Page 17466
1 Tuesday, 20 March 2012
2 [Defence Closing Statement]
3 [Open session]
4 --- Upon commencing at 2.14 p.m.
5 [The accused entered court]
6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Registrar, kindly call the
7 case.
8 THE REGISTRAR: Good afternoon, Your Honours. This is case
9 number IT-03-67-T, the Prosecutor versus Vojislav Seselj. Thank you.
10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Thank you, Registrar. Today is
11 Tuesday. Good afternoon to everybody, to the OTP representatives, and to
12 Mr. Seselj. We are still at the stage of the closing arguments by the
13 accused.
14 You still have three hours and 40 minutes left, as I said last
15 time. If we don't lose or waste any time today, including the breaks, we
16 might be able to finish today with regard to the closing arguments unless
17 the Prosecutor may have rebuttal evidence or closing arguments. But I
18 fail to see what could be said, since everything that has been said so
19 far by Mr. Seselj was known to us through the filings and because of the
20 closing brief. So we might be able to finish today, Mr. Seselj. You may
21 proceed. You still have three hours and 40 minutes.
22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I'm not so sure, Mr. Antonetti,
23 that you had already known all that I said so far. And as for the
24 Prosecution, they are probably speechless by now, so they won't have
25 rebuttal. What could they possibly rebut from all I said? Nothing.
Page 17467
1 Now it would be in order to shed in greater detail some light on
2 the political circumstances that form the background of this case. We've
3 seen documentary evidence about demands to issue an indictment against
4 me, that everything should be done to prevent me from winning the Serbian
5 elections, et cetera. Carla del Ponte named two people as asking that an
6 indictment be brought against me and the main one is of course
7 Zoran Djindjic. But there were several other DOS party leaders only in
8 Serbia, like Goran Svilanovic, Mr. Covic, Miroljub Labus, and others.
9 And the indictment was indeed issued without being supported properly,
10 and the heap of papers accompanying the indictment could have been
11 sufficient only to Judge Kwon to issue an indictment and confirmed it.
12 It would not have sufficed to anyone else. And the Prosecution started
13 its investigation only after the indictment was brought. You can see
14 that from the dates on witness statements the Prosecution has shown here.
15 There have been several witnesses that had testified in the Milosevic
16 case earlier, so the Prosecution used their statements from that case or
17 asked them again to give new statements. The overwhelming majority of
18 witnesses provided statements only after the indictment was brought. So
19 the indictment issued by the Prosecution was not based on evidence and
20 witness statements. Instead, the indictment, once issued, was an
21 indicator how the witness statements should be adapted and adjusted and
22 how the evidence should be geared. Every witness interview was conducted
23 with a certain purpose. The investigators already had the indictment
24 before them and they were just looking for support for it. Some were
25 more skilful, others less. Some managed better; others fumbled and
Page 17468
1 stumbled and got completely lost. But they collected some scraps of
2 evidence that they could possibly fit into some paragraph in the
3 indictment.
4 This case is an essay on a given subject. A task was set and the
5 task that Gourdault mentioned in December 2006 was set already in 2000 in
6 Serbia. When the regime changed in Serbia, the DOS party came into power
7 with the help of Western intelligence powers and their huge amounts of
8 money and all possible logistical support, and still they were unable to
9 destroy the Serbian Radical Party. When I was already in The Hague,
10 there was of course no mention of a speedy trial, although Carla del
11 Ponte had promised it back in 2003, when she was in Belgrade. I was kept
12 waiting. Status Conferences went along one after another every four
13 months, and nothing. They were hoping they would manage to break me at
14 some point and accept an appointed counsel. All of you hoped that, the
15 Tribunal, the Registry, and the Prosecution.
16 Already then a psychological and mental warfare started against
17 me. On the 11th December, 2003, the Deputy Registrar David Tolb ert
18 issues a decision in which -- imagine this: The Deputy Registrar in his
19 decision, which is of administrative nature, invokes Resolution 827 dated
20 25 May 1993, whereby the Security Council established the international
21 Tribunal to prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of
22 international humanitarian law pending the restoration of peace. It
23 looks like it's now the job of the Registry and the Deputy Registrar.
24 What does the Registry have to do with the restoration of peace? And
25 then he invokes the Statute and the Rules of Detention which do not
Page 17469
1 govern these issues at all. He also refers to the need to protect the
2 individual rights of detainees. So in the process of violating my
3 rights, he invokes my rights. He says that the Security Council has
4 expressed extreme concern - and that is year 1993 - because of reports on
5 war crimes, ethnic cleansing, conquests, and withholding of territory,
6 and he invokes the arguments for establishing this international
7 Tribunal. And then he says: Bearing in mind that there are proceedings
8 currently underway against Mr. Seselj before this international Tribunal
9 concerning acts he committed while occupying a political position in the
10 former Yugoslavia, and bearing in mind that this accused at the
11 parliamentary elections scheduled for December 2003, and bearing in mind
12 especially that the warden of the Detention Unit of the ICTY was informed
13 that the accused had recently made statements for the press using
14 detention premises, which statements have later been published in the
15 media, and what was all this about? Of course I talked to certain
16 people. I made telephone calls to friends and acquaintances. And then
17 one of them would re-tell something for the papers out of our
18 conversations. Bearing in mind Article 63(B) of the Rules of Detention,
19 which envisaged that the Registrar may refuse a person wishing to visit a
20 detainee if it is considered that the purpose of the visit is to obtain
21 information that could be later published in the media and that this Rule
22 stipulates that communication between the accused and other persons may
23 be prohibited if there is reason to believe that such communication will
24 result in the publishing of the accused's statements in the media, and
25 especially if it undermines the ability of this Tribunal to contribute to
Page 17470
1 the restoration of peace.
2 The Deputy Registrar does not indicate, by the way, at all which
3 of my statements he's talking about. I had at that time received several
4 visits by my family members and friends, and these people, when they
5 returned to Belgrade, are asked by journalists about my health. They say
6 it's fine. How am I doing in detention? They say I'm fine. What am I
7 doing? Most of the time I'm reading and writing books, et cetera. What
8 else could they have said? What else did they have to say? Nothing.
9 The Registrar does not indicate what the problem was. I did call two or
10 three journalists from here - that much is true - but they are my
11 friends. I talked to them as well. I still call them occasionally
12 sometimes; for instance, Vladan Dinic, editor-in-chief of the newspaper
13 called "Svedok," "witness," and a few others. But I never gave them
14 interviews or press releases nor does the Deputy Registrar claim I did.
15 And in view of the fact that I was the object of great media attention
16 and reports that a person accused of crimes against humanity and war
17 crimes, such as this accused, is in a position to help the current
18 parliamentary electoral campaign in Serbia unhindered. So this is the
19 problem, that I am helping the campaign. I am still helping that
20 campaign. I am still on the Serbian Radical Party ballot for the
21 elections and I am top of the list. How can you forbid that? You can't.
22 The Serbian consul came to me. I signed all the necessary forms. I am
23 not a convict. Pending the final judgement, I cannot be denied any civil
24 right except the right to freedom of movement. I am here because there
25 was anxiety that I could flee, that I could commit a crime of similar
Page 17471
1 nature, et cetera; that's why I was denied provisional release. But no
2 other right can be denied to me; however, the Deputy Registrar seems to
3 think otherwise.
4 Then he goes on to say that the purpose of the DU premises is to
5 provide for the accused's welfare, not to hinder this Tribunal in its
6 efforts to establish peace and security in the former Yugoslavia. And
7 the fact that a detainee can communicate using the premises of the DU,
8 using such communication to interfere in the electoral campaign in Serbia
9 would probably interfere with the mandate of the Tribunal. I invite the
10 Registry to give you this decision of 11 December 2003 so you could
11 follow it in English if you are interested.
12 In view of the fact that in finding a balance between the rights
13 of the accused to communicate and to receive visits on the one hand and
14 the right of the ICTY to efficiently pursue its mandate and functions on
15 the other hand, it must be taken into account that the particular
16 circumstances of this detainee require special measures to avoid
17 potentially hazardous information leaking to the media, considering that
18 so far this detainee has not been subject to any restrictions in his
19 communication and visits.
20 What could be hazardous about information to mass media? What is
21 bad for you in the Registry concerning the Serbian Radical Party? What
22 could be hazardous to you is that the Serbian Radical Party wins or gets
23 a good result in the elections because you want to destroy it. And based
24 on all that, Deputy Registrar David Tolbert decides that all telephone
25 communication be prohibited between the accused and other persons, except
Page 17472
1 members of his family, consular and other representatives of his country,
2 and a limited number of other persons; that all telephone communications
3 be monitored except his communication with legal advisors and that all
4 persons be prohibited, save for his family, from visiting the accused,
5 and also accepting his legal advisors, if any, and consular
6 representatives; that all family visits should be approved as decided by
7 the warden and other authorities. This, however, does not apply to
8 written communication.
9 That was the first decision. You are yet to see what the
10 decisions that followed looked like. This is undeniable evidence that I
11 was subjected here to political persecution. This whole case is of a
12 political nature.
13 On the Catholic Christmas, 25 January [as interpreted] 2003,
14 sometimes in the afternoon - it could have been Sunday, if my memory
15 serves me well -- or no, no, it was Friday. I called the head office of
16 the Serbian Radical Party and there I talked to some of the top party
17 officials. I was on speaker-phone and there was several journalists
18 present. I said just a few sentences about the upcoming elections. I
19 did not divulge the names of protected witnesses, I didn't mention any
20 names at all, I didn't mention any protected documents, I did not even
21 refer to ICTY Judges or Prosecutors or anything. It was sometime on that
22 Friday afternoon. Then came the Saturday and the Sunday. Over the
23 weekend those who review intercepts of telephone conversations and make
24 transcripts submitted their report, and the next morning, before 8.00
25 a.m., I receive a piece of paper saying that until further notice I am
Page 17473
1 prohibited from using the telephone at all. And then on the 29th
2 December the decision comes down from Hans Holthuis, the Registrar of the
3 ICTY. He says: Taking into account that the Registry is decided to stop
4 the detainees from abusing privileged communication and in view of the
5 upcoming elections in Serbia, considering that it could hinder the ICTY
6 in re-establishing peace and security in the former Yugoslavia -- first
7 of all, this was not about privileged communication. It was about using
8 a public pulpit, because if it was privileged communication it could have
9 not been monitored. At that time I had only two lawyers, not officially
10 my legal advisors. But the ICTY refused to register them because they
11 wanted to impose on me their own people.
12 It goes on, bearing in mind that the parliamentary elections in
13 Serbia were held on the 28th of December, 2003, and bearing in mind that
14 Mr. Vojislav Seselj was one of the candidates standing in the election,
15 and bearing in mind that the DU chief officer found out that the accused
16 on the 25th of December, 2003, before the election abused the opportunity
17 to communicate from the DU by giving statements to the media which were
18 then extensively published, that constitutes a serious violation on the
19 part of the accused of the decision, and therefore another decision is
20 issued that by 10th of January the accused is banned from any telephone
21 communication with any other person, except with his legal advisor, if he
22 has one - and everybody knew that I didn't have one - and of course with
23 diplomatic representatives.
24 Now, this is a decision issued on the 29th of December, and you
25 see what is underlying this decision. Not a single of those standard
Page 17474
1 reasons is quoted. Instead, they say that my support for the Serbian
2 Radical Party is undermining the efforts of this Tribunal to introduce
3 and keep peace in the Balkans. Then on 5th of January -- that was on the
4 29th of December. And then on the 8th of January, the Deputy Registrar
5 David Tolbert issues yet another decision. Bearing in mind everything
6 aforementioned and invoking some of the provisions from the Statute and
7 the Resolution, says the following:
8 "Bearing in mind that the results of the parliamentary elections
9 in Serbia held on the 28th of December, 2003, indicate that the political
10 party led by the accused has won 82 seats out of a total of 250 seats in
11 the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, and taking into account
12 that the activities in post-election period will probably be conducive to
13 having the political party of the accused requesting additional
14 activities in the government activities that came after the
15 28th December, 2003, elections. In view of the wide coverage in the
16 media and having in mind that the accused's in such a position that he
17 has no problems in conducting election campaign or being involved in
18 post-electoral activities, the consequence thereof is the undermining of
19 the mandate of this Tribunal in its role in establishing and maintaining
20 peace. In other words, my electoral campaign actually undermined the
21 restoration of peace in the former Yugoslavia.
22 Now, post-electoral activities such as the discussion about the
23 composition of the government, et cetera, is yet another reason for
24 undermining the restoration of peace. This is all said by David Tolbert.
25 As a result, he decides that for another 30 days, unless decided
Page 17475
1 otherwise by the DU chief officer, to ban any form of communication
2 between the accused and other persons, making exception again for my
3 legal advisors, which I didn't have at the time, and other registered and
4 diplomatic representatives. So I was prohibited from any form of
5 communication, including family visits. Admittedly, the chief officer
6 offered me to call my family. That happened in his office in the
7 presence of interpreters, but I rejected his offer.
8 On the 6th of February, the Deputy Registrar issues yet another
9 decision and made reference, the usual reference, started from the
10 Security Council Resolution, the Statute, and the proclaimed objectives
11 of the ICTY. And he also reminds that in the previous decisions when
12 assessing the factors that could undermine the mandate of the ICTY, the
13 reports in the media that the accused was charged with genocide - pay
14 attention to this - genocide and war crimes, just as the accused is in a
15 position to conduct parliamentary electoral campaigns without any
16 hindrance at all.
17 Now, what they put in or threw in here was a charge for genocide.
18 Therefore, I had to look at the original in English, and there was no
19 mention of genocide there. So somebody who was translating this just
20 inserted the word "genocide." Probably I was so popular among some
21 people and they felt that I am not charged enough and they thought that
22 they would like to add some other ingredients. This is just to draw your
23 attention to the fact how your translation service operates.
