Page 48034
1 Tuesday, 7 October 2014
2 [Prosecution Rebuttal]
3 [Open session]
4 [The accused entered court]
5 --- Upon commencing at 9.01 a.m.
6 JUDGE KWON: Good morning, everyone.
7 Good morning, Mr. Vujic.
8 Yes, Mr. Tieger, you have the floor.
9 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President.
10 Your Honours, in response to your question on the 2nd of October
11 at transcript 48033, seeking clarity over the final brief's reference to
12 Count 7 in relation to Srebrenica, Your Honours are correct. We have
13 previously stated that Count 7 is not charged in relation to Srebrenica,
14 and of course we maintain that position. We are grateful to Your Honours
15 for the opportunity, therefore, to correct the record. We do not seek a
16 finding that Karadzic is responsible for the crime of deportation,
17 Count 7, in relation to Srebrenica.
18 Additionally, after the Defence closing argument, the
19 Trial Chamber inquired why the Prosecution could not make its declaration
20 with respect to incidents and charges on which no evidence was presented
21 after the closing argument, that is, in relation to 73 bis. So let me do
22 so now accordingly. The Prosecution does not intend to proceed further
23 with the incidents and charges against the accused which have been
24 excluded pursuant to Rule 73 bis.
25 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Tieger.
Page 48035
1 MR. TIEGER: Mr. President, Your Honours, I now --
2 JUDGE KWON: Just one second.
3 MR. TIEGER: Yes.
4 JUDGE KWON: Once we dealt with deportation, having heard all the
5 evidence and also heard the closing arguments, what specific incidents
6 are charged as deportation in municipalities?
7 MR. TIEGER: Well, it would be difficult to recite the totality.
8 I mean, those would be --
9 JUDGE KWON: If you could come back after the session.
10 MR. TIEGER: Sure. I mean, they would encompass basically the
11 entirety of the overarching JCE. So I'll see if there's some compact way
12 to define that for the Court's benefit, rather than by reference to the
13 overall charges.
14 JUDGE KWON: And when you come back, could you also address the
15 Chamber as to the elements that distinguish deportation from forcible
16 transfer, in particular in terms of the accused's mens rea.
17 MR. TIEGER: Very well.
18 JUDGE KWON: Thank you. Please continue.
19 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President.
20 Let me proceed, then, to address some of the positions taken by
21 the accused during his closing submissions.
22 At transcript 47885, Dr. Karadzic stated that he "did not
23 introduce a state of war in Republika Srpska so that the life of ordinary
24 citizens would not become militarised."
25 That is false. Apart from the fact that it would have changed
Page 48036
1 little for ordinary citizens - see, for example, P970, pages 104 and
2 334 - the real reason that Karadzic did not introduce a state of war was
3 to make it easier to ensure that expelled non-Serbs would not return.
4 And he explained this contemporaneously. In the context of an Assembly
5 discussion in September 1992, that's at D456, a discussion about the
6 borders of Republika Srpska and about ensuring separation from the
7 Muslims and Croats. At that time, Karadzic distinguished between
8 "external" borders, that is, those that separated Bosnia and Herzegovina
9 from Serbia or the Serbian Krajina in Croatia, and "internal" borders,
10 that is, those that would separate the Bosnian Serbs from Muslims and
11 Croats within Bosnia. And he said:
12 "We'll accept the external borders on condition that we get the
13 internal borders, but we will do everything we can to make the internal
14 borders thicker than the external ones without publicly saying so. Our
15 borders towards the Muslims and Croats are to be thicker than our borders
16 towards Serbia and Montenegro and the Serbian Krajina." D456, page 55.
17 In other words, "thicker borders" separating Serbs from Muslims
18 and Croats would prevent the Muslims and Croats from crossing those
19 borders and changing the newly formed demographics.
20 Karadzic then explained why a state of war had not been imposed,
21 and that's at page 57.
22 "We have refrained from introducing a state of war because it is
23 much more important, more founded and feasible, if something is done by
24 the civilian authorities without a state of war, under regular
25 circumstances, such as settlement and resettlement. When the civilian
Page 48037
1 authorities do this, it is much better, it is not discarded after the
2 war."
3 So contrary to Karadzic's claim to you last week that he
4 refrained from introducing a state of war in order to normalise
5 conditions of life in Republika Srpska, he did so to ensure the
6 permanence of the forcible transfers that had been and were being carried
7 out, reasoning that if people are moved out and resettled under the
8 apparent auspices of the regular civilian authorities, then this will not
9 be reversed after the war.
10 Now, that alone is sufficient to expose as false Karadzic's claim
11 that all citizens who left the territory could return to their homes when
12 they wished, claims that were recognised by internationals at the time as
13 "completely nonsense" because they were made in the context of ongoing
14 ethnic cleansing. And see the paragraph 80 of the confidential
15 Prosecution brief.
16 But even if and even though Dr. Karadzic couldn't sell this to
17 the internationals at the time, he now tries to sell it to you, repeating
18 the claim multiple times in the course of his submissions. For example,
19 T47899 and T48029.
20 He claimed at 47899 that he "rejected the speech of the member of
21 parliament who was saying that the refugees would not be able to return
22 or that mosques were destroyed." And that after this meeting he signed a
23 declaration enabling the return of refugees. This reference to his
24 reaction to the speech at the Assembly session is another blatant
25 mis-characterisation; the precise opposite is true. That deputy,
Page 48038
1 Vjestica, did not say that the refugees would not be able to return; he
2 was expressing concern that the latest peace proposal would permit them
3 to come back. And Karadzic assured him and the Assembly that it was not
4 true and there was no need to worry.
5 As he explained: "This is what was said about the control of the
6 borders. We will have barbed wire for ten years." P1379, pages 25
7 through 26.
8 As Karadzic stated at the 46th Assembly, P1403, page 157, his
9 forces had created new demographic realities that he intended to
10 maintain.
11 "We have created new realities. If you want to give Zvornik to
12 the Muslims, then you have to wage a new war in order to expel those
13 Serbs back to Zenica."
14 And Karadzic assured his followers that he would maintain that
15 reality despite any purported commitment to return required by
16 international agreements. So when the deputy -- the president of the
17 Deputies' Club Vojo Maksimovic advocated that non-Serbs be openly banned
18 from returning to areas under Serb control and expressed concern that
19 aspects of the peace proposals would trigger the return of Muslims and
20 Croats, stating: "Any thought about having 500 or more Muslims within
21 our future country is out of the question." P1385, pages 126 through
22 127.
23 When he expressed that concern, Karadzic explained the strategy
24 that would provide lip service to the principle of return but frustrate
25 it in practice.
Page 48039
1 "As to the return of the refugees, I owe an answer to Vojo's
2 question. According to international law, we have no right to ban the
3 return of the refugees. In principle, all refugees can return, but I
4 would just add one sentence. This also has to be a two-way process."
5 Karadzic recalled that a puzzled Owen had asked: "Why do you
6 insist on a two-way process?"
7 And then Karadzic explained it to the Assembly:
8 "When the Serbs from Zvornik return to Zenica, then the Muslims
9 from Prijedor will return to Prijedor. Therefore, it must be a two-way
10 process." That's at page 132 of that session.
11 And just in case that wasn't clear enough, he explained it again
12 at a subsequent Assembly session, the 53rd Assembly in 1995, when the
13 same issue was presented by the latest peace plan's inclusion of language
14 regarding "the right of refugees and displaced persons to be able to
15 return to their homes." Karadzic again emphasised that the RS would
16 insist on "an overall process." And he explained how this overall
17 process would effectively prevent non-Serbs from returning.
18 "That means that the Muslims from Kozluk can return to Kozluk, if
19 the Serbs from Kozluk return to Zenica. If they don't want to return,
20 then we need -- and if they cannot return, then we need a new war to
21 exchange that, and that's why I think we should always insist on this.
22 So an overall process, either overall or none at all."
23 Karadzic then pointed out the cleverness of his ploy.
24 "We can act the Serbian Cyrillic way and tell it to their face or
25 we can be a bit cunning. We do have to be a bit cunning."
Page 48040
1 Karadzic's cunning approach fooled no one then and should not
2 fool you now.
3 At transcript 47861 Karadzic challenged the Prosecution's
4 position about the Cutileiro Plan, stating:
5 "We accepted the maps and I had to tell the MPs that we were not
6 accepting the maps because otherwise we would have had a very difficult
7 situation in parliament."
8 Cutileiro, Karadzic's witness, made clear that Karadzic's claim
9 that he "accepted the maps" is false. Cutileiro explained that the map
10 that was attached to the Statement of Principles was "a preliminary map"
11 which merely reflected the existing, absolute, and relative majorities in
12 the municipalities across Bosnia. That's T33962 and 33965. There was
13 nothing to accept or not accept; it was the existing situation and
14 therefore the starting point for any further discussions. It was
15 obvious, as Cutileiro testified, that any discussion of what territory
16 would be encompassed by what entity would be a source of major upcoming
17 dispute. And therefore, Cutileiro explained, it was going to be the
18 object of a Working Group to define borders precisely "but that work was
19 never done." That's at T33961.
20 And although Karadzic insists on the contrary to you now, he
21 never put that to his own witness, Cutileiro, and never attempted to
22 suggest that Cutileiro was wrong when he said nothing moved beyond the
23 meaningless map that was attached to the Statement of Principles.
24 Cutileiro also made clear that the -- that those negotiations
25 never reached the agreement stage. The agreement in principles was
Page 48041
1 merely a preliminary step toward further negotiations. That's at T33955.
2 Karadzic himself emphasised at the time that the agreement was
3 not final, that is, the Statement of Principles was not a final
4 agreement, and made clear that he never intended to honour even those
5 preliminary principles. He reassured the Assembly first that the
6 document "is not final" and it "has not been signed." That's at D90,
7 page 6.
8 He emphasised that he would "never have signed this paper as a
9 document, never, never, never." That's at D90, page 43.
10 One of the reasons the agreement in principles was unacceptable
11 to Karadzic was that, as Cutileiro confirmed at T33958, it contemplated
12 that Bosnia would be a single state. In February 1995, after Karadzic
13 had succeeded in forcibly creating a largely mono-ethnic Serb state, he
14 recalled:
15 "The first principle or the first position in all Cutileiro
16 principles, if you remember, was that Bosnia was a state consisting of
17 this and that, but it always said that Bosnia was a state and we never
18 accepted that." That's at P1407, page 116.
19 Karadzic's repeated invocation of the Cutileiro Agreement to
20 justify the implementation of the common criminal purpose is not only
21 conceptionally flawed but grounded on falsehoods. And speaking of
22 falsehoods, at T47867, Karadzic said:
23 "And the table made by Ewa Tabeau shows that more Muslims left
24 municipalities after the Dayton Accords than before. When the war was
25 over, when the borders were clear, people started moving. Until then,
Page 48042
1 they stayed, although they had the option to sign up for convoys and
2 didn't use that option."
