1 Tuesday, 21st September, 1999
2 [Open session]
3 --- Upon commencing at 2.08 p.m.
4 [The accused entered court]
5 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Good afternoon,
6 everybody. Mr. Registrar, will you please tell us
7 which case this is?
8 First, I should like to say good afternoon to
9 the interpreters. I hope they can hear me, all the
10 booths. Good afternoon. Also good afternoon to all
11 the parties present here and the accused.
12 Now I should also like to ask Mr. Nice to
13 take the floor and tell us now what it is that the
14 Judges have to hear from you regarding your case.
15 Thank you.
16 MR. NICE: We are in the closing stages of
17 the Prosecution case. There are two substantive
18 witnesses remaining: the witness who deals with the
19 interviews of the defendant, and the Witness John
20 Ralston who deals with a number of matters and who will
21 come at the end.
22 First, there's an argument on admissibility
23 that my learned friend, Mr. Greaves, wishes to raise in
24 relation to photographs. There are small bundles of
25 the proposed photographs available for you, and I hope
1 they've been provided -- oh, they're coming.
2 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation]
3 [No interpretation].
4 MR. NICE: As this is a matter of
5 admissibility, I should ask that the session be
6 temporarily private because, of course, if you rule the
7 documents inadmissible, it would be inappropriate for
8 the public to have heard about them.
9 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Thank you.
10 Yes, a private session. Yes. Right.
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14 [Open session]
15 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Very well.
16 Mr. Nice, please continue.
17 MR. NICE: The photographs can be agreed for
18 what they are, in light of the ruling, or they can be
19 produced by one witness who I am calling in any event,
20 and Mr. Basham, if that becomes necessary.
21 I'll return to those later, having discussed
22 the matter with Mr. Greaves.
23 We turn to the interviews. The interviews
24 have presented a difficulty as to how they should be
25 presented.
1 Before I come to that and explain what I'm
2 proposing, I should say that Mr. Basham, pursuant to
3 the Court's order, is in court as the officer or the
4 investigator dealing with the case, but he is one of
5 the two investigators who was present at the interviews
6 of the defendant, and it may be, if there's anything
7 contentious in the interviews, that it would be
8 appropriate for him to withdraw now, before the officer
9 who is going to give evidence of the interviews comes
10 in. On the other hand, if there's nothing contentious
11 known to my learned friend that's going to arise in the
12 cross-examination, I would ask that he be allowed to
13 stay, because he is the continuing investigator in the
14 case.
15 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Greaves.
16 MR. GREAVES: Although for no particular
17 reason, I think it would be better, just in case
18 anything should arise unexpectedly, that he should go
19 out in any event, rather than there being any specific
20 reason for it. One knows that sometimes things can
21 happen that are unexpected. It's really just a
22 safety-first issue really, I think, that I'm raising.
23 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Nice.
24 MR. NICE: I'm entirely in the Court's
25 hands.
1 [Trial Chamber confers]
2 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Basham
3 should go out.
4 [Counsel withdrew]
5 MR. NICE: The Court has been provided with
6 bundles of the interviews separated out as to the dates
7 of the individual interviews and, so far as the
8 President's copy of the interviews is concerned, marked
9 with green and blue tags. The only reason that Judge
10 Riad's and Judge Rodrigues' versions haven't been
11 similarly marked is simply want of time.
12 Those tags represent, in total, the pages
13 that the Prosecution and Defence, in combination -- I
14 trust you have one --
15 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I am very
16 sorry, Mr. Nice, but the Judges, who do not quite know
17 the programme, wish that they could have -- it was said
18 last week we were given these folders, but I believe
19 that we should try to find these documents for the
20 Judges, or perhaps we should adjourn for a couple of
21 minutes until the Judges are provided with this
22 folder. Mr. Nice, I think that would be better.
23 Yes, it is quite true that you provided a
24 very complete document, but we did not know that this
25 afternoon we would be dealing with this folder, so I
1 think we should adjourn.
2 I shall ask my secretary to look for these
3 documents, but perhaps it would be faster if I go
4 there. Excuse me for this short misunderstanding.
5 We shall make a very brief adjournment, and
6 as good pupils, we shall have with us all the aids, and
7 then we shall be able to proceed. Thank you very
8 much. So I shall go and look for that.
9 --- Recess taken at 2.35 p.m.
10 --- On resuming at 2.44 p.m.
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] The hearing is
12 resumed. Please be seated.
13 [The accused entered court]
14 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Right. We are
15 now ready because we now have all the documents with
16 us.
17 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I trust that you have
18 the version that has the green and blue stickers down
19 the side, and those reveal what it was originally the
20 intention of both parties collectively to have
21 presented to you in detail. Green represents a place
22 to start in the interview and blue represents a place
23 to stop.
24 I have added up, with the officer who's going
25 to deal with these interviews, how long it would take
1 to read all those passages out in English at a
2 reasonably slow speed, and my forecast is that it would
3 take longer than you like, considerably; probably five
4 hours, something like that.
5 What I propose, and I hope this is acceptable
6 to you, is to call the officer, to get him to give a
7 summary of the interviews that took place and the
8 setting in which they took place, to make some
9 summarising remarks about features of the interview and
10 then to get him to deal, first, in an entirely summary
11 way, with the very first interview, which has got no
12 stickers, blue or green, on it, to deal reasonably
13 extensively with the passages marked by the green and
14 blue stickers in the first interview of the 4th of
15 June, because that covers a lot of important matters
16 and will be of value to the Chamber, and it may be that
17 there will come a time when we will be able to review
18 whether the Chamber wishes the exercise of the reading
19 in detail to be continued and completed, or whether it
20 may be possible to deal with things in some other more
21 summary way.
22 Can I say that I've had a request from the
23 Defence that there may be private sessions for -- it's
24 not for me to say. They've asked that I should ask for
25 private sessions for certain passages of the evidence,
1 and there would be reasons for our seeking private
2 sessions for certain passages of the evidence.
3 Can I suggest, with that in mind, that we
4 don't lay the document on the ELMO, because all too
5 possibly the relevant names or facts that would be the
6 subject of an application to hold a private session
7 would be displayed to the public before anybody picked
8 on the point and had gone into private session? So can
9 I ask that they're simply dealt with by the officer
10 having the volume in front of him and read out by him?
11 If that seems to be an acceptable way to go
12 ahead, then I'd ask for the officer to be called in.
13 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] No objections?
14 Let us have the witness brought in, please.
15 [The witness entered court]
16 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Will you please
17 give us your full name, the date of your birth, your
18 current occupation, and then you will take the solemn
19 declaration, and I will say no more at this moment.
20 THE WITNESS: Your Honours, my full name is
21 Bernard Patrick O'Donnell. My date of birth is the
22 16th of September, 1962, and I am an investigator with
23 the Office of the Prosecutor with the International
24 Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
25 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Will you now
1 make the solemn declaration, please?
2 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will
3 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
4 truth.
5 WITNESS: BERNARD PATRICK O'DONNELL
6 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Thank you,
7 Mr. O'Donnell. You may be seated. You are called by
8 the Prosecution. Will you please sit down?
9 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honour.
10 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I do not need
11 to explain to you the procedure because you all know
12 it, and I will now give the floor to the Prosecution
13 and then to the Defence.
14 Mr. Nice?
15 Examined by Mr. Nice:
16 Q. Mr. O'Donnell, were you for some time the
17 investigator dealing with this case and effectively in
18 charge of it?
19 A. Yes, I was.
20 Q. Did you subsequently relinquish that
21 responsibility to Mr. Basham, you turning your
22 attention to other cases?
23 A. Yes, that's correct.
24 Q. However, in the role you held and, indeed,
25 later on, I think, when Mr. Basham had already arrived,
1 did you conduct some interviews with the defendant,
2 Goran Jelisic?
3 A. That's correct. Your Honours, we conducted a
4 series of interviews with Mr. Jelisic.
5 Q. Do you produce -- and I think it's already
6 been given a number -- a binder --
7 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Nice and
8 the witness, will you please slow down? I do not know
9 whether you will speak faster than this or not, but
10 will you please bear in mind that the interpreters have
11 also to do their work? Thank you.
12 MR. NICE: My apologies to the interpreters
13 for forgetting that we're speaking in the same language
14 and, therefore, fall foul of the temptation to go too
15 fast.
16 Q. The interviews, Mr. O'Donnell -- I can't
17 remember how many in all, but there were several of
18 them -- were conducted over what overall period of
19 time?
20 A. The first interview was conducted on the 25th
21 of February, 1998, there were in total nine interviews
22 conducted, and the last interview was conducted on the
23 24th of July, 1998.
24 Q. Where were they conducted?
25 A. They were conducted here at the ICTY.
1 Q. Before we turn to the detail or even the
2 summary of any of these interviews, can you help the
3 Chamber in relation to cooperation of the defendant?
4 First, is it the case that the Office of the
5 Prosecutor has said from time to time that it will
6 report on cooperation of the defendant to the Chamber?
7 A. Yes, that's correct. I would like to make a
8 couple of points on cooperation.
9 Firstly, Mr. Jelisic took part in a total of
10 nine formal interviews. He voluntarily took part in
11 those interviews, some of which were quite lengthy. In
12 total, approximately 25 to 30 hours of interviews were
13 recorded on videotape.
14 During the interviews, he gave information
15 about crimes and admitted to the crimes -- to the
16 individual murders, and he also gave information about
17 other matters. To that extent, he cooperated. I
18 cannot say, though, that he fully cooperated. He was
19 very definite about the matters that he would talk
20 about and when. It was, at times, difficult to get
21 specific information from him, and he often became
22 agitated when asked for further information or where
23 inconsistencies were highlighted.
24 Whilst Mr. Jelisic gave us information about
25 the crimes, he presented us with what I believe is a
1 very sanitised version of events, very different to
2 information that was given to us by witnesses and
3 inconsistent in itself. A lot of what Mr. Jelisic told
4 us is not believable. I believe that Mr. Jelisic used
5 the interviews as an opportunity to present his actions
6 in the best possible light.
7 Q. At the time -- I'm sorry. We'll leave a
8 break, which we must do, between question and answer.
9 At the time of these interviews, had witness
10 statements been served on the Defence?
11 A. Yes, they had. A number of witness
12 statements had been given to the Defence.
13 Q. Did the defendant agree, at any stage, to be
14 interviewed about the charge of genocide?
15 A. He did agree that there would be interviews
16 on genocide, but the agreement was that we would cover
17 the individual murders first and then move on to
18 discussion on the crime of genocide. And at that
19 point, we intended to put to him a number of
20 inconsistencies in his story, along with
21 inconsistencies between the story that he gave us and
22 that told to us by witnesses. However, before we could
23 do that, I was advised by Mr. Jelisic that he would no
24 longer take part in the interviews.
25 Q. Finally, on the topic of information provided
1 by him touching on other people, without any names
2 being given, what value, if any, was that information
3 provided by him?
4 A. Mr. Jelisic gave us other information apart
5 from information relating just to his crimes. The
6 information that he gave is of limited use, firstly
7 because it is not information, in the most part, which
8 was new to us, and, secondly, because of the number of
9 inconsistencies in his testimony.
10 Q. On inconsistencies, because the Chamber may
11 not go through the totality of the interviews through
12 you, as a witness, what particular topics were there in
13 respect of which he gave differing accounts?
