1 Tuesday, 29 February 2000

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 [The witness entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.35 a.m.

6 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Case number

7 IT-95-14/2-T, the Prosecutor versus Dario Kordic and

8 Mario Cerkez.

9 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Sayers.

10 MR. SAYERS: Good morning, Mr. President, and

11 good morning, Colonel Landry.

12 THE WITNESS: Good morning.

13 WITNESS: REMI LANDRY [Resumed]

14 Cross-examined by Mr. Sayers [Cont'd]:

15 MR. SAYERS:

16 Q. Colonel, I take it that most of your written

17 work with the ECMM was carried out in the English

18 language; correct?

19 A. It is.

20 Q. And I believe that you testified in French in

21 the Blaskic case; correct?

22 A. Correct.

23 Q. All right. You do not speak Croatian

24 yourself, do you, sir?

25 A. No.

1 Q. And during your tour of duty with the ECMM,

2 you were exclusively dependent upon interpreters to

3 gain an understanding of what your Croatian

4 interlocutors were saying; correct?

5 A. Correct.

6 Q. Colonel, you have an exclusively military

7 background, correct, in the Canadian army?

8 A. Correct, yes.

9 Q. You've never commanded troops in combat,

10 though, have you?

11 A. No.

12 Q. Now, sir, you kept contemporaneous notebooks

13 of your experiences in Central Bosnia from March to

14 August of 1993; is that fair to say?

15 A. That's fair to say, yes.

16 Q. And have you used those to refresh your

17 recollection in order to prepare for your testimony

18 yesterday and today?

19 A. Definitely.

20 Q. I believe, sir, that the investigators that

21 work for the Prosecution spent just about a week with

22 you in 1996, meeting with you and going over your

23 personal archives. Is that correct?

24 A. That's correct.

25 Q. And you let them see whatever they wanted to

1 see, including your notebooks; correct?

2 A. They didn't see everything that I had. They

3 had to ask for exactly specific items or specific

4 periods, and then they looked at what I had covering

5 those periods. But I was always there with them.

6 Q. Absolutely. But whatever they asked for, you

7 provided; is that fair to say?

8 A. If I had it, yes.

9 Q. Now, in the witness statement that you gave

10 and signed on August the 9th, 1996, you referred to a

11 significant number of reports that were prepared. We

12 have requested those, but they have not been provided

13 to us. One of them is listed on page 3. It's a list

14 of significant officials of the government of

15 Herceg-Bosna. Do you recall that list at all?

16 A. I definitely recall having in my possession

17 copies of certain Herceg-Bosna documents, yes, but I

18 don't know if they are exactly the same as the one that

19 you are referring to.

20 Q. Right. It would be fair to say, though, that

21 you don't have with you today the document that

22 contained the list of the significant officials of

23 Herceg-Bosna that's referred to on page 3 of your

24 statement?

25 A. No, I don't have them with me.

1 Q. All right. Let's move on.

2 You actually arrived in Central Bosnia,

3 Colonel Landry, I believe, in early March of 1993. Is

4 that correct?

5 A. It is correct.

6 Q. And when you arrived, the British Battalion

7 component of the UNPROFOR forces had responsibility for

8 the Vitez/Busovaca area; right?

9 A. Right.

10 Q. The Canadian Battalion had responsibility for

11 the Kiseljak area?

12 A. Right. Visoko/Kiseljak, yes.

13 Q. And the French Battalion had responsibility

14 for the Kakanj area; right?

15 A. Yes, that's correct.

16 Q. And you left Central Bosnia or left your

17 duties as the then deputy head of the RC Zenica on

18 August the 24th of 1993; is that right?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. And I think that you were actually first

21 appointed to perform duties with the ECMM attached to

22 the RC Zenica on March the 6th of 1993. Is that

23 right?

24 THE INTERPRETER: Could you slow down,

25 Mr. Sayers, please?

1 MR. SAYERS:

2 Q. [Previous translation continues] ... as a

3 monitor?

4 A. Yeah. Maybe it's a day or so before,

5 because --

6 Q. About that, early March?

7 A. Okay.

8 Q. Now, it would be fair to say that most of

9 your colleagues, the ECMM monitors who were drawn from

10 various armed forces around the world, had very limited

11 knowledge about the countries that comprised the former

12 Yugoslavia, including the relatively new Republic of

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina; would that be fair to say?

14 A. I think yes, that's correct.

15 Q. Initially, sir, when you arrived in Zagreb to

16 prepare yourself for taking up your duties, you were

17 briefed for just a couple of days at the headquarters

18 of the ECMM in Zagreb; is that right?

19 A. It is right. But I must say, though, that I

20 had been receiving briefing back in my own country on

21 that conflict.

22 Q. Did you undertake any studies yourself of the

23 political structure of Bosnia-Herzegovina or its

24 history?

25 A. Following my stay with the ECMM, I underwent

1 a postgraduate programme, and my thesis was on

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

3 Q. But before that time, would it be fair to say

4 that you knew very little, if any, about --

5 A. I knew very little except what -- the

6 briefing that I had received in my own headquarters in

7 Ottawa, and then the briefing that I received at

8 Zagreb, and then the briefing that I received at RC

9 Zenica when I arrived.

10 Q. All right. Now, part of your briefing

11 included the ECMM's popular wisdom that the HVO was

12 controlled by the Croatian army in Zagreb; is that

13 right?

14 A. Not at the beginning. I must say that it was

15 mentioned that there was definitely a link between the

16 Croatian army and HVO to the effect that, when I

17 arrived, I was told that the Croatian army was

18 controlling the HVO. It was not put to me in those

19 words.

20 Q. Well, part of the briefing materials that

21 were shown to you said that the Croatian Defence

22 Council, HVO, is believed to be controlled by the

23 Croatian army from Zagreb. And I'm just reading from

24 your Blaskic testimony.

25 A. That's what I'm saying, it's believed to be

1 controlled, but that doesn't say that it was controlled

2 by them.

3 Q. And that fell into the category of so-called

4 unconfirmed information, as opposed to confirmed

5 information, right?

6 A. And that's the reason, for example, that

7 throughout the spring that we received different

8 communication from Zagreb trying to prove evidence that

9 in fact there was HV forces within Bosnia-Herzegovina,

10 so eventually to try to confirm this unconfirmed

11 statement, yes.

12 Q. But there is a strong distinction between

13 confirmed and unconfirmed information or reporting

14 within the ECMM, right?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. And the extent of HV involvement, if any, was

17 never confirmed during your tour of duty, was it?

18 A. No.

19 Q. All right.

20 A. That's not what I said yesterday. I said

21 yesterday that we had evidence that in the area of

22 Prozor, Jablanica, that we have seen and I had

23 personally seen logistic equipment coming from the HV,

24 which were then reported by some military

25 representative of the HV as being the fact that they

1 had military logistic equipment in that area.

2 Q. Did you try to engage in conversation with

3 any of the drivers of these alleged HV vehicles?

4 A. No.

5 Q. You didn't speak to any HVO forces to

6 determine whether these were HV troops; right?

7 A. No.

8 Q. And you didn't speak to any HV troops to

9 determine that they were in fact HV troops? Is that

10 fair to say?

11 A. It is fair to say, yes.

12 Q. So all we have is your deductions based upon

13 a visual sighting?

14 A. It's more than that. It's -- you must

15 realise that the way that information is being

16 collected, okay, and the way that we more or less try

17 to confirm information is not just based on one source

18 but based on multiple sources. So all I have been

19 saying is that we had multiple reports that people had

20 seen equipment with appellation or with signatures,

21 okay, that on those equipment that were not common to

22 HV forces, that were more or less common to -- sorry,

23 that were not common to HVO forces, but were common to

24 HV forces. And all I said is that in addition to that,

25 I personally saw that type of vehicle with the same

1 signature. And then to me, one plus one, then one,

2 that, yes, there was definitely HV equipment in the

3 area of Prozor.

4 Q. All right. Let's just turn for a minute to

5 your position as a monitor, sir. Newcomers always were

6 required to spend a short time as monitors in the

7 field; is that right?

8 A. It is right.

9 Q. All right. And it's true that the RC Zenica,

10 initially anyway, was responsible for a vast amount of

11 territory through the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina;

12 correct?

13 A. Correct.

14 Q. And as soon as you arrived in Zenica, you

15 were appointed to be the head of the Busovaca Joint

16 Commission; correct?

17 A. Not necessarily correct. I became the head

18 of the Busovaca Joint Commission. You must realise

19 that we were three military -- or three observers on

20 that commission, and as the new kid on the block, I was

21 one of the monitors on that commission. And then

22 eventually I came to be the head of the Busovaca Joint

23 Commission. But I was not at the beginning.

24 Q. All right. But you became -- I think you

25 held a position with the Busovaca Joint Commission from

1 the initiation of your duties until the commission

2 was --

3 A. Basically until, I would say, the end of

4 April.

5 Q. Right. I believe the Busovaca Joint

6 Commission or the Vitez Joint Commission, as it was

7 then known, was phased out of existence on April the

8 22nd, as part of the ceasefire agreement, and then

9 became part of the joint commission headquartered in

10 Travnik; is that right, sir?

11 A. It is right.

12 Q. After April the 22nd, sir, most of your work

13 was done in your own office, wasn't it?

14 A. Yes and no. I became then the chief of

15 operation, and I then became, as you've said earlier,

16 the deputy head. But one of my responsibilities was to

17 keep in touch with the numerous CC that RC Zenica had.

18 Which means that I did have the occasion on numerous --

19 yes, on numerous occasion to travel at length, to visit

20 Tuzla and to visit all the other, Prozor, Gornji Vakuf,

21 and Mostar, all the other CC that we had.

22 Q. But after April the 22nd, your duties became

23 more national --

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. -- in quality rather than original --

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. All right. You were also the officer in

3 charge of intelligence, weren't you?

4 A. Well, not -- I never was the officer in

5 charge of intelligence. All I have said is that I have

6 a background in intelligence, because we didn't have

7 this function within the RC Zenica, and I don't think

8 that we had any such posts within the ECMM. We had

9 people that were working in operation, collecting

10 information, but as such, the word "intelligence" was

11 never used to my --

12 Q. Colonel, on pages 7586 and 7587 of the

13 Blaskic testimony that you gave two years ago, you

14 said, "I myself was an officer in charge of

15 intelligence."

16 A. I think that I went through this transcript,

17 and I must say that one of the reasons why I have

18 decided to do it this time in English was that the

19 translation, to my point of view, was not to its best.

20 All I said was that I was trained as an intelligence

21 officer, but I don't recall receiving any specific

22 information that I was to be appointed within RC Zenica

23 as an intelligence officer. And again, I am very

24 strong on it; that is, I do not recall seeing any posts

25 within all of the ECMM where people were strictly

1 appointed as an intelligence officer.

2 Q. After your service on the Busovaca Joint

3 Commission was concluded, it's true, isn't it, that you

4 did a stint as an ECMM team leader with Dieter

5 Schellschmidt and were responsible for Zenica, Vitez,

6 Kiseljak, Kacuni, and Busovaca?

7 A. Okay, Mr. Dieter Schellsmidt was with me on

8 the Busovaca Joint Commission. And one of the things

9 that we did together is that as we were going further

10 down the chain of command to implement the ceasefire,

11 which the Busovaca Joint Commission had to overlook, we

12 had to work extensively on the ground.

13 Q. Colonel Landry, if you don't mind, we'll get

14 along a lot quicker if you just answer that question.

15 You did a stint as an ECMM team leader with

16 Mr. Schellsmidt for about 15 days after you ceased your

17 duties on the Busovaca Joint Commission?

18 A. The point that I just wanted to mention to

19 you was this was part of the Busovaca Joint Commission;

20 it was not outside of the Busovaca Joint Commission.

21 Q. Very well. Was the 15-day stint that you

22 spent in that slot before you left the Busovaca Joint

23 Commission or after?

24 A. It was during the Busovaca Joint Commission,

25 the end, towards the end.

1 Q. And I believe you were appointed assistant

2 operations officer at RC Zenica in the second week of

3 May of 1993; right?

4 A. I think I was then appointed chief of ops.

5 Q. And you held that position until the end of

6 July?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. And then you became deputy head of the RC

9 Zenica, a position that you occupied for about three

10 weeks; correct?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. All right. Now, is it true to say that when

13 you arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina, you found a very

14 unusual situation on the ground? For example, in

15 villages, the belligerents had basically grouped

16 themselves within various municipalities and even

17 within various villages and were basically keeping

18 surveillance on each other about 24 hours a day?

19 A. Correct.

20 Q. And it was a very tense and odd situation,

21 that sort of ethnic polarisation; wouldn't you agree?

22 A. Correct.

23 Q. In fact, would you agree that you detected a

24 deep-rooted animosity between the warring parties, with

25 much of the population, if not virtually all of it,

1 under arms at that time?

2 A. Well, I would quote slightly different the

3 last part of your statement. But overall, I would say

4 "yes".

5 Q. Have you ever read the fifth periodic report

6 prepared by the United Nations Commission on Human

7 Rights on the 17th of November, 1993? I was just

8 reading from that, sir, which made the observation that

9 much of the country -- this is in paragraph 12 on

10 page 4 of the report. "Much of the country is under

11 arms and the population is increasingly polarised."

12 A. I don't recall reading that document, but I

13 would tend to more or less agree with what's written

14 there.

15 Q. All right. Just a few more questions on the

16 situation as you found it when you first arrived.

17 It's true that in the spring of 1993, not

18 many government institutions were actually working,

19 were they?

20 A. What exactly do you mean by that?

21 Q. Well, let's take a look at the central

22 government first and then the municipal institutions.

23 The central government was actually cut off

24 and surrounded by forces of the Bosnian Serb army;

25 would you agree with that, sir?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. And therefore the central government had

3 virtually no communication with the various

4 municipalities in the outlying areas; would you agree

5 with that too, as far as you're aware?

6 A. No communication in the formal way of being

7 able to take the telephone and contact them. The

8 communications were done through a more lengthy

9 process.

10 Q. But basically the government simply wasn't

11 working, was it, the central government?

12 A. I think there was something which was

13 working, because one way or the other, there was

14 information that was being passed through, and

15 eventually there was movement of troops and there were

16 changes of attitude. But it was more or less in the

17 much more slower process, due to the situation that you

18 depicted.

19 Q. All right. And in the Blaskic case a couple

20 of years ago, sir, you said that at that time there

21 were not many institutions operating in Central Bosnia,

22 the police were not terribly active, there was no

23 justice system in place. That's page 7474. And then

24 you went on to make the observation that the two

25 military chiefs, one on the HVO side, one on the ABiH

1 side, were, for all practical purposes, to use your

2 words, the authority par excellence which predominated

3 at the time?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. And you still agree with that testimony that

6 you gave two years ago?

7 A. Yes. May I say something more than just

8 "yes", because I think that this type of question

9 required to specify a bit more.

10 JUDGE MAY: Well, Colonel, it's a matter for

11 us to decide what is said here, not for counsel. If

12 you can deal with the matter -- if you want to expand

13 an answer, do. But if you would bear in mind that

14 we'll finish more quickly if you simply say "yes" or

15 "no". But if you want to expand something, do. Also

16 bear in mind that prosecuting counsel can re-examine on

17 any matter which he thinks important which you haven't

18 clarified. But would you like to clarify that last

19 answer?

20 A. Yes, Your Honour, and I'll try to be very

21 brief.

22 Yes, you're right, and the reason why I said

23 that is that everything was being governed by whoever

24 was wearing a uniform, and that's what I meant. And at

25 that time, it appears very obvious to me that the

1 government was able to govern, okay, whatever side,

2 through the use of their military forces, because the

3 civilian police, we could not see if it was civilian

4 police or military police.

5 So that's what I meant by that, is that the

6 country or those areas were being governed by --

7 through the military forces.

8 MR. SAYERS:

9 Q. All right. And when you first arrived in

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina, you also said, on page 7486 in

11 Blaskic, that it was clear to you that the country was

12 wracked by an ethnic conflict, that Muslims detested

13 the Catholics, and vice versa; is that right?

14 A. I would not put it in this way. That's what

15 probably I was led to believe by the briefing that I

16 received, but I think that yesterday and throughout my

17 deposition on Blaskic, I illustrated that I was then

18 led to believe that the animosity was not really coming

19 from the bottom up but was more or less imposed from

20 the top to bottom.

21 Q. All right. But you did say, sir, that when

22 you arrived -- you say this on lines 19 through 23 of

23 page 7486:

24 "It should be said that when I arrived in

25 Bosnian territory, I already had an understanding of

1 the situation. I was convinced that we were facing an

2 ethnic conflict, that the Catholics detested the

3 Muslims, and vice versa."

4 Is that right?

5 A. All I can say, and again all I can say, I

6 didn't read that script before, I was never given a

7 copy of how my deposition in English was reflected, but

8 all I can remember is that, yes, that's what I was told

9 when I arrived in Bosnia, that there was an ethnic

10 conflict. But later on, okay, I more or less slightly

11 changed and amended this version through different

12 experiences that I had and which I was able to provide,

13 as evidenced throughout my statement.

14 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Could you

15 please slow down, because it is very difficult for the

16 interpreters to follow, and likewise to listen to the

17 interpretation.

18 MR. SAYERS:

19 Q. Yes. You've been told to slow down a

20 little. Actually, I say "we". I've been told to slow

21 down a little, and I'll do my best to do that.

22 Would you agree, Colonel Landry, that it was

23 very difficult, when you were in Central Bosnia, to

24 distinguish between a regular soldier, a militia

25 member, police officers, and even civilians, because

1 essentially everybody was in uniform?

2 A. Yes, you're right.

3 Q. And both the HVO and the ABiH used military

4 and regular police, and it was difficult to distinguish

5 between civilian and military police. You would agree

6 with that too; right?

7 A. I would agree, yes.

8 Q. And you would also agree that there were

9 horrible stories of atrocities, murders and so on on

10 both sides throughout your time in the country; right?

11 A. I would agree with that too.

12 Q. All right. You would also agree, sir, that

13 the presence or absence of a uniform tells us very

14 little about whether the wearer was a soldier or not,

15 wouldn't you?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. You gave some important statistics, Colonel

18 Landry, in the Blaskic case. You said that of a

19 population of about 4,4 million in August of 1993 when

20 you left, about 2,2 million of the population or 50

21 per cent consisted of displaced persons. Is that still

22 your view today after the studies that --

23 A. It's still my view, yes.

24 Q. And it's true that the population of Zenica

25 practically doubled as a result of the arrival of

1 refugees and displaced persons from various areas in

2 the spring of 1993; right?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. And the same is true of Busovaca and Vitez,

5 isn't it, sir?

6 A. Yes.

7 THE INTERPRETER: Could you please make

8 pauses between answer and question? Thank you.

9 MR. SAYERS:

10 Q. [Previous translation continues] ... weekly

11 summary, and we can put it on the ELMO, if you wish,

12 dated the 20th or the 26th of June, 1993, which makes

13 the observation that in Kakanj, Vares, Kiseljak, and

14 Vitez, the displaced persons situation had reached

15 almost critical levels. Is that your understanding?