24 Now, David Tolbert reiterates that at the parliamentary elections
25 in Serbia in December 2003 the party led by the accused won 82 seats in
Page 17476
1 the parliament, and taking into account the possibility that
2 post-electoral activities will probably result in a request on the part
3 of his party to have the accused become involved in all their activities
4 so everything is being repeated, contained in the previous decisions.
5 And then he says: That bearing in mind that the accused is still
6 exhibiting spiteful attitude towards this, he issues a new ban on any
7 form of communication between myself and other individuals. That was on
8 the 6th of February, 2004.
9 I published all this in the book: "Genocidal Diplomat, Meron --
10 Israeli Diplomat, Theodor Meron."
11 And then we have a decision of 9 March 2004 signed again by
12 David Tolbert. He repeats again everything that was stated in the
13 previous decision and then says that I am prone to being spiteful with
14 regard to these issues and this decision and the decision on
15 communication ban, and therefore suggests that this ban be extended for
16 another 30 days.
17 The next decision comes on the 8th of April. All these
18 disgusting things contained in the previous decisions are being repeated
19 there and the ban is extended for yet another 30 days. Then we have a
20 decision of 7th of May signed by David Tolbert again. It's a complete
21 repetition and everything is being extended once more.
22 And then we have a decision of 9th June containing all the same
23 language, and it provides for an extension of ban. This decision was
24 rescinded only on the 30th of June, 2004.
25 Now, you see here some new evidence in the form of these
Page 17477
1 decisions which I have presented to you in such an illustrious manner.
2 They speak of the fact that this Tribunal is politically motivated and I
3 demonstrated to you which motives underlie the case against me.
4 All of this is in line with what is written in Carla del Ponte's
5 book about the political nature of this Tribunal and how the indictment
6 was commissioned and issued. It also coincide with what
7 Florence Hartmann speaks about in her book, and that is how the Western
8 intelligence services used the ICTY as their instrument. Parallel with
9 that, there is witch-hunt against the Serbian Radical Party in Serbia. A
10 widespread campaign was organised to recruit some of our party officials.
11 The first information to that effect was when I heard that
12 Aleksandar Vucic met a famous US intelligence officer Morton Abramowitz.
13 And you know who betrayed Aleksandar Vucic? James Lyon was the one. Now
14 then a witch-hunt against Tomislav Nikolic started in 2005.
15 Natasa Kandic publicly stated that Tomislav Nikolic, as a volunteer of
16 the Serbian Radical Party in 1991 in Eastern Slavonia whether in
17 Ernestinovo or Lastovo, had killed some old women. Tomislav Nikolic
18 panicked. Because if that had really happened, I would have known about
19 that. He would have told me that because we were very close friends.
20 But he was panicking because he realised that once you accuse someone in
21 public it is very difficult to defend oneself. He was so flustered and
22 started giving some statements against The Hague, and I had to get in
23 touch with him and calm him down.
24 Now, since Slobodan Miljkovic, Lugar, came with a group of
25 trained volunteers in a helicopter in the area of Samac and was attached
Page 17478
1 to the 17th Tactical Group and then was accused of the crimes at the
2 location of Crkvina, he went back to Serbia. After he went back to Samac
3 in 1992, he apparently joined the Serbian Radical Party and he reached an
4 agreement with the local authorities in Samac to go to the front line
5 again, but this time for money. And he also agreed to come with a group
6 of volunteers in order to fulfil certain tasks. In Kragujevac, Tomislav
7 Nikolic organised a celebration to see off this unit without the
8 knowledge of the War Staff in Belgrade. Ljubisa Petkovic had never been
9 informed about this group going to the front, and I told you that in 2003
10 Slobodan Miljkovic was expelled from the party when he slapped Jovan
11 Savic, a president of the local board. These two elements were used to
12 attack Tomislav Nikolic, and he was, as a result, psychologically
13 shattered. He couldn't have known what Miljkovic was going to do in
14 Samac and there was no connection with these events. It wasn't even
15 proved that any old women were killed in Ernestinovo or elsewhere, let
16 alone that Tomislav Nikolic had something to do with that. If that
17 happened, it would have been in my indictment.
18 So in such a state of mind he's surrounded by representatives of
19 the ICTY and eventually he establishes contacts with Carla del Ponte. He
20 met her at least one in Strasbourg during the session of the
21 parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, and I have eye-witnesses
22 to that. And this meeting of theirs was so cordial and happened in front
23 of all other deputies which led them to believe that they knew each other
24 very well. Then apparently he met David Tolbert in Budapest, who was
25 first Deputy Registrar and then soon thereafter was transferred to the
Page 17479
1 position of Deputy Prosecutor. Is that possible? Obviously this is
2 possible in the ICTY.
3 Tomislav Nikolic met him in Budapest again during some session of
4 the Council of Europe. I heard about this encounter. When I asked him
5 about it, he told me that he was interested in my trial and he asked him
6 why was I indicted by the Tribunal at all. Dragan Todorovic was present
7 during this conversation. He became flustered and fumbled and didn't
8 provide any clear answer to that. Luckily a very brave man called
9 Julian Assange emerged. In Anglo-Saxon English-speaking area he's called
10 Julian Assange, and through his site called WikiLeaks he revealed a huge
11 amount of documents from the US diplomatic correspondence. I wrote a
12 book of more than 1.000 pages called: "WikiLeaks Tells Me." I published
13 all the dispatches that you can find on WikiLeaks where there's mention
14 of myself of the Serbian Radical Party, and the traitors Tomislav Nikolic
15 and Aleksandar Vucic, and a selection of dispatches from where the ICTY
16 is being mentioned. I actually chose only those - not all of them - but
17 only those that are most compromising for the ICTY. We can see how
18 Timothy McFadden spied on Slobodan Milosevic for the account of the
19 Americans, how he divulged his written communication with his wife. He
20 revealed information of the conversations that were wire-tapped in his
21 cell. He provided his own assessment of some of the personal
22 characteristics of Slobodan Milosevic.
23 There is plenty other evidence from which it is obvious that the
24 ICTY is a mere tool in the hands of Western intelligence services.
25 However very, very fortunately this dispatch turned up from the American
Page 17480
1 embassy in Paris that did me a priceless favour with the help of this
2 fumbling Maurice Gourdault-Montagne and I have key evidence about the
3 nature of this trial. If this were a real tribunal, gentlemen, if you
4 were acting as real Judges, as soon as that dispatch became public you
5 would have made the discussion to stop this trial because its integrity
6 has been destroyed. After this dispatch by the American embassy in Paris
7 containing the statement of Maurice Gourdault-Montagne there is no
8 integrity in this trial anymore. This trial is over, it's just that
9 nobody told you. I triumphed in this case. I've proven that all of this
10 is just a huge political intrigue. But you've done nothing. You were
11 willing participants in this. That's your problem.
12 In the WikiLeaks documents we find many more details about the
13 way Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic were recruited, about the
14 expectations of their masters in the West in the event they ever get into
15 power, what they are prepared to do. They are prepared to do much worse
16 than Boris Tadic and the Democratic Party. They have no scruples to
17 speak of anymore. And a notorious French spy master Arnaud Danjean was
18 very much involved in this. He connected them with Stanko Subotic and
19 Stane Zabac. Stankovic participated with his money, so did the German
20 government that usually places its funds through various charity
21 organisations. Danjean was personally involved, and it seems that a part
22 of the money that was extracted from Gaddafi was given to Tomislav
23 Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic. The greatest part of the money went to
24 Nicolas Sarkozy, of course. All these are secret funds. It's difficult
25 to expose. But since Gaddafi's fall we've had information in the public
Page 17481
1 domain that this is very commonplace indeed. These traitors on the
2 orders of their masters who told a story about me two years ago that I
3 had ordered Nikolic's killing. Do you know why that calculation was
4 made? All the media in Serbia published it, saying that there is
5 information I had ordered Nikolic's murder. Supposedly one of the
6 members of the Zemun clan made a statement about that, and the Tribunal
7 was then supposed to make a decision to stop all my communication with
8 the outside world, and my wife was even accused of conveying this
9 commission to a certain Simovic to commit the murder.
10 Tomislav Nikolic even "remembered" how I earlier ordered people
11 to be murdered through Aleksandar Vucic. However, the ICTY did not
12 react. And I thought a long time why it did nothing, and I came to the
13 conclusion that it's because the operation to destroy my heart had long
14 been underway. So this would have been superfluous and a bit unsavoury.
15 It's much more efficient. Because whenever they use these disciplinary
16 measures against me, I'm always defiant and I resist and you don't
17 succeed. But when they destroy my heart, I can't breathe. I'm still
18 defiant, I still fight, but I find it hard to breathe. That's it. It's
19 easier to stop me by physical means than by psychological means.
20 Psychologically I still rule over all the Hague Tribunal and all the dark
21 forces that stand behind it.
22 Against this political background, it's interesting that all the
23 Western forces were involved in this conspiracy: the US, the UK, France,
24 Germany. Their intelligence services made a great contribution. They
25 were involved in the attempt to break-up the Serbian Radical Party. They
Page 17482
1 took Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic as their proteges, although
2 they treat Tomislav Nikolic as something for a one-off use only. In
3 their internal communications they reveal him as a man who had purchased
4 his university degree. We have several agencies in Serbia, formally
5 speaking, to fight corruption. Do you think that any of these agencies
6 investigated how they -- how he had become a master of economics without
7 ever taking an exam? No, not even the current regime is willing to do
8 that. The current regime wants to see Nikolic's party in the parliament
9 to feel a gap here or there, although not to be very strong. They want
10 his party just to be around to get them a parliamentary majority when
11 they need it. That's his role. And Nikolic would do anything that
12 Arnaud Danjean, or some of the other western spy masters that I'm not
13 aware of yet, tell him to do. I found only about those who have been
14 blown already. Concerning those who have not yet been blown, I don't
15 have enough information. I don't mention a single name unless I have
16 proof. For all that I've said so far, I have ample proof. My evidence
17 cannot be refuted. Who can deny the diplomatic dispatches from the US
18 embassy in Paris to Washington? Who can dispute the role of
19 Arnaud Danjean in all these dirty dealings? Who can dispute the role of
20 any other participant? Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, for instance.
21 Nobody. You can just sit quietly listening to all of this.
22 Now I would like to move to another area that I have not yet
23 elaborated in the initial stages of my closing argument. The OTP is
24 straining to prove that my alleged hate speech may constitute the crime
25 of persecution. And the members of the Trial Chamber are inclined to
Page 17483
1 them, especially the majority on the Trial Chamber. And the Prosecutor
2 invokes the Nahimana et al. case. The Judges also referred to that case.
3 That is the jurisprudence of the ICTR which dealt with genocide,
4 indisputably established genocide, whereas under the convention on
5 genocide public and open call to genocide is punishable even if genocide
6 did not actually happen. But that's only concerning genocide. However,
7 in the appeals judgement in Nahimana et al., the same acts that had been
8 qualified as genocide were also qualified as persecution, extermination,
9 murder, et cetera. I read the judgement a long time ago. I don't
10 remember anymore.
11 Let's see the jurisprudence of the ICTY concerning the same
12 issue. Let me remind you of the Dario Kordic and Mario Cerkez case. The
13 ICTY indicted them on 30th September, 1998. Para 1 of that indictment --
14 Count 1 of that indictment is persecution as crime against humanity.
15 Persecution is a broader definition of all crimes against humanity, in
16 fact, it's a sui generis concept and persecution can also be an
17 individual crime against humanity.
18 In paragraph 37 of their indictment, item (C) says that the
19 campaign of widespread and systematic persecution was committed and
20 executed in the following ways. And then a whole series of these ways is
21 enumerated including (C), by encouraging, inciting, and conducting a
22 propaganda of hatred, mistrust, and rift on ethnic, national, religious
23 grounds by propaganda speech and in other ways. So it's a comprehensive
24 charge as if it had been phrased in preparation for me.
25 However, on 26 February 2001, the Trial Chamber - consisting of
Page 17484
1 Judge Richard May, Judge Mohamed Bennouna, and Judge Patrick Robinson -
2 hands down the judgement in which paragraph 209 deals with the campaign
3 of hatred on ethnic and other grounds and then it specifies. The
4 Trial Chamber notes that the indictment against Dario Kordic is the first
5 indictment in the history of the international Tribunal where this act
6 was charged as a crime against humanity. The Trial Chamber, however,
7 finds that this act as cited in the indictment does not constitute
8 persecution as crime against humanity per se. Nowhere else in the
9 Statute of the ICTY has it been quoted as a crime against humanity, and
10 most importantly it does not attain the same level of gravity as the
11 other acts stated in Article 5.
12 Furthermore, the criminal prohibition against hate speech has not
13 become a standard of international criminal law. That is why convicting
14 the accused of this crime as persecution would violate the principle of
15 legality. You are trying here prominent Croatian statesmen, one of the
16 highest officials of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna.
17 In the footnote 271, it says:
18 "The Trial Chamber accepts that 'direct and open call to
19 genocide' is a criminal act under Article 4(3)(c) of the Statute.
20 However, the act charged against the accused in the indictment is largely
21 below the standard of that crime."
22 I do not deny myself that open and direct call to genocide is a
23 criminal act punishable under the convention on genocide. However,
24 direct and open call to war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot
25 have the same treatment as the crime of calling to genocide. That is the
Page 17485
1 essence. That settles all the problems. In a new note it says to --
2 that it's note 272. It says:
3 "Criminal prosecution of acts of speech that do not reach the
4 level of incitement has weak support in the international jurisprudence.
5 In the Streicher case, the international tribunal found the accused
6 guilty because he had 'called the German people to active persecution.'
