It's not

21 because we don't ask any questions or that we do ask a question, that we

22 agree either with the Prosecutor or with you. It's ultimately that we

23 will determine whether what is being said is true or false, so don't say,

24 "You tolerate." We don't tolerate anything at this stage. We are

25 listening to what the Prosecution is saying, we are listening to what you

Page 7298

1 are saying. Well, it's tolerative [as interpreted] to listen to both

2 you, I tolerate that you express yourself, if you like.

3 Mr. Mundis, please proceed.

4 JUDGE HARHOFF: Mr. Riedlmayer, as indeed the accused was a bit

5 confused, so was I, and my question, and I believe this is probably the

6 same question which the accused had, is the following: What you see on

7 the right picture, is that the main entrance of the mosque, because if

8 so, then that would contradict your earlier statement that the main

9 entrance was to the left of the tower?

10 THE WITNESS: It is not the main entrance, sir.

11 JUDGE HARHOFF: Can you explain what it is?

12 THE WITNESS: Okay. It is what would be the right-hand wall of

13 the mosque, if you were standing at the main entrance, the main entrance

14 generally is on the front. That points towards Mecca, and the minaret is

15 to the right of it. I only know of one exception, among several hundred

16 mosques in Bosnia that I have seen, that was in Foca, where for various

17 technical reasons they placed it in another spot. But that was

18 traditional. And if you look at the "after" picture, I know it's very

19 difficult to see with all the destruction, but you can see that without a

20 doubt the minaret is bulging out on the left side, that that is the base

21 of the minaret.

22 JUDGE HARHOFF: So --

23 THE WITNESS: I venture a guess, because I have not -- I did not

24 go see that mosque before it was destroyed, but I venture a guess that

25 what you see behind the pile of rubble, which is the remains of the

Page 7299

1 minaret, is either a smashed window of the sort that you see to the right

2 of it or a side entrance, of which there are other examples, that leads

3 into the mosque and up the minaret or up into the women's balcony. But

4 it is not the main entrance. The main entrance to the mosques are

5 usually quite monumental.

6 JUDGE HARHOFF: So if the picture could have been expanded

7 further to the left, one would see the remnants of the main entrance?

8 THE WITNESS: If you were to look at the "after" picture and take

9 another 90-degree turn to the left, you would see the main entrance.

10 JUDGE HARHOFF: Thank you.

11 MR. MUNDIS: If we could now go to the next slide, and if you can

12 tell us, sir, what the next category is. And explain the characteristics

13 of that category.

14 A. The next category of damage is: "Heavily damaged." Heavily

15 damaged building, according to this category, is one that has suffered

16 significant structural damage to its main elements. Typically, this

17 would be used to describe a building that has been completely burned out

18 or the roof has collapsed from other causes. Often with extensive blast

19 damage or a combination of severe damage to several parts of the

20 structure.

21 Q. Let me just briefly interrupt you, Mr. Riedlmayer. On page 15,

22 line 2, the answer was: "The next category is 'Heavily damaged'," and

23 you went on to describe the characteristics of heavily damaged. We're

24 now looking at a slide that says, "Almost destroyed."

25 A. I'm sorry, I lost track. Heavily damaged is several principle

Page 7300

1 parts of the building such as the perimeter walls are missing or severely

2 compromised. The building appears to be beyond repair and would require

3 complete reconstruction, but still has some identifiable elements

4 standing.

5 The example here is the Franciscan Priory Church of St. Peter in

6 Mostar. You see a pre-war photo at left from a published photo book from

7 the 1980s. The church is visible on the left-hand side of the picture,

8 next to a large building. That's the Franciscan monastery. The "after"

9 photo was taken in 1992, and if you look at it, you can see, first of

10 all, that the roof and parts of the walls have collapsed. I also have

11 the technical report from Dr. Colin Kaiser, whom I mentioned before, who

12 mentions that there are large fissures in the wall and that the steeple

13 is in danger of collapsing. So this is a much more severely-damaged

14 monument than the ones in the previous category.

15 Q. Perhaps if we can look at another example, going to the next

16 slide, pleases.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, twice

18 already the witness has stated that the photographs of the destroyed

19 buildings date back to 1992, and in 1992 he did not write his expert

20 report, so he has to prove and show that they are, indeed, photographs

21 from 1992. He can't tell me that during the cross-examination. This is

22 something that must be cleared up by the other side, the source of the

23 photographs and the approximate date of the destruction of those

24 religious buildings, because if we trip up at the start of his testimony

25 with no dates, no photographs, in 1992 he didn't take the pictures, what

Page 7301

1 can we do with all that, then?

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, as we're seeing a

3 series of pictures relating to buildings that are lightly damaged,

4 heavily damaged, almost destroyed, could you tell us each time in what

5 year these pictures were taken? That is very important. And according

6 to what you were able to assess and what you were unable to assess,

7 according to you, during which period was the church lightly damaged,

8 heavily damaged, almost destroyed. We need two dates. We need the date

9 of the photograph and the date of the assessment, if you know.

10 THE WITNESS: Yes.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The best would be to return to

12 the previous photograph, because the objection related to the previous

13 photograph, two questions.

14 The picture on the right-hand side, when was this taken, and when

15 did the destruction occur?

16 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, in my report, in the database for

17 which you have a printout, for every site, source information and date is

18 given for every photograph, as well as supplementary information of

19 various kinds. In order to simplify things, these were merely cited as

20 descriptive examples of what I mean by damage categories. They were not

21 intended as exhaustive documentation on any given site.

22 If you wish, I can provide dates of destruction and sources of

23 photographs, but it will slow things down inevitably, because I will have

24 to look in the database. For the 178 entries, I have several hundred

25 photographs, and I don't have necessarily have in mind the date for each

Page 7302

1 one.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, maybe it would be

3 easier, every time we see a picture on the screen, maybe you could tell

4 us that the information is in the report on such-and-such a page, and

5 then we will be able to read the additional information provided in

6 support of what the witness is saying.

7 For instance, the photograph we see in front of us, where we have

8 documents 04692979 and following which relate to this.

9 MR. MUNDIS: We will endeavour to do that, and perhaps during the

10 next break my colleague will annotate the slide show for me so that we

11 can provide that information to the Chamber with respect to each picture.

12 But, again, as Mr. Riedlmayer has said, all of this information is

13 contained in the database. But we will endeavour to put that

14 information, the page number --

15 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] All right. Please proceed.

16 MR. MUNDIS: If we could, then, please go to the next example.

17 THE WITNESS: This is an example of a building that is almost

18 destroyed. The -- you can see once again that it has suffered multiple

19 damage. It's a Catholic Church in Stup, which is a suburb of Sarajevo,

20 in the Ilidza Municipality. The photos, I believe, were taken during the

21 war, and they come from published sources, and they show basically the

22 church is burned out, there is extensive damage to the steeple, and

23 there's damage also to the apse wall. I saw the church for the first

24 time in the summer after the end of the war. It was still an empty

25 shell. It has since been reconstructed.

Page 7303

1 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

2 Mr. Seselj, if he hasn't seen the document in the binder, we have

3 the photograph. This was taken by Kim Alagic [phoen] in 1992.

4 MR. MUNDIS:

5 Q. If you could perhaps then go, Mr. Riedlmayer, to the next

6 example.

7 A. This is a much more severe example. It's a mosque in the village

8 of Ahatovici, in the Sarajevo suburb of Novi Grad, and Novi Grad

9 Rajlovac; and you can see the massive stump of the minaret, identified as

10 such, and it is basically the only identifiable element left standing.

11 If you get the next slide, you can see what's left of the rest of

12 the mosque, which is not very much. You can see, in the left-hand side

13 of the rubble, a decorative column which came from the interior of the

14 mosque. You can also see that the surrounding houses are repaired, but

15 left standing.

16 Q. Now, can you explain to us, Mr. Riedlmayer, in light of the

17 extensive damage that we've seen in these last two photographs, how it is

18 that you've characterized these as "almost destroyed"?

19 A. "Almost destroyed" means there is still some identifiable element

20 of the building left above ground. The totally destroyed character means

21 just that, it means that it is either a shapeless mass of rubble or that

22 the rubble has been cleared and the site has been levelled, in which case

23 the only way you can identify that what was there before was a mosque, or

24 a church, or other kind of monument, is through supplementary

25 documentation, pre-war photos, extracts from cadastral registers, or

Page 7304

1 other information, and I'll show some examples.

2 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then please go to the next slide.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Just a minute. I would like to

4 keep the previous photograph on the screen, please.

5 For your information, Mr. Seselj, in the document we have

6 concerning this particular mosque, the expert refers to the testimony of

7 Mr. Ramiz Mujikic in the Krajisnik case, page 7947 of the transcript,

8 where the witness mentions this mosque. With this, you might be able to

9 find your way around the slide show.

10 Please proceed.

11 MR. MUNDIS: If we could go to the next slide.

12 Q. Now, can you start, Mr. Riedlmayer, by telling us about the

13 characteristics of this categorisation: "Completely destroyed"?

14 A. "Completely destroyed" is a building for which no identifiable

15 elements are left standing. In this case, the rubble is identifiable if

16 you know what the minaret looks like, but it's certainly not left

17 standing. It means that the building has been essentially razed and has

18 no potentially salvageable elements left.

19 This is a mosque in Donja Mi soca. It is a village in Ilijas,

20 one of the Sarajevo suburbs, and you can see there isn't really much

21 left, other than rubble.

22 Q. Can we perhaps go to the next example, please?

23 A. Okay. This is an example of a mosque of which really nothing is

24 left. It is the mosque in the centre of the town of Bosansk Samac, the

25 Aziziya Mosque built in the 19th century, and you can see the pre-war

Page 7305

1 photo at left. In the photo at right, the mosque stood where the large

2 garbage container is now standing. The tree to the left of the garbage

3 container, I believe, is the same as the tree in the photo before. It is

4 quite common for mosques in Bosnia to have a Linden tree or, as they call

5 it in Bosnia, "lipa," planted next to a mosque. It's traditional to do

6 that. Not only has the mosque been destroyed and the rubble removed, but

7 according to the Imam of the mosque, whom I interviewed and whose

8 statement is reproduced in the report, the Serb-controlled municipality

9 subsequently allowed buildings, like the purple one you see on the right,

10 to be -- to encroach on the site.

11 Q. If we could perhaps go to the next example.

12 A. Okay. This is an example of a building that I had to document

13 from cadastral registers. It is in the town of Nevesinje, which is in

14 Herzegovina, in the south of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is the Roman

15 Catholic Perish Church. It was also a registered monument, and it was

16 quite a lovely building. And you see a before picture published from a

17 photograph taken in the 1980s, and at the right you see the church

18 itself. It's the one building with the cross on it. There's a set of

19 stairs coming down, and a crooked line is a stone wall which you will see

20 on the next picture.

21 The next picture was taken from roughly where the label on the

22 street is, so slightly to the left of the church. You can see the

23 stone wall and the empty site of the church. So the church, according to

24 my informant, who is again quoted in the report, the parish priest

25 himself who used to be the priest of this church, was destroyed in 1992

Page 7306

1 with explosives and the rubble taken out of town. And since then, a road

2 has been constructed partway through the site. You can see it behind the

3 wall there, leading to the town hospital behind the site.

4 Q. And when was this photograph taken?

5 A. This is a photograph I took in July of 1992.

6 Q. Perhaps we have time before the break for one more example. If

7 we could go to the next slide, please.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Judges, may we have the

9 previous photograph put back on the screens so that we can see that same

10 wall by the church while the church was still standing and not destroyed.

11 I don't remember having seen the wall. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd like

12 to see the picture.

13 So where's the wall here?

14 THE WITNESS: Right in the bottom half of the picture, near the

15 midline. There's a set of stairs coming down from the church to the

16 street, and then a dotted line coming around. I believe that is it. The

17 straight lines are property lines.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please, don't show me excerpts from

19 the land registry, but on the photograph, where is the wall on the

20 photograph? Don't refer to the sketch.

21 THE WITNESS: Okay. On the photograph, you cannot see it. What

22 you can see in front of the church is the beginnings of the stairs which

23 head down from it, but the wall would be below the picture.

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] But in the cadastral plan, there

25 are no walls around the church. The plot is marked. Those lines mark

Page 7307

1 the boundaries of the plot. The wall would have been marked in a

2 different way. There probably were some stairs in front of the church,

3 but the wall is not here either.