16 A. Yes. If it is something that I have

17 reported, yes, I would definitely think that what I

18 reported was exactly what I was seeing and reading in

19 the situation at that time, yes.

20 Q. Thanks. Let me turn your attention first to

21 the area with which you were first associated, the

22 Busovaca area.

23 It's true that you arrived after the

24 conclusion of the fighting, the outbreak of fighting in

25 January, and that the main supply route from Busovaca

1 to Kiseljak had been cut off by ABiH forces from the

2 333rd Mountain Brigade and as well as others between

3 the villages of Kacuni and Bilalovac; is that right?

4 A. Umm-hmm, that is right.

5 Q. And at no time after your arrival, as far as

6 you're aware, or before the end of the war was the HVO

7 ever able to muster the military strength to

8 re-establish control over the main supply routes

9 between Busovaca and Kiseljak, was it?

10 A. Correct.

11 Q. All right. Now, the Busovaca Joint

12 Commission, sir, had been established before your

13 arrival?

14 A. Correct.

15 Q. It was established as a joint forum where the

16 parties involved in the fighting could air their

17 differences, raise contentious issues, to be resolved

18 through negotiations instead of armed conflict; is that

19 right?

20 A. Yes, but with the aim of implementing the

21 ceasefire agreement that had been signed by both

22 military commanders of Central Bosnia.

23 Q. Yes. And the ceasefire agreements, I

24 believe, were signed -- and I believe you've seen

25 them -- by Colonel Blaskic and by General

1 Hadzihasanovic and countersigned by Ambassador Thebault

2 and Colonel Stewart or Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart from

3 BritBat; right?

4 A. Right.

5 Q. Mr. Kordic was never involved at any time in

6 those ceasefire negotiations, as far as you were aware,

7 was he?

8 A. Directly, probably not.

9 Q. Or even indirectly? You don't have any

10 knowledge whatsoever of his involvement in those

11 negotiations, do you, sir?

12 A. I have no involvement, yes, in those

13 negotiations.

14 Q. Now, the structure of the Busovaca Joint

15 Commission, as I understand it, consisted at the upper

16 echelon of a coordination committee that met once per

17 month; right?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And that consisted of three to six UNPROFOR

20 representatives, HVO and ABiH representatives, as well

21 and ECMM representatives; right?

22 A. Correct.

23 Q. And Mr. Kordic was never on that coordination

24 committee, was he?

25 A. I don't recall.

1 Q. All right. Let me just ask the usher to put

2 one page from Exhibit D23/1 on the ELMO, and that might

3 refresh your recollection. Mr. Usher, I have that

4 here. This page, Annex A. Yes.

5 All right, sir. As we can see, this is a

6 document that shows the organisation of the joint

7 coordination commission, and it shows the coordination

8 committee consisting of the commanding officer of

9 BritBat, the chairman of the ECMM, as well as the

10 commanders of variously the 3rd Corps and the HVO

11 central command; correct?

12 A. Correct.

13 Q. So you would agree that Mr. Kordic never sat

14 on the coordination committee, wouldn't you?

15 A. Correct.

16 Q. In fact, sir, it's true that Mr. Kordic never

17 attended a single meeting of the Busovaca Joint

18 Commission while you were its head, or while you were a

19 member; isn't that right?

20 A. Correct.

21 Q. The committee actually met every day, didn't

22 it, or tried to? Not the coordination committee, the

23 actual Busovaca --

24 A. The working group, yes. On a daily basis,

25 from eight till six, sometimes seven days a week.

1 Q. As I understand it, the working group -- the

2 group representatives with whom you liaised principally

3 were Colonel Merdan for the Muslim forces, and

4 Mr. Nakic for the Croat forces?

5 A. Yes. And in addition to that, they were

6 being accompanied by two other staff officers from

7 their headquarters.

8 Q. And the plan was for Colonel Merdan to report

9 up his chain of command regarding incidents and

10 complaints, and for Mr. Nakic to do the same to his

11 chain of command; correct?

12 A. Correct.

13 Q. Both sides regularly made complaints of

14 breaches of International Humanitarian Law against each

15 other. Would you agree with that?

16 A. That's the way that the whole process

17 started, by letting both sides to provide their brief,

18 their protests, and then we were investigating that.

19 Q. And then investigative groups would be

20 formed, go out during the day to investigate the

21 complaints, and then report back at night; correct?

22 A. Correct. At night or the next morning.

23 Q. During the time that you were a member of the

24 Busovaca Joint Commission, would it be fair to say that

25 you never asked Mr. Kordic to attend a single meeting

1 of that institution?

2 A. No.

3 Q. All right. And I believe, sir, that the --

4 initially set up in Busovaca, the Busovaca Joint

5 Commission moved to Vitez in the last week of March,

6 1993, and changed its name as a result. Is that

7 consistent with your recollection?

8 A. Yes, it is.

9 Q. You gave some testimony about the village of

10 Skradno, sir, and the investigations that you performed

11 concerning complaints about harassment of Muslim

12 citizens in that town. The same kinds of complaints

13 were being made by Croats about harassment of Croat

14 citizens in other little villages. Wouldn't that be

15 fair to say?

16 A. Yes, sure.

17 Q. Now, you've just described that the way that

18 this commission was supposed to work, envisaged

19 complaints being passed up the military chain of

20 command, and then, within a reasonable amount of time,

21 improvements were supposed to have been put in place by

22 the military commanders; is that right?

23 A. That's right. But I must say too, at certain

24 times the municipality, which we had to do, were being

25 involved too. So I recall having meetings with the

1 mayor or representatives of mayors trying to eventually

2 make sure that the ceasefire agreement was being then

3 implemented, not just by the military, but by getting

4 the community involved.

5 Q. Yes. You took active steps to ensure that

6 the instructions from the military leadership filtered

7 down to the subordinate commanders and the civilian

8 government members in Busovaca, for example, or Vitez;

9 correct?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. All right. And after your investigations

12 about the complaints of harassment of Muslim citizens

13 in Skradno, things did improve there, didn't they?

14 A. Not really, because I kept going there on

15 numerous occasion. What did improve, though, is the

16 fact that since we were going there at random,

17 naturally, they were not any longer -- they knew that

18 they could not any longer keep on doing the type of

19 thing that they were doing. But the situation never

20 really improved. Okay --

21 Q. Well, you said on page 7608 of your April the

22 21st, 1998 testimony in Blaskic, as follows, when you

23 first reported the complaints about Skradno.

24 "I told them, the HVO, the first time I went

25 there that the people had been forced to line up

1 against the walls of their houses and go through a mock

2 execution. As far as I can remember, those incidents

3 did not take place again. Therefore, for me there was

4 already some improvement. It was clear that some of

5 the information had reached there."

6 So what you are saying, sir, that the

7 Busovaca Joint Commission was doing, what it was really

8 envisaged to do, and that was to try to diffuse some of

9 the tensions that had been build up in the local towns

10 and villages?

11 A. Diffuse by at least being allowed to have a

12 regular presence on the ground so that in fact people

13 would know that they could not keep doing what they

14 were doing, because it would be reported. Yes.

15 Q. And you did see some improvement in Skradno?

16 A. Along the line that you just mentioned, yes.

17 Q. Let me turn to the Vance-Owen Plan about

18 which you gave testimony. This was a plan that was

19 developed by the International Community to try to

20 bring peace to this troubled region; is that right?

21 A. It is right.

22 Q. And the plan was fully supported by the

23 International Community; correct?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. The Croats were the first to sign full

1 acceptance of all portions of the plan; right?

2 A. When you say the Croat, you mean the Bosniak

3 Croat.

4 Q. The Bosniak Croat contingent, yes. And then

5 ultimately, I believe, the Muslims --

6 A. 23rd of March.

7 Q. Yes. And then, I believe, the Bosnian Serbs

8 initially accepted the plan, except to ratification by

9 the Republika Srpska assembly in Pale, and then the

10 Pale assembly refused to ratify the plan; is that

11 right?

12 A. My recollection, yes.

13 Q. Now, you yourself never heard that the Croats

14 had ever presented any kind of an ultimatum to the

15 Muslim side in connection with the implementation of

16 this plan; isn't that right?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Certainly, sir, you never heard of any kind

19 of an ultimatum from Colonel Blaskic, did you?

20 A. No.

21 Q. Or from any other source with whom you were

22 dealing in the HVO; is that right?

23 A. Except that later on we got copies of those

24 correspondence between -- copy of correspondence of

25 Mate Boban about the fact that this 15 of April was to

1 be a kind of a special date as far as the full

2 implementation of the Vance Owen, but never to the

3 effect that we were fully aware of what was the

4 additional deals. We knew that something else was

5 going on, because if you look at the Vance-Owen Plan,

6 you will realise that the Vance-Owen Plan left some

7 latitude to be further settled down by the Muslims, and

8 the Bosniak Muslims, and the Bosniak Croats. For

9 example, the way that the whole military structure

10 would be further organised.

11 Q. Right. But in your functions as a prominent

12 ECMM monitor responsible for the Vitez-Busovaca region

13 on the ground, you never heard of any such ultimatum

14 while you were in the field, so to speak, did you?

15 A. As I said, I mean, one of the tasks that the

16 ECMM received upon this plan was to facilitate its

17 implementation. So we received numerous briefing on

18 the Vance-Owen Plan and, as I said, I mean, I have

19 recollection of seeing the paper signed by Mr. Mate

20 Boban about this 15 of April. And I think that I had

21 the copy of those documents in my possession.

22 Q. All right. Let me just suggest to you, sir,

23 that on page 7735 of the Blaskic testimony that you

24 gave, Judge Shahabuddeen asked you whether you were

25 ever aware of the issue of an ultimatum having been

1 issued by the Croatian side to the Muslim side

2 requiring implementation of the Vance-Owen Plan by the

3 15th of April. And your answer was, "When we were on

4 the ground, I was not given that type of information.

5 The only thing that I can remember is, I believe, that

6 the Muslims or Izetbegovic had signed the Vance-Owen

7 Plan at the end of April, or at least he had let it be

8 understood that he had agreed with the implementation

9 or at least the principles of the Vance-Owen Plan."

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. Very well. And you are not saying anything

12 differently today?

13 A. No.

14 Q. No. Now, I wonder if you could be shown

15 Exhibits Z571.1 and Z571.3, which was identified during

16 the direct examination. Just give them to the witness,

17 if you wouldn't mind.

18 Exhibit 571.3, sir, was something that is

19 entitled "Annex 4" and in agreement on interim

20 arrangements. Do you know whether this was actually

21 ever incorporated into the Vance-Owen Plan itself?

22 A. You mean the added page dated 25 of March?

23 Is that what -- because I have two documents here.

24 Q. 571.3 is the exhibit that I want you to look

25 at, the exhibit you were shown by the Prosecution.

1 A. And again your question is?

2 Q. Well, do you know whether this document was

3 actually made a part of the final version of the

4 Vance-Owen Plan, sir?

5 A. I would have to go through it to see exactly

6 what it is. All I can say is that we had a copy of the

7 Vance-Owen Plan, and if it is the Vance-Owen Plan, I

8 would say yes, we had it.

9 Q. Let me show you a document that has in fact

10 been identified by the parties in this case as a copy

11 of the Vance-Owen Plan. It should be Exhibit 571.1.

12 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] This is an

13 exhibit that was tendered yesterday.

14 MR. SAYERS: This was tendered several months

15 ago. I have an extra copy here, if you need it.

16 Q. Thank you very much, Colonel Landry. If you

17 just take a look at the exhibit that's been put before

18 you. Do you recognise this as a copy of what has been

19 known as the Vance-Owen Plan?

20 A. Yes. This is the official way to publish the

21 document. But I must say, though, that in the field,

22 okay, it's more or less a copy that -- that you showed

23 me that we received in our RC Zenica. So I was never

24 able to get this type of official document.

25 Q. All right. Would you just turn to page 137,

1 sir, which deals with interim provincial governments.

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. All right. As I understand it, sir, the

4 arrangement was for each province, each of the ten

5 provinces or cantons, to have first a governor that

6 would be appointed by the majority ethnic component of

7 the population, then a vice-governor appointed by the

8 next most numerous ethnic component of the population,

9 and then ten other members on an interim provincial

10 government, consisting of a mixture of the three

11 constituent peoples: Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. Is

12 that fair to say?

13 A. Yes, it is fair to say.

14 Q. If you just turn to the next page. Actually,

15 if you turn to page 139, sir. Province 10 is dealt

16 with, and it's fairly easy to understand. Province 10

17 has as its capital Travnik; correct?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. The governor was to be nominated by party A,

20 which is the Croats, the Croat party, the HDZ BiH;

21 correct?

22 A. I assume, yes.

23 Q. The vice-governor was to be nominated by the

24 Muslim party, the SDA; correct?

25 A. Uh-huh.

1 Q. Yes?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And then five members of the provincial --

4 the ten member provincial government were to be

5 nominated by the SDA, four by the HDZ BiH, and one by

6 the Serbian party, SDS; is that right?

7 A. Well, that's what's written there, yes.

8 Q. Right. And is that what you were informing

9 the Muslims and the HVO in connection with your efforts

10 to educate the locals about the components of the

11 Vance-Owen Plan? That's the governmental structure

12 that was envisaged and that was what you were

13 promulgating on behalf of the ECMM; correct?

14 A. Correct.

15 Q. All right. Now, that's relatively easy to

16 understand, sir, isn't it? That looks like, to me, a

17 balanced governance structure with power pretty much

18 equally shared between Croats and Muslims in Travnicka

19 province, province number 10. Would you agree with

20 that?

21 A. Definitely. May I make just one comment?

22 JUDGE MAY: Yes, indeed. I'm not quite

23 sure. Where are we going here? What is the purpose of

24 these questions, Mr. Sayers? Will you assist us?

25 MR. SAYERS: The purpose of the questions

1 was, Mr. President, just to underscore the fact that

2 the Vance-Owen Plan always set out a fairly simple

3 governance structure and always envisaged a sharing of

4 power between Croats and Muslims. And I am not exactly

5 sure how Colonel Landry or his colleagues at the ECMM

6 addressed the contentions that somehow the Vance-Owen

7 Plan was supposed to create ethnically homogeneous

8 provinces, because clearly it was not.

9 JUDGE MAY: Well, Colonel, perhaps you would

10 like to respond to that.

11 A. Yes, very easily.

12 We never argue about the nature of the

13 Vance-Owen Plan. What we said was the interpretation

14 of it. For example, if I go to Travnik, it was very

15 obvious for us that as soon as the Vance-Owen Plan had

16 been agreed, it was much more tension, okay, that

17 arise, and as soon as Travnik had been decided as to be

18 the capital of that province, then suddenly the local

19 authority, which happened to be Muslim, were being

20 displaced, were being ousted out, and then were being

21 replaced by other Croat representatives which have not

22 been legally elected. And it appears to us that as

23 this was happening, there was much more intense ethnic

24 discrimination taking place, which we had the feeling

25 that the Muslims were being forced out and that which

1 we had -- which ECMM had at the same time received a

2 lot of pressure by the HVO and the Bosniak Croat

3 authorities to make sure or to force us to allow the

4 displacement of the Croats that were living in Zenica

5 to move to Province 10. That's all we were saying.

6 JUDGE BENNOUNA: [Interpretation] Mr. Sayers,

7 I should like to ask Colonel Landry, does it transpire

8 from your analysis of the Vance-Owen Plan and does it

9 therefore transpire that there would be some cantons

10 which would be predominantly Croat or Bosniak Croat, if

11 one might call them that way, and others which would be

12 predominantly Bosniak Muslim?

13 A. Yes, Your Honour.

14 JUDGE BENNOUNA: [Interpretation] Thank you.

15 Mr. Sayers, I do not really think it would be

16 worth going into detail about this partition, because

17 we know about that. The problem is how the plan was

18 received and if it was received as Colonel Landry tells

19 us, and therefore those were the consequences of it.

20 And to go into various technicalities of the Vance-Owen

21 Plan, I do not know if we have to go there. Perhaps,

22 of course, it is of interest to people with a legal

23 education, but otherwise --

24 MR. SAYERS: I stand justly upbraided, Your

25 Honour, and I think we'll move on smartly.

1 Q. Let me just ask you one question, sir. Did

2 you ever discuss the details of the implementation of

3 the Vance-Owen Plan with any of the Bosnian Croat

4 political leadership in Central Bosnia?

5 A. This was done basically by Ambassador

6 Thebault. Okay, you must realise that we had many

7 things to do, and one of the things that we were

8 attempting to do was to voice this Vance-Owen Plan to

9 the locals, okay, and Ambassador Thebault was the one

10 more or less taking care of the very senior level.

11 Q. But you yourself had no such discussions with

12 the leadership of the Bosnian Croats in --

13 A. Besides the leadership at the local level and

14 some municipalities, as I said. I did meet with the

15 mayor at that level.

16 Q. You never discussed it, though, with

17 Mr. Kordic, for example, did you?

18 A. No, I don't recall that, except that once,

19 though, I did pay a visit to one of the other very

20 senior members of the Croat government, okay, near

21 Mostar. I have a recollection of paying him a visit,

22 and we did, in fact, talk about the Vance-Owen Plan.

23 This was later on, maybe May or June.

24 Q. That's in Herzegovina, though; right?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. You never discussed it with Mr. Kordic,

2 though, or any other Croat political leader in Central

3 Bosnia?

4 A. Not to my knowledge, no.

5 Q. Similarly, you never discussed it with

6 Colonel Blaskic, did you?

7 A. That, I cannot confirm.

8 Q. Let me turn to another subject, the chain of

9 command in the HVO.

10 Were you aware that the supreme commander of

11 the armed forces of the HVO throughout your tour of

12 duty, sir, was the president of the Croatian Community

13 of Herceg-Bosna, Mr. Mate Boban?

14 A. Yes, I assume, as I said yesterday. I mean

15 the military has to answer to the government, yes.

16 Q. And you understood that Mr. Boban was the

17 president of the so-called HZ HB, the Croatian

18 Community of Herceg-Bosna; right?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. Did you know that there was a separate

21 institution known as the presidency, quite apart from

22 the president? No? All right.

23 A. I have no recollection of it.

24 Q. All right. It's true also that the general

25 staff of the HVO and its headquarters was located in

1 Mostar or just outside; is that right?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And while you were with the ECMM, Colonel,

4 the commander in chief was Brigadier Milivoj Petkovic,

5 was it not?

6 A. That's correct.

7 Q. And in the Blaskic case, you stated that you

8 were of the impression that HVO troops generally

9 responded and reacted to the chain of command, and I

10 take it that's your view today as well.

