1 Friday, 16 April 2004

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 9.03 a.m.

5 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar, would you please call the case.

6 THE REGISTRAR: Case number IT-00-39-T, the Prosecutor versus

7 Momcilo Krajisnik.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Madam Registrar. Good morning to

9 everyone in this courtroom and those just outside.

10 Mr. Stewart, before I ask the usher to escort the witness into

11 the courtroom, in the beginning of the week you said you would think you

12 would need the week for the cross-examination of Mr. Treanor. Does that

13 mean that you expect to finish today?

14 MR. STEWART: Yes, Your Honour, I do. It's going to be -- it's

15 going to be fairly tight, as it often is, touch and go.

16 JUDGE ORIE: Let's then just get started.

17 Madam Usher, could you please escort the witness into the

18 courtroom.

19 [The witness entered court]

20 JUDGE ORIE: Good morning, Mr. Treanor.

21 THE WITNESS: Good morning, Your Honour.

22 JUDGE ORIE: May I remind you that you're still bound by the

23 solemn declaration you've given at the beginning of your testimony.

24 Cross-examination will now be continued by Mr. Stewart.

25 Mr. Stewart, please proceed.

1 WITNESS: PATRICK TREANOR [Resumed]

2 Cross-examined by Mr. Stewart: [Continued]

3 Q. Mr. Treanor, could you have, please, Volume 4 of your bundles.

4 And we're going to tab 62. And if we go to page 2, the foot of the page,

5 item 2 on the agenda. Just remind us. We looked at this briefly

6 yesterday, the agenda. Proposed recommendation, decision on the

7 establishment of Municipal Assemblies of the Serbian People in Bosnia and

8 Herzegovina.

9 And then if we go on to page 9. I had asked you in relation to a

10 point, then -- the discussion begins on page 9. And then on point 10 --

11 I'm sorry, page 10, I had asked you whether the paragraph about four or

12 five down, "Group of deputies," and so on, was broadly the same as

13 Variant B, first level, paragraph 4. And then we ran into a little bit

14 of choppy water because of some confusion over wording. But I think we

15 cleared that up.

16 When we go to -- on to page 12, we've got Dr. Karadzic talking.

17 And towards the top of the page there's a paragraph beginning "In the

18 army." Do you see that?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. "In the army there really are different tendencies. But on the

21 part of individuals it's really not an official position. There are

22 people cherishing different stupid ideas, but god willing that we stay

23 the state everyone will go to the elections afterwards."

24 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, whenever you start reading, your speed

25 goes up.

1 MR. STEWART:

2 Q. "And take his chances there."

3 On this issue and in other issues, again, this was certainly,

4 wasn't it, Mr. Treanor, a session of considerable debate, wasn't it, this

5 session of the Serb Assembly? It was very far from being a

6 rubber-stamping meeting at which everybody just went along to endorse

7 without serious discussion. It was a really rocky, tough debate, wasn't

8 it?

9 A. Well, I can recall there was quite a bit of discussion and

10 difference of opinion about the recommendation that we were just

11 considering.

12 Q. And we -- we've already dealt with it -- I think Mr. Krajisnik,

13 so I won't repeat it -- at page 14, you had highlighted where

14 Mr. Krajisnik explained and drawn attention to distinction between the

15 regionalisation and the formation of municipal assemblies. So we won't

16 simply go over the same ground again.

17 But over at page 15, Mr. Krajisnik, again: "Please can we

18 explain some things." And Mr. Krajisnik says -- do you see in the middle

19 of the page: "The Serbian people have through their deputies"? Do you

20 see that?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Yes. "The Serbian people have through their deputies formed the

23 Assembly of the Serbian People in BH for one reason only, because through

24 us here the will was imposed on our people. I am referring to the

25 platform and memorandum, the disruptions of constitutionality. In a

1 word, decisions were imposed which are contrary to the interests of the

2 Serbian people. Similar decisions are made in various municipalities

3 where our representatives are in the minority. To enable them to counter

4 the irregular practices imposed by the SDA and the HDZ, we think that we

5 should recommend that in such milieus where our representatives are in

6 the minority, they can form Assemblies like this one here and fight with

7 all means for their interests.

8 "Let us -- let me explain what we can do. In municipalities such

9 as Novi Grad, Hadzici, Stari Grad, et cetera, we have no rights whatever

10 -0 whatsoever. It is there that Assemblies of the Serbian People should

11 be formed, for by working in the Joint Assembly our representatives are

12 only a front while the others are working and implementing decisions

13 about which they ask none of the Serb representatives. That's the gist

14 of the matter. In any case, I do not mind if we do not adopt this, but

15 the initiative has come from numerous municipalities which claim that the

16 representatives cannot achieve everything" --

17 -- anything - I beg your pardon, "anything," not everything --

18 -- "that everything is being done by outvoting and the will of

19 others imposed on them. That way we are imposing our will on them too, I

20 must admit, but representatives of the Serb people are in question here."

21 So would you agree, Mr. Treanor, it could -- in fact, it could

22 hardly have been more clearly explained and emphasised by Mr. Krajisnik

23 at this point that the problem they were addressing related specifically

24 to those municipalities where the Serbs were in a minority in the

25 Assembly and were simply being outvoted?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. And those -- and Novi Grad, Hadzici, Stari Grad, those are

3 examples of that.

4 A. Apparently so.

5 Q. Yes. Then when we go over to page 16, Mr. Krajisnik's talking

6 again, the middle of the page: "In places where we can have no

7 political influence on the life and work of the municipalities," and so

8 on. So it's the same point. And then at the bottom of the page: "Let

9 me be clear on this point. I am in favour of this, but tell --" a

10 deputy. I beg your pardon. This is a deputy. He's not named.

11 "Let me be clear on this point. I am in favour of this. But

12 tell me, what do we gain with this new idea that Serbian deputies in

13 those municipalities where they are a minority should be proclaimed and

14 again vested with some powers with which they can achieve nothing? We do

15 not even know how those parts who have joined different municipalities

16 will achieve their rights. And let me assure you, this is creating an

17 impression of helplessness among the people. These representatives will

18 not be able to do anything this way, and we are now pulling wool over

19 their eyes to delude them that they will be able to do and achieve

20 something which, frankly speaking, I doubt."

21 Mr. Treanor, would it be a fair summary there to say that this

22 particular deputy was saying, "Well, this is an empty gesture. It's

23 actually not -- it's not going to make any practical difference. We'll

24 set up this parallel assembly and it went make any difference because we

25 won't be able to control things anyway"?

1 A. That's what he's saying here, yes.

2 Q. And then we get the decision at page 18. It's a decision -- it's

3 a draft only in the sense that of course it's intended to apply generally

4 to the relevant municipalities so that the name gets filled in when it's

5 used. But at page 18, it's a pretty detailed and specific provision.

6 And then if we go on to -- so the decision has been set out. The -- what

7 actually seems to happen is that -- yes, I beg your pardon. We go on to

8 paragraph -- page 22. Mr. Krajisnik, towards the bottom, the chairman,

9 that's Mr. Krajisnik, states:

10 "It's evident that we either do not understand each other or fail

11 to grasp the problems in the municipalities where we're in the minority.

12 In our discussions, we all proceed from the situation in the area from

13 which we come. Gentlemen, there are urban areas where we cannot resolve

14 this by regionalisation because regionalisation is a completely separate

15 issue. Now, we have Municipal Assemblies with three parties. They also

16 have groups of deputies just like we here in the republic have with

17 decisions constantly being adopted by the Assemblies. Rajko is

18 mentioning regionalisation. I would like to ask that we discuss that

19 when the time comes."

20 And then you've highlighted this passage before. So going to the

21 last sentence of this paragraph: "This is not in collision with

22 regionalisation." So it appears Mr. Krajisnik, as no doubt often happens

23 to somebody chairing a meeting, he's having to struggle a bit to get this

24 point across, isn't he, to some of the deputies?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And then he says: "Please do not make judgements proceeding from

2 your municipalities where the Serbs are in the majority and where

3 regional linking is possible."

4 And then the next paragraph: "This will fit in in regional

5 terms, and there is no problem in turning this into the Assembly of the

6 Serbian People. That would be in our favour."

7 And then there's a deputy, Mr. Jakic [phoen], says in the middle

8 of the page: "I should like to make another remark. We said act,

9 recommendation. Terminologically, a recommendation implies no

10 obligation. Accordingly, this does not mean that in every municipality

11 where we do not have a majority we have to form a Serb Assembly. What

12 use is a Serb Assembly where you have two or three representatives?"

13 So whether that's the same or a different deputy from the unnamed

14 deputy earlier, it's -- in effect it's the same objection, isn't it,

15 Mr. Treanor? What's the point, he's saying.

16 A. Well, I think the point here is a little bit different. The

17 other deputy was indicating that if an Assembly was set up consisting of

18 however many members, what difference would that make? This deputy is

19 suggesting that there are some places where -- and the example he seems

20 -- he gives seems to indicate that his thought is where there are so few

21 representatives that it wouldn't make any sense at all to even set up an

22 Assembly. And if -- well, I'll leave it there.

23 Q. Mr. Treanor, I accept that distinction. It's -- so in each case,

24 it's practical futility, really, as -- of the proposal is -- the gist of

25 what is being said in opposition, or in doubting the proposal.

1 A. In broad terms, yes.

2 Q. And then we get a -- at page 24 a supplement being suggested to

3 the decision, and it's of Mr. Radomir Neskovic, page 24, under a heading

4 with his name. "I would like to suggest a supplement to this decision to

5 form an Assembly of the Serbian People in the municipality and

6 additionally that the Assembly assess the situation in its

7 municipalities, taking into account all the specific features and propose

8 to this Assembly what should be done there."

9 And then he makes comment on regionalisation. Then he goes on:

10 "In municipalities where we are in the minority, where we cannot exercise

11 our power in any way because we're outvoted, I would suggest that the

12 Assembly of the Serbian People when decisions are adopted inform the

13 Assembly of the Serbian People of Bosnia-Herzegovina of that and that the

14 Assembly, the Serbian People of BH, decide that, for instance, it will

15 not recognise the decision of a given Municipal Assembly, for example of

16 Zavidovici, if it endangers the interests of the Serbs."

17 And then at page 26, Mr. Djurovic says: "Mr. President, from the

18 moment this issue was introduced, I've been thinking about the

19 effectiveness of the decisions we will adopt in these municipalities

20 which do not have a majority Serb population. Believe me, I cannot

21 imagine, knowing the organisational set-up of municipalities, a decision

22 to be implemented in the area of such a municipality."

23 And then Mr. Skoko, I think it is, at the foot of the page: "As

24 for the municipalities, I fail to see what good will come out of creating

25 Serbian municipal assemblies within municipalities where Serbs are

1 outvoted and less-important organs which will implement these decisions

2 are formed. What does the adoption of a decision at the municipal level

3 mean if there are no organs of power to enforce it? It's a decision

4 which is not binding on anyone; can just be just a proclamation without

5 any chance of being implemented."

6 And then in the middle of the page, Mr. Krajisnik is trying to

7 steer deputies off discussing what the Muslims will do by saying: "Well,

8 they don't ask us, so we won't worry about what they're doing in this

9 area. That's a paraphrase.

10 And then above the middle of the page, he says: "We suggest that

11 we do so in places where we are in the minority; namely, see whether we

12 will form municipalities or not. Nothing else." And then he asks if the

13 supplement proposed by Mr. Neskovic, back at 24,

14 which was to inform the BH Serb Assembly and get its support as necessary

15 should be incorporated. The deputies say no. Then the chairman

16 emphasises: "We should make sure of the following, that decisions

17 adopted by representatives of municipalities and verified by this

18 Assembly are not in collision with regionalisation and in the interests

19 of regionalisation can we adopt this." The deputies say it can't be

20 adopted.

21 It's a bit confusing. That seems to be the Neskovic proposal at

22 this point, isn't it, that's being rejected, Mr. Treanor?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. And then in the middle of page 28: "The Assembly agreed to adopt

25 such a decision with the following supplement, that it is recommended to

1 groups of deputies of the SDS Municipal Assemblies in BH on whom

2 decisions contrary to the interests of the Serbian people are imposed, to

3 have the decisions of groups of deputies to transform themselves into

4 Assemblies of the Serbian People verified by the Assembly of the Serbian

5 People of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

6 So is it a fair summary that a bit of Mr. Neskovic's proposed

7 supplement actually did get into the final decision?

8 A. It would seem so. I'm not -- I guess that would depend on the

9 technical meaning of the word "verified," but it would certainly seem so.

10 Q. So as I suggested to you, Mr. Treanor, and you agreed, we can see

11 that there was -- there was serious debate about this issue, but it all,

12 all, proceeded only in relation to those municipalities where the Serbs

13 were in a minority and were therefore liable simply to be outvoted.

14 A. Yes, that's correct.

15 Q. And that recommendation was published.

16 Now, in the -- if we go to the document -- I think we can put

17 that on one side, that file, if that's convenient for you. And if we

18 then go to the document which is at 6/66, Volume 6, tab 66, which is the

19 Variant A and B document. If we look at the preamble first, turning over

20 the cover page. And then we get a preamble before we come to the heading

21 "Variant A." It's item 3 of the preamble: "The tasks, measures, and

22 other activities from these instructions are carried out on the whole

23 territory of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that is,

24 in all municipalities where the Serbs live. And this is completely in

25 municipalities where the Serb people are in majority," Variant A;

1 "partially in municipalities where the Serb people are not in majority,"

2 Variant B.

3 So if this was, Mr. Treanor, if this were to have been

4 distributed in accordance with its terms in that paragraph, it would have

5 gone to presidents of every single -- the Serb -- the Serb leaders in

6 every municipality throughout the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina,

7 wouldn't it?

8 A. Well, I would presume that this document would have gone to the

9 presidents of the SDS in every municipality where the SDS was organised.

10 Q. Yes. I beg your pardon. The presidents of the SDS Municipal

11 Boards in -- wherever there was one.

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Throughout the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

14 We would in that situation, if this was a clear, express

15 instruction to be implemented immediately, we would have expected,

16 wouldn't we, to have seen widespread implementation of these instructions

17 within a relatively short period, wouldn't we?

18 A. Well, at the end of the instructions, it says that -- something

19 to the effect that they're to be implemented when the appropriate order

20 is given.

21 Q. So the places -- I'm sorry, Mr. Treanor.

22 A. We don't know -- for one thing, we don't know the nature of what

23 order may have been given in regard to the implementation, on the one

24 hand. On the other, we do see implementation beginning, as I mentioned

25 earlier, as soon as the 23rd of December.

1 Q. Now, it may be, Mr. Treanor, that we are already, as far as this

2 is concerned, in an area of evidence which is really for other witnesses,

3 rather than for you, which is the actual practical implementation what

4 happened in municipalities. So I'll just ask you: Are you aware of any

5 such a signal to implement these recommendations having been communicated

6 to anybody in December 1991?