7 However, the International Military Court decided that his acts (such as
8 publishing an anti-Semite magazine) constituted the act of 'incitement to
9 persecution and murder.' Similarly, in the Akayesu case the ICTR found
10 the accused guilty of direct and open calling to commission of genocide.
11 Furthermore, the only act of speech that is explicitly criminalised under
12 the Statute of the International Military Court, the Law No. 10 of the
13 Control Council, the Statute of the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia,
14 and the ICTR and the ICC is direct and open incitement to genocide."
15 In this part, the trial judgement was confirmed by the Appeals
16 Chamber. In these proceedings, the Prosecution did not even try to
17 contest this. In the same note, it says:
18 "There is fierce resistance in conventional law in this area and
19 it shows that such speech does not necessarily have to be considered a
20 crime according to international customs law. In the International
21 Convention on the Elimination of All Kinds of Racial Discrimination, it
22 says that parties that are parties to the Convention 'must treat as a
23 crime punishable by law any spreading of ideas based on racial
24 superiority or hatred, and incitement to racial discrimination.'"
25 Therefore, in the international customs law, racial hatred and
Page 17486
1 racial discrimination are emphasised, as they are in the
2 British House of Lords. Only that hatred is incriminated and sanctioned,
3 not squabbling between racial national -- sorry, not squabbling between
4 ethnic and religious groups, not racial groups. There are no racial
5 differences between Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Albanians, et cetera.
6 There is absolutely no racial distinction there:
7 "Article 20 of the International Pact on Civic and Political
8 Rights (which deals with a ban on war propaganda) determines that 'every
9 kind of war propaganda has to be banned and prohibited by law, that every
10 form of advocating racial or religious hatred that instigates the
11 discrimination, conflict, or violence must be banned by law.'"
12 You will find that in the international pact. However, it goes
13 on to say:
14 "Although according to the original draft of Article 20, that was
15 the case according to its final draft, it has to be banned by law, but
16 not by criminal law."
17 Look at that. This is what you will find on page 58 of the trial
18 judgement. It has to be banned by law but not by criminal law. By what
19 law? Perhaps by disciplinary law, misdemeanour law. Maybe it should be
20 punishable by pecuniary sentence, perhaps an imprisonment up to 60 days.
21 A misdemeanour court is a body of administrative power, not judicial
22 power. For example, in Serbia it is an administrative body which can
23 punish offenders with up to 60 days' imprisonment, not more.
24 If you read Manfred Nowak's book entitled: "Pact of the
25 United Nations on Civic and Political Rights," and it was published in
Page 17487
1 1963, you will find the basis for that. You will find here also that a
2 number of states has voiced their caveat about the interpretation of
3 these provisions -- so this is still in dispute in the international
4 customs of law. If there is something in dispute, it cannot be applied
5 by this Tribunal.
6 In the following footnote it says:
7 "A broad spectrum of legal approaches to the bans and prohibition
8 to 'instigation, or spreading of hatred, mistrust, and discords on
9 political, racial, religious basis by propaganda speeches on -- or in
10 other ways' also shows that there is no international consensus on the
11 criminalisation of the act at the level of the international customs
12 law."
13 You, as a Trial Chamber, mentioned laws of the former Yugoslavia.
14 The Serbian laws also probably provide for a ban on the spreading of
15 religious and national hatred. The sentence for that is ten to five [as
16 interpreted] years, but this is the Yugoslav -- or, rather, Serbian
17 national law. This is not part of the international law, therefore you
18 cannot apply it. You cannot prosecute me here for a traffic offence that
19 I may have committed in Serbia when I was drunk driving. I don't drink,
20 but I give you this as a drastic example:
21 "Germany and Canada [as interpreted] are on the two opposite
22 sides of that spectrum. Although, in many other countries, including the
23 former Yugoslavia and the United States of America, there is some aspect
24 of the regulation of such speech which might incite hatred. The
25 Constitution of South Africa Republic, Article 16(c) (excludes that 'hate
Page 17488
1 speech as an instigation to wrong-doing'). The Criminal Law of Canada,
2 Article 319 para 2, (puts a ban on voicing claims that might instigate
3 hatred against people of different race, nationality, or religion). The
4 Criminal Law of France also says that ("Those who issue publications or
5 in any other way to provoke discrimination, hatred, or violence against a
6 person or a group of persons because of their origin or because of their
7 affiliation or non-affiliation to an ethnic group, nation, race, or
8 religion, shall be punished by a sentence of up to one year in prison and
9 a pecuniary fine')."
10 You, Mr. Antonetti, know only too well, much better than I do,
11 that this is part of the criminal law of France, and that this cannot
12 constitute a crime against humanity. The Article 133 of the federal
13 criminal law of Yugoslavia is again mentioned here as an article putting
14 a ban on publishing such and disseminating such information which could
15 disharm [as interpreted] the unity and brotherhood of the nations of
16 Yugoslavia.
17 The German law also says that if some words degrade or belittle
18 parts of the population in a way which will probably disturb public law
19 and order. The United States of America is an exception to the scope of
20 guarantees to free speech. Speeches that spread hatred is protected by
21 the constitution of the United States of America if they do not incite
22 violence. This is a very high threshold in the American jurisprudence,
23 and I have tried to explain to you that the level of instigation may be
24 reached only if the instigation has largely contributed to the
25 perpetration of a crime. We cannot talk about assumptions here. For
Page 17489
1 example, if I hold a speech in Belgrade or Pirot and then somebody rapes
2 or kills on the other bank of the Drina, sometimes before my speech,
3 sometimes after my speech, and it is not relevant and it is not proven
4 how my speech may have affected that crime; still, I am held responsible
5 for someone having committed that crime of rape or murder. This is
6 nonsense.
7 Are you now going to issue a decision that will go against the
8 decision in the Kordic and Cerkez case? Maybe the Trial Chamber in the
9 Kordic and Cerkez case held onto its principles as regards the hate
10 speech because they had a lot of other elements that contributed to the
11 decision and they didn't have to evoke the hate speech. In my case, you
12 don't have anything else. Participation in war is not a crime. Making a
13 contribution to the Serbian war efforts is not a crime. The Serbian side
14 was not the aggressor side in the war. When you listen to my speeches
15 can you find a single fragment which constitutes an essential
16 contribution to the perpetration of a single crime? The Prosecution has
17 not conducted a serious investigation; we have already seen that. Its
18 investigation was also quite late. First they issued the indictment and
19 then they carried out the investigation. And then they added onto the
20 indictment and then they struck some parts of the indictment because they
21 had to.
22 The Prosecution has forgotten to take into account one thing.
23 They didn't want to watch the videotapes of my public speeches. If they
24 had been a bit more diligent, if they had been a bit more up to the
25 speed, they would have arrived at some evidence and proof that I quoted a
Page 17490
1 favourite song of mine in over 100 rallies and that song is over 200
2 years old. And while I was quoting those verses, the audience started
3 applauding me fanatically because the verses are strong, decisive.
4 I am going to read several verses from that song to you. I
5 gladly recited those verses. I knew them by heart after that time.
6 However, after such a long time I can no longer remember, I can no longer
7 rely on my memory, so I better read it, I suppose. I have just been
8 warned that I should read slowly and I will do that:
9 Let us go, the children of the homeland. The day of the glory
10 has arrived. A blood-stained flag is waving again. Do you hear the
11 blood-thirsty army that is coming?
12 We're talking about the enemy army.
13 They are arriving to slaughter our children in our arms. Two
14 armed citizens, let's form battalions. Advance. Advance. Let the soil
15 blood -- I mean, the enemy blood fill our -- the traces of our steps.
16 Love for the homeland, the sacred love for the homeland. May you
17 lead us. May you make our muscles stronger. Freedom. Sweet freedom.
18 Fight long with your defenders. Rally below our banners and let your
19 enemies die after they see your triumph and our glory.
20 Let us close our ranks. When our fathers are no longer with us,
21 we will find their dust and we will find the traces of their pride. And
22 we will not be jealous that we have survived them. We will be less
23 jealous that we have survived them than to have to share their coffins.
24 We will be proud to defend them. We will be proud to follow them.
25 To armed citizens, let's form battalions, advance and advance,
Page 17491
1 and let the soiled blood fill the traces of our steps.
2 What does the mob of slaves want from us? And this is a
3 reference to our enemy.
4 The mob of traitors, they have been betrayed by their own
5 governments. Who are these awful chains for, the chains that have long
6 been prepared for the Serbs that were prepared for the Croatian federal
7 unit and the Bosnian federal unit, but the Serbs stood up to that.
8 Mr. Antonetti, I'm sure that you have recognised the verses as
9 soon as I started reciting them. This is the French national anthem,
10 The Marseillaise, and this is the song that I used to be able to recite
11 off the top of my head. I did not read the whole of it now, but I used
12 to recite all of it once. Why did they never mention that I recited that
13 song in my speeches? What prevented them from doing that? This is the
14 way one speaks when we are at war. We are not supposed to commend the
15 enemy. Imagine what you French people used to say about the German enemy
16 when they attacked you. Or you Danes, when were you attacked, what year?
17 Or you Italians, when Germans occupied half of Italy? You cannot speak
18 nicely about your enemy, can you? And also people are joking with me
19 from the moment they heard that a pacemaker had been given to me - and
20 it's not a pacemaker, it's something else - but people started calling me
21 a peacemaker, they want to portray me as a peacemaker. Are you trying me
22 here -- am I on trial because I'm not a peacemaker? Because I'm not a
23 peace-loving person? That is why you are trying me. I am not a
24 peace-loving person. Am I on trial because I am an aggressive person
25 that I have an aggressive character? It's my right to be aggressive. If
Page 17492
1 any of my aggressivity is punishable, then I should be tried before my
2 local court in Belgrade, not before an international court.
3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, the time has come
4 for a break. We're going to break for 30 minute. We shall reconvene at
5 4.00.
6 --- Recess taken at 3.31 p.m.
7 --- On resuming at 4.01 p.m.
8 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The court is back in session.
9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] As we go on I will be dealing with
10 some very concrete remarks with regard to the Prosecution thesis which
11 have not been argumented [as interpreted] and are insupportable. In a
12 completely unreasonable way, the Prosecutor has tried to say that the
13 defence of western Serbs and helping that defence is a criminal act, is a
14 criminal enterprise.
15 Did the Serbs need defending in the territory of the Croatian
16 federal unit? Already in 1990, Tudjman changed the constitution against
17 their will and thus deprived them of their elementary right, the right to
18 being a constituent people.
19 What could happen next? Maybe what Judge Moloto said in the
20 Martic trial. Why you Serbs, when you saw that the Croats didn't like
21 you there, why didn't you just up sticks and leave Croatia? This is more
22 or less what he said. It's easy for Judge Moloto to talk. Where he
23 comes from, whatever a man has he loads onto a donkey or a mule and they
24 can go wherever they want. In the territory of the former federal unit
25 of Croatia, the Serbs had resided for over 400 years. They did not
Page 17493
1 settle by having expelled Croats from there. It was the Viennese court,
2 the Austrian authorities, that they wanted them to settle in the
3 territories that had been ravaged by the Turks before they arrived. And
4 from there Croats had scattered all over Europe, and that is why they
5 still live in Slovakia. The current Slovak president, Ivan Gasparovic,
6 is a Croat by origin. They also reside in a large group just outside
7 Vienna called Gradiscanskih Croats, and they also reside in Hungary.
8 There are a lot of Croatian names used by the Hungarians who don't speak
9 a word of Croatia. In Italy, until recently, there were a lot of
10 villages that were settled exclusively by the Croats who had fled before
11 the Turks. And now the Serbs had been invited to settle there in order
12 to defend the Austro-Hungarian empire. They protected the rest of the
13 Croats and they defended the entire Europe from the Turkish invasion.
14 When Turks became danger, the Austrian monarchy, after the battle of
15 Sadowa and the defeat there when Austria lost the possibility of leading
16 the unification of Germany had to let this job be done by Prussia, they
17 also lost the opportunity for a dual division of the monarchy. What
18 follows was a bargain with the Croats in that Croatia was given the whole
19 of Slavonia. The Croatian parliament as an institution was for centuries
20 the parliament of Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Croatia. Dalmatia and Croatia
21 and Slavonia were strictly divided. Dalmatians were not Croats. They
22 are of the Roman origin. They are very close to Italians. They are not
23 of Slavic origin. With the will of the Roman pope and with his support
24 when Italy lost its dominance in the northern part of the Adriatic Sea,
25 they were annexed to Croatia as a separate province during the reign of
Page 17494
1 the King Tomislav. Slavonia was also annexed to it subsequently.
2 However, this did not change the ethnic composition of Slavonia.
3 Slavonians remained the same just as Slovenes did. Slavonia and Slovenia
4 is one and the same thing.
5 Now, the Serbs came and settled in totally devastated territories
6 in order to defend Austria. The so-called military border or the
7 military Krajina was created as an autonomous region under direct
8 governance of Vienna. In 1871, when the danger was over, an agreement
9 was reached with the Serbian people to abolish the military border and to
10 have the military Krajina attached to Croatia and Slavonia because they
11 were divided between Vienna and Hungary. So the Krajina was to be
12 attached to Slavonia but with the proviso that the Serbs remain a
13 constituent nation equal to the Croats. And this was confirmed by the
14 communists when they established the Croatian federal unit towards the
15 end of World War II. This proclaimed Serbian right could not be
16 effectively be disputed, although there were efforts in that respect, and
17 then when Tudjman came in power by a stroke of pen, it was eradicated.
18 So what other option did the Serbs have other than to resist
19 this? And their memories of what happened during World War II were still
20 fresh. In the Second World War, the Serbs were subjected to genocide by
21 various fascist forces, by Germany and by the Croatian Quisling state.
22 Serbs found themself [as interpreted] in a situation to be rescued by the
23 fascist Italy from the Croats in 1941, which means the Italians had to
24 re-occupy their entire zone in order to prevent the Croatian crimes.