11 A. It is, yes.

12 Q. Yes. Now, throughout your tour of duty for

13 six months in Central Bosnia, there is absolutely no

14 doubt at all that it was Colonel Blaskic who was the

15 military commander of HVO armed forces in Central

16 Bosnia, is there?

17 A. Yes, it's correct.

18 Q. In fact, I think in your statement to the

19 Prosecution's investigators a number of years ago, you

20 said that he was definitely the HVO military commander

21 throughout your tour, and you still think that way

22 today; right?

23 A. Yes, it is.

24 Q. In fact, Colonel Blaskic displayed to you a

25 great deal of knowledge about his brigade commanders

1 and the disposition of the forces under his command; is

2 that fair to say?

3 A. Yes, it's fair to say, but assuming too that

4 they were having problems with control of certain

5 elements and, yes, considering the situation and, as I

6 said yesterday, the fact that they were not fully a

7 professional army, we realised that there was a certain

8 element of control at time to time, yes.

9 Q. And you articulated your view, I believe, on

10 direct examination, that Colonel Blaskic, as the

11 military commander of the forces in his area of

12 responsibility, had the obligation to ensure that all

13 of the troops under his command properly responded to

14 his authority; is that right?

15 A. It is right.

16 Q. And you also are of the view that it's simply

17 not possible to believe that he did not have an

18 exercise of full control over all of the troops under

19 his command; right?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. All right.

22 A. Yes, except the point that I just made a few

23 minutes regarding the fact that they didn't have a

24 professional army and they didn't have all the

25 necessary tools of communication too.

1 Q. Right. In fact, you were asked by Judge Riad

2 two years ago, at page 7725 of your testimony, whether

3 Colonel Blaskic was the uncontested commander of all

4 HVO forces in Central Bosnia, and you said that's

5 exactly what he was; right?

6 A. Exactly.

7 Q. All right. Now, going down to the next

8 level, Colonel, the brigade commands, it's true that

9 the HVO's military organisation envisaged a system of

10 municipality or territorially-based brigades with their

11 soldiers or forces drawn from the local environs;

12 correct?

13 A. Correct.

14 Q. Right. And beneath the brigades, they were

15 organised into satnijas or companies, each commanded by

16 a company commander who reported to the brigade --

17 A. Company commander or battalion commander

18 sometime, depending on the translation.

19 Q. Right. And then the brigade commanders

20 reported up the chain of command to the Operative Zone

21 commander, Colonel Blaskic; correct?

22 A. Correct.

23 Q. Who, in turn, reported to his CO, his

24 commanding officer, Brigadier Petkovic; correct?

25 A. Correct.

1 Q. All right. And you gave some testimony about

2 the Busovaca brigade commander, Dusko Grubesic. He was

3 the commander of the Nikola Subic-Zrinjski Brigade in

4 that town; right?

5 A. Well, I recall him as being the Busovaca

6 Brigade commander on the HVO side, yes.

7 Q. Right. There's no question that he was the

8 local HVO commander in Busovaca, according to your

9 recollection; isn't that right?

10 A. He was definitely the brigade commander, yes.

11 Q. All right. Now, you've described, in graphic

12 terms, how events gradually began to accelerate out of

13 control in April of 1993.

14 I wonder if I could just ask the usher to

15 show you a document that was marked as Exhibit D146/1,

16 which is an ECMM special report dated April the 7th,

17 1993.

18 In paragraph 1, sir, the comment is made

19 that:

20 "The coordination committee meeting of the

21 Busovaca Joint Commission was held today, April the

22 7th, 1993, in the FrenchBat location at Kakanj due to

23 the HVO representatives' high concern about their

24 security after blackmail sent during the last days by

25 Muslim hard-liners at Zenica."

1 Do you recall that incident?

2 A. I would have -- I know that we had a lot of

3 problems in Kakanj eventually during my stay and I had

4 to intervene on numerous occasions, so I would tend to

5 say, yes, that could be part of it.

6 Q. This comment, though, sir, makes the

7 observation that the threats had been received from

8 Muslim hard-liners in the city of Zenica and that the

9 meeting had to be convened in Kakanj due to the

10 concerns expressed by the HVO representatives for their

11 safety. Do you have a recollection of this incident or

12 not?

13 A. I don't.

14 Q. Very well. Thank you. I'm through with

15 that.

16 Even though your perception was that in

17 places like Travnik, sir, tensions were beginning to

18 rise at the beginning of April, it's true, isn't it,

19 that the local commanders in Busovaca actually met and

20 reached agreement on April the 8th and 9th, 1993, for

21 things such as filling in of fortifications like

22 trenches; right?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. That was Commander Grubesic from the HVO and

25 Commander Dvevad Mekic from the 333rd Brigade; correct?

1 A. We had been able to get written -- finally

2 written orders two months after the ceasefire had been

3 agreed by their commander, and that's the document that

4 I needed to have the local commander to fill the

5 trench, because they wanted to have proof and written

6 orders so they could proceed in filling the trenches.

7 Q. Yes, and it's fairly easy to understand why,

8 Colonel, because neither side wanted to fill in

9 trenches without being absolutely certain that their

10 senior command had ordered precisely that. Isn't that

11 right?

12 A. Well, when you say "neither side", I must say

13 that during that period of time, and it did change

14 later on, that the Muslims were definitely more anxious

15 to fill in the trench than the Croat side. But as I

16 said, it did change. As soon as the overall tactical

17 situation changed in Central Bosnia, it was the other

18 way around.

19 Q. Yes, and we'll get into that in just a

20 second.

21 But just continuing the escalation of

22 tensions in April just before the outbreak of conflict,

23 you gave some testimony about the kidnapping of four

24 HVO staff officers, I believe, on April the 14th. The

25 Court has already heard a lot of evidence about that.

1 We don't need, really, very much more. But it was you

2 who actually contacted the military authorities in

3 Zenica to request that the incident be investigated;

4 correct?

5 A. Umm-hmm.

6 Q. And it's true that Mujahedin associated with

7 the 7th Muslim Brigade were responsible for this

8 incident, and you were not actually -- or your monitor,

9 Mr. Baggesen, I believe, from whom we've heard, was not

10 able to local the whereabouts of these four abducted

11 HVO officers. Do you recall that?

12 A. I recall that, but I recall more or less my

13 direct involvement with the HVO brigade commander, I

14 think General Tadic, in Zenica, because I was directly

15 involved in that one. And, yes, there was definitely

16 links with the Mujahedin.

17 Q. Now, the next event that you spoke about in

18 your direct examination was the Easter celebrations

19 that you attended, the luncheon that you attended. I

20 believe it's on April the 13th, at which Mr. Kordic was

21 allegedly or was, in fact, present. Is there any

22 reference in your notebook to the April 13th, 1993,

23 Easter luncheon, sir?

24 A. Yes. That's why I was able to recall the

25 date.

1 Q. All right. Did you actually speak to

2 Mr. Kordic at that luncheon?

3 A. I was not sitting at his table.

4 Q. There were lots of people there, I take it.

5 A. Yes. There was a head table, if my

6 recollection is correct, and Mr. Kordic, along with

7 Colonel Blaskic, were sitting at the head table. And

8 the ECMM, since I was a brand new kid on the block, was

9 sitting at one of the tables with other guests.

10 Q. I understand that Ambassador Thebault was

11 present at that --

12 A. Most of the staff of the RC Zenica had been

13 invited. Basically, the monitor with interpreters were

14 there.

15 Q. All right. And then you said that Mr. Kordic

16 appeared in Travnik when there was an outbreak of

17 tension or fighting there?

18 A. Well, when I say appeared, I must be very

19 clear here, is that we went to Travnik because, as I

20 depicted yesterday, tension has built up, different

21 incidents took place, and they were all related or

22 appear to have been initiated with this business of

23 raising the Croat flag near the town hall, okay.

24 And what we hand up is that as we were having

25 this celebration, we received news that -- I don't

1 recall exactly if it was from Travnik or if it was from

2 BritBat, but that the situation has deteriorated to the

3 point that BritBat was sending armoured vehicles there

4 to try to calm down the situation. It seems to be out

5 of control.

6 And then we moved there and start meeting

7 with different representative, local civilian police,

8 military commanders, and then I recall very clearly

9 that at the end of the day we almost had to hand up in

10 the office of Mr. Kordic. And until then, I said that

11 Mr. Kordic was in fact more or less working out of

12 Travnik.

13 Q. But you now understand that he was not

14 working out of Travnik; is that right?

15 A. No. He was in Busovaca.

16 Q. All right. The next event is the abduction

17 of commander Zivko Totic on the morning of April 15th.

18 You were aware that the four soldiers escorting him

19 were executed?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. Did you see pictures of the car in which they

22 had been travelling and their bodies aired on TV that

23 day?

24 A. Maybe not on TV, but what I did was that I

25 went to the place where the incident took place. So I

1 could see a trace of --

2 Q. So you actually saw the car --

3 A. I think so, that I recall that I have seen

4 the car, yes.

5 Q. And it was riddled with bullets; a fairly

6 graphic scene?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. Did you ever see a TV press conference given

9 by members of the Croat leadership discussing this

10 terrible incident in Zenica?

11 A. No, I didn't, because I must tell you that as

12 soon as this incident took place, I was more or less

13 given the special task to try to investigate and try to

14 trace back the whereabouts of the Mujahedins that had

15 in fact abducted General Totic.

16 Q. I believe that at some point the Mujahedin,

17 who had abducted Commander Totic and killed his escort,

18 sent a letter to the ECMM threatening to kill people

19 that they had in custody unless foreign nationals were

20 released in Busovaca; is that right?

21 A. Yes --

22 MR. SCOTT: Your Honour, excuse me. None of

23 this is disputed. The Prosecution doesn't dispute --

24 JUDGE MAY: Yes, I know. We are spending a

25 lot of time on it. Why do we need to go through it?

1 MR. SAYERS: You are right, Your Honour. Let

2 me move on.

3 Q. Isn't it true, sir, that the fighting

4 actually broke out in the Lasva Valley on the evening

5 of April the 15th and not the morning of April the

6 16th, as far as you can remember?

7 A. It was -- it took place definitely during

8 that time, so ...

9 Q. All right. You described your drive past

10 Ahmici, sir. You do not know yourself whether the ABiH

11 had a unit based in that village, do you?

12 A. No, I don't know if they had a unit in that

13 village.

14 Q. Right. And you do not know whether a

15 specific defence plan existed for that village either,

16 do you?

17 A. All I can say is that when I went and I had

18 been given the chance, finally, to walk around, there

19 was definitely no sign of defensive preparation on that

20 village.

21 Q. You gave some testimony, sir, that as you

22 were driving along the valley road, from Vitez to

23 Zenica on the 16th of April, you did not see any HVO

24 troops. But let me just suggest to you that you were

25 driving through HVO controlled territory and it's not

1 surprising that you would not see any HVO troops, since

2 the front lines were actually to the north of the

3 supply route; is that right?

4 A. You meant HVO troops or you meant --

5 Q. HVO.

6 A. Well, I did say that I saw some HVO troops.

7 Q. Maybe we are talking at cross-purposes. You

8 saw HVO troops, but you said you did not see any ABiH

9 troops; correct?

10 A. Correct.

11 Q. The ABiH troops were located at the

12 confrontation lines to the north of the village.

13 A. Yes. Yes.

14 Q. All right. Would you agree, sir, that Ahmici

15 was the only almost exclusively Muslim village behind

16 the confrontation lines?

17 A. Not really. If you look at Vitez itself,

18 there was Muslims in there too. So there was other

19 small pockets of Muslims within the HVO controlled

20 area, as there was pockets of HVO or Croats within

21 Muslim territory.

22 Q. All right. You were aware, were you not,

23 that there had been an earlier incident in October of

24 1992, where a troop convoy was actually held up at

25 Ahmici?

1 A. No, I wasn't aware of that.

2 Q. All right. Turning to Zenica, sir. It's

3 true, is it not, that the two HVO brigades located in

4 Zenica were militarily defeated on April the 16th and

5 17th?

6 A. When you say defeated, all I can say is that

7 the battle took place, but my recollection is that some

8 of them had been arrested. I visited them in the

9 Zenica prison. But a lot of them too were able to

10 withdraw and to escape and to more or less link up with

11 the HVO.

12 Q. The long and the short of it is, though, that

13 the HVO military presence no longer existed in Zenica

14 as of April the 17th; isn't that right?

15 A. It is right.

16 Q. And you yourself saw tank movements, I

17 believe, around the Zenica environment by tanks owned

18 by the ABiH?

19 A. If I recall correctly, we reported one.

20 Q. All right. There was actually a April the

21 20th, 1993 report, which is already in evidence as 754,

22 that refers to two tanks that were seen on the mountain

23 road.

24 A. Okay. I thought you meant in Zenica, but the

25 mountain road is not in Zenica.

1 Q. So there was one tank in Zenica and other

2 tanks around the environs of Zenica; is that right?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. Now, when the fighting broke out, you made an

5 attempt to contact Colonel Blaskic, did you not?

6 A. Yes, we did.

7 Q. And you were informed that he was not

8 available?

9 A. Exactly.

10 Q. But you made no attempt to call Mr. Kordic,

11 did you, or contact him in any way?

12 A. No, you are right.

13 Q. As far as you are aware, no one else from

14 BritBat attempted to contact Mr. Kordic that day, or

15 thereafter?

16 A. That I could not say, and I could not say

17 either for Mr. Thebault.

18 Q. But no one in the ECMM, as far as you are

19 aware, tried to contact Mr. Kordic?

20 A. As I said, I am not aware of what

21 Mr. Thebault said. But all I said is that we try,

22 okay, since we were working on the Busovaca Joint

23 Commission and since the direct link that we had was

24 Colonel Blaskic, I tried to --

25 Q. All right.

1 A. -- establish contact with him.

2 Q. You were shown a document, sir, during your

3 -- actually, you were shown two documents, both faxed,

4 I believe, to the ECMM and to BritBat on the 17th of

5 April, 1993?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. The first was a document that had three

8 signatures?

9 A. Signed by the same individual.

10 Q. Signed by the same individual?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. Do you know who signed the document?

13 A. No.

14 Q. All right. Let me just suggest to you that

15 it was Mr. Anto Puljic who signed also for Mr. Ignac

16 Kostroman, the Secretary-General of the HZ HB, and for

17 Mr. Kordic, the vice-president of the HZ HB.

18 A. Uh-huh.

19 Q. Did you know Mr. Puljic?

20 A. The name right now means nothing. Maybe I

21 have met him. I don't know. I mean, you have to

22 recall that those incidents took place several years

23 ago, and my books are full of people that I have met.

24 I would need to see his face, and then I could tell you

25 if I've met him or not.

1 Q. All right. You were aware that Mr. Kordic

2 was the vice-president of the presidency of the HZ HB;

3 is that correct?

4 A. Exactly. And he was located in Central

5 Bosnia.

6 Q. Now, the fighting actually ceased as a result

7 of -- from the Croat side as a result of orders issued

8 by Mr. Mate Boban, and then by General Petkovic, and

9 then by Colonel Blaskic; is that right?

10 A. I know that there was eventually orders that

11 were given, but I must tell you that at that time

12 mainly through the military chain of command. So I

13 know that -- I am aware that later on Petkovic came to

14 Zenica or came to some other places, where finally

15 Mr. Thebault was able to again get another ceasefire.

16 And I must tell you that during that period there was

17 many of those meeting. So I would not be able to

18 recollect exactly when and at what meeting it took

19 place, but I know that there was a series of meetings.

20 Q. All right. We need not spend too much time

21 on this, Colonel Landry, because these documents are

22 already in evidence. But let me just suggest to you,

23 since this is relatively important, from the chain of

24 command perspective, that an order signed by both Mate

25 Boban and President Izetbegovic --

1 A. Okay.

2 Q. -- was signed on April the 18th, 1993. It's

3 Exhibit D83/1. This order provided -- in fact, let's

4 just put it on the ELMO. D83/1, please.

5 If I might just ask the Court's direction, in

6 order to save the Registrar a lot of work, we actually

7 have clean copies of the exhibits that have previously

8 been admitted into evidence. And it might be more

9 efficient just to have the assistant put, or the usher,

10 put these on the ELMO, Mr. President, if that's

11 acceptable.

12 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

13 MR. SAYERS: Thank you. These are two

14 additional copies of the next two orders. Thank you.

15 Q. All right. Colonel Landry, you would agree

16 that President Izetbegovic and President Boban signed a

17 four point order on the 18th of April, 1993?

18 A. Right. Now that I have the document in front

19 of me, yes.

20 Q. The first paragraph provided that all

21 misunderstandings in relations between Croatian and

22 Muslim peoples in BH should be resolved by political

23 means. Right?

24 A. Right.

25 Q. And then the fourth -- the third point,

1 rather, was to -- an order to all units to stop the

2 fighting immediately. Right?

3 A. Uh-huh.

4 Q. And then the fourth was to establish the

5 responsibility and intentions of the units and

6 individuals with a role at the beginning of the

7 conflict. Do you see that?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. All right. Now, the next order I'd like you

10 to examine is the order handed down the same day, sir,

11 by the chief of the HVO main headquarters, Brigadier

12 Milivoj Petkovic. If you could just put that on the

13 ELMO, please. And this order, as you would expect,

14 sir, is sent by the commander in chief of the HVO

15 military forces down to the various operative zones.

16 Do you see that?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. And that's the way that the chain of command

19 is normally expected to work? You would agree?

20 A. Definitely.

21 Q. All right. And then the third order I'd like

22 you to look at is an order of the same day signed by

23 Colonel Blaskic, D84/1. And Colonel Blaskic, the

24 operative zone commander, issues the same order that he

25 had been instructed to issue by his commander in chief,

1 his commanding officer. Right?

2 A. Right.

3 Q. So here you see a practical example of the

4 chain of command in the HVO military working precisely

5 as you would expect as a professional military man?

6 A. Right.

7 Q. Now, sir, after this series of orders had

8 been issued, it's true that the warring factions got

9 together in Zenica, they were assembled, I believe, by

10 Lieutenant-General Morillon and by Ambassador Thebault,

11 and an agreement was hammered out that day, April the

12 20th, 1993; correct?

13 A. As I said, yes. It could be another date,

14 but I know that during that period there was many of

15 those that took place, and I recall personally being

16 involved with one that Morillon was chairing.

17 Q. All right. We have previously had the

18 document marked Exhibit D24/1, and the first provision

19 of that agreement said, sir, that the BiH army, and the

20 HVO, are both legal, military forces of the Republic of

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina and are treated equally.

22 A. Uh-huh.

23 Q. Were you aware of that provision?

24 A. Yes. Now that you are reading it, it

25 definitely rings a bell.

1 Q. And I believe the signatories to that are

2 self-explanatory, Colonel. General Halilovic, who was

3 the commander in chief of the ABiH armed forces,

4 Brigadier Petkovic, commander in chief of the HVO

5 forces, and countersigned by General Morillon and

6 Ambassador Thebault. And you are familiar with that

7 document?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. Now, at no point was Mr. Kordic involved in

10 these negotiations. You would agree with that?