7 A. Well, as we indicated in the report in the paragraphs that you

8 referred to yesterday - I believe paragraph 61 and 62 - in discussing

9 these instructions, we reached a tentative conclusion that the

10 instructions were distributed on the 20th of December at a meeting, at

11 which time presumably the order was also given to implement them. What

12 the nature of the order was, we don't know. Based on the documents, we

13 can only infer that it had something to do with actually implementing

14 these instructions, since we see them being implemented soon after that

15 meeting.

16 Q. Well, that's really what I was getting at, tying in with your

17 answer a few minutes ago. When you made a reference to provisions at

18 the end of the document - and "provisions" is my word - but you made a

19 reference. You were talking, I take it, particularly about the very last

20 two numbered items before we get to the reference to the SDS Crisis

21 Staff, numbers 3 and 4 at the very end of the document in English,

22 beginning, number 3, "the tasks, measures," and number 4, "a secret

23 procedure."

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. That's what you were talking about. So that the three -- these

1 instructions, in a nutshell, can be applied only on the order of the

2 president of the SDS in Bosnia and Herzegovina according, to a secret

3 procedure. And then, 4: "Providing for the secret procedure to be

4 established later."

5 The point of what I was asking you earlier, Mr. Treanor, was -- I

6 said well, if they -- if this document, as on its face it appears to have

7 been, was designed to go to the presidents of the SDS Municipal Boards,

8 wherever they existed throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, I suggested to

9 you that it was therefore surprising if it really did that it wasn't

10 much more widely implemented. And your response to that was, I think,

11 along the lines of, "Well, it didn't fall to be implemented until the

12 signal was given in accordance with those provisions at the end of the

13 document." Have I summarised what you said at that point sufficiently

14 accurately?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. Yes. In that case, then, are you aware of any such signal having

17 been given to those -- that limited number of municipalities where

18 evidence has been given that there was implementation of at least some

19 provisions of this document in December 1991?

20 A. Well, again -- as I think I said already, presuming that our

21 inference is correct that these instructions were distributed in some

22 fashion on the 20th of December, we don't know whether on the basis of

23 the documents certainly that we adduced in the report, whether on that

24 occasion it was distributed to every Municipal Board, and we don't know

25 what the order, as referred to here at the end in paragraph 3, what the

1 order of the president on that occasion may have been. Obviously it

2 could have been anything from please implement this in every

3 municipality, and here's a copy for everyone, to, for instance, let's

4 only implement this now in these particular municipalities or only in

5 Variant A municipalities or Variant B municipalities, or something of

6 that description. I just don't know, on the basis of the documents that

7 we had available in the report and, indeed, documents which I'm aware of

8 now.

9 The document from Bratunac that we referred to in those

10 paragraphs makes -- to me, makes it clear that the president of the SDS

11 in Bratunac received these instructions on that occasion and went back to

12 Bratunac and sought to implement them.

13 Q. Well --

14 A. But whether, again, the others insofar as they may not have done

15 that didn't do that because they were too lazy or too incompetent to do

16 so or whether they were not told to do so at that time or whether we just

17 don't have records of what they did, I don't know.

18 Q. Well, for such an apparently - and this is the way it's presented

19 by the Prosecution in this case - for such an apparently very important

20 document, Mr. Treanor, the degree of laziness which led to all the

21 municipalities apart from a very small number, simply not bothering to do

22 anything about it at that point in December would have been

23 extraordinary, wouldn't it?

24 A. I couldn't qualify it one way or another. I think that

25 Dr. Karadzic perceived that there were some -- a slowness about this.

1 And there are references later on, indeed I believe into March, of the

2 necessity for doing this. So there apparently was some slowness about

3 doing so, for whatever reason. There may have been other reasons in the

4 discussion during the Third Session of the Assembly that we were just

5 referring to, the discussion relating to the recommendation to set up

6 Serbian Assemblies in the municipalities. I believe at least one of the

7 deputies expressed reluctance to do so because he felt that that would

8 exacerbate relations between the SDS and the other parties in that

9 municipality rather senselessly, since he seemed to feel that there was

10 some possibility there of them, in fact, all coming to an agreement, so

11 that such a step would sabotage his efforts to, I think as he put it, to

12 win over that whole municipality, and so therefore he did not want to

13 split it. Now, that is one reason, I believe, why the December 11th

14 document was couched as a recommendation. I think I indicated this

15 yesterday. That was only a recommendation. And I believe that was one

16 of the reasons.

17 This document is not recommendation. It's an instruction to be

18 implemented at the order of the president of the SDS, whereas the other

19 document, again, was a recommendation from the Assembly of the Serbian

20 People.

21 Q. Have you ever seen any material to suggest that it was

22 contemplated that the triggering procedure in those paragraphs 3 and 4 at

23 the end of this document was proposed to be on a selective basis,

24 municipality by municipality or by batches of municipalities?

25 A. No. And I'm only suggesting that as a possibility.

1 Q. Yes, I understand, Mr. Treanor. Yes.

2 Let's look at Variant A, which is on page 2 of the document and

3 particularly first level, paragraph 4. It says: "An Assembly --"

4 sorry, I'll give everybody a moment. It's the top of page 3, very top of

5 page 3, item 4: "An Assembly of the Serb People in the municipality is

6 to be called and proclaimed, which will be made up of the representatives

7 of the Serb people in the Municipal Assembly."

8 Mr. Treanor, what could have been the point of such a provision

9 in a municipality where the Serbs were in the majority in the Municipal

10 Assembly?

11 A. Well, quite frankly, I could only speculate on that. I think I

12 share your puzzlement as to why that is in there, and I believe I am

13 correct in saying, although I am speaking from memory and incomplete

14 documentation on this, that as far as we know no such Assembly was ever

15 formed in a Variant A municipality.

16 Q. Sir, I think, very fairly acknowledging that you share my

17 forensic puzzlement, Mr. Treanor, in a nutshell, is the answer that there

18 isn't in fact any rational explanation for the instruction in paragraph

19 4, first level of Variant A?

20 A. Well, again, I could only speculate on that. I'm -- as I said, I

21 do not understand why it's in here. Maybe there was the thought that

22 maybe we should have our own Assembly so we can conduct our own business

23 without the other deputies who we -- to be sure can outvote. They won't

24 even know what we're doing. Maybe there was some thought like that. I

25 don't know.

1 Q. Well, I understand, Mr. Treanor, your -- you very frankly

2 expressed your puzzlement to begin with. So as I'm pressing you, you

3 are, as you very fairly say, speculating as to what it could possibly be.

4 May I suggest to you, acknowledging that I don't think you put forward

5 that speculation with huge enthusiasm for it, it appears, that there's

6 not a hint of any such usefulness of this provision in the debate in the

7 Assembly that we looked at earlier this morning, is there?

8 A. No, not at all.

9 Q. And actually, since in that debate it's also fair to say, isn't

10 it, that the explanation given, I think by Mr. Krajisnik - but if I'm

11 wrong about that, it probably doesn't matter very much - but the

12 explanation given was, well, look, what we're really proposing in this

13 recommendation is that on a municipal level you do what we've done on the

14 BH level, which is because we were being outvoted it was simply essential

15 for us to set up our own Assembly.

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. So if we take that - I don't want to press it too painfully - but

18 if we take that analogy, that would have been as if the Serbs on the BH

19 level, even able to achieve a minority in the -- a majority in the

20 BH Assembly and therefore, of course, control things, said, "Well,

21 actually, we'd like to have our own Assembly."

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. And if we go on to the second level of Variant A, paragraph 1:

24 "A session of the Serb --" I'm sorry. I'll give everyone a moment. It's

25 the very top of page 4: "A session of the Serb Municipal Assembly is to

1 be called. A Municipal Executive Board is to be formed and municipal

2 governmental organs are to be created," and so on. It's effectively the

3 same point, Mr. Treanor. So I won't belabour it too much, but again,

4 there was no need, was there, for the Serbs in municipalities where they

5 were in a majority to form a Municipal Executive Board because they

6 controlled the one that was already in existence?

7 A. Yes. And again, the only point here that I can see would be that

8 on that Executive Board, as in the Assembly, there may have been

9 representatives of other parties. So the desire here may have been to

10 form a purely Serbian executive body.

11 Q. It may be too broad a question for you, Mr. Treanor, in which

12 case please say so, but knowing what you know about this time, this

13 place, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the situation, what is your comment on the

14 suggestion that that would have been an extremely foolish political step

15 to take because you would be substituting for a situation in which you

16 democratically controlled the proper, democratically appointed organ

17 while having a minority there who could democratically express their view

18 but whom you could consistently outvote, you would be replacing that with

19 an organ about which there would - I'll use the word "inevitably" here -

20 be considerable consternations and objections to its legitimacy and it

21 would be said, "Well, you're just -- you're just walking over us now,

22 because you've excluded us even from the debate."

23 So you would give yourself all the negative aspects of creating a

24 body of doubtful legitimacy in others' eyes but not actually improved

25 your ability to get through decisions and do what you want. It's a

1 rather long question, but I'm sure you got that point, Mr. Treanor. It

2 would be foolish politics, wouldn't it, to do that?

3 A. This discussion is very hypothetical, since I'm not aware that

4 this ever happened. However, the point in regard to the Executive Board

5 or the Executive Committee, as we, I think, tend to refer to the

6 governmental bodies, not to confuse them with the party boards, the point

7 is that the Executive Committee was composed of the heads of the various

8 administrative departments of the municipality, and as heads of the

9 departments, they had their own authority within those departments. As a

10 result of the election -- the elections in 1990 and the interparty

11 agreement that was reached, the distribution of the places on municipal

12 executive boards was to be in some fashion proportional to the strength

13 of the various -- of the three national parties who were in the

14 coalition, was to be proportional to their strength in the Municipal

15 Assembly, so that members of the HDZ or the SDA could have been and

16 probably were in fact in control of certain of the executive organs of

17 municipalities which were Serbian majority municipalities even. So there

18 may have been a desire to have a, as I put it, a purely Serbian executive

19 in order to be ready to get control of the individual departments that

20 may not already have been controlled by the SDS.

21 So it's not simply a question of voting within the Executive

22 Committee, but there's also an issue of the control of the municipal

23 administrative organs. Again, this is all extremely hypothetical and

24 speculative as to why this provision may be in here, a provision which

25 I'm not aware was ever implemented.

1 Q. Yes. I think, Mr. Treanor, I can comment that the hypothesis in

2 question is to some extent one you had floated yourself in an earlier

3 answer.

4 What -- and we're looking at Variant A at the moment -- what

5 Variant A contemplated was - and we see this in first level, number 5, at

6 page 3 - that "As well as the calling and proclaiming of what would be

7 this new Assembly, in fact, the Serb Assembly, that in fact preparations

8 were to be made for the formation of municipal state organs, an Executive

9 Board -" it sounds a bit repetitive there -"administrative organs,

10 magistrates, courts," and so on. So the whole system that you've

11 described of the existing Executive Board, where perhaps posts of heads

12 of different departments would be allocated among the parties, that would

13 effectively be gone, wouldn't it, under the -- what's contemplated in

14 paragraph 5?

15 A. I'm sorry, what would have been gone?

16 Q. It's -- paragraph 5, as at the Bosnia-Herzegovina level --

17 paragraph 5 in Variant A first level, it contemplates parallel organs,

18 doesn't it, within the municipality?

19 A. Yes. I mean, the difference between level -- what are we calling

20 it -- the first level and the second level seems to be basically one

21 between preparations on the first level and actually carrying out things

22 on the second level.

23 Q. Yes. It's not in fact as clear-cut as that, is it?

24 A. Well, broadly speaking, I mean, that's the difference between the

25 two levels, I think.

1 Q. In your report at paragraph 64 - and you've confirmed this in

2 your evidence. The transcript reference is 1574 - you said that the --

3 paragraph 64 it is. It's actually just a short passage. You said: "The

4 signal to activate the second stage of preparations anticipated in the

5 19th December 1991 instructions was given by Karadzic on the 14th of

6 February, 1992 at yet another expanded Deputies' Club session on the day

7 before the Seventh Session of the Bosnian Serb Assembly."

8 When you talk about the signal to activate the second stage of

9 preparations, just -- can we just be clear as to what you mean by "the

10 second stage."

11 A. Well, the second stage, referring to what is described in this

12 document as the second level, and where in other places and perhaps in my

13 testimony I refer to as the second degree. In this -- in the A and B

14 document, we have Variants A and B and we have first level, first degree,

15 first stage, second stage.

16 Q. So does that imply, therefore, if the -- well, let me start with

17 a prior question. Those paragraphs at the very end of the document,

18 paragraphs 3 and 4, "The tasks, measures and other activities in these

19 instruction cans only be applied only on the order of the president of

20 the SDS in BH," it clearly doesn't in terms provide for instructions or

21 the triggering order of the president to be given in stages. Just taking

22 it bit by bit, step by step, it doesn't in terms say that. That's clear,

23 isn't it, Mr. Treanor?

24 A. It -- no, it doesn't lay that out. I would have thought that was

25 the implication, but --

1 Q. Yes. Mr. Treanor, going on to say that of course equally it

2 certainly doesn't rule it out and in practice. I'm not going to suggest

3 that you -- that you can't, then, follow what's contemplated by 3 and 4

4 by giving the triggering order in stages. I'm not suggesting that to

5 you. But your suggestion in that paragraph of your report that on the

6 14th of February Mr. Karadzic gave the signal to activate the second

7 stage implies, doesn't it, that at some point the signal was given to

8 activate the first stage?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. And -- but I think perhaps it's already clear that it's really,

11 as far as you're concerned, it's a complete mystery as to when and how

12 any such signal to activate the first stage might have been given.

13 A. No. I think I have said here and we've said in the report that

14 the -- it would appear that the first stage was ordered, implemented

15 beginning on the 20th of December.

16 Q. Well, I think -- well, I don't want to go over old ground there.

17 The first stage would have been -- so that the thesis, if you like -

18 whether it's a thesis or a hypothesis here, but I'd say that it's a

19 thesis - is that the instructions to implement the first stage, either

20 they were given very selectively to a small number of municipalities or

21 they were very largely not carried out in a wide number of

22 municipalities. That's the position, isn't it?

23 A. Well, the degree to which they were carried out is not entirely

24 known to us, because we don't have documentation from every single

25 municipality, at least not that I'm aware of. So the precise degree of

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12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

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1 implementation is not known. It would appear from later statements even

2 after the 14th of February by Dr. Karadzic that in fact it had not been

3 carried out; in some places even by that late date. So there certainly

4 does seem to have been some variance in the implementation of the

5 instructions.

6 And let me comment and perhaps draw attention to the obvious that

7 this is a bit of a murky area. The documentation on it is by no means

8 complete.

9 Q. And perhaps we can go, then, and have a look at the intercepts

10 bundle, because you've dealt with this point. I may have already given

11 the page reference. You were dealing with this at page 1579. It is in

12 the transcript of your evidence earlier. And you -- at that point in

13 your evidence you had been referring to an item from the transcripts

14 bundle. It's item 27 -- it's tab 27, and it's page 5 of the English

15 transcript, and it was at a session of the Main and Executive Board of

16 the SDS on the 14th of February, the date you've given.

