Page 20626
1 Monday, 19 May 2003
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 [The witness entered court]
5 --- Upon commencing at 9.02 a.m.
6 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Groome.
7 WITNESS: FADIL BANJANOVIC [Resumed]
8 [Witness answered through interpreter]
9 Examined by Mr. Groome: [Continued]
10 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, when we concluded your testimony a week ago, you
11 were describing a meeting you attended with two people by the name of
12 Grujic and Jovo Mijatovic. I'm going to ask you a few more detailed
13 questions about that meeting, but before I do, could you briefly describe,
14 in a sentence or two, who was Brano Grujic?
15 A. Brano Grujic is a citizen of Zvornik of Serb ethnicity, the number
16 one man in Zvornik, the president of the municipality.
17 Q. And who was Jovo Mijatovic?
18 A. Jovo Mijatovic was one of the leading politicians in the
19 municipality, and he was a deputy in the National Assembly.
20 Q. Finally, are you familiar with a person by the name of Marko
21 Pavlovic?
22 A. Yes, I am.
23 Q. Can you tell us in a sentence who he was?
24 A. He represented himself as the first commander of the army and all
25 the other units situated within the territory of Zvornik municipality.
Page 20627
1 Q. I have one final question before I ask you to continue your
2 testimony. Was there a Serb Crisis Staff in the Zvornik area? And if so,
3 can you tell us where its headquarters was located?
4 A. There was a Crisis Staff for Zvornik municipality based in
5 Zvornik. The president of the staff was Brano Grujic.
6 Q. And was there a building, a particular building that the Crisis
7 Staff used?
8 A. I don't know.
9 Q. Are you familiar -- well, let me now draw your attention back to
10 that meeting. At that meeting, were you given an ultimatum?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. What was the ultimatum and who gave it to you?
13 A. On the 26th, in the morning, in Kozluk, in the police station
14 there, Brano Grujic told me that we should immediately move out of Kozluk.
15 He said that when he said "immediately," it meant within an hour.
16 Q. During the course of that meeting, did anyone indicate to you what
17 would happen if you failed to move out of Kozluk within that period of
18 time?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Who advised you what would happen?
21 A. Jovo Mijatovic, a deputy in the National Assembly of Bosnia and
22 Herzegovina, took me to the side and told me that an all-out attack was
23 being prepared on Kozluk, and if we didn't move out that we would all be
24 killed.
25 Q. What did you do after you left that meeting?
Page 20628
1 JUDGE MAY: The reference to "we should move out," who do you mean
2 by that?
3 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Only Bosniaks lived in Kozluk. And
4 there were about two to 2.500 Bosniaks left. So the implication was that
5 we Muslims, we Bosniaks, had to move out. That was the order we were
6 given.
7 MR. GROOME:
8 Q. What did you do after you left that meeting?
9 A. First of all, I asked how could we organise this for 2.500 people,
10 how we could leave Kozluk? Brano Grujic told me not to worry about that
11 at all, that transportation was provided and that we would be deported to
12 Serbia.
13 Q. Is there anything else of significance that occurred during that
14 meeting before I ask you what you did after you left the meeting?
15 A. No.
16 Q. What did you do after you left the meeting?
17 A. I left quickly, and I sent a number of my associates to get the
18 people together. I took a loudspeaker and called on the people to come.
19 At the very centre of Kozluk there were long columns of military vehicles,
20 tanks, and quite a large number of troops. It was dreadful.
21 Q. Where -- was it your intention to assemble the people in a central
22 location?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And where did you attempt to assemble the people of Kozluk?
25 A. In the centre of Kozluk, in front of the cultural centre.
Page 20629
1 Q. Now, at the cultural centre, was there anybody that -- there to
2 record the names of the people who were assembling there to leave Kozluk?
3 A. Yes, there was.
4 Q. Can you just describe briefly for us the process under which the
5 names of the people were gathered, those people that were leaving Kozluk
6 that day?
7 A. In front of every house there were several soldiers standing,
8 policemen and paramilitary troops. Those men were pushing the people
9 towards the centre. They were opening fire at them. They were beating
10 them. And the people of Kozluk felt like herds of sheep being shepherded
11 into the centre of Kozluk. In the centre of Kozluk, in front of the
12 cultural home, there were about 2.000 people assembled. There were many
13 soldiers, paramilitary units, policemen, and other armed forces.
14 A group of soldiers together with a group of citizens of Kozluk
15 were taking down the names of people. The citizens came up, they signed
16 their names, upon which they entered, they boarded the parked buses and
17 trucks.
18 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I'd like to show you Prosecution Exhibit tab 4.
19 THE REGISTRAR: That's Prosecution Exhibit 445.
20 MR. GROOME: Thank you.
21 Q. Prosecution Exhibit 445, tab 4, a document of several pages. Do
22 you recognise that document?
23 A. Yes.
24 MR. GROOME: I note for the Chamber a copy of this will be
25 displayed on the monitors, and for the amici and the accused.
Page 20630
1 Q. I want to draw your attention to the first page of that document,
2 and I want to draw your attention specifically to the upper right-hand
3 corner. There's a stamp there. I believe it's in blue ink on the
4 original. Can you please read what that stamp says.
5 A. The Serbian Republic -- sorry. The Serbian Municipality of
6 Zvornik, Municipal Staff of Territorial Defence Zvornik.
7 Q. I want to now draw your attention to the last page of that
8 document and ask you, do you see anywhere on that page your signature?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Can you describe for the Chamber what is this document,
11 Prosecution 445, tab 4.
12 A. This is a list of the citizens of Kozluk, a list of the heads of
13 households with the number of family members indicated who were moving out
14 of Kozluk in an organised fashion.
15 Q. Was there a similar document prepared for the people from Skocici?
16 A. Yes, there was.
17 Q. Can you describe where Skocici is in relation to Kozluk?
18 A. Skocici is a small locality right next to Kozluk.
19 Q. And were the people from Skocici also required to leave that day?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And did they, too, assemble in the same place as the people from
22 Kozluk?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. I'd ask you to take a look at Prosecution Exhibit 445, tab 5. And
25 again, is that -- draw your attention to the upper right-hand corner. Is
Page 20631
1 that the same stamp of the Zvornik Territorial Defence in the upper
2 right-hand corner of the first page of that document?
3 A. Yes, it is.
4 Q. And I --
5 A. Municipal Staff of the Territorial Defence of Zvornik.
6 Q. And could I draw your attention once again to the last page and
7 ask you do see your signature on the last page of that document?
8 A. Yes, I do.
9 Q. Now with respect to tabs 4 and 5, are these both the original
10 documents as you recall from that day?
11 A. The original documents with the signatures were taken by the
12 members of the Zvornik territorial staff. These are copies.
13 Q. Is it fair that those are carbon copies generated on the same day?
14 They're not photocopies made at a later time?
15 A. No, they were made on the same day, only the first copy was taken
16 by the people from the Zvornik Territorial Defence.
17 Q. Now, in addition to these documents, did you ever receive a
18 document signed by Major Marko Pavlovic?
19 A. Yes, I did.
20 Q. And can you briefly describe the circumstances under which you
21 received that document.
22 A. When we had assembled in front of the cultural centre and once we
23 had signed the document saying we were leaving Kozluk, then an envelope
24 was opened containing the instructions or order of the commander of the
25 Zvornik Territorial Defence. I saw that document 15 minutes prior to us
Page 20632
1 being expelled from Kozluk.
2 Q. I'm going to ask that you take a look at Prosecution Exhibit 445,
3 tab 6. I'm going to direct your attention to the upper portion, the
4 typewritten portion of that document. Does that document fairly and
5 accurately depict the document as you initially received it on that day?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. I'm going to ask you to read the second paragraph of that document
8 for us.
9 A. "To the above-mentioned adult persons upon their explicit request,
10 without any duress, having expressed the wish that they wish to avoid at
11 all costs the mobilisation into Muslim formations, a pre-settlement has
12 been approved."
13 Q. Was that statement true?
14 A. No, it wasn't.
15 Q. Now, the bottom portion of the document as we have it here in
16 court has some handwritten notes on it. Do you recognise the handwriting
17 on the bottom portion of that document?
18 A. Yes, I do.
19 Q. Whose handwriting is it?
20 A. It is mine.
21 Q. And when did you make these handwritten notes on top of the
22 document you received?
23 A. On the 26th, in the afternoon, in Loznica.
24 Q. And do these notes reflect your calculation about the actual
25 number of people who were forced to leave Kozluk on that day?
Page 20633
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And can you give us the number of people you counted that were
3 forced to leave Kozluk?
4 A. Five hundred and twenty-five households; 1.822 persons or
5 citizens.
6 Q. Now, sir, can you please describe for the Chamber how the people
7 were physically moved from Kozluk out of Kozluk. What vehicles were used?
8 A. In the centre of Kozluk, there were 17 buses and three trucks with
9 trailers. There were two passenger vehicles as well. And we travelled in
10 that way from the centre of Kozluk as far as Loznica. From Loznica to
11 Ruma, we continued in those same vehicles, and in Ruma --
12 Q. I'm just going to ask you to go step-by-step each portion of the
13 journey. I'd like to ask you a few questions about Loznica.
14 In what republic is Loznica?
15 A. Loznica is in Serbia.
16 Q. And was that the first place that the buses stopped after they
17 left Kozluk?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Were there border controls on the Serbian side of the border as
20 you crossed into Serbia?
21 A. There's a border crossing between Bosnia and Serbia at Sepak that
22 is a bridge across the Drina River. That is the border crossing. And
23 this long column of vehicles crossed over to Serbia there and we were
24 stopped there. We were stopped at Loznica next to the Drina river bank.
25 Q. How long were you in Loznica before you were moved from Loznica?
Page 20634
1 A. We spent about five to six hours there.
2 Q. On the Serbian side of the border did you see any persons you
3 recognised as being paramilitary forces?
4 A. As soon as the column of vehicles stopped, a large number of
5 people walked around the convoy and the men. These men wore different
6 uniforms. They were rather dirty, carrying various types of weapons.
7 They were wearing gloves on their hands. They looked awful, like
8 vultures, and they walked around us, demanding that the girls get off.
9 Q. Did you -- did you or somebody else make contact with the Serbian
10 police regarding that situation and was there a response by the Serbian
11 police?
12 A. We were quite frightened. Many of these men were walking around
13 our buses and trucks. They started pulling people by the hand, demanding
14 money. And then I approached a police patrol, and they just asked me to
15 be quiet and that reinforcements would arrive.
16 Q. Did police reinforcements arrive and protect the convoy?
17 A. Three to four vehicles arrived. Quite a large number of policemen
18 came who were tidy, wearing proper uniforms, and they stood around the
19 convoy and the vehicles so that these others didn't dare approach us any
20 more.
21 Q. And during the time you were in Loznica, were you subjected to any
22 mistreatment whatsoever by the members of the Serbian police force?
23 A. No.
24 Q. Now, do you know a person by the name of Dr. Nikolic?
25 A. Yes, I do.
Page 20635
1 Q. Is he a Serb doctor based in Loznica?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. And did you make contact -- I don't believe I've heard the answer.
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And did you make contact with him while you were in Loznica?
6 A. Yes, I did.
7 Q. Did he come to meet with you along with a representative of the
8 Red Cross?
9 A. They came, they met with me, and they told me that they would give
10 us aid.
11 Q. Did you have any conversation with them regarding what would be
12 required or who would have to give permission before you would continue
13 your journey?
14 A. We asked them for some food because there were quite a lot of
15 children. And we also asked them to help us to move on, because the
16 frontline was there close by, and there were quite a number of
17 paramilitary units there. And they responded that they would do
18 everything they could.
19 Q. And was there anything said about having to get permission or
20 authorisation for you to continue on your journey?
21 A. The people from the Red Cross, from Loznica, said that they would
22 send a letter to Belgrade asking for permission for us to be able to
23 continue on our journey.
24 Q. Did you have a second meeting with the representative of the Red
25 Cross during which they informed you that such a letter or such
Page 20636
1 authorisation was received?
2 A. Yes. In the afternoon, they came with a paper, and they said,
3 "You're lucky. You've got permission to be able to move on."
4 Q. I'm going to ask you to look at a document, Prosecution Exhibit
5 445, tab 7, and my question to you is do you recognise this document?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Could I ask you to read the typing on the upper left-hand corner
8 and continue on to the title of the document.
9 A. "The Republic of Serbia, the Commissariat for Refugees," number,
10 then date 26th of June, 1992, Belgrade.
11 "Staff for the reception and care of refugees." I saw this
12 document on the 26th in the afternoon.
13 Q. The Chamber will have the document to read in full, but just to
14 summarise the contents of the document, does this document authorise -- or
15 did it authorise the people of Kozluk to continue their journey through
16 Serbia?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Now, after receiving this document, did the convoy move from
19 Loznica to somewhere else?
20 A. The convoy moved on through Serbia in the direction of Ruma.
21 Q. And what time of the day, approximately, did the convoy arrive in
22 Ruma?
23 A. Quite late.
24 Q. And when you arrived at Ruma, what happened?
25 A. The police that escorted us said that there was a train that we
Page 20637
1 would board and that the train would take us further on.
2 Q. And did you and other members of the Kozluk community in fact
3 board a train?
4 A. The police left, and we got off the buses and trucks and boarded
5 the train. The train had several carriages, and there were quite a number
6 of those intended for cattle.
7 Q. Can you describe what, if anything, occurred while the people of
8 Kozluk were boarding these trains?
9 A. As we were boarding the train, we were stoned. A large number of
10 citizens threw stones at us, chairs, shouting, "Turks. Alija's army."
11 And quite a number of people were injured on that occasion because this
12 large crowd of 2.000 people were boarding the carriages for livestock.
13 The stones were raining on us, pieces of wood, and quite a number of
14 people were injured. Some in the head, started bleeding.
15 Q. Sir, once the people were loaded onto the train, where did the
16 train go?
17 A. The train went -- or, rather, we were told we were going to
18 Subotica. And as we travelled, in several other places, stones were
19 thrown at us, and the glass was broken, so the people didn't dare get up.
20 So we had this stoning on a number of occasions.
21 Q. The train that you boarded and took between Ruma and Subotica, was
22 it an ordinary train -- my question to you is were there other people not
23 from Kozluk on that train, or was it a train specially arranged for the
24 people of Kozluk?
25 A. It was a special train, a train intended for cattle.
Page 20638
1 Q. Now, when you arrived at Subotica, can you tell us approximately
2 when you arrived in Subotica?
3 A. I can't remember exactly, but I know that the trip took a long
4 time and that we arrived in Subotica during daytime. I know that the
5 people were tired, bloody, quite a number of children were sick.
6 Q. The first night in Subotica, where did you and the other people on
7 the train, where did they sleep?
8 A. In Subotica, we slept on stones in the wagons, in the carriages,
9 in the fields. There were about 2.000 people. The conditions were
10 appalling. They were hungry, ill. They spent several days in terrible
11 conditions.
12 Q. Did there come a time when the people were moved to another
13 location?
14 A. On that occasion, we were visited by members of the Red Cross.
15 Quite a significant number of journalists visited us. They filmed us as
16 if we were animals in a circus. They spent a lot of time filming us.
17 People were given first aid. Some of them had injured heads. They then
18 promised to transport us to Palic, to transfer us to Palic, that some kind
19 of a camp or collection centre for those refugees.
20 Q. And were -- were you and other members -- or the other people from
21 Kozluk transferred to this Palic, this refugee centre?
22 A. Yes, we were.
23 Q. Were there guards at this refugee centre Palic?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Can you describe what you learnt about the guards that were
Page 20639
1 guarding people of Kozluk in Palic.
2 A. Well, they boasted that they had been in the battlefields in
3 Croatia and Bosnia. They kept saying -- shouting and saying that they had
4 killed quite a lot of Turks. They had a terrible appearance. They had
5 beards. And by the way they looked, you could see that they were
6 combatants.
7 Q. Did the guards at this camp say anything to the people who were
8 detained there regarding what was required for them to be able to leave
9 that camp?
10 A. Well, whoever had money, they would sort that person's papers out
11 through connections. They'd sort out passports for them. They were taken
12 away, taken to the station and then they would go to Hungary. Those who
13 didn't have money remained there. They remained in Palic, in the camp in
14 Palic.
15 Q. Did there come a time when you were able to make contact with some
16 friends of yours in a factory in Serbia?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Were you able to make certain arrangements with these people to
19 assist you and the other people from Kozluk?
20 A. It was the management of the Suboticanka factory, which is located
21 in Subotica, and there was a group of Hungarians there who were part of
22 the management. As they cooperated well with the same factory in my
23 place, in Kozluk, they brought juice to us. I asked them to assist us, to
24 help us get passports and photographs because we didn't have any money,
25 and this was simply not a possibility for us.
Page 20640
1 Q. And did they make arrangements for photographers to come to take
2 passport photos, and did they take a collection of money to assist in the
3 purchase of passports?
4 A. Over several days they brought about five photographers who made
5 photographs for the entire population. They came with the chief of
6 police, and in front of us they handed over to him a cheque as a means of
7 payment for those passports.
8 Q. Approximately how many Serbian passports were issued to the people
9 of Kozluk during this time period?
