Page 728
1 Friday, 19 March 2010
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 9.23 a.m.
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Good morning to everybody. We apologise for the
6 delayed start of the hearing of today. We were informed that the witness
7 scheduled for today is not available due to medical reasons, he's ill,
8 but perhaps, Mr. Thayer, you have some more information.
9 MR. THAYER: I do, Mr. President. Good morning to you and
10 Your Honours. Good morning, General Tolimir, Mr. Gajic, good morning,
11 everyone.
12 The witness is very much under the weather. I met with him, and
13 he is absolutely unable to do, I think, anything other than lie down at
14 this point. I'm not sure what it is. It's flu or something, but he is
15 absolutely indisposed, so he is with the doctor right now being examined.
16 He's been sick since he got here, and it's only gotten worse
17 unfortunately. He was okay for about a day and then went off the edge.
18 So unfortunately we're not sure when he's going to be able to testify in
19 the future. We'll have to look at the schedule because Mr. Ruez is on
20 such a tight schedule because he's only available on certain days. We
21 have been trying to schedule our witnesses so nobody pushes him further
22 and further since he's coming from where he is currently working. I
23 suspect that this current witness will be back sometime in April. We'll
24 have to look at the schedule and advise all the parties. We would have
25 scheduled him for Monday if he were healthy, but we scheduled a witness
Page 729
1 who has flown here from overseas who has somebody with him as his support
2 person who loses work every day they're here. And they need to get on
3 the stand, we hope, in one day, get off, and then get back to their home
4 country. So we don't want to push that person further along either. So
5 that's the status at the moment in terms of the witnesses. We have
6 approximately two hours of video more that we can play today to continue
7 along with our video review. That's where matters stand unfortunately.
8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer, the Prosecution should be aware of
9 the time we have for all hearings. You should be prepared -- of course I
10 see we have a problem with only sitting two days a week at the moment and
11 that raises some problems for you by scheduling witnesses. But on the
12 other hand we should be in a position to have a reserve witness in a case
13 one witness can't appear for hearing and for examination. And we hope
14 very much that we will not have this situation too often.
15 MR. THAYER: Mr. President, I can tell the Court that we have
16 begun making preparations to have some of those, what we call, gap-filler
17 witnesses available for the future, namely, a couple of our investigators
18 who will be available to testify on short notice about certain discrete
19 areas that will take an hour here, half an hour there. We hope to be
20 able to insert them as the time comes. In fact, we had one ready to go
21 on Monday in case we ran out of time, and we'll cross that bridge when we
22 get to it. But we share the Trial Chamber's concern certainly on that
23 issue.
24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.
25 You are prepared to show us some videos. This will save some
Page 730
1 time with witnesses, future witnesses, therefore please carry on.
2 MR. THAYER: Thank you, Mr. President. I'll turn it over to
3 senior trial attorney McCloskey. And may I ask to be excused for the
4 rest of the proceedings.
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you, Mr. Thayer.
6 MR. THAYER: Thank you, Your Honour.
7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And welcome to you, Mr. McCloskey.
8 MR. McCLOSKEY: Mr. President, we're prepared to proceed where we
9 left off. You recall we were at what we call the first Hotel Fontana
10 meeting where they were -- General Mladic said he was calling them back
11 later that evening. And now we have the video of that next meeting he
12 was speaking of. And just so you know, this was material that we would
13 have always wanted to play for you, so this is not in any way some kind
14 of gap-filling material that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. So this
15 is -- this is always going to be court time, and we will always endeavour
16 to have this kind of material for you in this event. Thank you.
17 [Video-clip played]
18 MR. McCLOSKEY: Mr. President, if we could have a few minutes,
19 there's some technical difficulty.
20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Very well.
21 Mr. McCloskey.
22 MR. McCLOSKEY: Yes, there's been some kind of software glitch.
23 We have to get on another software to get this out, and we're not sure,
24 but if we could take a 15-minute break or maybe take the break now, I'm
25 fairly confident we can get this right.
Page 731
1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I think we will have a break of 20 minutes.
2 Adjourn now, and resume at quarter past 10.00.
3 --- Recess taken at 9.57 a.m.
4 --- On resuming at 10.20 a.m.
5 [Video-clip played]
6 JUDGE FLUGGE: Mr. McCloskey.
7 MR. McCLOSKEY: Yes, Mr. President, we have switched software
8 packages, this may be -- the quality may be degraded slightly.
9 Ms. Stewart ran this last night on -- did a dress rehearsal, and it
10 worked fine. But, of course, now we've switched software, the quality
11 may not be as good, but we're ready to go. We'll start now with video
12 from Srebrenica town in the morning of the next day, the 12th of July.
13 [Video-clip played]
14 I'm sorry. Apparently the new software has not been calibrated
15 correctly for the subtitling, and I apologise, Your Honours, for this.
16 And if we could have a little more time, I think it's important to see
17 this. Some of this you may not get to see again, though most of it
18 there'll be a witness, if there's something of significance, that will
19 explain who these are -- who the people are, but ...
20 We're going to go back to one of the old original tapes which had
21 the next Hotel Fontana meeting from the next morning of 12 July, and
22 we'll play that right now.
23 [Video-clip played]
24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. McCloskey.
25 MR. McCLOSKEY: We're planning on skipping this one part because
Page 732
1 we have an updated version that's subtitles, but that's the problem with
2 the subtitles. So we will skip ahead and go to another version. But it
3 will be self-explanatory where we are. Thank you.
4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
5 [Video-clip played]
6 MR. McCLOSKEY: Mr. President, that is all the video that we have
7 prepared. We will endeavour to fix the other subtitles and the other
8 issues so we'll have more should we get gap periods. But that's all we
9 can play for today.
10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much. I think that's all for
11 today. Hereto adjourn, and we will resume on Monday. Thank you.
12 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 11.44 a.m.
13 to be reconvened on Monday, the 22nd day of
14 March, 2010, at 9.00 a.m.
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