17 And he says about halfway down the page, just below halfway down:

18 "The main attitude towards Yugoslavia during this entire interfering of

19 the European Community was that the Serbs were right but the factual

20 situation is so and so -- was so and so. Now we are in the position to

21 say yes, maybe the Muslims are right but the fact of the situation is so

22 and so - although they're not right - the factual situation is so and so.

23 Now it is so. Now it's up to us. It's up to each individual to do his

24 part of the job. We shall also talk about that today, but I have to say

25 that we must be wise, unified, dedicated in order to take the last drop

1 of power into our hands in a humane way, of course carry it out in a

2 humane way, a just way towards both Muslims and Croats who live there.

3 That is particularly important that there would be no fleeing from our

4 areas.

5 But also that a bird cannot come in without your knowledge. That

6 is, if you remember; who keeps that in mind or maybe not on his person a

7 stage number 2. There is, remember -- you know what I'm talking about.

8 We know -- yes. That is therefore the stage number 2, the second stage

9 in smaller or bigger variations, but you have to implement that slowly

10 now to have absolute control who is travelling along your roads, what

11 they are transporting, for which purposes. That's the way it must be.

12 You have to have at your disposal," and so on.

13 And that's what you get or that's where you get the reference to

14 the Variant A and B instructions and --

15 THE INTERPRETER: Could the counsel please speak into the

16 microphone.

17 MR. STEWART:

18 Q. And what I suggest is the --

19 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, you are asked to speak more into the

20 microphone.

21 MR. STEWART: Oh, thank you, Your Honour.

22 Q. That's where you get the reference to the Variant A and B

23 instructions and that's where you get the signal from Mr. Karadzic to

24 implement stage 2. That's right?

25 A. Well, I think there's at least one more reference to that matter

1 in this document. And this document may not be a complete record of what

2 transpired on that particular day or indeed on that particular weekend,

3 which saw more than one meeting.

4 Q. Are you pointing the Trial Chamber to some other specific

5 reference, then, in the documentation that we do have to support this

6 point?

7 A. I thought I had in my testimony. Maybe I didn't. But I think

8 there is at least one more reference to the second degree, second level

9 in this particular document.

10 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Tieger.

11 MR. TIEGER: It may be helpful if I direct everyone's attention to

12 page 17 of the English translation.

13 MR. STEWART:

14 Q. Well, Mr. Tieger has very helpfully directed us to page 17, but

15 now we are in page 17 I think I have to invite you, Mr. Treanor, to

16 indicate what you might suggest on page 17 supports this point.

17 A. Well, in the middle of the page, I can see beginning at line 14,

18 "There is nothing that we shall disapprove of except for foolish things,

19 and I think that we, Serbs, must stop with declarations -- with

20 declaration. We've had enough declarations. And now these declarations

21 should be translated into a map. And the stage number 2 should also be

22 converted, the one we've talked about, the one you have, if not here,

23 then at home, in order to have authorities in the field functioning, that

24 a bird cannot fly over really," et cetera.

25 Q. So that's the point you had in mind, is it, Mr. Treanor, a few

1 minutes ago when you said there was another reference in this document?

2 A. Yes. I thought there was at least one more reference, and

3 there's one.

4 Q. It's -- I suggest to you this is an extremely -- you could only

5 work with the documents you got, but it's --

6 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Tieger.

7 MR. TIEGER: I'm sorry. Since we are also working with this

8 document, I would suggest turning to page 24. Mr. Treanor has also

9 indicated other references, and that would be found -- sorry -- also in

10 the middle of the page, approximately line 16 and 17.

11 MR. STEWART: Page 24, Mr. Treanor?

12 Q. Page 24, Mr. Treanor. The reference -- well, clearly: "What is

13 in mind is as regards the essence of which Mr. Radic spoke. Now, please,

14 that's why we called you today, to intensify, to introduce the second

15 level, and to intensify the functioning of the government at any cost and

16 on every single millimetre of our territory."

17 A. Yes. Now, as I -- and I will check now if the Court would like

18 me to, but I believe I indicated in my --

19 Q. Yes, you --

20 A. -- direct testimony that the expression being used here is the --

21 in Serbian is the same as in the original Variant A/Variant B document.

22 Q. The expression -- the first phrase "level,"?

23 A. The level --

24 Q. Level. It's -- well, in English, Mr. Treanor, but perhaps you

25 can say whether the position is different in Serbian, in English I'd

1 suggest to you this is an extremely flimsy basis on which to link what

2 Mr. Karadzic is saying on the 14th of February with this specific

3 document bearing the date 19th of December, 1991.

4 A. Well, again, I don't want to characterise it in any particular

5 fashion. I have indicated it here, and I have also indicated that this

6 is a rather murky area. Documentation is scanty. But I believe, based

7 on the language being used and the context of what's being said, and

8 specifically, for instance, the reference to control, that the reference

9 here is to the same document; that is to say, to the Variant A and B

10 document.

11 Q. You see, I suggest there are two different things. If you -- one

12 is where you start from the position that such a document exists, has the

13 official endorsement of the SDS in December 1991, is distributed with the

14 approval or possibly even under the direction of Dr. Karadzic, then

15 perhaps linking slightly murky or flimsy words with that is not as

16 difficult a task --

17 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Tieger.

18 MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, I don't believe this is a question

19 attempting to elicit information. I think this is argument. And I think

20 it's gone too far.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart.

22 MR. STEWART: Well, I haven't finished it yet, Your Honour.

23 JUDGE ORIE: No. But I think Mr. Tieger said that it tended to

24 be an argument. That's how I understood his words.

25 MR. STEWART: Well, I heard what he said, Your Honour, yes.

1 JUDGE ORIE: Okay. You finish your question, and then we'll

2 decide whether we'll allow the witness to answer the question.

3 MR. STEWART:

4 Q. But, Mr. Treanor, I suggest if you start from -- you're the

5 expert assessing all these things on the basis of the documentation

6 you've seen. If you start from the position that this document did not

7 have the official approval of the SDS leadership, did not in fact come

8 officially from an organ of the SDS party in December 1991, then I

9 suggest to you that you would not have found enough in the words of the

10 record of the 14th of February, 1991 to link what Dr. Karadzic was saying

11 with any confidence at all to that document.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Does your objection still stand, Mr. Tieger?

13 MR. TIEGER: No. It's slightly different. I think the way this

14 question was framed, I might add, it seems to me to emphasise that my

15 earlier objection was well founded. However, now it's veered into the

16 realm of speculation.

17 [Trial Chamber confers]

18 JUDGE ORIE: You may answer the question, Mr. Treanor. Perhaps

19 you could reread it on the screen.

20 THE WITNESS: Yes, I have been reading it, Your Honour.

21 I take it to mean, basically, that if the document didn't exist

22 would I think that it was being referred to on February the 14th. The

23 answer to that is no. Quite logically, I believe.

24 JUDGE ORIE: But the starting point of the question was not

25 whether the document exists but whether it was approved and adopted, I

1 think you said. Did not have the official approval of the SDS

2 leadership, did not come officially from an organ, which, of course, is

3 not exact through same as the existence of a document.

4 THE WITNESS: Well, okay, if it didn't exist in terms of the

5 party, if there was no -- if there was no such instruction current within

6 the party, then clearly there couldn't be a reference to it.

7 JUDGE ORIE: May I ask you one additional question: Is the fact

8 that "second level" is between quotation marks, does that -- first of

9 all, does that appear in the original?

10 THE WITNESS: On which page, Your Honour?

11 JUDGE ORIE: On page 24. It says: "To intensify, to introduce

12 the second level." "Second level" appears in the English text in

13 quotation marks.

14 THE WITNESS: In quotation marks. Yes, I see that, Your Honour.

15 JUDGE ORIE: Does that have any -- as far as giving specific to

16 the wording here? I mean it's -- "second level" could be a very abstract

17 concept related to whatever could be on the second level. Is it of any

18 significance to you that "second level" here is between quotation marks

19 when interpreting the meaning of this part of the words spoken?

20 THE WITNESS: Well, I would have to refresh my memory as to

21 whether it was used in the original. If it were used in the original

22 here or elsewhere, it could -- one conclusion could be that it was

23 considered to be some sort of term of art that had a particular meaning.

24 But again, whether it actually is used in quotation marks in the original

25 and whether it's done so consistently and whether that is or is not a

1 peculiarity of the transcriber, --

2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

3 THE WITNESS: -- that type of thing.

4 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

5 THE WITNESS: I wouldn't attach undue significance to that.

6 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you.

7 THE WITNESS: Extreme significance to that.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed, Mr. Stewart.

9 MR. STEWART:

10 Q. In your report at paragraph 62, you say -- I think perhaps -- I

11 read the first sentence a short while ago, but you go on then, the second

12 sentence: "Given the nature of the document" -- this Variant A and B

13 document -- "many municipal leaders must also have been summoned to the

14 session if only" - that's in Sarajevo - "if only as it appears to be,"

15 excuse me, "informed about what to do next. It is significant that these

16 detailed and wide-ranging written instructions from the SDS leadership

17 were apparently ready for dissemination when the larger group was

18 convened. Although the circumstances surrounding the distribution of the

19 19th December 1991 instructions cannot be fully reconstructed from

20 available documents, it seems evident that any Main Board meeting on this

21 issue on 20th of December was simply an occasion to disseminate already

22 agreed, prepared, and drafted measures."

23 Just pausing at that point. You say "it seems evident that any

24 Main Board meeting on this issue on 20th of December was simply an

25 occasion to disseminate already agreed, prepared, and drafted measures."

1 So it's inherent in what you're saying there that you're assuming a Main

2 Board meeting which was summoned apparently for the purposes, at least

3 primarily, of dealing with this particular issue.

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. And you -- is it correct you don't actually have any -- you don't

6 have any material that you've seen that enables you to draw any reliable

7 conclusion that a Main Board meeting on 20th December took place

8 primarily to deal with this issue?

9 A. Well, at the time this was written, we -- we had used the

10 documents which are indicated in the footnotes, which refer to there

11 being a meeting, having been a meeting.

12 Q. Yes. But --

13 A. Footnote 183, "running from municipality to municipality." And

14 we simply put that together with the date of the document itself and the

15 initiation of the implementation. To conclude, as it says at the

16 beginning of the paragraph, "It is most likely on available evidence that

17 the document was distributed a session of the Main Board on 20 December

18 1991."

19 Let me remark that this section of the report is about

20 decision-making within the SDS and perhaps not, rather -- perhaps not

21 elegantly enough, what this paragraph is saying inter alia is that we

22 really don't know anything about how this document was formulated or

23 adopted. The only thing that we've been able to discover is when it may

24 have been distributed.

25 Now, since this report was written, additional documentation has

1 come to our attention, for example, in the form of telephone

2 conversations, one of which I believe I used in my presentation in which

3 reference is made apparently to this meeting. I'm citing from memory

4 now. I believe it was the telephone conversation between Dr. Karadzic

5 and Mr. Novakovic on the 18th or 19th of December at which Dr. Karadzic

6 refers to a meeting the next day and indicates something about the nature

7 of the meeting which connects with this document. Again, I can't

8 remember the exact details, because there was another telephone

9 conversation as well that I didn't use that points in the same direction,

10 a telephone conversation with -- between Dr. Karadzic and Mr. Risto Djogo

11 about at the same time that contains similar references.

12 Q. There just -- there seems, I suggest to you - would you agree -

13 that there's an element of circularity in your approach in order to be

14 reaching the conclusion that the meeting of the Main Board was called on

15 this issue or primarily on this issue. You're using as support for that

16 the existence of the document itself with the date of the 19th of

17 December.

18 A. Well, have I said the meeting dealt primarily with this issue?

19 Q. Well, "primarily" was my word, but your report talked about, in

20 the middle of paragraph 62, you're saying "it seems evident," which I

21 understand in effect to be an expressed view therefore by you. "It seems

22 evidence that any Main Board meeting on this issue on the 20th of

23 December was simply an occasion to disseminate." So perhaps we can

24 clarify this. I had taken it that the phrase "any Main Board meeting on

25 this issue" meant either a Main Board meeting to deal only with this

1 issue or - and I took the lesser of the two - a Main Board meeting

2 primarily dealing with this issue. Do you see, Mr. Treanor? Because

3 otherwise, I'm suggesting, if it's just one of a number of issues, it's

4 not aptly described as a Main Board meeting on this issue.

5 A. Well, the point of the sentence is that we do not think that the

6 document itself was discussed and adopted on that occasion in the manner

7 at which documents were discussed and adopted, for instance, at the

8 Assembly. The document is dated the 19th of December. We know from the

9 diary that there was a meeting on the 20th of December, a meeting of the

10 Main Board. There was a meeting of the Main Board on the 20th. There

11 was then a meeting of the Assembly on the 21st, the 22nd was a Sunday,

12 and the first time the implementation of instructions appear on Monday

13 the 23rd. Therefore, basically on that sequence of events we have made

14 the tentative -- what I would call tentative conclusion, since buttressed

15 by additional evidence, that it is most likely that the document was

16 distributed at a session of the Main Board on the 20th of December, 1991.

17 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, would that be a suitable break point

18 for the Chamber?

19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. It would be. We'll adjourn until five minutes

20 to 11.00.

21 --- Recess taken at 10.30 a.m.

22 --- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.

23 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, you may proceed.

24 MR. STEWART:

25 Q. Yes. Mr. Treanor, I checked back in the transcript as to what

1 you'd said about that conversation on the 19th of December, 1991 between

2 Mr. Karadzic and Mr. Novakovic and, actually, in the light of what you

3 said in your evidence in chief I don't need to pursue it in

4 cross-examination.

5 What you -- we were looking at paragraph 62 of your report. And

6 what you had said after the sentence that I've just before referring to

7 about the meeting on this issue on the 20th of December, the next

8 sentence was then: "Given all the proceeding, furthermore, it is likely

9 that some informal group or body within the top SDS leadership had

10 determined the policy based upon which this document was drafted for

11 dissemination to a wider circle of SDS loyalists and subsequently

12 implemented throughout BH."

13 And so far as the suggestion that it was some informal group or

14 body was concerned, though not being entirely sure whether you personally

15 can offer any more on the topic, Mr. Treanor, I am putting to you so that

16 it can be clear to everybody, and particularly the Trial Chamber, what

17 the case is, was that this document was indeed prepared by an informal

18 group or body but not a body technically within the top SDS leadership;

19 that was it was in fact prepared by, I'd say, some group, because that's

20 the most I can say, of retired military officers and was never, in fact,

21 an official or officially adopted or endorsed document of the SDS party.

22 Can you -- I'm putting that case. It may be, Mr. Treanor, that

23 there is no further comment you can offer beyond what you've already

24 said. But if you can, please do.