25 Last night I was watching a programme on television where it says that
Page 17495
1 Drazen Mihailovic was a pro-fascist and that he co-operated with
2 Italians. Yes, that's true, but the Italians did not commit genocide
3 against the Serbs. It was done by the fascist Croatia and the fascist
4 Germans, and the Italians never committed genocide against the Serbs, the
5 Jews, and the rest. So you always have to choose between the lesser of
6 two evils. Yes, Italy re-occupied those territories, but they were not a
7 genocidal power, whereas Croatia's state was a genocidal power.
8 And now you accused me for telling this to the Serbs. I simply
9 recounted facts. Hundreds and hundreds of books have been written about
10 this. Numerous documents have been preserved from that period, and now
11 are we to pretend that this never happened? As soon as Tudjman got into
12 power, our memories of the Independent State of Croatia were revived.
13 And in addition to that, he reinstated his connections with the Ustasha
14 emigres. And were we then expected not to help the Serbs who were
15 endangered? The snatching the Serbs' constitutional right -- the
16 snatching of their constitutional right was something that was done to
17 the Serbs, and we had the same situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The
18 Serbs were denied their right to be a constituent nation.
19 Towards the end of the Second World War, there was a dilemma
20 whether to attach Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia or to establish it as a
21 separate unit, and then the latter was accepted. It was proclaimed as a
22 federal unit made up of equal constituent nations, i.e., Serbs, Muslims,
23 and Croats, although at the time the Muslims were not designated as a
24 nation because at the time they had an option to decide whether they
25 would declare themselves as either Croats or Serbs. But they had their
Page 17496
1 specific features being a separate religious community. All Muslims of
2 Bosnia-Herzegovina descend from Serbs who during the Turkish occupation
3 converted to Islam. Initially the majority of people accepted Islam for
4 their own interests, in order to achieve a privileged position. And then
5 their children and their grandchildren, at least those belonging to the
6 ruling class, were sent away to Istanbul, Egypt, and Baghdad to study
7 there. They studied Turkish, Arabic, and Persian languages. They were
8 able to read the Muslim holy scripts. And many of them became fond of
9 Islam through their reason and through their approach to its values.
10 Initially, nobody understood it, but part of the people accepted it in
11 order to keep their lands, their estates, and to achieve a privileged
12 position.
13 After having studied these languages, people started appreciating
14 this religion and started loving it. Even ordinary people were able to
15 learn something about this new religion, although they could not read
16 original scripts in Arabic or Turkish, but they listened to the sermons
17 of priests. Now, these Serbs who converted to Islam became soldiers of
18 the Turkish empire. They took part in all the subsequent Turkish
19 conquests. They fought around Vienna, in Asia, Africa, God knows where,
20 and they earned a reputation of good fighters. In turn, that gave them
21 economic power and influence, but they were always a vast minority
22 compared to the Orthodox Serbs, and particularly compared to the
23 Catholics, up until the great defeat at -- in Vienna in 1690. At that
24 time the Turks were forced to abandon Hungaria [as interpreted],
25 Slavonia, Lika. And where do they go? They went to what is nowadays
Page 17497
1 Serbia, all the way south to Macedonia, and they went to
2 Bosnia-Herzegovina.
3 The Austrian military leader Eugene of Savoy raided
4 Bosnia-Herzegovina and burned everything. He burned all the mosques in
5 Sarajevo. He pulled down all the fortifications, and then when
6 General Pikolomini, the main commander of the Austrian army -- the
7 Austrian army had to withdraw and Eugene of Savoy did the same. And what
8 happened? The entire Catholic population was then moved by him to
9 Slavonia which left Bosnia-Herzegovina with fewer than 10.000 Catholics.
10 A lot of Orthodox Serbs went along with them and settled in Slavonia.
11 And that is how Slavonia that had been a Turkish province for centuries
12 once it was vacated, Bosnian Catholics in Orthodox people came and
13 settled there.
14 A similar thing happened in Croatia. The Croats have their
15 original native mother tongue which is called Cakavian and it is
16 different from Stokavian and from the Slovenian language. Modern
17 linguistics considered the Croatian language to be ancient Stokavian.
18 And all of these languages are Serbian, in fact.
19 Mr. Marcussen may laugh at this to his heart's content, but it
20 seems that he doesn't know anything about this. Why did he become
21 involved in this trial at all? You cannot conduct this trial as some
22 trials conducted against Serb officials for the crimes in Kosovo. He
23 managed to sow or to put a bone of contention among the accused, and this
24 is something that he cannot here -- do here because he is faced here with
25 somebody who is far superior to him. And I really cannot resist the
Page 17498
1 arrogance that I am displaying that emanates from this superiority.
2 Now, almost destroyed as a nation, scattered around Europe,
3 Croats had their nobility living in Slavonia and western parts of Croatia
4 and they forced their Kajkavian neighbours to declare themselves as
5 Croats. Ljudevit Gaj, who was the leader of a movement, started a paper
6 called "Danica" which was first published in Kajkavian and then in
7 Stokavian accent. The "biskup" of Djakovo says that the Serbs and the
8 Croats were one and the same nation, only they were divided by religion
9 into Catholics and Orthodox. However, this could not be proven in
10 Dalmatia, let alone in Slavonia. Admittedly, there was no awareness of
11 being Serbs developed among the people living in Slavonia. However, they
12 were aware of their Slavonian identity. They had a leader called
13 Mato Topalovic, and he published a number of articles in which he
14 resisted attempts to have Slavonians declared as Croats. And this
15 struggle lasted until 1850 and the second phase was in 1900.
16 Then at initiative of some Croatian intellectuals, amongst whom
17 was Mazuranic, for example, a so-called Vienna Convention was reached.
18 Representing the Serbs were Vuk Karadzic and Djuro Danicic. And based on
19 that agreement, the Serbs and the Croats started speaking the same
20 standard language and started calling it Serbo-Croatian or
21 Croatian-Serbian. And before the ink got dry on that agreement, the
22 Croatians started systematically corrupting this language in order to
23 distinguish it from the Serbs.
24 At the first Catholic Congress in Zagreb it was proclaimed that
25 all Stokavian-speaking people are Croats of Catholic faith. And this is
Page 17499
1 the root of the tremendous evil that was to reach its climax in the
2 crimes during the Second World War, because some of the Croatian clerics
3 committed or were complicit to the most terrible crimes, and other people
4 who committed the worst crimes were Catholic Serbs, because by
5 annihilating the Orthodox Serbs they tried to annihilate everything that
6 reminded them of their Serbian origins.
7 So without taking into account all these historical facts, it is
8 impossible to judge the current situation. The past of all former
9 generations is a burden like a nightmare on the minds of people living
10 nowadays. We cannot behave as if history starts from us. We have to
11 remember everything that our forebears went through and we re-live it
12 again. That is the reason why as soon as the Ustasha traditions were
13 revived in Croatian, we sent alarms to the Serbian public.
14 Since 1981, as early as then, I warned of the pan-Islamist
15 tendencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1986 my book, "The Witch-hunt
16 Against a Heretic" was banned. But I proceeded with substantiated
17 arguments, and it wasn't Izetbegovic's group that was the problem but the
18 regime in Bosnia-Herzegovina which back in the communist times revived
19 and started pan-Islamist ideas, attempting to frame Bosnia and
20 Herzegovina as a majority Islamist state. I have once before been held
21 accountable for what you are trying me. Why are you trying me again for
22 the same thing: My demand to deconstruct the Yugoslav federation, my
23 demand to abolish the Muslim nation, et cetera? I was tried for that in
24 Sarajevo in 1984, and you are trying me for the second time for the same
25 thing. You can convict me a hundred times but you cannot kill the truth.
Page 17500
1 The truth is more powerful than all of us together. Unlike you, I'm
2 convinced in the truth of what I'm saying and that's why I'm more
3 relaxed, whereas you are wallowing in problems. You are in a vice
4 between the tasks set to you and the pressures put on you by those dark
5 Western powers and you have to cope with the task.
6 The Prosecution says that the establishment of Serbian autonomous
7 regions in the territory of the Croatian and Bosnian-Herzegovinian
8 federal units was a step in creating a greater Serbian state. That is
9 not true either. By creating Serbian autonomous regions, the Serbs were
10 primarily trying to prevent the secession of Croatia and
11 Bosnia-Herzegovina and to force Croats and Muslims to negotiate on the
12 theory that if you stay within Yugoslavia we will stay in Croatia and
13 Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you want to go away, we don't want to go away
14 with you. That was the Serbian policy. In the Serbian Autonomous Region
15 of Krajina which included Dalmatia, Lika, Banija, and Kordun, and in
16 Western Slavonia and the Serbian autonomous region, Eastern Slavonia,
17 Baranja, and Srem. That was the basic policy in all Serbian autonomous
18 regions formed in the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Why not establish
19 them? Serbs, when they established those autonomous regions, they did
20 not expel anyone. They did not persecute anyone. They never spoke about
21 a greater Serbian state. They kept emphasising one thing alone: We want
22 to stay in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was created in 1918 and we want it to
23 survive. That's all. Nothing more. Who was the disruptive factor in
24 the Balkans? Those who broke Yugoslavia up. Not those who wanted to
25 preserve it. I was one of the few Serb intellectuals who understood how
Page 17501
1 great the Serbian mistake was in the creation of Yugoslavia. If we had
2 not accepted Yugoslavia in 1918, nowadays Serbia would include all of
3 Slavonia, all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Adriatic coast until the
4 peninsula of Planka north of Split. It would not be called Greater
5 Serbia. It would be called simply "Serbia." Our political leaders and
6 the Regent Aleksandar Karadjordjevic wanted more. They wanted a union of
7 southern Slavs and thus destroyed Serbian interests. They didn't know
8 whom they were uniting with. Serbian Orthodox people, Serbian Catholic
9 people, and Serbian Muslims should have united. We should have left
10 Croats and Slovenes alone and let them agree with Austrians, with
11 Italians, with Hungarians, who takes what territory, and we should have
12 left them to their own devices. Unfortunately, this was not done. The
13 Prosecution holds it against me that I enumerate all Serbian lands. That
14 features in the first programme of the Serbian Chetnik Movement and the
15 Serbian Radical Party later on in our programme declaration, and that
16 remains our orientation today. In disputably the Serbian land remains
17 the same today, including Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija. You want to
18 seize Kosovo from us, but you won't manage. Even if rivers of blood have
19 to flow again, if we, the current generation, do not succeed, our sons
20 and our great-grandsons will succeed.
21 Macedonia was officially recognised as part of the Serbian
22 territory after the First Balkan War. According to the
23 Bucharest agreement this is indisputable. After the Second World War,
24 according to the Versailles agreement, nobody ever questioned that
25 Macedonia belongs to Serbia. Serbs themselves contributed to a certain
Page 17502
1 ethnic assertion of Macedonia. If they are not exactly the same as
2 Serbs, they are very similar. Nobody's as similar to Serbs as
3 Macedonians. Serbs gave Macedonians a federal unit, but when Macedonians
4 wanted to secede, Serbs never tried to stop it by force. Yes, I raised a
5 bit of a racket against that, but we never did anything to stop it. We
6 thought they would get some independence, they will live out these whims
7 of theirs, and then they'll come back. However, the Americans
8 intervened, took over the military base in Vojna Palanka, the Krivolak
9 base. They gave Albanians an opportunity to mutiny, to mount an
10 insurgency, and then occurred an explosion in Albanian and Macedonian
11 relations. Tensions are rising and Macedonia will be in trouble.
12 Don't forgot, Macedonia is only the land nowadays that the
13 Serbian army liberated in the First World War. Only those living in
14 those territories have the right to call themselves Macedonia. What the
15 Bulgarians conquered is now part of greater Bulgaria. What the Greeks
16 conquered has long been Greek. Nobody ever mentions the existence of
17 Macedonians there anymore. And the Prosecution blames me in their
18 closing argument that back in 1990 on -- that on Ilindan, a great Serbian
19 holiday celebrated by Macedonians as well, I went to the Prohor Pcinjski
20 monastery and from the falls of a Serbian Orthodox monastery, I crushed
21 atheist Satanist plaques depicting the hammer and sickle, saying that at
22 some point in history the communists held a meeting there and agreed
23 about an insurgency and the building of a communist Macedonia. What was
24 that plaque doing on a Serbian Orthodox monastery? What were those
25 atheist Satanist plaques doing there? And proceedings again were started
Page 17503
1 against me. That was on Ilindan, 1990, sometime at 5.00. I broke those
2 plaques and now proceedings are underway, witnesses are being heard, they
3 can hold me accountable only for a misdemeanour only if I had disturbed
4 order and peace, but the monks of the monastery said, We were not
5 disturbed. We heard the sounds of the hammer and that was pleasing to
6 our ears. The people had gathered there already from Serbia and
7 Macedonia by 5.00 since it's a great holiday, and they said, We were not
8 disturbed in the least. We really liked it when Vojislav Seselj appeared
9 and took those plaques off. So they had to free me, they had to acquit
10 me.
11 And now the Prosecution is portraying this as a sign that I am a
12 bad person or what. Macedonia does not feature in my indictment.
13 Montenegro has always been Serbian. Even when they had their own
14 statehood and independence, it declared itself as Serbian in its own
15 constitution. In the territory of the current Montenegro and northern
16 Albania, the first Serbian state was created back in the times of
17 King Caslav, King Stefan Vojislav, King Bodin, King Vojin Vladimir. That
18 was all the way up to the end of the 10th century. So what? Do I deny
19 that a Montenegrin nation exists? Of course I do. Every honourable
20 person does because a Montenegrin nation is a trick. It's deceit. Only
21 dishonest people can say Montenegrins exist as a nation.