3 This astonishing claim is based on a manipulation of one of
4 Dr. Tabeau's tables during cross-examination at T28349 through 71, when
5 Karadzic asked about the percentage of people who left after the war in
6 comparison to the percentage who left between 1991 and 1995. Perhaps we
7 can use Prijedor and Sanski Most, two municipalities I discussed last
8 week, as examples of this manipulation.
9 So as you can see, according to P5010, page 4, table 2, as well
10 as Tabeau's testimony at T28169 through 70, there were 49.351 Muslims in
11 Prijedor in 1991. 42.000 had moved out by 1993 and 3.600 remained in
12 1995. Equally, according to the table, 28.136 Muslims were in
13 Sanski Most in 1991; 24.000 had moved out by 1993; and approximately 3350
14 were left in 1995.
15 Now, although the RS sources for the mid-conflict figures are
16 different sources than Tabeau's statistical sources, these figures
17 unmistakably reveal that the vast majority of Muslims were gone by 1995.
18 But not to Dr. Karadzic, who insisted on pointing out in
19 cross-examination the percentage of decline between 1995 and 1997, a
20 highly misleading and meaningless figure because by far the biggest part
21 of the population change took place before. And indeed, if you check the
22 Prijedor statistics, even that claim is factually in error, even that
23 meaningless claim, because in fact in Prijedor, the percentage between
24 1995 and 1997 is slightly higher than the percentage before.
25 In any event, Dr. Karadzic now trots out this irrelevant argument
Page 48043
1 again, this time dressing it up as if it was about raw numbers instead of
2 percentages, and hoping no one will notice. This is as disingenuous as
3 saying that you're happy for everyone to return even as you're kicking
4 them out, and hoping no one will notice. And we'll see more of this
5 approach when we discuss his Sarajevo arguments.
6 Your Honours, some points were raised regarding Count 1 of the
7 indictment. Now, first, contrary to the Defence suggestion, this count
8 does not turn on any specific pieces of evidence that the Appeals Chamber
9 cited as examples, examples that alone were sufficient to support a
10 98 bis finding. Those were merely exemplars for the totality of the
11 evidence supporting the finding. In any event, the thrust of the Defence
12 submission is that the Chamber should essentially defer to or is
13 constrained by the findings in other cases, including Brdjanin, Stakic,
14 and even the Eichmann case.
15 As you have noted previously and as the Appeals Chamber itself
16 noted in response to essentially the same argument, that's found at
17 para 94 of their decision, this Chamber must adjudicate Count 1 based on
18 the totality of the evidence on the record in this case. In assessing
19 the intent of the accused, it is necessary to consider, amongst the
20 totality of that evidence, the inference that arises from acts
21 attributable to him. Many of the destructive acts against the Muslim and
22 Croat communities were committed by his army and his police. By
23 contrast, none of the accused in previous cases were the president of the
24 RS and supreme commander. Indeed, Karadzic himself elicited evidence
25 from both Stakic and Brdjanin that underscores their more limited
Page 48044
1 authority over those organs. He led evidence, for instance, that Stakic
2 could not issue orders to the army or the police, that's D4195 at
3 paras 20 through 21, organs that Stakic acknowledged were responsible for
4 widespread destructive acts, that's T45220 through 22. And he led
5 evidence that Brdjanin did not have command authority over the army,
6 that's D4034 at paragraph 38.
7 Karadzic is now attempting to draw analogies to their cases,
8 analogies that are rendered inapt by virtue of the very evidence that he
9 led. Additionally, the Defence ignores that the Stakic case did not
10 involve a vertical JCE going up to Karadzic, although the Trial Chamber
11 in that case went out of its way to note the indications that there was
12 one. That's trial judgement at para 551.
13 Yet, while Stakic did not command the army and police that
14 participated so significantly in destructive acts in Prijedor, the Stakic
15 Appeals Chamber found, based on the evidence in that case, that a
16 reasonable Trial Chamber could have found Stakic responsible for
17 genocide, although it was not prepared to overturn the Trial Chamber's
18 determination.
19 The Defence also cited the Eichmann case, asserting that the
20 failure to convict Eichmann of genocide for the two-year period when Jews
21 were deported rather than exterminated supports the Defence position. It
22 does not. The Eichmann case, which distinguished between the period of
23 deportations and the commencement of exterminations, merely confirms the
24 obvious, that forcible transfer alone does not constitute genocide, as I
25 observed in our closing submissions. And one or two genocidal acts
Page 48045
1 appended to forcible transfer would not ipso facto transform it into
2 genocide. But that is very far from the case here, with thousands and
3 thousands of genocidal acts.
4 In citing the Eichmann case, the Defence attempts to suggest that
5 this is a deportation rather than a genocidal case, as if they are
6 somehow mutually exclusive. Genocidal intent often embraces the forcible
7 displacement of a significant segment of the population. You need look
8 no further than the Srebrenica precedents from this Tribunal to clearly
9 see that destructive acts and forcible transfer can combine very
10 effectively to reflect genocidal intent. As Judge Shahabuddeen stated:
11 "... standing alone, forcible transfer did not constitute
12 genocide, but in this case the transfer did not stand alone ... it was
13 part - an integral part - of one single scheme to commit genocide
14 involving killings, forcible transfer, and destruction of homes."
15 That's the Krstic appeal judgement, separate opinion of
16 Judge Shahabuddeen at paragraph 35.
17 The determination of genocidal intent arises from, in addition to
18 direct evidence from the mouth of the accused, the combined effect of the
19 acts that the accused intentionally inflicted on the community and its
20 foundations of life. An assessment of that combined intent on the
21 community necessarily embraces forcible displacement, in addition to
22 killings and other genocidal acts.
23 Similarly, Your Honours, it does not matter if the motive for
24 destruction, for example, to create a "secure" ethnically separate
25 territory, is one that might have been achieved through means other than
Page 48046
1 the destruction of the community. The issue is the intent that
2 accompanies the genocidal and other destructive acts. And when one kills
3 thousands, traumatises, imprisoned, debilitates thousands more, destroys
4 most homes and sacral objects, and scatters group members to the winds,
5 the intent to destroy that community inescapably follows.
6 Finally, the Defence does something here that they did throughout
7 the course of their submissions --
8 JUDGE KWON: Before going further, Mr. Tieger. You distinguished
9 the accused's case from the cases of Stakic and Brdjanin. How would you
10 distinguish his case from the case of Krajisnik then?
11 MR. TIEGER: Well, with -- first of all, you'd have to look at
12 the precise evidence in the case, but as you are well aware from
13 Mr. Krajisnik's testimony here, he -- he was not the supreme commander of
14 the military and he purported not to be, that I don't -- the evidence in
15 that case reflected in the judgement did not turn on that sort of
16 finding. Further, the expressions of intent came directly out of this
17 accused's mouth, not his. There are a battery of distinctions in that --
18 in that particular case, aside from the nuances of the particular
19 evidence and the totality of the evidence which the Court in that case
20 had to assess.
21 Further, this Court would have to -- if making such a distinction
22 indeed had relevance - and I would suggest it does not - then this Court
23 would have to determine the extent to which that -- any previous
24 Trial Chamber may have become caught up in the supposed dichotomy between
25 forcible transfer and genocide, without appreciating the contribution
Page 48047
1 that forcible transfer may make to establishing genocidal intent.
2 So there are many ways of distinguishing the Krajisnik case, but
3 as I mentioned before, it is for this Chamber based on the totality of
4 the evidence which is unprecedented, I would suggest, whether or not the
5 genocidal acts attributable to Dr. Karadzic were accompanied by the
6 requisite intent.
7 Mr. President, I was indicating -- I'm sorry. I don't know if
8 the Court wanted to continue with that.
9 JUDGE KWON: I was waiting for the translation. Please continue.
10 Thank you, Mr. Tieger.
11 MR. TIEGER: Mr. President, I had mentioned motive and then the
12 focus -- and then the fact that the focus needs to be on the intent, not
13 the motive. Then I went on to say that there was an effort by the
14 Defence to do something we see permeating their submissions, and that was
15 the attempt to suggest an innocuous interpretation for Dr. Karadzic's
16 repeated statements about the extinction, annihilation, and bloodshed
17 that awaited Bosnian Muslims and Croats. And in doing so, he asked
18 Your Honours to look at the evidence piecemeal, divorced from the overall
19 pattern of crimes that took place.
20 Now, taken in isolation, both from other statements and also,
21 more importantly, from the overall context, the significance and meaning
22 of those statements might theoretically be susceptible of various
23 interpretations. But those statements did not occur in isolation. They
24 were made by the most powerful leader of the Bosnian Serbs, a man at the
25 helm of the forces that would implement his policies through countless
Page 48048
1 destructive acts against the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat
2 communities. Those acts, which reveal an unmistakable intent to destroy
3 the foundations of life of those communities, blow away any fanciful
4 interpretations of Dr. Karadzic's statements and confirm them as direct
5 expressions of his intent.
6 Mr. President, Your Honours, let me turn to some of the Defence
7 submissions on Sarajevo, and on the heels of the discussion about the
8 attempted manipulation of Tabeau's statistics, let me first turn to
9 another effort at statistical charlatanism.
10 The accused claimed, with respect to Markale I, that Dr. Zecevic
11 asserted that the projectile entered at a 60-degree angle and claimed a
12 margin of error of 33 per cent. That's his claim. That means, according
13 to Dr. Karadzic, that it could have been between 40 degrees and
14 79.8 degrees, a "huge range," and therefore it "could have been fired by
15 anyone but the Chinese." That's at T48005.
16 These statistics have nothing to do with Zecevic's analysis and
17 everything to do with Karadzic's special statistical manipulations.
18 Follow how he gets there.
19 One, based on the configuration of the surrounding buildings, all
20 agree that the minimum and maximum at which the projectile might have
21 descended was between 50 degrees and the very steep 85 degrees, that is,
22 somewhere within this 35-degree range.
23 Two, Zecevic actually calculated that the projectile descended at
24 a 60-degree angle, plus or minus 5 degrees.
25 Three, Dr. Zecevic's 10-degree margin of error reflected
Page 48049
1 approximately 33 per cent of the total 35-degree range, a margin of error
2 that Karadzic's expert Allsop agreed was "generous."
3 Four, with no mathematical or evidentiary basis whatsoever,
4 Karadzic then reapplies that 33 per cent to Zecevic's 60-degree finding,
5 angle of descent finding, coming up with a new range of error of nearly
6 plus or minus 20 degrees and attributing it to Zecevic, when in fact
7 Zecevic actually said it was plus or minus 5. And all of that tortured
8 logic is an effort to obscure the important fact which is that when
9 Dr. Karadzic's expert Dr. Allsop was asked whether Zecevic's generous
10 margin of error of plus or minus 5 degrees addressed all of Allsop's
11 concerns about possible variables and therefore allowed for a
12 sufficiently accurate determination of the fire distance, when Dr. Allsop
13 was asked that he answered that it did. That's at T29508 through 09.