10 A. Over a thousand.
11 Q. I'm going to ask you to take a look at Prosecution Exhibit 445,
12 tab 8. These are two passports. A copy of the photograph page of one of
13 them will be displayed on the screen before you. I would draw your
14 attention to Saha Hadzic's passport. Can you see it on the screen before
15 you?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Do you know this person?
18 A. This is a citizen from Kozluk. Her name is Saha Hadzic.
19 Q. Was she one of the people who was forced to leave Kozluk in the
20 way that you've described before the Chamber?
21 A. Yes, she is.
22 Q. And is this a photograph of the passport issued by the Republic of
23 Serbia during this time period?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. I'd ask you to take a look at the other photograph page of the
Page 20641
1 second passport. And do you recognise the two people -- if you look on
2 the screen before you, it's displayed. Do you recognise the two people
3 here?
4 A. Yes, I do.
5 Q. Are they two people from Kozluk that were forcibly removed from
6 Kozluk on the 26th of June?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. I'm going to draw your attention now to the stamp, the issue stamp
9 in this particular passport. And can you -- can you describe -- or I'd
10 ask you just to read, who was this passport issued by?
11 A. Municipal Assembly of Subotica.
12 Q. Sir, could I ask you to look on the monitor. The page is
13 displayed on the monitor before you.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Who issued this passport?
16 A. The secretariat in Subotica.
17 Q. Of what governmental office?
18 A. Serbia.
19 Q. And what's the date of issue?
20 A. The 29th of June.
21 Q. Now, after passports were issued, were people then placed on
22 trains and sent to the Hungarian border?
23 A. Groups of citizens, as they received their passports, left for the
24 borders in groups. They got on the trains and headed for Hungary and
25 Austria.
Page 20642
1 Q. The trains from Subotica to Hungary and Austria, were they
2 specially arranged trains or were they regularly scheduled passenger
3 trains?
4 A. I don't know, but I think that these trains had been organised.
5 MR. GROOME: I'm going to ask now that Prosecution Exhibit 445,
6 tab 9, be placed on the overhead projector.
7 Q. Sir, there's a map being placed to your left. Do you recognise
8 this map? You can look to the left. The original is on the projector to
9 your left. Do you recognise this map?
10 A. Yes, I do.
11 Q. Who made the markings on this map?
12 A. I did.
13 Q. And what do -- what does the line that you've drawn on this map
14 indicate?
15 A. Well, this is the route we took. It is this route that was used
16 when we were deported.
17 Q. I would ask -- thank you -- that we start from the bottom. I'd
18 ask you to start at Kozluk, and if you would just trace with the pointer
19 the journey that you and the other members of the Kozluk community took,
20 and please indicate where it was you crossed into Serbia. If you'd do it
21 on the -- to your left, yes, please.
22 A. Kozluk, which is in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is here. We have the
23 Sepak place on the Drina River, and there is a border crossing there.
24 This is the point at which we crossed into Serbia. And we arrived between
25 Banja Koviljaca and Loznica. We spent a certain period of time there, and
Page 20643
1 then we continued on this route in the direction of Sabac and Ruma. We
2 got on a train in Ruma, and about 2.000 people were transported on that
3 train in livestock carriages, and we were stoned on several occasions.
4 The train went in the direction of Subotica.
5 In Subotica, we were placed in accommodation. We slept near the
6 railway. There were quite a few journalists and quite a large number of
7 people had been injured. And then a group of good Hungarians helped us to
8 go to Palic from Subotica. They were from the Red Cross.
9 Q. During the course of this journey, were you ever free to simply
10 leave the convoy and travel throughout Serbia or go where you pleased?
11 Were you ever free to do that?
12 A. No, no, I wasn't.
13 Q. In your mind, or what did you observe that indicated to you that
14 the people of Kozluk weren't simply free to disperse into Serbia and go
15 where they wished?
16 A. First of all, we weren't allowed to take anything with us.
17 Secondly, while we were being deported, we were escorted by the police.
18 We were beaten. We were starving during the transport.
19 We arrived in Subotica. We were taken to -- it wasn't even a
20 station, it was a place where there were a lot of police. It was some
21 sort of a dead end, and we couldn't move. We didn't have any means. We
22 didn't have any documents. We were hostages of those policies. We were
23 taken to Palic, which was a camp of a closed kind. It had guards. Where
24 could we have gone? Nowhere.
25 MR. GROOME: I'm going to ask that the witness's monitor be placed
Page 20644
1 so that he can see something displayed on Sanction.
2 Q. Sir, you mentioned in your testimony that international
3 journalists were present and took pictures of some of these events. I'm
4 going to ask you to look at some pictures contained in a video on the
5 screen before you, and then I'm going to ask if you recognise the pictures
6 and the people in them.
7 I'd ask that we now play it.
8 [Videotape played]
9 MR. GROOME:
10 Q. Do you recognise the people in these photographs?
11 A. This is the train that was used to deport us from Ruma to
12 Subotica. Just those few carriages. The others were livestock carriages
13 and didn't have any windows. These citizens of Kozluk, Mehic Alija, Jakic
14 Zehrudin, Muhamed Kalabankovic [phoen], Mulajbisevic Sana. A large number
15 of fellow citizens of mine with small children. There were women, people
16 who had been injured, people who had suffered a lot.
17 MR. GROOME: I have no further questions.
18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
19 Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:
20 Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Banjanovic, first of all, I would like to ask
21 you about this stay of yours in Serbia. As far as I can understand,
22 people in Serbia helped you. They helped you inasmuch as you were
23 refugees. Am I right or not?
24 A. Well, let me tell you, if it's assistance when you're surrounded
25 and prevented from leaving, if one can call being stoned three or five
Page 20645
1 times assistance, if you can call the fact that 30 people were wounded is
2 a form of assistance, sleeping in carriages and next to carriages called
3 assistance, and if we have to listen to stories about how many people were
4 killed in Bosnia and in Croatia, if we call this assistance, then that's
5 assistance.
6 Q. It seems that, in your opinion, Serbia shouldn't have allowed you
7 to pass through its territory. Anything could have happened to you in
8 Bosnia in that case. So it seems that we were wrong to help you.
9 A. Serbia shouldn't have sent those paramilitary forces to Kozluk,
10 the forces that maltreated honourable Serbs as well as us Bosniaks. And
11 the forces that deported, that caused the deportation of citizens of
12 Kozluk and other citizens.
13 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, let's not go into what you are now claiming. That
14 is quite contrary to what you have been explaining.
15 All the people that you mentioned and what you have read out from
16 these documents here, although you only read parts of the documents, none
17 of this concerns Serbia. Read it out again.
18 Provide tab number 4 again, the yellow square from which you read
19 out the words "Crisis Staff," et cetera, "Municipality of Zvornik," and so
20 on, and read it out again. Read it all out.
21 JUDGE MAY: What's the question?
22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. May, the question is:
23 What does the document say?
24 JUDGE MAY: We've got the document. We've seen it. Now, what do
25 you want to ask the witness?
Page 20646
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, for example, it says, "The
2 Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina." And then beneath that it
3 says, "The Serbian Autonomous District, Semberija and Majevica," then
4 beneath that, it says, "In the Serbian municipality of Zvornik," and then
5 it says -- I don't know what else it says because I can't remember any
6 more. So we're talking about a different state.
7 Q. Isn't that correct, Mr. Banjanovic? We're not talking about
8 Serbia.
9 A. Another state called Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the commander was
10 from the Republic of Serbia, a certain Marko Pavlovic. And the
11 paramilitary formation called the Nis paramilitary formations dominated
12 there, the Kovice from Loznica, and there were many other paramilitary
13 formations which were in Zvornik, Kozluk, and other places.
14 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, you know a witness with whom I'm going to discuss
15 the subject of paramilitary formations but you must be aware of the fact
16 that authorities in Serbia cracked down on paramilitary formations, and as
17 far as volunteer units are concerned, their significance was negligible
18 with -- in comparison to the volunteer units in the Bosnia and Herzegovina
19 army. Are you aware of that?
20 A. Mr. Milosevic, as far as I and the citizens of Bosnia and
21 Herzegovina and the citizens of Serbia are aware, all the prisoners, all
22 the criminals, you let them go free. You released them from prison and
23 they acted as vultures and contaminated the good relations between the
24 Serbs and the Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
25 Q. My dear Mr. Banjanovic, I think you are very badly informed with
Page 20647
1 regard to this matter. No one released prisoners of any kind from prison.
2 Not in Serbia, either, apart from those who had served their sentence.
3 Someone has provided you with bad information.
4 A. The people who were in Kozluk told me about this from the Zuti
5 unit.
6 Q. Well, were people from Serbia in Kozluk?
7 A. Yes, from Loznica, Valjevo, Nis, from Kragujevac.
8 Q. Very well, Mr. Banjanovic, it seems that there were people who
9 came from the entire area of Serb to Kozluk; is that correct?
10 A. They did come to Bosnia.
11 Q. Let's just clear this matter up because we're not going to have
12 too much time.
13 In tab 6, and we can see your handwriting there too, this
14 document, Mr. Banjanovic, let's try and be objective at least to a certain
15 extent. If we view this from the position of the Serbian authorities, the
16 Serbian organs or those of Yugoslavia, if you like, here it says: "We
17 hereby request the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to
18 allow safe and organised passage of persons on the list to the border zone
19 with Hungary. These persons, adults, have been allowed to move out at
20 their explicit request without constraint." As you say, it's not written
21 in the Serbian version but in the Bosnian version. And then it goes on:
22 "And because of their desires they informed us at all costs to avoid
23 mobilisation into Muslim formations. This request has been granted. They
24 have been allowed to leave for passage for the territory of the Federal
25 Republic of Yugoslavia and other Western European countries. Heads of
Page 20648
1 families confirm with their signatures that their departure is the result
2 of their own wish and that it has been not been induced by any repressive
3 measures. The families that have decided to move out are aware of the
4 risks to their property which they're leaving in the zone of combat
5 operations and they have been informed that the authorities in Zvornik
6 cannot assume full responsibility for the belongings they leave in their
7 houses and apartments."
8 I have just read out what it says here, although there are certain
9 grammatical errors. And then it says the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and
10 Herzegovina, it says the Serbian Municipality of Zvornik, it says the
11 staff of Territorial Defence, the Autonomous Region of Semberija and
12 Majevica.
13 So the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that is
14 to say of the Republic of Serbia, received a letter in which they were
15 requested to allow you -- to make it possible for you who had signed that
16 list, because you wanted to go to Western Europe, they wanted to allow you
17 and make it possible for you to go there.
18 How did the authorities of Yugoslavia react? They tried to help
19 you. You showed -- you were shown a map here. You went to Loznica
20 immediately because that's at the border. That's the Municipality of
21 Loznica; isn't that correct? Isn't that right, Mr. Banjanovic?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. People tried to help you. They came to help you. You say that
24 there were various hooligans, various thugs around you. That's what you
25 said, when you moved -- when you crossed into Serbia; isn't that correct?
Page 20649
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And then a police patrol turned up, a regular police patrol.
3 Isn't that what you said?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Didn't that police patrol, didn't they say to you that they would
6 ask for reinforcements? Isn't that correct?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Did reinforcements arrive?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Did you say that they behaved correctly and had a correct
11 appearance, which isn't the case for the other people who were at the
12 border? There was a war in Bosnia. The border was there.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. The police protected you from them, didn't they? Isn't that
15 correct? Yes or no.
16 A. How could that mob, how could those people have been in Serbia, a
17 neighbouring state?
18 Q. How could you be there?
19 A. We were forced to be there.
20 Q. A war was raging there. There was a conflict. Did you tell the
21 police that you were forced to go there?
22 A. Mr. Milosevic, you are forgetting that there were over 3.000
23 people, armed people who had forced those people to go to the centre.
24 JUDGE MAY: Don't interrupt. Now, allow the witness to finish
25 what he wants to say. Let him finish.
Page 20650
1 Mr. Witness, if you want to reply, you can, and you're not to be
2 interrupted. Now, do you want to add something?
3 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you. You're forgetting that
4 this was forcible deportation. When these people were taken away, within
5 one hour a number of people had been wounded, about ten houses had been
6 torched, looting had started. There was torture, beatings, attempts at
7 shooting people. We were loaded onto trucks, trailers. That document,
8 that written document, and you say that it is grammatically incorrect,
9 your people made that document out, the people from the Serbian
10 municipality. It was signed by Commander Marko Pavlovic who is from
11 Sombor in Serbia, and this was given us to about 15 minutes before we were
12 put onto the vehicles. This was forcible deportation. It wasn't on a
13 voluntary basis, and we were escorted by several thousand paramilitary
14 troops and police in Serbia on the Drina River in Loznica. Thanks to the
15 local police alone, we were saved from those vultures who had already
16 started selecting young girls and had started snatching necklaces and
17 rings from them and had started attacking us. That's the truth. There is
18 no other truth.
19 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
20 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, you say that I am forgetting all this. I don't
21 forget what I heard from your testimony. I've heard about Kozluk. I
22 heard about the place called Kozluk only now during your testimony. I'd
23 never heard about that place before. I don't know what -- what it would
24 be well-known for. But didn't you yourself say that as soon as you had
25 crossed the Drina you were protected by the regular police force from
Page 20651
1 Republika Srpska? They protected you.
2 I assume that there was violence there, that people behaved in
3 various manners and that this could be described as violence, but weren't
4 you protected by the police of Republika Srpska there, of the Republic of
5 Serbia there?
6 A. Mr. Milosevic, Kozluk is well-known as a multinational place, and
7 there were Serbs and Bosniaks who lived, they were on good terms for
8 hundreds of years, and it was well-known for this.
9 When we crossed into Serbia, we were attacked by several groups of
10 people wearing various sorts of uniforms, wearing gloves. They were dirty
11 people, they were armed people. This was the first contact we had with
12 Serbia. We were attacked in Loznica.
13 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I recognise the fact that having the status of a
14 refugee when travelling or fleeing from a given territory, I recognise the
15 fact that it's not pleasant to have such a status. My question was a
16 quite specific one. There were various people, various individuals who
17 wanted to attack you, but you were protected by the police in Serbia.
18 A. The police protected us and escorted us all the time from Loznica,
19 from Ruma, from Subotica, and Palic. They protected us and made sure that
20 we wouldn't go anywhere else. And they made sure that we remained in that
21 convoy of death.
22 Q. First of all, there was no convoy of death. Was anyone killed?
23 A. More than 20 people were injured in Ruma. I was personally
24 wounded. Citizens stoned us, beat us with chairs. They called us
25 balijas, and they told us to go to Turkey.
Page 20652
1 After Ruma, we were stoned in one place. The train was stoned.
2 The stone -- the train had been quite damaged. This had been filmed by
3 international journalists in Subotica.
4 Q. Very well. Gutman filmed that. You said that windows were broken
5 and so on and you said that you were transported in carriages for
6 livestock.
7 A. I said the first two carriages were for passengers and the others
8 were livestock carriages. I repeated this on two occasions and showed it
9 on the monitor. There were two to three carriages which were passenger
10 carriages and the other ones were carriages for livestock.
11 Q. Where were these photographs taken, the ones that you were shown
12 at the end?
13 A. In Subotica.
14 Q. I don't see any windows that were broken. All the windows are
15 intact on those carriages. Did they change the carriages? What happened?
16 Or out of gratitude for the assistance that you were provided with by
17 Serbia, did you decide to taint the reputation of these people as much as
18 you can?
19 A. Serbia's reputation can't be tainted. You did that. But the
20 doctors checked the bodies of people and provided first aid to over 30
21 people in Subotica.
22 Q. Well, who, which doctors provided you with first aid? Who
23 examined you? Who examined the people who had been injured? Out of the
24 2.000 people, there were 30 who were injured in various incidents.
25 A. They weren't incidents.
Page 20653
1 Q. What was it then?
2 A. Well, we were stoned in a place called Ruma. A group of Serbs
3 stoned us Bosniaks.
4 Q. How do you know that they were Serbs?
5 A. Well, because they said, "Go to Turkey, Alija's army."
6 Q. They called you Alija's army?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. And in Subotica, only the Hungarians helped you, the Serbs didn't;
9 is that right?
10 A. I don't know who they were, but the doctors who helped us were
11 good. They provided the children with water. The Red Cross arrived.
12 They provided food. The doctors provided assistance. And I must say that
13 we owe a lot to those people. There are good people in Serbia too.
14 Q. I see that for what is commendable, you wish to attribute to
15 Hungarians from Subotica. And of course I don't exclude that possibility,
16 because there are many Hungarians living in Subotica.
17 As for everything that is bad, that you attribute to the Serbs.
18 Let's make that clear.
19 A. Not to the Serbs but to you who were leading your men over there.
20 Q. Very well, Mr. Banjanovic. I don't know where you see any
21 negative links between the authorities in Serbia and your treatment, but
22 Mr. Groome asked you whether anyone mistreated you, that is among the Serb
23 policemen, and you said no.