22 As for Bosnia, in the Middle Ages, it was constantly almost part
23 of Serbia. What was not part of Serbia is a small area in
24 Central Bosnia, perhaps Sarajevo, Kiseljak, Fojnica, no farther than
25 Zavidovic. North of that, Usora and Soli, that's the land of
Page 17504
1 King Dragutin. Serbian monasteries attest to that. The Herzegovina is
2 the land of forefathers of Saint Sava. The first herceg, Saint Stefan,
3 got his title from Saint Sava and proclaimed himself herceg, which means
4 "duke," that's the German for duke, so he's a colleague of mine of sorts,
5 and that was in the monastery of Mileseva, today's Serbia. Dubrovnik was
6 first a Roman city and the entire environs were Serbian. And through
7 constant resettlement its ethnic structure was changed. The Roman
8 population remained patricians, but the majority of citizens were Serbs.
9 And Dubrovnik used to be a Catholic city, but Serb Catholics lived there.
10 All prominent Dubrovnik intellectuals are Catholic Serbs, including
11 Ivan Gundulic, including Rudjer Boskovic. Rudjer Boskovic comes from my
12 family. His father Nikola resettled from the same village as my father,
13 Orahov Do. He resettled to Dubrovnik 200 years earlier, that's the only
14 difference, and there he married an Italian woman. From a marriage
15 between a Serb and an Italian woman, Rudjer Boskovic was born.
16 And now Croatia are claiming it as their own. Dalmatia at the
17 time Croats and Serbs arrived was only the territory between Zadar and
18 Split. Omis was Serbian, and the border between Croatia and Serbia was
19 on the Cetina river. Croatia was far back in the hinterland of Dalmatian
20 towns, and in all those Dalmatian towns Roman population lived and it
21 stayed there for a long time, all the way up until their -- the end of
22 the Second World War and then the communists expelled 300.000 Italians
23 from there. Lika, yes, it was originally Croatian, maybe belonged to
24 Avarians, because Lika of Gacko had autonomy and it was headed by Ban.
25 And the Ban of Lika, Krbava and Gacka was man number two in the state.
Page 17505
1 Korduni used, indeed, to be Croatian, and so was Petrova Gora which used
2 to be Mount Gvozd. Banija was also Croatian once upon a time, but
3 Croatians disappeared from there. The Ottomans killed some of them,
4 captured others, expelled the third part, and Serbs occupied an empty
5 land at the invitation of the Austrian emperor. So whose land is it now?
6 Slavonia was not Serbian but it was not Croatian either. It used
7 to be Slovenian. Slavonia and Slovenia is the same thing. It was an
8 integral part of a state called Great Moravia state which included
9 Slovakia, the Czech state and the Pannonian Plain. And when the
10 Croatians came to the Pannonian Plain, they pushed the Slovenes further
11 south. The toponyms, the place names say it all; Slovenia, Slavonia,
12 Slovakia, they all have the same roots.
13 Now, Kajkavian Slavonians were pushed back from Slavonia up to
14 the line held by the Turks, and that is part of what is today
15 Western Slavonia. And the Turks settled primarily Muslim population
16 there but also a lot of Orthodox Serbs, to be serfs or to be border
17 guards. So what am I claiming as our own now? I'm not claiming
18 anything. It's Serbian land and I have proof that it's Serbian land.
19 Am I not allowed to say that it's Serbian land? Should I be
20 hesitant or shy about saying it in public? Why? Because I'm in danger
21 of being convicted by you? I couldn't care less whether you will convict
22 me. I told you as much on day one. I'm not interested in your judgement
23 at all. I've used this trial as a public political platform to settle my
24 accounts with The Hague Tribunal and the dark forces whose instrument
25 this Tribunal is, and I've done this with huge success. I can't imagine
Page 17506
1 anyone being more successful in this endeavour than I, and I'm sure you
2 can't either. You have been witnesses to this.
3 The Prosecution says that at the beginning of the war Serbs tried
4 to take strategically important points. What's strange about that? In
5 every war opposing sides try, first of all, to take strategically
6 important points. For us Serbs, strategically important points were
7 scattered across the Serbian Krajina, and especially in
8 Bosnia-Herzegovina. A strategically important point for us is the
9 corridor between Serbian Krajina and Semberija. We had to cut this
10 corridor through or we would have condemned Krajina to disaster, to
11 failure. And we have made this corridor. Volunteers of the Serbian
12 Radical Party participated in it, and I'm proud of that. And in this
13 entire operation of making the corridor you were unable to find anything
14 incriminating.
15 We Serbs were successful. We made the corridor. And now the
16 Western forces want to steal that corridor from us by supervising Brcko,
17 by manipulating the so-called arbitration process regarding Brcko, and by
18 the false interpretation of the Dayton Accords, which left the
19 Arbitrary Commission to determine the inter-entity line between the two
20 entities. And the Arbitration Commission consisted of a representative
21 of the Western forces, one Serb, and one Muslim. They voted a Serb over.
22 And instead of determining a border, they decided that Brcko would be a
23 district. When needed, they would try and break the Republika Srpska in
24 two parts in Brcko.
25 You are surprised that the Drina River held quite a big
Page 17507
1 significance for the Serbs. Of course it did.
2 The Drina River flows through the centre of the Serbian lands and
3 it is very important, therefore. We had to prevent the possible
4 destruction of the electrical power-plants on the Drina River as well as
5 the planned destruction of the red mud dam near Zvornik, and Muslims had
6 been preparing for that. The strategic goal of acceding the Adriatic
7 coast, that is and has always been one of the strategic goals of Serbia.
8 First of all, the Great Britain in 1915 guaranteed that Serbia would have
9 access to the Croatian coast. In 1960, in the so-called London Pact
10 envisaged that. And then in 1918 American President Wilson submitted a
11 declaration to the American Congress. The declaration had 14 bullet
12 points. Under bullet point 11 of the declaration, it says:
13 "The occupied territories of Serbia and Montenegro had to be
14 reinstated, i.e., what Austro-Hungarians and the Germans had occupied,
15 and Serbia had to be provided with free access to the sea."
16 American President Wilson guaranteed that in 1918. And now we
17 have been deprived from that free and safe access to the sea. We will
18 never give up on the free and unhindered access to the sea. We will have
19 to get it once again. How? I don't know how, I don't know it in
20 advance, but we will never give up on that goal. Once an opportunity
21 presents itself, when the current Western powers fall -- are crushed,
22 let's just look at the crisis surrounding euro and the budgetary deficits
23 of some members of the European state. Either the European Union is
24 going to invest hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars into saving
25 Greece or everything will fall through. And this is a vicious circle,
Page 17508
1 and I hope that very soon the European Union will go under. Certainly it
2 will go under before they force Serbia to become a member. America also
3 has to go under. America survives only on the printing of the dollar.
4 The only industry that America has, and that is of some relevance, is the
5 printing of the dollar. Once when the rest of the world stops accepting
6 American dollars as an equivalent of the value of all commodities,
7 America will go under. There is nothing to preserve it.
8 The entire empire is founded on the prevalence of the American
9 dollar. We will never give up on having access to the Adriatic sea and
10 you can sentence me to a hundred years in prison for saying that.
11 You're also holding it against me that I supported the
12 Serbian Democratic Party. That's correct at first, that was in the year
13 1990 when the Serbian Democratic Party was established in the former
14 Croatian federal unit while it was still an integral unit, and when the
15 Serbian Democratic Party was established in Bosnia-Herzegovina we, at
16 first members of the Serbian Chetnik Movement and then from 1991 members
17 of the Serbian Radical Party, considered that we didn't have to establish
18 our own party over there, but that all the Serbs had to be united around
19 the Serbian Democratic Party. That was our position in 1990 and at the
20 beginning of 1991. However, the Serbian Democratic Party broke up in the
21 territory of the former Croatian territorial unit and its Krajina segment
22 separated from the rest of the party. And since we were not satisfied
23 with some of the aspects of the policies of the Serbian Democratic Party
24 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we decided to establish our own party over there.
25 In Bosnia and Herzegovina at first, only three branches were set
Page 17509
1 up: One in Banja Luka headed by lawyer Nikodin Cavic, the other in
2 Bijeljina headed by Mirko Blagojevic, and the third one in Sarajevo
3 headed by Branislav Gavrilovic. In 1992, we had only those three
4 branches, nowhere else in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sometime in May 1992 I
5 was visited by Nikola Poplasen. He was a professor at the same faculty
6 of political sciences where I used to teach. We knew each other from
7 Sarajevo. He was a prominent intellectual. At the time he was a bit
8 more Red, but he was healed from the communist disease. I take the most
9 blame for that, but I saw him as the best person to be -- to spear-head
10 the foundation of the Serbian Radical Party.
11 We also approached Rade Leskovac, and we entrusted him with
12 establishing the Serbian Radical Party of the Republic of Serbian
13 Krajina. We had a branch in Knin already, headed by Tode Lazic. And in
14 1991, we also had a nucleus of the Serbian Chetnik Party more than the
15 Serbian Radical Party in Eastern Slavonia. And that's it. That was all.
16 And then we started establishing serious political parties. They were
17 linked to the Serbian Radical Party in Serbia, or rather, in the
18 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but they had an autonomy of sorts and
19 they were registered in the Republika Srpska and in the Republic of
20 Serbian Krajina as independent parties.
21 In other words, that period of support extended by the Serbian
22 Radical Party was very short. We extended support to the Serbian
23 Radical Party of Republika Srpska in 1996 because we did not want to put
24 forth our candidates for the president of the Republic and a member of
25 the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We only had our list for
Page 17510
1 parliamentary elections and we won 10 per cent of the vote.
2 Unfortunately, we supported Biljana Plavsic as the future president of
3 the republic and very soon it turned out to be a huge mistake, both by
4 Karadzic and his associates and ours because we supported her although we
5 knew who Biljana Plavsic was.
6 The problem for the Prosecutor is the fact that Serbia assisted
7 and helped western Serbs, and the Prosecutor says how Serbia helped them.
8 Serbia would have been a land of traitors if it hadn't helped its western
9 brethrens. Imagine America helped the so-called Contras in Nicaragua.
10 Those Contras that fought the Sandinista regime and committed atrocious
11 crimes. Nicaragua issued a -- started a case against America, but the
12 American court of justice did not take that into account. They said
13 America did help them but not to rise into power but to help them. And
14 now when the Defence presented that argument in the Tadic case and evoked
15 the judgement of the International Court of Justice, the Trial Chamber
16 here concluded that that precedent could not be used because Serbia has
17 to be taken accountable for helping its brethren in the west. America
18 helped bandits, criminals -- the traitors of the Nicaraguan people, and
19 we, in our turn, helped our brethrens. America was not held responsible
20 for helping bandits and we are being held responsible for helping our
21 brethrens who had already experienced the bloody Ustasha knife in the
22 Second World War and now we had to let them experience that same thing
23 again. The killing of the Serbs had already started in towns. They were
24 fired from work, and so on and so forth.
25 In a party of wedding guests in front of an old Serbian church,
Page 17511
1 although in all the mosques in Sarajevo -- the Nikola Gajdovic, the
2 bride-groom's father, was killed. The police did not react, and the
3 assassin soon became one of the main Muslim commanders in Sarajevo. He
4 was killed only after the war as -- in a show-down of Sarajevo criminals
5 because he, himself, was a well-known criminal.
6 The Prosecutor also evokes the role of the JNA. At first the JNA
7 tried to preserve the entire state of Yugoslavia and then it reduced its
8 goal to the protection of the Serbs. And this was openly written by
9 General Veljko Kadijevic in his book. What else could the JNA have done?
10 We condemned the leadership of the JNA for actually interfering in some
11 conflicts in Slovenia and they had sent bare-handed lads against armed
12 Slovenian territorials, hunting societies, criminals, and so on and so
13 forth.
14 And when I say that those lads were bare-handed, what does that
15 mean? They had arms but they did not have live bullets and they were
16 like clay pigeons for Slovenian rebels. And it never occurred to you to
17 try anybody from Slovenia for that crime. And what about the Resolution
18 of the Security Council, the mandate that it gave to The Hague Tribunal
19 also encompasses the territory of Slovenia. Why was that not taken into
20 account? How come nobody from Slovenia was taken responsible for that
21 massacre that took place? Of course you didn't do that because your main
22 objective are Serbs, not anybody else or everybody else.
23 And now look at another thing here. When the state borders are
24 threatened, every military in the world would distribute arms to the
25 loyal population living around the borders, every military in the world
Page 17512
1 will do that, to defend themselves, to make it easier for them to
2 organise themselves. Why is it then the problem that the JNA supplied
3 arms to the Serbian population? I have already explained to you how that
4 was done illegally at first, how we broke into military depots and took
5 weapons from there. Later on the JNA provided us with more modern
6 weapons. It was only later that the Serbs were provided with the modern
7 Kalashnikovs. That was after the month of August 1991. Up to then we
8 had provided them with written-off, obsolete Thompson rifles, M-48
9 rifles, pagan rifles and similar weaponry. All of that had been planned
10 for destruction and there were even documents to that effect showing that
11 those documents had already been destroyed as obsolete.
12 If the task of the JNA was to preserve the territorial integrity
13 of Yugoslavia and then it turned out to be impossible, then they had to
14 save what they could save. That was the reduction of the JNA goals that
15 I have mentioned. We couldn't keep Slovenia and Yugoslavia, okay let it
16 go. Let's keep what we can. The JNA was very late in abandoning some
17 territories that were never Serbian territories. For example, Varazdin,
18 General Trifunovic was there. He had -- he surrendered the entire
19 Varazdin Corps to the Croats, 120 most modern tanks and other armoured
20 tools. Instead of blowing all that up or instead of trying to break
21 through with that, because that was huge fire-power, he could have given
22 them an ultimatum. He could have said, Either you will let me through or
23 I will destroy Varazdin. He surrendered everything instead. And instead
24 of executing him in the middle of Belgrade, he was sentenced to a mild
25 sentence, and now the pro-Western traitor regime has amnestied him
Page 17513
1 completely. This is what happened to us, among other things.