4 I'm not challenging that this church might have been destroyed,

5 but you can't now present something that is not evidence taken at the

6 site.

7 MR. MUNDIS: Mr. President, with all due respect, these are all

8 issues that could be raised during cross-examination.

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, these are typically

10 questions that you should ask during the cross-examination. We noted

11 that there is a wall, that on the picture here we hardly see this wall.

12 Fine.

13 Let's move on.

14 MR. MUNDIS: Please go to the final example and then we'll take

15 the first break.

16 Q. Can you tell us about this slide, Mr. Riedlmayer?

17 A. This is a case where you can still see the foundations, but the

18 building is gone. The grainy black-and-white photo at left is a

19 published photo taken before the war of the new mosque, Dzedid Dzamija in

20 the town of Janja near Bijeljina. It was one of two mosques in Janja,

21 which were both destroyed in 1993. And at right of the photo, I took a

22 photograph of the foundations. You can get some scale of it from the

23 people standing at right. In many cases, the foundation was no longer

24 there, but in this case you can tell that these were the dimensions of

25 the building before it was destroyed.

Page 7308

1 I again have statements from the local Islamic community, who

2 were present in town when the mosque was destroyed, according to their

3 account, by an explosion and the rubble removed.

4 MR. MUNDIS: I actually misspoke, Your Honours. If I could, I

5 have one more example, and then that would actually be the best place to

6 take the first break. So if we could go to the next slide.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. One last example,

8 please.

9 THE WITNESS: Yes, this is --

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, let us go back to

11 this photograph.

12 You can see the contour of the hill behind this mosque, that's

13 what it looks like to me, and here the hills seem to have been razed to

14 the ground, not only the mosque. We can see some other buildings here,

15 and you can see the contours of the hill on the other photograph.

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, it is true that the

17 photograph you took here on the right-hand side is such that you can't

18 compare anything with the photo on the left-hand side. That's obvious.

19 The new buildings were not there at the time. The environment has

20 changed. Now, maybe on this day, it was sunny and you could really see

21 the hills in the background, but the photograph on the right does not

22 seem to correspond to the photograph on the left.

23 THE WITNESS: Okay. Your Honour, what you describe as a hill is

24 actually an artefact. It comes from a book with rather thin pages. Up

25 near the minaret, you can see the lines of writing showing through from

Page 7309

1 the previous page, and what you take to be a hill is actually an

2 illustration on the previous page showing through. Janja is a town in

3 the Semberija plain. It has no hills, it is a very flat area. And

4 unfortunately, I had to work with whatever documentation I could find.

5 This was the only pre-war published photo I could find of this mosque.

6 If I'd been able to find better documentation, I would have included it.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] In your document, you say that

8 Mr. Salko Basevic, president of the Islamic Community, who told you this?

9 THE WITNESS: Yes.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] And this supposedly has been

11 destroyed in May 1993?

12 THE WITNESS: Yes.

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

14 MR. MUNDIS: If we could just very quickly look at the next and

15 final example from the slide show of complete "Completely destroyed."

16 Q. Could you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what is depicted in this

17 photograph?

18 A. I just wanted to include an example where all you could really

19 find, there was no more foundation present, and all you could really find

20 was traces of the foundation which you could look at through differences

21 in the colour of the ground, in the type of vegetation, and you could

22 actually outline the building that way, because the building has been

23 completely destroyed and the rubble removed. This was the mosque in

24 Gornji Sepak, a village north of Zvornik, and as you can see, there

25 wasn't much visible left of it. I would have had trouble finding it, had

Page 7310

1 I not had the guidance of the local imam.

2 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. This would be an

3 appropriate time, Your Honours.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Let's take a

5 20-minute break.

6 --- Recess taken at 10.06 a.m.

7 --- On resuming at 10.28 a.m.

8 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, you have the floor.

9 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

10 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, before turning to the next part of the slides,

11 can you please, if it's possible, give us some numerical conclusions

12 regarding your report and your findings, in terms of overall destruction?

13 A. Yes. So you will recall the five categories of damage. In the

14 survey, we -- the survey included a total of 101 mosques, which was the

15 largest category of monuments, out of which only ten were lightly

16 damaged. The rest were either severely damaged or destroyed.

17 In -- with regard to Catholic churches, the percentages were

18 similar, but the numbers were somewhat smaller, given that the Catholics

19 are a smaller minority, and in some of the municipalities, such as

20 Zvornik, they are not represented. Out of 27 Catholic churches, 6

21 Catholic monasteries, one seminary and sundry other Catholic structures,

22 82 per cent had been severely damaged or destroyed. Is that enough?

23 Q. Yes, thank you. Now, if we could then please then go to the next

24 slide, and I'd like to ask you, sir, if you were able to gather any kind

25 of information from your site visits and documentation concerning damage.

Page 7311

1 A. Yes. So in addition to the documentary evidence which I've

2 already cited, such as photographs, or informant statements, or cadastral

3 registers and so forth, I, of course also relied on the evidence of my

4 eyes, especially during the site visits, which in many cases was

5 sufficient to allow me to make certain common-sense conclusions about

6 these buildings.

7 Q. And if you could also now, looking at the slide that we currently

8 see -- could you please tell us what -- read the caption so that

9 Dr. Seselj can understand what this shows?

10 A. The text at left says: "The clues gathered from the damage."

11 Q. And can you tell us, sir, this photograph that we see, what does

12 this depict?

13 A. All right. This is the stump of a minaret, the base of a

14 minaret, in the village of Ravne, south of Zvornik, in the Kamenica

15 Valley. What you're looking at is a stump roughly two metres high. I

16 stood next to it, and it was a little taller than me. And what is

17 characteristic about it is the kind of damage it has suffered.

18 MR. MUNDIS: I'll ask you about that in just a moment.

19 Your Honours, if you go to ERN page 0469-2781 in the annex

20 containing the database, there's information concerning this mosque.

21 Q. Do you know, Mr. Riedlmayer, when this photograph was taken?

22 A. I believe this is a photograph that was taken in 2002. I'd have

23 to double-check. What was the number again?

24 Q. 0469-2781.

25 A. Oh, yes. Okay. This was taken in May of 2002, by an ICTY

Page 7312

1 investigator. I visited the same site in July of 2002 and saw much the

2 same, but I liked this photo because of what it shows.

3 Q. And before we turn to this minaret --

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes. Expert, please, you said

5 something in passing which attracted my attention. You said that this

6 picture had been taken by an investigator of the OTP. Is this what you

7 said?

8 THE WITNESS: Yes.

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Were you there also when the

10 picture was taken?

11 THE WITNESS: I was not there when this picture was taken. I was

12 there two months later, however, and saw the same thing.

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well, thank you.

14 If one day you do another expert report for I don't know whom,

15 normally the expert should take the picture, in order to make sure that

16 no one can think that the person taking the picture is taking it under a

17 certain angle for some reasons.

18 THE WITNESS: In my report, Your Honour, you will see an

19 extensive appendix on the various sources of information. The photos I

20 took were only a subset of that information. I acquired photos and other

21 information from other sources judged to be reliable. All sources are

22 indicated.

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

24 Mr. Mundis.

25 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

Page 7313

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, I'm

2 asking you to order Mr. Mundis that every time he tells you, the Trial

3 Chamber, at what page the information about the destroyed building is

4 concerned is to be found, to tell me the reference in Serbian, because I

5 can't leaf through this binder every time. And the Prosecutor is not

6 examining the witness following the same order, so I can't find it. It

7 is not in the order that it is listed here.

8 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, when you're giving

9 a page, give us a number. And since the text is in English, please read

10 it in English so that the interpreters can translate.

11 MR. MUNDIS: I will do the best I can, Mr. President. Obviously,

12 we're trying to move as expeditiously as possible, but I will endeavour

13 to provide that. Of course, these slides were given to Mr. Seselj

14 yesterday, so that he did have time to compare the slides to the report,

15 but I will do what I can.

16 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, before we turn --

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, the

18 Prosecutor cannot say that I had enough time to study this, if this was

19 disclosed to me yesterday. I planned to study this in the two and a half

20 hours that I waited here for the transportation. Had I been on time, I

21 would perhaps have been able to study it, but I don't want to study

22 anything that is in the English language. It is at the sink -- in the

23 sink in my cell. That's where I left it. I have to get the reference

24 where the description is in the attachment to the report in the Serbian

25 language, because all the buildings are listed here related to the

Page 7314

1 relevant locations, but the Prosecutor is not examining the witness in

2 the same order in which they are put here.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, Mr. Mundis said he

4 will endeavour to meet your request. He will give you, in his own

5 language, elements of information, and it will be translated into your

6 language by the interpreters.

7 As for yesterday, it is true that you did have to wait

8 extensively before going back to your cell, but that was because of the

9 fire in the jail. You were not the only one in this situation.

10 Furthermore, at my request, the Registry have given me a table

11 giving us, since the beginning of the case, when you arrived and when you

12 left the Tribunal. I have it here in detail, and I haven't had time yet

13 to check exactly what happened, to see whether at any point in time you

14 were asked to wait a bit too long. I haven't had time to do this yet,

15 but I will do this as soon as I can.

16 Mr. Mundis, please proceed.

17 MR. MUNDIS:

18 Q. Before returning to this -- the remains of this minaret,

19 Mr. Riedlmayer, can you just tell us a little bit about what a minaret is

20 and what it symbolizes? What's the symbolic value of a minaret?

21 A. A minaret is a tall, slim steeple. It is located next to a

22 mosque. It is used to signal the times of prayer. It is usually a

23 hollow structure with a circular stairwell inside. The person who

24 announces the call of the prayer, the mujezin, climbs up the stairs and

25 goes out on a balcony and recites the call to prayer.

Page 7315

1 Symbolically in a community, a minaret is often the tallest

2 object in the village or in the neighbourhood, and it symbolizes several

3 things, even to non-observant Muslims, it signals the presence of a

4 Muslim community. To religious Muslims, it symbolizes many things,

5 amongst which it points towards heaven and symbolizes the oneness of God.

6 So ...

7 Q. Can you tell us, sir, a little bit about how minarets are

8 typically constructed in Bosnia-Herzegovina?

9 A. One has to distinguish between the minarets of traditional

10 buildings, which are built out of stone or brick, and more modern

11 minarets, which tend to be built with reinforced concrete. This is a

12 fairly modern mosque and was built with the iron reinforcing rods of

13 reinforced concrete.

14 Q. How do you know that, sir?

15 A. If you look carefully at the photo, you will see the rods are

16 still there. They are bent and dangling down. If you look near the top,

17 you can see that each of the strips of masonry is hanging down from one

18 or more bent iron rods. What you see facing towards you is what used to

19 be the inside facing of the minaret.

20 MR. MUNDIS: Perhaps if we could pull up -- we have another still

21 of this photograph which bears ERN number -- or 65 ter number 00463B,

22 00463B. It's the same photograph. We're unable to have the witness

23 mark, Your Honours, electronically on the Powerpoint slides. This is the

24 same slide, and I'm going to ask the witness if he can make some

25 markings.

Page 7316

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, I have

2 to repeat an objection that I've already made.

3 After a while, I have been able to find the information about

4 this mosque that was destroyed, and it says here that the mosque was

5 destroyed in February 1993. The conflict in Zvornik started on the

6 6th -- or, rather, the 8th of April and lasted until the 26th of April,

7 1992.

8 This is a public trial, and in the interests of the public it is

9 very important to stress this information, to present the information.

10 If the expert has this information, and obviously he does in this case,

11 it has to be noted in accordance with the data available to the expert.

12 The mosque was destroyed in February of 1993, that should be enough, but

13 you have to see my point of view.

14 I cannot, in my cross-examination, deal with each and every

15 building that was destroyed individually. I don't have the technical

16 capabilities as the Prosecution has. The examination-in-chief has to put

17 the basic information in, and the most important information is when the

18 building was destroyed. Some of the buildings were destroyed after the

19 Dayton Peace Agreement was signed, and that's what the expert says,

20 himself, in his report.

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, let me answer what

22 you said.