14 A. There are a number of broad areas that there
15 are inconsistencies in his version of events.
16 Mr. Jelisic claimed that he was forced to
17 commit the murders that he did and that he killed
18 people, fearing that if he did not, then he himself
19 would be killed. He claimed that he stayed in Brcko
20 because he was told to, and again he feared that if he
21 disobeyed orders, he would have been killed. He
22 claimed that he only killed people that he was told to
23 and that he never killed anyone of his own free will.
24 In fact, he said that where he had the opportunity of
25 not killing someone, then he didn't kill them, and he
1 saw that as a personal triumph.
2 There are a number of inconsistencies in his
3 claims on those points, and I believe that his claims
4 are not true.
5 Q. In a sense, your belief on the matter is not
6 to the point; it's just identifying the different
7 stories.
8 A. My apologies.
9 Q. That's all right.
10 A. There are a number of inconsistencies on
11 those points.
12 Q. Did he also give an account of the reasons
13 for leaving Brcko, and was that one that was always the
14 same or not?
15 A. There are differences in his version of
16 events and, again, inconsistencies in his claim that he
17 had to stay in Brcko. Would you like me to go on
18 with --
19 Q. No, I think that's enough, by way of a
20 headline, for the Chamber, and we'll now move, please,
21 to the interviews themselves.
22 The first one was on the 25th/26th of
23 February. On this occasion, you were accompanied by
24 whom as interviewer?
25 A. The interview on the 25th of February was
1 with myself and Investigator Martina Fietz.
2 MR. NICE: Those names can be found on page 1
3 of this interview, and we do not propose to lead
4 matters in detail from this interview.
5 Q. Can you, Mr. O'Donnell, summarise, and really
6 summarise quite shortly, what was covered in this
7 interview, should the Chamber want to look at it in
8 detail at a later stage or at any stage?
9 A. The interview on the 25th of February, along
10 with the interview on the 26th of February, covered the
11 background of Mr. Jelisic -- his childhood, his
12 upbringing and his education -- in great detail.
13 Q. Did he give any explanation for how he came
14 to be involved in the things alleged against him?
15 A. Mr. Jelisic told of the illness suffered by
16 his mother when he was very young, the limited time
17 that he spent with his father, the death of his
18 grandmother, and sickness in his childhood which he
19 said initially led to him being not a good student.
20 Later, in early high school, he said he
21 associated with, as he put it, bad friends -- smoking,
22 and he started drinking alcohol.
23 Later, he was married and separated from his
24 wife, a point he said caused him a lot of sadness, and
25 he said that he began to spend enormous amounts of
1 money in different bars, ordering sad songs because of
2 the woman who left him, and this led him to become
3 involved in criminal activity, being fraud.
4 Q. Just a matter of detail for the Chamber to
5 have in mind. At the time of or shortly before these
6 events, had he, as is revealed in the interviews, been
7 before the courts locally?
8 A. Yes, he had.
9 Q. Was a prison sentence imposed or not?
10 A. A prison sentence was imposed. He appealed
11 that sentence, and the sentence was later confirmed.
12 Q. He makes reference to that in the course of
13 the interviews?
14 A. Yes, he does.
15 Q. Can we turn to the interview of the 4th of
16 June?
17 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I'm going to deal
18 with some of this in detail, and I hope that the speed
19 I am speaking at is acceptable to the interpreters. If
20 not, I'm sure I will be corrected.
21 One way of dealing with interviews of this
22 sort, to assist the Tribunal and to make them a little
23 less difficult to consume, is for me to read the
24 answers of the defendant, for the officer to read the
25 questions of the interrogators; and provided we do that
1 at a sensible speed, it's not then necessary for us
2 regularly to say, "Did he say this?" and "Did you say
3 that?" So if that course is acceptable to the
4 Tribunal.
5 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Well, yes, of
6 course it is agreeable. But you really deem it
7 necessary to read the whole interview?
8 MR. NICE: As I've indicated, although in
9 this first interview I will read quite a lot of the
10 marked passages indicated by the green and blue
11 markers, I think by the second interview and certainly
12 by the later interviews, it will be necessary to read
13 or to take you to other smaller portions. But the
14 first interview, I think, does contain a lot of
15 material that will be of assistance.
16 Q. So if we turn to the interview of the 4th of
17 June, Mr. O'Donnell, page 1 shows the people present,
18 and between pages 1 to 4, the detailed preparations for
19 the interview and the careful establishment of consent
20 and so on is gone through; is that correct?
21 A. Yes, that's correct.
22 Q. At page 5, and I trust that -- just give me
23 one minute.
24 [Prosecution counsel confer]
25 MR. NICE: Yes. I understand that the booths
1 all have copies.
2 I'm so sorry.
3 [Trial Chamber confers]
4 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes.
5 Mr. Registrar, are you paying attention? For
6 the record, you have to mention the pages and also the
7 counts. And the document, is it also mentioned?
8 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Yes. It was
9 distributed already.
10 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Did you write
11 numbers from 1 to 17, and each one of them corresponds
12 to one of the fragments?
13 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Yes. So it
14 is 66, this is Exhibit 66, and it goes from 1 to 17.
15 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes. Go on.
16 Please proceed.
17 THE REGISTRAR: Now, excuse me. No, it goes
18 from 1 to 14. Sorry.
19 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I discover that a
20 small technical problem has developed, in that the
21 versions of the interviews provided to the
22 interpreters' booths on Friday may have been mislaid.
23 Ms. Reynders, our ever-helpful case manager,
24 is going to see what happened to them, because they
25 were provided last week. But if it's acceptable to the
1 booths, I'll carry on speaking at this sort of speed
2 until they are found.
3 THE INTERPRETER: The English booth has its
4 copy.
5 MR. NICE: Thank you very much.
6 Q. Page 5 then, please, and if you would like to
7 pick it up with the first question by you.
8 A. On line 4; is that correct?
9 Q. Yes.
10 [As read]
11 A. I said, "Let's start with your arrival in
12 Brcko. Can you tell me when you arrived in Brcko,
13 please?"
14 Q. "I arrived in Brcko on the last day of April
15 '92, so I don't know it was 30th of April or 31st of
16 April. I don't know how many days April has, but the
17 last day of April."
18 A. "Why did you go to Brcko?"
19 Q. "I was brought to Brcko. Now I don't know how
20 to explain this. First we were gathered by TO members,
21 TO members of the Bijeljina TO. We were gathered in
22 front of the TO building in Bijeljina. You can ask
23 questions."
24 A. "Okay. Can you give me some background to
25 how that came about, how you came to go to Brcko with
1 the TO, please?"
2 Q. "On that day, around noon, we were at a
3 funeral in the village of Brodac near Bijeljina. It
4 was the funeral of Alexander Sasapopovic, who had
5 committed suicide by shooting himself from a handgun.
6 At the funeral were present some young men, a group of
7 young men that I knew from Bijeljina. Out of that
8 group, a young man whom I knew called me and said that
9 Major Blogoje Gavrilovic was there, Major, and that he
10 had something to offer, some kind of deal. When I
11 approached the group, when I approached the group,
12 Gavrilovic told me to be in front of the TO building at
13 4.00 p.m. in civilian clothes and to have my uniform in
14 a plastic bag. Already there I learned that there was
15 a plan that they were not -- that they were going to go
16 to Brcko and that there were not many Serbs in Brcko,
17 and that's why a group from Bijeljina had to go there.
18 Sometime before 4.00, I arrived in front of the TO
19 building in Bijeljina, where there were roughly 25
20 young men that I knew from before, most of them. We
21 were told that we would be transported in civilian
22 vehicles to the sugar-processing plant in Obaska near
23 Bijeljina. In the administration building of this
24 factory, of this plant, there was a reconnaissance unit
25 stationed whose commander was precisely this Major
1 Gavrilovic. We arrived in two four-wheel drives,
2 Russian, Lada Niva, and there was one ordinary Lada and
3 one ordinary Zastava 101 car. These two vehicles, Lada
4 Niva were property of the TO in the Bijelina TO. When
5 we gathered at the sugar processing plant, there were
6 more soldiers in camouflaged uniforms. We were then
7 told why we were going to Brcko, what we would do there
8 and what the definitive object of our going there was.
9 We were then told briefly that on the 1st of May, in
10 the morning, the bridge would be blown up and that
11 after that the war would start and that we would be
12 given further instructions in the Serbian Orthodox
13 Church in Brcko where Crisis Staff of Brcko would meet
14 us; of the municipality of Brcko would meet us. I
15 don't exactly know what time it was when we set off,
16 but I believe that we arrived roughly around 8.00 to
17 the -- in the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is the
18 Srpska Varos Serbian part of Brcko. When we arrived in
19 front of the church, the entrance, we saw there roughly
20 70 men in uniform. Ninety, sorry, mistake seventy
21 armed men about 90 per cent of them were in civilian
22 clothes."
23 MR. NICE: Can we go into private session for
24 what follows, please?
25 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, we are in private
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9 [Open session]
10 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] But to avoid
11 this coming and going from and into private sessions, I
12 should -- because we all have the text in front of us,
13 and when you say -- instead of saying "family
14 so-and-so," perhaps you could say "family X" or "family
15 Y," because it is simpler perhaps than constantly
16 switching in and out of private sessions. If you have
17 a whole passage which concerns a particular family,
18 then we shall go into private session. I'm simply
19 trying to simplify matters as much as possible.
20 MR. NICE: I'm very grateful. I will pursue
21 that course and probably miss out nearly all names on
22 one side or the other, and that will save time, I
23 think, as well. I pick it up at the top of page 8.
24 Q. "There were several lists because there were
25 several formations. Already people had arrived from
1 Serbia and what I had heard is that many people who had
2 been on this list had already been killed a day or two
3 before the war had started at night in their homes."
4 A. "Okay. You said that the people on the list
5 were, as they were referred to 'Ustasha,' and others
6 had put up people in the town, were there any other
7 people on the lists?"
8 Q. "People who financed and people who procured
9 weapons for them. People who knew in advance what was
10 going to happen."
11 A. "Were there any others mentioned such as
12 politicians, academics, business figures?"
13 Q. "Yes, I was given a list myself; and yes
14 these were prominent people, that's the only way to
15 describe them."
16 A. "How many people were on the list that you
17 were given?"
18 Q. "Twenty to twenty-three, twenty-five
19 maximum."
20 A. "Were they all men or were they men and
21 women?"
22 Q. "On the list there were only men. On my list
23 there were only men."
24 A. "Who gave you that list?"
25 Q. "Yes, we'll go on to that question. That
1 night when we arrived I was not then given a list, we
2 were just shown a list and they were then mentioning
3 certain families that were considered to be the most
4 extremist. We were told about the Ljuca family. For
5 instance here, who's a witness for the prosecution ..."
6 I'll leave a [blank]. If this is acceptable, if I use
7 the word "[blank]" whenever I miss a name out, it may
8 be easier to follow because if we start --
9 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes. Just do
10 not mention the surname. Just do not mention names, if
11 you can avoid that. Of course, if there is a dispute,
12 if it is a matter for contention, then we shall go into
13 private session.