2 The JNA was late. The JNA was not up to the speed. You are
3 commending the Guards Brigade in your closing argument, and you say that
4 it was an elite brigade with the best-educated soldiers, best-trained
5 soldiers. This is ridiculous. They were not trained to do anything but
6 to do -- be on sentry detail in cities and to participate in ceremonious
7 units in case a foreign statesman decided to visit. If there were no
8 volunteers, if there were no territorial soldiers, the Motorised Brigade
9 would still be lodged in the mud around Vukovar. The mere fact that they
10 didn't have trained soldiers, they used heavy weaponry even if that was
11 not justified. Unfortunately, that's the kind of an army that the JNA
12 was. The JNA had to carry out a triage, to put the most capable officers
13 to the fore. Those who were not capable withdrew of their own will, they
14 would leave. And when the JNA became the Army of Yugoslavia, it
15 recovered. And already in 1992 during the NATO aggression we had a
16 really serious army, so serious that NATO would have never dared use
17 infantry to intervene in Serbia. Unfortunately the state leadership of
18 Serbia accepted the semi-capitulation, that NATO entered Kosovo and
19 Metohija. The Serbian Radical Party was the only one who consistently
20 opposed that, and we were the only one in the Assembly who voted against
21 that because we were ready to fight the NATO infantry, to show them what
22 kind of soldiers the Serbs are. They would have never dared attack us by
23 land.
24 The Prosecutor says that I was a fanatic who contributed to an
25 unlawful enterprise that I instigated a hatred campaign and persecution
Page 17514
1 campaign. This is nonsense. I was not a fanatic. My propaganda was
2 real, it was based on facts. The Prosecutor, quoting the alleged expert
3 Oberschall, has tried to prove that a propaganda campaign is tantamount
4 to spreading a lie. In the West maybe every propaganda is a lie; not in
5 Serbia. The most successful propaganda in Serbia is propaganda based on
6 the truth, and that's the kind of propaganda campaign that the
7 Serbian Radical Party has pursued from its foundation. We have always
8 told the Serbian people the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
9 truth. And that is the secret of our success and our vitality. That is
10 also the secret of the huge trust that the Serbian people has in us.
11 Even those who do not vote for us respect our principles, our honesty and
12 loyalty and perseverance and loyalty to the goals that we fight for.
13 There were no places where any persecution campaign took place because
14 there was no persecution, a persecution that would be the result of that
15 campaign.
16 There was no persecution of Serbia. We saw that in Hrtkovci.
17 Not a single inhabitant of Hrtkovci was deported from Serbia. None of
18 them were forcibly relocated. You know what forcible relocation is?
19 This is what the Americans did with the Japanese and interned them in
20 concentration camps pending the end of the war. That's a forcible
21 transfer. Do you know what deportation is? Look at the example of the
22 Germans deported from Poland, Czechoslovakia; that is deportation. It
23 means that you either have enough time to take some of your belongings
24 and sometimes you don't even have enough time to do that. People who
25 were going to Croatia three or four times to measure up the properties
Page 17515
1 that they were to swap, that cannot be called deportation. Tudjman was
2 also in favour of the exchange of population, so was Dobrica Cosic. They
3 spoke about a civilised exchange of population, and I adhered to the same
4 principle. Even when I spoke about our programmes, I never said, You are
5 going to be expelled. No. Instead I said, You are going to be given
6 addresses of the Serbian property and you are going to swap your
7 properties with them. That cannot be described as the crime of
8 persecution. It might be unpleasant as a fact, but this is not the crime
9 of persecution. It does not involve deportation.
10 The ethnic composition in the territories was altered and that is
11 true, but how did it all start? It started when Serbs started fleeing
12 Croatia as soon as Franjo Tudjman won the 1990 locations and that was an
13 ongoing process. And it still goes on to this date. There's no return
14 for the Serbs to their land with the exception of some elderly people who
15 prefer to go back to their ancestral homes and die there and be buried
16 there. Nobody else is returning. There are no guarantees for their
17 return. There is no restitution of the Serbian property and you never
18 tried anyone for what the Serbs experienced in Croatia. You are trying
19 to deal with the consequences of inhumane acts rather than with the
20 causes.
21 The ethnic composition changed in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well, but
22 how did that happen? The first exodus was that of the Serbian people,
23 mostly from Sarajevo, and then from other towns such as Tuzla, Zenica,
24 Zavidovici, Maglaj, Mostar. And then you had a mass of Serbian refugees
25 flooding parts of Republika Srpska where the Muslims were still residing.
Page 17516
1 And of course the very appearance of these refugees is a form of
2 pressure, but this is not a planned pressure or designed pressure; it is
3 a natural pressure. And very often populations were exchanged
4 spontaneously because people felt more secure among their own. If you
5 have tens of thousands of Serbs arriving in Zvornik from Tuzla and other
6 places, what can you do? Who can prevent that? And you never tried a
7 single Muslim for the persecution of Serbs. Yes, you did try Hazim Delic
8 and Esad Landzo for the crimes committed in Celebici. You picked up
9 people from the lowest rungs of the social ladder in order to present it
10 as a kind of balance. You also tried General Seferovic [as interpreted]
11 and he was acquitted and you tried Hadzihasanovic and Kubura as well, and
12 they were sentenced to token sentences. First Mr. Antonetti gave them
13 three years each - if I'm not mistaken - and then the Appeals Chamber
14 reduced that sentence to a year and a half. Naser Oric was sentenced to
15 two years, and after that he was acquitted. Rasim Delic was sentenced to
16 three years. Mrs. Lattanzi was on the Bench. And we anticipated that
17 the Appeals Chamber was going to acquit him all together, and these are
18 the results of your trials against Muslims. On the other hand, the Serbs
19 are handed in, life sentences, et cetera.
20 It is not Muslims' fault that they had to form their armed
21 formations. They had established their Patriotic League, they brought
22 Mujahedins from other Islamic countries, and eventually committed
23 atrocious crimes in their territories. Who was tried for the crimes
24 committed in Kazani in Pofalici, and other places where Serbs were
25 butchered? You didn't try anyone. The front line ran through the middle
Page 17517
1 of Sarajevo. The Serbs and the Muslims were shooting on each other by
2 using artillery and whatever weapons they had. However, you say that
3 only the Serbs are to blame. Whereas, according to you, the Muslims were
4 simply defending themselves from the barbarians. With all these false
5 judgement rendered by the ICTY you are attempting to falsify history. Do
6 you really believe that history is going to be written based on your
7 judgements? No, your judgements are going to be the subject of
8 historical research and then these judgements will be conducive to the
9 compromising of international justice. It will compromise it even
10 further because it's already been compromised.
11 I already said that the Prosecution was citing my speeches beyond
12 the time span of the indictment, prior to August 1991 and after 1993.
13 They even quote a book of mine which was published in the year 2000. It
14 seems that the Prosecution is in the dark. They would like to have me
15 convicted, but they still don't know how to achieve that. They assembled
16 scraps and pieces of evidence, they engaged some lawyers who were full of
17 self-confidence at the beginning but who are actually not capable of
18 coping with this kind of proceedings, and everything turns out to be
19 falsehood.
20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] [Previous translation
21 continues]... I'm not going to make any big speeches, just to tell you
22 that it's time for a break. We shall resume at quarter to 6.00. And
23 according to the time left you still have one hour and ten minutes. So
24 at five to 7.00, in theory, you should be finished with your closing
25 arguments. So that is the situation as it is now. We're going to break
Page 17518
1 for 30 minutes.
2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I'll do my best to finish today if
3 it is possible.
4 --- Recess taken at 5.16 p.m.
5 --- On resuming at 5.46 p.m.
6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The court is back in session.
7 THE ACCUSED: [Microphone not activated]
8 [Interpretation] In their final brief and their closing argument,
9 the Prosecution particularly insisted on the alleged reliability of the
10 statements given to them. These statements are extremely unreliable
11 because they were composed by the Prosecution themselves, and not only
12 was that done during the investigation but it was done even after the
13 indictment was finalised. So these are two reasons for them to be
14 unreliable. I'm not going to repeat all the arguments based on which all
15 the Prosecution witnesses have been disqualified.
16 The Prosecution accuses me of calling Tudjman the new Ustasha
17 leader for opening -- or, re-opening the question of the former genocide
18 against the Serbs, et cetera. Tudjman was indeed a new leader, but
19 instead of calling him "Poglavnik" which would put him on par with
20 Pavelic, he used to call himself supreme leader, or "vrhovnik." That's
21 the word that never existed in our language before. As for everything
22 else, it was identical. I used words and I fired and pounded them as if
23 I were firing from a howitzer. My great friend Jean-Marie Le Pen used
24 his words in such a lethal manner which helped him sustain himself on the
25 French political scene for decades and that provoked animosity against
Page 17519
1 him all over Europe. People who verbally pound their opponents, as if
2 they were firing from a howitzer, means targeting the core of the
3 problem, to use the destructive power of your thought to destroy the
4 arguments of your opponent to prove the consistency of your own political
5 programme, to prove that you are knowledgeable about everything. All
6 this means firing from a howitzer in a verbal way, and that's what I've
7 been doing here in this courtroom for nine years. Don't you, as the
8 Prosecution, realise how devastated you have become? And I think that
9 the Trial Chamber is fully aware that you have found yourself in dire
10 straits. I used a howitzer 203-millimetres in my speeches here, and that
11 is why that was so devastating for the Tribunal, for my indictment, and
12 for the Trial Chamber who is at odds with what they should be doing
13 according to their conscience and what they must do in compliance and
14 obedience to their masters.
15 At one point, the Prosecution says that in one of my speeches I
16 said that if a division were to take place the Muslims were entitled to
17 18 per cent of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but that's a fact.
18 According to land registry, the Serbs held 74 per cent of land; the
19 reason being that even during the Turkish occupation the Serb population
20 used to live in villages and country-side, whereas the Muslims lived in
21 towns and cities. They were artisans. They were soldiers. They were
22 traders. Therefore, they didn't have any title deeds on the land. Once
23 this Turkish occupation went away, they even were deprived of that. Even
24 with the abolishment of serfdom, and I hope you know what serfdom is, the
25 Serb peasants were compensated for that and I think you know that a serf
Page 17520
1 is obliged to give a portion of his earnings to the landowner and those
2 were the people who were in authority and had influence. So there was no
3 mistake about that at all. The Muslims held 18 per cent of the land, the
4 Serbs held 74 per cent of the land, and the rest belonged to the Croats.
5 Later on they say that I used to dub Vukovar the greatest stronghold of
6 Ustasha, and that's the truth.
7 According to the Croatian sources, 1600 volunteers from all parts
8 of Croatia entered Vukovar in order to fight the JNA troops. So on the
9 one hand we had highly motivated Croatian fighters nurtured within the
10 Ustasha ideology, and on the other hand we had the JNA which was half
11 rotten. Vukovar had always been a Serbian town, although some census
12 after the war claimed that there were fewer than 50 per cent of the
13 Serbs. However, one should add to that figure the Serbs who declared
14 themselves as Yugoslavs as well as those who had to leave Vukovar in the
15 meantime as a result of various pressures.
16 The Prosecution, probably to insult me, says that I was a
17 self-styled soldier who wore a camouflage uniform and a flak jacket. I
18 have never in my life worn a flak jacket because in that way I also
19 exercised moral influence on my fighters, and I even criticised officers
20 who wore flak jackets if all their troops did not have one. Such an
21 officer cannot have authority among these troops. I never wore a flak
22 jacket. I did wear a uniform, though. I wore a uniform from
23 1st October, when the state of immediate threat of war was proclaimed,
24 until the withdrawal of the JNA from Bosnia-Herzegovina; that is, the
25 establishment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I was and I thought
Page 17521
1 of myself as a soldier of my homeland, and I'm still a soldier of my
2 homeland although I don't wear a uniform. I'm fighting the evil of this
3 Hague Tribunal against the worst Serbian enemies who formed this illegal
4 institution. I am still a soldier of my homeland.
5 But after the creation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, I
6 never put on a uniform again and I toured the front lines in civilian
7 clothes, which doesn't mean that I was unarmed. I always had a pistol in
8 my belt.
9 The Prosecution insists on the Serb take-over in the
10 municipalities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the areas of former Croatia,
11 that is, the former Croatian federal unit. Serbs did take over power in
12 all municipalities they were able to, but the same thing was done by
13 Croats and Muslims. Wherever Muslims were able to take over in
14 Bosnia-Herzegovina, they did.
15 A moment ago I seemed to have made a mistake. I remembered later
16 that Muslim General was not Seferovic, it was Sefer Halilovic. I think I
17 made a mistake there, the one who was acquitted.
18 What did the Muslims do in Zvornik? They completely took over
19 power. Back in 1991 they formed Green Berets, and from the depots of the
20 Territorial Defence they armed local criminals. Muslims were the first
21 to take over Zvornik and then Serbs recaptured it. And in all these
22 towns it was either Muslims would prevail or Serbs would prevail. You
23 seem to have a problem with only places where Serbs prevailed. Where
24 Muslims prevailed, you find it natural because you believe that the
25 Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the regular army of Bosnia and
Page 17522
1 Herzegovina, whereas the Serbian army is a paramilitary organisation, and
2 that's how you openly proceed in all the trials here. The Army of Bosnia
3 and Herzegovina is falsely representing itself. It was an exclusively
4 Muslim army, with a Croat here and there in their ranks. But the Croats
5 had their own army, the Army of Herceg-Bosna of the
6 Croatian Defence Council, as they called it.
7 There was no army that was the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
8 although the Muslim army falsely holds itself out to be that. Every
9 ethnic group had its own army. Their officers graduated from the same
10 schools. They graduated from the Yugoslav military academies.