23 During a trial, we have the Prosecution that has its own

24 witnesses, and then you have your own Defence witnesses. During the

25 examination-in-chief of a Prosecution witness, unless major objection,

Page 7317

1 the accused and his counsel will say nothing and wait for the

2 cross-examination. During the cross-examination, you can challenge the

3 Prosecutor's case on this specific point that you just raised.

4 You are right, the building, as it is and as mentioned, was

5 destroyed by explosives and razed to the ground in February 1993, after

6 April 1992, which is when the fighting occurred in Zvornik and around

7 Zvornik. So here there may be a problem. But during cross-examination,

8 without going into details, you can say, in passing, that regarding this

9 building, there is a problem, since the expert said that the building was

10 destroyed in February 1993. This is all you should do. But if you keep

11 raising objections over and over again during the examination-in-chief,

12 when the Prosecutor is putting forward his case, just objecting that you

13 cannot defend yourself alone because you have no help and so forth and so

14 on, this is not a valid objection, and Mr. Mundis is right to reply in

15 the way he replies.

16 It is true you're in a difficult situation. You're

17 self-representing yourself and assuring your own defence, and you're

18 probably flooded with thousands and millions of documents. I understand

19 that you have to get ready, you have to prepare. It is true you have

20 other things going on. I fully understand that. Everything is very

21 complicated. We're fully aware of the fact, and maybe this is why other

22 Trial Chambers had decided to appoint a counsel for you. But you're

23 self-representing yourself. The Trial Chamber has recognised this right,

24 and we understand that this self-representation entails difficulties.

25 Fine.

Page 7318

1 Mr. Mundis, please, could you please move on.

2 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

3 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, if you could take the electronic pen that's

4 attached to the screen. And, sir, you were telling us a few moments ago

5 about the structure of this minaret as it was constructed, and I'm asking

6 you now if you're able or in a position to make any markings on this

7 photograph that would help explain that.

8 A. I will do my best. I will do what I can.

9 Imagine the minaret having walls like this going up [marks], and

10 the structure is held up by iron rods which before the destruction stuck

11 up like that [marks]. They enclose a hollow space in which there is a

12 circular stairwell. The entrance was on the other side, and there were

13 steps going up.

14 At some point, a blast occurred within that enclosure of the iron

15 rods, bending them outwards and breaking them, and then the weight of the

16 attached masonry pulled the remaining rods downwards, almost like a

17 wilted flower, in a circular pattern [marks]. I don't pretend to be a

18 munitions expert, but I think this is a common-sense conclusion, that

19 there would have been an explosion placed at some distance up the steps,

20 because there is almost two metres of the minaret still left standing.

21 So I concluded from this that this minaret was destroyed by explosives

22 being placed within it.

23 And I don't know if it's my place to note it, but in fact, while

24 the fighting in the town in Zvornik did occur in April of 1992, this

25 particular mosque, as several other mosques in my survey, were in the

Page 7319

1 Kamenica Valley south of Zvornik, which saw continued fighting into 1993.

2 So it's not correct that the fighting in this area had stopped by 1993.

3 I know this from my reading of standard sources on the conflict.

4 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, this photo that you've depicted, where, as you've

5 described it, a wilted flower or a wilting flower, those concrete

6 reinforcing bars, are they visible in this photograph?

7 A. Yes. You can see them quite clearly between these two lines

8 here, for example [marks]. You can see several bent bars.

9 Q. Okay. Can you please mark that area that you've just encircled

10 or --

11 A. [Marks]

12 Q. Can you please now to the side draw the number 1 next to that?

13 A. [Marks]

14 Q. And the concrete or the original structure, the lines that you've

15 drawn, can you please mark a "2" next to those?

16 A. [Marks]

17 Q. And with respect to what you've described as the bars in a wilted

18 flower, can you please indicate that with the number 3?

19 A. [Marks]

20 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you. We would ask that this be admitted into

21 evidence, this marked photograph, please.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Registrar, could we have a

23 number.

24 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit number P444.

25 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then please go back to the slide show.

Page 7320

1 If we could go back to Sanction, please, Mr. Registrar.

2 Q. And, again, for the benefit of the Chamber, this photograph or

3 this structure is described on page 0469-2719, and the information

4 therein indicates this photograph was taken in July 1990. And the

5 Serbian version, we're just pulling up --

6 While we're doing that perhaps, Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us

7 about this building and the conclusions you reached?

8 A. Yes. This is the old mosque or the Ljubovic Mosque in the

9 village of Odzak, south of Nevesinje. It's an 18th century mosque. The

10 pre-war photo comes from a dated publication, a magazine, published in

11 1990. It is a frontal view of the mosque. It is a little deceptive,

12 because what you see up front is the low roof of a portico, a porch, that

13 comes down almost to a man's height, and then in front a white line is a

14 wall in front of it. Many of the older mosques in Bosnia have an

15 overflow area in front of the door which is used on major holidays or on

16 Fridays, when there is an overflow congregation, and they extend the roof

17 in order to provide shelter from the weather. So that's the pre-war

18 photo.

19 Next to it is a document that I obtained from the former chief

20 imam of the Islamic community in Nevesinje. It is a copy of a memorandum

21 that he sent to the commander of the JNA at the time that this particular

22 mosque was destroyed in 1991, and the 25th of September.

23 This is a photo that I took of the same mosque in the summer of

24 2002. You can see the same supports of the sloping roof, and you can see

25 that the minaret and the entire mosque behind the front wall is

Page 7321

1 completely gone. You see also a few large blocks of stone up front. I

2 walked around the perimeter of the site and found huge stones from the

3 mosque, the size of this witness stand, thrown at a distance of 50 or

4 more metres away from it. So it was a very massive explosion. And from

5 the evidence of the remains, it appears that the explosion was within the

6 mosque, rather than in front of it.

7 According to the memorandum from the imam, the mosque was

8 destroyed by JNA reservists who were on their way to the fighting in

9 Croatia in 1991. The war in Bosnia had not officially gotten underway

10 yet, and this was one of the first monuments that was attacked.

11 JUDGE HARHOFF: And when was that?

12 THE WITNESS: This was 25 September 1991.

13 JUDGE HARHOFF: Thank you.

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. The question of

15 relevance must be raised here. What does this have to do with the

16 indictment against me, what does this have to do with the role of the

17 Serbian Radical Party? The witness himself has told you that this was

18 before the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He said that the JNA

19 reservists were passing through in the night between the 23rd and the

20 24th of September, 1991. That was during the war for Serbian Krajina,

21 and there was no fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis.

23 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honour, it certainly goes to the issue of a

24 pattern of conduct or -- and it goes to the contextual elements in which

25 the indictment was raised. Perhaps this type of objection would be

Page 7322

1 better placed when we get to the point where I will be tendering the

2 entire report into evidence, and I can address Your Honours then as to

3 any of the specific examples contained in the report itself.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Please continue.

5 MR. MUNDIS: My case manager, Your Honours, is endeavouring, to

6 the best of her ability sitting here, to try to locate the corresponding

7 Serbian language pages of the annex, and I will tell you, with all

8 transparency, that in realtime it's not going to be possible for us to do

9 that. If it's important for the accused to have the Serbian language

10 page numbers of the annex with respect to the dates of the photographs,

11 then I'm going to ask for a recess in order to allow us to go through the

12 multiple hundred-page -- hundreds of pages of annexes and pull up the

13 Serbian language page numbers. So if the Chamber directs us to provide

14 that information in realtime as we go along, I am going to be forced to

15 ask for a recess in order to do that.

16 I've got -- I'm approximately halfway done with the slides, so I

17 don't want to continue having objections about the information that

18 Dr. Seselj says he needs, but I cannot sort through this myself, standing

19 here in court. So I'm in the Trial Chamber's hands, but those would seem

20 to be --

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Continue, continue as you

22 started. We will assess this on a case-by-case basis.

23 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then go to the next slide. This is

24 contained in the English version of the annex at page 0469-2784, and

25 according to the information contained therein, this photograph or these

Page 7323

1 photographs were taken in July 2002.

2 Q. Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what's depicted in these two

3 photographs?

4 A. Yes. This is another mosque in the Kamenica Valley, south of

5 Zvornik, Zvornik Municipality. It is in a village called Redzici, and it

6 is quite plain, what you're looking at. It is a somewhat older mosque

7 made out of stone, and the mosque is burned out. Even from the photos,

8 you can see that it is missing its roof and the interior is empty. I

9 actually went inside, and I saw charred room timbers. The distinguishing

10 feature here is that the stone minaret is not only decapitated, and you

11 can see the signs of a blast simply not only from missing stonework but

12 from the large fissure in the stone work, but the cap of the minaret, the

13 balcony, landed inside the stump. And, you know, again, you have to

14 conclude that this happened through some fairly major blast.

15 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you.

16 JUDGE HARHOFF: Mr. Riedlmayer, I'd be grateful if you would just

17 give us two pieces of information in relation to each of these pictures;

18 namely, when was the church or the mosque destroyed, and when was the

19 photo taken?

20 THE WITNESS: Okay. The photo was taken during my fieldwork in

21 July of 2002. And according to the statement from the informant who

22 accompanied me to this, the former head imam of the main mosque in

23 Zvornik, the mosque was damaged by shelling in June of 1992 and was

24 destroyed in October 1992, when this particular village fell to the Serb

25 forces.

Page 7324

1 JUDGE HARHOFF: Thank you very much.

2 MR. MUNDIS: If we could please then go to the next slide, and

3 this corresponds to page -- the ERN number is 0469-2977. And again,

4 Mr. Riedlmayer, if you can explain to us what is depicted here, taking

5 into consideration the information that Judge Harhoff has also requested,

6 please.

7 A. The photograph at the left is a pre-war photo. It was taken in

8 1980, and it comes from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an organisation

9 based in Geneva, which awarded the restoration of the old town of Mostar

10 with the Aga Khan award in 1980. What it shows is the mosque of Koski

11 Mehmed Pasha. It is the largest and most visible mosque in the old town

12 centre of Mostar. The picture was taken from very near the famous Old

13 Bridge in Mostar, and it is from almost but not quite the same angle of

14 view as the second photo.

15 The second photo was taken in August of 1992 by a professional

16 photographer named Paul Harris, who then published it in a volume of his

17 photographs entitled: "Cry Bosnia." The sources are indicated in the

18 bibliography entry to the database entry.

19 The difference between the points of view is merely that in the

20 pre-war photo, the photographer was standing higher up at the edge of the

21 ravine, whereas in the post-war photo he was a little bit lower down, and

22 so you see a little more of the mountain behind. But otherwise, it's a

23 very similar angle. And since it was August of 1992, we know the damage

24 had to come from the first siege of Mostar.

25 What you see is that the mosque has been impacted several times

Page 7325

1 by projectiles. The minaret has been cut off near the base. There are

2 several holes through the wall of the mosque and through the dome, and at

3 least one of the nearby buildings has also been hit.

4 Next slide. Okay. These are two close-up views from a volume of

5 documentation on damage to the architecture at Mostar, published in 1992

6 by the Federation of Architects of Mostar. The photograph at the left is

7 the base of the minaret. You can see where it has been sheared off, and

8 next to it you can also see the entrance, portico, and part of it has

9 been caved in either by the projectile or the falling masonry. You would

10 enter the mosque through that portico, and at right is the image within

11 the mosque. You can see the hole in the dome and one of the holes in the

12 walls of the mosque, and you can see the considerable damage it has

13 already suffered through rain and other elements coming in. The dark

14 areas spreading near the holes indicate the damp damage. So this is a

15 monument that I called "heavily damaged" in the categorisation.

16 Q. And just so we're clear, Mr. Riedlmayer, this mosque that's

17 depicted on this slide is the same mosque that we saw in the previous

18 slides from across the river?

19 A. Absolutely.

20 Q. If we could then go to the next slide. This --

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Judges, I really cannot follow

22 this. It's quite impossible. I have to be given the page in Serbian,

23 because I just spend all my time leafing through and I still can't find

24 it, and I haven't managed to find this last mosque. Now, if you consider

25 that I don't need to follow this, I'll take my headset off and let

Page 7326

1 matters take their course.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, the accused has the

3 binder, like we do. The photograph we have before us has a page number

4 in the binder, so please give us this number. Just specify that the

5 photograph is in the binder, give us a page number, and, Mr. Seselj, in

6 the binder you turn to the page number in question.

7 What is the page number?

8 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honour, are you referring to the Registry page

9 number on the top of these pages?