25 A. You made reference to a group of Yugoslav army officers, which is

1 interested. We at a certain point in time - and I'm not sure when that

2 was - we sent a request for assistance to the authorities of Republika

3 Srpska in connection with this document. I can't remember the exact

4 terms of the request, but it was basically seeking information on the

5 background to the document. And we received a reply from the central

6 office of the SDS, I believe, saying that they didn't really know

7 anything about it -- but maybe they didn't say that, because they said

8 they knew something about it -- that the only information they had was

9 that there may have been some group of retired army officers who drafted

10 it or something to that effect.

11 Q. Yes. That's absolutely right.

12 MR. STEWART: In fact, I have the -- that particular letter or I

13 think it would be that particular letter in front of me, that

14 Mr. Blewitt, Graham Blewitt, deputy prosecutor, had written to the

15 liaison officer for the Republika Srpska, that being the liaison this

16 institution, this Tribunal, and the Republika Srpska. And the reply

17 received had, as well as information about what happened to documents.

18 Mr. Blewitt was inquiring about whether -- about distribution list for

19 copies of Variant A and B document because a number of copies, as we

20 know, were in the possession of the OTP.

21 Q. And the paragraph in question was: "The Main Board, as well as

22 any other SDS body, never considered or instructed the organisation and

23 activation of Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina at its sessions. We

24 were informed that such instructions were given by a certain number of

25 retired officers of the former Yugoslav People's Army." That's the

1 letter and the passage that you had in mind --

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. -- in your answer a moment ago.

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. That's an exchange of correspondence Mr. Blewitt wrote on the

6 30th of July, 2001, and so the reply from Republika Srpska from Milovan

7 Bjelica was dated the 5th of November, 2001.

8 In bundle 11, at tab 115, Mr. Treanor. We looked at this before

9 for other purposes. Assembly of the -- the Serb Assembly, Fourteenth

10 Session, 27th [Realtime transcript read in error: "29th"] of March, 1992

11 at page 23 of the English version.

12 A. This is the session of the 27th of March.

13 Q. Sorry, did it not say the 27th? I beg your pardon. Yes, I did

14 say 29th. Thank you for correcting that. 27th.

15 At page 23, just under halfway down this page, it's Dr. Karadzic

16 speaking, and he says: "When we consider the overall situation, we do

17 not see what they will gain by it. They can attempt to intimidate the

18 Serbs here and there in Gorazde. They can kill someone in Brod, but they

19 can never incorporate Serbian areas into their state or conquer them

20 because they do not possess the forces required for the extensive

21 territory held by the Serbs. We know that our people have armed

22 themselves. We don't know the various ways and means by which this was

23 done, but we do know that the people have enough weapons. I must say,

24 however, that we do not have paramilitary units.

25 When you return to your municipalities, especially the newly

1 formed municipalities, I ask you to do what you are required and entitled

2 to do under the law. The moment you arrive in your municipalities, you

3 must urgently establish Crisis Staffs. You must try to organise the

4 people so that they can defend themselves. Find a number of reserve

5 officers for those staffs and have them register everyone who owns

6 weapons as well as units. They should organise Territorial Defence and

7 if the JNA, Yugoslav People's Army, is there, they must be placed under

8 its command. If they're not, let them be placed under the command of

9 reserve officers. They may not go anywhere but must remain in place to

10 defend their territories," and so on.

11 Mr. Treanor, in the light of your conclusions as to what had

12 already happened in relation to Variants A and B, if it had been

13 distributed in the way that you describe, at least some triggering of

14 first level had occurred, and if Dr. Karadzic on the 14th of February had

15 said something to trigger off the second level, why was this injunction

16 in that passage necessary?

17 A. I think I referred to this earlier as an indication that

18 Dr. Karadzic apparently felt that the instructions had not been carried

19 out to an adequate degree in their entirety, and therefore on this

20 occasion is repeating the order.

21 Q. It's an extremely mild exhortation, isn't it, by Dr. Karadzic for

22 -- to deal with the situation of the failure to implement an instruction

23 about which on your view of the matter a great deal of trouble had been

24 taken. It had been specifically disseminated before the end of 1991. It

25 is a very detailed document. It requires a large number of steps to be

1 taken. And in circumstances where, apparently, it just largely hasn't

2 been complied with, Dr. Karadzic is expressing himself in rather

3 uncharacteristically mild terms, isn't he?

4 A. Well, you've called the terms you're using "mild" twice, which

5 leads me to the thought, which quite frankly I didn't have before, that

6 perhaps the extent of non-fulfilment wasn't really all that great and he

7 was merely addressing himself to a few laggards. I really don't know. I

8 mean, as I indicated earlier, this is a rather murky area and this is

9 one of the things that makes it murky. One of the other things that

10 makes it murky is the conversation of the -- with Mr. Novakovic on the

11 18th of December in which Mr. Karadzic already refers to the introduction

12 of the second degree.

13 Q. The same documents, if we go over -- I'm talking about those

14 minutes of the Assembly on the 27th of March. If we go over to the next

15 page, page 24 - 24 in English, 31 in the B/C/S version - first complete

16 paragraph: "A war in Bosnia and Herzegovina will not solve anything. If

17 it breaks out, you will get the plans. But I urge you to immediately

18 organise the people within Territorial Defence units headed by reserve

19 officers, form squads, platoons, and Crisis Staffs and engage retired

20 officers. This must be done throughout our areas."

21 Now, particularly the reference to "Crisis Staffs" there,

22 Mr. Karadzic is saying, and obviously the breaking out of -- the outbreak

23 of war is on the horizontal to say the least, but "you will get the

24 plans." Then a specific reference to a number of matters to be dealt

25 with, including Crisis Staffs. So what it comes to is you -- you will

1 get plans, implying, I suggest, Mr. Treanor, some specific detail,

2 because it will be war there. And he's saying, "But in the meantime,

3 until that happens, until you get these detailed plans, "Do the

4 following," and the following includes Crisis Staffs.

5 Mr. Treanor, isn't that extremely difficult to reconcile with a

6 situation in which Crisis Staffs themselves, then, have already been set

7 up or instructions have already been given for that to be done some

8 months previously?

9 A. Well, quite frankly, I think this passage is a little bit less

10 problematic in that degree, if we grant that they had not been set up

11 everywhere that Dr. Karadzic might have liked to have seen them set up,

12 the reference to them in this speech seems to presume that everyone knows

13 what a Crisis Staff is and what setting up a Crisis Staff entails.

14 Q. Well, he does spell out in the next paragraph that "The

15 presidents of municipalities and Executive Boards will hold the highest

16 ranks in the Crisis Staff." He feels the need to spell out that

17 absolutely simple, basic element, doesn't he?

18 A. Yes. Well, he mentions that particular element, indeed.

19 Q. But he wouldn't need to do that if everybody was already very

20 familiar with a detailed formulation of the plans, would he?

21 A. Well, the degree to which he may have wanted to address

22 particular points, refresh people's memories, especially those that

23 hadn't set up Crisis Staffs, was of course up to him within the framework

24 of making his speech. As he indicated on the 14th of February, he

25 realised that not everyone had that document under their arm on that

1 particular occasion but, rather, may have had them at home, so

2 particularly - and I'm just speculating - particularly for those that

3 hadn't carried out the instruction, he's doing a bit of memory refreshing

4 here.

5 Q. Crisis Staff -- the concept of a Crisis Staff, it wasn't a

6 completely new idea or new animal in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was it?

7 A. Well, that's a rather obscure area as well. I believe the

8 Presidency, the non-Serbian members of the Presidency had formed a

9 Crisis Staff at a certain point in time. There may have been an HDZ

10 Crisis Staff, but the -- at a high level, the central Crisis Staffs.

11 We're talking about --

12 Q. But --

13 A. We're talking about the earliest Crisis Staffs within the context

14 of the conflicts that I'm aware of were in fact formed in Croatia by the

15 authorities of the Republic of Croatia in the summer of 1991. So this

16 was a term that was out there.

17 And by the way, the Variant A and B document was published in the

18 Bosnian press at the beginning of March 1992, so the idea of Serbian

19 Crisis Staffs was also public. But the particular composition, duties,

20 and activities of any particular so-called Crisis Staff would presumably

21 have varied from place to place or from entity to entity, from party to

22 party.

23 Q. With Crisis Staff, what I had in mind was it was a familiar term.

24 It was a more widely used concept to -- Crisis Staffs could be formed in

25 a whole range of emergency situations, floods and natural disasters.

1 A. Well, I have heard that, but I have never seen a document that

2 that effect. And believe me, I have looked into the matter. Which

3 doesn't mean that it is not correct, but I have only heard that and I

4 have never seen a document to that effect. But as I have said, we have

5 found out that the Republic of Croatia established Crisis Staffs in the

6 -- at various levels in the summer of 1991, and we find that after that

7 time that we see this. And indeed, Dr. Karadzic uses that term in the

8 summer of 1991 in a telephone conversation, after -- Beginning with that

9 period, the summer of 1991, we see this term being used in various

10 contexts in connection with the conflicts.

11 Q. And then if -- if we look back at page 24, that same minutes of

12 the Serb Assembly, the same paragraph we were looking at towards the top

13 of the page, Mr. -- Dr. Karadzic continues after, according to you,

14 reminding everybody that the presidents of municipalities and Executive

15 Boards would hold the highest ranks in the Crisis Staff.

16 The next sentence: "We must study the situation regarding the

17 saving of lives, property, and territory. We have no other plans."

18 Now, if we look back at the Variant A and B document, which, to

19 remind ourselves is in bundle 6, the first tab numbered 66 - we probably

20 don't need to grind through it in any great detail - but do you agree,

21 Mr. Treanor, that the document itself contains quite a number of

22 paragraphs and points which do relate to the saving or protection of

23 lives and property?

24 Let me give you an example. In Variant A, first level, paragraph

25 6: "The organisation of protection for important facilities in the

1 municipality is to be strengthened."

2 7: "Control is to be established and a check carried out of

3 existing material reserves."

4 Paragraph 11: "Preparations are to be made for the protection of

5 children, pregnant women, elderly people," so and so, "including

6 preparations for protection and evacuation."

7 Two bullet or dash points down: "The protection of resources is

8 important for defence and resistance as well as for the life and the work

9 of the population."

10 So I could go on, as I sometimes do, Mr. Treanor. There's lots

11 of -- lots in that document, isn't there, relating clearly to the saving

12 - and I've added the word "protection" because I think that's the clear

13 sense - saving and protection of lives and property?

14 A. Indeed. In fact, at the very beginning of the instructions,

15 reference is made to the defence of the interests of the Serbian people,

16 and that was certainly among their interests.

17 Q. It's just that where Dr. Karadzic says "we must study the

18 situation regarding the saving of lives, property, and territory, we have

19 no other plans," the obvious sense of that is we'll have to give --

20 excuse me. We will have to give you more details of that later. This is

21 under review. This is under consideration. You will get the plans when

22 the time comes, but we haven't yet done them. Isn't that the obvious

23 sense of what he's saying?

24 A. Well, he's apparently referring to a set of plans. Whether he's

25 referring to this set of plans or another set of plans, I don't know,

1 because I haven't seen any other set of plans.

2 Q. Mr. Treanor, I do suggest on this particular question that you

3 are really avoiding answering my question. So I urge you: Isn't it the

4 obvious sense of what Dr. Karadzic is saying that they did not have

5 formulated plans in relation to the saving of lives and property -

6 that's under study, under consideration - and those will be provided at

7 some point in the future?

8 A. Well, I would have thought there was a contradiction between

9 saying you'll get plans and then saying we don't have plans. I don't

10 know what plans precisely he doesn't have.

11 But beyond that, I mean, we're getting into a semantic issue,

12 plans versus instructions.

13 Q. Mr. --

14 A. On the 19th of December.

15 Q. Mr. Treanor, we are not getting into a semantic issue. Referring

16 to this as a semantic issue is not answering the question.

17 A. Could you repeat the question.

18 Q. I'll put it more shortly, then.

19 It's clear that Dr. Karadzic is saying we haven't got plans ready

20 for you on protection of lives and property, saving of lives and

21 property, but you will get them when you need them.

22 A. No, that isn't clear to me. The comes -- the statement "we have

23 no plans" comes at the end of a paragraph at which -- in which a number

24 of things are alluded to. It could refer to any one of those. In -- it

25 indeed may be referring to some additional plans that they want to have

1 in -- regarding to saving lives and property.

2 Q. It's a source of scientific exercise that you're engaged in,

3 Mr. Treanor. When we put these comments together with the puzzling point

4 at the very beginning of all this as to what on earth Variant A was

5 needed for so far as the setting up of new Assemblies of Serb People were

6 concerned, doesn't it tend to lead much more probably to the conclusion

7 that this was put together, the Variant A and B document, by some group,

8 such as the Defence is saying, who did not think it through and had not

9 worked it out and didn't have the political grasp of the situation that

10 Dr. Karadzic and others associated with him would have had?

11 [Defence counsel confer]

12 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Treanor, are you able to answer the question on

13 the probability of conclusions as suggested by Mr. Stewart?

14 THE WITNESS: Well, I think I would certainly agree, as we

15 discussed Variant A, that it does not -- the document in its wording

16 doesn't reveal -- indicate the type of concerns in regard to Variant A

17 municipalities, if I can use that expression, that were or were not, as

18 the case is, manifested at the 11 December session. I think the document

19 is very much a Variant B document, if I can put it that way, that the

20 important part of that document is really Variant B for the -- many of

21 the reasons that we've already discussed here. So I would not say that

22 the document was drafted by members of the Assembly, for instance, or

23 Mr. Krajisnik, who was very sensitive to the differences between majority

24 and minority municipalities.

25 The only indication that we now -- that -- well, we didn't have

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1 any indication in the documents from that period as to who did draft that

2 document, which we indicated. We've had a subsequent indication that it

3 might have been drafted by a group of army officers, which if true would

4 certainly account for its rather - and perhaps I'm making unfair

5 presumptions here - the rather templated quality of the document, if I

6 can put it that way. That is, Variants A and B read pretty much the

7 same. A lot of military orders tend to be sort of boiler-plate. I think

8 that's the word I was looking for. So that would -- that would account

9 for that.

10 Whether that's true or not, the only indication that we have is

11 from that very late-dated indication from the office of the SDS. But

12 irrespective of who may have drafted it - and clearly somebody drafted

13 it - the other conclusions in our report - and I think that piece of

14 information is consistent with it - indicate that irrespective of who

15 drafted it it was adopted, if you will, accepted, and apparently

16 distributed and implemented by the SDS.

17 MR. STEWART:

18 Q. Mr. Treanor, your comment about the boiler-plate aspect of this

19 document, that -- it's Mr. Krajisnik's position - and I wonder whether

20 you'd agree with it, then - that the tone and the language - of course,

21 it's written in Serbian - the tone and the language of this document is

22 rather in the style of military, old communist-regime authors. Do you

23 agree with that? Do you --

24 A. Well, that could be. I -- I've read a lot of military orders in

25 my day but not a lot of ones written in Serbian, quite frankly, because I

1 don't work in the military area here. So that may well be true, but I

2 couldn't confirm it.