11 Sefer Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic and Kubura, all of them, they finished
12 the same military academies as Ratko Mladic and other Serb officers.
13 Only those criminals like Izetbegovic at the beginning of the war
14 mobilised people like Juka Prazina and others, but even Izetbegovic had
15 to get rid of them. In the end, some were liquidated, some fled.
16 Juka Prazina fled to Belgium and was killed somewhere on the motorway.
17 The Muslim intelligence service caught up with him. He knew too much and
18 he was liquidated. And this Juka Prazina, in the early days of the war,
19 attended sessions of the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the
20 Rump Presidency.
21 Speaking of the SFRY Presidency, you always say
22 "Rump Presidency." Why don't you use the same term referring to the
23 Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina after the Serb representatives left it,
24 Nikola Koljevic and Biljana Plavsic? Why isn't that rump? Where is your
25 principled approach?
Page 17523
1 You say, furthermore, that Seseljevci, Seselj's men, had a bad
2 name. Had a bad name where? In Croatian and Muslim propaganda? Or is
3 it fama volat, whatever rumour has? First of all, I am always
4 accompanied by the odium from the former Yugoslavia, from the communist
5 time, as an anti-communist dissident. I was the only one who styled
6 himself as an anti-communist at that time. Other anti-communists never
7 said so openly. They pretended they wanted to adjust socialism and adapt
8 it. I was the only one who said so openly. All the media were under
9 communist control and created a bad public image for me. And when I
10 formed the Chetnik Movement, it's not only the Croatian and Muslim media,
11 it was the Serbian media as well. The odium was far worse there because
12 in the communist times Chetniks were portrayed as butchers, as
13 slaughterers, as fascists; whereas they were royalists and they were not
14 extremists. It was the communists who were extremists. And then when
15 the war broke out that not a riot spread. However, there's not a single
16 case where Croats or Muslims charged a volunteer of the Serbian
17 Radical Party a so-called Seseljevac with war crimes. Not a single case.
18 Our volunteers were often captured by the Croats, mainly when they were
19 wounded, and all of them were exchanged. Not a single one of them was
20 tried.
21 The same goes for the Muslims. Not a single place of worship was
22 destroyed by a volunteer of the Serbian Radical Party. You say that some
23 man called Vranjanac destroyed the Catholic church in Nevesinje. First
24 of all, you did not prove he was a radical, nor is anyone able to
25 identify him. And why didn't you put that Roman Catholic church in
Page 17524
1 Nevesinje in the indictment? What are you doing? It's not in the
2 indictment. If you had really believed that was so, you would have
3 written so. Not a single place of worship was destroyed or damaged by
4 us. Religious buildings were destroyed when the fighting was long over,
5 and who did that? Let that be investigated by the Serb and the Muslim
6 authorities, but let it be investigated on the Croatian side as well.
7 The Prosecution is inconsistent in a series of trials. In the
8 Mrksic et al. case, the existence of a joint criminal enterprise was not
9 proven, and in my case there is allegedly a JCE regarding Vukovar. So
10 the commander of the Motorised Guards Brigade and his most prominent
11 officers are not part of the JCE, while I am; I, who wasn't there. When
12 Vukovar was liberated I was in Knin. I was in Benkovac during those
13 days. You even have video footage of me in Benkovac.
14 In the Mrksic judgement, the charge under Article 5 of the
15 Statute concerning a crime against humanity was rejected. The finding
16 was that there was a crime of violation of rules and customs of war.
17 Under Article 3 of the Statute Mrksic and others were convicted, or
18 rather, charged first for executing prisoners of war. And what was
19 proven, that 200 POWs were executed not counting those seven foreigners?
20 Setting aside that it was proven that the military intelligence service
21 of the JNA made a list of who was to be executed together with
22 Vesna Bosanac. First of all, it was to be 200 people and that it should
23 be scum, scum, riffraff. There is a Turkish term for that, "fukara."
24 Poor people, idle people, those bent on petty crime, that kind of people,
25 they made that selection. And Vesna Bosanac helped make that selection,
Page 17525
1 that 200 people, 200 Croats, were to be executed but that that should be,
2 even in the Croatian view, the least possible damage. None of the
3 renowned people were executed, nobody in command position. The crime was
4 organised, but you know very well who organised it.
5 You keep repeating the lie that Vojin Vuckovic, Zuco, was a
6 commander of the SRS volunteers in Zvornik. We've heard many statements
7 here, including from Muslim's chiefs of police in Zvornik, that Zuco,
8 together with his brother, Repic, Miroslav Bogdanovic and Milorad Ulemek
9 Legija, arrived by car at Zvornik before the beginning of the conflict
10 and that the Muslims arrested them at the roadblock, they beat them up.
11 And later one of those Muslim police chiefs Mujic freed them so that
12 Serbs later help him get out of Zvornik to Serbia. And now you are
13 trying to prove that Rankic brought them. Rankic was never in Zvornik
14 and he told you so in his testimony, and you have written proof that
15 Rankic resigned from his membership on the War Staff back in 1991, in
16 December 1991. That's when you were bargaining and making promises. At
17 that time you could have gotten statements -- any statements you liked.
18 If you had kept your early promises to your witnesses, maybe you would
19 have been more successful, maybe it would have been more difficult for me
20 to expose that false testimony. However, you disappointed your own
21 witnesses and you are getting payback. Even when you are bargaining with
22 the worst sort of criminal you have to keep your promise, otherwise the
23 bargain falls through. But you wanted to be worse criminals than the
24 criminals and it backfired.
25 You also lied that Arkan's men were the first to come to the
Page 17526
1 Muslim shelter in Zvornik and then Seseljevci, that Arkan's men took out
2 the men from there and Seseljevci took out women and children, whereas
3 written documents say otherwise. Arkan's men took everyone out of the
4 shelter and then took the men aside and executed them and chased the
5 women and children away. And then only at the exit from Zvornik,
6 Seseljevci, that is, volunteers of the SRS, received those women and
7 children and tried to help them, provide them with food, et cetera. Why
8 are you lying that Seselj's men came into that shelter? Where is that in
9 the evidence? What proof do you have? What statement do you have? You
10 made that lie in the closing argument. You never even tried it during
11 the trial.
12 Who gathered you like some sort of riffraff to do this dirty
13 business in the trial? I can't understand. You refer often to Mladic's
14 diary. Mladic notes in one entry that Marko Pavlovic or somebody else
15 from Zvornik told him at a meeting at Pale that Seselj's men and Arkan's
16 men were good in the fighting in Zvornik. What does that mean? Mladic
17 was not in Bosnia and Herzegovina, first of all, at that time. He was no
18 commander. The Army of Republika Srpska did not exist yet. There was
19 only JNA, and our volunteers were integrated into the JNA. Our
20 volunteers were commanded by the commander of the reserve police,
21 Vojislav Jekic. And it's in one of my interviews to Radio Loznica, I
22 mentioned it. You had it admitted into evidence, not I. It's an
23 interview from 1993, 1994, long before the indictment was brought. Yes,
24 there was a group of about 100 volunteers of the Serbian Radical Party.
25 They had joined the reserve police, and the commander of that reserve
Page 17527
1 police was Vojislav Jekic. Later when Kula Grad was being taken, all
2 Serb forces were commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Stupar. That's the only
3 truth. All the evidence and the transcript of the trial indicate that.
4 You mentioned several times that Witness 1062 revoked the
5 statement she had given to the Muslim authorities in 2003. You remember,
6 Judges, how miserable she was here in the courtroom when I caught her in
7 this pathetic lie, and it was sad. I was very cautious because she had
8 lost both her husband and her son. I was very cautious indeed. I only
9 did the most necessary examination. And then I pulled out the document
10 and she was taken by surprise. She was not ready for it. The Muslims
11 coached her before the testimony, but she wasn't prepared for that
12 question and then she said it was not her signature, she didn't write it,
13 whereas you know perfectly well that it was her signature. You gave me
14 that document because it was your obligation.
15 You say that whilst the town of Zvornik was taken, the volunteer
16 units became members of the police and the Territorial Defence. That's
17 not true. Where is your proof in evidence? The volunteer unit of the
18 Serbian Radical Party withdrew. A few individuals stayed behind. I know
19 of one who stayed behind. But what did it have to do after the
20 Serbian Radical Party after that? The volunteer -- the individual stayed
21 on his own and found a job in the police. A few of our members from
22 Mali Zvornik also found jobs in Veliki Zvornik. Some people from Bobic's
23 group were members of our volunteers from Loznica under the command of
24 Cvetinovic. Dragan Cvetinovic, also known as Stene, who was later
25 proclaimed a Chetnik Vojvoda. So what could we do if somebody had been
Page 17528
1 our volunteer and then no longer was and joined somebody else? However,
2 the payrolls that you provided me with that you had seized show that
3 after the 26th of April no single volunteer of the Serbian Radical Party
4 remained in Zvornik and nobody treated them like that. You lied. They
5 moved Zuco and his Yellow Wasps to Skelani. Zuco was never in Skelani.
6 Why did I insist on the deliberate mistake that the interpreter
7 made with the song? The song has been played several times during this
8 trial and in the course of my testimony in the trial of
9 Slobodan Milosevic. A group of soldiers is marching, and in the middle
10 of that group there is a man with a Chetnik cap and a Chetnik standard.
11 The soldiers are wearing the so-called olive-drab uniforms, which means
12 they are either reservists or soldiers of the Guards Brigade or God knows
13 what soldiers. God knows even what part of Vukovar that was, whether it
14 was Sector South or Sector North. Somebody must have staged and edited
15 that. And the soldiers are singing: Slobo, send us lettuce, there will
16 be meat. We will be slaughtering Croats. And your false interpreter
17 interpreted that completely differently. Hey, Croats we are going to
18 slaughter you. We will slaughter half of you and the rest we will give
19 to dogs. Both set of words are abhorrent, but the songs are completely
20 different. And, now, why did I insist that that is very important and
21 that a distinction had to be made between the two? First of all, the
22 soldiers that were singing, Slobo send us lettuce, they could not be
23 volunteers of the Serbian Radical Party. First of all -- and when we
24 look at the uniforms we see that they couldn't be because our volunteers
25 had received brand new uniforms from the JNA depots, and what we see in
Page 17529
1 the footage are obsolete uniforms.
2 Second of all, volunteers of the Serbian Radical Party would
3 never sing a song that laudates Slobo. They wouldn't start something
4 with Slobo. They would sing, Seselj send us lettuce, or, Vojvoda Seselj
5 send us lettuce, if they had sung that at all. Maybe they had sung even
6 more atrocious songs but you never investigated that. But look at the
7 Croats, look at what kind of songs the Croats sing even today, look at
8 their famous singer Thompson. He is one of the most prominent national
9 singers. But that doesn't really matter. The Serbian volunteers of the
10 Serbian Radical Party had fresh recollection of the times when Milosevic
11 arrested me several times in 1990. I was convicted three times, and from
12 Milosevic's prison I put up my candidacy as the future president of the
13 republic, and I won 100.000 votes based on just one appearance on TV.
14 And most importantly, our volunteers used to sing mocking songs about
15 Milosevic, such as the song: Milos Rankovic has resurrected and now his
16 name is Slobodan Milosevic. And then: Slobo is hanging in Terazije.
17 And then: Slobo, leave your Partizans be because Chetniks are defending
18 your homeland.
19 I full have respect for Milosevic and for what he did for himself
20 and defending the Serbian people before this illegal Hague Tribunal. I
21 fully respect his martyr's death. We became sincere friends here during
22 the time that we socialised here. We had never been friends before. But
23 now I'm sharing with you some facts that do not insult Milosevic. Those
24 facts only go to show how your indictment with all of his -- its
25 accompanying documents is based on false documents. You can't go against
Page 17530
1 the facts. The only songs that my volunteers could sing about Milosevic
2 could be mocking songs. They wouldn't be wearing five-pointed stars on
3 their caps. It's just unimaginable.
4 Another problem for you is Slavko Aleksic. Why didn't you find
5 at least one crime that you could attribute to him? He stated somewhere,
6 and you quoted from that statement, that on the 21st of April, 1992, he
7 set foot on the Jewish cemetery and cleansed Grbavica. What does that
8 mean? He actually mopped Grbavica from the Muslim forces and when you
9 take a territory, when you occupy a territory you have to mop-up the
10 territory in order to enter all the possible pockets of resistance and to
11 liquidate whatever of that resistance remains. Muslims had never been
12 expelled from Grbavica. On several occasions I visited Grbavica. I
13 found myself at Soping in Grbavica II when a large group of civilians, a
14 majority of them Muslims, were waiting for bread. Every day the Army of
15 Republika Srpska provided each family with a certain quantity of bread.
16 There were both Serbs and Muslims standing in the same queue. I spent
17 almost an hour there talking to those whom I had known before the war,
18 with whom I had socialised and had been friends with. There were crimes
19 committed in Grbavica as well, but those crimes were committed by
20 criminals. And if any of those criminals were linked to the top echelons
21 of the government, an investigation should reveal that. However, no such
22 criminal was in contact with Slavko Aleksic.