11 A. Definitely agree with you.

12 Q. No one suggested that his presentation was

13 necessary in order to make any agreement relating to

14 the cessation of hostilities binding; correct?

15 A. Correct.

16 Q. So far as you are aware, no one from the ECMM

17 invited him, no one from BritBat invited him? In fact,

18 his name simply did not come up during the

19 negotiations; correct?

20 A. Correct.

21 Q. All right. You are aware, Colonel, that

22 notwithstanding this ceasefire agreement, hostilities

23 continued sporadically in areas on the -- what had

24 become the front lines? For example, in the village of

25 Jelinak, a predominantly Croat village, the civilians

1 were expelled by about a hundred BiH troops who --

2 consisted of a battalion sized grouping, and this was

3 reported at the end of April of 1993. Do you have any

4 recollection of that?

5 A. I don't have any specific recollection. But

6 as I am more than willing to admit, there has been

7 retaliation on both sides and I am not trying to depict

8 that one side was without fault. On the contrary.

9 Q. All right. Turning to the next subject,

10 which is the crimes against Croats that you

11 investigated in the latter part of April and resulted

12 in a special report that you prepared.

13 A. When you say "latter part of April," you

14 meant right after the mid-April incident?

15 Q. That was an imprecise phraseology on my

16 part. It was actually your investigation that

17 immediately preceded the special report on Croats in

18 Zenica that you prepared, dated the 20th to the 21st of

19 April, 1993.

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. And that's already in evidence, Your Honours,

22 as the 25/1.

23 As I understand it, sir, you were assisted by

24 Father Stjepan Radic?

25 A. Yes. Known as Father Stjepan. That's all I

1 can recall.

2 Q. And he reported to you that he had seen ABiH

3 troops completely out of control, committing crimes,

4 didn't he?

5 A. Well, if it's what is written in the report,

6 I would say yes. But to my knowledge, he didn't see

7 that much because he was in central Zenica, okay. And

8 what we did was that we took him with us, so that we

9 could go and investigate the incident that took place

10 on the villages which were bordering Zenica.

11 Q. All right. I don't think you are disagreeing

12 with this, but you said in your testimony a couple of

13 years ago, and it's been a few years, obviously, that

14 Father Stjepan had given asylum to several Zenica HVO

15 persons. This is page 7525 of the transcript. That

16 they had seen the Bosnian troops were out of control,

17 and it seemed --

18 A. Those people -- okay, that's what those

19 people reported to Father Stjepan. And they were

20 looking for asylum. And I've met those people, because

21 I was then invited by Father Stjepan too. And those --

22 two individuals were politicians.

23 Q. Yes.

24 A. And I think that I reported their names.

25 Q. Yes. As I understand it, sir, what you did

1 was you conducted a two-day investigation. On the

2 first day, you made a visit to the gaol in Zenica,

3 where you saw hundreds of Croats incarcerated; correct?

4 A. Right.

5 Q. And then the second day you made a visit to

6 various villages, and you reported your findings in

7 this special report?

8 A. Correct.

9 Q. In your report, sir, you recite a fairly

10 deplorable history of people being thrown out of their

11 houses --

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. -- in Janjac?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. Stranjani?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. In Janjac, there were 209 families expelled

18 from the village, that you record?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. In Stranjani, there were seven houses burned

21 down and 240 other houses looted, all belonging to

22 Croats, right?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. In Zahalje, you found that four Croats had

25 been murdered during the expulsion process?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. The visit of Dobriljeno completely deserted

3 of its Croat inhabitants?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. The village of Zalje, you found 25 houses

6 burned, the entire village deserted, ten civilians

7 slaughtered, including one 90-year-old man and one

8 three-year-old young girl, who had been shot dead in

9 her bed. Right?

10 A. Yes. If that's what I reported on my report,

11 then that's exactly what we were told by the witnesses

12 that were there in those village.

13 Q. Do you know whether anyone was ever brought

14 to justice as a result of those atrocities?

15 A. I don't recall.

16 Q. All right. You also investigated another

17 incident that occurred a few days later in the village

18 of Miletici, correct? April the 25th, I believe, where

19 five people were tortured and murdered by ABiH

20 Mujahedin.

21 A. Is it in the same report? Because this, I

22 have no recollection. Unless it's on the report.

23 Q. Let me just ask you to take a look at Exhibit

24 D86/1.

25 MR. NICE: Your Honour, we remain concerned

1 about the relevance of this material which, as I

2 understand it, wasn't dealt with in chief. And it's

3 taking a lot of time to go through it.

4 JUDGE MAY: That's a matter for us,

5 Mr. Nice.

6 MR. SAYERS: I'm sorry, Your Honour, I did

7 not mean to wander into material that was not covered

8 on direct, but I believe that the crimes against Croats

9 had in fact -- we can move on very briefly.

10 A. All I can say is that I was not the one that

11 did investigate this situation.

12 Q. Very well. Now, sir, turning onto another

13 subject. You gave some testimony about the relative

14 strengths of the HVO military forces and the ABiH

15 military forces, in your view. And you also gave some

16 testimony today that the strategic and tactical

17 situation changed during the midst of your tour of duty

18 as an ECMM monitor.

19 There is no question that as of the second or

20 third week of April -- sorry, the second or third week

21 of June, 1993, that the tide had most definitely turned

22 against the HVO, and the ABiH forces were militarily

23 dominant. Would you agree with that?

24 A. Yes, I would agree. I mean, I would have to

25 go through my notes to see exactly when it took place,

1 but, yes, as I said earlier, yes, we could see that the

2 whole tactical situation changed drastically in Central

3 Bosnia.

4 Q. Were you aware, sir, that during the month of

5 May and the first eight days of June of 1993, General

6 Hadzihasanovic had resolutely refused to meet with

7 Colonel Blaskic to discuss issues in a joint commission

8 context? Did anyone tell you that?

9 A. I don't recall. Maybe I have been told, but

10 I don't recall it. All I can say, though, is that I

11 can recall that General Halilovic had been removed from

12 his command later on and replaced by another general.

13 MR. SAYERS: Mr. President, I am about to

14 move onto another subject. This might be a convenient

15 time to --

16 JUDGE MAY: Are you going to be very much

17 longer, Mr. Sayers?

18 MR. SAYERS: I would anticipate, Your Honour,

19 as I said yesterday, I am not going to go beyond the

20 morning session.

21 JUDGE MAY: How does that place us? I mean,

22 you've had an hour and a half already, Mr. Sayers.

23 You've got as far as Zenica. You are in the middle of

24 April. There can't be very much more left to do.

25 MR. SAYERS: There's the Zenica shelling,

1 Your Honour; there is the Kiseljak testimony about

2 which the witness spoke; there is the relative

3 strengths of the ABiH and HVO forces in June, July, and

4 August; the April the 28th convoy incident; and then

5 the HV testimony that the witness gave. Those are the

6 subjects that I would like to address.

7 JUDGE MAY: Well, they should be dealt with

8 in at least an hour, if not quicker.

9 MR. SAYERS: I would think so, yes.

10 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

11 MR. NICE: We have a witness who can be dealt

12 with in --

13 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Mr. Nice.

14 Microphone, please.

15 MR. NICE: We have a witness who can be dealt

16 with in half a day, I'm sure. There's a short ex

17 parte, if such a hearing can be granted, and there are

18 various procedural matters that can usefully occupy any

19 balance of the day, and particularly I know that

20 exhibits have yet to be progressed. And there's the

21 question of videos that I want to raise as well.

22 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Well, we can't sit late

23 tonight. We shall have to adjourn very soon after

24 four, so we may not be able to get very far with the

25 other matter. But it does mean cross-examination

1 should be expedited as quickly as possible.

2 Yes, half past.

3 --- Recess taken at 11.03 a.m.

4 --- On resuming at 11.35 a.m.

5 JUDGE MAY: What's this map, Mr. Sayers?

6 MR. SAYERS: We can address the point right

7 now, Your Honour.

8 The Colonel made a reference to a

9 conversation that he had with General Praljak towards

10 the end of his tour of duty, and General Praljak

11 acknowledged the presence of HV troops around the town

12 of Trebinje. This is a large relief or large-scale map

13 of all of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, and I just

14 wanted the Colonel to point out exactly where Trebinje

15 was for everybody's geographic reference.

16 THE WITNESS: Sorry, I missed part of --

17 MR. SAYERS:

18 Q. No problem. You gave some testimony about a

19 conversation that you had had with General Praljak

20 concerning the presence of HV troops in the town of

21 Trebinje. Do you recall that?

22 A. So what else was I saying?

23 Q. I just would like you to point out where

24 Trebinje is for everybody's easy reference, sir.

25 A. No idea, except that it has to be in the area

1 of Prozor.

2 Q. For your assistance, sir, I've actually put a

3 little yellow Post-It Note right below Trebinje.

4 A. Okay. This is not the type of map that we

5 have used up there, so some of the names are not

6 exactly the same.

7 Q. If you would just look at the little yellow

8 note, sir.

9 A. There's many of those yellow --

10 Q. No, a yellow note.

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. There it is. Now, that's Trebinje. Would

13 you just point it out for the three Judges, please?

14 A. Right there [indicates].

15 MR. SAYERS: Thank you. That's the only

16 point, Mr. President.

17 A. I've never been to that place.

18 MR. SAYERS: All right. Now, Colonel, let me

19 try to pick up the pace here a little, if I can.

20 Q. You gave some very brief testimony about an

21 incident on the 19th of April, 1993, in which Zenica,

22 the city of Zenica, was shelled. Do you recall that?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. All right. Look at your statement, on

25 page 7. And I take it you've had the opportunity to

1 review this statement at some point that you gave to

2 the investigators four years ago.

3 A. No.

4 Q. Well, let me just suggest to you that you say

5 that you made a record in your diary of the following:

6 The first two rockets, you said, landed at about 12.10

7 hours. Is that consistent with your recollection?

8 A. It is consistent.

9 Q. Two more rockets landed in the city centre at

10 12.24?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. And then two others at 12.29?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. Two more rockets fell at 12.48, you said?

15 A. Umm-hmm.

16 Q. And 12.58?

17 A. Umm-hmm.

18 Q. And so that's a total of ten by now?

19 A. Umm-hmm.

20 Q. And then you said further away from the town

21 you heard two rockets hit at 13.56 hours?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. Two more at 14.04 hours, and earlier than

24 that, two rounds of two rockets hit at 13.16 hours and

25 two at 13.43 hours; is that right?

1 A. I would have to go directly to my notes, but

2 yes.

3 Q. All right.

4 A. I'd like -- sorry.

5 Q. So that's a total of 18 rockets landing in

6 Zenica or its environs in the space of about two hours,

7 sir. Is that consistent with your recollection?

8 A. Eighteen, you said?

9 Q. Yes.

10 A. Okay, I might have to go back to my note --

11 Q. Please do?

12 A. -- and then I'll give you a copy of exactly

13 what I have here. The date again is?

14 Q. April the 19th, 1993.

15 A. If I'm allowed, Your Honour.

16 JUDGE MAY: Yes, indeed.

17 A. Yes.

18 MR. SAYERS:

19 Q. So just so that we're agreed, sir, that's a

20 total of 18 rockets landing in the city centre or in

21 its environs; is that correct?

22 A. No. I have six -- the six first ones, okay,

23 were very near to Zenica. Okay, according to my note

24 here, all the others were -- all I heard was a noise,

25 and all I indicated here in my book was the fact that

1 they landed far away, far away to the south, far away

2 to the north.

3 Q. All right.

4 A. And I can give you a copy of my record here.

5 Q. Certainly.

6 Let me just ask the usher, if I may, to put

7 page 7 of your statement on the ELMO.

8 Let me just suggest to you, sir, that in the

9 paragraph that's the second from the bottom, the

10 chronology and the number of shells that I just went

11 over with you is what appears in your statement.

12 A. But that's exactly what I am saying, further

13 away from the town, and then two fell to the south and

14 north out of the town, and two -- and then two rockets

15 were heard falling further away. So I am not referring

16 to the fact that all those, except those six, shells

17 fell into the city of Zenica. All I said is that my

18 record says that they fell further away, outside of

19 what we could observe.

20 Q. All right. Well, I counted then a total of

21 18, and you are saying that six rockets fell in the

22 town centre, and so 12 would fall in the environs of

23 Zenica, within two hours of the initiation of the

24 shelling, or the rocket fire.

25 A. So I have nine rounds, okay, besides those

1 six that were -- that are heard that fell outside of

2 Zenica. Okay. And then at 15.15, okay, we heard a

3 very heavy machine gun firing within the city of

4 Zenica.

5 Q. Six rounds inside the city and then a further

6 nine outside of the city centre, is that right, for a

7 total of 15 shells within a two-hour period?

8 A. 12.24 to 14.04 hours, yes.

9 Q. Just a few brief questions in connection with

10 the testimony that you gave concerning your

11 investigations of villages in the Kiseljak area, to the

12 north of Kiseljak, sir. You did not find any dead

13 bodies in Svinjarevo, Behrici, or Gomionica, did you?

14 A. If you look at the people that signed the

15 report, okay, I myself was the only one that did visit

16 Rotilj. The other report was made by my counterpart,

17 and I came, since I was responsible, I came to see it.

18 Q. All right. Did you actually visit the

19 villages of Svinjarevo, Behrici --

20 A. No. I did visit the village of Rotilj, as I

21 pointed out in my report.

22 Q. I misunderstood that from your direct

23 testimony, and I'm sorry for that. Let me turn to

24 Rotilj. Did you ever speak to one of your co-monitors,

25 Colonel Hendrik Morsink, about what had actually gone

1 on at Rotilj, sir?

2 A. It could be possible.

3 Q. Did he tell that he met the commander,

4 Commander Mirko Redjo, R-e-d-j-o, who had led the

5 assault on Rotilj after there had been firing from the

6 village, and one of his soldiers had been killed?

7 A. I have no recollection. But it could be

8 possible, yes.

9 Q. All right. Just for the Trial Chamber's

10 reference, I refer the Trial Chamber to pages 8220 and

11 8221 of Colonel Morsink's testimony. I am through with

12 that subject.

13 Next subject, sir. The question of whether

14 the four HVO staff officers and Commander Totic had

15 been abducted by Mujahedin was answered, wasn't it?

16 There was no question, in your mind, that the Mujahedin

17 were actually responsible for the abductions, and they

18 were the people that actually gave up custody of these

19 five people?

20 A. What I said is that I definitely was involved

21 with Totic, and there was no doubt in my mind that

22 Totic had been abducted by Mujahedins.

23 Q. And the same thing is true of the four HVO

24 officers; correct?

25 A. That I cannot refute or cannot confirm. All

1 I know is that Totic was definitely kidnapped by

2 Mujahedins, since I was myself directly involved with

3 his release.

4 Q. Very well. Did you prepare a contemporaneous

5 record at the ECMM regarding the chronology of the

6 events surrounding the release of these five HVO

7 officers?

8 A. I think, to the best of my recollection,

9 something was done with my good friend Dieter --

10 Q. Mr. Schellschmidt?

11 A. Yes, Dieter Schellschmidt. And we did

12 prepare something at the end. Because he was

13 working -- as I was working directly at Zenica, he was

14 working, I think, at the -- in the military prison near

15 Busovaca. I think. Because this operation was quite

16 complicated when it was time to release the prisoners,

17 and we had to work with BritBat, we had to work with

18 ICRC, so we were quite split on the ground.

19 Q. All right. And Exhibit D79/1 is already in

20 evidence. It was prepared by Mr. Schellschmidt. Did

21 you actually witness yourself the circumstances that

22 surrounded the coordinated release of the HVO prisoners

23 and the ABiH prisoners, sir?

24 A. As I've mentioned, I was the one coordinating

25 this whole release from Zenica. And what was agreed

1 was that, in Zenica, General Totic was supposed to be

2 released there. And some other release or exchange of

3 prisoner were taking place at the other place.

4 Q. All right. Now, you personally, sir, were --

5 there is no need to go over the report. It says what

6 it says, so I'll move on.

7 You were convinced that the Mujahedin had a

8 special relationship with the 7th Muslim Brigade, which

9 was under the direct control of the 3rd Corps; is that

10 right?

11 A. Yes. I don't know if it was a command

12 relationship, but I definitely assumed throughout that

13 they had some relationship.

14 Q. Yes. And it's right, sir, that Colonel

15 Merdan, in particular, had close relations with the 7th

16 Muslim Brigade; isn't that right?

17 A. Yes, to the best of my recollection, Merdan

18 was the one that was having some kind of control over

19 that brigade. And that's the reason why he was always

20 escorting me when we were visiting the brigade.

21 Q. Yes. All right. Let me turn to the

22 testimony that you gave regarding the April the 28th,

23 1993, UNHCR convoy incident. You would not disagree

24 with the fact that incidents of this kind were breaking

25 out, both in ABiH controlled territory and in HVO

1 controlled territory, pretty regularly, right?

2 A. No. No. This was the first type of incident

3 that any side, during my stay there, took control of an

4 UNHCR convoy.

5 Q. Now, who did you speak to on that day when

6 you were in the office of your headquarters?

7 A. Okay. As I've told you, I was sitting at the

8 ops centre while the meeting was going on in the

9 conference room with Ambassador Thebault. I received a

10 communication from BritBat, telling me that if the

11 Croats were not to relieve the convoy, BritBat was to

12 send a company or a squadron of warriors and they were

13 going to get them out of there.

14 Q. Who told you that?

15 A. Well, somebody from BritBat. Probably the

16 ops officer from BritBat or maybe it was the commanding

17 officer. I have no recollection of that.

18 Q. All right. Do you know whether you were

19 speaking to someone who was actually a witness to the

20 apprehension of the convoy itself, or were they

21 merely --

22 A. Well, I assume that the guy with whom I was

23 talking to was definitely somebody within the ops

24 centre, because we were talking on the telephone. So

25 that probably this individual was not the one that had

1 physically witnessed what was going on. It had been

2 reported to him.

3 Q. What he was doing was reporting to you things

4 that he had heard from other people, second or third

5 hand, right?

6 A. Well, maybe not second or third hand, but I

7 assume that if the ops centre had received this

8 information, that before they start alarming the rest

9 of the region, that they must have confirmed that in

10 fact the UNHCR had been -- a convoy had been taken

11 hostage. Because that's the normal procedures within

12 military operation.

13 Q. Well, you yourself don't know whether that

14 convoy had in fact been taken hostage, do you?

15 A. No, I have no evidence, except the

16 communication that I have and except for the fact that

17 I did witness the argumentation that further on took

18 place between Thebault, between Halilovic, and between

19 Blaskic. Because that creates quite a turmoil at that

20 time.