14 During his submissions regarding Sarajevo, Dr. Karadzic made
15 generalised claims of alleged selectivity by the Prosecution, finally
16 attempting to distill it with an alleged example at T48007. He claimed
17 that the Prosecution failed "in full" a document in which the last
18 omitted line reveals the opposite of what is claimed. But the reality is
19 that it is Karadzic, once again, who omits the critical portion of the
20 document.
21 Now, he was referring to an excerpt from Banbury's diary quoting
22 him as saying, that is quoting Karadzic as saying: "Retaliation is
23 productive. When they shell Doboj and we retaliate, it's effective."
24 You see that on the screen in front of you. And he showed the Court that
25 slide, the slide which shows General Janvier confronting Karadzic with
Page 48050
1 the fact that this retaliation targeted civilians and Karadzic ostensibly
2 denying it, claiming: "No, military targets." And this supposedly
3 reflected a classic form of cheating, according to Karadzic, by the
4 Prosecution.
5 But what he didn't show you are the very next lines of this very
6 page, lines which show that this denial was completely superficial and
7 disingenuous, and those lines are shown here. As Banbury explained, when
8 Janvier disagreed with Karadzic, based on what was by that point, that
9 is, in late April 1995, the very obvious fact that shelling in Sarajevo
10 targeted civilians, Karadzic simply switched tacks, moving from a false
11 denial to brushing off the shelling of civilians by his forces with a
12 joke and a big laugh. "Maybe some of our gunners have bad eyes, (laughs
13 big)."
14 In short, in order to falsely create the impression that the
15 Prosecution misleadingly cited a document which was actually favourable
16 to him, Karadzic employed the very tactic that he falsely accused the
17 Prosecution of using.
18 Not content with this brazen falsehood he goes on to argue that
19 only the Muslim side "could benefit from the suffering of Sarajevo." And
20 therefore, there would be no reason for him to engage in terror. That's
21 T48007.
22 Of course, this is directly refuted by the very exchange we just
23 discussed with Janvier, during which Karadzic noted that the shelling of
24 Sarajevo to retaliate against the other side for events elsewhere was "an
25 effective" strategy.
Page 48051
1 Similarly, in March 1995, Mladic told General Smith that the
2 intensified sniping of civilians in Sarajevo was in retaliation for Serb
3 military casualties. That's at P2451, paras 94 through 95, and T13330.
4 And Galic threatened Richard Mole several times that if events
5 elsewhere did not go in the Serbs' favour, the city would be shelled.
6 For example, telling Mole on one occasion that if the shelling from Igman
7 on to Lukavica did not halt, he would "fire his weapons on to the city of
8 Sarajevo." P1426, paras 92 through 94.
9 As Mole described the situation more generally:
10 "There was an accepted norm that if the Serb side failed to
11 achieve their objectives - and I use that in the widest sense, in BH, so
12 that anything from a local complaint to something else that happened
13 within Bosnia - the general perception, which I shared, was that Sarajevo
14 would suffer as a result."
15 And Mole explained that this was understood to mean that
16 artillery fire would be brought to bear on the city in response. P1426,
17 para 91.
18 Mole's observation was echoed by witness after witness. I refer
19 to the evidence cited in our brief at para 609 and the concrete examples
20 of Serb forces retaliating by shelling civilian areas of Sarajevo, as
21 described in paragraph 736.
22 Karadzic's claim that the Serb side did not benefit from the
23 terror campaign is false. He himself confirmed the opposite, as did his
24 subordinates, and international military officials watched it happen.
25 At transcript page 8170, Karadzic invoked Bosnian army
Page 48052
1 General Karavelic in support of his assertion that the SRK used shelling
2 appropriately to neutralise enemy firing positions, a wildly misleading
3 claim that was exposed during trial when it was revealed that Karavelic
4 said in full:
5 "Throughout the war, the Serb forces made no distinction between
6 military and civilian targets. Anything that moved, including civilian
7 pedestrians, came under fire. Hospitals, schools, and historical
8 buildings received direct artillery, tank and mortar fire on a regular
9 basis, while houses, apartments and gathering places, such as markets and
10 waterlines, would be shelled without seeming pattern. Nobody knew when
11 and where a shell would hit, so every place was dangerous."
12 Fraser explained that this description by Karavelic "distinctly
13 resembles the pattern that we saw" during his tour of duty. That's at
14 T8170.
15 Dr. Karadzic also spoke about what a "terrible" and
16 "catastrophic" weapon multiple-barrel rocket-launchers were, insisting
17 that the SRK never used these rockets. That's at T48015.
18 And while they were not typically used, he should nevertheless
19 make that claim to the parents of the 4-year-old girl killed in a rocket
20 attack on the city centre in late August 1995. And for that see P1953,
21 paras 98 through 100.
22 In any event, Karadzic's acknowledgement that rockets should
23 never be used in a place like Sarajevo confirms the inherently
24 inappropriate and inaccurate weapons system upon which modified air bombs
25 were based, and of course it cannot be reconciled with Karadzic's case
Page 48053
1 that they somehow became less "terrible" and "catastrophic" when affixed
2 to a 100- or 250-kilo air bomb.
3 Your Honours, I now need to move into private session, please.
4 JUDGE KWON: Yes, we move into private session.
5 MR. TIEGER: At --
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24
25
Page 48055
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 (redacted)
8 (redacted)
9 (redacted)
10 (redacted)
11 (redacted)
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 (redacted)
17 (redacted)
18 (redacted)
19 [Open session]
20 THE REGISTRAR: We're in open session, Your Honours.
21 MR. TIEGER: Karadzic also attacked the professionalism and
22 objectivity of local Sarajevo police investigators, relying on sweeping
23 generalisations to do so. His specific attack is reserved for an
24 unscheduled sniping incident at Nehru Street. That's at T47958 through
25 59.
Page 48056
1 Karadzic complains that the bullet's vertical trajectory was
2 upward by 70 centimetres across a 2.5 metre room, presumably suggesting
3 an angle that meant the fire was too close to be a Serb position, and
4 that the horizontal trajectory was not calculated but would have revealed
5 that fire had not come from a Serb position if it had been calculated.
6 Again, both claims are wildly false.
7 As reflected in P1911, Karadzic has not just doubled or tripled
8 the actual upward trajectory but exaggerated by a factor of nine, by
9 nine times, claiming that the bullet went up 70 centimetres when it went
10 up only 8, producing an angle of fire actually of 1.4 degrees.
11 Further, contrary to Karadzic's claim, the investigators in fact
12 calculated the horizontal trajectory using a tried and true method. As
13 KDZ477 testified, they used a piece of string to connect the entry and
14 lodging points, thus identifying the trajectory, which pointed to where
15 the bullet came from: SRK territory in Dobrinja 1. That's T10977.
16 Karadzic's remaining arguments about local investigators, T47989
17 through 91, are actually groundless, amounting to a very general
18 statement such as "the witness made mistakes" and then offering, through
19 naked citations, what is essentially a cut-and-paste of large portions of
20 examination, which he then dumps in the lap of the Trial Chamber to guess
21 what it means and what significance should be attached to it.
22 These broad allegations are replete with mis-characterisations.
23 Many of the occasions where he claims a witness made a mistake are
24 actually responses where the witness undermined the premise of Karadzic's
25 question itself. Rather than revealing "mistakes" by the witness, they
Page 48057
1 reveal failures of cross-examination by Karadzic. For instance, Karadzic
2 alleges that one of Nedzib Djozo's many so-called "mistakes" included his
3 evidence at T9607 through 09 that there were more than a hundred sniping
4 victims attacked from the SRK's position in Spicasta Stijena. Karadzic
5 then said:
6 "I will put it to you that there weren't even ten in total."
7 To which the witness responded:
8 "That is a ridiculous statement. We know exactly how many people
9 were killed. We kept a record."
10 There was no impeachment and Karadzic moved on. Later on
11 redirect examination at T9644 through 46, the Prosecution tendered P1991,
12 the Stari Grad log-book showing dozens of killed sniping victims in
13 Sedrenik, including children and the elderly.
14 This shows that what Karadzic considers to be a mistake is
15 instead examples where a witness disagreed with him, and where the
16 witness was clearly right.
17 But this was just one of many such examples of citations he gave
18 for alleged mistakes of local investigators in Sarajevo.
19 He claimed, as another example, that Sead Besic committed
20 "cardinal errors" and then relies on examples such as T9439 through 40,
21 where Karadzic simply disagrees with the witness about whether it was
22 appropriate to move bodies after Markale I.
23 Likewise at 9458 through 64, Karadzic's cross-examination fell
24 apart as he attempted to show that a photograph depicted a different
25 stabiliser based on its length. The witness demonstrated that when the
Page 48058
1 stabiliser was laid flat on a table next to a ruler from above, as in the
2 photo, it looked shorter than in reality due to the tail fins which
3 raised the back of the stabiliser. And the witness then identified
4 distinctive markings that matched the stabiliser in the photo with the
5 stabiliser in court. This was clearly not a "mistake" by the witness,
6 but a mistake in perception by Dr. Karadzic.
7 He lists transcript pages, as another example, from KDZ166's
8 testimony to show alleged "mistakes." Such as T8295, again, there's no
9 mistake. The witness simply stated that his personal task was not to
10 establish the direction of fire, but that this was for the ballistics
11 team on -- the ballistics experts on the investigation teams.
12 Or T8316 through 17, Karadzic asked the witness whether he was
13 aware that ABiH launched a military offensive the day before the SRK's
14 modified air bomb attack in scheduled incident G15, and the witness said:
15 "No, I was a police officer. I was not an army member." Again, not a
16 "mistake."
17 Or T8321, no mistakes here either. Karadzic tried to get the
18 witness to agree that a wire factory was actually making shells and the
19 witness said he didn't know.
20 The same is true of Karadzic's claim that KDZ477's findings were
21 "unusable." At T9 -- 10944 through 47, cited by Dr. Karadzic, the
22 witness simply explained that he personally was not a ballistics expert.
23 And at 10977 through 978, an exchange which related to the same
24 unscheduled sniping incident on Nehru Street that Karadzic falsely cited
25 as having a bullet trajectory upwards of 70 centimetres, and claiming
Page 48059
1 that the horizontal trajectory had not been determined, well, here
2 Karadzic reveals that he was actually aware that the horizontal
3 trajectory had been calculated, and instead chastised the witness for not
4 reporting in his diary or report that he used a string to establish the
5 trajectory. Again, no mistake. At T980 the witness said:
6 "In such a situation you always use a string to carry out that
7 measurement. However, I didn't have to write that in my diary, that a
8 string was used for it. It simply had to be done in order to establish
9 where the bullet came from."
10 Mr. President, are we proceeding for an hour at a time or an hour
11 and a half?
12 JUDGE KWON: Originally we scheduled 90 minutes for your rebuttal
13 argument.