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes, the number which is on the

11 page.

12 MR. MUNDIS: Okay. Well, the slide, Your Honours, we're now

13 showing is page 39 in the Serbian version.

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I don't understand. In the

15 binder, there are numbers, the pages are numbered, so give him the page

16 number in Serbian.

17 MR. MUNDIS: It's page number 39 in the e-court version, and the

18 page number -- the hard page number is page 633/12459 ter. The top

19 right-hand corner. The English version of this slide on the left bears

20 ERN number 0469-2584, and the photo on the right bears ERN

21 number 0469-2583.

22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, as far as I'm

23 concerned, page 633 was sufficient information. I found it straight

24 away. That's all I need the Prosecutor to tell me, just the page in the

25 Serbian version. And as soon as he said, "Page 633," I found it straight

Page 7327

1 away, and that's the simplest way to do it, as far as I'm concerned.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Well, if you had said,

3 "Page 583," personally I would --

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] "533" in my book.

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] So the pages are not numbered

6 the same way in English and in B/C/S.

7 MR. MUNDIS: No, they're not.

8 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] That's right. Well, yes, of

9 course. So please give us the number in B/C/S, please, the B/C/S page

10 number.

11 MR. MUNDIS: We will again endeavour to do that, to the extent we

12 can.

13 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, looking at the two photos on the screen in front

14 of you, can you tell us, sir, what is depicted in these photographs,

15 again keeping in mind the information Judge Harhoff requested?

16 A. Okay. The two photos both come from the president of the Islamic

17 Community of Janja, Mr. Salko Basevic, whom I interviewed in July of

18 2002. The left-hand photo was taken before the war. It shows the Atik

19 Dzamija or old mosque in the center of Janja. You will note two

20 characteristic features. One is the gate house at the left and the other

21 one is the rhombus-shaped window on the mosque. The photograph on the

22 right was taken in April of 1993, and it shows the mosque the morning

23 after it was blown up, and it shows, first of all, the great amount of

24 rubble in front. In the back, you can see part of the wall, but the

25 minaret is gone. But you can still see the rhombus-shaped windows. You

Page 7328

1 can also see the force of the blast sheared off the top of the tall tree

2 in front of the mosque. And at the far right of the picture, you can see

3 a yellow bulldozer in the act of clearing the rubble.

4 Q. On the slide that's now --

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. I'd like us to remain

6 on this slide. Don't let them move on, because the Prosecutor wants to

7 keep something back, and nothing should be kept back from the public.

8 Look at the end of the text. The witness says here that he heard

9 that the destruction of this mosque was the act of extremist part of the

10 police force called "The Panthers," whom members we saw on the streets,

11 and their commander was Major Mauser, and he asked by the 15th of April,

12 all Muslims leave Bijeljina. So we're talking about 1993 here, one year

13 after the battle for Bijeljina.

14 And I would like to remind you, Mr. President, when you were the

15 Pre-Trial Judge, and previously when other Judges took your place, I

16 asked that under 68(1) I be disclosed all the Ljubisa Mauser, Panthers

17 documents, who was the vice-prime minister of Djindjic in his party and

18 set up the party in Republika Srpska and for the Serbian guards of

19 Vuk Draskovic, and I still haven't been disclosed that material, and for

20 the public, the Prosecutor has to state that because I am being held

21 accountable for that crime, so I have to intervene.

22 This is not a question for cross-examination, I am not going to

23 deal with it in cross-examination, I have a different concept for my

24 cross-examination, but the Prosecutor must not hide or keep back

25 important facts. The witness has just indicated the perpetrator of a

Page 7329

1 crime, according to what the local said, the imam of the mosque or

2 whoever. I can't be specific on that point. I can't find it now, but

3 anyway, and the public is left with the impression that I destroyed that

4 mosque, and you must believe me when I say that I did not.

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, according to the

6 witness, this was destroyed by the Panthers of this famous Mauser.

7 Mr. Seselj had already asked, and I remember this, to have everything

8 relating to this group of individuals disclosed to him. Was this done,

9 was this not done? I know nothing about this. You have attributed this

10 destruction to him.

11 As I said yesterday, when I commented on the indictment, I said

12 to Mr. Seselj that he could be held responsible for crimes committed by

13 others, insofar as these other individuals were part of the same criminal

14 enterprise as he was. I don't know whether this group was part of the

15 criminal enterprise or not. But Mr. Seselj is challenging this. He is

16 saying that this was done by others that have nothing to do with him.

17 This is my first question.

18 The documents relating to Mauser's Panthers, were these documents

19 disclosed to him?

20 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honour, I'm not in a position to answer that

21 question right now. I would certainly make the inquiries.

22 I would ask, with all due respect, that these interventions by

23 the accused be stopped. This has to do very little with this witness and

24 his testimony. We are trying to move through this expert's report as

25 expeditiously as possible. The issues raised by the accused, with

Page 7330

1 respect to disclosure, is a matter that could be dealt with a little bit

2 later, and the argumentation that he puts forward concerning the Panthers

3 is certainly something that is not appropriately done at this stage of

4 the proceedings.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please --

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Without going into the

7 substance of this, who did what? In your expert report, you mentioned an

8 article which was published in "Newsday" in New York. This article

9 describes what happened. Did you look into the matter, did you try to

10 understand who did what, or did you not deal with that?

11 THE WITNESS: I included any firsthand news reports, mainly to

12 settle issues as to when something was destroyed. It was really not in

13 my competence to carry out investigations about individual parties

14 responsible. And I will note that the information I got from Mr. Basevic

15 is all on the very first page. That's page 583. The rest of the

16 information, one is a piece of witness testimony from a transcript in the

17 Milosevic trial, and there are three excerpts from news reports. The

18 Gottman [phoen] article from "Newsday" is significant mainly for noting

19 that as of February 1993, the mosque was still standing, and the ones by

20 the reporters from the "London Independent" and the "Washington Post"

21 show that by the first week of May, it was no longer standing. That was

22 my main goal in including those.

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

24 Mr. Seselj, the Prosecutor seems to want to establish for the

25 time being that this was destroyed. For the time being, the witness will

Page 7331

1 not talk about who has destroyed it. You could have raised your

2 objections during your cross-examination. This is another issue.

3 This witness is coming here today to say that the mosques have

4 been destroyed, full stop. He doesn't know who has destroyed these

5 mosques.

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I say something, Mr. President?

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] [Previous translation

9 continues] ... here that no article is quoted. It is a television

10 programme, in fact, by journalist -- his name is G.B. Rado from

11 Independent Television news, and he is reporting from the town at the

12 point in time when the mosque is being destroyed. And you can see that

13 mayor of Bijeljina, Jovan Vojnovic, a Serb, at the end explains to him

14 that he learned about the plans to destroy the mosque in advance and that

15 he was opposed to them. And then he said, with the sounds of a bulldozer

16 in the background, he speaks of the impossibility of him doing anything.

17 And this is a component part of the expert report.

18 The expert report must necessarily contain information about each

19 of the religious buildings, who destroyed it and when, and we don't have

20 that information for each of these buildings.

21 And secondly bear in mind that Zoran Djindjic and Ljubisa Savic

22 Mauser are not mentioned in any indictment as participants in the joint

23 criminal enterprise. Had it said that Slobodan Milosevic had destroyed

24 this mosque, since I am part of the joint criminal enterprise, accused of

25 such with him, then I would be responsible with him and instead of him

Page 7332

1 now. But as it says that Mauser did that, then Djindjic cannot respond,

2 nor can Mauser. They were never in a joint criminal enterprise, and I

3 can't be held responsible for the two of them. Although they don't

4 exist, but find someone, a third person, who will be held accountable for

5 Djindjic's and Mauser's crimes.

6 So this objection is rather complex. It has to do with

7 relevance. When something is irrelevant, then I have the right to

8 intervene at any point.

9 Secondly, it has to do with the comprehensiveness of this expert

10 report. This expert isn't an author and just travelogue and describes

11 what he just saw, but he enters into an analysis of what was destroyed

12 and who destroyed it. Sometimes he's successful and sometimes he's not.

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] When you take the floor, it's

14 an avalanche of issues you raise now, one cannot prevent you from

15 defending yourself, so I have to state things as they stand.

16 This expert report was disclosed to your experts, who are present

17 in the courtroom today. What you have just said you could have mentioned

18 in the submissions you filed after having received this expert report, so

19 it is needless to repeat what has been said all right.

20 We know the public at large, of course, doesn't know that this

21 has been mentioned in your submissions, but then wait for the

22 cross-examination.

23 You mentioned this third point. You reproach the expert who is

24 sitting in front of us for not having looked into the issue of who did

25 what. His assignment at the time was not to say who had done what. He

Page 7333

1 was there to see what had happened. He was not there to authenticate the

2 perpetrators. If it's Mr. Mauser who is responsible, this was not --

3 this is not part of the examination-in-chief of this witness. That is

4 another issue.

5 I understand that you mention your responsibility in the matter,

6 which is perfectly understandable, but choose the right witness. This

7 witness cannot say who did what. He went there, he took photographs, he

8 spoke to people, but he did not conduct any investigations of a police or

9 judicial nature, so he can't say who did what. He just, as you can see

10 on reading his report, compiled a series of articles, wrote down what one

11 or another person told him, and that's all he did. We will have to admit

12 or not admit his expert report.

13 As far as we are concerned, the only important issue is this: On

14 the basis of the information provided in the report and the questions put

15 by the Prosecutor, the answers provided by the witness, the questions put

16 by you and the answers provided by the witness again, will this warrant

17 the admission of his report and the annexes. It is not a matter of

18 trying to understand who did what. This issue will be addressed with

19 other witnesses at another point in time.

20 Mr. Mundis, can you confirm that this witness is here today to

21 only talk about the fact that mosques and churches were destroyed; he's

22 not here today to say X, Y, Z has done this?

23 MR. MUNDIS: The witness explained the taskings he was given.

24 The Trial Chamber will be asked, at the end of all the evidence in this

25 case, to reach the ultimate decisions that must be made, based on all the

Page 7334

1 evidence they've heard. That would include this expert's report. That

2 would include this expert's testimony, in our respectful views.

3 But we again -- as the Presiding Judge just indicated, we need to

4 be moving forward and focusing on all of the evidence. And if this is

5 not the right witness to be putting certain things to, then we should not

6 allow that to happen. What we're trying to do is move as expeditiously

7 as possible.

8 I would ask that the interventions and objections of the accused

9 be subtracted from his cross-examination time.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, I must be very

11 watchful here and watch what Mr. Seselj is doing, but I need to watch

12 over you, too.

13 I have put to you a very clear question, and you did not answer

14 my question. This is my question: This is an expert witness. Is he

15 here today to come and testify about the destructions that occurred in

16 churches and mosques, and is not here to talk about the perpetrators of

17 these destructions? And I await your answer.

18 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honour, the witness, in his report, has cited

19 to information concerning the destruction of these buildings and, in some

20 instances, the perpetrators. The Trial Chamber can give that information

21 whatever weight it deems necessary, after hearing all of the evidence.

22 It may be that at the end of the trial, when all the evidence is in, some

23 of the cited material that Mr. Riedlmayer cites to concerning the

24 perpetrators the Chamber will give no weight to.

25 I'm not in a position to say what weight, if any, should be given

Page 7335

1 to the material cited to in his database or the annex, because we haven't

2 heard all the evidence yet.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Can you remind the Trial

4 Chamber what the exact field of expertise of this witness was? In other

5 words, a letter which was sent to him, asking him to provide this report,

6 what exactly did you ask of him?

7 MR. MUNDIS: The witness has explained that, Your Honour. He was

8 asked to look at the destruction of cultural property in the relevant

9 municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, relating to the indictment in

10 this case.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. He wasn't asked to

12 authenticate the perpetrators of these destructions.