3 Q. Yes. And in particular -- I won't press you too far, because

4 after all, Mr. Krajisnik does have the advantage on this point of being a

5 Serb, and Serbian is his own language. But he -- it's suggested

6 particularly that references to -- whatever the equivalent word is in

7 Serbian here -- to "commander" and the reference to "our armed forces"

8 that in small but cumulative ways the whole language and tone of this

9 document has that old military ring to it. Can you comment on that,

10 Mr. Treanor, or have we got as far as you're really able to --

11 A. Well, I think --

12 Q. -- go?

13 A. Well, as I would say, I cannot contest that, and I frankly

14 concede my ignorance on that point. The SDS leadership and the members

15 of the Assembly in particular were very supportive of the JNA, so it

16 doesn't surprise me that they would have been very close to members of

17 the JNA or retired members of the JNA who may have assisted them with

18 various tasks.

19 Q. Mr. Treanor, do you consider it likely that Mr. Krajisnik, who

20 was the president of the Serb Assembly and who had chaired that earlier

21 debate in which the recommendation in relation to what I call minority

22 municipalities had been adopted, do you consider it likely that

23 Mr. Krajisnik would have associated himself, then, with a document in the

24 form of this Variant A and B document without any further reference back

25 to the Assembly?

1 A. I really don't know.

2 Q. Well --

3 A. As I say, the -- as I said earlier, there seems to have been a

4 two-track process going on here: One with the recommendation of the

5 Assembly, which was a public document, that Assemblies of the Serbian

6 People be formed, as opposed to this document, which was an internal

7 party document and distributed through party channels, obviously

8 confidentially since we know so little about it, and which of course goes

9 far beyond simply the establishing of Serbian Assemblies but includes

10 instructions for the establishment of executive organs and other

11 activities, such as the protection of property.

12 Q. You see, I suggest to you, Mr. Treanor - and you've had the

13 advantage of considering all this period and these materials over many

14 years - that it would have been politically absolutely a crude blunder by

15 Mr. Krajisnik, as the Speaker of the Assembly, to associate himself with

16 any such document in this form, given the debate and the toughness of the

17 debate which had been had in the Assembly, in relation to the minority

18 municipalities' proposal, without his having it raised in any way in the

19 Serb Assembly for debate.

20 A. I don't see a crude blunder necessarily, and I'm not sure what

21 you mean by "to associate himself with any such documents in this form."

22 You mean that form of document, I suppose. Well, on the face of the

23 document, he's not associated with it. As we know from documents which I

24 offered in my presentation, the SDS as far back as September had adopted

25 a two-track strategy, if I can put it that way, one public, one

1 conspiratorial. This document, I would say, is on the conspiratorial

2 track; therefore, it is not something that people are supposed to be

3 associating themselves with, certainly publicly. The establishment of

4 the Assembly and the decisions of the Assembly were, of course, the

5 public track.

6 Q. Mr. Treanor, I put it to you that your approach, and I put it

7 that way, has an air of complete unreality on it. The position was this:

8 There were, in the case presented against Mr. Krajisnik, there were

9 enough copies of this document in the world and they were in enough hands

10 for the possibility of it not becoming widely known within the Serb

11 Assembly to be just about nil, so that the members of the Serb Assembly,

12 if it was a document with official support from the leadership of the

13 SDS, would have come to know that very quickly. And in the light of the

14 debate that there had been on the minority municipalities - I'll put it

15 politely but colloquially - some of the deputies would have been saying

16 -- to appear to have been knocking on his Speaker's office door and they

17 would have been say, "What on earth is going on? We had that -- we had

18 that debate a few weeks ago, whenever it was. You've heard what some of

19 the people have got to say about that. We approved that. You got that

20 through all right. And now you've got some other documents, all this

21 detailed stuff and majority Assembles and you didn't even ask us about

22 it." Isn't that the reality of what would have happened if this document

23 had had the status which you suggest it had?

24 A. The members of the Bosnian Serb Assembly were almost exclusively

25 members of the SDS. Many of them were members of the Main Board. Many

1 of them - I don't know how many, because we don't know precisely who was

2 at the meeting of the 20th of December - were present at that meeting.

3 The Statutes of the SDS call for acceptance and implementation of party

4 decisions. Dr. Karadzic was very insistent on that. What transpired at

5 that meeting, which would have been the opportunity for -- I'm

6 speculating -- would have been an opportunity for anyone to express their

7 disagreement, they wouldn't have had to go to Mr. Krajisnik to complain.

8 And as I indicated, perhaps the resistance to doing that in certain

9 municipalities is the reason why it may not have been implemented in

10 certain municipalities.

11 When you referred to being associated with a document, I thought

12 you meant in a public manner. As you indicated, there were many copies

13 of the document but, rather interestingly, perhaps it became public -- or

14 got published -- was published in the press only at the beginning of

15 March. So up to that point, they seem to have done a fairly good job in

16 keeping it confidential.

17 Q. Well, you see there, Mr. Treanor, once again if you -- as often

18 happens, if you don't start from here, you may end up somewhere else. If

19 you give the document the status that you give it and you assume it's

20 what it was and that it had the distribution it had and so on, then

21 introducing the conspiratorial element to explain why it didn't appear

22 publicly in an obvious way is not so difficult. But if the document did

23 not have the status that you describe and if it was a document of the

24 nature with the origin that the Defence is suggesting and if it never was

25 adopted, then you don't need a conspiracy, do you, to explain its lesser

1 prominence? It just wasn't that important a document.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Tieger.

3 MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, let me address what I think is

4 happening here and then explain briefly why I think it's inappropriate.

5 As I understand it, the witness has repeatedly explained the basis for

6 his conclusions, and there has been ample opportunity to identify,

7 explore, and address those.

8 Now we seem to be engaged in the following exercise in which all

9 of those bases are sort of sequentially eliminated and the witness is

10 asked to speculate about individual pieces of evidence as if the other

11 pieces of evidence did not exist. It can be an interesting philosophical

12 debate, but I don't think it advances our inquiry here. I think it's

13 time-consuming and I think it is resulting in a considerable amount of

14 speculation and effectively argument between counsel and the witness.

15 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart.

16 MR. STEWART: It may not matter much from a practical point of

17 view, Your Honour, because I think we probably have explored the issue,

18 this particular issue, as far as we need go.

19 JUDGE ORIE: I think as a matter of fact that it's quite clear

20 from the point of view of the Defence that if the document would not have

21 had the status as given to it by Mr. Treanor, then of course the way

22 people would have dealt with this document would have been different. Is

23 that the point?

24 MR. STEWART: Well, it is the underlying point.

25 Your Honour, in a -- I don't really want, then, to spend time

1 justifying what I've already done.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

3 MR. STEWART: Which would then take more time.

4 JUDGE ORIE: Well, you could put a hundred questions in this

5 respect. If the document would not have had the official -- let me just

6 try to invent one question.

7 If some bunch of unorganised people would have produced a

8 document in which a certain role is given to the president of the -- to

9 give secret instructions, well, you could expect that someone would ever

10 go to that president and say, "Do you know that your name is abused for

11 that?" You could put thousands and thousands of questions starting from

12 a different point of view, but it's quite clear to me, and I think to the

13 Bench, that if the document had a different status, that you would expect

14 other things to happen related to that document. Yes.

15 Then if you say that -- if that's the most important thing, I

16 would like to invite you to move on to your next subject.

17 MR. STEWART: Well, I'm more than happy to, Your Honour, because

18 I think really that point had -- well, it's a matter of argument whether

19 it has emerged clearly. Apparently it hasn't emerged clearly. But it

20 was necessary for me also just to explore how far certain elements of

21 Mr. Treanor's conclusions depend upon the reliability of other elements.

22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

23 MR. STEWART: And we've done that.

24 JUDGE ORIE: The point was clear already quite some time ago.

25 Please proceed.

1 MR. STEWART:

2 Q. I invite you to consider this possibility, Mr. Treanor, that the

3 -- and it is -- I put it forward just as a possibility for you to

4 consider, that discussion on the 19th of December could, consistently

5 with a great deal of the material we've seen, have revolved around the

6 recommendation in the Assembly in relation to -- adopted by the Serb

7 Assembly in relation to what I call minority municipalities, rather than

8 discussion about the Variant A and B document.

9 A. Indeed the discussion would have involved a lot of things. I

10 don't know what the discussion was, unfortunately. Indeed maybe there

11 wasn't any discussion of the A and B document. Maybe it was simply

12 distributed or something.

13 Q. Well, and you don't yourself know and can't tell, is that

14 correct, whether any dissemination of the Variant A and B document around

15 that time was official or unofficial?

16 A. Well, we said in the report that it seems likely on the evidence

17 that it was - I don't know -- remember the word that we used -

18 distributed, issued at that meeting. Wherever it was issued, it must

19 have been official, in my view.

20 JUDGE ORIE: Has this not been dealt with now four or five times,

21 on the officiality of the document and distribution.

22 Please proceed, Mr. Stewart.

23 MR. STEWART:

24 Q. Just go back to the very first page of the Variant A and B

25 document and the reference in the top left-hand corner of I think every

1 version, "Serbian Democratic Party, Bosnia and Herzegovina Main Board" or

2 "Main Committee," depending which translation one chooses. Is it a

3 possibility that this document, that is intended to mean that the

4 document was addressed to the Main Board?

5 A. No. I take that to be the origin of the document. That's

6 usually where the letterhead, if you will, is located, indicating the

7 origin of a letter, so forth.

8 Q. That would be the -- and that would be the -- the custom or

9 practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina to --

10 A. Well, I'm just referring from memory to the various letters of

11 Dr. Karadzic, for instance. And if it was being addressed to somebody, I

12 would expect to see it in -- not in the nominative case, which is here,

13 but in the dative case.

14 Q. [Microphone not activated]

15 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

16 MR. STEWART: Sorry. I'm going to move on, Your Honours, to

17 another topic.

18 Q. I want to consider now the issue of the expanded Presidency,

19 Mr. Treanor. Just to remind ourselves, Mr. Krajisnik is alleged to have

20 been a member of a five-person expanded Presidency from the 2nd of June

21 to the 17th of December, 1992. You cover some aspects of this matter in

22 your report at paragraph 260 and following, and you very helpfully set

23 out some of the relevant constitutional provisions. I'll take them from

24 there, because it's far easier for us to do it that way.

25 You dealt with this in your evidence in chief. "To summarise, on

1 the 12th of May" -- and this is paragraph 260 of your report -- "on the

2 12th of May the Bosnian Serb Assembly passed a law amending and

3 supplementing the constitutional law, and that provided that until the

4 president of the republic was elected there should be a three-member

5 Presidency elected by the Assembly of the Serb People," and Dr. Karadzic,

6 Dr. Plavsic, and Mr. Koljevic were elected on that day.

7 On the 1st or 2nd of June - and this is really the key point so

8 far as Mr. Krajisnik's involvement is concerned, and key point in the

9 case put against him - is that the Presidency then adopted - and we look

10 at 261, paragraph 261 of your report - adopted the law on supplementing

11 the constitutional law for implementing the Constitution of the Serbian

12 Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and added paragraph 3 to Article 5, and

13 that's a key paragraph because it provides - and you cite it in your

14 report - "During a state of war, the Presidency shall be expanded to

15 include the president of the National Assembly" - of course, that was

16 Mr. Krajisnik; that's where he comes in - "and the president of the

17 Government of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina." And we

18 know - and there's no dispute about this - that no state of war was

19 formally declared in 1992; that instead, if you like, on the 15th of

20 April there was a declaration of an imminent threat of war, which was a

21 different thing.

22 So so far we're in agreement about these basics, are we,

23 Mr. Treanor?

24 A. Yes. An imminent threat of war was declared on April the 15th.

25 And I am not aware of any similar declaration of a state of war. In

1 fact, there is some discussion later on in the year of the fact that in

2 fact there was no such thing, but then we have on the 17th of December a

3 declaration, if you will, on the end of the war.

4 Q. Yes. And so the two stages or the two dates which are material,

5 then, for this particular point, then, following the 1st of June - and

6 you very clearly and helpfully record this at 264 of your report - that

7 on the 30th of November a meeting of what was described as the Presidency

8 discussed the legal position, and in particular the fact that in that

9 provision of the Constitution that we referred to a few moments ago,

10 which had been added on the 12th of May, it was only a state of war which

11 triggered off what is referred to now as the expanded Presidency, the

12 five-person Presidency.

13 This was dealt with, wasn't it, by -- when considered by that

14 meeting, described as a meeting of the Presidency on the 30th of

15 November. It was dealt with effectively by shelving the issue for the

16 time being. But that shelving came to an end on the 17th of December,

17 when the declaration of an end of -- the end of the war took place, as

18 you describe, and so constitutionally everything went back to square one

19 as far as the Presidency was concerned, the original constitutional

20 provisions.

21 A. No. On the 17th of December, another reform of the Presidency

22 was carried out. The offices of two vice-presidents were created, which

23 had not existed in the original Constitution.

24 Q. Yes. Mr. Treanor, if I may interrupt. I don't think there's any

25 disagreement between us. I think I had cited accurately as far as I went

1 from your report. Your report says in paragraph 265: "The Assembly

2 restructured the Presidency by reverting to the original constitutional

3 provision for one president." And then you do say: "But also passing a

4 package of amendments which created a dual vice-president."

5 A. Yes, very well.

6 Q. So we're at one on that. And amendments of the vice-president.

7 But at the level of Presidency, as you accurately and very succinctly set

8 out there, just went back to the original constitutional provision of a

9 single president.

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. Yes. And that issue, which -- would you agree that issue that

12 had been shelved on the 30th of November, about whether the amend the

13 Constitution, to introduce a reference to imminent threat of war; that

14 actually was superseded, then, by the decision on the 17th of December?

15 A. Yes, which appears to embody the results of whatever

16 deliberations may have taken place after the 30th of November as to how

17 to handle the situation. Another action that was taken about this time

18 was the creation of the Supreme Command.

19 Q. Now, it -- Mr. Treanor, you might wish to answer this by saying

20 that we have for you as a non-lawyer reached the limits or are going

21 beyond the limits of your legal expertise, but --

22 A. Well, no, I think as a political matter, I think they addressed

23 this issue, which was a problem. And I would say that three things were

24 done: They created the Supreme Command; they made some more changes in

25 the Presidency, going back to one president and then creating two

1 vice-presidents on the 17th of December; and they declared an end to the

2 war. This seems to be a package of measures to address those concerns

3 and other issues at that time, but they seem to be interrelated.

4 Q. In fact, Mr. Treanor, when I indicated you might wish to answer

5 this by saying that for you as a lawyer we might have reached the limits

6 or we're going beyond the limits of your legal expertise, I was actually

7 referring to the question I was about to ask you. The question I was

8 about to ask you or what I was going to put to you was this: That there

9 was a clear defect, wasn't there, in the sense that the conditions

10 triggering off the five-person expanded Presidency -- or the condition -

11 namely, a state of war - had not arisen.