14 MR. TIEGER: Okay.
15 JUDGE KWON: But if it is convenient, we can take a break.
16 MR. TIEGER: That's fine, Mr. President. I mean --
17 JUDGE KWON: How long will you --
18 MR. TIEGER: I will go the 90 minutes, so I presume you want to
19 break at this point, if that was the same schedule.
20 JUDGE KWON: Sure.
21 MR. TIEGER: But I thought we were proceeding on the hour and a
22 half schedule.
23 JUDGE KWON: I am thinking that originally we planned a half-hour
24 break between the rebuttal and rejoinder argument.
25 MR. TIEGER: Right. So I thought --
Page 48060
1 JUDGE KWON: The Chamber is just wondering whether half an hour
2 would be sufficient for the Defence to prepare, given that rejoinder
3 argument is just response to the rebuttal arguments.
4 MR. ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. President, we were thinking the same
5 thing, that it was a little bit unfair to expect us to respond so quickly
6 when the Prosecution had such a long time to make its rebuttal. So we
7 would like to have as much time as possible.
8 JUDGE KWON: 45 minutes would be sufficient or do you think you
9 need more than that?
10 MR. ROBINSON: Well, would you mind taking an early lunch and we
11 can work through the lunch break and give us an hour or so would be good.
12 JUDGE KWON: Having heard your voice, it's better to have a
13 break, a short break, 20 minutes.
14 MR. TIEGER: Yes, Mr. President.
15 JUDGE KWON: We'll resume at 10.23.
16 --- Recess taken at 10.03 a.m.
17 --- On resuming at 10.23 a.m.
18 JUDGE KWON: Yes, please continue, Mr. Tieger.
19 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President.
20 In relation to attacks on the investigators, just two more
21 examples of what Dr. Karadzic considers a mistake. He said that
22 Dragan Miokovic committed "mistakes which disqualify everything that he
23 provided to this case." But it is not even clear from the citations he
24 offers what part of the testimony he could conceivably consider a
25 mistake, such as at T8591 through 92 or 8631 through 633, with the latter
Page 48061
1 passage concluding with the Presiding Judge admonishing Dr. Karadzic that
2 his line of questioning involving "asking the witness to draw meaningless
3 lines is unhelpful."
4 Similarly, he claims that Emir Turkusic made mistakes, for
5 example at 9066 through 69. And that passage concludes with a comment
6 from the Presiding Judge that it was unclear what point Karadzic was even
7 trying to mistake. The quote was from the Presiding Judge:
8 "What I wanted you to do was repeat your question instead of
9 wrapping up on your part. What was your question? It's not clear to us
10 what the question was and what the answer was."
11 And he made similar unfounded attacks on the credibility of
12 international witnesses. For instance, at T47980, he falsely accused
13 Jeremy Bowen of lying about the position of Serb gunners. In fact, Bowen
14 frankly acknowledged at the outset of his testimony that he had made a
15 mistake as to the location of the shooter of a busload of children in one
16 of his stories, a mistake caused by the fact that he had been in the city
17 a short time. And Bowen emphasised that the mistake had "no bearing" on
18 the overall truth of the report. That's found at T10079 and 10081.
19 In another example, at T47974, Karadzic falsely claimed that
20 Banbury "admitted" that "the Muslim side had actually carried out tricks
21 in order to deceive the international community." And he accused Banbury
22 of failing to put that in his original statement. In fact, as can be
23 shown at 13369 through 70, Banbury agreed only that the Bosnian Serb
24 authorities made these kinds of allegations and that he took note of
25 their "warnings."
Page 48062
1 Similarly, Karadzic tried and failed to undermine Harland's
2 evidence by asserting at T47976 that Harland "said in his own words he
3 was there to defend the government and the measures and the agreements
4 did not apply to the government forces." He cited to transcript
5 page 2066 and paragraphs 31 to 33 of Harland's amalgamated statement,
6 neither reference contains any evidence even remotely supporting this
7 proposition.
8 Mr. President, let me now turn to the accused's submissions
9 related to Srebrenica.
10 First, an isolated or a preliminary matter. At transcript pages
11 48024 to 48028, Karadzic argued that the Srebrenica-related graves
12 included victims from prior to 1995. P4841 is a BiH Federal Commission
13 for Missing Persons list of persons exhumed in Bosnia in various
14 municipalities, including Zvornik, between 1996 and 2007. And I refer
15 you also to P4837 at paragraphs 31, 64, and 72. Karadzic points to
16 individuals whose disappearance predates 1995 and argues that they should
17 be discounted from the total number of 1995 Srebrenica victims, but that
18 reasoning is flawed. The individuals on P4841 whose disappearance
19 predates 1995 were not counted by Janc and do not form part of the total
20 figure of 5.977 victims in Srebrenica-related graves. And for that see
21 the Srebrenica Narrative, paragraphs 170 through 171.
22 Two individuals listed at P4841, at lines 2025 and 2128, have
23 dates of disappearance listed as 12 July 1990 and 12 July 1905,
24 respectively. It is clear that the year of disappearance listed there or
25 recorded there for those two individuals is an obvious data entry error
Page 48063
1 and, in fact, the ICMP records their date of disappearance as July 1995.
2 And for that see P5913.
3 I can also direct Your Honours' attention to P4771 at page 145,
4 line 294, and P107 -- and page 107, rather, line 18.
5 But let me move on to the bulk of the Srebrenica submissions by
6 the accused.
7 What is the Defence case? Mr. Robinson said in his submissions
8 on Thursday that thousands of Bosnian Muslim prisoners were executed by
9 the likes of Frank Kos and Drazen Erdemovic. That's T47952 through 53.
10 He claims that a reasonable inference is that "Karadzic never planned or
11 ordered those executions," that they were "concealed from him," and that
12 he is therefore "not guilty of genocide." That's T47938 and see also
13 47947, lines 16 through 17.
14 He went on to claim, referring to the 2 August intercept in which
15 Beara and Stevo talk about getting back from the Republic of Serbia
16 Muslim men who had fled across the River Drina, that Beara may have been
17 saying that it would be no good if Karadzic agreed to exchanges and then
18 the lack of prisoners from Srebrenica became known and that this shows
19 that Karadzic had no knowledge that the prisoners would be executed or
20 had been executed. And Mr. Robinson added:
21 "And there were reasons for people in the VRS to have concealed
22 executions from President Karadzic," T47947.
23 It seems that Mr. Robinson is arguing that Beara and the VRS were
24 concealing executions from Karadzic and this is also what is said or
25 implied in the Defence brief, paragraphs 3039, 3110, 3114, 15, 53, 81
Page 48064
1 through 84, 3257, 3259 through 60, 80 through 81, 85, and 98.
2 Who is Karadzic blaming? He said on Thursday:
3 "Now what happened when they entered Srebrenica? I saw a few
4 killings of some people who happened to be there by members of that
5 well-known platoon and the members of this platoon took part in the
6 killing of POWs." T48022.
7 He was referring to the 10th Sabotage Detachment.
8 Then he said:
9 "None of my generals or ministers should even have been indicted,
10 let alone convicted and sentenced to very long terms of imprisonment. It
11 is justice that was condemned." T48025 through 26.
12 So is Karadzic blaming Colonel Beara as Mr. Robinson does? Does
13 the Defence blame Mladic and the VRS Main Staff or not? What is the
14 Defence case? In any event, blaming Beara, who told KDZ320 that his
15 orders to get rid of the Muslim prisoners in Zvornik came from "two
16 presidents," that's found at our brief at 992 through 5, and who told
17 Stevo in the 2 August intercept that they now had to tell our chief and
18 the supreme chief, that is, Mladic and Karadzic, blaming Beara does not
19 exculpate Karadzic.
20 But both Mr. Robinson and Mr. Karadzic blame executioners like
21 Frank Kos and Drazen Erdemovic, both of whom were members of the
22 10th Sabotage Detachment, a unit that was directly subordinated to
23 Mladic, see paragraph 823 of our brief, under the command and control
24 therefore of General Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. And on the
25 16th of July, 1995, eight members of the 10th Sabotage Detachment,
Page 48065
1 including Kos and Erdemovic, travelled under orders from their base in
2 Dragasevac to the Zvornik Brigade headquarters. From there, they were
3 taken to Branjevo Farm, where they executed over 1.000 Muslim men. Beara
4 told them in the immediate aftermath of the executions: "You have done a
5 great job and the state will be grateful to you." See 1014 through 1020
6 of our brief.
7 And the Republika Srpska state was grateful to them. In
8 January 1996, the VRS and MUP leadership, including Dragan Kijac, then
9 minister of the interior, collaborated to protect members of the
10 10th Sabotage Detachment from arrest and transfer to the ICTY, by issuing
11 them fake IDs. That's at our brief paragraph 1070.
12 On the 22nd of March, 1996, Karadzic had a meeting with Mladic,
13 see 1058 through 59 and 1071 through 74 of our brief. US Secretary of
14 State Albright had just visited the execution and burial site at
15 Branjevo Farm, which is in the Pilica area. Karadzic talked about this
16 in his closing and he said:
17 "Nothing did happen in Srebrenica. My attention is being drawn
18 to Srebrenica and to civilians, and whatever is happening happened 80 to
19 100 kilometres away from Srebrenica and it wasn't happening to civilians.
20 And of course when we got the most convincing evidence, these mortal
21 remains on the surface, when Madeleine Albright found this, then there
22 were orders to investigate that and the military prosecutor said no one
23 know anything about this and no one wants to know anything about this.
24 There was an immediate response." That's at T48023.
25 And Karadzic was not being honest. Remember the contemporaneous
Page 48066
1 statement and record made by Mladic in his diary of what Karadzic said
2 following Albright's visit:
3 "A big show was put on for Albright. She expected they would
4 find 1200 Muslim bodies at Pilica, but they found some five bodies."
5 That's P1490, page 47.
6 When Karadzic said that Albright expected to find 1200 bodies, he
7 was referring to an account of the Branjevo Farm executions which had
8 appeared in the Bosnian press that day, an interview with Drazen
9 Erdemovic, one of the executioners whom he and Mr. Robinson blame.
10 That's P6451. Karadzic's subordinates put on a "big show" for Albright.
11 It is clear that he knew then that the bodies of the Muslim men and boys
12 had been removed from the mass grave at Branjevo Farm and reburied months
13 earlier. That's why they only found "some five bodies" as Karadzic said.
14 On the following day, 23 March 1996, Karadzic ordered the VRS
15 Main Staff and MUP to set up a "mixed expert commission" of three members
16 each "to fully investigate and determine the facts regarding the alleged
17 discovery of two decomposed bodies at the scene of earlier battles with
18 the Muslim side in the Pilica area, Zvornik municipality." That's P3163,
19 pages 6 and 8.