13 MR. MUNDIS: No, he was not. During the course of his fieldwork,

14 as he's testified, a number of -- on a number of occasions information

15 was provided to him, and he has included that in the database. Whether

16 it was from an open source, whether it was from a journalist, whether it

17 was from a priest, whether it was from an imam, that information at the

18 end of the trial the Chamber may give some weight to, having heard all

19 the evidence in the case. But, of course, it's certainly hearsay with

20 respect to what people told him outside of the courtroom or what he read

21 in a contemporaneous media report or a book. But once you've heard all

22 of the evidence, the Chamber may then decide, "We'll give certain weight

23 to the database information or the report, but we'll give weight to other

24 things concerning the evidence." The primary thrust of the report

25 concerns the destruction of cultural property in the relevant locations

Page 7336

1 during the relevant time periods.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President and Judges, for each

4 of the destroyed or damaged buildings, the witness states who destroyed

5 it to the best of his knowledge. There are always second-hand,

6 third-hand, or fourth-hand stories but he says something everywhere in

7 all instances; and the most general formulation is Serb forces, that's

8 the term that is used, then extremists from amongst the Serb ranks, I

9 assume he means the buildings that were destroyed outside combat. Then

10 he mentions Mauser's Men or the Panther's, and in some places, he uses

11 the term "Arkan's men." He never says "Volunteers of the Serbian Radical

12 Party" or "Seselj's men." And you notice very well that an investigation

13 must be launched into who actually did destroy these buildings.

14 Now, the question is: Who is to conduct that investigation? Is

15 it up to the Prosecutor or is it only up to me? I am fully convinced

16 that it is only the Prosecutor who can conduct an investigation, because

17 I am not here to prove my innocence. I am protected by the presumption

18 of innocence, so it is up to the Prosecutor to prove and show evidence

19 that I destroyed these.

20 He did offer up certain evidence through this witness -- through

21 this expert report, but they're not sufficient, because we can see there

22 was never a real investigation. But they are an indicator. I know you

23 can't take this at face value, any of the observations by the expert as

24 to who did the destruction, but they could be indicators as to who could

25 be suspects or suspected of having destroyed these buildings, at the very

Page 7337

1 least. And now you expect in the Defence cross-examination for me to say

2 that I did not destroy mosques and churches. I'm not going to do that,

3 and in fact I'm reaching a decision not to present my Defence case at

4 all. I'll leave it up to the Prosecutor, what the Prosecutor says I did.

5 We'll leave it at that. I don't want to prove that I'm innocent.

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Expert, please, could you

7 please tell the Trial Chamber what was the purpose of your report? You

8 wrote this report, so you must know exactly what was the purpose of your

9 report. What was your assignment?

10 THE WITNESS: The purpose of my report was to provide information

11 on the destruction of cultural property in the designated municipalities,

12 with a focus on the cultural property of the Muslim and Roman Catholic

13 communities. This information would include information on the

14 buildings, when they were destroyed, in what state they were when I saw

15 them, and any other information that seemed relevant to the destruction

16 that I was able to gather from various sources during the course of my

17 investigation. Everything that I put into the database and into the

18 report is very carefully sourced, and I believe it is up to this Court to

19 evaluate that evidence.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I'll stop you here. It's like

21 hearing a representative of the OTP telling me, "It's up to you to

22 assess."

23 Line 2, page 70, you say:

24 " ... and any other information that may be relevant regarding

25 the destruction."

Page 7338

1 Does this mean -- does this sentence mean that this is the reason

2 why you mentioned identities or groups of people who, by hearsay, you

3 were told that they were the perpetrators of these destructions?

4 Please don't look at the OTP. Look at me, please. I'm asking

5 the question.

6 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour.

7 The assignment, as I saw it, was, first of all, to make sure that

8 any ruined building I saw had, in fact, been destroyed during the war and

9 hadn't been either demolished after the war or before the war. I

10 understood it to be important to establish when something was destroyed.

11 That was the general focus of it.

12 I will note, for example, that in the entry related to the mosque

13 on that picture, I never referred to perpetrators in any specific term.

14 If, however, in the course of my investigations I was told such

15 information, I noted it down, and I thought it would be up to the OTP if

16 it wanted to approach the witnesses or take formal depositions. That is

17 not my role. I understood that, but I also felt that any information

18 that I received that seemed to be substantive, I ought to include for

19 whatever value it may carry. The obligation I felt was simply to

20 establish whatever facts could be established or whatever information

21 could serve towards establishing those facts.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Well, for the information of

23 the Judges and of the public, what exactly are you an expert at?

24 THE WITNESS: Okay. I'm an expert -- first of all, my primary

25 formation, I'm a historian, so a historian's impetus is to find out what

Page 7339

1 happened. And in order to find out what happened, you gather various

2 evidence.

3 Also, for the past 24 years, I have been involved in the

4 documentation of cultural heritage, specifically art and architecture,

5 and I saw, as my primary task, finding out what happened to these

6 buildings. What I was documenting primarily was, (a), the condition of

7 the building before and after, and, (b), trying to find out some

8 information about when it happened to that building. Okay.

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I was looking at what you've

10 done up until now. On page 2623, the Catholic Church at Bosansk Samac,

11 this is what you're adding as a caption, your comment was the following:

12 "This church was destroyed by the Serbian forces when they

13 attacked the village in May 1992. At least ten Catholics were killed."

14 Is that what you were asked, to also provide information on the

15 casualties and to say exactly what units were involved, or did you

16 believe that because you had heard this, somebody told you it was worth

17 noting it down?

18 THE WITNESS: Because I was told this by the parish priest of

19 that church, I thought it was important information to note down, not to

20 leave it out. But, you know, again, if he hadn't told me that, I

21 wouldn't have been going around making inquiries.

22 [Trial Chamber confers]

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. As you just saw,

24 the Trial Chamber deliberated on this, given the objections raised and

25 the issues raised. The Chamber will now render an oral decision.

Page 7340

1 The Prosecutor, as of 11.40, can only asking the following

2 questions to the witness: Questions dealing with the location where the

3 destruction occurred; questions dealing with the nature of the

4 destruction; questions dealing with the identification of the destroyed

5 property. The Prosecutor is allowed to ask the witness whether he has

6 information pertaining to the date at which the destruction occurred.

7 However, regarding this fourth item, the Trial Chamber reserves itself

8 the right to give or not give probative value to the witness's answer,

9 according to the elements that it will have.

10 Thus, the Prosecution is no longer required to ask specific

11 different questions to the witness, and the witness is not supposed to

12 answer any questions, dealing with who did what.

13 Furthermore, Mr. Seselj's Defence will also not be allowed to

14 involve the possible involvement of X, Z or Y to the events. The Trial

15 Chamber is only interested in knowing where the destruction occurred,

16 what property was destroyed, and at what date the property was destroyed.

17 These are the different items. And if the expert actually took a

18 picture, he must give us the dates at which the pictures were taken. If

19 there's two pictures, the date of the first picture, the date of the

20 second picture. We do not want to know any more than that.

21 Now, after this oral decision, Mr. Mundis, you have the floor.

22 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

23 Q. If we can return, then, Mr. Riedlmayer, to the slide in front of

24 you to resume. I believe before the interventions, you were telling us

25 that there was a before-and-after shot of the Mosque of Sultan Suleiman

Page 7341

1 the Magnificent in Janja.

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And if we can go to the next slide, can you tell us what this

4 photo is and what it depicts?

5 A. This is a photo taken in 1992 when I visited Janja. It shows a

6 new mosque under construction. This is in 2002, and it shows some of the

7 surrounding houses which are part of the community of Janja. And as you

8 can see from the neighbouring houses, the roofs are old, so they're

9 presumably houses that date from before the war.

10 Q. Could we please go to the next slide. The information concerning

11 these photographs may be found in page 406 of the Serbian language

12 version of the report. The English version bears ERN number 0469-2877.

13 Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what's depicted in these two

14 photographs?

15 A. These two photographs are of a mosque in the village of Svrake,

16 which is in the Sarajevo suburbs, of Vogosca in the Semizovac area. The

17 photo on the left comes from a documentary volume that was published

18 right after the war, and presumably the photo was taken at the end of the

19 war.

20 The photo at the right was taken in 2003, and I obtained it from

21 the Islamic Community. However, I also visited the community at one

22 point. What they both show is -- the one on the left is the damage to

23 the mosque, and once again we are revolving 90 degrees to the left. In

24 the photo of the destroyed mosque at the left, you see -- what you see is

25 the same wall as the wall bathed in sunshine of the reconstructed mosque,

Page 7342

1 so it's that wall. And what you see in the left-hand side of the

2 black-and-white's picture is the remains of the minaret, the stump of the

3 minaret. You can also see, if you look carefully, that, first of all,

4 the roof is gone and, secondly, there are collapsed roof timbers inside.

5 What this indicates is some sort of blast damage.

6 The information I had as to the timing of destruction is cited in

7 the entry for this at page 878. It includes testimony from another case

8 before this Tribunal, the Krajisnik case, and also a Council of Europe

9 report, and the third one is from the State Commission for Gathering

10 Facts for War Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. So three different sources.

11 I cite them for the information of the Court.

12 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer.

13 Your Honours, this would be an appropriate spot for the next

14 break.

15 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. We will now break

16 for 20 minutes, and we will resume at 12.05. And let me remind you that

17 we will sit until 1.15 today.

18 --- Recess taken at 11.47 a.m.

19 --- On resuming at 12.10 p.m.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Prosecutor, the Registrar

21 told me that you have used one hour and six minutes, so you have

22 fifty-four minutes left, which means we will not finish today.

23 Witness, unfortunately you will have to come back next Tuesday.

24 I asked you yesterday whether it was a problem for you. Is it a problem

25 or not? If you have commitments, we could always set another date for

Page 7343

1 you to come back, but if it's possible, it would be best if you could

2 come on Tuesday.

3 THE WITNESS: I can come.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] He can come. Very well.

5 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

6 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, we'll turn now to a different topic. I'm

7 wondering, sir, if you can tell us, based upon the fieldwork that you've

8 done and your other work concerning cultural property relating to this

9 case, if you were in a position to observe any noticeable patterns or

10 trends.

11 A. Yes. I made some effort to note which buildings were of the

12 pre-modern period, so the Ottoman-Austro-Hungarian period, and also which

13 buildings had been listed monuments, in other words, under register of

14 protective monuments under the legislation in effect in the former

15 Yugoslavia. And in the case of mosques, almost two-thirds of the

16 mosques, 65 out of 101, were dated from the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian

17 period, and 30 of these had been designated as listed monuments. I found

18 that these older mosques and the mosques which had been deemed of special

19 importance, and therefore designated for listing, had been

20 disproportionately destroyed. Overall, the degree of destruction was

21 quite high, some 90 per cent of all mosques, but in the case of these

22 older mosques, a much higher percentage was heavily damaged or destroyed.

23 And, similarly, 28 out of the 30 mosques that were listed monuments were

24 found heavily damaged, and the two that weren't, one was on the Bosnian

25 government side of the confrontation line and was damaged by explosive

Page 7344

1 projectiles, but it was not destroyed, and the other listed mosque was in

2 Nevesinje, where two other mosques had -- and the Catholic Church had

3 been destroyed. But this mosque was inactive. It was in the center of

4 town, but it had lost its minaret sometime before the war and had been

5 used as a warehouse during the communist period. It was vandalised and

6 desecrated, but it was not destroyed, unlike the two other mosques which

7 were completely levelled.

8 So from this, I would conclude that these mosques had been

9 singled out.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, please, you're saying

11 that these mosques were listed. Now, a layman could wonder what this

12 means. Who listed these mosques? Was it the country, itself, listed as

13 a cultural or religious monument, or is it a world listing, were they

14 listed maybe to the World Heritage List or something? What exactly is --

15 what did you mean exactly when you said they were registered?

16 THE WITNESS: I provide a detailed explanation, Your Honour, in

17 footnote number 11 of my narrative report. It's attached to

18 paragraph 23. They were listed under the legislation in effect in the

19 former Yugoslavia. These were laws both at the federal level and at the

20 republican level of the Federal Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And what

21 the designation meant was that these were buildings that could not, under

22 the law, be demolished, or altered, or destroyed, and that they would be

23 eligible for state conservation money. It's the same kind of monuments

24 protection law you have in most European countries, and it involves a

25 process where certain monuments are nominated and then designated.

Page 7345

1 Does that answer your question?

2 MR. MUNDIS:

3 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, as a historian and someone who specialised in

4 Islamic art and architecture in the Balkans, what's the significance of

5 your conclusions with respect to the older particularly mosques that were

6 destroyed or damaged?

7 A. These were the major landmarks of those particular localities,

8 and presumably had greater cultural significance than smaller or less

9 notable buildings that had been built more recently. I can cite as an

10 example the mosque you see to the right here.