24 A. No.
25 Q. So that's right, isn't it? Not only did they not mistreat you but
Page 20654
1 they also protected you. And then you go on to say that Dr. Nikolic
2 arrived. You mention Dr. Nikolic. Judging by his surname, I assume that
3 he's a Serb. Is that right? Is that right?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And the Red Cross?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. And they said that they would give you aid, and they did, didn't
8 they?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. A moment ago, you said that you asked them to help you to move on;
11 is that right?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. So you asked them to help you to go on, to go towards Western
14 Europe, which was your destination, wasn't it?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Then what deportation are you talking about or of any involvement
17 on the part of anybody of Serbia in this when you asked the Red Cross and
18 this Dr. Nikolic to help you to move on, to make progress along your
19 journey. And then we have in tab 7 here --
20 JUDGE MAY: Now, wait a moment. Wait a moment. One thing at a
21 time. What is being suggested is that you weren't being deported at all.
22 You were asking to go to Western Europe or somewhere, and the Serbs were
23 helping you. That's what's being suggested. What is your comment as to
24 that?
25 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] First of all, on the 26th in the
Page 20655
1 morning, the town mayor of Zvornik, Brano Grujic, gave us orders that
2 within an hour, we should assemble in the centre of Kozluk and to leave
3 Kozluk immediately. So we didn't leave on our own accord but following
4 orders from the front man, the one man in Zvornik, Brano Grujic.
5 Secondly, we were forced out of our homes. Next to each of our
6 house, there were several soldiers, paramilitary men, policemen who were
7 shepherding the people like herds into the centre of town.
8 And thirdly, in Kozluk itself, unseen torture started. Houses
9 were torched. People were beaten, mistreated. Several men were wounded.
10 This was a scene of horror. In less than an hour, the men were boarded
11 onto trucks with trailers and 17 or 18 buses. More than 2.000 men got in,
12 and under police escort as well as accompanied by troops and paramilitary
13 units, we were taken to the border.
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes. But Mr. May, you will agree
15 that there's no point in hearing the same story for a second time. This
16 is not in answer to my question.
17 JUDGE MAY: Of course not. But, Mr. Milosevic, what he's saying
18 is that they were forced out of their homes, put on -- put on a train and
19 driven across Serbia and then forced out. So he's saying it's all part of
20 the same story. You must allow him to give his evidence about it.
21 Now, you were asked specifically, and you can deal with this,
22 about the role of Dr. Nikolic, and it's suggested to you that he was
23 assisting you. Now, can you comment on that?
24 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] We were brought to Serbia, and the
25 vehicles were parked in the form of a column in the town of Loznica. A
Page 20656
1 large number of paramilitary troops tried to get the young women off, to
2 mistreat us, and then I --
3 JUDGE MAY: Would you just concentrate for a moment on the role of
4 Dr. Nikolic. We did hear that evidence. Was he assisting you?
5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes.
6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Very well. Yes, Mr. Milosevic, your next
7 question.
8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes. I knew Mr. Nikolic, and he did
9 help me.
10 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
11 Q. What was Nikolic?
12 A. Nikolic was a doctor in Zvornik, in Bosnia, and we knew him. And
13 then the Red Cross and he arrived, and we asked them to give us food and
14 water. And the Red Cross did bring us water and food for the children.
15 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I will come back to the events in Kozluk. I wish
16 to clear up, first, what happened in Serbia. The authorities in Serbia,
17 the Red Cross of Serbia, the police that protected you in Loznica had to
18 deal with a column of buses and trucks of refugees from Bosnia and
19 Herzegovina; is that right?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Did you talk to any representatives of the authorities of Serbia
22 except for the police whom you -- who you asked to protect you?
23 A. With the Red Cross and the local police.
24 Q. Very well. And you asked the local police to protect you and they
25 did. As for the Red Cross, as you said a moment ago, you asked them to
Page 20657
1 assist you and to help you continue your journey; is that right?
2 A. All those documents that were written were written by them. This
3 was no mobilisation. And quite a number things were added artificially.
4 They just told us for us to be able to pass through Serbia, they would
5 have to ask Belgrade and that they would send a letter there.
6 Q. Very well. Now, let's look at tab 7. On that same day, you get a
7 reply. So the authorities in Serbia -- the column of refugees has crossed
8 into Serbia, the buses and trucks. The staff for refugees in Loznica asks
9 the Commission for Refugees, because in the heading, it says Commission
10 for Refugees, Belgrade, the 26th of June, they are replying on the same
11 day. They're not delaying for a moment. And this document says "Staff
12 for the Reception and Care of Refugees."
13 "We examined the written statements of 1.822 persons in 17 buses,
14 three trucks with trailers and two passenger vehicles from Kozluk, Zvornik
15 Municipality (who state that of their own free will and without pressure,
16 they wish to leave the territory of Yugoslavia and travel to Western
17 European countries) and are now refugees temporarily residing in
18 Loznica..." That is what it says. This is what Belgrade is responding
19 to.
20 And it says that they: "... found that the written statements of
21 the above-mentioned persons, given" -- it's rather illegible because it is
22 a poor copy -- "on their own behalf as well as on behalf of their underage
23 family members and children are valid since they were given voluntarily
24 and expressed their will as to where they want to live, which is one of
25 the fundamental human rights.
Page 20658
1 "In view of the above, we believe that the requests of these
2 persons should be met" - and I'm afraid I can't read it - "enable their
3 probably realisation in the sense of the intentions contained in the
4 statements submitted."
5 This was the response they gave you. So I'm saying -- I'm talking
6 about what happened to you in Serbia, because as you know, I was the
7 president of Serbia, and I am interested in the attitude of the
8 authorities, the Red Cross, the Commission for Refugees, and all other
9 entities in Serbia.
10 So the column arrived, the police protected you, the Red Cross
11 came, you asked them to assist you, they did assist you. You asked the
12 police to protect you, they protected you. You asked them to make it
13 possible for you to move on, they did, and you got as far as Subotica; is
14 that right? And then you say that you slept on stones there. I don't
15 know whether in the whole of Vojvodina there are stone beds. In
16 Vojvodina, certainly not.
17 JUDGE MAY: This is not a question. These are endless speeches,
18 endless speeches by you, all of which we'll be able to hear in due course.
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't know where he found rocks in
20 Vojvodina. Maybe he took some rocks with him from Bosnia..
21 JUDGE MAY: That is a question. At last we have a question.
22 Would you like to answer that? Just a moment. Let him answer.
23 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Any answer is superfluous. The
24 mistreatment we suffered in Serbia is forgotten, the heads injured in
25 Ruma --
Page 20659
1 JUDGE MAY: Don't let's keep this going. Let's deal with it as
2 quickly as we can. It's said that you were exaggerating when you said
3 they slept on rocks. Now, is that right or not?
4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] We slept on a side railway track.
5 We were not in the station. We were separated on a dead-end railway track
6 and that is where we spent the night, in those carriages. Many people
7 slept alongside the carriages because there wasn't enough room for 2.000
8 men. People were hungry and thirsty. And a number of international media
9 companies filmed this Golgotha, this suffering and this mistreatment and
10 injuring of people.
11 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
12 Q. Therefore, the media in Serbia did not conceal as to what was
13 happening to refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina; is that right?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Unfortunately, unfortunately, it is certainly not pleasant to be a
16 refugee. You said that some angry people threw stones at you, which is
17 quite possible, but the police protected you, as was its duty to do. You
18 say that some 30 people were injured. I don't believe there were that
19 many, but still, the medical staff assisted you and treated them.
20 Incidents are quite possible.
21 My question to you is: What was the reaction of the authorities,
22 meaning both the police and the medical authorities?
23 Now, let's us move on.
24 JUDGE MAY: Yes, let us move on. We've heard the evidence. We've
25 heard the points you've made. There's no point going over it over and
Page 20660
1 over again, and we've got the documents. So let us move on.
2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Let us move on. When I look at
3 these documents, Mr. May, what else could the authorities of Serbia do, I
4 ask you? I beg your pardon. First of all, they say it's a fundamental
5 human right which they wish to protect.
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. And you said at one point, and I took note of that -- no, no.
8 I'll ask you that later on.
9 Let us see what happened in Palic. You say that you were taken to
10 a camp in Palic. Do you know that Palic is the most significant resort in
11 that area?
12 A. I don't know.
13 Q. And they put you up in their own tourist centre. There was no
14 camp at Palic. They put up the refugees in their favourite tourist
15 centre, the favourite tourist resort in the environs of Subotica.
16 Everyone is listening to this and they know what Palic is. What kind of a
17 camp are you talking about?
18 A. You're not telling the truth. They didn't take us to any hostel
19 or hotel. They took us to a meadow with tents. And there was a wire
20 around it, and there was a gate there, and there were guards with beards
21 who boasted as to how many people they had killed in Croatia and Bosnia.
22 You can't call that a tourist resort.
23 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, are we talking about the 26th of June, 1992?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. When did all these bearded men have time to kill those people in
Page 20661
1 Bosnia and then come back to Palic in Subotica? What are you talking
2 about? Why are you making up these things?
3 A. The attack on Zvornik occurred on the 8th of April, and these men
4 boasted that they were there in Zvornik and did what they did. And this
5 was on the 26th and the 29th of June. So it's three months later. And
6 Croatia was even before that.
7 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, why are you making up these things? Are you
8 saying that in Palic you were kept in a kind of concentration camp?
9 A. I'll repeat: We were kept in a meadow, in tents. There was a
10 wire fence around it, and there were guards wearing beards, frightening
11 people and demanding money from people to get them passports. For us,
12 that was a camp.
13 Q. Now, let's clear things up, please. Mr. Groome asked you how many
14 Serbian passports you received, and you said at the end you all got these
15 passports, didn't you?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. First, do you know that there are no Serbian passports? They
18 don't exist.
19 A. Everything is Serbian over there, including Serbian passports.
20 Q. But you held in your hand a passport which says the Socialist
21 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the Serbo-Croatian language and in a
22 foreign language, probably either French or English. So it's a Yugoslav
23 passport. I didn't pay attention when I was looking through your
24 documents, but you yourself read out the date of issue of that passport,
25 the 29th.
Page 20662
1 So this happened to you on the 26th, you travelled, you arrived
2 there, all this was over by the 29th. Didn't they then help you to give
3 you passports because you wanted to travel abroad? You wanted to go to
4 Hungary. Wasn't this a kind of assistance to make it possible for you to
5 get travel documents with which you could travel unhindered abroad like
6 free citizens?
7 A. You are distorting things. It wasn't three days. The passports
8 were issued over a period of about ten days. They were issued in groups,
9 depending on how much money people had. The more people paid -- this was
10 public crime committed by those people in Palic. The guards, the people
11 who had money paid plenty for it, got a passport. Others waited for ten
12 days in the meadow in tents, without water and under extremely difficult
13 conditions. You call that a tourist resort? That was a camp.
14 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I would spend up to a month on voluntary work
15 drives in tents, and I never considered myself being a camp. And you were
16 in tents in Palic next to the lake of Palic, and what are you saying? The
17 people who had money, they got a passport in two days and those who didn't
18 got it in ten days?
19 A. But you forget that those hosts of ours, as you call them, and
20 they were our guards, were men under arms, very dirty, people who kept
21 talking about fighting in Croatia and Bosnia.
22 Q. Very well. I assume they did lecture you about fighting in
23 Croatia and Bosnia, but somehow it doesn't seem to fit that people came to
24 help you from the Suboticanka factory, they gave you fruit juices, they
25 drank with you, you have photographs taken with them next to the train, a
Page 20663
1 refugee train, travelling. They don't even treat you as refugees because
2 you were still citizens of an existing state of Yugoslavia, so they helped
3 you to get passports in the closest Secretariat of Internal Affairs, that
4 is in Subotica; is that right?
5 JUDGE MAY: What is the question? He's told you that they
6 received passports. He's given his evidence about it. Now, what is the
7 question?
8 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
9 Q. Wasn't that assistance? Was your intention to go to Western
10 Europe?
11 A. It would be assistance if we were not in the camp, if we did not
12 have to pay dearly for those passports. It would be assistance if we were
13 not mistreated. Those who had a large sum of money got passports. Those
14 of us who didn't have money, waited for a long time.
15 Q. And how long did you have to wait for it, those of you who didn't
16 have money?
17 A. Five, six, seven, eight days.
18 Q. Let the citizens of Yugoslavia hear you that you had to wait all
19 of five, six, seven or eight days to get a passport. And then all those
20 with passports, let them remind themselves how many of them had to wait
21 for five, six, seven, or eight days to get a passport, for the formalities
22 to be completed when one normally applies for a passport, for a passport
23 to be printed, registered, and handed over to the recipient.
24 A. Waiting in one's own apartment in one's own town is one thing, and
25 waiting in a meadow in a tent without food or water, with war cries is
Page 20664
1 something else.
2 Q. So you're claiming that there were some Indians surrounding you,
3 shouting war cries.
4 A. They were your Chetniks waging war in Croatia and Zvornik.
5 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I had no Chetniks of my own. As you know full
6 well, Mr. Banjanovic, but I see that you have every intention of giving
7 that impression. But never mind. Let's go on.
8 Let's go back now to your Kozluk, which, as you say, is a
9 well-known town. I really do regret that I had never heard of it. You
10 say -- tell me, please, on that day, the 26th of May [as interpreted], how
11 many soldiers were there in your Kozluk, of all possible types, troops,
12 paramilitary, police, everything?
13 A. There was about 1.000 to 1.300 households. In front of each there
14 was two to three soldiers. So there were more than 3.000 members of the
15 army, paramilitary units, police force, Territorial Defence units. I had
16 never seen so many men of that kind, because Kozluk was surrounded by
17 Serbian villages. So there were more than 3.000 of them.
18 Q. Very well, Mr. Banjanovic. As you were president of the local
19 commune there and you were familiar with what was going on there, tell me,
20 please, how can you explain the purpose for which those 3.000 men under
21 arms had come to Kozluk? Were 3.000 of them needed to force you to move
22 out or do anything else?
23 A. For several days Radio Loznica, which is in Serbia, and Radio
24 Zvornik, which is in Zvornik in Bosnia, exerted media pressure, claiming
25 that we had guns, weapons, that we were well-armed. Then an APC of the
Page 20665
1 Yugoslav People's Army with the words "The Drina Corps" inscribed on it
2 was roaming around Kozluk and the surrounding places, calling on the
3 people to surrender the weapons and to surrender the people we were
4 hiding. So there was a very strong media campaign on the radio and
5 through loudspeakers.
6 Q. First of all, there were no Yugoslav People's Army troops there
7 but there was only the Territorial Defence or the army of Republika
8 Srpska. There was no JNA forces there in Kozluk. Do you know that or
9 not?
10 A. Colonel Milosevic introduced himself in Kozluk to us as being the
11 commander of the Drina Corps. He stated this at meetings. He told this
12 to international people.
13 Q. When was this, please?
14 A. In May, June.
15 Q. So not during these events.
16 A. No, not on the 26th but before the 26th.
17 Q. Were there JNA members involved in these events?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Who was there from among the JNA?
20 A. There were people in uniform. For us, they were the army.
21 Q. Very well. That is sufficient. Tell me, was anyone killed on the
22 26th of June in Kozluk?
23 A. A few days before that, Medo Marhocevic was killed.
24 Q. Wait a minute, please. That was a few days before that. I can't
25 enter into each individual incident. Just tell me, on the 26th, the day
Page 20666
1 we're talking about when you were allegedly forced to leave Kozluk, was
2 anyone killed?
3 A. Galib Hadzic was seriously injured in the centre of Kozluk. A
4 soldier shot at him.
5 Q. I see. He was wounded. But was anyone killed?
6 A. No, no one was killed.
7 Q. I see. You describe here that from all sides you were surrounded
8 and that you were beaten and shot at. That was the description you gave.
9 A. We were surrounded. We were herded into the centre of Kozluk.
10 There was shooting on all sides to intimidate us, and houses were torched.
11 Q. I have taken note - and this can certainly be found in the
12 transcript and on the tape it can be found as we are speaking the same
13 language - you said they were shooting at the people. That is what you
14 said, they shot at the people.
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Yet you say that no one was killed.
17 A. Galib Hadzic was seriously wounded.
18 Q. I see. There were 3.000 soldiers shooting at the people and this
19 Galib Hadzic, one, is wounded?
20 A. They were shooting into the air, they were shooting at the houses.
21 Q. Oh, into the air. I see. And torching houses. I see. Then you
22 say that your original documents were seized by members of the TO of
23 Zvornik.
24 A. The commander of the military police, known as Studeni. He was
25 head of the deportation.
Page 20667
1 Q. I'm not interested nor do I know him nor do I know your president
2 of the municipality. So you're talking about the TO of Zvornik. Are you
3 talking about Zvornik in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. You say that these people that were rounding you up were listing
6 you down together with the citizens of Kozluk?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. So if they were forcing you out, why did the citizens of Kozluk
9 make lists? Why was that necessary at all?
10 A. There was a commission in front of the cultural centre, and people
11 signed their names on this list. And once they had done that, they were
12 shoved into the buses and trucks without any luggage and without any food.
13 Q. I can't believe that they left without luggage or food. And you
14 say they were shoved into trucks and buses and trailers. And in this
15 document, it says: "We examined the statements of 1.822 persons who were
16 transported in 18 buses, three trucks, and two passenger vehicles from
17 Kozluk."
18 So most of the people were boarded onto buses; isn't that right?
19 Seventeen buses, three trucks, and two passenger vehicles. That is what
20 is said in this document. Is that incorrect?