14 MR. NICE:
15 Q. "For instance here, who's a witness for the
16 Prosecution, [blank], who was supposed to be killed.
17 Families Ramic --"
18 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Very good.
19 Fine. Thank you.
20 MR. NICE:
21 Q. "-- and Bukvic, these were the most wanted
22 families as far as I remember."
23 A. "Can you go on to the next morning and what
24 happened then, please?"
25 Q. "We were woken up by the head of the
1 household and we had coffee and plum brandy. Before
2 half past four and five o'clock, we heard the first
3 large explosion, and then five, ten minutes later,
4 another one. So then the head of the household told us
5 that the first bridge that had been blown up was the
6 bridge in the centre of Brcko which was connecting
7 Brcko to Republic of Croatia, in fact, to the place
8 called Gunja, and that the second explosion was at the
9 railway bridge which was also connecting Brcko to
10 Republic of Croatia, and we learned which formations
11 had carried out the mining of the bridge."
12 A. "Which formations were responsible for
13 that?"
14 Q. "The Red Berets."
15 MR. NICE: I pause to offer to the Court and
16 perhaps to the Defence cutting out that long answer
17 from being read and to move straight on to the next
18 question. Unless anybody wants the detail, it doesn't
19 touch precisely on our topic.
20 Q. Can you read the next question, please,
21 putting a "blank" in for the name?
22 A. "Did you see [blank] in Brcko?"
23 Q. "No. I heard which were the places where he
24 had gone to and who he met."
25 A. "Okay. You mentioned that you took with you
1 from Bijelina a uniform. What uniform did you have?"
2 Q. "Some people had ordinary olive grey and some
3 people had camouflage but the reason is so that we
4 would not be noticed, and when we arrived that's why
5 our uniforms were in bags."
6 A. "What uniform did you have?"
7 Q. "I had a camouflage. I had been given a
8 camouflage uniform at the sugar processing plant."
9 A. "You did not have a uniform before you
10 arrived there; is that correct?"
11 Q. "No."
12 A. "Okay. Were you issued with a weapon at that
13 time?"
14 Q. "Now, I had a rifle from the Bijelina war and
15 that I had received from [blank] who was the president
16 of the Ledince local commune crisis staff. Now, at the
17 same time, this is related to [blank], he was at three
18 posts at the same time," and he then sets out the
19 posts. He sets out the office of the same person at
20 line 24. Line 26.
21 A. "Okay. Was that the only weapon that you had
22 with you on the first day of May 1992?"
23 Q. "Yes."
24 A. "Okay."
25 Q. "But at the sugar processing plant, they gave
1 us extra ammunition and they gave us a bag with four
2 extra ammunition sets for the automatic rifle. I had
3 forgotten to say of course we were also given two hand
4 grenades each to those who hadn't had them. Most
5 people had something already, had either a hand grenade
6 or handgun."
7 A. "Okay. Did you have a handgun?"
8 Q. "No."
9 A. "Okay. Were you given specific orders or
10 instructions as to what you were to do on the first day
11 of May 1992?"
12 Q. "I was given specific instructions about the
13 3rd or 4th of May. I was at a checkpoint, that's what
14 it was called, at the entrance to Srpska Varos on the
15 railway, together with [blank] and an older man from
16 Brcko. I think he'd been a teacher or something."
17 A. "What were you to do there?"
18 Q. "If we were told that if something arrived
19 that was looking suspicious, a vehicle, that we should
20 stop them, check the ID and search the car, nothing
21 extra."
22 A. "Okay."
23 Q. "On the 3rd or 4th of May, [blank] shot
24 himself in the leg from the rifle and he was taken to
25 the hospital, and the person who came for me to the
1 checkpoint was [blank], presumably I think that's his
2 name, [blank], being a nickname who was the chief of
3 police in Bijelina. He put me in his official vehicle
4 and took me to the police station in Brcko. He said he
5 had a special task for me and that I mustn't fool
6 around much and that I would be given direct
7 instructions at the police station which had been
8 liberated."
9 A. "Okay. What happened then?"
10 Q. "I was brought to Brcko. I was taken to
11 [blank]. There were some policemen there, some in
12 uniforms, some in civilian clothes. They were
13 inspectors of what, I don't know. I didn't know them
14 then. I was then given a policeman's uniform, a
15 scorpion handgun with a silencer, and I was given a
16 Motorola. I was then given the nickname of Adolf by
17 that very same chief and that I'm supposed to use that
18 name, codename, for the Motorola. There was a group of
19 young men from Bor who were all in black uniforms.
20 There were those with the Red Berets and then there
21 were these people from Serbian Volunteers Guard who had
22 the Tigers insignia. Then there was the Bijelina
23 police. Bijelina police were stationed at the Galeb
24 Hotel, and it was on the 6th or 7th of May that the
25 first murder happened."
1 A. "Okay. The meeting where you were taken to
2 see [blank] was on the 3rd or 4th of May; is that
3 correct?"
4 Q. "Yes. I'm not quite sure. A lot of time has
5 passed."
6 A. "Do you remember what day of the week it
7 was?"
8 Q. "No, I don't remember."
9 A. "Was that the first time that you were given
10 the name Adolf?"
11 Q. "Yes."
12 A. "What did he say to you at the time you were
13 given that name?"
14 Q. "That that would be my code, that I was to
15 use it for the Motorola."
16 A. "Was that the first time that you used that
17 nickname?"
18 Q. "I don't understand the question."
19 A. "Did you use the nickname Adolf at any time
20 before the 3rd or 4th of May, 1992?"
21 Q. "No."
22 A. "Who suggested the name Adolf?"
23 Q. "This man [blank] from Bijelina who gave me
24 the Scorpio, who gave me the silencer, who gave me the
25 Motorola."
1 A. "Do you know why he chose the name Adolf?"
2 Q. "I have no idea," and I don't propose to read
3 the remainder of that answer unless it's wanted that I
4 should do so. Mr. O'Donnell, if you could go to line
5 15 passage.
6 A. "Were there other people with you at the time
7 that you were given your uniform and pistol and the
8 name?"
9 Q. "Yes, it was a full station."
10 A. "Do you know any of the other names that were
11 given to people?"
12 Q. "Then? At that time?"
13 A. "Yes, with you."
14 Q. "No. I knew [blank]. I knew that other guy
15 was [blank].
16 A. "But were they given their names at the same
17 time as you or did they already have those names?"
18 Q. "It must have been before. It wasn't then
19 because when I arrived they had already been calling
20 each other over Motorolas with their codes."
21 A. "Was anything else said about the name Adolf
22 when it was given to you?"
23 Q. "No. I can't think of what could have been
24 said, just to report on that name and that the Motorola
25 at the station had to be on all the time."
1 A. "Did they tell you that the name had any
2 significance?"
3 Q. "Just the code, just the code to answer."
4 A. "Was there any reference made to Hitler or
5 anyone else?"
6 Q. "No. No. It was only later when people
7 heard how they were calling me that everyone --
8 everybody started making jokes," and the interpreter
9 interrupted and said, "So he said, 'I just needed a
10 little moustache and that would be perfect.'"
11 A. "What position did you hold with the Brcko
12 police?"
13 Q. "No position. No position. I had no
14 position. I have completed eight grades of primary
15 school. Even in the army when I served my military
16 service, I did not have a rank, so. Of course, later
17 on I was given the description of being the murderer
18 for the SUP, for the police station."
19 A. "Can you describe the uniform that you were
20 given?"
21 Q. "It's a shirt, pale blue shirt that was the
22 uniform of the former Yugoslav police," and I think we
23 can turn on over the page, unless more detail is
24 wanted.
25 In summary, he deals with his uniform,
1 Mr. O'Donnell, with his knowledge of ranks, and matters
2 of that sort, and at the top of page 16, did he deal
3 with the fact that he was provided also with a baton
4 and with handcuffs?
5 A. That's correct.
6 Q. He deals with the size of the scorpion
7 pistol, but we have photographs of it and of the
8 silencer, but he deals with that all in detail. If we
9 go over to page 17, line 1, please.
10 A. "Okay. Please take your time and tell me
11 whatever details you can as we go through. Firstly,
12 Counts 6 and 7, it is alleged that on or about the 6th
13 or 7th of May, 1992, you escorted an unknown male down
14 the street near the Brcko police station where you shot
15 him in the head with a scorpion pistol and killed him.
16 What can you tell me about that matter?"
17 Q. "I was told to go to have my baptism of
18 fire. Blank, (redacted)
19 (redacted)
20 (redacted)
21 (redacted)
22 (redacted)
23 (redacted)
24 (redacted)
25 (redacted)
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 (redacted)
8 [Trial Chamber confers]
9 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] If we proceed
10 in the same way and say, "[blank], [blank]",
11 Mr. Londrovic, I think that would make it the same.
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes, but I seem
17 to remember that the indictment was read publicly, if
18 you recall. When Mr. Jelisic has had his initial
19 appearance, it was read out. It's public. So I think
20 that we should just take the precaution of putting in
21 as many blanks, that is to say, wherever names occur,
22 that that is sufficient.
23 Please continue, Mr. Nice.
24 MR. NICE: Yes, indeed. Your Honour, I hope
25 that the speed that I'm going is neither too fast nor
1 too slow. If the interpreters know that they have
2 found their documents --
3 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I think it's
4 rather fast than slow, if you want, because you are
5 proceeding a little quickly perhaps. So try and slow
6 down just a little bit, if you would. We're going to
7 try and get this 4th of June interview done with, and
8 we'll then have a pause. So we're going to try and
9 take into account, as much as possible, the comments
10 and remarks made by Mr. Londrovic regarding the
11 accused's family. So with these reservations, I should
12 like to ask you to continue, Mr. Nice.
13 MR. NICE: Thank you.
14 Q. Line 11:
15 "[Blank] and myself, he had been leader of
16 [blank], who had all been in black uniforms. We went
17 down in front of the building and we met these two
18 reporters or two photographers. We had been told by
19 [blank] first that we would go and execute two
20 civilians and that after that we were supposed to be
21 photographed with a coffin in front of the police
22 station, that we could then pretend that we were
23 mourning this Serb,"
24 in inverted commas,
25 "who had just been killed by Muslims. But
1 the coffin was empty. There was nothing written on the
2 cross. There were some wreathes. This was all a
3 propaganda. It was all a setup.
4 "From the infamous cell number 13, [blank]
5 took out two prisoners from the police station.
6 Whoever came to be in that cell number 13 had no chance
7 whatsoever of surviving. These people had been on
8 lists, and they had been tried and sentenced in
9 advance. We took away these civilians towards the
10 market centre down the street. I shot at one and
11 [blank] shot at the other. I shot from the Scorpion
12 pistol, and [blank] shot from his automatic rifle.
13 "The only thing I can't remember is which
14 uniform [blank] was wearing, but I think it might have
15 well been also police uniform, but they must be on
16 photographs. And these two photographers, [blank] and
17 [blank], were standing at the side, and they were
18 taking pictures as we were in different stages of us
19 killing these two people.
20 "When we finished that, we returned to the
21 SUP building, and just opposite the SUP is a small park
22 and there's a -- it's a small park just opposite.
23 People from SUP had already organised the coffin, the
24 wreathes and everything, but now we took a young woman
25 called [blank] and we were -- we were -- this was all
1 pretence. She was pretending. She was screaming
2 in mourning for whoever had been killed and whoever --
3 and who was then in the coffin, so she was pretending
4 to cry and so were we."