11 Q. Perhaps if we go to the next slide. And before you answer that,

12 sir, let me just again, for the benefit of everyone in the courtroom,

13 this is page 319 of the Serbian version of the report, and the ERN number

14 of the English is 0469-2992. Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Riedlmayer.

15 A. This is the Karadjoz Beg Dzamija, the mosque of Karadjoz Mehmed

16 in Mostar. It was built in 1557, and it is one of the most notable

17 pieces of Islamic sacral architecture in Bosnia, if not the Balkans. It

18 was a listed monument. And the photograph at left, taken before the war,

19 comes, I believe, from the Institute for the Protection of Monuments.

20 The photograph at right comes from that same documentary volume I

21 referred to earlier, produced by the Mostar Federation of Architects. It

22 was taken in the summer of 1992, and it shows the damage from the first

23 siege of Mostar. You can tell, first of all, that the minaret has

24 been decapitated above the balcony, and you can tell there were multiple

25 impacts on the mosque, smashing the portico.

Page 7346

1 It's worth noting that this particular mosque did suffer further

2 damage in the second siege of Mostar, but the principal damage, as to

3 most monuments of Mostar, was done in the first siege, the one in 1992.

4 Q. If we could then go, please, to the next --

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, expert witness, you

6 told us you were a historian. I'm sure you are well versed in the

7 history of the Balkans. The destruction of religious monuments that we

8 see here, could you tell us whether, in the history of the region, there

9 were precedents to this, whether whenever there was a conflict, whether

10 one of the manifestations in the conflict was to go and destroy the

11 Orthodox Church, or the mosque, or the Catholic Church? Did you look

12 into this? Did you look into what had happened earlier?

13 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour. In fact, part of the

14 supplementary information provided in the appendices to my report

15 includes both my testimony before the International Court of Justice and

16 several of my articles where I discuss this. The simple fact is that the

17 degree of destruction that we saw in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1992-1995

18 war was, indeed, unprecedented. There had been destruction before, for

19 example, in World War II and during the wars of the 19th century, but

20 never at this scale.

21 In ordinary times, these monuments very often would face each

22 other across the town square, which if you give it consideration, is a

23 statement of sorts. If these were people who really loathed each other

24 and couldn't bide each other's sight, they wouldn't have expended the

25 investment and put these monuments in such a way that they would have to

Page 7347

1 face the other every time they emerged from worship. So during most of

2 the times, it was not a problem.

3 The other thing that is to consider is you will note that two

4 things of these mosques date from the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian

5 period, meaning they survived for centuries before being destroyed or

6 damaged in this current thing.

7 Now, obviously in time of war, there are such things as

8 tit-for-tat and acts of retribution. What strikes me about the pattern

9 of destruction that I've seen in Bosnia, both in the set of

10 municipalities for this report and for my other reports, has been the

11 totality of the destruction in the territory that was controlled by Serb

12 forces during the war. I know of only one mosque that survived with its

13 minaret intact and largely undamaged. That was in one village in Bosnia,

14 Voljine [phoen], near Mrkonjic Grad, where the local Serb residents

15 stopped paramilitaries from destroying the mosque. But everywhere else,

16 in major cities where these buildings were at the center of town and

17 presumably in plain view of everyone, these were destroyed and often

18 destroyed in the absence of any fighting.

19 So that's the pattern I've seen. Yes, there was destruction of

20 World War II and there was sporadic destruction going back to the 19th

21 century, but, no, this kind of total erasure was certainly unprecedented.

22 Q. If we could please then go to the next slide, and again the

23 information concerning this cultural property is on page 304 in the

24 Serbian version, and the ERN number for the corresponding English pages

25 is 0469-3012.

Page 7348

1 Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what is depicted on the screen

2 in front of you?

3 A. What we see here is probably the one monument in Bosnia that even

4 people who haven't been there will recognise. It's the old Ottoman

5 bridge over the Neretva River in Mostar, and everyone knows that the

6 bridge was brought down in the second siege of Mostar by Croatian

7 shelling. This, however, is a photo taken in the summer of 1992,

8 following the first siege of Mostar by Yugoslav and Serb forces.

9 In my database entry for this, I characterize the damage to the

10 bridge as light. You can see there have been some impacts, also an

11 effort to shield the bridge. Somebody has tried to put some planks

12 across.

13 If you bring up the next slide, please. However, there was

14 severe damage to the two 16th century towers.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Please, may we have the

16 previous slide back on our screens and have the witness tell us on what

17 side of the bridge this is. What's the side we're looking at? On what

18 side of the bridge is this?

19 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, this is proper cross-examination type

20 of questioning. The accused, Dr. Seselj, can't object to an answer of

21 the witness, so I would ask the Trial Chamber to --

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, Mr. Mundis is quite

23 right. If you wish to challenge these photographs or what these

24 photographs look like, since the witness hasn't said anything

25 particularly salient about it, he said that the bridge had been slightly

Page 7349

1 damaged, that's it, he said that was destroyed afterwards, so please

2 proceed, Mr. Mundis.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, well, I do have

4 something to say in this regard, with your permission. If you don't give

5 me permission, I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to fight for

6 the right to say something. If you're courteous enough to allow me to

7 say something, I will. If not, I won't.

8 But why is this important? This is the frontline in Mostar. The

9 Serbs were on one side, the Croats on the other. So there's nothing more

10 important than for us to hear stated which side of the bridge this is and

11 where the damage is done. I'm not going to deal with that during the

12 cross-examination, but you must provide the public with precise

13 information on this point.

14 And, secondly, the witness is now talking about the damages done,

15 and we see over there that there are hardly any damages, except for what

16 was caused by rifle fire. But let's see who targeted the building we saw

17 that was partially damaged. It was the party on the other side, on the

18 opposite side. So let's see who was on the opposite side.

19 You're trying people who have been charged with the destruction

20 of this bridge, so let's not link this up with the other trial now, or

21 let's do that.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, your comment would

23 be particularly welcome if the witness were here to say who had done

24 what. We handed down a decision a moment ago, and we stated that the

25 witness was to talk about the nature of the destruction and not about the

Page 7350

1 perpetrators. Now, if you say which side this was on, you are already

2 biased. This is why I don't wish to say any more about it.

3 Technically speaking, if you look at the photograph on the Serb

4 side, if you look on the Serb side and the Croatian side, you are quite

5 right, but this is not our subject matter today. We want to acknowledge

6 things visually, on the basis of the photographs shown to us by the

7 witness. We want to assess the level of the damage.

8 Mr. Mundis, please proceed.

9 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

10 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you please comment upon the two photographs

11 shown on the screen in front of you?

12 A. Yes. This is one of the two medieval towers that flanked the

13 bridge on either side. What you're looking at is the left bank of the

14 river, the east side. The river is flowing to the south. And the 1981

15 photograph comes from the Aga Khan Cultural, and I was able to match it

16 up with an exact angle with a photograph taken in 1992 and published by

17 the Mostar Federation of Architects.

18 And if you take a look at the entry for the bridge, you will also

19 see a detailed technical assessment of the bridge also done in 1992 by

20 Dr. Colin Kaiser, the UNESCO representative. From what you can see just

21 visually, you can see that the tower and its surrounding structures have

22 been burned out and that there have been major projectile impacts upon

23 it. If you look at Colin Kaiser's report, he expresses concerns for the

24 structure. Nevertheless, given the reserved nature of my damage scale, I

25 still called this "lightly damaged," and in fact they did prove to be

Page 7351

1 suitable for reconstruction.

2 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can we please go to the next slide, and this

3 is --

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, I just

5 have a question to ask you and your colleagues.

6 Did you hear well when it was said that this building is on the

7 east bank of the Neretva River? That's the interpretation I got. That's

8 all I'm interested in. Is that what you heard, too, because the witness

9 said it's on the east bank and the Neretva River flows west of that.

10 That's all I'm interested in, nothing more than that.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, you did say that the

12 building was located on the east side of the Neretva; is that right?

13 THE WITNESS: That is correct.

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

15 MR. MUNDIS:

16 Q. Turning to the slide in front of us, this mosque may be -- the

17 description of this mosque may be found in the database, page 527 of the

18 Bosnian or Serbian version of the report, and the English ERN

19 number 0469-2707.

20 Mr. Riedlmayer, can you please tell us what's depicted on this

21 screen?

22 A. Okay. This is one of the oldest mosques in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

23 It's Carev Dzamija or Mosque of the Sultan Bajezid, the second built in

24 1485, in the town of Nevesinje of Herzegovina. This is a photograph from

25 a guide-book published immediately before the war and shows the mosque

Page 7352

1 following a recent conservation that was carried out just before the war.

2 Q. If we could please go to the next slide. What does this

3 photograph depict, Mr. Riedlmayer?

4 A. This is the site of the mosque when I visited it in July of 2002.

5 Q. Who took this photo, sir?

6 A. I did.

7 Q. Can you describe what's depicted in the photograph, please?

8 A. If you would please go to the previous slide, I can point

9 something out.

10 This photo is taken downhill, looking towards the mosque. The

11 other photo was taken uphill from the downhill end, so the mosque would

12 have been where those junked lorries and other automobiles are. You can

13 see the discolouration in the grass, which outlines the foundations.

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Just a piece of information.

15 The photograph clearly shows that there are no stones left, there's

16 nothing left of the mosque. According to you, what happened to the

17 stones of this mosque? Were they used to build the neighbouring houses

18 or were these stones, like this was the case for castles in France, these

19 went to the United States ? What happened to these stones?

20 THE WITNESS: I interviewed the imam of the mosque,

21 Armin Effendi Omerika, who was present in Nevesinje at the start of the

22 war, and I was told that first of all the -- he gave me a date for the

23 destruction of the mosque, which is in the entry which I'm trying to find

24 here. And he also told me that following the explosion, the rubble was

25 collected and taken out of town and dumped in a garbage dump, which he

Page 7353

1 then later showed us, a dump site at Ponor, two kilometres outside of

2 Nevesinje. In fact, all that was left was the underground part of the

3 foundations, which you could still see through the grass, but the site

4 had been completely levelled. The surrounding houses all pre-date the

5 war. They are older houses with roofs that have patina on them, so they

6 weren't destroyed. And according to my information, there was no real

7 fighting in Nevesinje. This did not happen as part of a battle.

8 Q. And, Mr. Riedlmayer, on the lower right-hand side of this

9 photograph, there's a small wall that's visible. It's less than a metre

10 tall, I would estimate. Can you tell us what that is?

11 A. Okay. That is a graveyard that -- a family graveyard of the

12 Basagic [phoen] family, who were the most notable Muslim family in

13 Nevesinje, and you can see it on a pre-war photo that I also included in

14 my database entry.

15 At the time I visited, the gravestones were still there, but the

16 graveyard was being used as a vegetable garden.

17 Q. If we could please go to the next slide. And, again, for the

18 benefit of everyone in the courtroom, the Serbian version of the

19 information concerning --

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Just a minute. Could we get

21 back to the previous photograph, please.

22 On looking at the previous photograph, I discover there's a white

23 truck that has "UN" marked on it at the back, so I assume that when you

24 went to take your pictures, you were accompanied by a member of the OTP,

25 I assume.

Page 7354

1 THE WITNESS: I was accompanied by a Tribunal investigator. He's

2 mentioned in my report, who acted as driver and security. All he did is

3 he drove the jeep where I told him to and periodically reported back to

4 base on a satellite phone about security.

5 Does that answer your question?

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] [No interpretation]

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection, just very briefly.

8 Judges, I hope that you are aware that at that time the Serbian

9 Restoration Movement was in power in Nevesinje at that time, the SDS was

10 not in power, the Serbian Radical Party did not exist there. This is one

11 of the two municipalities in Republika Srpska that were governed by the

12 Serbian Restoration Movement.

13 MR. MUNDIS: Again, Mr. President, that's not a proper objection

14 or intervention at this point in time, and we would again ask that the

15 accused be instructed to limit his objections to proper legal objections

16 concerning questions and not to simply make comments or legal

17 argumentation during the course of the trial.

18 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, your objection,

19 which is of a legal nature, pertains to Article 7(1) of the Statute.

20 This witness will not label anyone to settle the issue. You can address

21 this matter at a different time, different moment, different place. You

22 can perhaps address this issue in the presence of another witness.