21 A. First of all, those buses and trucks arrived immediately we told
22 we had to leave, which means that they had been prepared and organised.
23 Secondly, there is room in one bus for 50 people. And you see how many
24 there were. The buses and trucks were packed full. People were choking
25 inside.
Page 20668
1 JUDGE MAY: We are going to adjourn now. It's half past.
2 Mr. Milosevic, we have in mind that this was a 92 bis witness, a
3 Rule 92 bis witness, and therefore, you should have rather longer, but the
4 time you can have is an hour and a half, which means you've got, if you
5 want it, another three-quarters of an hour with this witness.
6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Three-quarters of an hour, Mr. May,
7 is not long enough, I think, because by putting this witness on the 92
8 bis, you have limited my cross-examination quite considerably.
9 JUDGE MAY: No. And it would certainly be long enough if you
10 didn't spend so long arguing with the witness. You've got three-quarters
11 of an hour.
12 We will adjourn now. Twenty minutes.
13 --- Recess taken at 10.31 a.m.
14 --- On resuming at 10.55 a.m.
15 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, in your statement it says that Kozluk had about
18 12.000 inhabitants. Is that correct?
19 A. No. About 5.000 inhabitants. But with Sepak, Skocic, the
20 surrounding places, it has about 12.000.
21 Q. So that information refers to the entire local commune, not just
22 the village?
23 A. Kozluk is a local commune with about 5.000 inhabitants.
24 Q. So tell me, given that in this list of yours you had 1.822 people
25 who went to Western Europe, that's what it says here, what happened to the
Page 20669
1 other 3.200 inhabitants?
2 A. All the other citizens went to Western countries.
3 Q. So others went too.
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. How many Serbs lived in Kozluk?
6 A. There were between 15 and 20 families there.
7 Q. How many lived -- how many Serbs live there now?
8 A. There were about 5.000 Serbs when we left Kozluk, and at the
9 moment there are about 1.000 Serbs there.
10 Q. On the second page of your statement you say that after the fall
11 of Zvornik, Kozluk remained surrounded by the Serbian forces. Isn't that
12 correct?
13 A. Yes, it is.
14 Q. Do you know how long these battles, this fighting in Zvornik
15 lasted for?
16 A. No.
17 Q. Do you know how many victims there were in that fighting?
18 A. No.
19 Q. So how is it that, as you claim, Zvornik fell but Kozluk didn't?
20 What was the difference?
21 A. Well, Kozluk, the inhabitants of both nationalities remained
22 loyal. There was no fighting in the centre itself. We lived in peace
23 with our neighbours.
24 Q. So there were no attacks directed against Kozluk?
25 A. Not until the 20th, no.
Page 20670
1 Q. And before the fighting in Zvornik, did you decide to form some
2 sort of a Crisis Staff in your place; isn't that correct?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Were there any Serbs in that Crisis Staff?
5 A. The Serbs formed their own police forces and their Crisis Staff.
6 So a number of citizens, inhabitants formed a Crisis Staff, and we would
7 always meet together.
8 Q. But you provided a list here. There were nine of you in the
9 Crisis Staff, and that was before any kind of fighting broke out. So why,
10 when you say that you lived on good terms with the Serbs in that place,
11 why didn't you have a joint Crisis Staff, that you made a Crisis Staff --
12 you formed a Crisis Staff for Muslims alone?
13 A. Because the Serbs separated themselves. They separated the
14 police. In time, they formed their own units, their own staff, et cetera.
15 They didn't want to be together with the Bosniaks.
16 Q. So the Serbs didn't want this but you did?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. But was there a defence plan, a plan to defend the place, that you
19 discussed at the Crisis Staff?
20 A. No.
21 Q. What were your personal duties in the Crisis Staff?
22 A. Well, our task was to establish contact with neighbouring places
23 in which people of Serbian nationality lived, with Tabanci, Malesici,
24 Rici, Skocic, and other places, in order to attempt -- in order to avoid a
25 war, because we had always lived on good terms until then.
Page 20671
1 Q. Well, this is why I'm asking you why you needed this war, since
2 the terms you were on with others were good. Tell me, was there any
3 contact with Muslim paramilitary formations, you as a crisis staff?
4 A. No.
5 Q. In your statement you say you engaged two Muslims and sent them on
6 some sort of spy mission among the Serb forces to see what was going on
7 there; isn't that correct?
8 A. Well, this is what you claim.
9 Q. In the sixth paragraph -- I've only received your statement in
10 English although I believe that you didn't give your statement into
11 English --
12 JUDGE MAY: Let the witness have a copy of the statement.
13 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
14 Q. Well, it says here: [In English] "I asked two Muslims, one of
15 them was a forester, to inquire what was going on all surrounding areas
16 for our security. They saw military training performed by those people in
17 the vicinity of Kozluk. They told what they had seen --"
18 JUDGE MAY: Let the witness find it. Have you found that,
19 Mr. Banjanovic?
20 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] It's not necessary.
21 JUDGE MAY: Just make sure you have it in front of you.
22 Yes, go on reading. It's page 2, sixth paragraph.
23 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes.
24 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
25 Q. So these aren't my words, they're your words. So please tell me,
Page 20672
1 what were the names of these two Muslims?
2 A. One of them was called Nijaz Marhosevic, and the other person, and
3 the other person was called Redjo.
4 Q. What was their duty? Were they obliged to follow your orders?
5 A. Well, that was not an order of any kind.
6 Q. Was this mission a dangerous one for them?
7 A. Well, you know what a forester does in forests. It's his job to
8 be in forests. You know what the duty of a guard consist of. He had to
9 be present in the forest. We didn't send the fire brigade there, we sent
10 people whose work this was.
11 Q. Very well. You sent them to see what was happening. As you say
12 in your statement, you approached the Serbian soldiers and you openly
13 asked them what they were doing there, and they answered to you in a
14 friendly way that Grujic had called them there; isn't that correct?
15 A. Yes, that's correct.
16 Q. So tell me, how is it that your place was surrounded since you
17 were free to move around, to move through enemy ranks and talk about the
18 reasons for their presence there, et cetera? How can you talk about there
19 being an encirclement?
20 A. First of all, Serbian forces had encircled Kozluk from all sides.
21 And also encircled by the Territorial Defence, paramilitary units, and the
22 police.
23 Q. Didn't you say there were Serbian villages around you?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Sir, even 20 years ago it was encircled by Serbs; isn't that
Page 20673
1 correct?
2 A. Yes. But there were no trenches at the time and there were no
3 armed soldiers at the time, and at the time, one year back, there weren't
4 various exercises, training manoeuvres, firing, and so on.
5 Q. What did those two men of yours see, the two men that you sent on
6 a mission?
7 A. They didn't go to reconnoiter. They carried out their usual
8 duties as foresters. They saw a certain number of unknown people who had
9 bands on which it said Military Scouts. They saw that these people were
10 armed, and they also saw that these people were training.
11 Q. So they observed them carrying out military exercises without
12 hindrance.
13 A. Well, it was from a great distance, through binoculars.
14 Q. So they were covered -- they were under cover?
15 A. Yes, obviously.
16 Q. As I see, they informed someone called Redjo; is that correct?
17 A. Redjo is a policeman. He is from the local police in Zvornik, and
18 he was a worker in -- he works as a policeman in Kozluk.
19 Q. That's why they informed him, because he was a policeman?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And then as I can -- as I see in your statement, he -- that is to
22 say, Redjo went straight to Zvornik. He went to the police station.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. In order to hand over all the proof of these activities; isn't
25 that correct?
Page 20674
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. So according to what comes out of what you have just confirmed,
3 Zvornik fell, the Serbs laid siege to Kozluk, and Redjo went to Zvornik
4 that had allegedly been taken and told the Serbs that the Serbs were
5 training.
6 A. No. You are distorting what I said. You're distorting the facts.
7 This happened before the fall of Zvornik.
8 Q. So even earlier on?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Very well then. In the eighth paragraph on the same page, you say
11 that the Serbs from Ugljari, Malesici, and Tabanci built a big road
12 although there was a good road that passed through Kozluk; isn't that
13 correct?
14 A. Yes, it is.
15 Q. So tell me, why didn't you mention this?
16 A. Well, because at the time, heavy military machines appeared in
17 Serbian villages alone.
18 Q. So they were building a road and this is something that was
19 suspicious; isn't that correct?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And why would it be suspicious to build roads?
22 A. Because there were two roads already in existence. That's a
23 little too much. It was a matter of connecting the Serbian villages in
24 the Serbian territory in order to bypass Kozluk. You've asked me this on
25 two occasions. Is it necessary to ask me a third time?
Page 20675
1 Q. On page 3 of your statement, you say that the Serbian policemen,
2 almost all the arms and vehicles from the police station in Zvornik was
3 transported to Celopek; is that correct?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. How do you know that that happened?
6 A. Because when I went there to the Crisis Staff on several occasions
7 with a special permit, I saw that there was a large number of police
8 vehicles, and I saw that there were a lot of police present there, et
9 cetera. And Radio Zvornik said that this Ministry of the Interior, this
10 police station, had been divided into a Muslim and Serbian part.
11 Q. And on that basis you concluded that they had transported weapons
12 to Celopek?
13 A. No. When I went to the Crisis Staff and to Zvornik, when I was
14 provided with a special permit, I saw that there were many vehicles there
15 and many policemen.
16 Q. And you came to that conclusion on that basis?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Very well. You say that the Serbian paramilitary formations
19 attacking Safka [phoen] and Kovacevic [phoen], these villages, they passed
20 through your place very often and they were afraid of the inhabitants'
21 reaction, but fortunately, nothing happened; isn't that what you said?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. So tell me, how is it that the Serbian forces attacked all the
24 surrounding places and even passed through your place in order to attack
25 others but they kept bypassing Kozluk?
Page 20676
1 A. They passed through Kozluk. In Kozluk there was the Serbian and
2 the Bosniak police, and they had joint patrols. There were two Crisis
3 Staffs in Kozluk and they cooperated. There was contact with the
4 neighbouring places, and there was mutual respect in Kozluk, because we
5 had always lived in peace. There were no incidents in Kozluk. It's true
6 that those paramilitary units and the army came and passed through, but
7 they didn't disturb us.
8 Q. Very well. When you say in the surrounding places, you are
9 referring to the Serbian places, the Serbian villages. Why had barricades
10 been erected there?
11 A. Well, I don't know why, but I know that a long time before that, a
12 year before the conflict broke out, there was training of some kind, there
13 were meetings, there were military scouts who had bands on them. These
14 people were often seen. There was something happening.
15 Q. But you don't know what.
16 A. No.
17 Q. Tell me, is it true that your neighbours, your Serbian neighbours
18 visited you and tried to convince you that nothing bad would happen to the
19 Muslims and that there was no reason to be afraid?
20 A. That's correct.
21 Q. And what did Brano Grujic tell you about that at a meeting that
22 was held with you at Kozluk?
23 A. With the mayor Grujic, we had several meetings at which Marko
24 Pavlovic and others were present. At those meetings, he promised us that
25 no one would touch us, that we could continue living in peace. He said
Page 20677
1 that we should surrender those weapons and carry on working in the fields
2 and not think about the frontline, et cetera.
3 Q. So the only request that concerned military matters had to do with
4 surrendering weapons?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. On page 4 of your statement, you say that the Muslim inhabitants
7 from the village of Sepak and the village of Skocic who had left their
8 places, you tried to persuade them to return to their village; isn't that
9 correct?
10 A. Yes, it is.
11 Q. So you too thought they weren't in any kind of danger from the
12 Serbs.
13 A. Well, a large number of Kozluk had appeared in Kozluk. There were
14 about 12.000 people in Kozluk, and we no longer had any food. Illness --
15 illnesses were present. There was a lot of people from all the
16 surrounding Bosniak villages in Kozluk, and it was an intolerable
17 situation. So we then agreed that those people would return to their
18 homes and no one would touch them. We said that everything would carry on
19 in a peaceful manner, that there wouldn't be any attacks et cetera.
20 Q. So is it true that the inhabitants from these villages were only
21 requested to hand over heavy weapons which they didn't need, not by any
22 means unless they were preparing some sort of military action? Isn't that
23 correct?
24 A. Well, the most difficult thing was the fact that there was -- the
25 media was constantly requesting that these guns and heavy weapons should
Page 20678
1 be surrendered, but the Bosniaks really didn't possess any such weapons,
2 the Bosniaks from Sepak and Kozluk, the surrounding places. Because we
3 cooperated well with the Serbs and with Serbia, we didn't have any weapons
4 of any kind, and this was really evident.
5 Q. Did any of the inhabitants from Sepak and Skocic, were any of them
6 killed?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Who?
9 A. Some men didn't want to go with us. They went to the free
10 territory. They crossed over to the free territory and that is when they
11 were killed.
12 Q. Are you referring to the territory that was under the control of
13 the Muslim forces?
14 A. The BH army.
15 Q. Very well. And that's where they were killed.
16 A. They were killed on the way there.
17 Q. And after you had tried to convince them, did the inhabitants from
18 Sepak and Skocic return to their places?
19 A. Vasilije Kacavenda was on a peace mission. There was Muhamed
20 Lugavic, there was Marko Pavlovic, Brano Grujic, and myself. After a
21 number of meetings, about 5.000 to 6.000 people returned to their houses
22 in Sepak, Skocic and other places.
23 Q. Is it true to say that you contacted the JNA to help you if your
24 place was attacked, if your village was attacked?
25 A. Yes.
Page 20679
1 Q. So you had faith in the Yugoslav People's Army?
2 A. Right up to the time that I saw those military vehicles returning
3 and when I realised that was no longer the Yugoslav People's Army.
4 Q. But you know that the withdrawal of the JNA from Bosnia was in
5 order to satisfy the request of Alija Izetbegovic and his men?
6 A. All I know is that I saw large columns of tanks. There were
7 military columns. I saw the JNA flag, but those people in those vehicles
8 and those lorries, they weren't soldiers. They were terrible people.
9 They were dirty. They were wearing various kinds of uniforms. They
10 opened fire at my place. They gathered in the centre of the town.
11 Q. Well, let's not waste time on this, on the subject of firing in
12 your place which didn't result in any casualties, there is no point in
13 discussing this. But please tell us, you tell -- you're saying that in
14 your office - and this is something you mentioned a minute ago, this is in
15 Kozluk, it's on page 5 - you were met by Brano Grujic, Dragan Spasojevic,
16 and Dr. Muhamed and Jokic, who was a Muslim; isn't that correct?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And then these three together, together with the hodza, Muhamed
19 Efendija Lugavic and the Serbian priest Vasilije Kacavenda went to see the
20 locals of Sepak and Skocic and appealed to them not to resort to force and
21 not to attack the Serb barricades. Is that what you stated?
22 A. No.
23 Q. What did you say then, please?
24 A. Well, it's written in my statement.
25 Q. Very well. How do you interpret this event when a
Page 20680
1 Serbian-cum-Muslim delegation comprising men of religion were endeavouring
2 to calm down the situation? Was that their main purpose?
3 A. This delegation's aim was to encourage the Bosniak population to
4 return to their homes in the surrounding villages.
5 Q. But is -- does this act indicate any intention on the part of the
6 Serbs to attack these places or, on the contrary, to calm the situation
7 down?
8 A. This delegation said that it could not take any responsibility,
9 that there were higher placed people in Zvornik, higher-level commanders
10 who could guarantee security.
11 Q. Very well. Now, if on that occasion Grujic and Spasojevic
12 addressed the people and said that no one would be hurt or arrested, that
13 there was no cause for fear, that everyone should return to their homes;
14 is that right?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. So was their intention to intimidate and expel the Muslims from
17 this area? Wouldn't they have said quite the opposite if that had been
18 their aim?
19 A. This happened long before the deportation. Their aim was to break
20 up this group of people because it was dangerous to have 12.000 Muslims in
21 one place.
22 Q. But then you asked Grujic to see his superior.
23 A. He as the mayor said that he could not assume any responsibility
24 and that there was someone higher up.
25 Q. And then you went to Karakaj, which is a part of Zvornik; isn't
Page 20681
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 Blank pages inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and
13 English transcripts. Pages 20681 to 20691.
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Page 20692
1 it?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. So Grujic too wanted you to make sure you were safe?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And in Celopek you meant someone called Pejic?
6 A. In Karakaj.
7 Q. I see, in Karakaj. I'm sorry. In Karakaj. And what did he tell
8 you?
9 A. Well, I saw that he really was the boss. A part of the delegation
10 didn't even dare enter the office, whereas the others stood at attention
11 in front of him. He received only the hodza Lugavic, the priest
12 Kacavenda, and myself.
13 Q. And what did he say to you?
14 A. He said to Brano Grujic that we must be protected and that he
15 should rule if he can. If not, he would be replaced. I asked that he
16 personally should come and visit Kozluk.
17 Q. So he insisted that you must be protected. And he said to Grujic
18 that he must perform his duty and take care of the citizens; is that
19 right?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. So he didn't intimidate you, but on the contrary, indicated that
22 he wanted to protect you; isn't that right?