20 This is the order to which Karadzic referred in his closing at
21 T48023.
22 But there were no battles in the Pilica area, see T23537. There
23 were only mass executions of unarmed Muslim prisoners. Karadzic's order
24 was a sham, part of the cover-up. The commission's membership, the MUP
25 and VRS, assured that there would be no real investigation and there
Page 48067
1 wasn't. This was confirmed by a meeting on 25 March chaired by
2 Dragomir Vasic. A military prosecutor, Drinic, who attended the meeting
3 "by accident," reported after:
4 "None of the people present knew any details of the locality and
5 of the actions that needed to be undertaken nor was anyone informed about
6 what would be found on site, or else no one wanted to know." See our
7 brief at 1074 and P3163.
8 Karadzic alluded to this evidence in his closing at T48023.
9 There was never an investigation or prosecution by either the VRS or MUP
10 into the Srebrenica events, nor was there ever intended to be. See
11 paragraph 1054 of our brief. I also refer you to paragraph 1075 and
12 remind you of Karadzic's 1 April 1996 order for another investigation
13 that was never intended to happen and the evidence related to that.
14 In the Srebrenica component, as in the other aspects of the case,
15 the Defence seeks to have you consider evidence in isolation, detached
16 from the totality of the evidence. Let's just take one of the "facts"
17 that Mr. Robinson drew to your attention last week.
18 "Fact: Dr. Karadzic spoke with Miroslav Deronjic on 13 July
19 at 2010. Deronjic informed him that they had 2.000 and there would be
20 more during the night. Dr. Karadzic said that all goods must be placed
21 in the warehouses by 12.00 tomorrow, not in warehouses there but
22 somewhere else. Deronjic said he understood."
23 Mr. Robinson went on to say that a reasonable inference is that
24 Karadzic was referring to sending the prisoners to Batkovic, not Zvornik
25 where they were delivered for death. Mr. Robinson asked rhetorically how
Page 48068
1 Deronjic could possibly understand that the prisoners were to go to
2 Zvornik and that Batkovic was the likely place in view of
3 Milenko Todorovic's testimony that they received instructions at one
4 point to prepare Batkovic prison to receive prisoners from Srebrenica.
5 But let's tether to the totality of the evidence the extraordinary fact
6 that Karadzic told Deronjic that all the goods, that is, 2.000 men and
7 more to come, must be placed in the warehouses by 12.00 tomorrow, not
8 there but somewhere else.
9 Fact: By the time of this call, Mladic had given an order that
10 the Bosnian Muslim men were to be moved to Zvornik to be killed. See
11 paragraphs 955 and 966 of our brief.
12 Fact: Deronjic told Beara that it was Karadzic's instructions
13 that the Muslim men were to be moved to Zvornik. See paragraph 965 of
14 our brief.
15 Fact: At this meeting, the only issue was where - was where, not
16 if - the prisoners were to be killed, that is, the meeting where Deronjic
17 spoke to Beara. That's at our brief at footnote 3495.
18 Fact: By 7.00 p.m. preparations were commencing for receipt of
19 the thousands of prisoners that were being sent to Zvornik to be shot.
20 See paragraphs 956 and 957 of the confidential brief.
21 Fact: Todorovic's evidence is that he had instructions from
22 Tolimir to prepare Batkovic camp and then was told by Tolimir to stop
23 preparations. See our brief at footnote 3488.
24 It is crystal clear that the supreme commander was instructing
25 his subordinate what to do in that phone call. Clear he was telling him
Page 48069
1 what to do and clear it was done.
2 The "reasonable inference" posited by the Defence is that every
3 single institution of state, the army, the police, the civilian
4 authorities, ignored the supreme commander's instructions and then
5 engaged in a lavish conspiracy of silence to ensure that no one told him,
6 including his trusted commissioner.
7 Mr. President, Your Honours, I mentioned earlier the contrast
8 between Mr. Robinson's condemnation of Beara and other members of the VRS
9 and Dr. Karadzic's rousing support for "my generals." Karadzic knows
10 that he cannot accept the reality of what happened to the Srebrenica
11 Muslims at the hands of the VRS because that condemns him, condemns the
12 man who had his finger on the pulse of the operation from its very
13 inception, who monitored it personally in the planning stages, who issued
14 instructions to move the prisoners from the last arguable place they
15 might have had a chance to the place where there was no reason for them
16 to be other than to be executed; the man who had to approve any change in
17 the operations that would allow Muslim men and boys to get out alive; the
18 man whose top officials travelled to the area and reported back to him,
19 who chortled over the reburials that seemingly would prevent the world
20 from ever knowing what really happened, who created transparently sham
21 "investigations" as a laughable fig leaf to cover his tracks. He knows
22 the truth of his responsibility is exposed by the totality of this
23 overwhelming evidence and so he seeks to treat each piece in isolation or
24 irrationally deny them.
25 Your Honours, in the case of the Srebrenica component, as in the
Page 48070
1 totality of the case, Dr. Karadzic's ceaseless efforts to justify,
2 deflect, obfuscate, mis-characterise, and outright misrepresent have
3 culminated in the submissions we've just discussed, in which sweeping and
4 unsupported generalisations are juxtaposed with citations that
5 misrepresent or invert facts or even invent a new reality. These were
6 not the flailing attempts of an uneducated man but of a man desperate to
7 deny the facts that condemn him. These facts reveal beyond a reasonable
8 doubt his guilt on all counts of the indictment.
9 Mr. President, that would conclude the submissions except for the
10 remaining question by the Court about Count 7. The Court had inquired
11 about deportation in relation to the municipalities and the mens rea in
12 connection with that, so I would turn first, of course, to Count 7 which
13 indicates at paragraph 68 the commission of forcible transfer and
14 deportation from the municipalities, those municipalities are defined in
15 Count 3 at paragraph 48, as the Court is aware.
16 Insofar as the mens rea is concerned, forcible transfer is the
17 forcible displacement of persons which may take place within national
18 borders. That was found by the Stakic appeals judgement at
19 paragraph 317. Whereas the crime of deportation requires a displacement
20 of individuals across a border, either a de jure border or displacement
21 across a de facto border, the determination of which is a case-by-case
22 determination based on the circumstances.
23 As far as the mens rea is concerned, in the case of forcible
24 transfer, since the ultimate location doesn't form a part of the
25 elements, the mens rea is established by virtue of the intent to forcibly
Page 48071
1 displace the individual.
2 In the case of deportation, since displacement across a border is
3 an element, the mens rea must encompass that element and the Prosecution
4 must establish that the accused intended to displace the person across a
5 de jure or de facto border.
6 JUDGE KWON: And you cannot further identify specific incidents
7 that is charged as deportation in this case, in the mentioned
8 municipalities?
9 MR. TIEGER: Well, I can -- some come to mind. For example, I
10 know that it was the men from -- the population in Bosanski Novi, if I
11 recall correctly, was displaced across -- well, first of all, let me step
12 back more broadly. The -- in virtually every case, the forcible
13 displacement was intended to get people, Muslims and Croats, outside of
14 RS which constituted a de facto border. That's -- so that is in --
15 that's at the essence of what was being done.
16 JUDGE KWON: So, for example, let me put it simply, if we find no
17 evidence of deportation with respect to a specific municipality --
18 MR. TIEGER: I'd have to -- I'm sorry --
19 JUDGE KWON: No --
20 MR. TIEGER: Is the question whether there was any displacement
21 at all?
22 JUDGE KWON: My question is whether the accused needs to be
23 acquitted of that count? No, it's because you referred to 20 or
24 19 municipalities as all --
25 MR. TIEGER: From --
Page 48072
1 JUDGE KWON: I will leave it at that. I will consult my
2 colleagues.
3 [Trial Chamber confers]
4 JUDGE KWON: Yes, the Chamber will leave it at that.
5 MR. TIEGER: And just one possibility, Mr. President, and that is
6 in paragraph 48 we do identify the individual municipalities --
7 JUDGE KWON: Yes.
8 MR. TIEGER: -- one by one.
9 JUDGE KWON: Before we break, shall we go into private session
10 briefly.
11 [Private session]
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 (redacted)
17 (redacted)
18 (redacted)
19 (redacted)
20 (redacted)
21 (redacted)
22 (redacted)
23 (redacted)
24 (redacted)
25 (redacted)
Page 48073
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 [Open session]
8 THE REGISTRAR: We're in open session, Your Honours.
9 JUDGE KWON: I take it an hour would be sufficient?
10 MR. ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. President.
11 JUDGE KWON: Shall we resume at 12.00? Yes.
12 --- Luncheon recess taken at 10.52 a.m.
13 --- On resuming at 12.01 p.m.
14 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Mr. Karadzic, you have the floor.
15 THE ACCUSED: Thank you, Excellencies. Good afternoon. For a
16 minute it is afternoon.
17 [Interpretation] Distinguished Mr. Tieger presented a series of
18 points to prove that the position of the Defence is inaccurate and
19 incorrect, but Mr. Tieger knows very well his own case and the documents
20 that he himself had tendered too well to be able to say such things.
21 For instance, he says that I was against introducing the state of
22 war so that non-Serbs who had left and all sorts of refugees could not
23 return. This is very far from being true. Just one example. 5970, a
24 session of the Assembly of Republika Srpska, pages -- 5970 -- P970, P970.
25 So on pages 37, 104, 110, and 111, I was talking about the reasons why
Page 48074
1 the state of war was not being introduced. For instance, on page 110,
2 let me read it in English.
3 [In English] "Reserves, emotional reserves, material reserves,
4 all that, all this has been preserved, moral reserves, all this has been
5 preserved because we did not drill the nation. I know that every army in
6 the world would like the entire nation to march in a file. They would
7 not endure for long, that would be a very brief march indeed. The nation
8 would crumble down. Therefore, let us not go into political matters. We
9 are here in the Assembly. We can submit an official request to the
10 Assembly to introduce a state of war. This Assembly has rejected that
11 several times. I do not want to introduce it and I did not introduce it
12 at a certain point at -- and I did introduce it at a certain point under
13 constitutional power ..." and so on and so on.
14 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, is that a B/C/S page number, 110?
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] In English it's 110 and 111,
16 towards the bottom of page 110 and the beginning of 111.
17 JUDGE KWON: Please continue. Thank you.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Late Professor Koljevic on page 258
19 says again in our position to request for a state of war:
20 [In English] "The civilian authority believes that the army
21 acting on the idea of the state of war wants to take over all power in
22 its hands."
23 [Interpretation] Those were the real reasons and it has nothing
24 to do with the return of refugees. You will find references in other
25 Assembly sessions and in interviews where I say that I don't want the
Page 48075
1 people's life to be militarised. It's also mentioned on page 37 that the
2 war is of low intensity, what would things look like if Israel introduced
3 a state of war because of a low-intensity war with the PLO. Those were
4 the analogies I used. And the fact that this did not have anything to do
5 with the return of refugees -- first of all, in the Assembly I often had
6 to seek approval and consent for very embarrassing things and in those
7 cases, political speeches had a pacifying tone. But these things do not
8 govern the return of refugees. The return of refugees was governed by
9 agreements that I signed guaranteed by the international community. That
10 is what counts, not the words of an Assemblyman or my words in response
11 to him to calm the situation down.