23 Mr. Mundis.

24 MR. MUNDIS: The information concerning this mosque is found on

25 page 633 in the Serbian version, and the ERN pages in the English

Page 7355

1 version, 0469-2562 and 2563.

2 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us what's depicted in these two

3 photographs, please?

4 A. What we are looking at is the mosque of Sultan Suleiman the

5 Magnificent, also known as Atik dzamija or old mosque at the centre of

6 Bijeljina. The photo at left comes from a pre-war guide book edited by

7 Nebojsa Bato Tomasevic. It dates from 1980. The photograph at right is

8 one I took in July of 2002. It shows the same site. All that is left,

9 once again, of the mosque is the discolouration in the grass. The site

10 is right in the center of town, next to the government buildings and

11 other major monuments of the town.

12 Q. Sir, on the picture on the right, can you tell us what is

13 depicted in the background on the left-hand side of that photograph?

14 A. Yes. That is the Serbian Orthodox Church in the centre of

15 Bijeljina, both the very tall bell tower and the structure to its left.

16 Q. Based on the information available to you, sir, and your

17 fieldwork, do you know when this mosque was destroyed?

18 A. According to the information I had, and the statement is on the

19 second page of the entry, the mosque was one of five mosques in Bijeljina

20 that were blown up on the night of 12-13 March 1993.

21 MR. MUNDIS: I also simply note, Your Honours, for the record,

22 that videotape P348, which was shown on 3 April 2008, relates to this

23 mosque. I simply point that out for the Trial Chamber's benefit.

24 If we could please then go to the next slide.

25 Q. This mosque is described beginning on --

Page 7356

1 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I have a follow-up question to

2 put to the witness. If you allow me, I'd like to see the previous slide

3 again.

4 Here, you see the ground in the forefront. There's nothing

5 there, the mosque doesn't exist anymore. And in the background, you can

6 see the Orthodox Church. There are two things that are noteworthy here.

7 You said that this mosque had been destroyed between the 12th and

8 the 13th of March, 1993, during the night. Some individuals, I don't

9 know who these people are, threw an explosive, perhaps, and everything

10 blew up. The debris then fell to the ground, and these individuals left.

11 But how is it that later on, the mosque was not rebuilt and, (b), that

12 everything disappeared? If everything was cleaned up, as we see it

13 there - there's no waste paper, there's nothing lying around - the

14 stones, the waste material, the rubble, everything was taken away, it

15 looks like a clean slate, but who removed everything from there; not the

16 people who threw the explosives? Who took everything away? Did you

17 reflect on that?

18 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, this particular incident was extremely

19 well reported in the media, not only by the television reporter whose

20 video the Court already saw, but by other reporters who were present in

21 town, because at the time the Republika Srpska Assembly was holding its

22 meeting in town, deliberating on one of the peace plans, the

23 Vance-Owen Plan, and they were all present in town when the five mosques

24 were blown up. And according to these news reports, some of which I have

25 included, the very day after the destruction, municipal work crews, with

Page 7357

1 heavy machinery, were busy removing the stones of the mosque and

2 levelling the site. So the removal happened in conjunction, really, with

3 the destruction, within less than 24 hours.

4 Following the destruction of the mosque, even after the Dayton

5 Peace Agreement, the Islamic Community -- you asked about the rebuilding

6 problem. The Islamic Community of Bosnia-Herzegovina sought permission

7 to retake control of the plot of ground and to rebuild the mosque, and

8 they brought suit before the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

9 which is a mixed international and local judicial body established under

10 the Dayton Agreement. And the Human Rights Chamber brought a number of

11 rulings on this which also concern certain facts about the destruction of

12 the mosque, and I have appended the text of those rulings as an appendix

13 to my report.

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

15 MR. MUNDIS: Can we please go to the next --

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Mr. President, I'm

17 surprised that you missed it. According to the information available,

18 the mosque was destroyed in the night between the 14th and the 15th of

19 March, and the Assembly of Republika Srpska had its session to discuss

20 the Vance-Owen Plan much later than that. And could you please now order

21 the Prosecutor to get the exact -- the correct and accurate data on that?

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Witness, you seemed

23 very sure about what you were saying. There seems to be a 24-hour

24 differential here. You said that it was between the 12th and the 13th.

25 Mr. Seselj is saying that it's between the 14th and the 15th. So we

Page 7358

1 don't quite know what the exact date is anymore.

2 THE WITNESS: The 12th and 13th is what is stated in my entry.

3 It may have been a problem in translation.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Anyway, Mr. Seselj talked about

5 the 14th and the 15th. Maybe there's a mistake, but this is not the

6 point.

7 When I put you the question innocently to understand why

8 everything was clean, you told me that the municipality had intervened,

9 and you provided me with a piece of information. And then you added it

10 was on the next day following the explosion that people were sent in to

11 clean this up. The accused is now telling us that as far as he is

12 concerned, the municipality meetings of Republika Srpska occurred well

13 after that, a long time after that. He might be right, he might be

14 wrong. You might be right, you might be wrong. What do you have to say

15 to that?

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please, Mr. President, as far as

17 I can recall, the Republika Srpska Assembly was in session. The witness

18 said it was the National Assembly of Republika Srpska that was in

19 session, and to my knowledge this happened two months later. So it's not

20 my mistake. Whether it's the 13th or the 14th, that's beside the point.

21 It's the gap, the gap of maybe 24 hours or two days. You could still

22 link it to the session of the Assembly, but the Assembly was in session

23 at a much later date.

24 We've already had this in front of us, and before you prohibited

25 the debate about who perpetrated this, we did have this debate. And now

Page 7359

1 a link is established a session of the Republika Srpska National

2 Assembly, and that's not in the expert report at all. This is something

3 that the expert has just come up with out of the thin air.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. The meeting of the

5 Assembly of the Republika Srpska seems to have occurred two months later.

6 You don't seem to agree. Let's proceed.

7 THE WITNESS: I merely mention, as an explanation for why so many

8 reporters were in town, whether it was that particular meeting to which

9 Mr. Seselj is referring, I have no idea, but I recall that there was a

10 meeting of the Assembly.

11 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you. Again, I note for the record that we

12 believe it's improper for the accused to object to answers given by

13 witnesses, but I'll move on.

14 May we have the next slide, please.

15 Q. This mosque is described, beginning on page 496 of the Serbian

16 version of the report. In the English, the relevant page begins on ERN

17 number 0469-2745.

18 Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us a little bit about what's

19 depicted on the slide that's in front of you at the moment?

20 A. Yes. It is reputed to be the second-oldest mosque in Bosnia.

21 It's the mosque of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in Kuslat Municipality.

22 It is located south of Zvornik, atop a high cliff overlooking the Drina

23 River.

24 Q. This slide that we see in front of us, can you tell us about what

25 it shows and when this drawing was made?

Page 7360

1 A. Okay. The drawing was published in 1984. It is a view of the

2 mosque, and I would call the Court's attention a little bit to the

3 topography, because it will help you understand the next slide. You see

4 the mosque located at the left edge of the precipice of the cliff. The

5 ground underneath the mosque is level. Then between the mosque and the

6 higher outcrop of rock at right, there is some vegetation that's visible

7 down below, and then there is a higher outcropping at the right.

8 Q. Next slide, please.

9 A. This is a view taken from that higher outcrop down towards the

10 mosque. You can, first of all, see how immensely high up it is, that

11 those are trees down below. It was a traditional Bosnian mosque with

12 stone walls and a wooden roof and a wooden minaret, and metal finial at

13 the top of the minaret.

14 Q. Go to the next slide, please.

15 A. The picture at left comes from Bosnia's Institute for the

16 Protection of Cultural Heritage, and you can see the mosque on top of the

17 cliff.

18 The second picture, the one at the right, was taken in May of

19 2002 by a Tribunal investigator. I have a picture of my own, but at that

20 time I didn't have the "before" picture, and this shows a better angle,

21 the one -- I was there two months later.

22 Just to orient you as to what is happening, again if you look at

23 the black-and-white image on the left, you can see the level area of the

24 mosque, and then next to the mosque, a patch of vegetation and then the

25 higher outcropping. What is a little bit confusing is that the second

Page 7361

1 picture, the one at the right, is taken from a slightly different angle.

2 First of all, the "before" picture was taken from the next

3 hillside, which is why you see the mountains in the background. The

4 second picture was taken from the bottom of the valley, which makes those

5 mountains disappear.

6 Also, the second picture, the "after" picture, was taken a little

7 bit to the left, which makes the outcropping that the mosque was on look

8 much slimmer, because you're looking at it edge-on. But I think now that

9 you've seen several pictures, you have no problem in identifying where

10 the mosque stood, which is now a little level plot of ground, and then

11 the patch of vegetation and then the higher outcropping.

12 Q. Can you tell us --

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. Judges, please do not

14 allow the witness to mislead you in this way. You can see on the next --

15 on the second photograph that there is no space where the mosque was. It

16 is not there. It's the summit. Well, if the photograph was indeed taken

17 from the same place, you can see the beginning of the summit to the far

18 right of the mosque, and the area where the mosque was does not exist on

19 the second photograph. Please have a look and you will see.

20 I think this is really inappropriate, what the witness is doing.

21 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, this is --

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, the only problem

23 that anyone may have in this courtroom is this: We have two photographs.

24 We have an old photograph, where we see a mosque. We have a second

25 photograph where there is no mosque. So without having been to school,

Page 7362

1 you might well ask, "Where has the mosque gone?" You don't need to have

2 written a PhD to wonder why this is the case.

3 On the second photograph, it looks as if there's no mosque. Is

4 that what you wanted to tell us, Witness?

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, please allow me to

6 say that there is no space where the mosque was. On the second

7 photograph, there is no space where the mosque was.

8 JUDGE LATTANZI: [Interpretation] But, Mr. Seselj, you can ask all

9 these questions and go into details during the cross-examination, and

10 that way you will not keep interrupting the Prosecutor. It's very

11 difficult for us, also, you know to keep track of things with you and

12 your objections.

13 MR. MUNDIS: Again, for the record, we reiterate this as a proper

14 ground for cross-examination and or argument and is inappropriate at this

15 point.

16 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us, sir, how does one gain access to

17 this mosque, or how did one gain access to this mosque?

18 A. Okay. Your Honour, the main highway is at the bottom of the

19 valley that you see on the photo at right, where the trees are. It is

20 the main highway heading out of Zvornik, and this is the spot where the

21 highway turns away from the river. To go up to the mosque requires a

22 two-hour climb up an unpaved road. It is not an easy place to get to the

23 mosque served the inhabitants of a couple of small villages up on the

24 mountain, I was told. This is actually why I had to rely on a photograph

25 taken from down below, rather than making that climb. I had limited time

Page 7363

1 in Bosnia, and it would have taken an entire day to climb two hours up

2 and two hours down just to take a photograph immediately on the site.

3 Q. I would now like to turn to what could very well be the last

4 topic we reach today.

5 You mentioned earlier, Mr. Riedlmayer, a mosque which had not

6 been destroyed because it was inactive. Do you remember telling us about

7 that, sir?

8 A. Yes, in Nevesinje.

9 Q. Other than that mosque, sir, what, if anything, can you tell us

10 about other inactive mosques in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and what happened

11 to those inactive mosques during the war?

12 A. Okay. In my survey, I found a small number of mosques, three

13 altogether, in the Republika Srpska, three within this survey, although I

14 saw others in other municipalities for other surveys, three mosques that

15 had suffered relatively minor damage in municipalities where every other

16 mosque had been seriously damaged or completely destroyed. And in all

17 cases where mosques in these municipalities had been left only lightly

18 damaged, the mosques were mosques that were under construction on the eve

19 of the war. Under the laws of the former Yugoslavia, religious

20 communities registered these monuments at the time that they went into

21 active use, and so these mosques had not yet been dedicated or

22 registered.

23 Q. If we could please then go to the next slide. And again,

24 Mr. Riedlmayer, for the benefit of Dr. Seselj, could you read the caption

25 on the left of this slide, please.

Page 7364

1 A. The caption on the left says: "Inactive sites were missed."

2 Q. And for the benefit of the accused, this mosque that's depicted

3 in this photograph is described in page 426 of the Serbian language

4 version of the annex. The English version may be found at ERN

5 page number 0469-2847.