23 A. He asked us to surrender heavy weapons if we had any.
24 Q. Very well. That's only logical.
25 A. I said that he could go to Kozluk and see for himself that we had
Page 20693
1 nothing.
2 Q. Is it true that he gave you assurances that you should stay in
3 your homes, that there was nothing to fear, and that all he requested was
4 the surrender of heavy weapons?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And then you invited him to Kozluk. He accepted the invitation.
7 And then you set off to Kozluk immediately together; is that right?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Is it true that he addressed the people in Kozluk?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Offering the same guarantees he had given you?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Is it true that he promised to provide food, medicines as soon as
14 possible?
15 A. He was appalled by the difficult situation he witnessed, and he
16 saw a large number of children and sick people, and he sent some medicines
17 and doctors and a truck full of food. What he promised to 10 to 12.000
18 people, he kept. He kept his promise.
19 Q. Did Pejic say to you that if you wanted to leave nevertheless,
20 that it was very dangerous for you to head towards Tuzla?
21 A. No. He told us that we could never pass along that route to
22 Tuzla. He said, "If you go to Tuzla, you will join the army and you will
23 wage war against us." That is what he said. And I saw a very, very large
24 number of barricades and lots of men under arms.
25 Q. Was there a frontline there somewhere?
Page 20694
1 A. The frontline was removed from Kozluk.
2 Q. Yes, a distance away, but in the direction of Tuzla, and that is
3 why you couldn't go towards Tuzla, because it was unsafe for you.
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And then he told you that you could go in the direction of Serbia;
6 is that right?
7 A. For a while, we were totally surrounded and in total isolation,
8 and the only exit led towards Serbia. And also, we had to have special
9 passes.
10 Q. But you all left to Serbia without any special passes, only having
11 signed this list of people who wanted to go to Western Europe.
12 A. I'm talking about the people who left before. About 3.000 people
13 had left before that.
14 Q. Did anything happen to those people?
15 A. The people who remained in Kozluk, who didn't want to leave with
16 us, were killed.
17 Q. Were killed?
18 A. Yes. More than 20 men were killed.
19 Q. When were these people killed?
20 A. After the 26th.
21 Q. When you had left already.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Who killed them?
24 A. Those same guards, those same men that had surrounded Kozluk.
25 Q. As far as I can see from your statement, Pejic released several
Page 20695
1 people from Kozluk, trusting your statement that they were not members of
2 the Green Berets.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. As far as I see from your statement, you don't know the names of
5 those prisoners.
6 A. Yes, I do. There was a neighbour called Idriz. His sister got
7 married to somebody from Skocic and left there and then he was arrested.
8 Q. So you knew all of them that you guaranteed about?
9 A. Yes. The Serb policeman told me about them, and I went and made
10 the request, and they were released.
11 Q. So they were released because you guaranteed that they were not
12 members of the Green Berets.
13 A. That they were ordinary citizens.
14 Q. And did you distinguish members of the Green Berets from others?
15 A. There were no Green Berets in my areas. I don't even know who
16 those Green Berets were.
17 Q. Very well. And you say that from the 20th to the 25th of June,
18 shooting could be heard in the environs of Kozluk.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Was there any fighting going on there, combat operations?
21 A. In Kozluk, it was quite peaceful, and people still believed in
22 co-existence. Immediately prior to the deportation, Marko Pavlovic and
23 other paramilitary units started their reign of terror in the surrounding
24 villages. They mistreated Serbs. They made them strip. They beat them.
25 Q. Serbs?
Page 20696
1 A. Yes. The reason was that they were too close to us Bosniaks. A
2 large number of people were beaten up. A large number of people were
3 mistreated by these paramilitary units.
4 Q. So paramilitary units are -- were mistreating Serbs because they
5 were on friendly terms with the Muslims?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Now, tell me, please, as I have a piece of information here, I
8 want to check whether it is correct. It has to do with this fact that at
9 one point, that is on the 26th of June, they told you that they could no
10 longer guarantee your security; is that right?
11 A. After the order issued to me by Brano Grujic that we should
12 immediately leave Kozluk, a member of parliament called Mijatovic came up
13 to me and said that there was no safety any more and that it would be best
14 for us to leave because there could be a massacre.
15 Q. But what was the reason for this?
16 A. I don't know what the reason was, but I did see that in Zvornik
17 and around it no one had control any more.
18 Q. So the chaos of a civil war.
19 A. No, no. There was a conflict among the Serbs themselves, among
20 various paramilitary units, units of the army and so on. Nobody knew who
21 was in command any more.
22 Q. So that's exactly what I'm saying. A chaotic situation typical of
23 a civil war. Do you know a village called Rastosnica? How far it from
24 Kozluk?
25 A. Quite far.
Page 20697
1 Q. Quite far, I see. Has this anything to do with the fact that it
2 was right then that the Muslim forces had destroyed that village and
3 expelled more than 4.000 people from the area, Serbs?
4 A. We were totally isolated and we didn't know what was happening a
5 kilometre away from us not to mention 50 or 100 kilometres away. We just
6 saw these various armies passing through Kozluk. Something was going on.
7 Q. So several thousand people from this destroyed village fled to
8 your area, according to my information.
9 A. While I was there, no one arrived.
10 Q. Very well. Is it true that in Kozluk nothing was destroyed?
11 A. How could it be destroyed when there was no war there? Maybe 50
12 up to 100 houses were destroyed that were already old, and a number of
13 houses were damaged or torched during the deportation. But the number is
14 very small.
15 Q. So as opposed to Rastosnica which was totally destroyed and 4.000
16 people expelled from it --
17 JUDGE MAY: The witness knows nothing about that. There's no
18 point repeating it.
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. But the witness does
20 know that Kozluk was not destroyed, that there was no war there.
21 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We've had the evidence about that. He's given
22 it at some length.
23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.
24 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
25 Q. When the Red Cross received you in Serbia - we discussed this at
Page 20698
1 the very beginning - in view of the circumstances that we have just
2 addressed, you yourself say there was chaos, conflict, even conflicts
3 between various Serb formations, between Serb formations and Muslim
4 formations. It doesn't matter which. You don't know of any Green Berets
5 or the Patriotic League or anything like that. You say the army of Bosnia
6 and Herzegovina. Anyway, you were evacuated. You arrived in Serbia. Did
7 the Serbs save your life perhaps in doing this? Because you are talking
8 of the circumstances under which you left. They told you they could no
9 longer guarantee your safety, and you yourself described the situation as
10 chaotic. By helping you to evacuate, did they save your life?
11 A. First of all, they lied to us. We were tricked. We didn't go to
12 war. We surrendered our weapons. Why were we expelled from our jobs?
13 Why didn't they let us till our land?
14 Q. That's another question. You yourself described a moment ago the
15 chaotic situation, the shooting and everything else, and that you were
16 told that they could no longer guarantee your safety. So my question is:
17 By helping you evacuate, did they save your lives?
18 A. They wrote this letter saying that we were doing everything
19 voluntarily, but in fact, they expelled us. We left in trucks, in buses.
20 The stoning, the beating, the killings was not an act of benevolence but
21 an act of expulsion. Why would 5.000 people leave their homes? That is
22 ethnic cleansing. That was the scenario.
23 Q. Out of fear of war. Why do refugees all over the world leave
24 their homes?
25 A. We were not at war.
Page 20699
1 JUDGE MAY: We've exhausted this topic. Move on to something
2 else.
3 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
4 Q. Did everyone have to leave Kozluk or only the people who wanted
5 to?
6 A. I don't understand the question.
7 Q. We are talking about the departure and whether it was under force.
8 Did everyone have to leave Kozluk or only the people who wanted to leave
9 and who wanted to go to the West?
10 A. It was not a voluntary matter. It was an order that we should
11 leave immediately. It was ethnic cleansing.
12 Q. Let us leave the qualification of this to someone else. Tell me,
13 how many people stayed behind in Kozluk? If 1.822 of you signed that
14 paper, how many stayed behind?
15 A. The Serb families and some Bosniaks who didn't want to go with us.
16 And all those Bosniaks were killed.
17 Q. I see. So those 20 Bosniaks only stayed behind. You said that 20
18 were killed and now you say all of them were killed.
19 A. I gave you a precise answer. The Bosniaks who didn't want to go
20 with us were killed. There were some 20 of them.
21 JUDGE MAY: So let's make sure we have this right. There were a
22 number of Serbs, and you say 20 Bosniaks who stayed behind; is that right?
23 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes.
24 JUDGE MAY: Can you tell us how many Serbs there were? Can you
25 give us some idea of that?
Page 20700
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] He said 15 households. There were
2 15 Serbian households.
3 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] There were between 15 and 20 Serbian
4 families. Those Serbs remained in Kozluk. Nobody disturbed them. They
5 were Serbs.
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. I gathered that nobody disturbed you either. They suggested that
8 you leave because they could no longer guarantee your safety because of
9 what was going on in your environs.
10 A. You don't want to hear me.
11 Q. I do want to hear you.
12 A. The army, para-army and the police were herding people into the
13 centre. They were opening fire. Medo Marhocevic was killed. Hadzic was
14 wounded. Several houses were torched. Quite a lot of people were
15 slapped.
16 Q. This Medo was not killed on that day.
17 A. On the 23rd, 24th he was killed but certainly not during that
18 particular event.
19 Q. Therefore, you said a moment ago that on that day, no one was
20 killed except for that one person being wounded. Very well. Now, tell
21 me, how did the Serbs carry out ethnic cleansing by expelling Bosniaks to
22 Serbia?
23 JUDGE MAY: Well, that's a matter entirely for the Trial Chamber
24 in due course, to characterise it and decide what happened. You've heard
25 -- all he can do is give his evidence. He said they were sent to Serbia.
Page 20701
1 Any qualification, as he rightly said, as you rightly said, is a matter
2 for others, in fact for the Trial Chamber. Let's move on.
3 You've got about, I should think, about five minutes left.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. I'll try, Mr. May.
5 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
6 Q. I put this question to him because, Mr. Banjanovic, I thought you
7 were the head of the Association for the Return of Citizens of Bosniak
8 Nationality of the Municipality of Zvornik; isn't that correct?
9 A. No. I'm the president of the association for the return of all
10 people to their territory, and that includes Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs.
11 Q. Very well. Is it true to say that the government of the
12 Federation of BH exerted pressure on the Muslims from Podrinje in order to
13 get them to leave Podrinje and to move to the Sarajevo municipalities?
14 A. I'm not aware of that fact.
15 Q. Did your association on the 23rd of May, 1996 - and I'm speaking
16 about your association - did they issue a communique in which they
17 condemned the government for such demographic policies?
18 A. We were against any form of transporting, transferring people. We
19 wanted people to return to their homes, and we wanted trust among citizens
20 to be re-established.
21 Q. Very well. But since I'm asking you whether they exerted
22 pressure, did the government exert pressure to make Bosniaks from
23 Podrinje, to make Muslims move out? You say that you're not aware of
24 that, but your association condemned the government for the exertion of
25 such pressure. Are you aware of this fact or not?
Page 20702
1 A. We condemned all institutions that encouraged people to leave
2 their homes.
3 Q. But tell me, explain to me, what did the BH federation government
4 want to achieve by exerting such pressure and by encouraging the people to
5 move out?
6 A. I'm not the Prime Minister, I'm just an ordinary citizen of
7 Kozluk, and I want to live in Kozluk and to live on good terms with
8 everyone.
9 Q. Very well. But you are aware of the fact that the government
10 exerted pressure on the Podrinje Muslims so that they would move out from
11 that territory. You're not aware of that fact, nor are you aware of any
12 form of pressure exerted by the Muslims and --
13 JUDGE MAY: He said that. Let's move on to something else.
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.
15 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
16 Q. Since I no longer have -- since I have no more time, I only have
17 one more question for you, and this concerns the beginning of my
18 cross-examination, what you said at the end when you -- concerning your
19 arrival in Serbia, according to what you said.
20 In Loznica, you asked the Red Cross for help. You asked them to
21 help you continue your journey to Western Europe. Did they, as this is
22 what you requested from them, could they have assumed, could they have
23 known that you were deported or did they consider you to be refugees?
24 A. Mr. Milosevic, we were forced out of Kozluk. We were expelled
25 from Kozluk. Twenty Bosniaks were killed.
Page 20703
1 JUDGE MAY: Just answer this, Mr. Banjanovic: Can you say from
2 your knowledge whether the Red Cross knew what your position was, that you
3 were deported or not?
4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Well, they did know. As soon as
5 they saw us in the lorries, they knew that we were being deported. And we
6 also told them what we had been through. We told them about what had
7 happened. People were aware of the fact that this was a matter of
8 deportation, forced expulsion.
9 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
10 Q. Are you now claiming that you informed the Red Cross in Loznica of
11 the fact that you weren't refugees but that you were being forcibly
12 deported by the authorities from the municipality of Zvornik?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. How is it that this does not appear on any of the documents that
15 have been provided?
16 A. Well, you have to ask those who compiled these documents. We
17 didn't.
18 Q. You said that you only contacted the Red Cross apart from the
19 police that protected you. So you informed the Red Cross that you weren't
20 leaving of your own free will and that the list that you had signed was a
21 list that had been compiled under duress and that nothing -- none of this
22 was correct. So why did you ask them to help you leave for Western Europe
23 as soon as possible?
24 A. This is what you are claiming.
25 Q. But -- I'm sorry. But you said, and it's in the transcript, we
Page 20704
1 asked them to help us continue our journey to Western Europe or, rather,
2 you did not want to stay on in Loznica, you wanted to carry on. That's
3 what you stated today.
4 A. We received an order from Mr. Marko Pavlovic in Kozluk according
5 to which we were leaving on a voluntary basis and that we were trying to
6 avoid the mobilisation. But this is something he wrote down. We didn't.
7 It's a lie.
8 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I'm asking you to explain to me your testimony
9 that you gave here this morning according to which you asked the Red Cross
10 in Loznica to enable you to carry on your trip to Western Europe as soon
11 as possible. Isn't that correct?
12 A. Yes it is.
13 Q. If you made such a request, if you asked them to help you go to
14 Western Europe as soon as possible, how can you at the same time claim
15 that you told them that you had been taken there by force and that in fact
16 you didn't want to carry on?
17 A. This is what you are saying. I said that we had been taken there,
18 I said that we were hostages and that we wanted to go as far away from
19 Serbia as possible, and I asked them to help us, and they said that they
20 would send a document to Belgrade. I don't know what they wrote in that
21 document, but they wrote it, we didn't.
22 Q. They didn't write anything. They sent your list, because in that
23 document from Belgrade, it states, and I'll remind you of this, it states
24 quite clearly here: "We have examined the written statements, the 1.822
25 people in 17 buses, three trucks with trailers, and two passenger vehicles
Page 20705
1 from Kozluk, Zvornik municipality, and they now have permission. The
2 written statements of the above-mentioned persons, given on their own
3 behalf, on behalf of their under aged family members or children, et
4 cetera, expressed their will as to where they want to live, which is one
5 of the fundamental human rights.
6 So they examined your list, the list that you had written and
7 signed. They forwarded it to Belgrade and they requested that they should
8 enable you to carry on. They replied that they had examined the list,
9 decided that it was a matter of human rights that had to be respected, and
10 they provided you with authorisation, with permission to carry on.
11 A. What you have failed to read is that the commander of the
12 Territorial Defence in Zvornik, Marko Pavlovic, wrote down that we were
13 leaving on a voluntary basis, that we were trying to avoid mobilisation
14 and that we were putting our property down on a voluntary basis, that we
15 were doing everything on a voluntary basis, that we hadn't been beaten,
16 that none of our property has been torched, that we weren't being
17 transported, et cetera.
18 JUDGE MAY: Now, we have been over this several times, and we're
19 not going to go over it again. We have the documents. We've heard the
20 evidence. Now, Mr. Milosevic, your time is now up.
21 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
22 Q. In that document, and you claim that the facts mentioned in it are
23 false, you had that in your hands and it contains your handwriting.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. So why didn't you draw the attention of any of the Serbian
Page 20706
1 authorities to the fact that it wasn't true?
2 A. I informed the Red Cross in Loznica, and I informed Mr. Nikolic of
3 this fact.
4 Q. Very well.
5 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Mr. Tapuskovic.
6 MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.
7 Questioned by Mr. Tapuskovic:
8 Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Banjanovic, I think there is a matter that
9 hasn't been fully clarified. As far as I have understood you, perhaps you
10 could repeat this, you said that in your local commune there were 12.000
11 people in total.
12 A. No.
13 Q. What did you say then?
14 A. There were about 5.000 people in Kozluk. And in Skocic, Sepak,
15 the surrounding places, together with Kozluk there were about 12.000
16 Bosniaks.
17 Q. Very well. Let's concentrate on Kozluk which had 5.000
18 inhabitants. Given what you have just explained to the Trial Chamber now,
19 if only 1.822 people left Kozluk and followed the route that you
20 indicated, does that mean that a little over 3.000 people remained in
21 Kozluk?
22 A. No. There were about 5.000 inhabitants in Kozluk, and from the
23 beginning of the conflict until the time of the deportation on the 26th,
24 about 3.000 people left and went to foreign countries.