12 But look at our final brief concerning the return of refugees.
13 That's page 257, paragraphs 996; paragraphs 989 to 999 of our final
14 brief. And of course it is expected that if refugees return, two groups
15 of refugees would not meet in Zvornik. Somebody has to guarantee the
16 Serbs' safety if they were to return there. There is nothing wrong with
17 a two-way process.
18 On page 3 of today's transcript it is said that
19 President Karadzic did not declare a state of war to make return
20 impossible; however, in paragraph 999 of our final brief we quote an
21 example, namely, the example of Bijeljina where refugees returned at my
22 invitation and it turned out to be a little premature and it turned out
23 to cause certain problems. So this argument of the Prosecution is
24 completely worthless. And the evidence that we have support the
25 assertions of the Defence and support our case.
Page 48076
1 On page 5 Mr. Tieger says: Give Zvornik to Muslims. Give
2 Zvornik to Muslims does not mean that Muslims would come to Zvornik; it
3 means put Zvornik in the Muslim entity, in the Muslim constituent unit.
4 The two things have nothing in common. We are fighting for Zvornik to
5 remain in our republic, not for Muslims not to return.
6 On page 7 it is wrongly stated that I accepted the maps. We
7 should review the tapes and you will see that I did not claim that.
8 Regarding maps and that agreement, that agreement was the sine qua non of
9 Bosnian independence. We made that perfectly clear and Europe accepted
10 that and somebody wanted to cheat us. No. That won't do. We lived on
11 65 to 70 per cent of the territory, we were a sovereign, constituent
12 people, we accepted that they exit Yugoslavia but only on the condition
13 that we get something. That was a condition sine qua non.
14 Serbs are not fools. Karadzic has nothing to do with it, not
15 even the last granny in the last village in Bosnia would accept something
16 like that.
17 The record says that I accepted the maps, but the maps were the
18 only thing that we did not accept. Our only condition was that maps had
19 to be final, definitive, so that people do not flee from places where
20 they expected they could go on living. The maps were in dispute and the
21 evidence is replete with proof that maps needed to be finalised as soon
22 as possible by working groups; however, that did not happen, not because
23 of any failure on our part but because the Muslim side left that table.
24 It says here that the principles were unacceptable to Karadzic
25 because BH would have been a unified state. BH would not have been
Page 48077
1 acceptable either to Serbs or Croats as a unitary state, even if we were
2 a minority. Instead we were a large Christian majority of over
3 60 per cent. So this is not true either.
4 Now, look at page T33968, where Ambassador Cutileiro mentions the
5 diary of Ambassador Okun and the discussion with the foreign minister,
6 Pinheiro. It says the only possible variant is a tripartite Bosnia.
7 That was also our own condition. We accepted that with a heavy heart,
8 but we did accept it. Ambassador Okun notes:
9 [In English] Okun's notes indicate that he stated that it was
10 absurd to blame the situation in Bosnia exclusively on the Serbs.
11 [Interpretation] And on page 3396 it says that:
12 [In English] "Cutileiro still posed the following a rhetorical
13 question: Could we have a unitary Bosnia or did we have to have a
14 tripartite Bosnia?"
15 [Interpretation] And of course the foreign minister repeated on
16 many occasions in the media that only a tripartite Bosnia could be a
17 solution to the problem, so that is not correct either.
18 Now, concerning statistics, I did not do the statistics. It was
19 their own expert, Mrs. Tabeau. I was talking about proportionality. The
20 number of Muslims that were there at the time of Dayton Accords, a large
21 percentage left after that. I did not deal with proportions; it was
22 Mrs. Tabeau's report that dealt with it. On the 31st of March, 1992,
23 when the Muslim operation against Bijeljina -- Karadzic was away.
24 It is said that the objective could have been achieved by
25 different means. Of course every objective can be achieved by different
Page 48078
1 means, and Ambassador Cutileiro writes that in his letter to the
2 International Herald Tribune and repeats in all his speeches that it was
3 a huge shame that war happened, bringing with it a huge loss of life,
4 whereas everything could have been resolved by his Lisbon Agreement and
5 the Cutileiro Plan. Perhaps it was not the IHT, perhaps it was
6 The Economist.
7 So it could have been done by different means, and Karadzic was
8 in favour of different means. And Patrick Treanor, an expert and an
9 employee of this OTP, says so, and we deal with it in our final brief in
10 paragraph 101, where we state that Treanor agreed that up to
11 27 March 1992 until the outbreak of war, Karadzic had always advocated
12 peace and peaceful solutions; he never advocated war. Mr. Treanor said
13 that on page 14442. Mr. Treanor had worked in the OTP for 15 years and
14 he was converted into an expert in order to translate the Prosecution
15 case into evidence. He authored an important part of the pre-trial brief
16 by his own admission, but he -- even he said that Karadzic had never
17 advocated war before it broke out; he was against war.
18 It doesn't cross OTP's mind to establish how the JCE could have
19 been implemented, how could it have contained any element of removing
20 non-Serbs from Republika Srpska without war. And even when the war broke
21 out, the Prosecution neglects to notice our great efforts for combat to
22 be avoided and to solve everything at the negotiating table. That was
23 the point of all my speeches in the Assembly of Republika Srpska and
24 elsewhere. Three signatures decide the fate of Bosnia, and in my
25 platform it is clearly said there can be no fait accompli, there can be
Page 48079
1 no recognition of territories taken with violence, and after the war
2 everybody will return wherever they want.
3 The Prosecution has - and we dealt with it in our final brief
4 paragraphs 239 to 327 - 95 intercepts involving my conversations before
5 the war and my speeches, that is to say, my words. I had given thousands
6 of interviews and uttered millions of sentences and words, I rattled on
7 the whole time, and they cannot find one single unmutilated sentence to
8 use against me. 95 intercepts from the pre-war period and in all of them
9 all they can find is my advocacy of peace and that is from my
10 conversations with other members of the alleged JCE. They can only see
11 how I advocated peace and how I tried to make Muslims safe and feel safe,
12 how I tried to refrain from anything that could make them anxious,
13 speeches in which peaceful coexistence is advocated.
14 Let us be clear. If Muslims or Serbs or Croats wished a secular
15 life, then we could live together. If any of these three peoples wanted
16 to build their religion into the state machinery, then we could only live
17 one next to another. And Mr. Izetbegovic and I agreed on that point
18 completely. If Mr. Izetbegovic insisted on the Islamic Declaration and
19 wanted to apply it to all the Muslims, we had nothing against it; but in
20 that case, we would live each in their own canton. There is no
21 inconsistency and no difference there.
22 As for the war period, if the Prosecution says that a JCE can
23 just crop up during the course of the war, although they cannot establish
24 when and who did this, there are over 60 orders of mine, strictly
25 confidential orders to organs that are supposed to implement them.
Page 48080
1 That's no propaganda. In these 60 orders, they cannot find a single
2 order that tolerates crimes or orders crimes. When Zupljanin is
3 reporting that somebody is asking for as many civilians as possible to be
4 gathered, he has a negative attitude towards that. There was no problem
5 unless there was fighting, but then there were individual problems but
6 that happens any time anywhere. In some European countries right now,
7 only 30 to 40 homicides are being resolved when their state authorities
8 are fully functioning now, in peacetime, and then we try to control
9 everything, although we were totally destroyed, without an
10 infrastructure, and without a proper state apparatus.
11 Karavelic's statement was referred to here and due to my lack of
12 experience I allowed that to be admitted because I kept thinking that he
13 would come as a witness. And he says that SRK used artillery just as the
14 1st Corps of Bosnia-Herzegovina used it. Then later on this propaganda
15 came, the Serbs did this, the Serbs did that, but there -- that is what
16 he says throughout basically, that the SRK used artillery just as I used
17 it, he said. Hospitals and other facilities that Karavelic refers to in
18 his statement, he did not mention that these facilities were targeted
19 only when they were used as military facilities. Why were enormous areas
20 not targeted, large parts of different neighbourhoods where not a single
21 shell fell? Why? Because no one ever fired from there.
22 In 1995, the 4-year-old girl, she was not killed by a multiple
23 rocket-launcher. Later on we'll have to move into closed session because
24 we just have to deal with this now, whatever we can deal with in open
25 court.
Page 48081
1 Judge Baird asked the Muslim investigator why they did not deal
2 with the horizontal deflection of the projectile in the street -- in
3 Nehru Street and he had no answer to that. They came to the window, they
4 saw where the Serb positions were, and that's what they inferred. This
5 was not done. As for the vertical deflection, as stated Mr. Tieger
6 here -- no, it was 70 centimetres in terms of height. That was the
7 difference. So it was fired from elsewhere. It was not visible and it
8 was not targeted. It was a stray bullet. That's why this isn't in the
9 indictment, that's why it was thrown out of the indictment. At any rate,
10 it is not the way it is being represented. The transcript does not
11 reflect that this difference of 70 centimetres is the difference in
12 height from the window to the wall and that is very clear there. There
13 is 70 centimetres, that's how the bullet went and the dimensions of the
14 room have to be taken into account as well.
15 100 sniper victims from Spicasta Stijena? Well, why is there not
16 a single fatality in the indictment against me? This person was wounded,
17 that person was wounded, but their experts also said - and the
18 representatives of the UN said - that there were stray bullets
19 everywhere, on all sides, and that more people were killed by stray
20 bullets than by snipers. Snipers of the Serb army did not target
21 civilians intentionally and not a single piece of evidence was presented
22 to that effect.
23 The distinguished Mr. Tieger tried to defend, from my objections,
24 that is, witnesses of the Prosecution who were MUP investigators of
25 Bosnia-Herzegovina at the same time. He says that KDZ166 did not make
Page 48082
1 any mistakes during his investigations, and this allegedly refers to
2 other investigators too. So let's deal with one particular example now.
3 Let us look at G7.
4 The investigation organs sketched the scene during the
5 investigation and that's where they marked the cardinal point of north,
6 and north is marked as perpendicular to the street of Oslobodilaca
7 Sarajeva. According to the sketch of the scene, it does not correspond
8 with the actual cardinal point of north, it actually has an azimuth that
9 is approximately 300 degrees. So the police marked it wrongly. And
10 60 degrees is the mistake involved and that cannot be an acceptable
11 error. When I asked that witness here in court, when I say: Where is
12 the north here? And then his answer is: Well, whichever way you look at
13 it. No, it's not the way it's done. The north is always marked on maps,
14 but what was needed was to accuse the Serb side.
15 Mirsad Sabljica tried to explain that north was marked properly
16 on the sketch of this scene, but when confronted with evidence he
17 corrected that and his assessment was that north constitutes an angle
18 with Oslobodilaca Sarajeva of 30 to 35 degrees. That is what he said on
19 page T7787 through 88. The exhibit is D741.
