Page 2482
1 Thursday, 17 January 2008
2 [Open session]
3 [The witness entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 8.32 a.m.
5 [The accused entered court]
6 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Registrar, could you please call
7 the case.
8 THE REGISTRAR: Thank you and good morning, Your Honours. This is
9 case number IT-03-67-T, the Prosecutor versus Vojislav Seselj.
10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. Registrar.
11 This is Thursday, January 17, 2008, and I welcome Mrs. Dahl, the
12 witness, Mr. Seselj, and everyone helping us around the courtroom. I will
13 now give an oral decision.
14 Oral decision on lifting the confidentiality of the transcript of
15 January 15, 2008. Noting the verbal request of the accused of January
16 15th, 2008 in order to lift the confidentiality of the excerpts of the
17 transcript on page 2306, line 5 to 21 for the French transcript, noting
18 that this excerpt deals with the existence of a motion submitted by the
19 accused on December 11, 2007, and filed by the registrar as document 359,
20 confidential document, noting that the content of this document number 359
21 must continue to be confidential since the name of witnesses being --
22 having been granted protective measures are mentioned, but since this
23 submission 359 may be made public, as well as what was said during the
24 hearing and which is on the transcript on page 2306, line 5 to 21, for
25 these reasons, according to Rule -- to Article 20 of the Statute and Rule
Page 2483
1 54 and 75 of the regulation grants the oral submission of the accused and
2 makes public lines 5 to 21 of page 2306 of the French transcript dated
3 January 15, 2008.
4 Very well. Mrs. Dahl, you now have the floor to finish off your
5 examination-in-chief.
6 WITNESS: GORAN STOPARIC [Resumed]
7 [Witness answered through interpreter]
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I say something before that?
9 Before the examination-in-chief starts, I have four brief requests.
10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Please go ahead quickly.
11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I ask the Trial Chamber to look at
12 the possibility of the first 40 minutes of yesterday's hearing be made
13 public. In my view, there is not a single reason why that part of the
14 session should remain inaccessible to the public.
15 Furthermore, during the course of the day, perhaps up until the
16 first break, we should receive the text of the SMS messages that had been
17 received. Before you rule on this, I'm not going to say what it is
18 actually but we all understand what this is all about.
19 Two more requests unrelated to that but they have to do with our
20 work afterwards. The Prosecution requested to include Witness VS-046
21 [as interpreted] on its list of confidential witnesses.
22 THE INTERPRETER: 44, interpreter's correction.
23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] They had them on their list
24 previously and they gave up on them.
25 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Just a minute. There must have
Page 2484
1 been a mistake you said VS-044 and here on the transcript it says VS-046
2 so you were --
3 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's note, we corrected it.
4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] 46, right?
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] 44 [as interpreted], yes. In the
6 meantime, the man established contact with my legal advisors and agreed to
7 be a Defence counsel and after that Ms. Dahl looked for him, went to his
8 home and asked that he be a Prosecution witness which he categorically
9 refused. He made a statement before the court in Belgrade, before the
10 police and sent her a letter to that effect.
11 Fourthly, very importantly, it would be very important that I
12 receive the text of the judgement in the case of the Vukovar troika before
13 the next witness is heard who is going to speak about Vukovar. It's not
14 indispensable for cross-examining this witness, but it's going to be very
15 important for the next witness. So could you please intervene with the
16 Registry to have this brought to an end as soon as possible. I haven't
17 received a copy yet, and you will understand why that judgement is so very
18 important for me.
19 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. You have made these
20 four submissions, and the Trial Chamber will look into that.
21 Regarding the fourth request on the Vukovar judgement, I'm sure
22 that you're talking about the judgement made by this Tribunal in the Mrkic
23 case.
24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, that's right.
25 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Obviously that's the one. This
Page 2485
1 trial judgement was rendered in English. I think it's more than 300 pages
2 long. I know of a previous judgement which I rendered and it was in
3 French and it was 800 pages long and the translation service took about a
4 year to translate those 800 pages. So if this trial judgement is to be
5 translated into your judgement in your own -- in your own language and
6 if -- since it's probably very long it will probably take some time, but
7 I'm sure that a number of your associates speak and understand English,
8 and they can probably identify in the judgement the excerpts that are of
9 specific relevance to you. Then just tell us then what pages you want
10 translated first.
11 You know that in a trial judgement you have very general
12 paragraphs but also paragraphs that are very relevant to you. So your
13 associates just have to check and see what paragraphs are relevant to your
14 case and then we will press the translation services to make sure that
15 they translate these first and we get them quickly. This is a possibility
16 that you should look into, because asking the translation service to
17 translate these 300 pages in your own language is not going to be
18 possible. It's just -- I know the answer, you know, without having to ask
19 it.
20 The legal officer will check where we stand in terms of this
21 translation, and we'll try and find a solution.
22 As to the three other items, the three other motions, we'll see
23 Witness 44, the problem of the SMSs, and the question of the 41st pages.
24 Very well.
25 Mrs. Dahl, you have the floor.
Page 2486
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] [no interpretation].
2 MS. DAHL: Thank you, Your Honour.
3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj once more.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, you know that not a
5 single one of my legal associates speaks the English or the French
6 language. When we check the transcripts, and I already told you that we
7 did that, with the transcripts in one session we engaged and paid a
8 professional translator to do this for us. To pay a professional
9 translator for a 300-page-long judgement is too expensive. We don't have
10 that kind of money. My debt is already too big and the Registry has to
11 translate this one way or the other into the Serbian language and their
12 translation is the official one. Why should this be done twice if the
13 Registry has to have this translated into Serbian one way or the other.
14 This is just a question of priority in translation.
15 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. We'll take what you
16 just said into account while we look into this.
17 Mrs. Dahl, you have the floor.
18 MS. DAHL: Thank you, Your Honour. We need to go into private
19 session to address a matter.
20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Partial hearing.
21 [Private session]
22 (redacted)
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3 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 10.07 a.m.,
4 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 22nd day
5 of January, 2008, at 2.45 p.m.
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