25 Q. Which routes did they follow to go to these foreign countries?
Page 20707
1 A. Some crossed over into Serbia. For a certain period of time it
2 was possible to go to Tuzla until that total blockade, when we were
3 subjected to a total blockade. Then it was only possible to go to Serbia.
4 Q. So those people who had previously passed through Serbia, did they
5 leave on a voluntary basis or in some other manner?
6 A. They received permits and they left on a voluntary basis.
7 Q. And these people who followed other routes, through Tuzla, et
8 cetera, did they also leave on a voluntary basis?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Only these 1.822 people didn't leave on a voluntary basis?
11 A. That's correct.
12 Q. Thank you. As far as I have understood you, in addition to this
13 joint declaration, there were individual declarations given by each one of
14 you according to which you wanted to leave and go to a foreign country.
15 A. No.
16 Q. So there was just this joint statement?
17 A. There was a list that we signed, and there was an order from the
18 Territorial Defence which had been brought in an envelope. We didn't sign
19 any kind of a statement.
20 Q. Can you explain to the Trial Chamber whether all of these 1.822
21 people left Serbia and carried on?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. So that means that the 1.822 people, all of them had valid
24 passports?
25 A. Yes.
Page 20708
1 Q. They had all been provided with valid passports.
2 A. Perhaps about a hundred people had passports.
3 Q. And the others got it in Subotica?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Do you know how long it takes for such a procedure in order to
6 issue passports and do you know that each passport has to be paid for,
7 certain fees have to be paid?
8 A. These were joint passports, and it had been paid by the
9 Suboticanka factory. They paid very well for this. They brought six
10 photographs -- photographers.
11 Q. Can you now explain to the Trial Chamber the following: The
12 Serbian Red Cross escorted you through the territory in Serbia.
13 A. We were escorted by the police.
14 Q. And Red Cross representatives?
15 A. No.
16 Q. And who met you when you crossed the Yugoslav border? Was a sort
17 of reception organised for you?
18 A. I don't know. I was the last one to get off. There were trains
19 that took us there, to the stations, and we were sent further on then.
20 Q. Were those representatives of -- were these foreign
21 representatives of the Red Cross?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And they had plans for where you should continue to?
24 A. I don't know if they had any plans.
25 Q. But you were sent to specific places?
Page 20709
1 A. We were sent to camps.
2 Q. And you were then sent further on to Europe.
3 A. To join up with our families.
4 Q. Thank you very much.
5 JUDGE KWON: I have a question before Mr. Groome re-examines the
6 witness.
7 Questioned by the Court
8 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Banjanovic, you said that you were not allowed to
9 leave the column while you were in Serbia. Is that right?
10 A. Yes.
11 JUDGE KWON: Does that mean there were some refugees who wished to
12 remain in Serbia but were not allowed to do so and forced to move on to
13 going --
14 A. Yes.
15 JUDGE KWON: How many of them?
16 A. Yes. Well, not a very large number.
17 JUDGE KWON: Could you tell the story to me in detail about the
18 refugees who wished to remain in Serbia.
19 A. Well, a lot of people worked in Serbia. There were quite a few
20 mixed marriages. When we were expelled, we were in a column in Loznica,
21 so leaving the vehicles was not permitted. We weren't permitted to leave
22 the vehicles, and we dared not do so because there were a lot of armed
23 people, armed men moving around the convoy, moving around the column.
24 They asked for money, and they were looking for girls. They wanted the
25 girls to get out of the vehicles. The people were afraid to leave the
Page 20710
1 trailers, the lorries, the buses. The police who were present there
2 didn't allow anyone to leave these vehicles.
3 After an hour or two, a large number of policemen arrived, four to
4 five police cars. There were a lot of policemen who didn't allow us to
5 leave the buses and the lorries, to get off the buses and lorries. While
6 we were carrying on, we had very little time. When we were getting onto
7 the train we had to do so very quickly because they were stoning us from
8 all directions. They stoned us. What else could the people do other than
9 run into the trains, run into the carriages? They stoned the train on
10 several occasions.
11 When we arrived in Subotica, we were hungry. We were tired. A
12 lot of people had been beaten, had injuries to their heads. It was a
13 difficult trip. And I'll repeat this: While we were being deported from
14 Kozluk, none of the citizens was allowed to take anything, neither food
15 nor footwear nor clothes. Several families had relatives in Sepak and in
16 other towns they had relatives too and they wanted to go and visit them.
17 The police didn't allow them to do so. They didn't allow anyone to leave
18 the convoy.
19 JUDGE KWON: I'm interested in those refugees who wished to remain
20 in the territory of Serbia. Were they not able to talk to the Red Cross
21 people, when they had a chance to talk with them, about their wish to
22 remain in Serbia?
23 A. I was the only person who spoke to the Red Cross, and I told them
24 about this wish, but the people from the Red Cross said it would be better
25 for them to go because of the war, because of the extremely difficult
Page 20711
1 situation, because of the tension. And at that point, we all decided to
2 leave in that column. We all decided that no one should remain.
3 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.
4 Re-examined by Mr. Groome:
5 Q. Mr. Banjanovic, I want to ask you a couple of additional questions
6 regarding Prosecution Exhibit 445, tab 7. I ask that be handed to the
7 witness. And that is the document issued by the Republic of Serbia
8 Commission for Refugees.
9 My first question to you is: How much time elapsed between the
10 time the Red Cross representative left you saying that they were going to
11 seek authorisation for the convoy to continue and the time that that
12 representative returned with tab 7 of Prosecution Exhibit 445?
13 A. Everything moved on very quickly. About two hours.
14 Q. So if we were to accept the contents of tab 7 on face value, in
15 that two hours, the information you provided the Red Cross would have had
16 to have been sent up to Belgrade. The first line of the document says:
17 "We looked into the written statements of 1.822 persons." That would
18 have had to have been done. Tab 7 would have had to have been drafted,
19 and it would have had to have been sent down to Loznica; is that correct?
20 A. That's correct.
21 Q. The copy that you saw, that you were presented with in Loznica,
22 was it a fax copy or was it an original?
23 A. I think it was a fax.
24 Q. I want to draw your attention to the last line of the first
25 paragraph, and there's an assertion there that you and the other people
Page 20712
1 from Kozluk were temporarily residing in Loznica. During the course of
2 your trip from Kozluk and out of Serbia, did you spend even one night in
3 Loznica?
4 A. No. We didn't stay in Loznica. We were in lorries.
5 MR. GROOME: No further questions.
6 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Banjanovic, that concludes your evidence. Thank
7 you for coming to the International Tribunal to give it. You are now free
8 to go.
9 [The witness withdrew]
10 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
11 MR. GROOME: May I raise an administration point with respect to
12 the last witness. I neglected to refer on the record to the portion of
13 the videotape that was played. That was an excerpt from Prosecution
14 Exhibit 342, tab 13. The time -- the time of that excerpt was 22 minutes
15 and 47 seconds to 24 minutes and 19 seconds. Your Honour Judge May, in a
16 ruling of the 16th of October of last year, you made a ruling that we
17 would deal with that particular exhibit excerpt by excerpt. We will work
18 with the registrar later today to identify all the references to that
19 exhibit and perhaps then a unique tab number or exhibit number can be
20 assigned to the exhibit or this portion of that exhibit which was
21 displayed here in court with this past witness.
22 JUDGE MAY: Very well. That sounds sensible.
23 Yes, the next witness.
24 MR. NICE: Mr. de la Brosse is the next witness, the expert.
25 Your Honour, there is a large number of exhibits with this
Page 20713
1 witness. May they be given a collective exhibit number with tab numbers
2 dealing with individual exhibits?
3 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that's Prosecution Exhibit 446.
4 MR. NICE: I intend to take a little time, but not very much, with
5 the witness going through his report so that its structure can be
6 understood by those viewing the proceedings and the Chamber may be
7 reminded of the structure and along the way to deal with a few sample
8 paper exhibits and a few - I can't remember how many - about ten or so,
9 video clips.
10 It may be convenient, if the Chamber's sorting its papers, if it
11 finds the curriculum vitae of the witness, which I certainly shan't be
12 taking in detail, and also the index to his report. The index is not at
13 the moment numbered by pages. I'd ask that a copy of it go on the
14 overhead projector if we can find a spare copy of the index itself which
15 is at pages 2 and 3 of the report, but I'll be able to take you to the
16 relevant pages quite easily.
17 When we look at paper exhibits, I'm afraid I will not be selecting
18 them from sequential tab numbers. I hope that won't be inconvenient. I
19 will be able to identify the tab numbers and have the relevant short
20 extracts placed on the overhead projector so it may be in that way the
21 Chamber won't be too inconvenienced. I certainly hope not.
22 And, Your Honour, while we're waiting for the witness to come in,
23 with some regret that perhaps Mr. Lopez-Terres isn't here, bearing in mind
24 his approach to these matters in an earlier case, I can tell you that the
25 witness will be giving his evidence in French, and I think, if not the
Page 20714
1 first, one of the first witnesses in the trial to give evidence in what
2 is, after all, one of the two official languages of the Tribunal.
3 [The witness entered court]
4 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the witness take the declaration.
5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly declare that I will speak
6 the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
7 JUDGE MAY: If you'd like to take a seat.
8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you.
9 WITNESS: RENAUD DE LA BROSSE
10 [Witness answered through interpreter]
11 Examined by Mr. Nice:
12 Q. Your full name, please.
13 A. Renaud de la Brosse.
14 Q. Your occupation, Mr. de la Brosse?
15 A. I'm a professor at the University of Reims in the Champagne
16 Ardennes.
17 Q. You're here to give evidence about propaganda and you've provided
18 an extensive curriculum vitae which is available to the Judges as an
19 exhibit in this case and will thus be available in due course to others
20 who seek it because it's publicly filed, but let's focus on the relevant
21 part of your experience. Have you been in research work and otherwise
22 concerned with the role of the press in political transition and crisis
23 since about 1991?
24 A. Yes. I have been interested in the role of the media and their
25 position in relation to political changes which took place in Eastern
Page 20715
1 Europe and in Africa during the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s.
2 That is the subject of my doctoral thesis.
3 Q. And in the course of your research, have you not only considered
4 traditional matters like Armenia and Nazi Germany but performed case
5 studies on various occasions?
6 A. Yes. In 1994 I was in charge of a work that was published at the
7 publishing house Decouverte, which is a series of case studies - there
8 were nine - and these retraced the negative role of the media in
9 propagating images of hatred and racism. Those case studies took place in
10 Africa. This was -- there was a case that I studied in Burundi and Rwanda
11 and in Eastern Europe, using the case of the former Yugoslavia, which I
12 wrote myself, and as part of a study on Romania. And other case studies
13 in other continents, including the Middle East, Palestine, Egypt and the
14 Caucasus.
15 Q. Generally, and that is not particularly focusing on propaganda,
16 has your work been acceptable to UNESCO in studies on West African
17 matters, and also to the European Community on other topics?
18 A. I did in fact have the opportunity to carry out several studies
19 for UNESCO and the European Commission. The last study that I did for the
20 European Commission was in September of 2002, and it dealt with regulating
21 communications in sub-Saharan Africa.
22 Q. Have you prepared reports from time to time for various NGOs and
23 in particular for Reporters Sans Frontieres?
24 A. Yes. I did some missions for them in Africa in 1994 in Guinea,
25 Conakry, and in Guinea-Bissau. In addition, I was involved in drafting a
Page 20716
1 report for the French Ministry of Defence on the development of a meeting
2 in Africa.
3 Q. By the time you were commissioned by the Office of the Prosecutor
4 to prepare a report on propaganda over an extended period of time in the
5 former Yugoslavia, were you already in possession of some materials that
6 related to the former Yugoslavia as a result of your earlier case study?
7 A. Yes. I began to work on Yugoslavia specifically in 1994 when I
8 was directing the work and working directly with the case study on the
9 former Yugoslavia. In addition, I continued to work on that, going into
10 more depth in an article that was published in a collective study led by
11 General Cot in 1997, and I also worked on propaganda in an article which I
12 published further to the war in Kosovo dealing with journalism. And I
13 also was interested in propaganda through the media in Africa.
14 Q. Then being commissioned to prepare this report by the Office of
15 the Prosecutor, were you provided with further materials, substantially
16 from newspapers but also videos?
17 MR. NICE: And those materials, Your Honour, are identified in the
18 exhibits and in particular in tab 2 of the exhibit.
19 A. Yes. In addition to my own archives, I used some firsthand
20 material. These were either written press articles or extracts of
21 television programmes.
22 Q. Thank you to Ms. Dicklich, it's really tab 3, not tab 2.
23 Before we turn to the report itself, should we just observe this:
24 The report was filed publicly in these proceedings as long ago as I think
25 about February of this year. Have you received in respect of it any
Page 20717
1 negative comment by those who may have claimed access to it and read it?
2 A. I know that there was an article in a Berlin newspaper. I believe
3 that it was positive, and I know that there was an article on an internet
4 site. And in addition, I -- I know that the official from the Reuters
5 office in Belgrade in 1991, apparently he was -- he challenged an article
6 that was published in Politika. I don't have the date. I don't have the
7 article with me here. He also challenged the fact that it was at the
8 source of the distribution of information about 41 babies allegedly
9 massacred by the Ustasha in Vukovar in November of 1991.
10 Q. Have you heard any more from that particular person since this
11 first comment on your report?
12 A. No, not at all.
13 Q. And apart from him, has there been any other negative comment by
14 general readers or peers who may have read your report, it being available
15 since February?
16 A. No, not as far as I know.
17 Q. Propaganda, it may be accepted by you, is something used by all
18 sides in all wars these days. Would you accept that?
19 A. Yes, absolutely.
20 Q. You have focused in your report on the use by either the accused
21 or the Serb interests of propaganda, but have you also given some
22 consideration to the use made by the other protagonists in these
23 conflicts, of propaganda?
24 A. You're speaking about Yugoslavia, are you?
25 Q. Yes.
Page 20718
1 A. Yes. In this article that I wrote in 1994, out of reasons of
2 intellectual honesty, I thought I needed to use a comparative approach,
3 using the documents I had available to me. That is, several articles,
4 including NGO reports whose objective was to defend press freedom in the
5 media, I got some information from there. They were either reports or
6 press releases or warnings that had been sent to various chiefs of
7 government at the time.
8 I said -- I wrote that that propaganda was used by each of the
9 republics at the time.
10 Q. In your report you express a view as to the comparative use of
11 propaganda by the different sides. How would you support the view as to
12 whether one side or another was using propaganda more extensively; from
13 your earlier work or from some other way?
14 MR. NICE: Paragraph 67 of the report, Your Honour.
15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I base myself on what I had access
16 to at the time that the article was being written and also on
17 conversations which I had with journalists or intellectuals. By that I
18 mean people from universities or other people who were interested in those
19 issues and who confirmed to me that on the Serbian side propaganda had
20 spread out over a much longer period of time than in Bosnia-Herzegovina or
21 in Croatia. And in addition, the intensity of that propaganda apparently
22 seems to have been greater. In particular, through the written press, if
23 we look at the daily Politika which, until it was taken over by the Serb
24 nationalist elements at the end of 1991 was really an institution in
25 Serbia. It was a newspaper which was given credit of being extremely
Page 20719
1 professional, and the setting up of a column that was called -- we called
2 in French co-reactions or -- led to the production of 4.000 articles in
3 which the themes of Serbian resentment are developed in respect of the
4 other communities. And that column went on for about three years, if I'm
5 correct. I think it was -- I think it was from 1988 to 1991. And it was
6 a sum of articles which were very important. And I did not find, if I'm
7 not mistaken, I didn't find from -- at least from conversations I was able
8 to have with other journalist colleagues, I didn't find such examples in
9 Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia.
10 Having said this, this observation is not actually based on an
11 exhaustive comparative study.
12 Q. If we now place on the overhead projector, and leave it there, the
13 index to your report first. It's in two pages. This will enable those
14 viewing the proceedings to know the structure of the document that the
15 learned Judges and the parties have had an opportunity to consider as we
16 take a few samples from what you have written.
17 Did you, as the index reveals -- go to the next page, please.
18 Did you start off your report with a part headed Political
19 Propaganda, Definitions, Fundamental Principles and Yugoslav
20 Particularities.
21 MR. NICE: And, Your Honours, that runs between pages 4 and 9 of
22 the report. And I think the only points that I would seek to emphasise at
23 this stage can be found first of all in the report itself at page 4,
24 paragraph 2.
25 Q. You set out here something of which the Special Rapporteur
Page 20720
1 appointed by the United Nations was able to deal with in a report of 1994
2 where he explained in respect to the former Yugoslavia that, since the
3 fighting began and information put out by the media of the former
4 Yugoslavia has mainly consisted of national discourse and generalised
5 attacks and insults aimed at other people, he was able to go on to make
6 this point: "It comes as no surprise that the phenomenon has directly led
7 to the perpetration of horrible atrocities on the fields of battle and
8 throughout the entire territory."
9 Now, that observation, does that underline in any way the
10 distinctions that you seek to draw perhaps between propaganda that may be
11 acceptable and propaganda that may not be acceptable?
12 A. Yes, absolutely.
13 Q. If we look then at tab 27, paragraph -- another report of the
14 General Assembly, and I'll put on the overhead projector paragraph 206 of
15 it.