5 A. "Okay. I'll ask you a few questions about the
6 shooting.
7 "You said that you met with [blank], and
8 before the shooting he told you that you would have
9 your, as you put it, baptism by fire?"
10 Q. "No, [blank] had said that I would have my
11 baptism by fire, but [blank] had said that a lot of
12 things had been screwed up in Brcko, and that things
13 needed to be cleared up, and that we needed extra
14 propaganda to show what was happening."
15 A. "When was the first time that you were told
16 that those two people were going to be killed?"
17 Q. Repeated the question following an
18 interjection by the interpreter, and at line 22, the
19 defendant said:
20 "[Blank] said that I would be going to my
21 baptism by fire and that two people would be executed,
22 and [blank] said -- said, 'Then give the reasons why.'
23 And they thought that these two photographers, because
24 they were Serbs, that they would be working for the
25 Serbian cause. Of course, they had no idea that these
1 photographs would end up with The Hague Tribunal."
2 A. "Was there anyone else in the room when the
3 discussion took place about the executions?"
4 Q. "Yes."
5 A. "Who else was in the room?"
6 Q. "I don't -- I really don't know the names,
7 but there must have been between 20 and 30 civilians.
8 Among them was Amir Novalic, also known as Fric. I
9 know, it's indictment, I know that he was called Fric."
10 A. "Sorry. What I'm asking you is when there
11 was a discussion about the executions and [blank] was
12 talking about the propaganda that was needed, were
13 there other people in that room?"
14 Q. "[Blank] and myself. We were called upstairs
15 to be given instructions, [blank] and myself."
16 A. "You went downstairs to cell number 13 after
17 that; is that correct?"
18 Q. I think we can probably now move straight on
19 by summarising the next page or so. He deals with
20 matters then, in answer to your questions, in some
21 details, I think, Mr. O'Donnell.
22 A. That's correct.
23 Q. He sets out the history of how he took these
24 two men and how they shot both of them, something that,
25 as you know, is covered by some photographs that are
1 going to be produced in evidence in this court?
2 A. That is correct, Your Honours.
3 Q. At page 21, line 10?
4 A. "How many shots did you fire at the person
5 that you killed?"
6 Q. "I have no idea. Maybe two or three
7 bullets. I don't want you to misunderstand me. I
8 really, really don't remember these things. It's been
9 a long time."
10 A. "I understand that a lot of questions that I
11 ask you, you may -- you might have trouble recalling
12 details. If that's the case, please tell me."
13 Q. I think there's some then further matters of
14 detail. If we go to page 22, you repeat substantially
15 the account that he's been giving already; is that
16 correct?
17 A. Yes, that's correct.
18 Q. 23 again fills out that account, and we can
19 come to page 24.
20 Having been asked about the body, did he, at
21 the top of page 24, say this:
22 "There were more bodies later on that
23 accumulated there. I know, because I had been walking
24 around town, and later on a small lorry came and piled
25 up all these bodies, and I think they took them in the
1 direction of Bijeljina, where the pit was. I don't
2 think it was the Serbs who loaded these bodies onto the
3 small lorry. It may have been Muslims, because there
4 was a Muslim in front of police station who were
5 cleaning the windows, especially cleaning the glass
6 from the windows. That's the windows that had
7 shattered during the explosions"?
8 A. Yes, that is correct. I then went on to
9 say:
10 "Did you then leave the bodies where they
11 fell or did you take them somewhere?"
12 Q. "We didn't carry them. I've never touched a
13 corpse, a body."
14 A. "Why did you shoot that man?"
15 Q. "As I was told to."
16 A. "Do you believe that you had any
17 justification for killing him?"
18 Q. "It's up to you to decide. I -- it's whether
19 I had to, whether I was justified, whether I was told
20 to. I don't know. I'm just telling you the way it
21 was."
22 A. "What do you believe would have happened if
23 you did not kill him?"
24 Q. "I probably would be given a treatment by
25 [blank]. I had had a taste of it before the war, and
1 it probably would have been treatment in terms of
2 possibly intimidation, some physical violence applied
3 or something. But I am talking about [blank]. They
4 knew very well about my sentence, three-and-a-half-year
5 sentence, and they often put it out to threaten me."
6 A. "Do you believe that you would have suffered
7 some type of physical violence if you did not carry out
8 the order?"
9 Q. "Yes. I believe that I would have suffered
10 some kind of punishment."
11 A. "Was that mentioned to you at any time?"
12 Q. "When?"
13 A. "At the time of being told to do this
14 killing."
15 Q. "After several murders that I committed,
16 several crimes that I have committed, I have been given
17 a kind of treatment by the intervention platoon, and
18 the second time I -- when they wanted me -- to force me
19 to do things, then I had -- and I shot, I fired from
20 the same Scorpion into both my legs."
21 A. "Were there any threats made to you before
22 doing this killing?"
23 Q. "If I had protested, there would have been
24 threats. But because I did not protest, there were no
25 threats."
1 A. "And you think those threats would have taken
2 the form of some sort of assault; is that right?"
3 Q. "Perhaps beaten me up, locked me up, or
4 returned me to Bijeljina to prison."
5 A. "Okay. Could you have left Brcko?"
6 Q. "When the last time when they were -- when
7 I -- just before I had to fire into my legs when the
8 federal SUP came to take me back to Brcko, that's
9 when -- that's the special unit from the Yugoslav SUP,
10 from the Federal Secretariat to the Interior of the
11 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and leadership ...",
12 and then a name.
13 A. "Prior to the meeting with [blank] and
14 [blank], just before this killing, were you told at any
15 time that you would have to kill people?"
16 Q. "No."
17 A. "Could you have left Brcko on the 6th or 7th
18 of May?"
19 Q. "Well, there was not -- not really many
20 checkpoints or anything. I suppose I could have
21 been -- I could have just left, but I'm sure I would
22 have been returned, just like I was returned from --"
23 an unclear word.
24 "There are non-Serbs that were in SUP and
25 that were going to be executed by me, and I took these
1 people who will come and testify for me that I took to
2 another location and were not killed. You probably
3 will have the opportunity to speak with these people."
4 A. "Okay."
5 Q. Did you then show the defendant photographs
6 from the Washington Post, part of a sequence of
7 photographs that are going to be shown as an exhibit in
8 this case?
9 A. Yes, I did.
10 Q. Does he identify himself as being the man in
11 the photograph, killing, by shooting, the victim seen
12 there?
13 A. Yes, he did.
14 Q. He identifies the place -- we've had it in
15 evidence -- and there was a break in the interview at
16 the top of page 27?
17 A. That is correct.
18 [Trial Chamber confers]
19 MR. NICE:
20 Q. The interview continued, and at line 21 you
21 moved on to counts 8 and 9, the killing of Hasan
22 Jasarevic, who fled from the police station. Did you
23 say to him:
24 "What can you tell me about that incident?"
25 He said, "Yes, I did it"; line 28?
1 A. That's correct. I said, "What can you tell
2 me about it?"
3 Q. "This murder is in -- related to the killing
4 of Amir Novalic. If you don't mind, I would like to go
5 to Novalic, to explain about Novalic, and then I can
6 explain. It follows on how it happened about Hasan
7 Jasarevic."
8 A. "If that's easier, that's no problem at all."
9 Q. "It's related because, chronologically, Amir
10 Novalic's murder happened first."
11 A. "Sure, okay."
12 Q. "And then there was an escape and then this
13 other one."
14 A. "Okay. For purposes of the tape, I'll put
15 some details on tape and then you can continue with the
16 murder of Amir Novalic. What we will talk about is
17 counts 16 and 17.
18 "It is alleged that on or about the 7th of
19 May, 1992, you shot and killed a Muslim detainee named
20 Amir Novalic, also known as Fric, inside the Brcko
21 police station. What can you tell me about that
22 matter?"
23 Q. "Amir Novalic, also known as Fric, was being
24 interrogated in a cell next-door, in a room next-door
25 to the cell number 13. He was interrogated or, more
1 precisely, said they were beating him up. He was
2 beaten up by the members of the intervention platoon of
3 the police.
4 "At one point, a young man left that room. I
5 was in the corridor of the police station. It's as you
6 enter the police station, it's the corridor to the
7 right. And then on the left-hand side, there were two
8 bathrooms, then number 13 cell, the infamous, and then
9 that office, that room where Amir Novalic, also known
10 as Fric, was.
11 "So from that point, a group of policemen
12 came out. Some of them had blood on them, and what
13 they said was, 'Go and have a look how we -- we've
14 processed this guy.' I approached the room, and as I
15 approached the cell, as I came to the door, Amir
16 Novalic, completed covered in blood, completely beaten
17 up, rushed towards me with an axe. As he was going to
18 hit me with the axe, I started running away from him
19 towards the other end of the corridor, and I couldn't
20 shoot because on the other side of the corridor behind
21 him there was a group of about 10 or 15 policemen, and
22 they were standing there and watching what was going
23 on. And I took -- I lifted a chair to protect myself
24 from the axe, and so as I lifted it, he hit me on the
25 arm, which is what I -- which is what I had it
1 bandaged, which can be seen on that photograph. As I
2 know I just wanted to defend him, I lifted it -- did
3 not go towards him. I lifted the chair."
4 Following an interjection by the interpreter:
5 "And I started to run outside of the
6 building towards the exit. Fric then lifted himself
7 up, and he had the axe."
8 Following an intervention, you said --
9 A. "Okay. You said he's run at you with the axe
10 and you picked up a chair; is that correct?"
11 Q. Two answers further on, for substance. Line
12 11:
13 "I lifted a chair like what I wanted to
14 protect myself from the axe. I lifted it too much, and
15 the axe hit me with the axe on my right hand, on the
16 lower part of my right arm. I can explain later on
17 about how the axe happened to be there.
18 "And then when I turned back and a man from
19 the formation Red Berets with the nickname [blank], he
20 lives there now, and from the handgun he fired one shot
21 in the direction of Fric. And as he hit him, as the
22 bullet -- as he fired, Fric fell, and so we concluded
23 that he had hit him. After Fric fell, [blank]
24 approached with an automatic rifle, and he fired a
25 round into the automatic rifle -- into the chest of
1 Fric. I was in the corridor of the building and I was
2 watching it all, and I remember that [blank] ran down
3 the stairs, that he didn't even ask what had happened.
4 He just started to complain, and loudly, why were
5 people being killed inside the building.
6 "Before I was taken to the hospital to have
7 my arm bandaged, this man, Hasan Jasarevic, made a
8 break free. He tried to escape from the building of
9 the SUP, of the police station, with another young man,
10 with another man. So one of them went towards the
11 place where the first killing -- where the killings
12 from counts 6 and 7 took place, towards that direction,
13 and Hasan Jasarevic set off towards a small newspaper
14 kiosk and the fountain there. There used to be a
15 fountain there."
16 A. "Okay. Before we go on to that other count,
17 I want to ask you some further questions about the
18 killing of Fric."
19 Q. Page 30, we can skip the questions about Fric
20 and go to line 21.