20 KDZ166, who Mr. Tieger is trying to protect, agreed that the
21 sketch was incorrect, but he could not explain why north was not marked
22 properly. I wonder -- the reference is T8297 through 8300. I wonder in
23 which one of our countries did the participants in this trial come from
24 this kind of investigation would work. Is there any system or any
25 country where this kind of investigation could be carried out and found
Page 48083
1 acceptable? How can that be considered an established fact? There is
2 lots of that, and many investigations and Muslim investigators themselves
3 admitted that their investigations were not done according to the usual
4 kind of procedure that was applied in peacetime. It was abbreviated.
5 You can use that kind of thing in propaganda, but you cannot appear
6 before a criminal court that way because this is an offence to the court
7 itself.
8 Turkusic, in relation to G19, that particular incident, testifies
9 that the shell fell at 105 hundred hours [as interpreted], although
10 CSB Sarajevo reports show that the first information about the shelling
11 was received at 11.30 and the commission appeared on the scene at 12.15.
12 T9064. So if this is not a mistake and if this is not sloppiness, then I
13 really don't know what precision is. Also, the results of the
14 investigation of the counter-sabotage unit of the MUP of
15 Bosnia-Herzegovina and UNPROFOR considerably vary in terms of the angle
16 of descent and direction of fire.
17 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's note: We did not catch the
18 transcript references.
19 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, could you repeat the transcript page
20 number.
21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] T9066 through 69, and T9074 through
22 75.
23 There are traces of fragments that do not correspond to the
24 alleged explosion.
25 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's note: We did not catch the
Page 48084
1 numbers again.
2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The alleged scene --
3 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, could you repeat the numbers again, if
4 you said any.
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Transcript T9098.
6 So the video representation of the incident shows that the
7 positions of the alleged victims and wounded persons do not correspond to
8 the version of the incident that is suggested. T096 to 9094 [as
9 interpreted], those are the transcript references and T9100 to 9101.
10 It is fully clear that investigations were carried out
11 unprofessionally regarding Markale II, that incident, because the shells
12 could not have come from Serb positions because, inter alia, and that was
13 explained in our final brief, paragraph 2125 through 2162, and also for
14 the reason that was omitted from our final brief and that is evidence to
15 the effect that the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps did not have mortars at these
16 positions, the positions referred to by the Prosecution, because these
17 mortars were in a completely different municipality. That is D2331,
18 paragraph 51. Then D234, paragraph 24; D2344, paragraph 10; and D2451,
19 paragraph 24; D2341, paragraph 24; and D2344, paragraph 10.
20 So many distortions, so many concoctions of quasi evidence. It
21 is highly advisable for the Trial Chamber to double-check everything that
22 the Prosecution presented.
23 Can we now please move into private session briefly because that
24 is required by the subject matter involved.
25 JUDGE KWON: Yes.
Page 48085
1 [Private session]
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 (redacted)
5 (redacted)
6 (redacted)
7 (redacted)
8 (redacted)
9 (redacted)
10 (redacted)
11 (redacted)
12 (redacted)
13 (redacted)
14 (redacted)
15 (redacted)
16 (redacted)
17 (redacted)
18 (redacted)
19 (redacted)
20 (redacted)
21 (redacted)
22 (redacted)
23 (redacted)
24 (redacted)
25 (redacted)
Page 48086
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11 Page 48086 redacted. Private session.
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Page 48087
1 (redacted)
2 (redacted)
3 (redacted)
4 [Open session]
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can you please --
6 THE REGISTRAR: We're in open session, Your Honours.
7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can you please decide whether we're
8 going to take a break or not?
9 JUDGE KWON: I think we started at 12.00. You can continue until
10 1.00. How long do you expect to last?
11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I believe I would need one and a
12 half hours and that is definitely the time that I'm going to use.
13 JUDGE KWON: If you need, we'll take a break in the middle, if
14 you like, for 15 or 20 minutes. I'll leave it to you, Mr. Karadzic.
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It is agreeable. Maybe that would
16 be good, to give me a chance to put my papers in order.
17 [In English] Did you mean right now or ...?
18 JUDGE KWON: I said I would leave it to you, Mr. Karadzic.
19 THE ACCUSED: Yeah, I would be grateful for this break.
20 JUDGE KWON: Then shall we begin at 1.00.
21 --- Recess taken at 12.44 p.m.
22 --- On resuming at 1.00 p.m.
23 JUDGE KWON: Please continue, Mr. Karadzic.
24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.
25 Relating to item 1, genocide in municipalities, Mr. Tieger is now
Page 48088
1 trying to distance himself from the Stakic, Brdjanin case, and the
2 Krajisnik case, where the Trial Chamber acquitted the accused of the
3 crime of genocide. He says that there were differences between the
4 accused and that the accused had no jurisdiction over the army. However,
5 that was not what he said when he wanted to take over thousands of
6 adjudicated facts from these respective judgements. He tried to put the
7 Chamber in a position in which it would believe that the interests of the
8 accused coincided with Karadzic's interest in disputing the evidence
9 including the evidence on the crimes and expulsion that are being
10 attributed to the army.
11 In these cases, the OTP presented allegations that the local
12 organs led by Stakic and Brdjanin were closely co-operating with the army
13 as part of the joint criminal enterprise with a view to committing
14 genocide. This is only an attempt to distance the said accused from the
15 conduct of the army, or rather, the Army of Republika Srpska in various
16 municipalities in 1992; however, it's too late because the OTP had
17 already taken a stance when these cases were tried. Had the OTP
18 presented any new evidence relating to the Karadzic case, maybe that
19 manoeuvre would have been successful. However, they failed to put forth
20 any new evidence. They are presenting the same facts, the same speeches,
21 the same incidents that had been found by previous Trial Chambers
22 insufficient to return a verdict for genocide in the municipalities, both
23 in this Tribunal and before the International Court of Justice. These
24 elements were never accepted as being part of the intention to destroy
25 Bosnian Muslims.
Page 48089
1 The OTP would like to have a conclusion on genocide intentions
2 deriving from forcible relocation; however, the evidence about forcible
3 relocation speak something completely different. Both Mr. Tieger and the
4 OTP never explained why, if there was an intention to destroy the Muslims
5 of Bosnia, why so many of these Muslims who were under the control of
6 Bosnian Serbs, who were detained and interrogated and were living in
7 these villages and in municipalities throughout 1992 and later on, why
8 were they allowed to leave? That was not a forcible transfer. We can
9 counter evidence with one another. If the aim was to have them
10 destroyed, why was it made possible for them to be entered into lists,
11 why buses were paid for, allowing them to leave wherever they wanted to
12 go?
13 None of this convinced either the International Court of Justice
14 or the Trial Chamber of this Tribunal that there was any force applied in
15 municipalities that was calculated to destroy this group of people,
16 albeit there was a possibility for that but it was never established.
17 The Prosecution failed to prove genocide in the form as stipulated in
18 Count 1.
19 Today the OTP said that I said about Mr. Harland that it was
20 untrue that he came to defend the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina
21 and that he was not impartial. During my negotiations with his
22 superiors, Mr. Harland took notes. Some of his superiors testified here,
23 including General Rose, but first and foremost those involved in
24 political negotiations such as Ambassador Akashi and Cutileiro. The OTP
25 never asked me about their attitudes because they knew to the minutest
Page 48090
1 detail what I was able to accept. Instead, they asked Harland, who was
2 totally incompetent to testify about these things. He has no military
3 background, but nevertheless he proposed the theory about three forms of
4 shelling.
5 Concerning his impartiality, this is a disaster. On page 2128,
6 this man said that the Security Council Resolutions 824, 819, and 836
7 called for the withdrawal of all forces except those of the BH
8 government. Of course, all the gestures of the Army of Republika Srpska
9 he has to consider as illegitimate because he didn't know that we were
10 equal. This is still the case there; however, he maintains that
11 everybody else except the BH government forces should withdraw. This is
12 an additional reason confirming that he was here to defend the BH
13 government, that the Serbs were outlaws, and that the government was
14 right. Therefore, his entire testimony can and must be discarded,
15 particularly the portion thereof in which he proffered his unprofessional
16 opinion that he is not trained to give.
17 He was not the only one. There are plenty similar to his case.
18 Banbury admitted the tricks of Army of BH army --
19 THE INTERPRETER: Could Mr. Karadzic please repeat the transcript
20 page.
21 JUDGE KWON: Could you repeat the number.
22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Page 28 of today's transcript. It
23 is also said there that it was misrepresented that Harland did not have a
24 clue what to do. Banbury, however, admitted that the Army of
25 Bosnia-Herzegovina resorted to tricks. Neither of them knew anything
Page 48091
1 about the UN Resolutions. Every new replacement, any new staff, came
2 with ready-made prejudices and without proper knowledge. Although
3 Mr. Banbury was in the habit of educating others about the UN mandate,
4 and you can see from his testimony that he didn't know anything about it
5 but rather had completely wrong knowledge.
6 Harland also demonstrated the lack of knowledge about the Army of
7 BH even though we presented a host of documents about the conduct of the
8 BH army, about the fire that was coming from their side of course. He
9 considered all of that to be legitimate and he didn't see the need to
10 record that because it was done by a legitimate government in his view.
11 We are now on page 29, where Mr. Tieger says that Janc's list did
12 not include the persons who had previously been killed, and the reason
13 for that is that he had purged that list. He didn't know where these
14 people had come from. He discarded hundreds of exhumed bodies. The OTP
15 argues that everyone who was listed in that area was shot dead. Even
16 Janc admitted that that was not the case because all the other documents
17 show that a huge number of people were exhumed, not from three graves,
18 according to Janc, but from each and every grave. They were -- those who
19 were killed in 1992, 1993, 1994 were exhumed from common graves.
20 It is totally pointless and senseless to claim that if there are
21 900 bodies in a secondary grave, nobody can establish where the primary
22 grave was. These are the differences that cannot be legally accepted,
23 and these are the routes taken by the column during the breakthrough. So
24 these were primary graves. So if there's 13 per cent or 10 per cent,
25 that can be a secondary grave. For all others, it was a primary grave.
Page 48092
1 With regard to the 10th Sabotage Detachment, Mr. Tieger said that
2 Erdemovic testified about the detachment that had only a few of them.
3 When asked how it was kept secret for such a long time and who he was
4 allowed to discuss this, he said: Everybody except a few associates who
5 wouldn't say this to Pelemis. And that's what this revealed later when
6 Salapura gave testimony. At the time, Erdemovic was not allowed to
7 discuss this issue in order to prevent it being disclosed to Pelemis who
8 was somewhere in hospital at the time. And this is a fact.
9 On page 33, Mr. Tieger said, concerning surface remains in two
10 locations, these surface remains that were discovered by Mrs. Albright
11 after she had been brought there and shown it. They're definitely, most
12 definitely, not the result of mass execution. These must have been
13 remains of those who were involved in combat. It was neither a mass nor
14 an execution and it is crystal clear for us that we need to have an
15 investigation.