16 In another report dated 1995, we see this passage: "Nationalist
17 rhetoric and sweeping attacks and slurs against other peoples have been a
18 dominant feature of news propagated in the former Yugoslavia's media since
19 the start of the conflicts. Not surprisingly, this phenomenon has led
20 directly to the commission of fearful atrocities on the battlefields ..."
21 Insofar as you can consider this, and you mustn't stray beyond
22 your appropriate area of expertise, but insofar as you are able to
23 consider this, does the material that you have seen and reviewed fit with
24 that conclusion of the rapporteur and the report?
25 A. Yes.
Page 20721
1 Q. Can we go then to the page 5 of the report. There are a couple of
2 places where you draw on a book written by Borisav Jovic, of which the
3 Chamber will be aware, and of course it will be for determination later
4 whether the passage quoted is one upon which the Judges can rely.
5 Nevertheless, for these purposes, we can see, and this can be found in its
6 original or better form at tab 4, I quote here for the purposes of saving
7 time, Borisav Jovic wrote this: "For years, he," speaking of the accused,
8 "paid the biggest attention to the media, especially television. He
9 personally appointed editors-in-chief of the newspapers and news
10 programmes, especially directors-general of the radio and television.
11 Perhaps in no other area but this was he in direct communication with all
12 editors who 'fed' the public with the news, comments and generally with
13 information. He was deeply convinced that citizens formed their view of
14 the political situation on the basis of what they were presented and not
15 on the basis of their real material and political position. What is not
16 published has not happened at all - that was Milosevic's motto."
17 How does that approach, if it be an accurate reflection of an
18 approach, fit in with your understanding from other case studies of the
19 use and effectiveness of propaganda?
20 A. This statement of Borisav Jovic has been corroborated by other
21 testimony of close -- people close to Mr. Milosevic. I think later on
22 we'll have the occasion to review the excerpt of a review of Dusan
23 Mitevic, who was the director of the RTS, in which he corroborates that
24 first testimony.
25 JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, can I take you and the witness back to
Page 20722
1 the UN report, paragraph 206 of which you've cited. I think that's tab
2 20 --
3 MR. NICE: Seven.
4 JUDGE ROBINSON: Twenty-seven. The report makes the point with
5 which the witness has agreed, that nationalistic rhetoric has led directly
6 to the commission of fearful atrocities on the battlefield and throughout
7 the territory. It's early in his testimony, but I would imagine that
8 later on he will tell us how he is able to substantiate that connection,
9 that link between nationalistic rhetoric and the commission of fearful
10 atrocities.
11 MR. NICE: We will deal with that later. Since Your Honour has
12 taken us back to that tab, and in case the particular report is of
13 interest to the Tribunal, it may be that we can look at a couple of
14 passages on the preceding page, paragraphs 165 and 167 coming up now, and
15 I'll get the witness to return to this towards the end of his testimony.
16 If we look in the same report at a slightly earlier passage,
17 paragraph 165 of the conclusions, the reporter noted: "The federal and
18 republican governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia exercised
19 firm control over the main media, especially state television. These
20 media have served as an effective tool for the dominant political forces
21 in formulating a new agenda based on the Serbian nationalism, and in
22 fomenting hatred against other national groups in the former Yugoslavia."
23 And then at paragraph 167: "The Serbian media have performed a
24 negative role in the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. They
25 have provoked nationalist hatred. Among themes which have dominated these
Page 20723
1 media outlets have been justification for military operations in
2 neighbouring countries and the theory of an international plot against
3 Serbs."
4 And with that additional paragraph in mind, Your Honour, we can
5 move on, but we'll come back to it at a later stage.
6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. It's time for a break, Mr. Nice. Is that a
7 convenient moment?
8 MR. NICE: Yes. There is one other exhibit on this section I was
9 going to deal with if I can.
10 Can we look at something from tab 6. The Chamber perhaps having
11 its eyes on page 6 of the report, and at the end of -- yes. At the end of
12 paragraphs 4 and the beginning of paragraph 5.
13 If we could hand in this collection of extracts. Perhaps the
14 witness could just have it.
15 This is -- as the heading of this tab reveals, this is a
16 collection of written and verbal -- no, just on the overhead projector,
17 please. This is a summary of written and verbal attacks on the
18 independent press.
19 Q. I've drawn to the Judges' attention that part of your opening
20 effectively, if not summary, series of observations and conclusions which
21 deals with control of the press, and we see included in the attacks on the
22 press this: "Doctor Milan Jevtic, an 'expert' in religion, to RTS on 6
23 December 1992 said this: If there is anybody to be blamed for the war in
24 Bosnia, it's the so-called independent newspapers Borba and Vreme in
25 Belgrade. By campaigning for peace, they actually prevented Serbs to be
Page 20724
1 properly prepared for fighting with Muslims so they are responsible for
2 many dead Serbs."
3 Then at the end of the page, in an interview published by Politika
4 on 29 March 1996, Mira Markovic referred to the independent media as
5 "Stirring up political, religious, and national hatred, defeatism,
6 political and physical violence directed against men."
7 And in order that you can deal with four excerpts collectively,
8 would you, Usher, be good enough to go on two pages to page 3 where we see
9 that Aleksandar Vucic, Minister of Information of Serbia, in a letter to
10 the international press, now much later -- we've gone 1992, 1996, and it's
11 now 1998, 31st of August, 1998 -- saying that, "After a deluge of
12 sensational and false reports blaming only one side for everything that
13 happened in the former Yugoslavia, Serbian people, many reporters and
14 media are directly accountable for the political moves of their
15 governments and indirectly for the death, persecution, and
16 living-on-the-verge-of-death of the Serbs."
17 And then finally, in the middle of the period, or earlier on,
18 1993, a news presenter on RTS in October 1993 accused the independent
19 press of immorality and high treason, saying that the scenario of
20 fabricating information is well-known and has come to the fore after the
21 collapse of Yugoslavia. "According to this scenario, fabricated
22 information has been propagated by more than foreign spies pretending to
23 be journalists and reporters. We do not expect from them either morality
24 or sympathy on account of the innocent victims in Klecka, murdered
25 soldiers or policemen. However, when we experience the same things in
Page 20725
1 newspapers and magazines published in Cyrillic alphabet whose very
2 something create panic among their own people and predict bombardment
3 instead of reporting what really has happened, then it's immoral at
4 least."
5 Now, these are a collection of complaints, and I think that's
6 enough, about the other side's press or about the free press, perhaps.
7 Can you just fit those attacks into your general thesis on propaganda for
8 us before the break?
9 A. These attacks against the independent press or alternative press
10 show that one was aware, at least those who stated them were conscious, of
11 the negative influence that propaganda can have. Now, were these actual
12 effects that took place? Well, we have to see about that. But it does
13 show the potentially negative role of the media.
14 Q. And it shows the effect of those putting out this material --
15 A. Yes, the potential effects.
16 JUDGE KWON: Did the witness make this excerpt, these quotes?
17 MR. NICE:
18 Q. Did you make these excerpts yourself or were they prepared for
19 you?
20 A. All of these quotations are things that I put together because the
21 report is very long - I apologise - and the examples are all over the
22 report, and I wanted to supplement this by making it more systematic, and
23 so I put the quotes together that were in the report, and ever since then
24 I found others which I thought were -- it would be appropriate to put them
25 together as well for the Court.
Page 20726
1 JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn now. Mr. de la Brosse, could you
2 remember during this adjournment and any others there may be in your
3 evidence not to speak to anybody about it until it's over and of course
4 that includes the members of the Prosecution team. If you could be back
5 in 20 minutes, please.
6 --- Recess taken at 12.29 p.m.
7 --- On resuming at 12.56 p.m.
8 MR. NICE:
9 Q. Mr. de la Brosse, we have on the overhead projector the index, and
10 it reveals that in the next part of your report you dealt with the use of
11 propaganda, background and definition, identifying what propaganda is, how
12 there's a difference between lawful and unlawful propaganda, how it's been
13 shown to be effective in the past, and you then turn to identify as the
14 principal Serb propaganda that the message was "A state for all Serbs."
15 And this material, in the English version, can be found between pages 9
16 and 18 of the report.
17 JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Nice.
18 MR. NICE: Thank you.
19 Q. There are only two -- two points I want you to deal with in
20 detail, one a video and one a paper extract, although we don't have a
21 special exhibit for it.
22 MR. NICE: If the Chamber wants to look at page 9, the opening
23 page of this section, at footnote 17. And if in readiness for one of
24 several video extracts it would like to take - in case it finds it helpful
25 - part of tab 26 which is the transcript of the video extracts and play
Page 20727
1 on the Sanction system the first video extract.
2 [Videotape played]
3 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "Muslim extremists have come up with
4 probably the world's most horrible way of torturing people. Last night
5 they threw Serb children to the lions in the local zoo, Pionirska Dolina,
6 the Serb patrol says."
7 MR. NICE:
8 Q. Your comments on this as a piece of television output, please.
9 A. The information is being transmitted without any basis, and it
10 comes from one source only which, professionally speaking, is something a
11 journalist should not do. And in addition it is an example of a flagrant
12 lie, because it was never proved. And its purposes to stigmatise a
13 community.
14 Q. This is an example of propaganda, and perhaps I should have dealt
15 with it in the previous opening section of your report, but you describe
16 it as a flagrant lie, and it may be thought to have been an improbable
17 story by some. What does it say of the environment into which this
18 material was being broadcast that it could be broadcast at all?
19 A. The information was broadcast by the Pale television. It was
20 taken up by the Bosnia-Herzegovina agency, and then as such it was
21 transmitted by Tanjug agency and the RTS which is what gave it credit with
22 the public. That is, the television-watchers in Serbia.
23 Q. And it might be if you were to publish a similar article in a
24 television programme in Holland or something like that, it would not
25 simply be acceptable to the public. Can you comment on what must have
Page 20728
1 been the position of the environment into which this was broadcast at the
2 time, which was 1992, that it could be accepted?
3 A. I think that one has to recall, first of all, the stigmatisation
4 of the Muslim community in Bosnia and Herzegovina which had already begun
5 before that. And in addition, one finds oneself in a situation where the
6 largest part of the Serbian population relied for its information on the
7 Serbian television and the written press that was under the control of the
8 government.
9 Q. Thank you. Within the section of your report which I've just
10 summarised - could the usher be good enough to take us to page 17 of the
11 report itself - and if you can just look at one extract of significance on
12 the proposition that the propaganda here was a state for all Serbs. And
13 at footnote 35.
14 Again drawing on Borisav Jovic's book, at footnote 35 -- further
15 up the page, please, Usher. Further up. Much further up. Number 35.
16 There we are. That's it.
17 The very -- I beg your pardon, yes. The extract from Borisav
18 Jovic's book for the 17th of October of 1990 you say is revealing in that
19 it records "the wave of hatred and national prejudice threatens to return
20 us to our bloody past. This has become the greatest danger to the
21 security and integrity of the country. All of this has been furthered by
22 the open information and propaganda war in Yugoslavia's completely divided
23 media market. Relations between the individual federal entities have
24 become so bad that contacts at the level of responsible institutions have
25 been severed or reduced to confrontation through the media."
Page 20729
1 He deals with a letter of resignation from the Yugoslav Presidency
2 and addressed to the citizens via Belgrade television read similarly, and
3 then this: "The media are completely divided and the media war has
4 assumed such intensity that the opposing sides can be considered
5 belligerents."
6 Now, you've included this in your passage of a propaganda and a
7 state for all Serbs. Your comment, please.
8 A. My first comment is that on both sides the political class was
9 conscious of the potentially harmful role of the media and in particular
10 television. And in addition, the Belgrade television, together with
11 certain written press organs, I'm thinking in particular about Politika
12 and Politika Ekspres, they constantly put forward the resentment of the
13 Serbs which consisted of saying that the Serb people is a victim people.
14 These massages were based on four major themes, that is, the genocide, in
15 quotation marks, which the Serbs of Kosovo allegedly were the victims.
16 That would be the first theme that one finds at the time in the Serb
17 media.
18 The second theme which was developed has to do with assimilation
19 which would threaten the Croatian Serbs.
20 And the third theme which was very developed in the media as well
21 has to do with the economic exploitation which the Serbian Republic was
22 allegedly the victim.
23 And finally is the theme of the status of the Serb Republic within
24 the entire Yugoslavia. That was an inferior status in respect of the
25 others because its sovereignty, allegedly, was limited by the autonomy of
Page 20730
1 the Vojvodina and Kosovo provinces.
2 And all of this means that through -- through these threats which
3 would -- apparently were being -- were in place against the Serbian people
4 were the very basis of the propaganda being used against the Serbs in
5 Croatia and Kosovo. And I can give you examples in the report -- I've
6 given some examples in this report in fact.
7 Q. And that feeds into your notion of the propaganda being a state
8 for all Serbs, as I understand it.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. As you realise, we must deal quite briefly with the report which
11 has been pre-read. So we can go now, on page 2 of your summary, if the
12 usher would be so good, which is the part that lies between pages 18 and
13 26 of your report.
14 The summary reveals that -- the index reveals that you've set out
15 some fundamental principles of propaganda, namely that the message must be
16 kept simple. There may be a desire to project the propagandist's fault
17 onto others, to use news to the advantage of a person or body putting out
18 the propaganda, that there must be repetition of a message endlessly, that
19 there may be reliance on myths and history in order to create a national
20 consensus. That's the next part of your report. Am I right?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Two things to look at: First within tab 26, and this can be found
23 by the Chamber at page 24 of the report, footnote 47 which lies within
24 paragraph 26.
25 Mr. de la Brosse, you deal under the need to create a national
Page 20731
1 consensus with what you describe as a pulling in or a contagion effect.
2 We'll look at a clip and then I'll ask for your comment on it. The clip
3 is clip 2. This is from November 1991.
4 [Videotape played]
5 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "This is rather unusual, a young
6 woman going to war, isn't it? What do you think?
7 "I don't think it is. We need to answer the call. I am a mother
8 of two small children.
9 "Where are you from?
10 "I am from Pirot.
11 "How old are you?
12 "Thirty-three.
13 "What made you decide to go?
14 "Well, when I watch television, I see what's going on and I want
15 to help, and it's worth sacrificing my life for this here Serbia of ours."
16 MR. NICE:
17 Q. We must bear in mind, Mr. de la Brosse, that propaganda will have
18 been used by, for example, parties to the recent Iraq war, and that will
19 have had pictures probably of soldiers going to war and so on. What do
20 you draw in particular from this extract of this young woman on
21 television?
22 A. This procedure was generally used within the context of the war,
23 and they were as a war going on with Croatia, and it is in addition an
24 example among other examples, as I've mentioned others, in which
25 everything is being done to mobilise the population -- the Serbian
Page 20732
1 population around the war objectives, in particular the objective of the
2 conscription. And to do so, they frequently used people who appear as
3 models. In this case, the young woman who is very far away from Vukovar,
4 in fact, and who decides to join up in the fight, in the fight for Serbia.
5 What one tries to do by using a model of this type is to make sure
6 that adherence of those people be presented as the general opinion and its
7 way of pulling people in or a contagious effect.
8 Q. Thank you very much. Let's then move to the next part of your
9 report. If the usher can find page 2. The pages are pages 26 to 30.
10 And in this part of your report, you deal with how the media was
11 set up as the propaganda linchpin, how a general rule of the propaganda
12 was or seemed to be that Yugoslavia committees should be pitted one
13 against the other but that how the media should be used as a fully-fledged
14 weapon. That's the way your report ran; correct?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. There's nothing further by way of particular example that we need
17 to draw on for that section, so that we can turn now to Part 2 of your
18 report, headed "Media in the service of war," the first part of which is
19 simply dealt with on page 32 and requires no amplification.
20 When we then go to the itemised sections on the index, "History
21 manipulated to nationalist ends," that occupies pages 33 to 56, and there
22 are one or two things that we're going to look at -- in fact, several
23 things that we're going to look at there. But before we look at examples,
24 and for those viewing or who haven't read the report, you break this into
25 several sections. First of all, the responsibility for propaganda of the
Page 20733
1 individuals, the accused's reliance on the media to consolidate his power,
2 propaganda showing that the Serb identity was under threat, propaganda
3 that you say shows that the accused exploited the Serbian mystique.
4 You then deal with media coverage of political masses with attacks
5 on the media, we've seen some of that already, and with television as the
6 system's linchpin.
7 Within that section then, if we go first to page 34, paragraph 39.
8 MR. NICE: Your Honours, this is not something that I'm going to
9 take you to now in detail, simply to alert you to the fact that the
10 memorandum of which we've heard by the Serbian Academy of Arts and
11 Sciences is I think now for the first time an exhibit before you. I don't
12 think it's been exhibited before. And you'll know that the witness deals
13 with that in his report. It's tab 28, if you wish to find it.
14 Q. If we go on from that to the section about the accused's reliance
15 on media to consolidate his power and to page 42 of the report, paragraph
16 45. And Mr. de la Brosse, I know I should be giving you paragraph numbers
17 because the French version is differently page numbered.