21 Q. One of the -- yes. One of the documents that

22 you were shown yesterday, that we had not seen before,

23 it was Exhibit Z857.3. I don't think there is any need

24 to get it. The report says, "BHC report" -- this is

25 paragraph C2 on page 2. "BHC report that on 28 April a

1 40-vehicle convoy, escorted by BritBat, was detained by

2 HVO forces who demanded that they search it. HVO claim

3 that their orders came from Mr. Kordic. They said they

4 would ignore any orders from Colonel Blaskic or

5 Brigadier Petkovic. Eventually Brigadier Petkovic

6 contacted Mr. Kordic and the convoy was allowed to

7 pass. The local HVO said they were only acting on

8 Mr. Kordic's orders."

9 You yourself do not know any of the details

10 surrounding the interchange between the persons who

11 were escorting the convoy or in the convoy and the HVO

12 troops themselves, do you?

13 A. No.

14 Q. And you don't know whether indeed those

15 troops, whoever they were, the HVO forces, were indeed

16 acting on Mr. Kordic's orders or not, do you?

17 A. Well, you have to realise that the way that

18 we -- the relationship that we've been having

19 throughout that time with BritBat, okay, was a -- quite

20 an extended relationship. We used to visit them on a

21 regular basis, and I assume, based on previous

22 incidents, that when something was reported to us

23 through their own headquarters, that there was

24 eventually obvious evidence that what they were telling

25 us was the truth.

1 Q. You yourself, sir, you do know, do you --

2 A. I could not. I was standing in the ops

3 centre.

4 Q. All right. Now, you never spoke to the

5 commander of the Nikola Subic-Zrinjski Brigade,

6 Mr. Grubesic, about this incident?

7 A. Because we felt we didn't have to. We had a

8 commander right beside us and we had the army commander

9 right beside us.

10 Q. And it's true, sir, that Ambassador Thebault,

11 and the two commanders in chief of the warring forces,

12 General Halilovic and Brigadier Petkovic, visited

13 Busovaca the very next day, didn't they, April the

14 28th?

15 A. Could be possible, yes.

16 Q. And you are not aware of anyone mentioning

17 anything about this convoy, for example, to Commander

18 Grubesic or to Mr. Kordic, are you?

19 A. Well, all I recall, as I said, is that

20 General Halilovic had to speak with him to diffuse the

21 whole incident. And I don't know to whom he talked

22 except that he was able to get somebody at the other

23 end of the line which, for Thebault and myself,

24 appeared to be Mr. Kordic, and eventually the whole

25 convoy, the whole situation was defused. And then I

1 assumed there must have been some links, some

2 discussion that took place.

3 Q. Let's just follow this through a little bit

4 in detail, sir. You don't know to whom Brigadier

5 Petkovic actually spoke, do you, yourself?

6 A. I don't see why Mr. Brigadier Petkovic would

7 have told me that he was talking to Mate Boban. I

8 still recall that he said that he spoke to Mr. Kordic.

9 I don't see why he would have lied to us.

10 You have to realise that we were right now in

11 the midst of trying to again come up with a ceasefire

12 and that the HVO were trying to demonstrate to us that

13 throughout there had been goodwill, and then this

14 incident happened right in the midst of a kind of talk

15 which we were to help out -- to defuse the whole

16 situation, and I have this very clear knowledge. I put

17 it in my report, and I think that --

18 JUDGE MAY: Colonel, I think we've got the

19 point here. Now, Mr. Sayers, if you would like to move

20 on.

21 MR. SAYERS: Yes, indeed.

22 Q. Two points on this. Colonel Blaskic never

23 stated that the -- to you at any point that the

24 commander of the Busovaca Brigade was not entirely

25 under his command, did he, sir?

1 A. Never.

2 Q. And, in fact, following this incident,

3 Colonel Blaskic reiterated to you and others that he

4 was, in fact, the commander and chief of all the HVO

5 troops in his territory?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And he made that statement on several

8 subsequent occasions, didn't he?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. In fact, I believe in the Blaskic case, sir,

11 two years ago, you said that this was obviously a

12 misunderstanding between him and the political leaders,

13 and happily the situation was peacefully corrected and

14 resolved; right?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. All right.

17 A. Because otherwise some action would have been

18 taken against Mr. -- the Busovaca Brigade commander.

19 Q. All right. Let me turn to the month of

20 June. It's true, isn't it, that the military attitudes

21 on the part of the Muslim armed forces, in your view,

22 hardened considerably in May of 1993 and thereafter and

23 that the Muslim forces became far more aggressive,

24 militarily?

25 A. Yes. Again, it could be early June, it could

1 be mid-May. But, yes, in the course of my stay, we

2 could see that there was a change in the relationship.

3 Q. All right. And there's no question, equally,

4 that the ABiH launched large-scale offensives in June

5 in Travnik and Kakanj simultaneously; is that right?

6 You remember that, I'm sure.

7 A. Yes, I remember more the Kakanj thing. Okay,

8 the Travnik, I would have to go again through my

9 notes. But definitely Kakanj, because I was directly

10 involved on numerous occasions to sign the ceasefire

11 between the two of them in Kakanj.

12 Q. You would agree that these were large,

13 well-organised offensives requiring advanced planning

14 and logistical preparation; right?

15 A. Definitely.

16 Q. Right. Now, we've already heard from one

17 senior representative of the ECMM that there were

18 20,000 refugees, Croat refugees, who had to leave the

19 area as a result of the June offensive. That's

20 Witness AD. Is that a number that's consistent with

21 your recollection, sir?

22 A. I could not say, okay, but there was

23 definitely refugees. So it could be 10,000, 20,000, or

24 30,000. I have no recollection of that number.

25 Q. And in Kakanj, where you were involved, is it

1 your recollection that 10,000 refugees fled the city,

2 Croat refugees, towards Vares?

3 A. Again, I have no recollection of the precise

4 number, but, yes, definitely there were refugees that

5 had to flee.

6 Q. Did you have any role in the ECMM's

7 investigation or investigation by the United Nations

8 Commission for Human Rights of atrocities committed

9 during the Travnik offensive in June at Maljina and

10 Cukle?

11 A. No.

12 Q. Sir, you've testified that you paid visits on

13 a regular basis to the BritBat headquarters. I'd just

14 like to show you a BritBat military assessment of June

15 the 9th, 1993, and ask you whether you agree with the

16 conclusions contained in it. Thank you.

17 I'd like to ask the usher to put the last

18 page of this on the ELMO, page 10. It's the last one.

19 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] This will be

20 D194/1.

21 MR. SAYERS: Thank you.

22 Q. Colonel, the observation is made by the

23 intelligence cell of the 1st Battalion of the Prince of

24 Wales Own Regiment, in paragraph 7, that the June

25 offensive was the first time that the BiH have taken

1 the military initiative against the HVO in Central

2 Bosnia. The milinfosum goes on to note that:

3 "It would appear that Enver Hadzihasanovic

4 and 3 Corps are orchestrating a carefully-planned and

5 phased attack against the HVO in the areas of Travnik

6 and the western Lasva Valley. In this context,

7 Hadzihasanovic's constant refusals to meet Blaskic and

8 his failure to attend negotiations concerning the

9 situation in Travnik during that phase of the current

10 fighting perhaps receive explanation."

11 And the observation is made that the

12 clearance of Travnik of all HVO elements was in a

13 manner similar to that practiced in Zenica in April.

14 Do you agree with those comments, sir, the

15 military analysis of the BritBat in early June of 1993?

16 A. Is there a date on this document?

17 Q. June the 9th, 1993, sir.

18 A. Yeah, I would probably have phrased it

19 slightly different, but, yes -- as I said, I would

20 probably phrase it slightly different, but in essence,

21 yes, I would tend to support this assessment.

22 Q. Right. And then the milinfosum goes on to

23 note, in paragraph 8, that:

24 "The BiH have always been in the dominant

25 military position in the Lasva Valley, and it now seems

1 that they are prosecuting this advantage."

2 The comment goes on to note that:

3 "The timing of this action has probably been

4 delayed by the issue of passage for the Convoy of

5 Mercy."

6 Do you agree with that military assessment,

7 sir?

8 A. No, I would totally disagree with it, because

9 I disagree with the first sentence, "The BiH have

10 always been in the dominant military position in the

11 Lasva Valley," as I disagree with this because that's

12 not what I saw when I arrived there. And the reason,

13 again, is that for the first few months that I was

14 there, the Muslim -- excuse the expression -- but were

15 more always walking on their knees to get -- to make

16 sure that all agreements that they were doing with the

17 Croats were to be fulfilled; i.e., roadblock, i.e.,

18 establishment of other necessities for their people, so

19 I would disagree with that first sentence.

20 Q. All right. Wouldn't you agree, though, that

21 it was suicidal, under the circumstances, to route an

22 aid convoy destined for Muslims in Tuzla directly

23 through a war zone and HVO-held territory?

24 A. First of all, I have to correct what you

25 said, because the Tuzla convoy was made up of Muslim

1 and HVO Croats living in the Tuzla area, and if it

2 would not have been for the force commander of the

3 Tuzla -- the HVO force commander of the Tuzla area,

4 probably this convoy situation would have ended up much

5 more worse than the way it ended up.

6 And if, again, you recall the Vance-Owen Plan

7 that you've shown to me earlier, you would see that in

8 it, okay, there is a paragraph stating that free access

9 to the main road has to be provided, okay, to all the

10 parties. And based on the willingness of all the

11 parties to agree with the Vance-Owen Plan, and based on

12 the willingness to all the commanders involved in the

13 move of this Tuzla convoy, we agreed then to support

14 the idea.

15 Q. But there's no question, sir, that the Tuzla

16 convoy was driving up through Central Bosnia in the

17 middle of a huge ABiH offensive against the HVO; isn't

18 that right?

19 A. At that point, it was not obvious that the

20 major offensive of the BiH was that obvious, and then I

21 would have challenged you. Then why was it accepted by

22 the HVO to let it through, to let it go first? That's

23 the judgement that I have right now, and that's, I

24 recall very clearly, that Mr. Thebault, before

25 launching this kind of initiative, had made sure that

1 we had the support of the HVO.

2 Q. It's true, sir, that the convoy took several

3 days to wind its way up through Gornji Vakuf and

4 Prozor, through Novi Travnik and into the Vitez area;

5 is that right?

6 A. It is right, as it took a lot of time too, to

7 get through the port to start with, because it was

8 stopped at different levels. As soon as the convoy

9 passed Vitez on its way down, it was stopped on a

10 regular basis, asking for more confirmation, more

11 paperwork, and yet it was accepted.

12 Q. And you don't have a clear recollection

13 yourself of precisely when the ABiH offensive in the

14 Travnik area was launched, do you?

15 A. I would have to go through all my paperwork.

16 But all I can tell you is that all the resources of the

17 ECMM were given to this convoy, so -- and I would tend

18 to believe that if there would have been a major

19 counterattack going on at that time, I'm sure that

20 Mr. Thebault and some other upper staff of the ECMM

21 would have more or less been involved in monitoring

22 what was going on.

23 Q. Well, let me just ask you this question,

24 Colonel: Did you ever have any conversations with any

25 representative of the 3rd Corps or the Muslim military

1 command to make an inquiry why in the world a huge

2 offensive would be launched just shortly before or

3 pretty much simultaneously with the arrival of this

4 large aid convoy right through HVO-held territory?

5 A. I have no recollection. I was, on a regular

6 basis, contacting the BiH, and I do not recall

7 precisely asking that question or having a discussion

8 on that specific issue.

9 Q. Did you ever hear or see on television, sir,

10 the consequences of an incident regarding a shell fired

11 from Stari Vitez into Vitez during the evening of June

12 the 10th, 1993, which literally blew eight small

13 children to pieces?

14 A. I don't recall it, but I have seen much

15 atrocity on both sides; that I can tell you.

16 Q. Right. But this was the evening before the

17 convoy was --

18 JUDGE MAY: He doesn't recall it. I think

19 we've probably exhausted this topic now.

20 MR. SAYERS: Yes, Your Honour. I'll move

21 on.

22 Q. Did you have any dealings, Colonel, with the

23 offensive launched -- offensives launched by the ABiH

24 in the areas of Fojnica and Bugojno?

25 A. Yes, I recall it.

1 Q. All right.

2 A. I wasn't there when it took place, but I

3 definitely recall it.

4 Q. Do you recall that the ABiH launched an

5 attack on Fojnica on July the 3rd of 1993, one day

6 after, I believe, Lieutenant-General Morillon had

7 declared it to be a safe haven or a peace area,

8 so-called? That's accurate, isn't it?

9 A. I recall it, because we totally disagreed

10 with the evaluation of UNPROFOR regarding the future of

11 Zenica, because we had warned them that eventually this

12 was going to be the next target by BiH to secure their

13 line of communication with Mostar.

14 Q. And your prediction turned out to be

15 correct. Just one day after, they had been declared a

16 peace area by UNPROFOR; right?

17 A. Right.

18 Q. And as a result of that attack, a significant

19 number of Croat refugees were expelled from their homes

20 and left for the Vares area and Kiseljak; is that

21 correct?

22 A. I would tend to agree with what you're

23 saying, yes.

24 Q. All right, sir. And similarly there was an

25 all-out assault launched in the Bugojno area in July of

1 1993 which was successful, and resulted in the defeat

2 of the HVO forces in that city and the usual sad tale

3 of tens of thousands of refugees flooding out of the

4 town for other Croat-held territory; would you agree

5 with that?

6 A. Again, I have no recollection of the number.

7 It could be a few thousand, 10,000; that I cannot say.

8 But, yes, usually after this kind of attack or this

9 kind of situation, yes, it was always followed by a

10 flood of refugees.

11 Q. All right. Now, just a few questions about

12 Mr. Kordic. You knew that he held the post of

13 vice-president of the presidency of the Croatian

14 Community of Herceg-Bosna. I think you've already said

15 that. But do you know what precisely -- what were the

16 political powers that he was authorised to exercise?

17 Did you ever have any conversations with him about

18 that?

19 A. No, I never had any conversation. First of

20 all, I must tell you that I never had a chance to visit

21 him or to specifically have a chat with him, except for

22 this incident in Travnik. But I came to realise very

23 quickly that Mr. Kordic was more or less the overall

24 political person responsible for the whole of Central

25 Bosnia.

1 Q. All right.

2 A. And that there was not a damn thing which was

3 taking place there which had a political objective

4 which was not coming from him.

5 Q. Right. I think you said you only ever met

6 him once; is that right?

7 A. Well, I told you that I met him once, as far

8 as having a meeting with him, but I met him on

9 different other occasion, from a distance. For

10 example, I met him on the Easter party. And maybe

11 there is other -- a few other occasions where I was at

12 the same location as he was.

13 Q. All right. But you only ever recall one

14 meeting with him, specifically?

15 A. Yes, the meeting that we had on the evening

16 at Travnik.

17 Q. Did you ever meet the president of the HVO,

18 Dr. Jadranko Prlic?

19 A. I met a lot of people, but the name means

20 nothing to me now.

21 Q. Did you ever meet President Boban?

22 A. I think so, on one very, very small

23 occasion. And I meet some of the other people, as I

24 have alluded to you earlier. As I became the deputy

25 head -- before I became the deputy head, we went into

1 the Mostar area, and I had a chance to meet with very

2 high level figures within the HVO.

3 Q. Just before you left the country, sir, on

4 August the 24th, there was a meeting in Busovaca with

5 ECMM representatives, where the chain of command was

6 explained by Mr. Kordic; with General Praljak now as

7 the commander in chief, General Petkovic as his chief

8 of staff, and General Tole as the third in command. Do

9 you recall that at all?

10 A. All I recall, from what you said, is the fact

11 that General Petkovic, for a reason not known to me,

12 had been more or less -- had lost his appointment as

13 commander in chief of the HVO forces. That is

14 something very present to my memory. But that meeting,

15 no.

16 MR. SAYERS: Let me just ask the usher to

17 mark this as the next -- or the Registrar to mark this

18 as one of the final exhibits. And we are coming to an

19 end, sir.

20 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] The exhibit

21 is D195/1.

22 MR. SAYERS:

23 Q. -- and the comment where it is reported by

24 BritBat that Mr. Kordic, speaking with the ECMM in

25 Busovaca on the 21st of August --

1 A. What page did you say?

2 Q. Page 3, sir, right at the bottom.

3 A. Okay.

4 Q. Where Mr. Kordic reiterates to ECMM in

5 Busovaca, on the 21st of August, that Praljak was the

6 senior commander, followed by Petkovic, and then Tole.

7 Do you recall receiving a report by any of your

8 subordinates at the ECMM regarding this meeting, or is

9 this --

10 A. I must tell you that this took place at a

11 time that I was -- my last task at the ECMM, just prior

12 to my departure, had been to prepare a special report

13 on the Tuzla area. So I do not have a clear

14 recollection of what took place during that period in

15 Zenica. I could speak to you about Tuzla, but --

16 Q. That's fine. Just a few miscellaneous

17 subjects, and we'll wrap this up in about 15 minutes, I

18 hope.

19 You referred to some discussion that you had

20 with the deputy commander of the 3rd Corps, Colonel

21 Merdan, and this was Exhibit Z719, where he articulated

22 to you his view that there was some sort of a master

23 plot against Muslims, and that they had proof that

24 Mr. Kordic had supposedly met with Mr. Karadzic to

25 discuss the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Do you

1 recall that testimony, sir?

2 A. Yes, I do.

3 Q. All right. Now, no evidence, let alone

4 proof, was ever provided to you by Colonel Merdan of

5 that; right?

6 A. Right.

7 Q. And you never saw any agreement or --

8 A. We never saw any agreement that took place

9 allegedly between Mate Boban and his counterpart.

10 Q. And so, frankly, you simply have no idea

11 whether there ever was such an agreement or not, do

12 you?

13 A. As you probably are aware, one of the things

14 that the monitors were doing was to report. And we, by

15 reporting this kind of conversation -- and that's why

16 in the report the name of Merdan is there -- is that we

17 were just contributing through the whole knowledge of

18 what was going on.

19 Q. Yes. I think I understand you. You are just

20 reporting charges being made by one of the warring

21 factions?

22 A. Sure.

23 Q. All right. Now, it's true, is it not, that

24 Colonel Blaskic, with whom you met on several

25 occasions, he never told you that it was his aim to

1 drive Muslims out of the Lasva Valley, did he? He

2 never made any comments along those lines to you?

3 A. No.

4 Q. He never made any disparaging comments about

5 Muslims to you, did he, throughout the time that you --

6 A. Not to my recollection.

7 Q. And he never told you that it was the policy

8 of the HVO or the HDZ BiH to drive Muslims out of the

9 Lasva Valley, did he?

10 A. No. Except that we found it a bit awkward

11 that following the incident in mid-April, then we

12 started to receive all those -- all the communication

13 coming up from the HVO to the fact that we should allow

14 all the Croats in Zenica to move out of Zenica, because

15 they were not well taken care of, which at that time

16 was not really the case. Because, as you are probably

17 aware, at that time, the Muslims were the only one, or

18 the Bosniaks as they used to prefer to call themselves,

19 were the only ones which were holding on all their

20 minority, and doing and going at great lengths of

21 effort not to allow them to leave.