21 "Later on, we can go on to Jasarevic, but
22 anyway after I had come back, or later on when I
23 returned from the hospital, I asked who this man was,
24 how courageous of him to have done what he had done, so
25 I learned how Fric --"
1 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Do you think --
2 how long do you intend to go on? Which page do you
3 wish to cover before the break? I think it is time.
4 This interview ends on page --
5 MR. NICE: This interview goes to page 89.
6 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes, quite
7 right. So we shall make a break then. We shall make a
8 break and it will be a 20-minute break.
9 --- Recess taken at 4.00 p.m.
10 --- On resuming at 4.28 p.m.
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] The session is
12 resumed. Will you have the accused brought in,
13 please?
14 Mr. Nice, before we resume -- no, we have to
15 wait for the accused.
16 [The accused entered court]
17 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Before we
18 resume, the Judges wondered about the method you used,
19 concerned, on one hand, about not wasting time, on the
20 other, to work, and we just wonder if this was really
21 the best method to be applied. Because this binder was
22 given to the Judges and, of course, they are familiar
23 with it. Well, they are not particularly conversant
24 with it, but they have it. On the other hand, the
25 witness is here not only to give us his impressions but
1 also to pinpoint the important points, which are said
2 important points today.
3 It seems to me that the important point is,
4 on one hand, to highlight the most important elements
5 relative the genocide, and I am not talking about what
6 the accused has already admitted; and on the other
7 hand, the witness told us that there were some
8 contradictions, some inconsistencies, and we believe
9 that he was to show us today which are these
10 inconsistencies and contradictions.
11 We have now been reading fragments of these
12 interviews, which we do have before our eyes, and I
13 believe that this debate is losing some of its
14 transparency. I'm afraid that at the time of
15 cross-examination, the Defence will then catch up those
16 elements which the witness has not indicated or
17 clarified, and then, of course, in your re-examination,
18 you will be responding to that.
19 So I wanted to mention this on behalf of my
20 colleagues. What do you think about these concerns?
21 MR. NICE: As I said at the beginning of the
22 afternoon session, I thought it likely that we would
23 develop a modus vivendi after the first passage of the
24 interviews. It seemed important to me, and I trust
25 that the Chamber may agree, to have that first passage
1 of background which you haven't had before set out in
2 some detail.
3 But we've now reached a place where, as I
4 forecast, we will be able to accelerate the speed with
5 which we go through the material, and, indeed, I have
6 marked the pages that touch on contradictions, as well
7 as those that touch on counts. Subject to the
8 technical difficulties that I must cope with that
9 relate to the B/C/S booth, which I've heard about in
10 the pause, I think we can make good progress. It may
11 be that by the end of this afternoon's session, the
12 Chamber would either be prepared to take the necessary
13 balance of material read or to be read or be satisfied
14 that I'm moving at such a speed that only a small part
15 of tomorrow will be consumed with the interviews.
16 I rather doubt if there's very much that
17 Mr. Greaves wants to cross-examine on, because thus far
18 I have been putting in the matters that he wanted to be
19 put in, and I also know that he has himself, since he
20 identified the passages he wanted to go in, taken the
21 view that perhaps not all of that needs to be led.
22 So I'm pretty confident that, one way or
23 another, we will be able to speed up the process and
24 complete the evidence in this case tomorrow.
25 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes, but may I
1 remind you once again that on the counts which we have
2 here, the accused has admitted and has pleaded guilty.
3 So what I'm wondering is what is the purpose of this
4 particular exercise?
5 Do not, please, misunderstand me. This
6 Chamber is not asking for the repetition for the sake
7 of repetition, and I believe that we have already said
8 that. We are not really here to organise a race, but
9 we are here to conduct our work efficiently. If
10 efficiency means that we have to be long, we shall be
11 long. But it seems to me that we are long without
12 being efficient, and that is my problem. I know the
13 accused has pleaded guilty on so many counts, but we
14 are here seeking the evidence of genocide.
15 In this binder, you or, rather, your witness
16 should indicate which are the elements which constitute
17 genocide, you should draw our attention to those, or if
18 it is to clarify perhaps the personality of the
19 accused, those should be the primary concerns. That is
20 all that I really am saying.
21 Of course, you have to do your job, and go on
22 as you wish, but will you please bear in mind those
23 observations made by the Judges?
24 Thank you very much.
25 MR. NICE: Certainly. Those are the passages
1 we have identified, and, indeed, of course, the
2 killings to which he has pleaded guilty may be relevant
3 where he sets out his mental process. But if you'll
4 trust me, we can move from page 30 in the English, and
5 I'm afraid I don't know the B/C/S page numbers, but if
6 the B/C/S booth can let me know what page that is, I'll
7 endeavour to overcome the technical problem that we've
8 been having about page numbering.
9 THE INTERPRETER: We left off at page 20.
10 Can you hear me now?
11 MR. NICE: Thank you very much.
12 Q. So I'm going to go in the English version
13 from page 30, Mr. O'Donnell, straight to page 34, which
14 deals with the issue of how much thought he gave to a
15 killing to which he may have pleaded guilty, but it's
16 nevertheless important for that reason.
17 On our page 34, shortly before the end of the
18 first tape, at line 25, did you ask him: "Did you know
19 Hasan Jasarevic before the shooting?"
20 A. Yes, I did.
21 Q. And he replied, "No." Carry on.
22 A. I said, "Can you describe him for me?"
23 Q. "No."
24 A. "Do you know what ethnicity he was?"
25 Q. "Muslim."
1 A. "Do you know anything about him?"
2 Q. "Nothing."
3 A. "Where he worked, where he lived, anything
4 else?"
5 Q. "Probably, he's probably from Brcko. He had
6 been in the cell number 13 so he must have been
7 something."
8 That's the end of the first tape. In the
9 English version, I turn over one page to page 36. Is
10 it right, Mr. O'Donnell, that at line 24, you asked him
11 if he said anything to Jasarevic before he shot him,
12 and he said, "No, I don't think so. I think as soon as
13 I ran out and I just shot, as they were holding him I
14 shot ... We had no opportunity to exchange words. It
15 just happened. He was, he was trying to escape."
16 A. That is correct. I went on to say, "Do you
17 recall him saying anything to you?"
18 Q. I'm sorry. That's my mistake. "I don't
19 think so. His back was turned."
20 That's all I need from that. If we turn on
21 now to several pages, in the English version, we can
22 turn on to page 47. Your Honours, I'll give the B/C/S
23 booth some time to find the parallel page.
24 A. I'm sorry. Can I direct your attention to
25 the end of page 37, the beginning of 38, which I
1 believe is important?
2 Q. Yes. Very well. English version, page 37,
3 at the foot of the page, you asked him?
4 A. "Okay. Were you told to kill Hasan Jasarevic
5 by anyone?"
6 Q. The answer: "I cannot say that anybody said
7 to me, go and kill him now. It was just that he had,
8 simply had tried to escape and I went after him, but he
9 had been in the hands of this other, of these other
10 soldiers."
11 A. "He was already captured at the time you shot
12 him, is that right?"
13 Q. And I think he then just goes on to deal with
14 more of that, but the essential point you wanted to
15 cover is dealt with there.
16 In the English version then, at page 47, and
17 for the assistance of the Chamber, he picks up here
18 with the list again and provides a few more details
19 about the list of which he's spoken.
20 At the foot of the page, in the middle of the
21 page, you asked him, "Can you tell me about the list,
22 can you describe the list to me, please?" He replies,
23 "What was written was for instance the header was
24 Serbia Police Station Brcko and then it was a list of
25 Muslim prisoners. I can't remember what the
1 description of the Muslims was. And it had at the end,
2 it had Crisis Staff for, meaning for the Crisis Staff,
3 and then signature of [blank] and his name printed."
4 A. "How many pages was the list?"
5 Q. "One. I think there were twenty-three,
6 between twenty and twenty-five names, I think
7 twenty-three names."
8 A. "Was it typed or written?"
9 Q. And he says it was typed, and on the
10 following page, he gives further details. But at line
11 10, in particular, he says this on page 48 in the
12 English version: "There were just one, two, three
13 names. There was a 'one,' for instance, and then a
14 name, and then in brackets it said Muslim. And all the
15 people on my list were Muslims presumably if I had a
16 Croat there would have been Croat."
17 Is it right that he then set out that there
18 were no other instructions, he said, that were given to
19 him?
20 A. That's correct.
21 Q. Over the page to page 49 in the English
22 version, and starting at the foot of the page, is this
23 one of the inconsistencies you wanted to draw to the
24 Judges' attention?
25 A. Yes, it is. That's correct.
1 Q. Starting at line 36 on English page 49,
2 please read on.
3 A. I said, "What did he tell you --"
4 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Can the B/C/S
5 follow? I'm thinking about the accused. I'm thinking
6 about the Defence. Can the B/C/S booth follow?
7 Because, evidently, the page numbering is not the
8 same.
9 THE INTERPRETER: They are completely wrong.
10 We can't find the place.
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Well, no, I
12 just got a big sign of negation, showing me they could
13 not really keep up with you, and I'm thinking of the
14 accused and the Defence and Mr. Londrovic. Perhaps it
15 is too fast for them. I don't know. Some people say
16 that I'm very fast, but sometimes I'm fast. The French
17 booth, how about them? Can we go on? Will it be all
18 right now?
19 Proceed, Mr. Nice.
20 MR. NICE:
21 Q. Page 49, line 36, the question?
22 A. "What did he tell you had to do with the
23 people on the list?"
24 Q. "That I was supposed to kill them. With the
25 list, that's how I made mistakes. I was taken to
1 Laser. They took me from the police station because I
2 don't know where -- I don't know where Laser was."
3 A. "I still need to get some more details about
4 the conversation with [blank]. Do you remember exactly
5 what he said to you about what you were to do in
6 relation to the killing?"
7 Q. "Here's a list of balijas, Ustashas, here it
8 is and it had a signature."
9 And in B/C/S, this is on page 34,
10 Mr. Tochilovsky helpfully tells me. I'm at line 10 in
11 the English version, and I continue.
12 " The [blank] was there. He asked me
13 whether I had been inside the number 13 cell. I had,
14 yes, I had been inside. I couldn't say that I didn't
15 go, because I had been. I wanted to see who was in
16 there. And the key from cell number 13 was with the
17 duty officer who was there, and he also had a hole
18 through which we could check what was going on inside.
19 Perhaps it was this size. Up to about halfway, it's
20 empty, and then from about halfway, there is some kind
21 of wooden bench or something. So it's kind of a wide
22 bench about that high on which these people were
23 sitting. They had no blankets or anything like that.
24 I saw, when I went in, they used their jackets under
25 their heads."
1 A. "Okay. So you said he asked you if you had
2 been into cell 13. What was said after that?"
3 Q. "I can't quite remember the details. What he
4 may have done then, I think he may have done, is just
5 then given me the list and said, 'Well, here they are.
6 You've got them downstairs, you've got them in Laser,
7 you've got them in Luka.' I had never heard, until
8 then, about Luka. I think Luka may have been formed
9 around the 7th or something, because Luka was formed
10 after they got people out of Laser, where they had kept
11 them until then."
12 A. "Yes, but what did he say about actually
13 killing them?"
14 Q. And then over the page, we skip a couple of
15 questions and answers. He returns to say, at line 8 in
16 the English?
17 A. "You said that you were told that it was going
18 to be your baptism by fire and that you were told to
19 kill those people?"