12 A. Yes, that's one of the defects in that particular document and

13 the --

14 Q. And --

15 A. That's certainly one of them. Yes.

16 Q. Yes. Well, in any sense, it's enough on this own, Mr. Treanor,

17 this defect. I'm not going to explore any other defects at the moment.

18 So we're agreed there was that defect, that the condition for triggering

19 off that expanded Presidency had not arisen.

20 Secondly, it was never -- well, in the end, after the shelving on

21 the 30th of November and then the decisions on the 17th of December,

22 that defect was never technically cured and in the end in fact no attempt

23 was made to cure it, because there was no purported retrospective

24 amendment and, in fact, no amendment to cure that defect, was there?

25 A. Well, if you mean by during the defect adopting something of the

1 nature that -- the nature of what was discussed in the Presidency on the

2 30th of November, certainly that was never done. And, on the other hand,

3 a state of war was never declared, as we mentioned earlier. So that

4 wasn't done either. So this problem was not tackled head-on in that

5 fashion, thirdly.

6 Q. So why I referred to the possible limits, as far as legal issues

7 are concerned, Mr. Treanor, is this: That -- I just put it to you that

8 from a strictly legal, technical point of view there never had validly

9 been under the Constitution a five-person expanded Presidency and nothing

10 was ever done to ratify the -- or to cure by ratification or some other

11 way that invalidity.

12 A. Well, you certainly have reached the limit of my legal expertise.

13 Q. Yes. Well, that's a perfectly fair answer, Mr. Treanor. The --

14 and then so far as -- so if we, then, move away for the moment - and when

15 I say "for the moment," I think for the rest of your evidence,

16 Mr. Treanor, or the rest of your cross-examination from that legal

17 position - in a nutshell, because a great deal of this ground has been

18 covered, what the -- and if I call it "the expanded Presidency," now,

19 it's with that caveat. So I'm talking about the position between the

20 beginning of June and 17th of December. What that group, the minutes of

21 whose meetings we apparently have, actually did, so far as you're

22 concerned, you only know what you see on those documents and any other

23 documents that you have access to in connection with your report.

24 A. Well, yes. The only thing I know about the activities of the

25 Presidency are based on the documents that I've seen, which are not only

1 the minutes. There are some -- we have some of the decisions that they

2 issued, alluded to -- I used a couple of those in my presentation, I

3 believe.

4 Q. Yes, of course. I think I referred slightly more widely to

5 available documentation.

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And, for example, whether a particular person was or wasn't

8 present at a particular meeting, you -- if you see a person listed as

9 present at a particular meeting, you have no basis on which to do

10 anything other than make the normal common sense starting point

11 assumption that the person was there.

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. So if I say, for example, that there is the Twenty-sixth Session

14 of the Presidency which was dated 23rd August 1992, so that's right

15 within that period of the expanded Presidency, that's --

16 MR. STEWART: Excuse me one moment, Your Honour.

17 [Defence counsel confer]

18 MR. STEWART:

19 Q. I don't think we need the actual document at the moment. It's a

20 very simple point. Mr. Krajisnik is shown as present. He was not in

21 fact present that day. The reason he was not present was an unhappy one;

22 that was actually the day that his wife died and he was in Belgrade on

23 that day. And he was not present for that reason at the -- at that

24 Twenty-sixth Session. But that's just an example.

25 You would of course have -- this is correct? You would have no

1 knowledge whatsoever. You would have no way of knowing whether

2 Mr. Krajisnik was correctly or incorrectly shown as present at that

3 meeting or indeed any other meeting.

4 A. That's right.

5 Q. May I then ask you about the National Security Council. The

6 National Security Council was created - and you've covered this helpfully

7 in your evidence - was created by the Serb Assembly at its session of the

8 27th of March, 1992, and it was the decision that appears at file 11, tab

9 116. I don't think -- because we've seen lots of these pieces of paper

10 before I don't think I need to trouble you or the Tribunal to keep

11 delving into the files again. Again, it was set up as advisory organ of

12 the Assembly, wasn't it? That's ground that we've already covered.

13 That's correct?

14 A. If that's what it says, yes.

15 Q. Well, it does. And it was responsible for its work to the

16 Assembly. That was the formal position in the establishment of the

17 National Security Council.

18 A. You're reading it to me now. I don't have it before me, so --

19 Q. Oh, I beg your pardon.

20 A. I certainly take your word for it.

21 Q. Yes, well, take my word for it, please, Mr. Treanor. It's

22 absolutely ready checkable by anybody in a moment. And the president of

23 the republic was the ex officio chairman. You recall that.

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. And then you say in your report at -- this is at paragraph 258.

1 You say that the -- in reality the SNB, which is the same thing -- the

2 National Security Council -- the SNB became the central Bosnian Serb

3 Crisis Staff with a composition mirroring that of the regional and local

4 Crisis Staffs which form, you say, the subject of a separate report, and

5 that while it was supposed to be an advisory body - as in the technical

6 provisions I just cited to you - concerning itself with interests of the

7 Serbian People, it acted as a de facto expanded presidency and exercised

8 the powers of the Presidency.

9 May we look, then, at bundle 12, file 12, please, at tab 127. If

10 we go to, well, page 1, in the first place. I did give the tab number, I

11 think, did I? 127.

12 A. Yes. This is the session of the 12th of May.

13 Q. Yes, we're back to the good old 12th of May session --

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. -- of the Serb Assembly: Item 3, Confirmation of the decisions

16 and other legislation adopted by the Presidency of the Serbian Republic

17 of Bosnia-Herzegovina." And then -- that's the agenda. And then over

18 the page, page 2, we get that item as the decision. "The Assembly

19 unanimously confirmed the following decisions adopted by the Presidency

20 of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina," and then a number. I

21 won't read through them, because they can be read. But just to mention,

22 for example, number 7, "Decision on proclaiming imminent threat of war";

23 not an unimportant one. And then 8 was "Decision of the establishment of

24 penal and correctional organisations in the territory of the Serbian

25 Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

1 We don't see, do we, any equivalent adoption by the Assembly of

2 National Security Council decisions?

3 A. No. The decisions of the National Security Council, in so far as

4 they needed to be embodied in publicly issued decisions such as the

5 decision on proclaiming the imminent threat of war or the decision on the

6 establishment of penal and correctional organisations, both of which were

7 published in the Official Gazette after they had -- after this

8 verification took place, those documents were issued in the name of and

9 presumably signed by the two acting presidents.

10 Q. So what had happened was that the National -- in that situation,

11 then, the National Security Council, having been set up as an advisory

12 board only and having the obligation to report to the Assembly, what

13 you're saying is that in practice, then, the route for getting decisions

14 -- well, the formal route for decisions to be taken and implemented in

15 that situation was that it was done by the Presidency?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. If we go to -- back to bundle -- no, to bundle 11 it will be,

18 please, tab 118. We've seen this letter before. This is a letter dated

19 4th of April, 1992 from Dr. Karadzic addressed to the Serb Assembly. And

20 he was, as I think you've already pointed out, he was not technically the

21 right person to be the president of the National Security Council under

22 Article 3 of the -- of its, well, constitution, if I might call it that,

23 because it was the president of the republic, wasn't it, who was ex

24 officio to be the president of the National Security Council?

25 A. Yes. I would point out in this connection that the copy of the

1 decision we have is not a signed and dated copy, and it was not

2 published in the Official Gazette for I think a rather interesting

3 technical reason, but it would appear from the record of the Assembly

4 session that that was the text that was adopted. So if we take that as

5 our premise, then yes, he should not have been the president of this

6 body.

7 Q. Is this rather interesting technical reason a relevant technical

8 reason, Mr. Treanor, or just interesting? Because if it's just

9 interesting, then we'll have to suppress our curiosity.

10 A. Well, it would appear to me that it was not published not for any

11 desire to keep it secret perhaps but there was a problem that arose

12 connected with the move of the SDS leaders from downtown Sarajevo to

13 Pale, which took place very soon after the March sessions. And I'm

14 getting this from what was told to me in Pale by the individuals involved

15 with the production of the Official Gazette, that the materials that had

16 been prepared for publication in the next issue of the Official Gazette

17 were lost during that period; and therefore, once they got to Pale, they

18 had to reconstruct a number of things, and you'll find some peculiarities

19 in the Official Gazette in that connection. Namely, you'll find

20 documents signed by Dr. Karadzic as president of the Presidency or

21 something on dates before he occupied that position. And there's a large

22 gap in the pagination in the Official Gazette for that reason,

23 apparently. And this was apparently among the items that was totally

24 lost, and therefore never published in the Official Gazette.

25 Q. And it's correct, isn't it, there's no record this letter of

1 Dr. Karadzic's of the 4th of April, there's no record of any National

2 Security Council decision in terms of that letter?

3 A. No. That's the only record we have -- the only record I'm aware

4 of.

5 Q. And at the time, as I think you pointed out, Mr. Karadzic --

6 Dr. Karadzic had no executive position, apart from the fact he was

7 president of the SDS.

8 A. Correct.

9 Q. You referred to a transcript - and it's in the -- not

10 surprisingly, it's in the bundle of transcripts - it's tab, or section 28

11 of the transcript of speeches binder. I'm sorry, my terminology is

12 slipping. The intercepts -- the intercepts bundle, I think we call it.

13 It's got transcripts of intercepts and speeches. P67, anyway -- 66 in

14 English -- it is 67.

15 And you in your -- you dealt with this matter in your evidence in

16 chief. It's at page 686 of the transcript. And then what you said

17 was -- I'll just get that, if I may.

18 Oh, it's come over in the transcript today as 686. The page

19 number is 1686, 1686.

20 And you referred to the conversation that we have in the

21 intercepts bundle at 28, the conversation between Mr. Koljevic and

22 Mr. Krajisnik. And then you -- which is very short, and it says the

23 person appointed -- Mr. Krajisnik says, when they finally get on the

24 telephone together, [As read] "Hey, Nikola." And Mr. Koljevic says,

25 "What's up, Momo?" Mr. Krajisnik, "Are you coming to my place tonight?"

1 Mr. Koljevic, "tonight at 7.00, right. Yes. Radovan told me and I'll be

2 there. All right. He knows full we'll can you tell discuss that at my

3 place. Deal. All right. See you there. All right. Bye."

4 So that's pretty short and sweet. You said in your evidence that

5 this would in effect have been a meeting of the National Security

6 Council. "We certainly at least have three of its most prominent members

7 mentioned in this conversation. Who else was going to be at that meeting

8 precisely, I don't know."

9 Do you -- your conclusion that that would in effect have been a

10 meeting of the National Security Council, are you also using the

11 existence of Dr. Karadzic's letter to support that conclusion?

12 A. Yes, I think I was trying to link them.

13 First of all, let me address a matter connected to this

14 particular conversation and another conversation that took place on the

15 same day between, I believe it was Dr. Karadzic and Dr. Koljevic, which

16 is also dated the 4th of April. I believe that the date of these

17 conversations is incorrect now having -- I was looking into a related

18 matter, that is, the matter of mobilisation by the Presidency of SRBiH

19 which figured in the April 4th letter of Dr. Karadzic.

20 Having reviewed some documents in that connection just recently,

21 it appears that the sequence of events is as follows: There was a

22 meeting of the Presidency of Bosnia, of BH. On the afternoon of the 3rd

23 of April -- Dr. Koljevic and Dr. Plavsic were both present at that

24 meeting, according to the minutes. And a decision was made that

25 individual municipalities could mobilise their Territorial Defence

1 organisations if they thought the situation warranted.

2 There was also some discussion at that meeting about Dr. Plavsic

3 going to Bijeljina and Dr. Koljevic going to Banja Luka the next day, I

4 believe, the 4th. Now, there was another meeting on the 4th.

5 Dr. Koljevic and Dr. Plavsic were not present at that meeting, because

6 they were in the cities I indicated. At that session -- and it was a

7 very extended session. The minutes indicate that it lasted for a period

8 of days. I don't know precisely what the circumstances was, whether they

9 were all there at all time, but obviously it was a -- a crisis situation.

10 At that meeting another decision regarding mobilisation was taken,

11 basically that, well, everyone should mobilise in fact. That decision

12 was taken without the participation of the Bosnian Serb members, because

13 they were not there.

14 Dr. Karadzic's letter was issued on the 4th and appears to be a

15 response to the decision taken on the 3rd, that is, the partial

16 mobilisation, if I can put it that way. Therefore, I believe that these

17 conversations took place on the 3rd of April. In the conversation with

18 Dr. Karadzic, Dr. Koljevic indicates that he had been at a presidency

19 meeting that day.

20 So I think these conversations took place on the 3rd of April and

21 the meeting in the evening was on the evening of the 3rd of April. And

22 the letter was, of course, issued on the 4th of April and was in fact

23 published in the press on the 5th of April.

24 Q. I'm not sure whether you're the right person to be able to answer

25 this, Mr. Treanor, but then the question is, then, where did the date of

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 the 4th of April for this transcript come from?

2 A. That was the date on the transcript.

3 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. But the question was where that comes from on

4 the transcript, if you at the same time, if your testimony is that more

5 likely this conversation would have taken place on the 3rd. So I think

6 Mr. Stewart is trying to get an answer on that.

7 THE WITNESS: Well, I guess my answer to how did it get on the

8 transcript, I don't know.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

10 MR. STEWART:

11 Q. Well, that's fair enough. I thought perhaps you're not the right

12 person to answer that.

13 Of course, there's an alternative possibility, which is that the

14 date that we have been given all along for this transcript is the correct

15 date, that it did take place on the 4th of April and that it is not --

16 the conversation is not referring to a meeting being set up from which

17 this letter emerged.

18 A. Well, it is certainly possible that there's no connection between

19 the meeting and the letter. I think I linked them in my testimony as a

20 sequence of events that was taking place. It was, rather, my supposition

21 that a response to the mobilisation decision that was taken on the 3rd

22 would have been discussed most likely - I won't say inevitably; that's

23 all.

24 Q. It looks, doesn't it, Mr. Treanor, as if a perfectly reasonable

25 possibility, given that these people know each other and given the

1 brevity of the conversation between Mr. Koljevic and Mr. Krajisnik, is

2 that they did arrange to meet in the evening of the 4th of April and

3 actually that meeting simply doesn't have anything to do with that

4 particular letter.

5 A. Well, again, to my knowledge, at this point Dr. Koljevic was in

6 Banja Luka on the 4th of April. He had attended a meeting of the

7 Presidency on the 3rd of April, which was referred to in his conversation

8 with Dr. Karadzic and that conversation also referred to having a

9 meeting that night. This particular conversation is one in, well, a

10 series of at least two interrelated conversations about holding a meeting

11 on that particular evening, and one of them is certainly connected with

12 the meeting of the Presidency that Dr. Koljevic had attended on that day.

13 So I at this point infer that this conversation took place on the 3rd of

14 April and that there were plans to have a meeting at 1900 hours on the

15 evening of the 3rd of April. Whether that meeting in fact ever took

16 place, of course I don't know.