22 Q. You would concede, though, Colonel, wouldn't

23 you, that the HVO had lost the military ability to

24 protect Croats in the Zenica municipality as of April

25 the 17th, 1993, when the two Zenica brigades were

1 defeated there?

2 A. Yeah, but I assume that that was not a reason

3 why they had military forces in Zenica. I mean, their

4 tasks were not to provide safety and security to the

5 Croats and to Zenica; this was done by the joint police

6 forces within Zenica. So whenever we had problems with

7 the civilians in Zenica, I personally met the mayor and

8 made sure that he was taking all the necessary steps to

9 protect the Croat civilians.

10 Q. Isn't it perfectly logical, sir, that you

11 would want people who were under your military

12 protection to be in an area where you were able,

13 militarily, to protect them?

14 A. Sure. I couldn't agree more with you. The

15 thing which we found a bit, though, annoying, is the

16 fact that the date that those two requests came to us.

17 I mean, we were still right in the middle of what we

18 felt being still the fog of the war, and yet we receive

19 this well-prepared letter, okay, telling us that you

20 have to do something, our Croats are being massacred,

21 and you must definitely make sure that they are being

22 put on buses and brought back to us.

23 My feeling would be that if I am in the

24 middle of a military operation, than I would first of

25 all try to find out what's going on in the military

1 operation first.

2 So that was the thing that we felt which was

3 a bit annoying, the date at which we received this

4 request.

5 Q. All right. Let me turn to just another

6 subject. You gave some testimony about an alleged

7 agreement between President Milosevic and President

8 Tudjman. I put it to you, Colonel Landry, that's just

9 in the realm of scuttlebutt or gossip, isn't it? You

10 never saw such an agreement and you don't know whether

11 there was really such an agreement, do you?

12 A. I would tend to agree with you, with the

13 exception that when it's becoming confirmed by all the

14 International Community, and then it seems to that such

15 a tacit agreement would not necessarily take place with

16 a lot of publicity, but would be kept quite secret.

17 But the fact of the matter was that it was well-known

18 throughout UNPROFOR, throughout the ECMM, throughout

19 Zagreb, that this had taken place. And the more

20 incidents that we were seeing on the ground, as I've

21 explained yesterday, the fact that the HVO brigade or

22 the HVO forces that were in Tuzla were still

23 cooperating with the Muslims, and yet we could not have

24 the same kind of cooperation in Central Bosnia, was

25 quite indicative to us that maybe that agreement had

1 taken place and the borderline or the division line

2 would be around Central Bosnia, between Serbs and

3 Croats.

4 Q. Right. This was the populous speculation

5 that was going on in UNPROFOR and the ECMM. But the

6 point I was making, sir, is that you never did find out

7 that such an agreement had been concluded between those

8 two heads of state, did you?

9 A. No.

10 Q. All right. Sir, do you have any knowledge if

11 any disciplinary action was ever taken against ABiH

12 soldiers responsible for the Totic kidnapping, the

13 murders that we've seen in Zalje, and the other areas

14 identified in your special report, in Miletici or in

15 Maljina or Citluk?

16 A. No, I don't recall. Except the report that I

17 made that I witnessed myself. As I was investigating

18 the massacre that took place following those renewed

19 combat operations in mid-April, that I witnessed a

20 special unit within the BiH arresting people that were

21 burglars and were not authorised to do so. Beside

22 that, I have no recollection of what you said.

23 Q. And do you know what ever happened to those

24 people that were apprehended by the military police?

25 A. No.

1 Q. All right. With respect to the testimony

2 regarding the Ahmici investigation that you gave, did

3 you know that, in fact, Colonel Blaskic did order an

4 investigation into the perpetrators of the Ahmici

5 killings on the 10th of May of 1993?

6 A. No.

7 Q. All right. Would you agree, sir, that it

8 would be hard for him to -- or hard for the Croats to

9 conduct that investigation without being able to

10 identify eyewitnesses to the actual events on that day,

11 April the 16th?

12 JUDGE MAY: I don't think that's very

13 helpful. It's a pure matter of comment, which you can

14 make to us in due course.

15 MR. SAYERS: I'll move onto my final subject,

16 Mr. President, and I hope to be through by 12.30, as I

17 undertook to do.

18 Q. I believe, sir, that because of the rumours

19 of the presence of HV troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, you

20 insisted that specific observations be made, and that

21 if there were indeed HV troops, they should be

22 identified, and a special effort to do so should be

23 undertaken; is that right?

24 A. We had a lot of pressure from HQ Zagreb to

25 try to come up with identification of units that were

1 in that area. And as I said yesterday, I personally

2 witnessed, okay, HV equipment, military equipment in

3 the area of Prozor, which was then -- further other

4 ECMM monitors did see the same thing. And later on,

5 one of the HV commanders did say that there was HV

6 equipment --

7 Q. Just to interrupt you, and I don't mean to be

8 discourteous, sir. But the question was: It's true

9 that you instructed your monitors, having received

10 instructions from your superiors, to undertake a

11 special effort to identify HV troops in Bosnia. Right?

12 A. Yes. Because the allegation was serious.

13 Q. Yes. And, in fact, you were asked to be very

14 careful, to try to verify, whenever you came across a

15 military convoy, to verify that it was indeed a HV

16 convoy; correct?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. All right. And you would agree that it was

19 difficult to identify HV units, because, as you've

20 speculated, most of the movement must have been carried

21 out at night. Right?

22 A. Right.

23 Q. And that accounts for the sporadic,

24 intermittent sightings of allegedly HV troops, or at

25 least vehicles bearing HV marks; correct?

1 A. Correct, sir. They were not allegedly. I

2 mean, I would not see the reason why HVO logistic

3 vehicles would bear the mark of HV. I mean, it would

4 be totally going against the whole strategy.

5 Q. And you never saw any fighting units anywhere

6 in Bosnia?

7 A. No, I never saw any fighting units. Because

8 we were not allowed, as I said, to go to some of the

9 places where those fightings involving HVO -- HV forces

10 were taking place.

11 Q. Right. You never gained any information,

12 with all of your -- all of the resources available to

13 you, that HV forces were in fact controlled -- HV

14 forces controlled the HVO, did you? In other words,

15 dictated --

16 A. No.

17 Q. There was never any information that you came

18 across to the effect that the HV controlled the

19 military policy or strategy of the HVO, was there?

20 A. I never received that information. Mind you,

21 we had some doubt about it, but it was just

22 speculation.

23 Q. Yes. You never saw any HV troops yourself in

24 the Vitez-Busovaca pocket, in Kiseljak, in Zepce,

25 Vares?

1 A. No.

2 Q. Never saw any in Central Bosnia; correct?

3 A. Correct.

4 Q. And you never received any reports of any HV

5 troops present in any of the municipalities that I've

6 just identified, did you, sir?

7 A. Central Bosnia, no.

8 Q. The only logistics units you saw were south

9 of Prozor and --

10 A. Well, in the Prozor area, but not south of

11 Prozor; in the Prozor area.

12 Q. All of those were outside of the area of

13 responsibility of Colonel Blaskic, not within the

14 Central Bosnia operative zone, as far as you are aware;

15 correct?

16 A. Correct.

17 Q. Colonel, thank you very much indeed.

18 No further questions, Your Honour.

19 JUDGE MAY: Any questions?

20 MR. KOVACIC: I'm sorry, Your Honour. No,

21 there is not any questions.

22 Re-examined by Mr. Scott:

23 MR. SCOTT: If I could have the usher's

24 assistance quickly, please, to hand the witness all at

25 the same time 603, 609, 636, 639.1, 724.2.

1 MR. SAYERS: Your Honour, I believe that

2 these documents are the ones that we discussed

3 yesterday that were not admitted, because they had not

4 been provided to us, and weren't tendered during the

5 direct examination, so far as I am aware.

6 MR. SCOTT: Two are, Your Honour, two are

7 not, and --

8 JUDGE MAY: The two that were not can't be

9 put to the witness. You can put those that were.

10 MR. SCOTT: Your Honour, while that's being

11 done, allow me to point out to the Court, on 639.1 and

12 on 724.2, the two ECMM documents from Canada, that the

13 Defence has raised in cross-examination a suggestion

14 that ECMM was not aware of an ultimatum that can be

15 used for Mr. Boban. Both those documents

16 contemporaneous with the time of when this was

17 happening indicate exactly that there was awareness of

18 it.

19 JUDGE MAY: Very well. We have the point.

20 There is no need to take it any further. Yes, let's

21 move on.

22 MR. SCOTT: In that spirit, Your Honour -- I

23 won't take the usher's time further than with 603, 609,

24 and 636, except again, Your Honour, if the Court will

25 allow me to indicate these are three press articles

1 contemporaneous with the time from various, I would

2 think, generally respectable sources, April 4th, April

3 5th, and the 10th of April, all reporting the fact of

4 this ultimatum.

5 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Thank you.

6 MR. SCOTT:

7 Q. Concerning with that background, Colonel, if

8 you could look briefly, if you still have it in front

9 of you, to the document tendered to you by the Defence,

10 D83/1. If you don't have it, I can hand it to you. If

11 we have an extra copy, perhaps we can do it more

12 quickly.

13 Do you have that, sir? This was the document

14 put before you by Mr. Sayers a few minutes ago. Well,

15 no, I'm sorry, not -- it's not the correct document.

16 Perhaps we could move forward this way.

17 There was a document shown to you, signed by

18 Mr. Izetbegovic and Mr. Boban, dated the 18th of April,

19 1993, about a peace settlement, if you will. Do you

20 recall that document, sir?

21 A. I recall that it was shown to me earlier,

22 yes.

23 MR. SCOTT: Mr. Usher, you don't have that

24 document at the podium?

25 MR. SAYERS: Mr. President, if it would

1 assist, I have a copy here for counsel.

2 JUDGE MAY: If the Defence have it, it could

3 be passed on. Yes.

4 MR. SCOTT: I apologise for the delay, Your

5 Honour. Two very short questions.

6 Q. This agreement, dated the 18th of April,

7 1993, this was, in fact, by its date, after HVO attacks

8 in Central Bosnia, the Lasva Valley, and elsewhere on

9 the 16th and 17th of April, 1993; correct?

10 A. Correct.

11 Q. And assuming for the moment, for the record,

12 that there was one, after the April 15th deadline

13 passed; is that correct, sir?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. By the way, this agreement, this peace

16 agreement, was signed apparently in Zagreb. Do you see

17 that?

18 A. Yes.

19 MR. SCOTT: In terms of the Convoy of Joy,

20 the timing of that, could I again ask the witness to be

21 shown what was put before him a moment ago? I believe

22 it was 194/1, the milinfosum.

23 Q. Sir, if I could direct your attention to the

24 second page, the item numbered "8". If I can direct

25 your attention --

1 A. Did you say page 2?

2 Q. Page 2, item 8. I hope we're looking at the

3 same document. If you can see it -- and your copy is

4 rather poor, I suppose -- well, let me see. On item 8,

5 starting with the second line of -- second sentence of

6 paragraph 8, in reference to the BiH offensive, it

7 says -- the document says:

8 "The timing of this action has probably been

9 delayed by the issue of passage for the Convoy of Mercy

10 and its significance in the context of a starving Tuzla

11 area. Military action in the Lasva Valley effectively

12 cut the only remaining route to the north. The delays

13 that this convoy has met with en route may have finally

14 convinced 3 Corps that prospect for its arrival in the

15 north are slim and that accordingly they should

16 restrain themselves no longer."

17 In reference to the questions asked of you by

18 Mr. Sayers, does this indicate, sir, that in fact this

19 offensive did not take place or was not a mission until

20 after the Convoy of Joy?

21 A. I would tend to agree with your assessment,

22 yes.

23 Q. Concerning the Zenica shelling, you used in

24 your accounts -- in the questions that Mr. Sayers put

25 to you, you used the word "rockets" as opposed to using

1 the word "shell". Is there any significance to you in

2 terms of the fact that you had at one point -- at one

3 time the word "rocket" was used in terms of the shells

4 that fell, excuse me, in the centre of Zenica?

5 A. Yes. I think that I used the term "rocket".

6 Q. And do you know or did you know, in fact --

7 did you actually go out and investigate the craters or

8 the shelling, other than what you heard from your hotel

9 room?

10 A. From what I heard and later on from what we

11 reported, somebody else did make the investigation for

12 that specific incident.

13 Q. Can you tell us who -- the question came up,

14 you said there was a senior HVO official who you spoke

15 with in Mostar in May or June of 1993 about the

16 Vance-Owen Plan. Who was that?

17 A. I have no recollection. I would have to go

18 through my notes to find out exactly with whom I met.

19 Q. Do you have any recollection as to what he

20 said about the Vance-Owen Plan at that time?

21 A. I didn't look at my notes, so I have no

22 recollection.

23 Q. That's fine. I'm not going to ask you to do

24 that, Colonel.

25 Concerning the UNHCR convoy, you were present

1 when Colonel Blaskic and General Petkovic were there

2 trying to sort this situation out?

3 A. Yes, I was, because they needed the

4 communications which were in my office at that time.

5 Q. Did they say anything to you or was it

6 interpreted to you that there was anything that cast

7 any doubt that these events were, in fact, taking place

8 as they spoke in the way that you've described them to

9 the Court?

10 A. That's why I said that this led me to believe

11 that what had been reported to us was what, in fact,

12 was going on at that time.

13 Q. There was no report -- indication from

14 Colonel Blaskic or General Petkovic to you that these

15 events, in fact, were not taking place?

16 A. Correct.

17 MR. SCOTT: I'm almost completed, Your

18 Honour. I'm just looking through my various notes.

19 Q. Concerning the Vance-Owen Plan, the questions

20 asked you by Mr. Sayers, did it appear to you that what

21 the -- under their interpretation of the Vance-Owen

22 Plan, what the Bosnian Croats appeared to have in mind

23 was something more homogeneously Croat than what the

24 Vance-Owen Plan provided for, as you and ECMM

25 understood it?

1 A. Yes. Based on the incident that took place,

2 based on the way that the situation was developing in

3 Central Bosnia, yes, that's what we tend to agree on

4 within RC Zenica.

5 MR. SCOTT: I have about two questions, Your

6 Honour, and I'll be completed.

7 Q. Referring to the Vance-Owen Plan, the annex

8 that Mr. Sayers pointed you to and the make-up of the

9 Travnik government, under this plan the governor would

10 have been Croat, the vice-governor would have been

11 Muslim or Bosniak, and of the other members, the

12 Muslims would have had only one less -- only one less

13 than the Croats in making up that government; is that

14 correct?

15 A. Correct.

16 Q. Based on what you saw and were informed about

17 on the ground, Colonel, did such a composition as just

18 outlined -- did that appear to you to be acceptable to

19 the HVO?

20 A. Well, that I cannot comment on it, but all I

21 can say is that my recollection tells me that that

22 never eventually materialised as it was supposed to

23 be.

24 MR. SCOTT: No further questions, Your

25 Honour. Thank you.

1 JUDGE MAY: Colonel, that concludes your

2 evidence. Thank you for coming to the International

3 Tribunal to give it. You are free to go.

4 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Mr. President.

5 [The witness withdrew]

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

7 MR. NICE: The next witness is ready, and

8 Mr. Lopez-Terres will deal with it.

9 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Lopez-Terres, we've seen the

10 summary of this witness. She clearly went through a

11 terrible time. You can take that part of the evidence,

12 I'm sure, fairly shortly --

13 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] Yes.

14 JUDGE MAY: -- so as not to distress her.

15 Obviously, the evidence on page 2 is the significant

16 part and, of course, you could take longer with that.

17 I would say as far as cross-examination is

18 concerned, as I said with an earlier witness who gave

19 evidence about events which she was directly involved

20 in, distressing events, we should not expect you to

21 cross-examine at any length, and you won't be

22 criticised for not doing so.

23 I would add this: that if as a result of

24 that the cross-examination is short, I don't regard

25 that as a criticism of the Defence, and I hope nobody

1 else will criticise them, for handling the witness

2 here, if they have constraint in cross-examination.

3 MR. KOVACIC: Your Honour.

4 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Kovacic.

5 MR. KOVACIC: If we may suggest which

6 paragraphs should not be led by leading questions, 21,

7 25, and 33.

8 MR. SAYERS: And speaking for Mr. Kordic, we

9 would appreciate it if the Prosecution would not lead

10 paragraphs 8 through 14.

11 [The witness entered court]

12 JUDGE MAY: Let the witness take the

13 declaration.

14 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly

15 declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth,

16 and nothing but the truth.

17 WITNESS: NURA PEZER

18 [Witness answered through interpreter]

19 JUDGE MAY: Thank you. If you would like to

20 take a seat.

21 Examined by Mr. Lopez-Terres:

22 Q. Are you Mrs. Nura Mujanovic, widow of Mr.

23 Sefik Pezer, and were you born in 1948 in the

24 municipality of Vitez?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. In April 1993, you lived with your family,

2 that is, your late husband, Sefik Pezer of 52 years of

3 age, your son, Ahmed Pezer, who was 27, and your two

4 daughters, Alma and Taiba, 20 and 15, your

5 daughter-in-law and your granddaughter, in a house that

6 you owned in Zume, that is, in the lower part of

7 Ahmici, didn't you?

8 A. Yes, that was my family.

9 Q. In Zume, there were some 35 houses lived in

10 by Muslims, but the majority of inhabitants of the

11 village were Croats, weren't they?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Your husband, Sefik, and your son, Ahmed,

14 were both members of the Zume Village Territorial

15 Defence, and as such, stood guard, that is,

16 participated in night shifts of the guards in the

17 village?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. But they had only one weapon, and that was an

20 old hunting rifle, a rifle which belonged to the father

21 of your husband, Sefik?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. The Croat villagers knew that your husband

24 and your son had that weapon, because they returned so

25 when they stood guard in the village jointly?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. In the afternoon of the 15th of April, 1993,

3 you and your husband went to visit your cousin, who

4 lived at Krcevine and whose son, by the name of Emir,

5 had been arrested?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And your husband's cousin confirmed to you

8 that Emir had indeed been arrested with some other

9 Muslims at a time when he was going to the Bratstvo

10 Factory in Novi Travnik to work, and that that

11 particular arrest, that a bus had been intercepted at a

12 place called Stojkovici; is that so?

13 A. Yes. That is where they separated the

14 Muslims and arrested them, yes.

15 Q. At the time when you went to visit your

16 cousin, did you watch television on that occasion?

17 A. Yes. It was the afternoon news and we

18 watched it, and Dario Kordic appeared in the news, and

19 Tihomir Blaskic was present. And he said, "My

20 combatants are ready. They are waiting for the

21 orders." But we did not think that anything would

22 happen. We did not simply think that anything would

23 happen, and we stayed there for a little while and then

24 went back home to Zume.

25 Q. Did you watch television in the afternoon

1 when you were at home in the afternoon? I mean, was it

2 a habit with you?

3 A. Well, yes, but we did not watch it anymore.

4 I saw that and that was all.

5 Q. And that programme on television, that is,

6 the news that you just mentioned, it was the news

7 broadcast by the Vitez television, that is, the Croat

8 television of Vitez; was that so?