20 Q. And then you asked him a further slightly
21 longer question, and at line 18, he said, in the
22 English:
23 "The lists were probably held. I'll tell
24 you how it went. These were lists for executions, and
25 the lists were probably held by people who had been
1 interrogating them. For example, they sent me to
2 detain Kemal Sulejmanovic. After the interrogators had
3 spoken to him, if the order was to kill him, I would
4 kill him."
5 Page 35 in the B/C/S.
6 "And then, of course, if they had the orders
7 to continue his detention or to return him to
8 detention, then that would continue. Nothing would
9 happen to him. I think you will understand that
10 through the murder of Naza Bukvic and her father."
11 A. "Okay".
12 Q. You asked him another question. He said --
13 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Will you please
14 try not to use the names, not to read out the names?
15 Will you please just tell us "blank"?
16 MR. NICE: I've only been reading out the
17 names of the identified victims, I think, that have
18 already been given.
19 Q. So at line 30 in the English, he continued:
20 "He didn't say 'kill', he didn't say
21 'kill'. He said, 'Here is a list of people who have
22 to be liquidated.' As long as there was his signature
23 in the name of [blank], that means that somebody
24 somewhere had decided this, and I know. I learned
25 later on who was deciding what in the [blank]. For
1 instance, the person responsible for --"
2 And then he gives a number of names which we
3 needn't deal with.
4 You asked him, in page 52 of the English,
5 line 5, another question. He went on, asked if he had
6 been surprised:
7 "Well, I wasn't at all pleased that I would
8 have to kill people. I thought it was just going to be
9 a policeman, like before, but I think I took it all
10 very lightly. I couldn't imagine that a person who got
11 eight grades of school and who was supposed to go to
12 sit a sentence in gaol, that I would then be -- have
13 this power. We'll have a non-Serb witness, whom I was
14 told to liquidate, whom I took to a certain location
15 and left there. At that time, I was risking my own
16 life, and the specific case was ..."
17 And he then gives a job position.
18 " ... and he was not on my list."
19 If we turn over to page 53, in the middle of
20 the page, Mr. O'Donnell, is there a passage that you
21 want to draw particularly to the Court's attention?
22 A. There is. It starts with the question:
23 "Did you question your order to kill these
24 people?"
25 Q. That's line 21. Answer:
1 "Well, I wasn't indifferent to that."
2 Carry on.
3 A. "What do you mean by that?"
4 Q. "It was not pleasant to be given this list
5 and being told to kill people. These people were never
6 given a chance to defend themselves. They were
7 completely helpless."
8 A. "Well, that's why I'm asking the question.
9 It seems completely strange that you would be given a
10 list of people to kill and not question that."
11 Q. "I had -- I had no -- there was no way that I
12 could have questioned it. It was war. It was not a
13 game. There was nobody that I could appeal to. There
14 was nobody that I could protest to."
15 A. "Did you protest or question any of the lists
16 that you were given?"
17 Q. He then says, "No, to be honest."
18 At the foot of that page, he starts off with
19 a long answer that again you want to draw to the
20 Court's attention, I think.
21 A. Yes, that's correct.
22 Q. This relates to which topic, the one at the
23 bottom of the page that you think is significant?
24 A. It relates to whether or not he was able to
25 leave Brcko.
1 Q. And whether he had the freedom of movement
2 that he subsequently denied having?
3 A. Correct.
4 Q. We can deal with this one, I think, in
5 summary. There's a long answer at English page 54,
6 B/C/S page 37, where he speaks of a particular post
7 holder and sets out how it was that he was able to
8 drive this man. Just tell us where, please,
9 Mr. O'Donnell.
10 A. He was able to take him to Bijeljina.
11 Q. Thank you. We can then, unless you
12 particularly want to draw our attention to anything
13 else, can go to page 57 in the English, where he claims
14 at line 5, in a long answer -- and it's B/C/S page 39
15 at the top -- he claims that he spared the life of a
16 Dr. Ramic. Is that right?
17 A. Yes, that is correct.
18 Q. He claims, we can see in the answer, that the
19 order was to kill that person but that the person was
20 not killed. Did you find any evidential support for
21 that assertion by him?
22 A. Yes. To a certain extent, yes, that's true.
23 I would also like to draw to the attention of the Court
24 line 12 and line 13.
25 Q. In which case, I'll read that part of the
1 answer. Picking it up at line 10:
2 "Some of the friends of the family, he told
3 them that he -- he informed them that he was free and
4 safe. It could have happened that I could have had
5 problems. There were not specific problems, but I
6 could have had problems. I could have been killed by
7 one of the ..."
8 And then he names a number of people.
9 So what's the evidential support for the
10 Dr. Ramic account?
11 A. That he was saved, that he was, in fact,
12 alive.
13 Q. That he was alive?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Do you know anything of the defendant's
16 involvement in all that, one way or the other?
17 A. I haven't personally spoken to him.
18 Q. Is that the -- very well, that's all I need
19 to know.
20 Page 58, at the top of the page, you wanted
21 to draw the Court's attention to the answer there?
22 A. Yes, that is correct, from line 2 on page 58.
23 Q. The answer reads as follows:
24 "That's why I escaped from Brcko, because I
25 didn't want to get the bullet. The chief of police was
1 killed, the commander of the station."
2 And I needn't deal with that, I think, but he
3 says he didn't want to get killed. That's all you
4 wanted to draw attention to there, I think.
5 A. That is correct.
6 Q. At page 62, although we won't use any names,
7 does he, in the middle of page 62 in the English, which
8 is B/C/S page 42, does he speak of somebody and, at
9 line 20, say that that person had control over what was
10 happening in the camp? That was his account?
11 A. Yes, he did.
12 Q. Turning on to English page 65, is he now
13 dealing with the period after the killings at the camp
14 had been stopped by the intervention of someone else?
15 A. I can't say exactly what period of time he's
16 referring to, whether it was before that happened or
17 later. The significance is that it refers to him being
18 called to Luka or going there voluntarily, from line
19 16.
20 Q. You asked him -- just read the question.
21 A. I said:
22 "And when you were not called for specific
23 reasons, why did you go?"
24 Q. And he answered:
25 "I knew these people who were guards. It
1 was a habit. I would just go there because I was used
2 to going. I just went there, and I went there and
3 drank and watched the prisoners."
4 As we can see from the previous page, this
5 relates to a time later in May and thereafter. That
6 was on page 44.
7 For the assistance of the Trial Chamber, at
8 English page 68, although you may not wish to emphasise
9 this to the Chamber, there's further account given of
10 the lists and the instructions that he was given; is
11 that right?
12 A. Yes, that is correct.
13 Q. If we go to English page 72, and I don't know
14 if we can -- English page 72. We may be able to,
15 Witness, with Mr. Tochilovsky's assistance and
16 Ms. Reynders', identify the B/C/S. I think it's on
17 page 49.
18 At page 72, at line 30, did you start to deal
19 with what at that time was called counts 22 to 25, I
20 think counts 18 to 19 in the indictment before the
21 Chamber, the killing of Naza Bukvic?
22 A. Yes, that is correct.
23 Q. Over the page a couple of questions and
24 answers, he then says, at page 73, line 8, of that
25 person:
1 "I saw her first in the office of the two
2 inspectors. Her brother, I don't know what his name
3 was. I can see that his surname was [blank]. He had
4 been ... "
5 And it sets out his role.
6 Line 16 -- no, I can move on to line 20.
7 "At one point, Naza Bukvic spoke,"
8 this is on the telephone,
9 " and I believe it was her brother she was
10 speaking, and she said, 'I'm in a Chetnik camp with
11 father.' And she said to him not to surrender. She
12 couldn't say any more because they pressed the
13 disconnect button. I took my baton off and started to
14 beat her, and these two inspectors started shouting at
15 me, saying, 'No, stop. We have special methods for
16 her.' So I left the office. I later found out that
17 Naza had also signed an empty piece of paper.
18 "Then they called me to take Naza out and
19 kill her, and I took Naza out here, somewhere here. I
20 shot her."
21 He then set that out on a diagram; is that
22 correct?
23 A. That is correct.
24 Q. We can then, I think, go on, getting towards
25 the end of this first interview, to English page 80,
1 which has a passage you want to draw to the Judges'
2 attention?
3 A. That is correct; it is.
4 Q. While we're finding the B/C/S page reference,
5 what's the significance that you want to draw from this
6 passage?
7 A. The significance relates to how voluntarily
8 he committed the murders.
9 Q. It's at line 13 in the English, and this will
10 be found within page 54 of the B/C/S, 54 to 55. You
11 asked him a question. Please read it.
12 A. The question, starting from line 13:
13 "You said that you recall Naza Bukvic better
14 because she was a woman. Do you remember if you had
15 any conversation with her before you killed her?"
16 Q. "Possibly. I can't either -- I don't deny
17 it. I don't admit to it. It may have -- I may have --
18 I may have swore at her. I may have cursed her. I
19 don't remember."
20 A. "Okay."
21 Q. "I'm not saying that I was nice to her. I
22 can't remember everything in detail, but I don't
23 remember what I said to her."
24 I think you then turned to what were counts
25 28 and 29, now counts 22 to 23.
1 A. That is correct.
2 Q. The man with the ear cut off, killed in the
3 hangar, and he sets out in detail what happened about
4 that man; is that right?
5 A. That is correct.
6 Q. We've heard a lot of evidence about that.
7 Well, I think we can probably turn now to the
8 next interview, and the Chamber will have seen that we
9 are accelerating very considerably. I hope that the
10 speed is not too much for the many support staff.
11 The next interview, on the 29th of June, has
12 the personalities involved at page 1. It deals -- at
13 page 5 in the English, he deals, at line 18 and
14 onwards -- this is page 3 in the B/C/S -- with our
15 present counts 8 to 9, the young man from Sinteraj, and
16 he says of this killing at line 21 to 22:
17 "The officer on duty took them out of cell
18 number 13 because they had already been interrogated by
19 the inspectors. He was handed to me in front of the
20 duty booth in front of the police station, and the
21 young man walked in front of me. I walked behind him.
22 We left the police station, and we set off towards that
23 location where I shot the young man. I cannot quite
24 recall, but I believe someone else was with me then
25 too. I think someone must have gone to see it all, but
1 I was personally given the order. And as I usually
2 did, I used two bullets to kill the young man from
3 Sinteraj, shooting him in the back of the head."
4 And he sets outs that it was a Scorpion that he used.
5 We can move on to English page 15. While
6 we're finding the B/C/S page number, at line 28, did
7 you turn, in the interview, to Counts 10 and 11, as
8 they now are, Counts 12 to 13 then, page 10 in the
9 B/C/S, the killing of Ahmet Hodzic?
10 A. Yes, that's correct.
11 Q. You put the allegation to him, and at line
12 34, he said this:
13 "Following the same script, Ahmet Hodzic was
14 in cell number 13. It was only after the murder that I
15 found out some things about him. From certain Brcko
16 policemen in the police station, I had asked them who
17 was this man. That he had been the president of the
18 Muslim Party, the SDA, the Party of Democratic Action.
19 Now I don't believe he was really the president of the
20 party because I was later ordered to kill another man
21 who was the president of the party. The same thing, I
22 was handed Ahmet Hodzic in front of the duty booth, and
23 following the same script by order, I took him out of
24 the police station, I turned left towards the location
25 that we have just mentioned. I shot and killed him. I
1 can't remember that I beat him and I don't think I did
2 because it was not ordered to me to beat him."