16 Mr. Tieger, however, says that there was no intention of
17 conducting an investigation. I resigned in May and I was no longer able
18 to follow what was going on with those investigations. On page 35,
19 Mr. Tieger says: Is it possible that all the institutions, such as the
20 army, et cetera, ignored the president's or the supreme commander's
21 requests? When an army is doing something, they make a plan, they take a
22 decision, they issue a preparatory and executive order, and they monitor
23 the implementation, then they assign specific unit for carrying out these
24 orders. The people were begging at the time: Can you tell me -- can you
25 send me ten people or 15 people? They were pleading with the MUP to give
Page 48093
1 them manpower to carry out certain jobs. That is not how an army
2 operates. That was not the army's attitude. Yes, some individuals can
3 do that, but the army not. The army takes decisions differently and
4 executes them differently.
5 There was not a word from the Prosecution about the evidence of
6 KW586, which sheds very clear light on the events, the behaviour and the
7 tricks that were supposed to stigmatise us at the time for the purpose of
8 obtaining an international military intervention; however, the matter
9 ended up in court, which I believe is an insult to the Tribunal. Thus,
10 many of the 234 witnesses whom they believed had lied did not even try to
11 minimise it. This concerns forcible transfer and they can't quite agree
12 on that.
13 From Bosanska Krupa and the Krupa on the Una river from the
14 Serbian bank, from the Serbian side, the authorities moved Muslims from
15 one village to another village in the same municipality and some of them
16 they moved to the Sanski Most municipality, to the Muslim village to
17 Tomina, to save them from the combat zone. And Vojko Klickovic was
18 acquitted before the Military Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina for these
19 incidents and this is a court that very rarely acquits a Serb. Also from
20 Bosanski Novi people were given the choice of going to Banja Luka. They
21 didn't want to. In fact, they tried, they reached Doboj and then they
22 returned. All of them wanted to go to third countries. Certainly they
23 were not happy to do it, but it is quite clear that this was not forcible
24 transfer. This was an attempt to accommodate people because the
25 situation required it.
Page 48094
1 Of course, one has to bear in mind that both Doboj and Banja Luka
2 are in Republika Srpska. It's not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It's
3 in Republika Srpska. And I have to thank Mr. Tieger that for the
4 purposes of his case he declared the borders of Republika Srpska to be
5 state borders. Now when he needs to claim that the transfer of civilians
6 from Republika Srpska to the Muslim-Croat Federation, he says it's moving
7 to another state. So anything goes.
8 And this brings us to Markale -- excuse me, we are still on
9 Srebrenica.
10 Mr. Tieger recalls that Beara referred to two presidents or two
11 chiefs; however, KDZ320, a witness for the Prosecution, testified that
12 Beara wanted to create the impression -- in fact, he wanted to impress
13 others that he was duty-bound towards some commanders, but the witness
14 himself did not believe it and he could not find any connection with
15 President Karadzic. Also Franz Kos, who also testified here, never heard
16 any reference to President Karadzic as having ordered that his unit get
17 involved in any crime, i.e., executions.
18 When it comes to speculations as to where the prisoners were
19 supposed to go, it is said that nobody knows it was to be Batkovic
20 prison. I remember that it was mentioned in the transcripts, but we
21 don't have the audio recording; however, Milenko Todorovic said that at
22 the time he had been told to get ready to accept in Batkovici a large
23 number of prisoners. It was cancelled two or three days later, perhaps
24 even five or six days, but the fact is that the initial intention was
25 clear, namely, that these prisoners would go to Batkovic.
Page 48095
1 Earlier on - and I can't help mentioning this - Mr. Tieger said
2 that Robert Frost had asked me about 2.000 people -- sorry, David Frost.
3 Robert Frost is a poet, the poet who even said that good fences make good
4 friends.
5 So David Frost was not asking me about those 2.000 whose
6 whereabouts were known; he was asking me about 15.000 people who were
7 somewhere in the woods. However, Mr. Tieger wants to create the
8 impression that I knew their whereabouts and didn't want to say. I
9 didn't know. All I knew was that they were somewhere in the forests, and
10 everybody knew that.
11 Similarly, the Prosecution tries to shake the Defence case, which
12 cannot be shaken, by bits and pieces of sentences or misquotes.
13 Mr. Allsop did not say what he is claimed to have said. On T29509,
14 Mr. Allsop was asked: Even if his report were to be accepted and
15 including the argument that the trajectory of the projectile was affected
16 in some way as to cause a margin of error of 50 centimetres, or rather, a
17 deviation of 50 centimetres before hitting the ground, this would
18 correspond to a margin of error of 33 per cent. He answered "yes." But
19 this discussion involved only the variables between the time when the
20 projectile hit the ground and the 50 centimetres that it travelled before
21 impacting. Dr. Allsop testified that such a variable, such as wind,
22 humidity, the nature of the soil, do affect the angle at which the
23 projectile would impact the ground.
24 However, the question did not apply to other fundamental
25 objections such as the impossibility of calculating the angle of descent
Page 48096
1 at Markale I because the stabiliser was moved before measurements were
2 taken. The stabiliser was taken out and the crater was damaged. It was
3 especially impossible the following day when Zecevic came. It was not
4 only Allsop who confirmed it; it was confirmed by all the investigators
5 from the United Nations and they said it was impossible to determine the
6 angle of descent once the stabiliser is moved or removed from its
7 original place.
8 The margin of error has no meaning if the site has been tampered
9 with. UN representatives even offered a very generous margin of error.
10 If it had been possible, the UN would have broadened the margin to blame
11 the Serbs; however, they didn't do it. Allsop and the United Nations
12 representatives and all their inquiries and investigations show that it
13 is inaccurate and incorrect to ascribe responsibility to the Serbs and
14 Dr. Karadzic on the basis of what one volunteer, Berko Zecevic,
15 determined subsequently.
16 Your Excellencies, the Prosecution is unable to find in the
17 fundamental documents of Republika Srpska any evidence. The
18 Republika Srpska from its very beginnings acted based on documents and
19 decisions, not on the basis of bits and pieces of sentences. It produced
20 the constitution, laws, decisions, declarations, proposals, and bylaws.
21 The government adopted a large number of laws and decisions. And after
22 December 1992, the president himself issued a large number of orders and
23 decisions, both public and confidential, including appeals. This Office
24 of the Prosecutor did not find one fundamental document to prove that the
25 Serb people had intended to affect what exactly happened. We knew what
Page 48097
1 would happened and we begged: Let's not go into civil war. It was clear
2 at that time that everything could have been resolved peacefully, that
3 Serbs were for it. Witness Cutileiro testified that very early on, while
4 Karadzic was still at the conference, before 14 August 1992, Karadzic was
5 prepared to cede a lot of territory in order to save peace.
6 There is an abundance of evidence. Croatia clearly at that time
7 had racist laws. It's clear why so many Serbs and Jews suffered at their
8 hands. Republika Srpska did not have any such laws. Directive 7 does
9 not count because it was never implemented. Mladic changed it without
10 me. If he -- if it had been my directive, he wouldn't have been allowed
11 to change it without my approval. There is not a single word except
12 occasional utterances by individual Assemblymen. I was forced to make
13 political speeches. I had to make the Assembly swallow many bitter pills
14 and convince them that we have to accept certain things, and these
15 Assemblymen had every right to be angry.
16 However, gentlemen, these were not enactments that underlie the
17 behaviour of state agencies or officials. Debates among Assemblymen or
18 newspaper stories also do not underlie the behaviour of a state. It is
19 only the fundamental documents of the state that govern the state
20 behaviour. I want to emphasise -- God forbid that the Serbian leadership
21 had been different, that it had not included so many prominent
22 professors, academicians, doctors, and others. God knows what the war
23 would have looked like then. But none of what happened was a product of
24 the behaviour of the state. And we have ample evidence that people who
25 wanted to live in peace would have been able to live in peace pending a
Page 48098
1 political solution. The war did not happen as I wanted it. It was
2 horrible and let's hope to God that it was the last, but that is not in
3 my power.
4 I expect and I trust that the Chamber will study carefully every
5 document and every exhibit, both from the Defence and the Prosecution,
6 and if that happens, I have no doubt that a judgement of acquittal will
7 follow. I apologise to everyone for my amateurism, but my thirst for the
8 truth is much stronger than my legal knowledge.
9 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.
10 Unless there are matters to be raised further, we will soon
11 adjourn and the Chamber will withdraw to deliberate on the evidence
12 received throughout the proceedings.
13 The size of this case has been unprecedented. The first
14 Prosecution witness testified on the 13th of April, 2010, and the last
15 Defence witness testified on the 20th of February, 2014. Over the course
16 of these four years, the Chamber received the evidence of close to
17 600 witnesses and admitted more than 11.500 exhibits, which amounts to
18 over 146.000 pages. The volume of filings submitted by all parties in
19 this case has reached 90.000 pages and 48.000 transcript pages record the
20 course of hearings during the trial.
21 Notwithstanding the sheer magnitude of the case, thanks to the
22 co-operation of the parties and the professionalism demonstrated by
23 everyone involved, the proceedings ran smoothly. Therefore, on behalf of
24 the Chamber, I wish to start by thanking the parties for the
25 professionalism they have demonstrated throughout. My thanks also extend
Page 48099
1 to the standby counsel and his team.
2 I now turn to our court deputy and ushers and wish to express my
3 gratitude for their assistance through the course of the trial. The
4 Chamber thanks the interpreters and the court reporters who have had an
5 extremely difficult task. We thank Audio and Visual Unit, ITSS, as well
6 as the Victims and Witnesses Section, the Security Section, and the Dutch
7 police. The Chamber also wishes to thank all the States who have
8 co-operated during these proceedings pursuant to Rule 54 bis.
9 Last, but not least, I will now turn to our legal staff, without
10 whose assistance the conduct of the proceedings would not have been
11 possible. I would like to name them one by one on the record in order
12 express our gratitude. First, those who have now left the case or the
13 ICTY: Lorna Davidson, Linda Murnane, Grant Dawson, Rachel Opie,
14 Steven Koh, Amy Eussen, and Aurelie Roche-Mair. Next, those who are
15 still with us: Nolwenn Guibert, Silva Hinek, Viviana de la Pena Escobar,
16 Nakako Onishi, Harshan Athureliya, Sun Kim, Kirsten Calhoun,
17 Christine Keller, and Cliff Farhang. We have also received the
18 invaluable assistance of fellows: Alia El Khatib, Nak-Hee Hyun,
19 Kyunghwa Min, Jooheon Lee, Jaemin Choung, and Harin Song, as well as the
20 contribution of 70 legal interns. I thank them all for their work and
21 dedication to the Chamber and these proceedings. Finally, we also thank
22 our respective secretaries for their dedicated assistance.
23 Now, pursuant to Rule 87 of the Tribunal's Rules, I declare the
24 hearing closed. The Chamber will withdraw to deliberate in private and
25 will issue a Scheduling Order for the pronouncement of the judgement in
Page 48100
1 due course.
2 We stand adjourned.
3 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.39 p.m.
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