9 A. Yes, Croat television, but we watched it even

10 before that particular date, the 15th. We watched

11 Croat television before that, the one in Vitez.

12 Q. And that programme that you saw in the

13 afternoon of the 15th of April, you already told us it

14 was merely information, it was a news programme. It

15 was an afternoon news programme, wasn't it?

16 A. Well, yes. Yes. Nothing else.

17 JUDGE MAY: Just help us with this. Who

18 said, "My combatants are ready. They are waiting for

19 the orders"?

20 A. Dario Kordic said that.

21 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation]

22 Q. Do you remember if during that programme --

23 do you remember hearing Colonel Blaskic say anything?

24 A. No, nothing. He was just present there and

25 sitting next to Dario.

1 Q. Do you, perhaps, remember how were Dario

2 Kordic and Colonel Blaskic dressed in that programme?

3 A. They were wearing camouflage clothes,

4 camouflage uniforms.

5 Q. And you don't know from where was Mr. Kordic

6 speaking that day?

7 A. No, I don't. I don't know.

8 Q. But did you already know the accused, Dario

9 Kordic? Had you met him before? How did you know him?

10 A. No, I didn't know him, but I had heard from

11 my husband talking about Dario Kordic. I heard from

12 him that he existed, but I never saw him before; only

13 on television on that occasion.

14 Q. Was it the only day that you saw Dario Kordic

15 appear on television?

16 A. The only time that I saw him.

17 Q. Do you know that he appeared on Vitez

18 television regularly?

19 A. I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know that. I

20 didn't.

21 Q. And when you saw him on television, you

22 recognised him, didn't you?

23 A. Well, yes, I did. He said "Dario Kordic,"

24 that's how I know him.

25 Q. You tell us, "I recognised him," so this

1 should mean that you had already seen him before; on

2 television perhaps?

3 A. I don't know.

4 Q. And after you went back to Zume from

5 Krcevine, you met a niece of yours whose name was

6 Nadira Ahmic and who was killed the next day, and who

7 told you that there was somebody in the village who was

8 pointing at the Muslim houses to a man who was a

9 familiar face in the village?

10 A. He was pointing at houses and we mentioned

11 that she was on his doorstep, and she said, "Sefik,

12 look at him. He is taking around an unknown man and

13 showing him our houses, because our houses and Croat

14 houses are mixed." And he told that ours, Muslim

15 houses, had four slopes and the Croat ones two, but now

16 Muslims also build their houses with roofs with the two

17 slopes. And so he was pointing at them, and our houses

18 all burnt down, and their houses remained standing.

19 Not one of them burnt down.

20 Q. And this Croat that you mentioned, who was

21 showing to an unfamiliar man these houses, was he a

22 villager, was he a local man from Santici?

23 A. It's now called Santici, but we called it

24 Zume. Our land was there, in Zume, you know.

25 Q. And at night, between the 15th and 16th of

1 April, your husband and your son went out to stand

2 guard, as they usually did. Nothing special happened

3 during the night?

4 A. No, I don't think you could hear a bird

5 singing that evening, let alone something else. No,

6 they saw nothing.

7 Q. And in the morning of the 16th of April,

8 around twenty to 6, you heard repeated gunshots, and

9 you realised that they were firing at the window of

10 your house?

11 A. Yes. They fired at our windows just the same

12 way as on the 20th of October, 1992, those same

13 windows. I had a porch, a veranda facing the other

14 window and the window -- the kitchen window. And I

15 told my husband, "Well, leave it. It's over." And he

16 stood up, and all the bullets were all incendiaries,

17 all of them were incendiary bullets, those which fell

18 in the house.

19 Q. So that these bullets then set your house on

20 fire?

21 A. Yes, fire. They were burning everything.

22 There were very many bullets; one couldn't count them.

23 Q. And afterwards, from your room, could you

24 establish what house did this fire come from, or at

25 least some of these bullets? Could you establish where

1 they were coming from?

2 A. I'll tell you, we could not really see, but

3 they were coming from that direction, from Croat houses

4 from our neighbours. That was the direction which they

5 travelled from.

6 Q. Do you, perhaps, remember the name of the

7 Croat who owned the house that you just mentioned?

8 A. Sure, I do. They were my neighbours with

9 whom I'd lived in the area for almost 20 years. Before

10 that -- and I lived in the village of Gornji Ahmici

11 before, but Ahmici eight years. It was Kara Vidovic.

12 I don't know if that was his name, but that is what

13 they called him, and also Jozo Sakic and Anto Covic.

14 Q. Merely checking the name which appears here

15 on the transcript. You said Anto Covic, didn't you?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. Very well. Your husband went out that

18 morning and he received -- he was gravely injured in

19 the leg, but he nevertheless managed to get back to the

20 garage of your house, and after that you tried to help

21 him with your son. You tried to dress his wound,

22 bandage it. And your son suggested that you should

23 surrender or, rather, leave the house, because --

24 seeing what was happening to the house.

25 A. Yes. But we could not do anything but put

1 something on his leg. But there was not -- no real

2 help, because the injury was very grave, because those

3 were dumdum bullets and we couldn't do anything from

4 imitation bullets. So we couldn't do anything. We

5 simply had to leave the house. And a neighbour woman

6 came to our door and said, "Come out or you will all

7 burn alive." And my son went out and started across

8 the yard and we followed. And the first bullet came

9 from the neighbours, and he was immediately killed.

10 And my daughter-in-law was shouting, "Don't fire, you

11 will kill my child." But we reached that neighbour

12 woman's house and there were also some Croats in the

13 house.

14 Q. When your son was killed that morning, did he

15 have his hands on his head?

16 A. Yes. Yes. He raised his arms like that,

17 showing that he was surrendering, but the bullet hit

18 him and he fell. And we were walking on the other side

19 and he just remained there lying.

20 Q. When you left your house, your husband Sefik

21 was wounded, but still alive, wasn't he?

22 A. Yes. Yes, he was.

23 Q. Yes, please.

24 A. He was alive. He stayed alive there. But

25 later on he was probably killed because they came back

1 when we were there. They killed him. They fired at

2 his head, and they set fire to the house and it burnt

3 down.

4 Q. A moment ago you told us about soldiers,

5 about HVO soldiers whom you saw that morning. You saw,

6 I believe, eight soldiers who were in the

7 neighbourhood. Could you describe to us the clothing

8 of those soldiers?

9 A. They were all wearing camouflage clothes.

10 They were armed. They all had automatic rifles. One

11 of them took my daughter and pulled her by the

12 shoulder, and I pulled her to me and said, "You got one

13 child, you took the other. Let her go. She's a

14 child." Then he was so angry and fired in the air.

15 They were all masked. They had black paint on their

16 faces, on their cheeks, on their chins.

17 Q. Could you see if those soldiers were carrying

18 some kind of petrol cans or something like that?

19 A. Yes, they had petrol canisters, some 20

20 litres, some 10 litres. They would throw them into our

21 houses and then put fire to them. I mean, Muslim

22 houses.

23 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Lopez-Terres, I am going to

24 interrupt. It's just past 1. Is that a convenient

25 moment?

1 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation]

2 Absolutely.

3 JUDGE MAY: We are going to adjourn now for

4 the lunch adjournment. Could you be back, please,

5 Mrs. Pezer, at half past 2, when we'll continue with

6 your evidence.

7 THE WITNESS: As you say.

8 --- Luncheon recess taken at 1.04 p.m.

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1 --- On resuming at 2.36 p.m.

2 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Lopez-Terres.

3 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation]

4 Q. Mrs. Pezer, before we broke for our lunch

5 break, you were speaking about soldiers that you saw in

6 your village who were wearing camouflage uniforms and

7 who had paint on their faces, and you said that they

8 were carrying gas cans with them; is that correct? And

9 could you tell us whether you personally recognised

10 some of those soldiers when you were confronted with

11 them, because at some point the soldiers had you get

12 into a line?

13 A. Yes, that's what I said. I didn't recognise

14 anyone. I said how they were camouflaged, they were

15 wearing camouflage uniforms. My daughter told me later

16 that she recognised Franjo Jukic and Zoran, Zuco.

17 That's what my daughter told me. I didn't recognise

18 them.

19 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] The names

20 that the witness has given us are important, and I

21 would like to be sure there's no problem with the

22 transcript, whether it's in French or English.

23 Q. Could we ask the witness to tell us again the

24 family name of the two soldiers whom her daughter

25 recognised?

1 A. Franjo Jukic, he is from Nadioci, and Zoran,

2 nicknamed Zuco, Covic. He's a neighbour of mine. He

3 lives near me.

4 Q. Do you know Zoran Covic's father's name?

5 A. His name was Anto Covic. Zoran's father's

6 name was Anto Covic.

7 Q. This morning you told us that some of the

8 shots that were fired on your house came from the house

9 of a person whose name was Anto Covic. Is that Anto

10 Covic the same person that you're speaking about; that

11 is, Zoran Covic's father?

12 A. Yes, that is the father of Zoran Covic, and

13 that is where his house and his yard is, and that's

14 where the shooting came from. It's across the lane

15 from me.

16 Q. You said that your deceased son had a hunting

17 rifle. Was he able to use that weapon on the 16th of

18 April, 1993, before being killed or at the point that

19 they were killed, he and his father?

20 A. Well, no. It was an old rifle. I found it

21 there. It's older than I was. It was called an M-48.

22 It's my father-in-law's gun, a hunting rifle, and I

23 doubt that anything could have been done with it.

24 Q. Your daughter, Taiba, who you just spoke to

25 us about, at some point was grabbed by the shoulder by

1 one of the soldiers. Could you speak to us about that

2 incident about which you spoke a little bit or somewhat

3 this morning?

4 A. I can't really. I can just tell you that he

5 grabbed her by the shoulder, and I said, "Leave my

6 child alone, and don't kill my other child too." He

7 let her go, and then he fired a burst of gunfire into

8 the air. He was angry. Then he said that we should go

9 to their houses.

10 Q. And Franjo Jukic, whom you spoke about, he

11 intervened at that point; is that correct?

12 A. Yes. He said, "Don't," well, yes, on account

13 of me. And he said, "Vamoose, off you go to your

14 houses." That's it.

15 Q. On that morning, did you see that the HVO

16 soldiers were speaking to the inhabitants of the

17 village in their houses, using their names to speak to

18 them?

19 A. No, I don't know that.

20 Q. Did they ask people to come out of their

21 houses, calling them by their names?

22 A. Yes. They would say, "Get out Ahmic, Sahib,

23 Mevludin, Fadil." Yes, yes, they were shouting that.

24 We think that these could have been our neighbours.

25 They said that these were some people that came from

1 other parts. They say that until the present day, that

2 it was somebody else who came in. But they could not

3 have done that, people like that could not have done

4 that, because they did not know us, so we believe that

5 it was our neighbours who did it.

6 Q. Did you have the possibility of identifying

7 some of the soldiers who participated in that attack

8 or, in any case, to identify some of the HVO soldiers

9 who would regularly appear in the village?

10 A. No, I couldn't. It was an attack. It was a

11 matter of seconds. We couldn't even look, and I

12 couldn't recognise anyone. All of this happened very

13 fast, to kill as many people as possible.

14 Q. Do you remember the name of the HVO soldier

15 who, in the previous days or previous weeks, would come

16 regularly to the village dressed in a uniform?

17 A. Well, I only remember my neighbours who

18 wore -- at my place. I can remember them, but I don't

19 know others. I don't know about others.

20 Q. Could you speak to us about those neighbours

21 and the names of those neighbours, those that were in

22 uniform?

23 A. Well, Drazen Vidovic was in uniform. Then

24 there was Zoran Zuco Covic, and then Ivica Semren, and

25 Dragan Josipovic and others, and Nenad Santic. I saw

1 them every day before that particular point in time.

2 Q. This Nenad Santic whom you've just spoken to

3 us about, did he have any kind of command

4 responsibility in your village?

5 A. I think he did. I think he was commander of

6 the HVO there in our village; Zume, that is.

7 Q. Did he have a nickname or did he like a

8 nickname to be used when people spoke to him?

9 A. No. As far as I know, no. I only know him

10 as Nenad Santic.

11 Q. Would he sometimes like to give himself the

12 name Ustasha?

13 A. My husband said that that is what he said in

14 his presence, that he said that he wanted to be called

15 an Ustasha. That is what my husband said. He said,

16 "Don't call me by my name. Call me Ustasha."

17 Q. Do you remember that after the October 1992

18 conflict, that Nenad Santic, whom we are speaking

19 about, had submitted a specific document to one of your

20 neighbours?

21 A. I remember that. My neighbour Fahran Ahmic

22 was at my place. He was also killed. I was going with

23 my husband to his place and he gave him a certificate.

24 He said, "Look, Sefik, what Nenad gave me. He gave me

25 a pass allowing me to pass in certain places." That's

1 all.

2 Q. The name that you are speaking to us about,

3 was that Fahrudin Ahmic?

4 A. Yes. Yes, Fahrudin Ahmic.

5 Q. Was he killed?

6 A. Yes. Yes, he was killed too.

7 Q. You lived in the Ahmici and the Santici

8 region for a long time, Mrs. Pezer. Do you know

9 Mr. Nenad Santic's father's first name?

10 A. I know we called them the Radaks. I don't

11 know how to explain this, but they are really called

12 Santic. They lived in Rovna, in Donja Rovna, and Nenad

13 built a house in my neighbourhood in Zume. The first

14 son. He had two other sons as well.

15 Q. You've just told us that the Santic's were

16 Radak. Could you just give me the father's name, Nenad

17 Santic's father's name, first name.

18 A. Mijo. Mijo Santic.

19 Q. As far as you know, were there other people

20 named Nenad Santic in Santici in April of 1993?

21 A. I don't know. That I don't know. I'm not

22 aware of that.

23 Q. You don't know or you don't know any other

24 Nenad Santic's?

25 A. I don't know. That's the only Nenad Santic I

1 know, the one who lived in my neighbourhood. Mijo was

2 his father.

3 Q. Thank you. We are going to go back to the

4 narration of events, of the 16th of April, that we

5 started with this morning. You had to go to Josip

6 Vidovic's house, and there you were able to go in; is

7 that correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. That Josip Vidovic was married to a Muslim

10 woman; is that correct?

11 A. Yes. Yes. Fikreta Sivro was married to him.

12 Q. When you were in the house, you went to an

13 upper floor, and from that point you were able to see

14 that the village was on fire, and you also saw two

15 bodies lying on the ground; is that correct?

16 A. That is correct. I was there in the house,

17 and I went upstairs, and behind Sakib Pezer's barn was

18 his body and his son's body. And then I said to Josip

19 Vidovic, "We should go to my husband Sefik, who is

20 wounded, and to see whether we could help him." And he

21 said that he could bleed for three to four hours and

22 that nothing would happen to him. Well, they went to

23 school together and they are the same generation, the

24 two of them.

25 Q. These two people whose bodies you saw, that

1 was Mehrudin Pezer and Sakib Pezer; is that correct?

2 A. His son was Mevludin Pezer. Mevludin Pezer

3 and Sakib Pezer. And my name is Nura Pezer.

4 Q. Very well. Mr. Vidovic's house was a house

5 which looked like a Muslim house in the village; is

6 that correct?

7 A. Yes. Yes. Yes, there is only the road

8 between us.

9 Q. And you heard one of the soldiers asking why

10 that house wasn't burnt down; is that correct?

11 A. Perhaps five or six of them came in front of

12 his house, and he said to them, "Run away children."

13 And then he said the house was on fire. He thought

14 that it was a Muslim house, and not a single bullet was

15 fired in his house because of the way the roof was.

16 And then they went on further.

17 Q. Subsequently, you were able to leave the

18 village. You were taken in for a while in the house

19 where there were already Croatian women, and you took

20 shelter in that house. And then you went to the

21 village -- the Muslim hamlet of Kozmici; right?

22 A. Yes, we went to Kozmici. And then Ilija

23 Vrebac was there and Ljuta Divodic said, "Why didn't

24 you spend the night at our place." And I said to the

25 lady who was my neighbour, "Well, why not." Then she

1 said, "Well, I wouldn't really. They killed all of my

2 people, and now should I stop by and stay with them?"

3 And I said, "Well I've got to because I had my young

4 girls with me, and I had to spend the night at their

5 place." And then when we got in, there were about 50

6 people in the shelter, women and children that is.

7 They took us to the other basement and we stayed there

8 in the basement. We spent the night at their place.

9 Q. From Kozmici you were then escorted to

10 Sivrino Selo; is that right?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. And you stayed there for a while?

13 A. Yes. Yes. In the morning we went to Kozmici

14 and Niko Plavcic came to see us. He's also a neighbour

15 of us. And he said, "Come on, no one will harm you."

16 And we said, "We don't really want to go anywhere." We

17 said, "If you can take us to Sivrino Selo and then we

18 are going to try to rescue ourselves from there." Then

19 he went to Sivrino Selo and we went too.

20 Q. In Sivrino Selo you had to stay in the

21 basement, because the village of Sivrino Selo was being

22 shelled too; is that right?

23 A. Yes. Yes. We spent two days and two nights

24 in basements. Shells were falling and we were in

25 shelter.

1 Q. And then you went to Poculica. And four days

2 later you could leave the area to go to Zenica; is that

3 correct?

4 A. Yes. Yes. Then we went to Poculica, and we

5 spent four days in Poculica, and then we were

6 transferred to Zenica. That's where I live today, in

7 Zenica. I am on my own. That's it. My daughters have

8 married and my daughter-in-law left with her child. I

9 live by myself. It's been seven years now that I left

10 my home, on the 16th of April.

11 Q. Thank you very much, Mrs. Pezer. I have to

12 ask you for some clarification before we finish. The

13 person whose name was Niko Plavcic, who went with you

14 to Sivrino Selo, is he the father of the person named

15 Nikola Plavcic?

16 A. I don't know. He had three sons, three

17 sons. His oldest son was Ljuban, and then he had two

18 other sons. I don't know them. But I knew Ljuban a

19 bit better.

20 Q. Among those sons, was one whose name was

21 Nikola, who was nicknamed Slikica?

22 A. That's what I heard, that they called him

23 Slikica, but I don't know him. I can't remember him at

24 all. Perhaps I did know him, but I don't know. I

25 don't know. I know that he called -- that they called

1 him Slikica. I know that he had three sons.

2 Q. Thank you. I would like to show you in

3 conclusion a few documents, Mrs. Pezer. These are

4 documents which are from the case file Z2812.3, which

5 was submitted last week to the Chamber. And these

6 documents, which are part of that file, have reference

7 numbers, Z687, Z687.1, Z2809.1, and Z535.