3 Then I think on the following page, English
4 page 17, one page on, there's a short passage in the
5 middle of this page to which you want to focus the
6 Tribunal's attention.
7 A. That is correct. It starts with the question
8 from me at line 10 on page 17.
9 Q. Read the question and make the point,
10 please.
11 A. "I'll read to you part of what a witness said
12 about the killing to see if it refreshes your memory
13 and I will ask you to comment on that. He said ..."
14 that is, the witness who told us these things
15 said, "... I saw Papa, which is the nickname of this
16 person, coming out of the police station. Goran was
17 following him with a police baton and was hitting Papa
18 across his shoulders as he was not moving fast enough.
19 They came down the steps and took a left onto the
20 sidewalk. Papa was taken between the hairdressers and
21 the shopping centre."
22 Q. And he replied, "Yeah, that's the same
23 location we have spoken about before."
24 A. "Goran was escorted by 2 guards. Goran said
25 to Papa, 'You Turk, hurry up, you are looking at your
1 town for the last time.'" And then I said, "Is there
2 anything you can say about that?"
3 Q. This is on B/C/S page 12. The point that you
4 wanted to make about his answers here, Mr. O'Donnell?
5 A. In lines 26, 27, and 28, would you like me to
6 read --
7 Q. But the point that you're making is what?
8 A. The point that I'm making is that this is one
9 of the inconsistencies between his version of events
10 and other versions which we have been given which I'd
11 like to go into after we go through the various
12 passages.
13 Q. It sanitises the version of events as given
14 by the witnesses.
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And the answer that he gave, I'll just read
17 it to the relevant point: "Yes. If I was to engage in
18 any kind of contact with any of the persons that were
19 to be killed or rather if I had engaged in any kind of
20 contact. If that person had started begging or asking,
21 I would have rather killed myself than the person.
22 Although I had committed these murders, I am not a
23 person without a soul, I am not an executioner. And
24 you will see that when my witnesses speak to you. If
25 he had spoken one word to me, I would have done
1 something to save him. I would have fired in the air
2 or something. Or I would have killed myself, but it's
3 not an easy thing to do. You don't know what that
4 person is accused of. You see that the person is
5 helpless and you have to kill that person. If I hadn't
6 killed him, they would have killed me. And these
7 people, him and the others that we already talked
8 about, they would have been killed anyway. And I was
9 not the only one to kill, to execute people from room
10 number 13. The intervention squad, civilian police
11 intervention squad ..." and then he goes on to give a
12 name.
13 Over the page to page 18, you turned at, I
14 think -- well, we can just see. You asked him if he
15 was remorseful --
16 A. That's correct.
17 Q. -- at line 19, and he said at line 22, on
18 page 18, "I will feel that all the time until I have,
19 until I am convicted and until I receive my time ..."
20 and he then goes on to make further remarks about
21 that.
22 To page 19, there was a suspension of the
23 interview, and you pick it up dealing with what were
24 Counts 18 and 19, at line 28, this, of course, being
25 page 13 in the B/C/S, now Counts 14 to 15.
1 At line 28, you asked him about the killings
2 of two men, suggesting that he, with one other, had
3 been involved in the killing, asked him what he could
4 tell you about it, and at English page 20, he sets out
5 his account of taking these two men to the office
6 opposite the hangar, at line 9.
7 At line 10, he says, "For that murder,
8 [blank] had no order. He took that man straightaway
9 and took him, and I had first taken Cita to the
10 inspector. I left Cita in the office with the
11 inspector and I walked out and I saw [blank] walking
12 away from the body towards the van of the intervention
13 platoon. When the inspectors were finished with
14 Jasmenko Cumurovic, they called me into the office
15 because I had taken him into the office in the first
16 place. A guard came in a uniform, police uniform from
17 the Luka camp. He called me and I went to [two
18 names]. They told me that he was a dangerous Balija,
19 that is a pejorative term for Muslims, and that I
20 should kill him." There's the name of the victim
21 again. "I took him to the corner of the hangar and I
22 killed him with my handgun, Scorpio with a silencer, I
23 shot at his head. Even after this murder I could not
24 find out, nobody wanted to tell me why this man was
25 guilty, what he had been accused of. I never found
1 out."
2 Then, unless Mr. Greaves wants me to read out
3 any more of the passages that he had identified to be
4 read there, we can move to English page 29, and on this
5 page, it starts with, in the English, "Okay. I'd like
6 to talk to you about counts 14 and 15 ..." Did you ask
7 him about the killing of Suad, which is presently our
8 Counts 12 to 13?
9 A. Yes, I did.
10 Q. And his explanation was, at line 7, that he
11 had killed this man, the answer going on "... at the
12 same location where I killed the aforementioned people
13 where the photograph shows. Again I would like to
14 stress that I was not given the order to beat Suad, and
15 I don't think there is any rifle which would have an
16 iron rifle butt that I could hit with that. And if
17 ever there were orders to beat someone of course then
18 it would be with a baton. Whenever I was told to beat
19 someone I always made sure that I was, at least that I
20 would participate as little as possible because I am
21 not much for beating people ..." page 20 in the B/C/S
22 and at the top, but other than that, he went on to
23 explain -- having given that version of his own
24 approach, he went on to explain how he shot the man
25 with a maximum of two bullets; is that correct?
1 A. Yes, he did.
2 Q. And you would like to draw to the Court's
3 attention, at page 36 in the English, a short passage,
4 the significance of it being what?
5 A. The significance being again the sanitised
6 version of events that was given to us by Mr. Jelisic.
7 Q. In contrast with the witness statements that
8 you had and, indeed, that had been served.
9 A. That is correct.
10 Q. And the passage that you draw to the Court's
11 attention particularly starts, I think, in your
12 question at about line 20, where you're reading -- a
13 bit before line 20, line 18, where you're reading from
14 what the witness said.
15 A. That is correct.
16 Q. B/C/S, page 25, I think. Can you read the
17 passage that you have in mind, and I'll read the
18 answer?
19 A. It starts at line 18, "The witness
20 said, 'After the beating, Suad was told to get up and
21 walk in front of the soldiers. Suad sensed what was in
22 store for him and he started crying. Suad then pleaded
23 that he had a baby that was still on milk. They took
24 Suad to the area where Papa and the young man had been
25 taken. Goran went with the soldiers and escorted
1 Suad. At the time Goran was carrying a Scorpion
2 pistol. After they went out of sight I heard one
3 gunshot.' Is there anything that you can say about
4 that?"
5 Q. "He could not have heard the gunshot, that is
6 a lie. If he had heard the gunshot then I didn't kill
7 him. Because when you actually use the Scorpio with a
8 silencer you just hear the mechanism of the thing going
9 back after the shot. I think your witness wanted to
10 make it nicer. I would have said if it was like this,
11 if he heard it then I didn't kill him."
12 A. "What about the conversation with him
13 pleading with you?"
14 Q. "He definitely did not speak to me. Those
15 who were working outside, there was a group of them
16 cleaning on the right-hand side. And if they were
17 going to the left they could not have heard anything
18 even if there was conversation."
19 So he denies completely the pleading spoken
20 of by the witness.
21 A. That is correct.
22 Q. If we can move to the next interview on the
23 30th of June, the personalities present revealed on
24 page 1. On page 2 in the English, at line 26, you
25 turned to Counts 20 and 21, now Counts 16 and 17 --
1 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I suggest that
2 we, nevertheless, make a 15-minute break because this
3 is a long session. So we shall adjourn now for 15
4 minutes.
5 --- Recess taken at 5.17 p.m.
6 --- On resuming at 5.36 p.m.
7 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] We are
8 resuming. Will you have the accused brought in,
9 please?
10 [The accused entered court]
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Nice?
12 MR. NICE: Before we return to the place in
13 the bundle of interviews where we were, I discovered
14 there was one important question and answer that I, in
15 my haste, overlooked.
16 Q. Can I ask the Chamber and the witness just
17 for one reference, to go back to the interview of the
18 4th of June, at page 49 in the English? I've been
19 further alerted to the difficulties in the B/C/S and,
20 no doubt, also in the French booths, and we will try to
21 find the matching page, but it's only one short
22 question and answer that I need to draw to the
23 Chamber's attention. We'll see if we can find it in
24 the B/C/S. Perhaps as it's such a short passage, I can
25 simply read it out.
1 Mr. O'Donnell, was there a passage in the
2 interview, starting at line 13 on page 49, where he set
3 out what happens when he was given the list?
4 A. Yes, that is correct.
5 Q. Did you then ask him the question:
6 "Can you tell me what [blank] said to you
7 when he gave you the list"?
8 A. Yes, I did.
9 Q. And did he then reply in these terms:
10 "Each one of our conversations, each one of
11 our contacts, had something to do with me being told
12 that as many Muslims as possible had to be killed and
13 that Brcko had to -- should become a Serbian town"?
14 A. Yes, that is correct.
15 Q. You then asked him a further question about
16 the lists, and he replied -- and it is in the B/C/S at
17 page 33 -- and he replied:
18 "There was a list I was handed. I was told
19 that these were extremists, that these were dangerous,
20 that they were agitators for the SDA, that they were
21 organising SDA. They used the pejorative word for
22 Muslims, 'balija', that they were extremists. That was
23 what they -- that was the story they sold to us who
24 Muslims were, what Muslims were."
25 Was that the answer?
1 A. Yes, it was.
2 Q. And then he went on to deal with the passage
3 that I've already gone through with you?
4 A. That is correct.
5 Q. We now return to the interview of the 13th of
6 June that we can deal with, I think, really very
7 quickly, although there are some passages here that you
8 want to draw to the Judges' attention?
9 A. Yes, that is correct.
10 Q. But first, on page 2 of the interview of the
11 13th of June, there is something I must deal with in
12 relation to what was counts 20 and 21, now counts 16
13 and 17, the killing of the brothers from Zvornik, which
14 he dealt with on page 2 and over at page 3. This is
15 the detail that, in light of the way the evidence has
16 come out, I must just elicit.
17 In the course of a long answer on our page 3
18 at line 20, towards the end of the long answer, did he
19 say, of the killing of the brothers from Zvornik:
20 "We went to the hangar, and I read out the
21 names from the ID cards of the two brothers. We took
22 them out, took them behind the corner of the hangar,
23 and I shot one with -- firing from a Scorpion with a
24 silencer, and [blank] killed the other one from a
25 handgun. That's when Huso and Smail Zahirovic were
1 killed"?
2 A. Yes, that is correct.
3 Q. I'm now going to move on in the English to
4 page 8, and I'll see if I can find the matching B/C/S
5 page. It's page 6. This is a passage that you draw to
6 the Judges' attention, running over, I think, probably
7 into the following page, for what purposes? Is it to
8 do with his alleged remorse at saving people and his
9 ability to travel freely?
10 A. It's to do with the fact that he said that he
11 saved as many people as he could, and also about his
12 freedom of movement out of Brcko.