23 You're attacking the fact that Serbs were armed. Serbia was
24 arming them, the JNA was arming. Who was arming Croats? Who was arming
25 Muslims? Why didn't you charge a prominent German politician, for
Page 17531
1 example, for having sent huge quantities of depots -- quantities of
2 weapons from the depots of the former eastern Germany and delivered them
3 to Croatia? This was -- these were weapons of Russian make. Why didn't
4 you charge a Hungarian politician who also delivered weapons to Croats or
5 any other such person? You also mentioned the rally that I held in
6 Plitvice lakes. We went there as civilians. The JNA tried to prevent us
7 from doing that. A large number of roadblocks were set up by the JNA,
8 but I by-passed them all. They had heavy machine-guns that were flashing
9 in the spring sun. And when we did everything successfully, we returned
10 to Knin and Milan Babic commended me before Milan Martic and Milan Martic
11 donated me a Kalashnikov, the same Kalashnikov that he on the previous
12 day had confiscated from a local Croat in Knin. The local Croats in Knin
13 got those Kalashnikovs with ammunition with flour. I got a Kalashnikov
14 of Hungarian make. It was brand new.
15 What else happened? I was on my way to Belgrade with
16 Aleksandar Stefanovic. We were driving in the same car. I was driving
17 my own car, my Toyota Corolla and he was my co-driver. We made a mistake
18 near Doboj and we turned in the direction of Tuzla. We passed through
19 Tuzla. Every step of the way we could have been stopped by the Muslim
20 police, and we had agreed that if we were to be stopped we would open
21 fire immediately, to sell our hide as dear as possible. A war in Bosnia
22 had not started yet, but we knew what to expect if we were stopped. We
23 were not stopped. We passed through Tuzla and then to Bijeljina and then
24 we felt safe. I held that automatic rifle under my feet under my seat in
25 the car. Again we are talking one-sidedly. Who armed the Serbs? What
Page 17532
1 about Croats and Muslims? Who was the first who started arming
2 themselves? Let us see that.
3 You emphasised the example of Hrtkovci as allegedly a place from
4 which Croats were expelled, or rather, deported. We have already seen
5 that not a single Croat left Hrtkovci without previously exchanged their
6 property with somebody else. There were expulsions of Croats from the
7 territory of Serbia, however. When NATO troops entered Kosovo and
8 Metohija, Croats were expelled from Janjevo. They found it unbearable to
9 live under the Albanian authorities. They left all of their property and
10 fled to Croatia, and then Croats settled them in abandoned Croatian
11 apartments and houses. For example, the entire village of
12 Mijokovic Vojin [as interpreted] in Western Slavonia was settled with
13 Croats who had fled before with Albanians from Janjevo. There's your
14 example for deportation. Why didn't you try anybody for that?
15 The Prosecutor also spoke about some aggravating circumstances
16 and now we come to an area where I'm in complete agreement with the
17 Prosecutor. I'm in a complete agreement that there are no mitigating
18 circumstances in this trial, none whatsoever. There are only aggravating
19 circumstances. My behaviour, my conduct in the detention and before this
20 Trial Chamber, that's the first aggravating circumstance that the
21 Prosecutor mentions; and I am in complete agreement. I despise this
22 Tribunal. I despise the Detention Unit staff. And I take every
23 opportunity to spite the Tribunal, the Detention Unit, the Registry, the
24 Prosecutor, everybody here. There's no two ways around it. There's no
25 secret there I suppose.
Page 17533
1 You see how co-operative I am, how I agree with you.
2 Furthermore, you say that another aggravating circumstance is
3 that I've used this trial as a political sounding board. That's correct
4 because this is primarily a political court. How do I put up my defence
5 against this Tribunal and this Prosecutor than my staging a political
6 speech, a speech that will be much more clever and wiser than any of your
7 speeches and that I will use to pound at you, and you will stand no
8 chance in that clash of ideas, the clash of legal arguments, the clash of
9 legal principles. You don't stand a chance against me. All you have,
10 all that remains is a brute of force, and I challenge you, you Judges and
11 you Prosecutors, to use that brute force to the end. Do not hesitate.
12 You say that I presented a programme of Serbian national
13 dominance, and that's correct. You're saying that that is an aggravating
14 circumstance. I agree. Yes, we Serbs are dominant, national. What
15 other nation in the world would have survived everything that Serbs have?
16 What other nation in the world would have resisted all of the dark powers
17 and forces that the Serbian people, the small Serbian people have so
18 successfully resisted? I am approving the Serbian national prevalence in
19 this courtroom also as a prominent Serbian nationalist. I am plucking
20 your feathers and your feathers are flying sky high. You are not up to
21 my knees. I crush you every step of the way. Nobody can harm me. I am
22 destroying the Hague Tribunal as a whole. I am publishing the names of
23 protected witnesses on my web site. I am challenging you to a trial
24 before contempt of court. There are ten ongoing trials against me and
25 you can't do me anything because I'm morally and intellectually stronger
Page 17534
1 than you. There is no remedy against me. You can only kill me. And
2 then, even if you do that, my grave will continue to fight against you.
3 You don't even to begin to understand what that means, but you will
4 understand.
5 This is like when Americans played a game, according to which
6 they had thrown Osama bin Laden into the ocean, but they didn't, they
7 took him back to America to analyse it. When I die, you can't drag me
8 and throw me into an ocean. You will have to return me back to Serbia
9 and my grave over there will fight against you. The fight goes on.
10 Another aggravating circumstance you mention is the fact that I
11 obstructed the functioning of this Tribunal. This Tribunal has never
12 functioned normally. In no trial did it function normally, and
13 especially not in mine. What kind of a normal functioning of a Tribunal
14 is it when somebody's detention lasts for over nine years and then you,
15 Trial Chamber, evoke the jurisprudence of the International Tribunal for
16 Rwanda. However, in Africa, the African Declaration of Human Rights is
17 applied, whereas in Europe, the European Declaration of Human Rights is
18 applied. Let us see if there is a precedent in Europe, whether anybody's
19 detention in Europe has lasted so long.
20 You prevented me from presenting my Defence case. You have
21 denied me the right that I should enjoy pursuant to Article 21 of the
22 Statute, and not to even mention all the other things that you have
23 ill-treated me with from the first day I appeared before you. The number
24 of them escapes me. There was no need to deny me as a mitigating fact,
25 the fact that I have surrendered myself to The Hague Tribunal. I never
Page 17535
1 surrendered. I travelled to The Hague on the 24th of February for a
2 different reason. At several rallies I promised the Serbian people that
3 I would implement a project together with the Dutch queen. That's why I
4 travelled to The Hague. I had no intention whatsoever to surrender
5 myself. When the airplane landed in Amsterdam, the capital of the
6 Netherlands, and when the funnel was erected, all of a sudden the crew
7 told us that the airport police insisted that I should be the first to
8 step out of the airplane. I thought that a ceremonial guard was waiting
9 for me, that an anthem would be played, something of that sort. When I
10 stepped down from the plane, somewhere at the beginning of the funnel a
11 few Dutch policemen were waiting for me. One of them started searching
12 my winter coat that I was holding in my hands and another tiny person
13 started reading to me an arrest warrant. And when I looked at the door
14 that leads directly from the finger into the airport, I opened it up and
15 I ran out. However, I was surrounded by a hundred policemen and I didn't
16 have a chance. They just dragged me, put me inside a police vehicle, and
17 took me to the DU. Therefore, there was no extenuating circumstances
18 here and I don't insist on that at all.
19 All I've been doing here is to shatter you completely, and I'm
20 still doing it today. It might take its physical toll on me, but I am
21 enjoying it. I am having a time of my life.
22 Now, the Prosecution is asking for a sentence of 28 years in
23 prison. Of course there is no legal foundation for any guilty
24 conviction, but you don't need any legal foundation at all. Let us see
25 which kind of sentence would be most appropriate. If you sentence me to
Page 17536
1 28 years, it is impossible for me to serve it to the end. But if you
2 bear in mind how an energetic opponent I am of the United States of
3 America and their global hegemony and domination, how a strong enemy I am
4 of NATO Pact, how opposed I am to the EU, and if you bear in mind how
5 much I hate the ICTY, all the ICTY Judges and Prosecutors, then the only
6 appropriate sentence would be a life sentence. And if you sentence me to
7 life, that would be your only chance to have me serve it to the full.
8 Whatever else you sentence me to, I won't be able to serve it. So what's
9 the point? This would be the most elegant solution.
10 Of course you will have to provide some rationale for that, but
11 what does it matter? We have heard these rationales in other
12 convictions. All these convictions against the Serbs are full of
13 nonsense, full of false statements and lies. Why is it then a problem to
14 do the same in this case as well? You have your professional services
15 who are drafting this, only it's sometimes difficult to co-ordinate what
16 different people are writing. There are some convictions of the Serbs
17 for crimes committed against Albanians during the bombing -- NATO
18 bombing. Since the judgement is written in four volumes, you have
19 contradicting facts in different volumes because different people wrote
20 this judgement, and those who revised the final version did not spot that
21 difference, they didn't comprehend the problem. However, it's not a
22 problem at all. You can put on paper whatever you want. If you're faced
23 with a dilemma whether you should act in an honourable way and prove
24 yourselves as professional lawyers or if you should listen to your
25 masters, I think that the most lucrative approach would be to listen to
Page 17537
1 your masters. And that is something that I am really expecting from you.
2 If I die soon, in the near future - and I must tell you this - I forbid
3 any post mortem to be conducted of my body. A post mortem can only be
4 conducted in Belgrade, provided it is requested by my family and it
5 should in no way be done at the military medical academy. I need to tell
6 you that as well.
7 There's another thing that I need to do, at least formally in
8 order to bring more pain to you. At the end of this closing argument, I
9 move for the provisional release. What are the reasons for further
10 detention? There's no possibility for me to flee. Where would I escape?
11 There is no possibility for me to influence any witnesses because all the
12 witnesses have been examined a long time ago. And there's no danger of
13 me re-offending. Why? Because the state of war is no longer in effect
14 in the Balkans, and you have the jurisdiction only over the crimes
15 committed during the civil war. You have no jurisdiction over other
16 crimes. Of course I am not expecting you to grant my motion. I know
17 that you're going to reject it, but I am putting you in a position in
18 which you have to decide and which you have to reject my motion. This is
19 the essence of what I'm telling you right now.
20 I am very happy with this trial, although I was deprived by you
21 of many of my right and although you prevented me from presenting my
22 Defence case. I managed to prove that the ICTY is illegal, that it is
23 anti-Serbian, that it is using lies and the filthiest manipulations, and
24 that it did not contribute in any way whatsoever of the administration of
25 justice, but rather injustice, and it is a weapon in the hands of
Page 17538
1 totalitarianism and the New Global Order which is much worse even than
2 Hitler's Nazi system.
3 So, from here on, I will go straight into glory and the
4 Serbian Radical Party will be triumphant in the forthcoming elections.
5 And my Serbian Radical Party is more important to me than my own life.
6 You did not manage to break it, despite all your efforts. And
7 Maurice Gourdault-Montagne and all his friends and associates from
8 Western intelligence services will be disappointed in that because
9 practically you did nothing except that you helped me, who used to be an
10 ordinary person, to become a personality of importance that will have to
11 be described in every further and future study of the practice of the
12 Tribunal. And with this, I would like to conclude. I think I even
13 spared ten minutes of the time I was allocated.
14 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Indeed.
15 Does the Prosecution by any chance further to the Rules would
16 like to make or present a rebuttal argument?
17 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honours, as the accused have said himself
18 today, he has been using these proceedings as a public political
19 platform. He had continued his propagandistic claims of historical
20 justifications for his criminal conduct and he has continued to advocate
21 retaliation against innocent people. He had presented false claims of
22 conspiracies. He has claimed that he has not been given a fair trial.
23 He has attacked the Prosecution, the Judges, and the Tribunal, and he has
24 made numerous assertions which have no basis in the record. None of this
25 bears on his guilt for the charges in the indictment. His closing
Page 17539
1 arguments have raised no legal issues and no factual issues that the
2 Prosecution needs to rebut.
3 Your Honours, the Prosecution has proven the accused's guilt of
4 the charges in the indictment, and we ask you to enter a verdict of
5 guilty accordingly and impose a sentence that is -- that corresponds to
6 the many, many victims that have suffered as a result of the accused's
7 conduct. As for the request for provisional release, Your Honours have
8 repeatedly told the accused that he has to provide state guarantees. He
9 has not done so. He is fully aware of this, and there is simply no point
10 in him making these kinds of requests at this point in time on such an
11 unfounded basis. Thank you, Your Honours.
12 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Thank you very much,
13 Mr. Prosecutor.
14 Since the accused always has the final word, would you like to
15 add anything?
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I was waiting for the
17 interpretation.
18 Well, I have to add one thing at the end. During this trial I
19 was greatly handicapped and I deeply regret that fact. I expected that
20 in this trial I will be faced by capable Prosecutors, that I will oppose
21 some intelligent people and good lawyers and that we are going to conduct
22 a duel on equal footing. Unfortunately, in this courtroom I had to face
23 poorly educated people, people who are bad lawyers, and people who
24 entertain no moral scruples. And this is this disadvantage that I felt
25 the whole time, and that has diminished somewhat the value of this trial.
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1 It would have been much better if we could have struggled on equal
2 footing. There were 10 or 20 of them who were involved in this trial on
3 the part of the Prosecution, but they were no match to me. I sometimes
4 not even noticed them here in the courtroom. I undermined and destroyed
5 all their arguments and all their accusations, and they keep blabbering
6 about me being guilty of crimes and other rubbish. So it is really
7 regrettable to see what international justice has boiled down to, and I'm
8 happy that this first attempt to establish international justice after
9 the Nuremberg trials has collapsed. And it is mostly due to the trial
10 that was conducted against me.
11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Further to Rule 87 of the
12 Rules, I now close the proceedings. We shall withdraw in order to
13 deliberate --
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I'm not receiving any
15 interpretation. Not a single word.
16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I shall repeat. I shall
17 repeat.
18 I said that pursuant to Rule 87 of the Rules, I now declare the
19 hearing closed. The Trial Chamber shall deliberate in private, and once
20 we have deliberated we shall issue a Scheduling Order for the verdict.
21 Thank you. The hearing stands adjourned.
22 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 6.50 p.m.
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