8 A. What am I supposed to do now?

9 Q. Mrs. Pezer, on the document which was given

10 to you in the English version, and shown to the Trial

11 Chamber, there are several names: Drazan Vidovic,

12 Ivica Semren, and Zoran Covic?

13 A. Drazan Vidovic.

14 Q. Do you see those names?

15 A. Drazan Vidovic is the first one.

16 Q. And at the bottom of the page you've got

17 Ivica Semren and Zoran Covic.

18 A. Am I supposed to read this up here?

19 JUDGE MAY: Just a moment.

20 MR. KOVACIC: Your Honour, perhaps just a

21 suggestion, in order not to waste time later, because

22 we will be quite short, obviously. If my colleague

23 could point out to the witness the date of the

24 document.

25 JUDGE MAY: Yes. And can we have it, if

1 possible, on the ELMO, because we haven't got it in

2 front of us at the moment.

3 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] The

4 document, is it on the ELMO? I believe it is.

5 A. Well, this is pretty hard for me.

6 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] Could you

7 give the witness the document that I have with me

8 here? I think she's having some difficulty

9 understanding.

10 Q. Mrs. Pezer, you've got the names that were

11 underlined on that document. Those names which are

12 underlined, are they the ones that you've mentioned to

13 us during your testimony today?

14 A. Yes. This is Ivica Semren, Zoran Covic, and

15 Drazenko Vidovic.

16 Q. Thank you very much. I would like to show

17 you two other documents which I have already mentioned

18 when I gave the reference numbers.

19 Perhaps that could save us some time, if we

20 would just show them directly to the witness.

21 This document deals with someone named Nenad

22 Santic?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. As far as you know, does that document relate

25 to the Nenad Santic that you spoke to us about?

1 A. This is Nenad Santic.

2 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] Nenad

3 Santic, who was born on the 3rd of September, 1950.

4 Mr. Usher, could you show the witness the

5 second document, which will be the last one.

6 Could I see the document that's been shown to

7 the witness, please? This is the second document

8 dealing with the person whose name was Nenad Santic.

9 She saw this one already. Could we show her

10 the second one? Is this the one that she saw, because

11 we don't see anything on the screen. The second

12 document is a death certificate for Nenad Santic.

13 That's the one that I would like to have shown to the

14 witness.

15 A. Nenad Santic, father's name Mijo, Donja

16 Rovna, municipality of Busovaca.

17 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Who was born on the 3rd of September, 1954,

19 in Donja Rovna. Does this data correspond to the

20 identity of Nenad Santic that you spoke to us about,

21 Mrs. Pezer?

22 A. I don't remember the date of his birth. I

23 don't know.

24 Q. Born in Donja Rovna?

25 A. I know that he was born in Donja Rovna, but I

1 don't know when he was born. Anyway, his father lived

2 there, and he lives there until the present day, in

3 Donja Rovna.

4 Q. As far as you know, Nenad Santic, who was the

5 local leader of the HVO in your village, was he killed

6 during the conflict?

7 A. I don't know that. That I don't know.

8 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] Thank you

9 very much. I have no further questions to ask of the

10 witness.

11 Cross-examined by Mr. Sayers:

12 Q. Mrs. Pezer, good afternoon. Ma'am, I'm one

13 of the attorneys that represents Mr. Kordic. My name

14 is Stephen Sayers.

15 Please let me start out by saying that I'm

16 extremely sorry for the terrible times that you went

17 through in April of 1993.

18 I'd just like to ask you, ma'am, about the

19 statements and testimony that you've given in the

20 past. As I understand it, you gave some testimony in

21 the case against General Blaskic in 1997, towards the

22 end of the year, in November. Is that right?

23 A. It is.

24 Q. And just to make sure that we all have an

25 accurate record, ma'am, of the prior statements that

1 you have made, do you remember, on April the 29th of

2 1993, just 13 days after the terrible events that

3 happened in your village, you gave a statement to the

4 State Commission for Gathering Facts on War Crimes?

5 A. I don't remember that.

6 MR. SAYERS: That's fine. I wonder if I

7 could have this marked as the next Defence exhibit,

8 please. And this will help you remember, ma'am. It's

9 a copy of a statement that you gave on that date.

10 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] This is

11 D196/1.

12 MR. SAYERS: Thank you.

13 Q. Now, Mrs. Pezer, I wonder if you could just

14 take a look at the document we've put in front of you,

15 and I would just like to ask you whether you remember

16 giving a statement to the State Commission for

17 Gathering Facts on War Crimes in April of 1993, to

18 Mr. Benjamin Zlotrg and Ms. Amela [phoen] Hodzic.

19 A. Please believe me, I have no recollection of

20 it at all. It was seven years ago, and I really don't

21 remember if I ever did that.

22 Q. Very well. Thank you.

23 Let me turn to the next statement that you

24 gave, ma'am. Do you remember giving a statement to the

25 Zenica Security Services Centre on June the 25th, 1993,

1 just two months later?

2 A. You want me to answer?

3 Q. Yes, please.

4 A. No, not at all. I don't even -- about that.

5 I never went there.

6 MR. SAYERS: I wonder if I could just have

7 this marked as the next exhibit.

8 Mr. President, I don't want to make a meal of

9 this. I just want to identify these documents for the

10 record, and I'll move on promptly.

11 JUDGE MAY: Is there any relevance in the

12 documents, Mr. Sayers?

13 MR. SAYERS: Yes, there is, Your Honour. If

14 I might just point out to the Court that in neither of

15 the two documents that you have before you

16 contemporaneously is there any mention of the

17 television programme which Ms. Pezer has testified

18 about today.

19 Q. All right, ma'am. Looking at the document in

20 front of you, does that help jog your memory about

21 making a statement to the Zenica Security Services

22 Centre in June of 1993?

23 A. I did give some statements in Zenica, but I

24 don't know what date it was that I gave the statement.

25 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] This is

1 D197/1.

2 MR. SAYERS: Thank you. I'm through with

3 that document. Thank you, Mr. Usher.

4 Q. And the last question along these lines: Do

5 you remember actually giving a statement, ma'am, to an

6 investigating judge in Zenica, Ms. Dijana Ajanovic, in

7 proceedings brought against Dario Kordic on November

8 the 12th, 1993?

9 And I would just like to have this marked as

10 the next exhibit, please. Thank you.

11 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] This is

12 Document D198/1.

13 MR. SAYERS:

14 Q. Mrs. Pezer, we've just shown or had

15 identified a statement that you gave under oath to an

16 investigating judge in November of 1993. Would you

17 just turn to the last page of the Croatian version and

18 verify that that is your signature on the bottom of the

19 page under the word "Svjedok"?

20 A. [No audible response]

21 Q. Ma'am, in case you've forgotten the question,

22 I just asked you if that was your signature in the

23 centre of the bottom of that page.

24 A. It is. Yes, it's my signature. But you know

25 what I said about that, Dario Kordic, where I saw him,

1 and I think this -- and you can tell his lawyer that he

2 was, in our Central Bosnia, the main person, he and his

3 associate Tihomir Blaskic, and to stop wearing me down

4 anymore. They know I've lost 17 members of my family,

5 of my husband's, and my husband's family is my family.

6 My son I was bringing up for 20 years, and he

7 disappeared in a split second, and now they wear me

8 down. They know what we lost. In 35 houses in Zume,

9 41 died. You don't have to wear me down. Everybody

10 knows who did what.

11 If he didn't do it, let him tell us who did

12 it, apart from him, because I have nothing left by my

13 life. All the mothers that we left from there with our

14 children, all were left without lives. We've lost

15 everything, and we still have to bring our children

16 up.

17 He was a criminal to me and he always will

18 be. If he wants justice, God will punish him for what

19 he did. If one man killed a thousand people, then --

20 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Sayers, do you have any more

21 questions?

22 MR. SAYERS: I have only one more question,

23 Your Honour.

24 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Sayers, have you any more

25 questions?

1 MR. SAYERS: I only have one more, Your

2 Honour. I wonder if the usher would put this

3 photograph on the ELMO, please. It's been previously

4 marked 160/1.

5 Q. Ma'am, this is a copy of a photograph that

6 was taken at about 11 a.m., on the 16th of April, in

7 your village of Ahmici.

8 Just for the Court's reference, Major

9 Wooley's transcript has been admitted into evidence,

10 and it's page 3527 where this has been authenticated.

11 Ma'am, could you just take a look at the two

12 individuals standing behind the lady in the centre of

13 that photograph and the gentleman who is off to the

14 right-hand side, and could you just tell me if you

15 recognise any of those three persons?

16 A. No, I don't know any one of them.

17 Q. The gentlemen with the cigarette in his mouth

18 appears to be carrying a M-48 rifle, does he not, or do

19 you recognise it?

20 A. I don't recognise anyone.

21 MR. SAYERS: That concludes my questions.

22 Thank you very much, Your Honour.

23 JUDGE MAY: Thank you. If you'd like to

24 return the exhibit.

25 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Kovacic.

1 Cross-examined by Mr. Kovacic:

2 Q. Good afternoon, Mrs. Pezer. I am Bozidar

3 Kovacic, and I am the Defence lawyer for the second

4 accused, Mario Cerkez, whom you never mentioned today.

5 Please receive my deepest sympathies, but also please

6 bear in mind that we need to learn about some things in

7 more detail. I shall ask you only some of the basic

8 things that are our concern.

9 Could you tell us, you lived in Zume, you

10 said. Did you live above the road, uphill towards

11 Ahmici, or below it?

12 A. Uphill from the road.

13 Q. How many rows of houses were there above the

14 road; two, three, four?

15 A. Well, as I said, we are below the road and

16 above the road in Zume, next to Ahmici, and there are

17 about 35 houses there.

18 Q. How many does it take you on foot, for

19 instance, from your house to the mosque that was

20 destroyed?

21 A. Well, it could be about ten minutes. I

22 wouldn't know exactly, but roughly ten minutes.

23 Q. Right. Thank you. Tell us, you said that

24 your husband was one of the village guards, and that

25 your son was with him too. Do you know who was the

1 commander of the village guards in Ahmici?

2 A. Nobody. Nobody was the commander. They

3 simply looked out of the houses, guarded their houses.

4 There was no commander. There was nothing. No such

5 thing. People simply went out and stood -- and guarded

6 their houses.

7 Q. And Croats as well?

8 A. Yes, Croats too. Everybody would walk up and

9 down in front of his house, to guard it.

10 Q. And before the conflict they joined --

11 A. No, there was no conflict. There was an

12 attack, Mr. Lawyer. There was an attack, no conflict.

13 At night they organised an attack and in the morning

14 they attacked every house. There was no conflict or

15 anything.

16 Q. Right. Let me ask -- let me rephrase it. In

17 April 1992, and before that, Croats and Muslims went

18 and guarded jointly, didn't they, in the village?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. And let us now go into this detail. And then

21 at some point they separated and then each one went on

22 guard, and everybody guarded his own part of the

23 village?

24 A. No, not the village. It is houses. Not the

25 village. The villagers were mixed. I was in Santici.

1 Those are Santici. I lived in Santici. So it was

2 houses that were mixed, not different separate parts of

3 the village.

4 Q. Right. Did Midho Berbic play a role in the

5 village guards?

6 A. What did you say?

7 Q. I said Midho Berbic. Did he play a role?

8 A. No, he didn't have a role. What role could

9 he have?

10 Q. But what house did he guard?

11 A. Well, I don't know. He was up there and I

12 was in Ahmici.

13 THE INTERPRETER: Could the counsel please

14 pause between question and answer.

15 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Kovacic, you are being asked

16 by the interpreters to slow down.

17 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation] I apologise.

18 Q. Mrs. Pezer, you said that your husband's

19 rifle or the rifle in your house, that it was a M-48

20 brand?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And you don't know if it was a hunting or a

23 military rifle?

24 A. Oh, come on. It was a hunting rifle. It was

25 my father-in-law's. I had 50 years, and that rifle has

1 always been there. I mean, I don't even know if one

2 could fire from it any more.

3 Q. Thank you. Thank you. In the evening of the

4 15th of April, 1993, you went to see those friends in

5 Krcevine and you came back. Did you notice any

6 movements of the army concentration or rallying of the

7 army?

8 A. No, we didn't. But it was so quiet that you

9 couldn't hear a bird that evening. One couldn't hear a

10 bird flapping its wings until the morning, it was so

11 quiet.

12 Q. Right. You said that on the 16th of April,

13 on the day of the attack, that those soldiers were

14 wearing camouflage uniforms. My question is were some

15 soldiers wearing a different type of uniform, black

16 uniform say?

17 A. I don't know or didn't see them. All I saw

18 was camouflage uniforms. I did not see those others.

19 Q. But you said that some had their faces

20 painted. You said that some had their faces painted.

21 A. Yes. All of them. All of them had their

22 faces painted, the whole face and their chins.

23 Q. Were some of them wearing masks?

24 A. No, they didn't.

25 Q. Tell us, do you know if the name Vitezovi

1 applied to a unit? Did you know about that?

2 A. Well, I don't know that. I don't. I must

3 tell you, I didn't really look. I didn't really look.

4 Q. May I just remind you, that amongst those

5 many statements, in your statement of 1998, which you

6 also signed, you said -- you were referring to an

7 incident on that morning. And you said that Franjo,

8 and that was Franjo Jukic, you said that, "Franjo

9 prevented a criminal from a special purpose unit,

10 Vitezovi, to kill my daughter, Taiba." That he said,

11 "Not her, please." And you told us about that today,

12 but you did not say he was a member of Vitezovi. Do

13 you remember that?

14 A. I did say that, but I don't remember, because

15 I didn't ask what were their nicknames, and whether

16 they were Vitezovi. I knew they were in camouflage

17 uniforms and their faces were masked, their foreheads

18 and faces. And that is what I said

19 MR. KOVACIC: If I may, I should like to

20 tender this statement, which the witness gave to the

21 authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

22 JUDGE MAY: Is this another statement,

23 Mr. Kovacic?

24 MR. KOVACIC: Yes.

25 JUDGE MAY: Very well.

1 MR. KOVACIC:

2 Q. [Interpretation] Mrs. Pezer, you said

3 today -- you gave us the names of people whom your

4 daughter recognised at a later date, and you said that

5 they were Franjo Jukic and Zoran Covic. You also told

6 us, during your testimony, about --

7 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] This is

8 D61/2.

9 MR. KOVACIC:

10 Q. [Interpretation] You also mentioned the names

11 of Kristo, Ivica Semren, Drazan Vidovic, Miro

12 Josipovic, Nenad Santic. And if I understood you well,

13 because you did not really go into detail about that,

14 you say that you know that those individuals were HVO

15 members; isn't it?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. And that morning that you are talking about,

18 the 16th of April, 1993, you did not see them, however?

19 A. No, I didn't.

20 Q. As for Nenad Santic, you said that you knew

21 that he was from the village called Donja Rovna. Can

22 you tell us about this village? Is it a big village, a

23 small village?

24 A. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't really

25 count the houses there. I just know that he hails from

1 that part, and his father would come to see us. He

2 would come to see my father-in-law, and he built his

3 house also.

4 Q. Can we say that it's about as big as Ahmici?

5 A. Well, Ahmici is a bit bigger. Then there is

6 Krcevine, Grabovi, Pirici, Zume. It's a big

7 population, scattered all about. Then there is Mala

8 Rovna, Gornja Rovna, Donja Rovna. How can I remember

9 all of this?

10 Q. Tell me, madam, the last name Santic is a

11 frequent last name in that area; is that right?

12 A. Yes. Yes, it is. Also, a lot of them would

13 come to see my husband, Franjo Santic, Jozo Santic.

14 Then there were also others who went to school together

15 and things like that.

16 Q. And what about the name Nenad? Is that a

17 frequent name in that area among the Croats?

18 A. Well, no. Not where I live and where Nenad

19 lived, no. No. There is no other Nenad in that area.

20 I don't know any other Nenad there.

21 Q. All right. But do you know any other Croat

22 by the name of Nenad anywhere?

23 A. No. No. I didn't.

24 Q. And what about the name of Mijo, is that a

25 frequent name among the Croats?

1 A. Well, yes. It's their name, and of course

2 they give children that name, yes. And they will go on

3 giving that name.

4 Q. Very well. Thank you. Just something else.

5 Could you explain this to us a bit. When those

6 soldiers drove you away towards the Croat houses, that

7 is to say, from your houses towards the Croat houses,

8 they did not send you into the house of Josip Vidovic.

9 You asked the Vidovic's to take you in.

10 A. Yes, they took us in. Well, we didn't really

11 think so. We thought they would kill all of us. They

12 killed everybody out there, and we thought they would

13 kill us too. And I don't know until the present day

14 how I survived all of that, and how I managed to remain

15 living. It was so terrible. Only someone who had seen

16 this can believe it.

17 Q. So this Josip Vidovic, he offered help to you

18 on his own, didn't he?

19 A. Well, yes, he received us in his house, and

20 we were there.

21 Q. And then after this, Mrs. Vrebac helped you,

22 and this other woman?

23 A. Yes. Yes. She worked in the shop in our

24 area, about 20 -- for about 20 years. We were all

25 neighbours. And we did not have any kind of poor

1 relationship with them or anything. But what they did

2 to us is really a terrible thing. And I never made any

3 difference between them and us and my children and

4 their children. And if they respect their faith and

5 their church, they should also respect our faith and

6 another faith. And that's what I do too.

7 Q. Yes, Mrs. Pezer. I know that. You and I

8 know that. But other people here do not know this.

9 Jozo Vidovic and this Mrs. Vrebac, they were Croats,

10 right?

11 A. Yes, that's right. Well, okay. I mean, they

12 are our people, Bosnian people. Now they want to be

13 Croats. But they have to live together with us. I

14 want to go home. I mean, Zenica doesn't want me

15 either. They are not going to give me assistance

16 forever. There are 100 dulums of my land that they are

17 telling. And are you familiar with the Lasva River

18 Valley? All of that land over there is my land, in

19 that particular area. And look at the way I live.

20 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Kovacic, is there very much

21 more you want to ask?

22 MR. KOVACIC: Just one more.

23 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

24 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation]

25 Q. You mentioned Niko Plavcic. He himself

1 offered to take you there; right?

2 A. Yes, that's right.

3 Q. He didn't force you?

4 A. No, he didn't.

5 Q. He took you there to help you; is that right?

6 A. Yes, yes, and we said, "You take us to

7 Sivrino Selo." Who stayed until dark on the 16th was

8 taken to the camp at the Dubravica school. All of them

9 were taken there.

10 Q. He was also Croat; is that right?

11 A. Yes, that's right.

12 MR. KOVACIC: I think I'm finished, Your

13 Honour.

14 [Interpretation] Mrs. Pezer, I thank you very

15 much for your testimony, and I apologise for having

16 upset you a bit.

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] You're

18 welcome.

19 MR. LOPEZ-TERRES: [Interpretation] Only one

20 point, Mr. President.

21 Re-examined by Mr. Lopez-Terres:

22 Q. Mrs. Pezer, when you were taken into the

23 house of that Mrs. Vrebac that we've just spoken to you

24 about where there were Croat women, did you notice

25 whether there was any electricity in that house?