1 Monday, 22nd November, 1999
2 [Closed session]
3 --- Upon commencing at 10.05 a.m.
4 [The accused entered court]
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13 pages 2838-2885 redacted - closed session
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22 --- Luncheon recess taken at 11.35 a.m.
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1 --- On resuming at 2.35 p.m.
2 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] We'll resume
3 the hearing now. Please have the accused brought in.
4 [The accused entered court]
5 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I suggest that
6 we resume, if everybody is ready. We will begin by
7 calling in the next witness, who is a psychiatric
8 expert. Is this a public hearing?
9 MR. GREAVES: Before we come to that, there
10 is a matter you ought to know about the doctor.
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes.
12 MR. GREAVES: Your Honour, I met him at 2.00
13 at the front entrance to the Tribunal. It was quite
14 obvious when I met him that he has pretty well lost his
15 voice, no doubt through illness, which is fairly common
16 at this time of the year. He asked me, and I think
17 this was a sensible suggestion, if he is to get through
18 the afternoon, if he might have the services of a Dutch
19 translator. He speaks English, but obviously, if your
20 voice is not very good, you are going to do better in
21 your home language than you are in a foreign language.
22 I contacted the Registry to see if a Dutch
23 interpreter was available, but I understand that none
24 is available this afternoon.
25 So I am going to call him, but Your Honour
1 will have to know that he is in some difficulties about
2 being heard properly.
3 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Very well.
4 MR. GREAVES: So I'm sure that Your Honour
5 will extend some degree of sympathy towards him as he
6 struggles through.
7 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I think we'll
8 have the witness brought in first and then -- we have
9 two different problems. Either he's lost his voice,
10 and if he's lost his voice, whether he speaks Dutch or
11 English, he won't be able to speak so that we can
12 hear. If he still has his voice, it means he can
13 express himself with some more difficulty. But we'll
14 ask him. We'll just ask him.
15 Doctor, do you hear me?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
17 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] First of all,
18 you are going to give us your name, your first name,
19 and what your profession is. Please proceed.
20 THE WITNESS: My name is van den Bussche,
21 first name is Bernard, and my profession is forensic
22 psychiatrist. But I have a terrible flu.
23 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Yes, we hear
24 that. First we are going to ask you to take an oath.
25 Please take an oath. I think you have enough voice
1 left to undertake the oath.
2 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will
3 speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
4 truth.
5 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Very well.
6 Please be seated, doctor. I think that the very first
7 question that we have to ask you is the following:
8 Your problem was expressed to us as a problem of
9 language, English or Dutch, but as I thought, it's a
10 question of having lost your voice. This is the
11 question: Would you still like to testify? It's being
12 understood that you would be testifying in English, as
13 we do not have a Dutch speaking interpreter. If it is
14 a problem for you, a physical, medical problem for you,
15 you are a doctor; if you cannot express yourself, we
16 will of course postpone the testimony. Or, if you can
17 express yourself, it will have to be in English. What
18 would you choose?
19 THE WITNESS: I think it's better if you
20 postpone my testimony because my voice is very bad. We
21 can try, but I don't want to take the risk.
22 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Postponing
23 means when then? Let me consult with my colleagues. I
24 don't know whether that illness you have is something
25 that is healed very quickly.
1 [Trial Chamber confers]
2 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Nice, when
3 you think about speaking with this -- you spoke about a
4 confrontation. In my system it means that you have two
5 medical experts who would be in the same room. Is that
6 what you meant, they would contrast one against the
7 other, or one expert and then have the other one
8 follow?
9 MR. NICE: I was simply describing again our
10 common system, which is where you have experts and,
11 wherever possible, they give evidence one after the
12 other in order that each can hear the other. But as we
13 know for this week, the other expert isn't available
14 until Wednesday. We don't, of course, know whether
15 this witness's voice condition is something that he
16 suffers from regularly. We don't know whether it's at
17 its inception or at its expiry, and we don't know how
18 long it's likely to take for him to recover.
19 What I can tell the Chamber is this:
20 Mr. Greaves was good enough to indicate to me before
21 you came in that he was going to confine his
22 questioning of the doctor to the few questions that
23 identify his credentials, and of course that can all be
24 done in a compendious way, asking the witness to say
25 nothing more than to say yes, are these your
1 qualifications? So that wouldn't exhaust him.