6 Can you describe, Mr. Riedlmayer, what is shown in this

7 photograph?

8 A. What you see in this photograph is the new mosque at the village

9 of Donji Krizevici. Donji Krizevici is a village on the highway heading

10 out of the town of Zvornik to the northwest, just a few kilometres out of

11 town, and I saw the mosque immediately next to the highway.

12 As you can see, the mosque is still under construction. You can

13 see not only the raw brick but also, if you look carefully to the left of

14 the dome, you can see the reinforced -- reinforced steel bars that will

15 support the minaret once it's made. What struck me about it is even

16 though the building is under construction, it is readily recognisable as

17 a mosque. It is also in a very accessible spot, within sight of the

18 highway, and yet it seemed to have escaped the fate of the other mosques

19 in Zvornik.

20 Q. And perhaps -- perhaps I missed it, Mr. Riedlmayer, but can you

21 tell us, if you know, when this photograph was taken?

22 A. Oh, I'm sorry. The photograph was taken in May of 2002 by a

23 Tribunal investigator. You can see the Tribunal registration numbers at

24 the top right. I just thought it was a clearer photograph than the one I

25 took. I also visited the site.

Page 7365

1 Q. Okay. If we could please then go to the next slide. Information

2 concerning this mosque may be found on page 604 in the Serbian version.

3 In the English version, at ERN number 0469-2598.

4 A. Okay. This is an unfinished mosque in the village of Janjari,

5 which is near Bijeljina, on the border with the neighbouring municipality

6 of Ugljevik, and once again you can see the unfinished minaret at right

7 and you can see the concrete frame and some in-fill brick, some of which

8 appears to be missing.

9 Q. And how do you know, Mr. Riedlmayer, that this was an unfinished

10 mosque?

11 A. Well, some of it is just looking at it in common sense, but I

12 also spoke to an informant from the village, who told me that the mosque

13 had been under construction on the eve of the war and had already been

14 used as an overflow worship space during the last Bajram or Muslim

15 holiday just before the war.

16 Q. Can we go to the next slide, please. And what's depicted in this

17 slide, sir?

18 A. This is the same building, again turned 90 degrees. The previous

19 shot was taken from the left. And, once again, you can see that there

20 is -- there are building materials missing from the mosque, but that in

21 spite of the fact that it's next to the highway, nothing worse has

22 happened to it.

23 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you.

24 Mr. President, I'm not sure how much time I have left. Perhaps

25 if the Registrar can give me --

Page 7366

1 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The Registrar told me about

2 five minutes ago that you had used up one hour and thirty-five minutes,

3 so theoretically you have about fifteen minutes left.

4 Witness, please, I have an important question to ask. I'm seeing

5 the photograph of this mosque, which at the time was under construction.

6 If I'm not wrong, this mosque was under construction at the time, and the

7 way it looks now, is it the way it looked in 1992-1993, when the war

8 started?

9 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I can only go by what I looked at and

10 put it in the context of what I was told. If you look both at this photo

11 and the previous one, you can see that this is not the way buildings look

12 when they are being systematically constructed. Somebody has

13 opportunistically, I assume, raided it for building materials and removed

14 some elements. I also found graffiti inside, actually within the

15 initials of Mr. Seselj's party, but I had no --

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes. I wanted to get to this.

17 As a Judge, I'm looking at this photograph, together with my fellow

18 Judges, and we see a building with concrete, reinforced concrete,

19 probably, probably have these metal rods in the concrete. There's also

20 bricks. Obviously, there are some bricks missing, but there's still some

21 bricks left also.

22 In your document, there's the following mention. It says:

23 "This mosque has been vandalised and there are SRS graffitis on

24 it."

25 Now, a simple mind could immediately make a connection and say

Page 7367

1 that vandals destroyed everything, destroyed as much as possible, and

2 that these vandals are members of the Serbian Radical Party. But this

3 graffiti, did you see them with your own eyes or were you told about

4 them?

5 THE WITNESS: [Previous translation continues] ... Your Honour,

6 they were on the interior of the building, where the light wasn't good,

7 so you couldn't take photos of them, but I did see them. On the other

8 hand, I did see this in the summer of 2002. I have no knowledge of when

9 the graffiti appeared on the building. I believe that what is

10 significant about this mosque is not the graffiti, as such, but the fact

11 that it survived relatively undamaged, while finished mosques nearby were

12 destroyed. I think it is simply a fact I felt worth remarking on,

13 especially when you compare it to the previous site I showed at Kuslat,

14 where a mosque that was exceedingly difficult to get to was nevertheless

15 destroyed in the middle of the war, something that would have taken

16 considerable enterprise.

17 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes. This graffiti that you

18 read or saw, what do you attribute it to? You have graffitis everywhere,

19 "US go home," everywhere, I mean a lot of graffitis everywhere, so what

20 meaning did you give to this graffiti?

21 THE WITNESS: No actual significance, Your Honour, except for the

22 fact that graffiti of this sort is something I often saw next to the

23 ruins or the sites of destroyed mosques. So at the very least, it

24 indicates that there are people around there who feel these as a focus of

25 hostilities. That's all I can say.

Page 7368

1 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Generally speaking, I mean,

2 graffitis are on walls, so theoretically we should see graffiti all over

3 the walls, but we don't see any. It's inside that you find the graffiti.

4 THE WITNESS: In this case, yes. In other cases, no.

5 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, I note the time. The Prosecution does

6 have one issue to raise with respect to next week, and I would ask,

7 perhaps with your permission, the witness could be excused until Tuesday,

8 and then my colleague has --

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

10 Witness, you will please come back next week, please, and rest

11 assured, once Mr. Mundis's 20 minutes are up, you will be cross-examined

12 by Mr. Seselj for two hours, and after that you will be allowed home.

13 Don't worry. Unfortunately, you're going to have to spend the weekend in

14 Holland, or maybe you could go and visit some historic sites over here,

15 and that way you will not completely waste your time over the weekend.

16 I will now ask the usher to please escort you out of the

17 courtroom.

18 [The witness stands down]

19 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Would you like a private

20 session, Mr. Mundis?

21 MR. MUNDIS: I will yield the floor to my colleague,

22 Mr. Marcussen, who will address you and Your Honours.

23 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honours. I think we can start in

24 open session, but we will probably have to go into private session at

25 some point, and I'll indicate when.

Page 7369

1 Your Honours, I'm on my feet to make an application for the

2 admission of a written statement of the next witness into evidence,

3 pursuant to Rule 92 ter, so that would be Witness VS-51.

4 Your Honours recall that a number of motions were filed for the

5 admission of written evidence for a lot of witnesses at the pre-trial

6 phase. On the 31st of October, 2007, the Prosecution filed a

7 consolidated motion on the same issue, requesting the admission of

8 statements and transcripts from witnesses into evidence under

9 Rule 92 ter. This request included 33 witnesses whose transcripts from

10 other cases were being requested admitted into evidence, including VS-51.

11 On the 7th of January, the Trial Chamber, in its decision on the

12 Prosecution's consolidated motion pursuant to Rules 89(F), 92 bis, 92 ter

13 and 92 quater of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, ruled on these

14 requests.

15 THE INTERPRETER: Kindly slow down, thank you.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: [Previous translation continues] ... 48 and 49 of

17 the decision, the Trial Chamber found that it was in the interests of

18 justice --

19 THE INTERPRETER: Could you please slow down? Could you please

20 slow down?

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: [Previous translation continues] ... only

22 transcripts with respect to witnesses who were not either insiders or who

23 would give evidence about matters on which the Trial Chamber ultimately

24 had to rule, but it was closely related to the indictment.

25 On this basis, the Trial Chamber specifically denied the

Page 7370

1 admission on the 92 ter of two witnesses --

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Please slow down. You're

3 speaking much too fast, you're reading much too fast. The interpreters

4 are completely lost.

5 MR. MARCUSSEN: I will go back. Sorry.

6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Read slowly, read slowly. The

7 interpreters do not have the document.

8 MR. MARCUSSEN: [Previous translation continues] ... under 92 --

9 sorry. In your 7th January 2008 decision, Your Honours applied an

10 "interest of justice" test, which essentially was -- where you found that

11 it was not in the interests of justice to admit transcripts of witnesses

12 that were so-called "insiders" and transcripts which were closely related

13 to the indictment and therefore went directly to issues upon which the

14 Trial Chamber had to rule. There were two witnesses who were found to be

15 in that category, VS-04 and Milan Babic, and the request for the

16 admission of evidence -- for the request of transcripts of those two

17 witnesses were dismissed on the basis that it would not be in the

18 interests of justice to admit those transcripts. The remaining 31

19 witnesses, with respect to those witnesses, the Trial Chamber noted that

20 more than 8.000 pages of material had been put forward by the Prosecution

21 and that the Prosecution had failed to establish the relevance of the

22 material. Among those 31 witnesses were VS-51.

23 So the Trial Chamber dismissed the request for the admission of

24 the transcripts of these witnesses, but invited or indicated to the

25 Prosecution that the Prosecution could file new statements that were

Page 7371

1 tailored specifically to this case, and the Trial Chamber would consider

2 the admission of such statements pursuant to Rule 92 ter. So it's my

3 understanding that the Trial Chamber found that it could be in the

4 interests of justice to admit written evidence from these 31 witnesses,

5 including VS-51, provided that the Prosecution come with a focused

6 statement and establish the relevance of the evidence.

7 The Prosecution is preparing a new statement from this witness,

8 from VS-51. It is based largely on a statement that the witness gave

9 earlier to the Prosecution in 2002, with the addition of some material we

10 consolidate in from some additional information he provided in 2006 and

11 maybe a few bits from his prior testimony, with a view to have one

12 consolidated document that contains the evidence of VS-51.

13 We --

14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Let me stop you here to save

15 time, because I'm looking at the clock and I will be sitting on another

16 hearing in just an hour.

17 So in this decision, we said that if you did this, you were

18 supposed to provide this to us 14 days before the witness actually came.

19 VS-51 is scheduled for next week, so you did not meet this 14-day

20 criteria. So that now being said, there will not be a 92 ter for VS-51.

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honour, of course, if that's your decision

22 already at this stage, then we would -- I would note we have had, of

23 course, considerable difficulties, as Your Honours know, having contact

24 with this particular witness and have therefore not had an opportunity to

25 prepare a statement, but we can do him as a live witness. Obviously,

Page 7372

1 we're prepared to do that.

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes, viva voce, and I will tell

3 you how long you will be granted for this. But next week, we still have

4 this witness to finish. Tuesday will probably be used up by

5 Mr. Riedlmayer. We will start with 51, but we probably won't finish 51

6 by Thursday, so you will have to tell him that he has to do what is

7 necessary to spend an additional weekend.

8 MR. MARCUSSEN: [Previous translation continues] ... which were

9 also part of the reasons we put forward the request.

10 Thank you, Your Honours.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

12 It's time to end, it's time to finish. Just a few seconds for

13 Mr. Seselj and then we'll put an end to this hearing.

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I'd just like to

15 draw your attention to the fact that the Witness VS-51 is one of the most

16 important witnesses in this trial. You will remember that the thesis of

17 my defence, my defence case, is that General Aleksandar Vasiljevic

18 organised the execution of the prisoners of war in Ovcara and -- well, I

19 don't need to go on. He was the perpetrator --

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, you no longer have

21 the floor to speak about this. Witness VS-51 will come and we will see.

22 Let's no anticipate on whatever will happen with this witness. The

23 Prosecution is calling him and we will see what will happen. You are --

24 what you just said should be in cross-examination. Furthermore, I want

25 to repeat --

Page 7373

1 [Technical difficulties]

2 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Everything stopped now, the

3 machine stopped.

4 I think it works now.

5 So let me just tell to the Prosecution that housekeeping matters

6 must be raised early in the hearing, when we start, because when you

7 raise a housekeeping matter or a procedural matter at the very end of the

8 hearing, systematically Mr. Seselj wants the floor to reply, we end up

9 not -- going overtime. So administrative matters must absolutely be

10 dealt with at the beginning of the hearing and not at the end.

11 Secondly, regarding Witness VS-51, it will be a viva voce

12 witness. Therefore, there's no problems for the procedure to come.

13 Thank you.

14 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.20 p.m.,

15 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 27th day of

16 May, 2008, at 2.15 p.m.

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