Tribunal Update No. 463

[Institute for War & Peace Reporting]

WELCOME TO IWPR'S TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 463, August 11, 2006

WAR, CRIMES AND VIDEOTAPES  A series of videos of apparent war crimes against 
Serbs stir controversy across former Yugoslavia.  By Merdijana Sadovic in 
Sarajevo (TU No 463, 11-Aug-06)

BRIEFLY NOTED

BOTH SIDES TO APPEAL ORIC JUDGMENT

SERBIA PROBES MURDER OF 700 MUSLIMS

FORMER KARADZIC ALLY IN SARAJEVO TRIAL

KOSOVO SIX TRIAL RESUMES

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WAR, CRIMES AND VIDEOTAPES

A series of videos of apparent war crimes against Serbs stir controversy across 
former Yugoslavia.

By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo

Videos aired this week showing abuses against Serbs in 1995 have triggered 
angry reaction in the region and sparked debate on whether broadcasting 
possible war crimes on national television is the best way to serve justice.

While most analysts agree that such videotapes coming to light is a positive 
development, they also warn against local authorities using them for political 
gain - manipulating the situation by releasing only what they see fit and when 
it suits them.

It is hardly a coincidence that the first in this series of videos was 
broadcast in Serbia on the eleventh anniversary of Operation Storm - a large 
scale operation carried out by the Croatian army in conjunction with Bosnian 
Muslim forces to recapture the Serb-held Krajina region in August 1995.

It was the Croatian army's most successful military operation during their 
1991-1995 war with Serb forces. Hundreds of ethnic Serbs were killed during the 
offensive, which also forced about  200,000 to flee Croatia, mostly into Bosnia 
and Serbia. Although it officially lasted only four days, smaller operations 
continued until November of that same year.

One of the videos released this week shows members of the Croatian army's Black 
Mamba unit harassing Serb refugees attempting to flee Krajina. Bosnian Muslim 
soldiers, members of the Fifth Corps' special squad Hamze, are seen apparently 
shooting dead a Serb man who had surrendered and was sitting down with raised 
hands. 

This videotape - like the others - was broadcast on Serbian, Bosnian and 
Croatian television.

In Croatia, authorities reacted angrily, accusing the Serb media of 
deliberately choosing the date of the anniversary of Operation Storm in order 
"to spoil their celebrations". They denied Croatian soldiers were involved in 
the killings, placing all the blame on Bosnian soldiers.

Serbia's B92 was one of the stations that showed the disturbing images. Ljubica 
Gojgic, a B92 reporter who regularly covers war crimes cases, dismissed the 
Croatian government's accusations that the channel got the video two months ago 
but waited until the anniversary to broadcast it.

"That's not true," she said. "We received this tape from what we think is a 
credible source just a few days before we aired it." 

But she agrees the date it was delivered to B92  was probably chosen on 
purpose. 

"I'm not surprised we got this tape now, because our source knew the 
anniversary was the time when this footage would receive the most attention," 
said Gojgoc. She added that the infamous Scorpions video showing the abuse and 
killing of six Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in July 1995 came to public 
attention in June last year, shortly before the tenth anniversary of the 
Srebrenica massacre.

Just days after the first videotape came to light, a second explosive video was 
also aired on Serbia's state-run television.

It was apparently recorded in Bosnian Krajina in September 1995 during the 
Bosnian army operation to take control over Serb-held towns in the north-west. 
The Bosnian army's Fifth Corps carried out the attacks, led by former Muslim 
general Atif Dudakovic, with the help of Croatian forces.

In this video, Dudakovic apparently orders his troops to burn down Serb 
villages in the area of the operation. "Burn them all," he allegedly said.

The Serbian government has accused Dudakovic of  war crimes and has demanded 
his immediate arrest.  

Dudakovic, now retired, was widely regarded among Bosnian Muslims as one of the 
best and most capable wartime commanders. Bosnian forces under his command 
managed to regain control over the western Bosnian towns of Sanski Most and 
Mrkonjic Grad in autumn 1995 - one of the biggest Bosnian successes in the 
1992-95 war.

Until now he hadn't been implicated in any war crimes. He told Bosnian 
television on August 8 that he did not violate the Geneva conventions and 
received no reports about any of his soldiers that did.

"I can say with full moral responsibility that members of the Fifth Corps did 
not commit crimes. There may have been individual cases but only individual," 
he said.

A third video broadcast on Croatia and Bosnian television on the same day as 
the one purporting to show Dudakovic was the most shocking of all the 
videotapes which surfaced this week.