18 If the usher could perhaps be good enough to -- we'll take tab 4.
19 Do you have it? Thank you very much.
20 And we can see here and in a further extract from Borisav Jovic
21 something that's set out in part in your report, and it reads as follows:
22 "For years he, Milosevic, paid the biggest attention to the media,
23 especially television." I'm sorry. I've already read this. Let me go on
24 to the next paragraph.
25 "I wrote a series of three articles, the truth about Ante Markovic
Page 20734
1 and sent them to Slobodan. He instructed that they be published in
2 Politika. They will appear as instalments on the 5th, 6th, and 7th under
3 some pseudonym."
4 And then if we look at the next quoted passage, which is footnote
5 88, we see this: "The rule was never to stand in front of the TV cameras
6 where everybody could express their views but to publish a press release
7 which had personally been edited by Milosevic and which featured his views
8 as the subject of the talks without the views of the other party."
9 Your comment on those two passages, please.
10 A. This statement of Mr. Jovic shows that Slobodan Milosevic had
11 control over the subjects of the propaganda, that he would -- he was in
12 charge or he controlled the agenda that would appear in the media, whether
13 it was in Politika or on television. I think that's a very interesting
14 testimony as regards that aspect.
15 In addition, as regards the second example, it throws light on
16 what we're talking about, because Slobodan Milosevic understood that not
17 everything must be said in the media and that he wanted to control the
18 contents of what would appear or in the transcription of what he might
19 have said during meetings with political international leaders. And so
20 this is information about the meeting which he would direct -- which he
21 directed and not really reflect reality at question during the meetings.
22 Q. Thank you. If we go on to page 50 within this sector of your
23 report, and if the usher would look at page -- at the top of the page,
24 page 50, please. If you can put that on. And it's the passage which is
25 footnoted at -- footnote 108 but if you look at the main body of the
Page 20735
1 report at the top, you say this, talking about television as the linchpin,
2 saying it was "... the only source of information for over 90 per cent of
3 the Serbs," and you justify that.
4 "As such, by rewriting history and relying on snippets of truth -
5 through a selective memory which 'involves exonerating oneself from (one's
6 own) crime while stirring up memories of the crimes committed by
7 others...'" and that you attribute to Stanko Cerovic in an article
8 footnoted.
9 Now, tell us about that. What is the particular significance of
10 this approach to the use of propaganda?
11 A. Very often propaganda was used as a way of trying to compare
12 historical situations which were not the same. Crimes were committed
13 during the Second World War on both sides. The fact that one recalls only
14 the crimes committed by one of the parties in and of itself is a
15 propaganda exercise which one frequently sees. And very often, the
16 comparison is made, and now I'm relying on many examples that I give in
17 the report, between the attitude which is alleged to be that of the
18 Milosevic government and the pro-Nazi government of Croatia during the
19 Second World War. And that government is compared to that of Franjo
20 Tudjman who in some way is put forward as the historical continuation of
21 that fascist government from the Second World War. And so there is an
22 amalgamation which is made and which attempts to have people believe that
23 the situation that was at the end of the 1980s and 1990s would make them
24 think that the situation of the Serbs in Croatia was the same as it had
25 been during the Second World War. And in that way, a -- feelings of
Page 20736
1 hatred, of fear, rather, are -- are communicated to that population, and
2 that becomes part of the demonisation of that community.
3 Q. If the usher would be good enough to go to page 51 in the same
4 section, paragraph 54. This is really by way of, as it were, a
5 disclaimer, but we see that you open paragraph 54 with this assertion:
6 "Generally, before Serbia triggered the war..." You understand, of
7 course, that the question of who triggered the war, if it falls for
8 determination at all, is absolutely a matter for the Judges. Just please
9 explain how it came about that you wrote that sentence in your report,
10 although I make it plain, of course, that that is a judicial matter.
11 A. This is a question which can be controversial. In order to assist
12 myself when I was preparing this report and considering that the Security
13 Council of the United Nations under the UN charter is the organ that gives
14 priority attention to maintaining peace and international security for, I
15 considered that I could base myself on Security Council Resolutions, in
16 particular Resolution 757 of 30 May 1992, which speaks about the
17 responsibility of Serbia and Montenegro in the war.
18 Q. That's all I need to know so that the Judges can understand why
19 it's in the report.
20 Can we go over then, please, to page 52 and to footnote 114 where
21 you say in the text that the aim was to pit -- there was an aim of the
22 propaganda to pit the Serbian public against designated enemies.
23 And if we could now play, please, of tab 26, clip 3.
24 [Videotape played]
25 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "There is no need to talk about that,
Page 20737
1 and to those who think otherwise, I would say that I refuse to talk about
2 it because we need never try to find excuses for Serbia's determination
3 not to allow Serbs and Montenegrins to be killed in Kosovo again and why
4 we're unwilling to accept any discussion on establishing an Albanian state
5 on Serbian territory. To avoid any confusion, I hasten to add that anyone
6 seeking concessions along these lines would first have to depose the
7 ruling Serbian leadership. Recent events and, above all, grave conflicts
8 and acts of state terrorism in Croatia aggravated the Yugoslav political
9 crisis which already had a long history of ethnic strife and assumed
10 proportions of an armed conflict with elements of a civil war with
11 numerous casualties, columns of refugees, breakdowns in traffic and
12 supply. What we have now is a natural and legitimate self-defence
13 imminent in the historical dignity of any nation. All efforts directed at
14 qualifying it as banditism through loud, well-organised propaganda and
15 ballyhoo only reveal a counter-productive and non-effective concept
16 essentially chauvinistic and pro-fascist which stifles the national
17 interest and human dignity of a people fighting a just battle for equal
18 national and civil rights."
19 MR. NICE:
20 Q. The Chamber can find the whole of that speech transcribed at tab
21 36. We have seen in this clip of the accused coming from May of 1991 two
22 either disconnected or connected topics; Kosovo and Croatia.
23 Your comment on those clips, please, as potentially propaganda.
24 A. This is the kind of speech where the Kosovo Serbs and the Serbs of
25 Bosnia and Herzegovina are put -- are parallel with -- are put into
Page 20738
1 parallel with one another. The Serbian population of Croatia and Kosovo
2 are presented as victims, victims of their neighbours, and this is a very
3 Manichaean depiction of the Kosovo situation and closes the door to any
4 discussion or non-nationalist solution about that issue, that is the issue
5 of Kosovo. And in addition, the words used like "pro-fascist" about
6 Croatia, these have a historical connotation. I'm thinking of another
7 example of a historical amalgamation of comparing situations, in a way to
8 show that this is a continuation of the Second World War in Croatia that
9 is being seen. All of this is part of stigmatisation and generalisations
10 carried to extremes in respect of the risks that are looming over the
11 Croatian and Kosovo Serbs.
12 Q. Can we turn now to the next two clips which can be found
13 referenced on the following page of the report at page 53, and they are
14 respectively footnotes 116 and 117. These are examples of -- that were
15 said by the academic Dobrica Cosic.
16 [Videotape played]
17 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "Do you have your own private
18 thoughts on the boundaries of this Serbian state?
19 "The boundaries of the Serbian Autonomous Region will be ...
20 Well, I mean there's a historical link. Where Serbian blood was shed by
21 the Ustasha knives, that's where our boundaries will be.
22 "If the Croats really want to..."
23 MR. NICE:
24 Q. I'm sorry, I misidentified those as being Cosic. That comes
25 later. But can you tell us your comments on the first of those passages,
Page 20739
1 please.
2 A. This is a passage which gives two examples out of the four that I
3 mention in that part of the report. Here what we have are slogans that
4 are being used both to designate the enemy and to prepare the ground for
5 war. In the first except, one very clearly sees through the slogan that
6 is being used, that is, "Where Serb blood flowed, that's where Serbian
7 territory is." That's the propaganda nature of that way of speaking.
8 This is an example of one slogan among others. I could give you examples
9 of other slogans that were used on television and in the written press,
10 stating, for instance, that wherever there are Orthodox churches, that's
11 Serb land. Where there are Serb graves, that's also Serb land.
12 MR. NICE: Your Honour, that was in fact the previous page, page
13 52, and it was tab -- footnote 114. My error.
14 Q. We then go over the page to page 53 of the report and to footnote
15 116. If we can play clip 6.
16 [Videotape played]
17 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "One of the greatest sins of my
18 generation is this funeral which we are performing 50 years too late, the
19 funeral of Prebilovac martyrs. We committed this sin because we foolishly
20 believed that by forgetting the Ustasha crimes we were contributing to the
21 brotherhood of the Serbian and Croatian peoples."
22 MR. NICE:
23 Q. Thank you. That was in fact two clips, clips 6 and 7. It was
24 just -- or just clip 6. I'm sorry, just clip 6. It's the 22nd of August,
25 1991. It may help the Judges if from your reading you tell us, was this a
Page 20740
1 unique event, a reburial of earlier buried bodies or was it something that
2 happened from time to time?
3 A. This is a phenomenon which was repeated several times at the time
4 and frequently covered by the media. This has to do with the context
5 where the war was already begun. This is one example among others where
6 the crimes committed by the Croatian state and Croatia during the Second
7 World War are recalled. And when one noticed the umbilical cord, if I can
8 express it that way, that exists with the Croatian regime and which came
9 to power in 1990, and this is yet another historical amalgamation whose
10 purpose is, I believe, to feed the hatred against the entire Croatian
11 community which is in -- which is part of its stigmatisation.
12 JUDGE ROBINSON: When you say that it was repeated several times,
13 do you mean that it was repeated several times after the Second World War
14 or during the crisis at that time?
15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] During the crisis at the time. The
16 remains of Serb victims were excavated, victims of massacres that had been
17 committed by the Croats during the Second World War, and there were
18 funerals that took place years and years later of those -- for those
19 remains during ceremonies which were covered by the media. Have I
20 answered your question, Your Honour?
21 JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, but I am still interested to get some more
22 details as to precisely how often was this repeated? Do you have any more
23 precise information on that?
24 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, I don't.
25 MR. NICE:
Page 20741
1 Q. But apart from the surrounding events and the growth, if it be
2 found so to have been, of nationalism, was there any other particular
3 reason given triggering the digging up and reburial of these individuals
4 at this particular time, to your knowledge?
5 A. Without any question, in the media at the time the idea was put
6 forward that a genocide was threatening the Croatian Serbs, and I think
7 that the repetition of this type of ceremony was part of trying to spread
8 fear within the Croatians -- the Serbian Croatian Community -- Croatian
9 Serb community, excuse me. That is, to show that what happened in the
10 Second World War was about to happen again in Croatia.
11 JUDGE ROBINSON: Had it been done prior to 1991, you would not
12 have characterised it as propaganda or as illicit propaganda?
13 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No. Although as of the time that --
14 through this type of procedure one was trying to stigmatise a community,
15 to make generalisations about a judgement starting with the -- putting --
16 putting forward the image of what certain Croats during the Second World
17 War had done. When those facts are used to stigmatise an entire
18 community, that is the Croatian Community in 1990, I do think that falls
19 into unlawful propaganda.
20 MR. NICE:
21 Q. May we see, still on page 53, footnote 117, the next clip, which
22 is clip 7, please.
23 [Videotape played]
24 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "The genocide has begun and it
25 depends on the Serbs in Croatia and in Serbia and the international
Page 20742
1 factor, Europe and the world, whether their movement will reopen its
2 concentration camps and the pits used as collective tombs. But one thing
3 is for sure: Serbs will never again be led to the pits by just a couple
4 of Ustashas. Serbs have put up great resistance and the genocidal idea
5 will collapse along with the genocidal Croatian state."
6 MR. NICE:
7 Q. Now, this is something broadcast, we know, on the 25th of July
8 1991. The person speaking is Jovan Raskovic, a respected academic and
9 leader of the Croatian Serbs. What do you have to say about it as a piece
10 of television output at that time?
11 A. I think that one has to remember that Jovan Raskovic, in addition
12 to having been a university person among the Bosnian Serbs, he was also a
13 well-known psychiatrist. He was a -- he was a professor of Radovan
14 Karadzic's and the author of a theory according to which the Croatian
15 people has a genocidal character. I refer you to footnote 118. There,
16 once again, we see an example of an amalgamation -- of historical
17 amalgamation where a parallel is drawn between the genocide which took
18 place during the Second World War and that genocide where the genocide has
19 allegedly begun again. And through this excerpt one understands that this
20 is a -- pushing people toward anti-Croatian hatred but also to spread fear
21 among the Serbs living in Croatia and therefore to -- a call for them to
22 protect themselves, to band together.
23 Q. And Ms. Uertz-Retzlaff reminds me, Mr. de la Brosse, that this
24 perhaps fits - we needn't go back to it - to what you say at page 44,
25 paragraph 48 in your report about media coverage of political masses where
Page 20743
1 artistic, religious, and ritualistic ceremonies became frequently common
2 country-wide. Do you accept that there is that appropriate connection to
3 be drawn?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. The last clip of video for this section we're dealing with can be
6 found on page 56 of the report. It's footnote 126. If we could play,
7 please, clip 8 of tab 26.
8 [Videotape played]
9 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "Just when the neo-Ustashas are
10 getting ready for the decisive attack on Knin, an invisible hand has
11 started the mechanism in the very centre of Belgrade for the destruction
12 of Serbia. Since the time of Peter I to this day, we haven't been blessed
13 with such an extremely capable, honest, and courageous leader, Slobodan
14 Milosevic."
15 MR. NICE:
16 Q. This is part of a speech of March of 1991 by Mihajlo Markovic, who
17 was vice-president of the party. What do you say about that speech and
18 its being broadcast in that way?
19 A. I think that one has to recall the context. This video clip is
20 one of others having to do with facts that I allude to in the previous
21 pages. At issue here is a speech that was made during a counter
22 demonstration further to the demonstration organised on the 9th of March
23 of 1989 by the opposition in Belgrade.
24 In this case, what is interesting to note is that on television,
25 and one sees this in the print press as well, a parallel is drawn between
Page 20744
1 emblematic figures of Serbia's history. Particularly a reference is made
2 to Peter I. But one could also talk about Prince Lazar. Slobodan
3 Milosevic is presented here as the father of the nation, the Serbian
4 nation, and as the guarantor of its history.
5 This allows Mr. Markovic to denounce as bad Serbs or as traitors
6 those who opposed his policy.
7 Q. We come to the next section of your report. If the index is
8 immediately available, those viewing can see particularly between pages,
9 as it happens, 56 and 74, you deal with media at the heart of the Yugoslav
10 war. And in sections that explain how its use against the enemy was
11 justified, how the opponent was stigmatised, and how there was, as you
12 describe it, a conspiracy paranoia that developed.
13 If we look at within that general section first of all a couple of
14 clips which we pick up, indeed at clip -- well, first of all, page 59 of
15 the report, still in the section that is the general title, Media at the
16 Heart of the War, it's footnotes 131 first, or footnote 131 first, clip 9.
17 [Videotape played]
18 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "Ustashas raided a Serbian village
19 near Kukuruzari. They captured little Ilija and made his mother watch
20 them cut the boy's throat. Then they took his body away.
21 "It happened on his birthday?
22 "Yes, on August 2 this year. The boy's mother ran after them,
23 begging them to give her son's body. But they carried him away and later
24 burned his corpse. The skull was the only thing left. But she wouldn't
25 have even got his skull if it hadn't been for a woman who, although
Page 20745
1 Catholic, was humane and compassionate enough to show her place where her
2 son was buried. So she went there and found only this charred skull."
3 MR. NICE:
4 Q. Your comment on that clip and indeed if you feel you can on the
5 priest, Father Filaret, who is shown there speaking. This all happening
6 or being broadcast on the 22nd of September of 1991.
7 A. The example that we've just seen is one of the three that I base
8 myself on to emphasise the fact that television played on the emotional
9 side of the public by presenting individual tragedies through the
10 tragedies that some of the children lived or allegedly lived through in --
11 during that conflict and for which the spectator would have to have
12 sympathy and show compassion. Because when one shows the case of a child
13 who is the victim of crimes, there is a self-protective -- the
14 self-protective mechanism within the public is less operative. And so I
15 based myself on three examples here, and I include this one as one of
16 them.
17 I did not find any specific confirmation of that event. However,
18 the use that is made of it is what creates a problem, because once again
19 one clearly shows -- has here the resolve when that parallel is made
20 between the fate which allegedly was that of the boy and the one that the
21 Croatian Serbs were now living through allegedly, one really and clearly
22 tries or is trying to put across the message of hatred among the Croatians
23 -- among the Serbs against those who would have been responsible for that
24 murder. And so through this type of mechanism, the attempt is made to
25 provoke adherence to the cause either of the Serbs in Bosnia or the
Page 20746
1 Croatian Serbs.
2 Q. Thank you. If we can skip the next --
3 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, I'm going to ask whether we have another
4 case in this court this afternoon. If there is, we will have to come to a
5 halt.
6 Yes. There is another case at 2.15. Maybe it's convenient to
7 stop now. How much longer do you think you might be with this witness?
8 MR. NICE: I've got about another six clips and about another six
9 paper exhibits so I say not much more than half an hour. I'm sorry it's
10 taken as long as it has but it's a very substantial report.
11 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We will adjourn now. Nine o'clock tomorrow
12 morning.
13 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.46 p.m.,
14 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 20th day of May,
15 2003, at 9.00 a.m.
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