13 Q. That's revealed on English page 8, line 10, 9
14 and 10, his saying that whenever he saved a person, "it
15 was a great triumph for me, and any Muslim who was
16 killed, a man or woman, I -- like, for instance, Naza
17 Bukvic -- I would imagine my family and my parents
18 being killed."
19 Did he say that to you?
20 A. Yes, he did.
21 Q. I've changed the form of questioning slightly
22 to assist the interpreters, and I'm not dealing with it
23 in the question-and-answer form of you and me because
24 of the problems that that creates for them.
25 But further down page 8, at our line 28, did
1 he speak of a list of people that he had saved, saying
2 that he would try and get hold of one, a British
3 journalist, going on to say:
4 "And there was one dark gentleman, a French
5 journalist. They also had to be killed. I took them
6 to Bijeljina, and they went on their way safely on to
7 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and there's another
8 case I can't remember."
9 And he goes on to deal with that?
10 A. That is correct.
11 Q. And did he, over the page, indeed just one
12 question further on at English page 9, line 6, again
13 assert --
14 A. I'm sorry, can I just draw your attention to
15 line 36 on page 8?
16 Q. Yes, where he says -- sorry, line 36 on
17 page 8 is where he says he took someone to Belgrade?
18 A. That's correct.
19 Q. On page 9, at line 6, did he assert again
20 that he was telling you, you sincerely, that he saved
21 lives whenever he was able?
22 A. That is correct.
23 Q. And you draw that to the Court's attention as
24 inconsistent with what?
25 A. Mr. Jelisic gave us a version of events that
1 I would like to show a number of inconsistencies in. I
2 think it's better if I outline those at the end so
3 that --
4 Q. Yes.
5 A. -- they make sense.
6 Q. Very well. For the Court's reference, at
7 English page 25 did he start to deal, at your request,
8 with counts --
9 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Excuse me,
10 Mr. Nice, but we have a problem with your method. You
11 bring in, you call, a witness who is an investigator to
12 highlight the inconsistencies, and we believe that the
13 witness gets ready to speak about these inconsistencies
14 and he comes here and says, "Here, this is the first
15 inconsistency, this is the first one," and then he
16 shows us what the witness has said on one occasion,
17 perhaps on the [indiscernible] of the facts, and where
18 is this inconsistency? And yet we are still waiting.
19 We spent two hours this afternoon waiting for the
20 inconsistency, and you are saying, "You will see where
21 the inconsistencies are."
22 I cannot speak in the name of my colleagues,
23 but I speak in my own name that I find the method
24 slightly strange. The witness is here, we're reading
25 these statements, and he could have told us, "This is
1 the first inconsistency and I'm going to show you," and
2 then we shall see that.
3 Now we are reading, and the witness, instead
4 of giving evidence to tell us, "Here is the
5 inconsistency," and then he doesn't show the Judge
6 where the inconsistency is. I believe that would be a
7 better method.
8 MR. NICE: Well, we have a number of
9 functions to achieve with these interviews, not only
10 showing his account and showing admissions of matters
11 that are against his interest and that must be before
12 you, but also dealing with the inconsistencies, and I
13 had thought it would be preferable, rather than going
14 backwards and forwards through the bundle, to lay the
15 interesting and helpful material before you and then
16 get him to summarise it at the end. But I'm quite
17 happy to change.
18 There do remain some other matters in this
19 very interview that I have to draw to your attention
20 for other reasons, not only to identify where he deals
21 with the particular counts, because of course you'll
22 want to know that.
23 But if I can just take you now to a passage
24 that I referred to earlier at page 34 of the English
25 version. I know it's passing over a couple of matters
1 that the witness may draw to your attention later.
2 Q. Page 34, did he, at this part of the
3 interview, Mr. O'Donnell --
4 JUDGE RIAD: Is it the 4th of June or what is
5 it now?
6 MR. NICE: It is the interview of the 30th of
7 June.
8 JUDGE RIAD: The 30th of June.
9 MR. NICE: Page 34. It's a very long answer
10 which I can summarise, because the Chamber will
11 remember its significance and relevance, and it's at
12 page 24 in the B/C/S.
13 Q. Mr. O'Donnell, did the witness deal
14 extensively with someone -- we needn't name him or
15 identify him in any way, but someone who he drove away
16 from Luka camp back to that person's home address or
17 nearly to his home address?
18 A. Yes, he did.
19 MR. NICE: The Chamber will remember the
20 detail of this from last week.
21 Q. In the course of the answers on page 34 and
22 onwards, did he make complete admission to the fact
23 that he had filled out the pass for that person?
24 A. Yes, he did.
25 Q. Saying, in a sense, that he'd stolen it from
1 the office, but nevertheless making it quite clear that
2 he had filled out that pass?
3 A. Yes, he did.
4 Q. Thank you. Then if we can go to page 43 in
5 the English, which is page 30 in the B/C/S, is there a
6 passage at the bottom of the page that you wanted to
7 highlight, probably to refer to later if that's the way
8 it will happen, in summarising inconsistencies or other
9 points that you're making?
10 A. Yes, there is.
11 Q. What's the passage and what's the point?
12 A. The passage is from line 26, 27, on page 43,
13 and again it's an example of the sanitised version of
14 events given to us by Mr. Jelisic.
15 Q. So the passage concerned, does it read as
16 follows: that you asked him about what a witness would
17 say, where the witness spoke of somebody pleading not
18 to be killed, and of Jelisic saying, "How could that
19 person have heard what I'm saying," and basically
20 denying the allegation completely?
21 A. That is correct.
22 Q. So we can turn to the next interview, which
23 again can be dealt with very shortly, and it's the
24 interview on the 1st of July. The personalities are
25 set out. In this interview, you'd reached what are our
1 present Counts 40 and 41 --
2 JUDGE RIAD: Which page is it?
3 MR. NICE: The interview page is at the top.
4 Page 1 of the interview itself doesn't have a page
5 number but sets out the people attending.
6 Q. Page 2, at the foot, in the English, shows
7 that you were dealing with Counts 46 to 47, now Counts
8 40 to 41, and I think you would like to take the Judges
9 to page 6.
10 A. That is correct.
11 Q. So we'll find that in the B/C/S. I know
12 there's quite a lot on this in the following pages that
13 you want to comment on, and so when we've found the
14 B/C/S, rather than to do question and answer, I'll get
15 you to make your comments and summarise the passages
16 that you want to refer to, if that's convenient. We'll
17 find the B/C/S page first, I think it's page 4, and
18 you're taking the Judges, first of all, to lines 35, I
19 believe.
20 A. That's correct, line 35, when Mr. Jelisic
21 talks of leaving. Do you want me to go through them?
22 Q. No. I'd like you to summarise the point that
23 you're making over this and the subsequent pages,
24 because to read it out would take quite a long time.
25 A. Okay. Mr. Jelisic gives an account of
1 leaving Brcko, how he was able to leave Brcko and where
2 he went, also the amount of money that he had with him
3 at the time and what his beliefs were at that time. It
4 goes back to one of the first points that I made about
5 inconsistencies. I'm in a position to go through those
6 all now or I can come back and explain the significance
7 in the order of things.
8 Q. That's an account. We'll deal with it then
9 later.
10 Another passage that you wanted us to have in
11 mind, I think, is at page 11 to 12, but it's a matter
12 of detail that fits into this story, and we probably
13 can avoid searching for the B/C/S equivalent --
14 A. That is correct.
15 Q. -- because at this page, he indicated to you,
16 in an answer, that he had -- the top of page 12 --
17 6.000 or 7.000 Deutschmarks with him?
18 A. That's correct.
19 Q. However, at page 15 is something that you
20 would draw the Court's attention to as revealing
21 Jelisic's true attitude. Page 15 in the English will
22 be page 11 in the B/C/S, and would you like to read,
23 yourself, the questions and answers, because of the
24 technical problems of doing it the way I was doing it,
25 that you rely on here?
1 A. At line 7 on page 15, I asked the question:
2 "Did you leave many things in Brcko?" He said, "I had
3 nothing in Brcko. I did not live in Brcko. There was
4 nothing for me to leave." I said, "Were you well-known
5 in Bijeljina?" He said, "There is one thing I left --"
6 and there was some laughing. "I wanted to have my
7 coffee machine. I wanted to steal something from
8 Mistrovic gas station. It was a huge coffee machine
9 and that's something I really regret not taking, that
10 is something I miss."
11 Q. The significance of that?
12 A. Again, I find it very strange, when
13 Mr. Jelisic presented himself as someone who was very
14 sorry for what happened and he did things because he
15 was forced to and had no say in what was actually done.
16 Q. At page 19 and onwards, did he give an
17 account that I think you're probably able to summarise
18 about his arrest and the suggestion that he wanted to
19 surrender himself?
20 A. From page 19 and page 20 --
21 Q. Page 14 and onwards in the B/C/S.
22 A. -- he talks about the arrest of two other
23 people who were with him after he had left Brcko and
24 the fact that those people were arrested for things
25 that they did in the Brcko area. They were arrested in
1 the same coffee shop and at the same table as him, yet
2 the authorities at that stage showed no interest in
3 him.
4 Q. So what do you say as to the probable truth
5 or otherwise of that account?
6 A. I find it difficult to accept Mr. Jelisic's
7 version of events, given that he said that he at the
8 time was hiding out in fear of his life, and he went on
9 at page 21 to talk about a member of the special police
10 from Belgrade who told him he was supposed to kill
11 Mr. Jelisic and knew all of his movements, given that
12 he believed that they knew all of his movements and he
13 was at the same table as another two people that were
14 arrested for what they had done in Brcko, I find it
15 difficult that he truly believed that.
16 Q. Now, I'm going to, I think, cut short the
17 detailed analysis of further pages.
18 MR. NICE: I don't know until what time the
19 Court is sitting today, but I think the time has now
20 been reached, because we've looked at the raw material,
21 when the witness can give his summary of the
22 inconsistencies that the Court would like. Then having
23 done that, I've finished with this witness, and the
24 Court will realise that there's not a great deal more
25 evidence to consume tomorrow.
1 So I'm entirely in the Court's hands, but we
2 could take the evidence of summary now, or it may be
3 that the Court would want to deal with that tomorrow.
4 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] No. The
5 hearing adjourns at 6.00, and I believe the
6 interpreters also can hardly wait to get a breath of
7 air. So I suggest that we adjourn for today and resume
8 tomorrow morning, because we are working tomorrow
9 morning, and to resume at 10.00.
10 After this witness, after his
11 examination-in-chief and cross-examination, how long do
12 you have? How long have you planned for him, and how
13 long, after him, do you plan to go on?
14 MR. NICE: I'm in Mr. Greaves' hands for
15 cross-examination of this witness. Mr. Basham will
16 produce the photographs, and that will be the work of a
17 couple of minutes, and then Mr. Ralston will probably
18 be the best part of 45 minutes or an hour in chief, but
19 no more, cross-examination, and I think that the
20 Chamber did have in mind a short Status Conference
21 probably at that stage.
22 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes. We shall
23 have a Status Conference. That is true. I merely
24 wanted to hear what we still have to do before us. But
25 at any rate, we shall resume tomorrow morning at
1 10.00.
2 The session is adjourned.
3 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at
4 6.00, to be reconvened on Wednesday, the
5 22nd day of September, 1999, at
6 10.00 a.m.
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