17 The only -- the next thing that we do know is that we have the

18 letter of Mr. Karadzic dated the 4th of April. And as I say, that letter

19 was published in the press on the 5th of April.

20 Q. Well, we don't know whether the meeting took place. We don't

21 know whether the letter was discussed at the meeting, do we?

22 A. Not definitely, no.

23 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, Mr. Stewart. I see that you're looking at the

24 clock; so did I.

25 Before adjourning --

1 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

2 MR. STEWART: Yes, Your Honour. May I just mention the book. We

3 produced the -- as Your Honour directed, we produced the pages either

4 side. We haven't found out that there is a published English translation

5 of the book. In the usual way we can't prove a negative, we haven't

6 established there isn't. But at the moment ...

7 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then I -- first of all, as far as the

8 environment is concerned, is it right? Yes, this is 101 and 103, where

9 already we received 102. So this is the environment.

10 If no English translation does exist, I would invite the

11 Prosecution to read the context and to see whether you could agree on

12 whether we need any further translation apart from the part translated in

13 court. Yes?

14 I also understood, Mr. Tieger, that you had copied the many,

15 many documents.

16 MR. TIEGER: That's correct. Your Honour, we can distribute them

17 now or during the break. As you wish.

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Are we going to further deal with it? I don't

19 think so. So, therefore, I think distribution during the break would be

20 fine.

21 Then I have another smaller issue, Mr. Stewart. Yesterday you

22 confronted the witness with a different distance between the offices of

23 Mr. Krajisnik and Mr. Karadzic, which in view of the testimony given

24 until that moment was, well, at least indicated that what the witness had

25 said was not a bit wrong but entirely wrong. As far as distance is

1 concerned -- and then you said, "Well, there might be an issue of time.

2 And I'll further --" I'd like to have this either clarified or you the

3 three kilometres are not to be -- could be ignored.

4 MR. STEWART: I'm proposing to clear it up, Your Honour.

5 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Well, then we'll hear from you after the next

6 break.

7 We'll have a break until ten minutes to 1.00.

8 --- Recess taken at 12.31 p.m.

9 --- On resuming at 12.53 p.m.

10 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, please proceed.

11 MR. STEWART:

12 Q. Mr. Treanor, I'm not quite sure which bundle you've got. Have

13 you got number 12 at the moment or number 11 or which? Oh, you've got

14 the intercepts. I'm so sorry.

15 MR. STEWART: Could we have 11, please.

16 Q. And if we'd go to tab 120. You referred to this in your

17 evidence. The transcript reference is -- evidence in chief -- is at 1690

18 as "the first record we have of a session of the National Security

19 Council proper." But in fact, of course, it was a joint meeting of the

20 National Security Council and the government, wasn't it, as we see?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And the position was that the Security the National Security

23 Council - I think we've covered this ground - actually had technically no

24 formal powers at all, did it?

25 A. In terms of that -- the text of the decision we've seen, yes,

1 that's correct.

2 Q. So that where we have a joint meeting of the National Security

3 Council and the government, the Serbian Republic, that any powers of, if

4 you like, that joint meeting are going to be the normal executive powers

5 of the government.

6 A. No. I believe that, as indicated by the decisions published in

7 the Gazette which were signed by the Presidency -- or by the acting

8 presidents and later verified by the Assembly, that decisions were made

9 which were within the purview of the Assembly but taken by the Presidency

10 under its emergency powers.

11 Q. We may be slightly at cross-purposes here, Mr. Treanor. If there

12 was a -- at a joint meeting of the National Security Council and the

13 government of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the

14 National Security Council itself technically having no executive powers,

15 the government having the usual executive powers of a government, the

16 government's powers were all that that joint meeting had.

17 A. At least one member of -- one of the acting Presidencies was

18 present at this meeting. And as a result of this very meeting, a

19 decision on the imminent threat of war is issued, which is discussed in

20 these minutes, signed by the two acting presidents. If -- certainly, if

21 both of them had been present, then it would have been within --

22 apparently within their prerogative, barring any legal niceties which I

23 cannot address, to take decisions in their own name.

24 Q. Mr. Treanor, there is no issue between us on that. If all the

25 members of a particular organ are present and make the decision, then it

1 is normally going to be difficult to quarrel with that.

2 All right. Well, I won't pursue that point any more.

3 At the end of this minute that we're looking at at tab 120, we

4 see again council president Dr. Karadzic signing. Would you agree that

5 the key point here seems to be that Dr. Karadzic, having assumed the

6 position as president of the National Security Council - although

7 apparently inconsistent with the technical requirement that it should be

8 ex officio the president of the republic - in practice he's taking the

9 leadership of the government here.

10 A. By "government" do you mean the -- what could also be called the

11 Council of Ministers?

12 Q. Yes. That's -- that would do just as well for my purposes.

13 A. Well, there is a prime minister.

14 Q. Well, this is rather what I'm suggesting to you, Mr. Treanor,

15 that where you have a government and a prime minister - I think he's

16 called the president of the government often, isn't he, in the

17 documentation that we see --

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Yes. Where you have a government, and I'll use the terminology

20 prime minister, because it is simpler in the context, and then you have

21 another body here, the National Security Council and Dr. Karadzic is the

22 chairman or the president of that body, and they are meeting together,

23 those two bodies, and then it turns out that it's not the prime minister

24 who chairs and signs the minute and takes charge but it is Dr. Karadzic.

25 It's pretty clear, isn't it, that whatever the formal position, if you

1 like, the prime minister has had to move over and his seat effectively is

2 being taken by Dr. Karadzic?

3 A. Well, I see what you're driving at and we're getting into areas

4 of legal interpretation. But when we wrote the report and indeed now my

5 conception is that during this period the acting presidents were -- had

6 assumed emergency powers under the Constitution and issued decisions on

7 the basis of those emergency powers. I believe it's Article 81 which

8 gave the presidents of the republic, or in this case the acting

9 presidents the authority to make decisions which would ordinarily be

10 within the purview of the Assembly.

11 Now, among the things that were within the purview of the

12 Assembly were issues related to the government. The government, of

13 course, reports to the Assembly. It's appointed by the Assembly, can be

14 relieved by the Assembly, must answer questions from the Assembly, et

15 cetera. Therefore during this emergency period, that function -- the

16 functions of the Assembly are exercised by the president of the republic,

17 so the president of the republic in effect becomes the Assembly. So it's

18 not a question of the prime minister having to move over for anybody.

19 The prime minister is always subordinate to the Assembly, always answers

20 to the Assembly, and simply during these emergency periods that position

21 is taken by the support of the republic, or in the case the acting

22 presidents. So I don't see that the prime minister has had to move over.

23 If anyone moved over, it was the two acting presidents, I think.

24 Q. At tab 123 of this same bundle we see a document which is

25 apparently signed -- we don't see the actual signature, but by the

1 president of the government of the prime minister, Dr. Ranko Bjelic

2 [phoen]. And it's an excerpt from the "Instructions for the Operation of

3 Crisis Headquarters of the Serb People in the Municipalities." And I

4 just wonder if you can confirm that in the original Serbian that the word

5 or words which are represented in English by "Crisis Headquarters" are

6 the same as the words used at the foot of the Variants A and B document.

7 A. I don't know what you mean by "of the foot of the document."

8 Q. Well, at the very end of the Variant A and B, where it's signed,

9 in effect.

10 A. Ah yes. Yes. As far as I can recollect, what that says is

11 "Crisis Staff of the SDS." This refers to "Crisis Staffs," in the

12 plural, "of the Serbian People."

13 Q. And the --

14 A. In municipalities.

15 Q. Yes, I beg your pardon. So apart from the pluralising, but the

16 word for "Crisis Staff" or "Crisis Staffs" --

17 A. Yes, that's the same term.

18 Q. -- would be from the same?

19 A. That's the same term, yes.

20 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, there are one or two relatively minor

21 points, including the question that Your Honour raised before the

22 adjournment about the location of offices and so on to clear up in a

23 moment with Mr. Treanor. I simply wanted to make clear, having done

24 what I've done by way of cross-examination of Mr. Treanor over the last

25 few days, what I'm not going to do and why I'm not going to do it.

1 I am not going to put to Mr. Treanor what we see that he can't

2 actually himself give evidence about, which was beyond this documentation

3 what was actually happening, because after all, Mr. Treanor wasn't there.

4 He's not a factual witness in relation to that. He's very frankly

5 indicated that knowing what he knows and having studied the history of

6 politics, he's working from the documents, he's here to explain the

7 documents, he's here to put them into context. So, Your Honour, we

8 conceive it would be a rather futile and wasteful exercise to be batting

9 backwards and forwards to Mr. Treanor factual propositions of which he

10 can't say anything at all.

11 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Let me just check. I take it that you take

12 it, Mr. Treanor, that you agree with the characterisation of your

13 specific knowledge or expertise. I wouldn't say you have no knowledge at

14 all. Perhaps it's not first-hand knowledge. It's not the most reliable

15 source on what happened on the ground.

16 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour, I would not like to speak to

17 anything that is not encompassed within the documents with which I am

18 familiar.

19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, that's understood. And I think it's fair to do

20 it this way.

21 This, of course, could cause at -- this might not be a major

22 problem for this expert witness, that if we hear evidence on what

23 happened on the ground and if this raises all kinds of questions in

24 relation to documents, that it might be that we need Mr. Treanor again to

25 further elaborate on the documents.

1 Is that -- I take it, Mr. Tieger, that that's a possibility you

2 also envisage if we do it the way as suggested by Mr. Stewart.

3 MR. TIEGER: Certainly, Your Honour.

4 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

5 MR. STEWART: Yes.

6 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed.

7 MR. STEWART: Thank you, Your Honour.

8 Your Honour, the question of the location, Mr. Treanor.

9 Q. I'll put the position to you and then -- as we have it and then

10 you can simply indicate whether you agree or not, please. Mr. Krajisnik

11 worked -- while in Sarajevo, Mr. Krajisnik worked at all times in and

12 from the Assembly building which was on the other side of the road from

13 the Holiday Inn. But from late March 1992, Mr. Karadzic had a suite at

14 the Holiday Inn and he used that suite for meetings and to talk to

15 people. It was used as some sort of an office; some sort of a working

16 environment as well. But also, at some 3 kilometres - and that is the

17 distance I gave it, it remains the distance - at some 3 kilometres from

18 the Assembly building where Mr. Krajisnik had his office was the old

19 Assembly building and old goes back, of course, to the communist regime,

20 which had actually come to be known as the Deputies' Club. That was the

21 description of it. And that was a building where the SDS at period, 1991

22 and 1992, until, of course, everything moved to Pale eventually, but had

23 three offices and those remained as the SDS offices as long as their

24 operations were in Sarajevo.

25 A. Well, I have to confess, having just said about speaking from the

1 documents that my knowledge of this area is rather tangential. I was

2 under the impression the SDS offices had moved to the Holiday Inn

3 sometime in the autumn of 1991, but I -- that's just an impression that I

4 have. I don't know what the evidence is. But I can seek to clarify that

5 point if necessary. I'm not sure what the significance of this is, other

6 than a simple one of fact.

7 Q. Mr. Treanor, doubt whether we --

8 A. So what you're saying may be correct.

9 Q. Mr. Treanor, I doubt whether we will need to trouble you again on

10 this particular matter. I just wanted to make it clear. I think what I

11 put to you earlier about this was incomplete, perhaps than actually

12 wrong. But I wanted to clear it and make it plain what we were saying

13 was the physical layout.

14 MR. STEWART: One moment, Your Honour.

15 [Defence counsel confer]

16 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, that completes the questions.

17 We would tender into evidence, if it is the appropriate moment,

18 the letters that were referred to by Mr. Treanor, and then I had

19 identified those letters. That's the letter of the 30th of July --

20 copies I've got, of course -- the 30th of July, 2001 from Mr. Blewitt to

21 the liaison officer in Republika Srpska and the reply, the date 5th of

22 November, 2001. We have both those letters in B/C/S and in English in a

23 clip together. I -- does that -- they're clipped together at the moment.

24 Does that mean they should be disentangled and made 1 and 2, the English

25 and the B/C/S versions? It's a very small clip of papers, Your Honour.

1 JUDGE ORIE: I think for reasons of consistency, it would be

2 better to, because that's the structure we always have is the .1 being

3 the translation of the original. But now, of course, we have here the

4 problem that the original sent by Mr. Blewitt may have been in English

5 and the original received may have been the B/C/S version. Therefore,

6 perhaps -- but I'm also looking at you, Madam Registrar -- I think we

7 could deal with them as a bundle of --

8 MR. STEWART: That's very helpful, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE ORIE: -- of correspondence in the original and translation,

10 letters of the 30th of July and 5th of November, 2001.

11 MR. STEWART: Well, I think Ms. Cmeric had intelligently

12 anticipated Your Honours' view of that.

13 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Yes. We highly appreciate that, Ms. Cmeric.

14 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

15 THE REGISTRAR: This document will be Defence Exhibit Number D9.

16 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Is there any need to re-examine the witness,

17 Mr. Tieger? And perhaps but I first should consult my colleagues and see

18 whether we would have any additional questions.

19 [Trial Chamber confers]

20 JUDGE ORIE: Judge El Mahdi would have a few questions for you.

21 Questioned by the Court:

22 JUDGE EL MAHDI: Thank you, Mr. President.

23 [Interpretation] Witness, I should like to ask you a few very

24 brief questions. I need some clarification. First of all, I refer to

25 what you wrote in your report on page 40. The title is "Deputies' Club."

1 Do you follow?

2 A. Yes, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] You wrote the following: "[In

4 English] "Karadzic once --" [Interpretation] No, I'm sorry.

5 [In English] [Previous translation continues] "... was of course

6 a member of the Deputies' Club and its doyen." Then, further, you said

7 that "Mr. Maksimovic was the chairman of the Deputies' Club."

8 A. Yes, I see that, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] So my question in relation to

10 that is: What exactly do you mean by "doyen"?

11 A. Your Honour, that is a reference to the fact that Mr. Krajisnik

12 would have been the senior deputy in the club from the point of view of

13 the position that he occupied in the Assembly. Various deputies in the

14 Assembly including deputies of the SDS were elected to be chairman and

15 vice chairman of various commissions, presidents of the individual or

16 vice-presidents of the individual chambers. So there were various

17 offices within the Assembly as a body, and he occupied the highest office

18 in the Assembly. So that is what is being referred to there, as opposed

19 to Mr. Maksimovic, who within the structure of the Assembly did not

20 occupy as high as position as Mr. Krajisnik but was the president of the

21 Deputies' Club. Which is not to say that ordinarily the president of the

22 Deputies' Club would have been the Speaker or the president of the

23 Assembly. But that's the reference to the fact that Mr. Krajisnik was

24 the senior official who was a member in that club.