2 And if the Chamber decided it was going to go
3 ahead today, or at least it was going to try to go
4 ahead today, I would change the normal way of asking
5 questions, which is the questions can be long and the
6 answers short. I will try and make the overall
7 questions rather more comprehensive, enabling the
8 doctor to deal with them by, for the most part, shorter
9 answers. I think I can probably achieve that. But of
10 course he is going to have to communicate with his own
11 voice in his own words on some occasions.
12 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Judge Riad
13 would like to ask you a question.
14 JUDGE RIAD: Just a clarification concerning
15 the confrontation which the President asked you about
16 of the witnesses. You said that one will testify after
17 the other in order that each can hear the other. Which
18 means they have both to be present in the courtroom?
19 MR. NICE: That's the ideal position. But it
20 can't be achieved in this case this week because I
21 understand that this witness is available today but not
22 Wednesday --
23 THE WITNESS: I am available Wednesday. I
24 think it will take two days.
25 JUDGE RIAD: So when you say that one can
1 hear the other, you meant they should be here
2 together?
3 MR. NICE: That would be ideal, for obvious
4 reasons.
5 MR. GREAVES: Can I indicate that I would
6 have no objection to you adjourning this witness until
7 Wednesday, and I concur with my learned friend that
8 it's a proposition which I am well familiar. I had
9 thought that the doctor wasn't available Wednesday.
10 That must have been my mistake, for which I apologise.
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] I think that we
12 are not going to force somebody who has come to testify
13 under those circumstances. He should have full control
14 of his -- of himself. We hope that the doctor will be
15 in better condition on Wednesday.
16 I'm sure as a doctor you can give yourself
17 the proper medications. And please don't answer. I
18 don't want to make your situation worse. I think that
19 what we are going to do is we will adjourn. We don't
20 have a hearing tomorrow, no point in insisting on that,
21 so we will see one another again on Wednesday morning
22 at ten o'clock.
23 Is that correct, Mr. Registrar?
24 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Yes,
25 Mr. President.
1 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Having said
2 that -- Mr. Nice. Please proceed.
3 MR. NICE: Can I make a proposal, which I
4 prefer to make after the witness has withdrawn, but it
5 might save time and help your timetable.
6 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Thank you for
7 having come, doctor. Go home. We are ordering you to
8 go home and to take care of yourself.
9 THE WITNESS: Thank you very much.
10 [The witness withdrew]
11 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Nice.
12 MR. NICE: As the Court will appreciate,
13 there will now be the three witnesses for hearing on
14 Wednesday, the two psychiatrists and the witness who is
15 coming tomorrow. It's obviously vital that we conclude
16 those three witnesses on the Wednesday in order that we
17 can deal with the speeches on the Thursday.
18 That may affect the time that the Court
19 starts to sit. That's a matter entirely for the
20 Court. But can I simply respectfully invite the Court
21 to consider reminding itself of the contents of the
22 earlier psychiatric reports, and the psychological
23 report, which have been prepared. I think there are
24 only four in number. And I am afraid I don't have
25 knowledge of whether any or all of them have been
1 translated from the English into French. Probably they
2 haven't -- copies haven't found their way to me. But I
3 suspect that considerable time will be saved if the
4 Chamber is familiar with and has copies of those
5 reports, which are respectively from Elsmann in April
6 '98; Herfst, if I pronounce it correctly, in April
7 '98; and then the report of which we have already
8 spoken, from Dr. Duits and his colleague in November of
9 1998. If the Chamber is short of any of those reports,
10 I have English versions of them available, but I don't
11 have French versions, I'm afraid.
12 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Mr. Registrar,
13 do we have those reports? I suppose we do.
14 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Yes, we do.
15 We have the reports.
16 JUDGE JORDA: [Interpretation] Very well. All
17 right. We will organise ourselves. I see that Judge
18 Rodrigues has them and has them in French as well.
19 Thank you very much, Mr. Nice, in having said
20 this. We will now adjourn until ten o'clock on
21 Wednesday.
22 --- Whereupon hearing adjourned at
23 2.51 p.m. to be reconvened on Wednesday,
24 the 24th day of November, 1999 at
25 10.00 a.m.