Although it's not new - Gojgic said B92 aired it several years ago - it was 
nonetheless shocking, showing members of the Hamze unit as they brutalised a 
captured Serb soldier in September 1995. His body was filmed seconds later - 
dead with a cut throat. Muslim soldiers are also seen torturing a Serb 
civilian, who was then tied to a tractor and pulled around until he died.

Bosnian media have reported that the commander of this unit - which was 
apparently under the Fifth Corps and Dudakovic - was a foreign fighter Tarik El 
Harbi, who left Bosnia in 2001.

Many in the region are questioning why these videos  - with potentially crucial 
evidence of war crimes - are emerging only now, more than a decade after the 
war. They are also asking why those who have this footage prefer to give it to 
the media rather then to the judiciary.

The head of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre Natasa Kandic,  who 
discovered  the Scorpions video a year ago,  told IWPR there are several 
reasons why these videotapes have been kept in private archives for so long. 

"Those who recorded war crimes are usually those who also participated in those 
atrocities, so if they are still in possession of those tapes, they'll be very 
careful not to give them to the wrong person," said Kandic.

She speculated that those who have these recordings may use them to blackmail 
people on the video or try to sell them on the black market. Sometimes they use 
this material to make a deal with the prosecutors. When all that fails, she 
says, they turn it over to the authorities or to the media.      

Gojgic believes there are "many more similar tapes out there".

"It's fascinating how some people enjoy recording themselves as  they carry out 
terrible  crimes, just as they enjoy watching that video later on private 
parties and boasting to their friends about it," she said.

The head of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Banja Luka, Branko 
Todorovic, agrees. 

"Over the next several years, we will be seeing more and more evidence of war 
crimes committed during the wars in the 1990s, and it will often be shocking," 
he said.

While he recognises that local authorities and political parties in Bosnia may 
try to use this latest series of videotapes to manipulate the public and 
strengthen their own positions in the general elections scheduled for October 
this year, he says it is important that the videos continue to appear, 
regardless of the repercussions. 

"The key question here is how the public will react to what they see on these 
tapes and whether they'll be able to distance themselves from the perpetrators 
of those crimes," he said. 

He also believes that to accept the truth, sometimes we all need a little push, 
"We will have to face the truth about war crimes sooner or later, so the sooner 
it happens, the better for all of us." 

But the director of Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center Mirsad 
Tokaca disagrees. He thinks airing videotapes showing war crimes only degrades 
the victims.

"If those who distribute these tapes to the media cared about the victims as 
they claim they do, they would give them as an important potential evidence to 
the prosecutors and would demand investigation into those crimes. This way, 
they use this material for their own purposes, releasing it only when it suits 
them," said Tokaca.

B92's Gojgic told IWPR it is rumoured that Bosnian Serb police had these 
videotapes for quite some time and probably have more at their disposal.  That 
infuriates Milan Ivancevic, head of the Association of Killed and Missing 
Soldiers and Civilians of Republika Srspksa, RS.   

"I am angry as a man and as a Serb that they waited until now  to reveal them," 
said Ivancevic in an interview with Bosnian Serb television. "If they wanted 
them to be used as evidence, why didn't they do something before?"      

Observers  say the zeal with which Republika Srpska and Serbia's authorities 
demanded arrests of unindicted Bosnian Muslim commanders is in sharp contrast 
with their own unwillingness to arrest a number of indicted Serb officials. 
They include RS military and political wartime leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan 
Karadzic.

The irony of the situation was not lost on a Muslim member of Bosnia's joint 
presidency Sulejman Tihic.

"If they are truly committed to processing war criminals, let them prove so by 
arresting  Karadzic and  Mladic, because they have been hiding and financing 
them for 11 years," said Tihic in a statement issued on August 9.

Tihic is running for the presidency in Bosnia's  general elections set for 
October. 

Serbian deputy prosecutor for war crimes Dragoljub Stankovic went to The Hague 
earlier this week to personally deliver some of the Operation Storm videotapes 
to prosecutors. The tribunal, however, will not be able to make much use of 
them. All its investigations ended in 2004, and its prosecutors cannot launch 
new investigations or issue new indictments. They cannot even use this material 
in the ongoing or pending trials. That means local prosecutors will have to do 
all the work and under difficult circumstances.

"It's much easier for the prosecutors to do their job without political 
pressure and pressure from the public," said the spokesman for the tribunal's 
prosecutor Anton Nikiforov. "Politicians have already been too much involved in 
this case."

It was in response to that pressure that war crimes prosecutors from Bosnia, 
Croatia and Serbia met in Zagreb on August 10 to discuss what they should do 
about the Operation Storm footage. In the statement issued the same day, they 
said they exchanged all information they had on this case and confirmed their 
determination to cooperate.