25 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] Yes, that's precisely my

1 question. Because you say, and rightly so, that Mr. Krajisnik was the

2 president of the Assembly, and in a certain sense he was the doyen of the

3 deputies. However, within the Deputies' Club it was not him who was

4 elected president but someone else. So I don't see which role is played

5 by the president of the Deputies' Club, despite the fact that -- that is,

6 I have an impression that the club did indeed play a rather important

7 role.

8 A. The role of the president of the Deputies' Club I believe is

9 the -- your concern here. Each party represented in the Assembly had a

10 Deputies' Club. The clubs were recognised within the rules of procedure

11 of the Assembly. They were allocated offices, that type of thing, to

12 have meetings, at which they would determine the position of their party

13 group within the Assembly - the club is the name they called them - when

14 it came to particular legislative issues. How are we going to vote on

15 this issue? So they would have meetings and have discussions.

16 The person chairing those sessions, and we do have records of

17 some of those sessions, is the president of club. So we see Dr. -- or

18 Mr. Maksimovic chairing meetings of the Deputies' Club and being the

19 president of the club and having to chair those sessions undoubtedly

20 entailed quite a bit of extra work for Mr. Maksimovic, aside from his

21 other duties as a deputy. And I'm not sure whether he was also a member

22 or a chairman of any of the Assembly commissions or committees. But

23 presumably it was an amount of work that the club, and perhaps

24 Mr. Krajisnik, felt that could not easily be combined with

25 Mr. Krajisnik's duties as president of the Assembly, which also

1 undoubtedly took up quite a bit of time.

2 So I think that it was probably not unusual that whichever

3 Deputies' Club the presidents of the Assembly was a member of - and let's

4 remember that this was the first multiparty assembly in BH - would not

5 have been a part of the club because there would have been too much work

6 involved in occupying the two positions.

7 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] Do I understand correctly that

8 Mr. Krajisnik did not play a role which would have been important within

9 the Deputies' Club?

10 A. Well, he certainly participated in discussions in the Deputies'

11 Club. And the only thing that we know the Deputies' Club really did,

12 based on the documents we have, is have meetings and discuss their

13 position on various issues. And it was certainly open to Mr. Krajisnik

14 to participant in those discussions, and I believe he did, as reflected

15 in documents which have been used in the course of my presentation.

16 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] Thank you. Let me move on to

17 another question which has to do with what you say in your report on

18 page 48, line 2, and I quote: "[In English] It is likely that some

19 informal group or body within the top SDS leadership had determined," and

20 so on.

21 [Interpretation] So my question in relation to that is as

22 follows: When you composed your report, did you want to say that his

23 instructions were formulated at the Presidency of the SDS, at the

24 Presidency of the party, be it via a formal organ or an informal body?

25 Or does that open up a possibility that it was a completely different

1 body, an informal body, which was not necessarily integrated into what

2 you termed as "the leadership of the SDS"?

3 A. Well, the SDS had a single president. There was no collective

4 Presidency. There was one president; that was Dr. Karadzic. Did he

5 write the document? I don't know. But it would certainly appear that he

6 knew of the existence of the document and its contents at the latest by

7 the 18th or 19th of December, those being the dates of the telephone

8 conversations, if the dates are correct, with Mr. Djogo and Mr. Novakovic

9 that I referred to, in which he makes reference to -- appears to make

10 reference to the contents of the document.

11 So he was apparently aware of the preparation of the document and

12 aware of the fact that it was going to be distributed -- well, that --

13 that on the 20th - I think it's fair to say on the basis of those

14 conversations - that that document would be distributed and that that was

15 a very important meeting that he had to attend. Mr. Djogo had wanted him

16 to go elsewhere on that day, but he had so say, no, that I'm going to an

17 important meeting.

18 So it appears that Dr. Karadzic was privy to that document by

19 that point. Again, whether he drafted it, whether he asked someone else

20 to draft it, we just don't know. The only thing that we do know is we

21 cannot find any trace of the discussion and adoption of that document

22 within the minutes or records of such meetings of formal SDS organs as we

23 have. It appears to me quite likely that Dr. Karadzic asked some group

24 of, as is put here, informal group of probably what he regarded as

25 experts to draft the document for him in order to meet certain

1 contingencies which he foresaw may arise.

2 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] I apologise, but my question is

3 more simple than that. I wonder what your intention was when you wrote

4 the following sentence: "[In English] [Previous translation continues]

5 ... Group or body within the top SDS leadership."

6 [Interpretation] Because you explained already to us what your

7 point of view was when it comes to the term "leadership." You also

8 quoted -- you identified a number of individuals whom you thought

9 belonged to the leadership group. When you wrote your report, what did

10 you have in mind? Did you have in mind those same individuals who are

11 identified in your report at several places as being the formal

12 leadership of a party?

13 A. I think I see your point now, Your Honour. I believe that when

14 we wrote that we had in mind some group of individuals from among those

15 whom we knew that Dr. Karadzic was accustomed to consulting; that is,

16 members of the Main Board or the Executive Board or maybe even the party

17 council, some group composed of individuals from those party organs.

18 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] Very well. Thank you. And my

19 last question is actually a clarification. On several occasions you

20 referred to the aspect of conspiracy of the party, and you mentioned the

21 fact that there were two systems within the party, one that was declared

22 public and the other one which was secret, so to speak. Did you base

23 your conclusions on the fact that -- on the sole fact that some of the

24 individuals were given codes, name codes, in order not to reveal their

25 identity during their conversations? Was it only on the basis of that

1 fact that you drew the conclusion that the party actually had and applied

2 a method of conspiracy, so to speak? Because if I understand correctly

3 your testimony - and let me perhaps clarify my question - the policy and

4 the objective of -- the objectives of the party were publicly declared,

5 and I don't see there any aspect of conspiracy, apart from the fact that

6 it was at one point decided that certain individuals would be given code

7 names, which turned out to be useful because their conversations were

8 intercepted.

9 A. The -- the idea of the two tracks emerges from the documents from

10 early September 1991, which I used in my presentation, which uses

11 precisely that type of language, that the party should act on two tracks,

12 one public and one conspiratorial.

13 By its nature, conspiratorial activity is secret and seeks not to

14 leave behind any traces, certainly any documentary traces. I linked the

15 code issue with that as one possible manifestation of that type of

16 activity, and I think in the course of our discussion today, if not

17 earlier, I have linked the Variant A and B document with that type of

18 activity.

19 JUDGE EL MAHDI: [Interpretation] Thank you very much.

20 [In English] Thank you, Mr. President.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Treanor, I also have a question to you. I'll

22 read to you the last line of the letter that has just been tendered into

23 evidence under number D9. It reads: "The Main Board, as well as any

24 other SDS body never considered or instructed the organisation and

25 activation of Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina at its sessions. We

1 were informed that such instructions were given by a certain number of

2 retired officers of the former Yugoslav People's Army."

3 Is there any documentary evidence that any SDS body, either

4 during sessions, which I understand to be formal sessions, or outside of

5 such sessions, ever considered the organisation - I'm not yet talking

6 about the activation - the organisation of Serb people in Bosnia and

7 Herzegovina?

8 What I'm seeking is this is a, I would say, very broad denial

9 that goes, I would say, far beyond the Variant A and B document, and I

10 ask you to tell us whether in the documents you've studied you find

11 anything that would be inconsistent with this very broad denial of the

12 Main Board or any other SDS body never considered or instructed the

13 organisation and activation of Serb people.

14 A. Well, Your Honour, that is quite broad. I think that I have

15 presented documents in the course of my testimony which would indicate

16 that various SDS organs considered issues which could be considered --

17 which could be classified under that heading. For instance, the

18 establishment of the Assembly of the Serbian People was considered at

19 party meetings prior to the establishment of that Assembly. We've also

20 seen documents related to a Main Board meeting, an Executive Board

21 meeting in, I believe, late November, at which they considered various

22 issues which they recommended to the Assembly for adoption which could be

23 classified under that heading.

24 I would also remark that -- or remind the Court that as far as

25 I'm aware, the SDS lost its pre-April 1992 archive when they evacuated

1 Sarajevo. We have many documents from that archive which we referred to,

2 as I mentioned yesterday, as Cabinet B of the Sarajevo collection.

3 Whether that represents the entire archive as it may have existed at one

4 point in time, I don't know, but the point is that it is not now

5 available to the SDS, so that they would be in a rather poor position to

6 respond to that type of inquiry, except perhaps by consulting surviving

7 members of those bodies and asking them whether any -- what types of

8 matters were considered. But they would not have an archive to consult

9 to determine what they did during that period, because basically we have

10 the archive.

11 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. My next question is that the letter says that

12 "We were informed that such instructions were given by retired officers

13 of the JNA." Did you ever ask for the source of this information?

14 A. I can't say that we did, Your Honour. We may have, but I don't

15 know that.

16 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Is there any other source that would support

17 the retired officers of the former Yugoslav People's Army as, I would

18 say, the driving force behind giving instructions? I'm not saying

19 whether there were any army officers involved, but here it's mainly put

20 on the plate of the army's officers rather than anyone else. Is there

21 any support for the existence of such a group or for these army or

22 retired officers to be the driving force behind this activity or perhaps

23 other activities?

24 A. I'm not aware that there is, Your Honour.

25 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then finally, you have made no reference to

1 this letter in your report, did you?

2 A. No.

3 JUDGE ORIE: This report -- this letter at least gives, well, let

4 me say, a different version of what happened and where you specifically

5 dealt with the question of who distributed any instructions, could you

6 tell us why you did not, if it were only in a footnote, to give us this

7 different version of who's responsible for the adoption perhaps and

8 distribution of these A and B -- the Variant A and B document; although

9 it doesn't say specifically that, but that's the tendency, I would say,

10 of this answer.

11 A. Well, that's an interesting question, Your Honour. I'm not sure

12 whether we even considered that. We may have. But if we did, and the

13 same -- and we didn't use it, it's the same reason why we didn't consider

14 it. We were writing our report on the basis of contemporaneous

15 documentation, that is, documents produced during the period of the

16 conflicts and primarily documents produced at the time of the events,

17 that is, the records of the Assembly session that had just taken place,

18 that sort of thing. Using a document that was produced far after the end

19 of the conflicts is not something that I would ordinarily even think of

20 doing.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Although it is directly related to contemporaneous

22 documents, contemporaneous to the conflict.

23 A. Well, it -- well, yes, I mean, it relates to this document.

24 That's true.

25 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Because sometimes if there's unclarity -- if

1 something is unclear, you point at that and say this is not entirely

2 clear, that's not entirely clear. Would the existence of this letter not

3 have urged you to adopt one or two lines saying, "Well, although a

4 different explanation has been given --" because you make inferences.

5 There's no signature. There's a relatively unknown group of people or

6 organ or whatever you'd call it which raises some questions, and here's a

7 -- at least a -- another explanation for the vagueness, I would say, of

8 the document. Would it not have been proper to include that in your

9 report?

10 A. Well, obviously I could have included anything, and if Your

11 Honour feels it should have been included, I take your point, and we can

12 use that in the future. As I say, the frame of reference that I was

13 operating in was to use the contemporaneous documentation. We didn't go

14 to other sources of post-conflict information, such as memoirs, press

15 articles, interviews, that type of thing that took place after the end of

16 the conflict. So it was a rather mechanical cutoff from that point of

17 view. But again, if Your Honour feels it is appropriate --

18 JUDGE ORIE: Of course the question was whether you found it

19 appropriate or not, and, of course, this question suggests that at least

20 by the question of appropriateness, so -- to have the question reflected

21 to myself, whether I find it appropriate, is -- I asked you. Of course,

22 the question is about independence, and you'll understand that that's the

23 background of my question.

24 Do the questions raised -- put by the Bench raise any need to

25 further examination, direct examination or any further cross?

1 MR. TIEGER: No, Your Honour.

2 MR. STEWART: No, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

4 [Trial Chamber confers]

5 JUDGE ORIE: Then, Madam Registrar, I am not quite sure whether

6 we've taken decisions already on all documents tendered into evidence,

7 although they have been numbered. Could you please list them so that we

8 can -- perhaps first of all, we have to deal with the great number of the

9 19th of December, the instructions documents. I see that we have both

10 B/C/S versions and English translations, and some of them have no

11 translation and some of them have only in English. Would it -- did you

12 give them any sub-numbers, or do you suggest to give them any

13 sub-numbers, Madam Registrar?

14 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

15 JUDGE ORIE: What would the Defence like to do with them? I

16 mean, some -- there was testimony about these documents, so to that

17 extent of course it's not a very substantive issue -- finally, not to be

18 a very substantive matter. But I think it would be better to have them

19 in evidence.

20 MR. STEWART: Yes.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. And would you consider them to be one bundle

22 or all different? Perhaps we --

23 MR. STEWART: We'd say one bundle, Your Honour. Yes.

24 JUDGE ORIE: One bundle.

25 But then, of course, we'd have to -- then I suggest the

1 following: That we categorise them by their ERN numbers, that we have a

2 bundle containing and then ERN number so and so, so that there's no

3 confusion about what's in the bundle, especially about whether it's

4 translations, originals, handwritten, cover pages, whatever. I suggest

5 that we do it that way. But then this is not probably the appropriate

6 time to prepare for that and take a final decision, but then perhaps on

7 all the documents at the start next Monday morning, if that would be

8 agreeable.

9 MR. STEWART: That's entirely acceptable, Your Honour. Yes.

10 JUDGE ORIE: Then is there anything further on the agenda?

11 MR. STEWART: Oh, Your Honour, yes, the Prosecution very -- the

12 Prosecution very helpfully overnight had produced for us various

13 printouts of the Cutilheiro Plan. Yes. They gave them to us this

14 morning, since we didn't actually see them in the middle of the night.

15 There are quite a few. They require some sorting out and checking, Your

16 Honour. May we deal with that over the weekend as well?

17 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I then suggest that you take the best versions

18 of the Cutilheiro Plan which do not -- which are not inconsistent with

19 the ones we saw.

20 MR. STEWART: Yes.

21 JUDGE ORIE: And then if you tender them into evidence. But you

22 should check that we're really talking about from the content the same

23 document as we've seen. Otherwise, of course, you would first have to

24 ask Mr. Treanor whether the Lisbon and the Sarajevo and then perhaps

25 other versions would exist and whether -- what that would mean. Perhaps

1 you could check that with the Prosecution and see whether you agree that

2 we are, from the content, speaking of the same documents and then tender

3 them into evidence.

4 This is not necessarily done right away at 9.00 in the morning

5 next Monday.

6 I further indicate - but that's also in order not to - that the

7 parties will meet for practical matters in this case this afternoon and

8 that the Bench is involved in that communication as well, just in order

9 to avoid whatever impression of secret meetings.

10 Then we adjourn until Monday, the 19th of April in Courtroom II

11 at 9.00, but not Mr. Treanor, after having thanked you for giving your

12 many, many days' evidence, having answered questions of both parties and

13 from the Bench. Very often I have to thank someone also for travelling a

14 long way, but I'll not do that in your case.

15 We are adjourned until next Monday.

16 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.50 p.m.,

17 to be reconvened on Monday, the 19th day of

18 April, 2004, at 9.00 a.m.

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