"This is a very positive outcome," said Nikiforov. "This meeting is the best 
example that these three countries can work together on processing war crimes." 
        

Meanwhile, television viewers in the region await the next videotape. Sead 
Numanovic, a reporter for the Srajevo daily Avaz, also expects to see more 
videos in the coming months, showing gruesome details of war crimes committed 
by various people. 

"There is a new war going on - a war with video tapes - and the only ones who 
will lose for sure are the victims," he said.

Merdijana Sadovic is manager of IWPR's Hague tribunal programme.


BRIEFLY NOTED

BOTH SIDES TO APPEAL ORIC JUDGMENT

The prosecution and defense teams on July 31 filed notices of appeal against a 
two-year sentence given to Srebrenica wartime commander Naser Oric.

Prosecutors had originally called for 18 years, while the defense had asked for 
an acquittal saying he hadn't committed any crime.     

Oric was charged with wanton destruction of Serb villages around Srebrenica in 
1992 and 1993, and for murders and cruel treatment of Serb detainees in the 
town's prison during the same period.

On June 30, the trial chamber found him guilty of failing to prevent men under 
his command killing and mistreating Serb prisoners. He was freed immediately, 
because he had already served more than two years in prison.

Both sides will submit formal appeals in the next couple of months.


SERBIA PROBES MURDER OF 700 MUSLIMS

Serbia's war crimes prosecutor has opened an investigation into the murders of 
hundreds of Muslim civilians allegedly committed by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries 
under the command of Branko Grujic and Branko Popovic in eastern Bosnia in 1992.

Grujic, 62, and Popovic, 57, have already been detained in Serbia, where they 
are on trial along with five others for allegedly killing at least 19 Bosnian 
Muslim civilians and expelling more than 1,800 others from the eastern Bosnian 
town of Zvornik at the beginning of the war.

Grujic was mayor of Zvornik at the time, while Popovic was the commander of 
local territorial defence units.

Prosecutor's spokesman Bruno Vekaric said 20 of the 700 Muslims died of 
suffocation when they were put into a crowded room where the heating was put on 
maximum. The prosecutor alleges that bodies of the victims were buried in 
various locations in an attempt to cover up the crime. About 200 have been 
exhumed from mass graves so far.


FORMER KARADZIC ALLY IN SARAJEVO TRIAL

Wartime Bosnian Serb justice minister Momcilo Mandic has gone on trial at the 
Bosnian state court in Sarajevo. 

Mandic - who was three years ago publicly accused by the United States of 
directing ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war and helping war crimes 
indictee Radovan Karadzic escape justice - is accused of "planning, initiating, 
ordering, committing and inciting" the inhumane treatment of non-Serb civilians 
in 1992.

He and other alleged Karadzic supporters are also charged with funding the 
Hague tribunal's most wanted fugitive Radovan Karadzic through a series of 
illegal financial schemes. Karadzic has been on the run for years.

The case against him begins with prosecutors trying to prove the charges 
relating to organised crime, which will then be followed by evidence of his 
alleged involvement in war crimes.

Mandic has pleaded not guilty to all charges.


KOSOVO SIX TRIAL RESUMES

The trial of six senior Serbian and Yugoslav officials charged with 
responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic 
Albanians from their homes in Kosovo in 1999 resumed this week after the 
tribunal's three-week summer break.

The six defendants include three generals from the Serbian police and the 
Yugoslav army, VJ, who were indicted in 2003 - Sreten Lukic, Nebojsa Pavkovic 
and Vladimir Lazarevic. They are standing trial alongside three others who were 
charged in 2001 - the former chief of staff Dragoljub Ojdanic, the former 
Serbian president Milan Milutinovic and the former deputy prime minister of 
Yugoslavia Nikola Sainovic.

They all face four counts of crimes against humanity and one of violations of 
the laws and customs of war in connection with mass expulsions and massacres 
allegedly committed by forces under their control between January and June 1999.

According to the indictment, as many as 800,000 Albanians were expelled from 
their homes during that period.

This week prosecutors brought to court Kosovo Albanians who spoke about crimes 
they had witnessed in the villages around the town of Djakovica. 

They refuted the defense claims that the Albanians had fled Kosovo because of 
NATO air strikes, and that the Albanian men who were killed had mostly been 
members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA. 

They insisted that the Albanians were expelled by Serbs, not NATO, and that the 
villagers were further humiliated by being forced to cheer "Serbia, Serbia", 
before being forced out.

The trial continues next week.   


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TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 463