WELCOME TO IWPRS TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 545, April 4, 2008 SERBIAN ANGER AT HARADINAJ ACQUITTAL Not-guilty verdict in case against former Kosovo premier provokes storm in Serbia. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo and Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade
COMMENT: ICTY ARCHIVE MUST BE OPEN TO ALL Political leaders should seek full and open access to tribunal archive rather than debate its final resting place. By Robert Donia in Michigan and Edina Becirevic in Sarajevo SIX CROATIANS INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES Human rights groups say better late than never, but veterans associations maintain no crimes were committed. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb ARGUMENTS HEARD AGAINST ORIC JUDGMENT Prosecutors say two-year sentence for former Bosnian army commander is inadequate, while defence demand acquittal. By Simon Jennings in The Hague SESELJ CONTROLLED SRS VOLUNTEERS Witness also says he recalls hearing defendant order them to fight in Srebrenica. By Denis Dzidic in Sarajevo **** IWPR RESOURCES ****************************************************************** NEW PUBLICATION: SYRIA PRESS MONITOR To find out more or subscribe to RSS feed please go to: http://iwpr.net/syriapressmonitor.html SAHAR JOURNALISTS ASSISTANCE FUND To find out more or donate please go to: http://www.iwpr.net/sahar.html COALITION FOR INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE (CIJ) TRIAL REPORTS ARCHIVE Milosevic and other ICTY Trial Reports as well as Sierra Leone Reports are now available at <http://iwpr.net/?apc_state=hen&s=c> NOW AVAILABLE IN FRENCH: Reporting Justice: A Handbook on Covering War Crimes Courts. 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By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo and Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade Hague tribunal judges this week acquitted Kosovos ex-prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and his co-accused Idriz Balaj of all charges in their indictment which alleged they were responsible for war crimes committed in Kosovo between March and September 1998. The third accused, Lahi Brahimaj, was found guilty of cruel treatment and torture and sentenced to six years in prison. The three former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA were charged with violations of laws or customs of war, including murder, torture, rape and cruel treatment of Serb civilians and the mistreatment of other civilians perceived to be collaborating with Serbian forces or otherwise not supporting the KLA. When presiding judge Alphons Orie read the trial chambers decision, the public gallery which was packed with people, exploded with loud cheers, after which Orie had to intervene and demand silence in the courtroom. Not surprisingly, the judgment caused a furor in Serbia, where one official said the verdict shows that this court does not exist to mete justice", and will not encourage Serbs and other non-Albanians to expect a safe and peaceful life in Kosovo in the future. Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj faced charges of participation in a joint criminal enterprise, the aim of which was to consolidate the KLAs total control over Dukagjin area in north-western Kosovo. However, the trial chamber found that based on evidence presented, it was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that there was a joint criminal enterprise with the objective of targeting the civilians, [and] therefore the three accused could not have participated in it. At the time relevant to the indictment, Haradinaj was a commander of the KLA in the Dukagjin area; Balaj was in charge of the Black Eagles Unit within the KLA; and Brahimaj was a KLA member stationed in the forces Jablanica headquarters in the Djakovica municipality. The three accused were also acquitted of all counts alleging crimes against humanity. Evidence presented by the prosecution did not always allow the chamber to conclude whether a crime was committed or whether the KLA was involved as alleged, Judge Orie said on April 3. The evidence on some of the other counts indicates that the victims may have been targeted primarily for reasons pertaining to them individually rather than as members of the targeted civilian population, the judges found. They also ruled that the ill-treatment, forcible transfer and killing of Serb and Roma civilians as well as Kosovo Albanian civilians was not on a scale of frequency that would allow for a conclusion that there was an attack against a civilian population. However, Judge Orie highlighted the significant difficulties encountered by the trial chamber in securing testimony of a large number of witnesses. Out of 100 prosecution witnesses whose evidence was received, 34 were granted protective measures and 18 issued with subpoenas. The chamber gained a strong impression that the trial was being held in an atmosphere where witnesses felt unsafe, he said reading the verdict. Since the trial began in March last year, prosecutors contended that witness intimidation was a major stumbling block to the proceedings. In her opening brief at the start of the trial, then chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said that prosecutors [would] not have an easy task in proving the charges against the three. She added that witness intimidation was a major obstacle in this case, and had left many reluctant to come and testify. After reading the verdict, the trial chamber ordered the immediate release of Haradinaj and Balaj from the tribunals custody, while Brahimaj returned to the detention unit. Serbian officials slammed the judgment rendered this week. "This decision of the Hague tribunal represents a mockery of justice and a mockery of the innocent victims who suffered at the hands of Haradinaj," Serbias prime minister Vojislav Kostunica said in a strongly-worded statement issued shortly after the judgment was announced. Serbian president Boris Tadic said, This verdict will not see justice done and it will not encourage Serbs and other non-Albanians to expect a safe and peaceful life in Kosovo. Tadic claimed that Del Ponte had told him that prosecution witnesses in the case were intimidated and even murdered, in order to keep silent about Haradinaj's alleged crimes committed in the Kosovo in 1998. Serbian deputy prime minister Bozidar Djelic said that Haradinaj's acquittal was scandalous and a "black day for international justice". He added that this verdict dealt a serious blow to the reconciliation process among nations in the Balkans and the responsibility lies with the tribunal. Serbias War Crime Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told the Belgrade media that he was stunned by the verdict. However, he added that the prosecutors at the Hague tribunal had made a huge effort to put Haradinaj on trial and to secure an appropriate sentence. However, with so many witnesses who were too frightened to testify, the outcome of the trial was not surprising, he added. According to Vukcevic, Nine very serious witnesses linked to the Haradinaj case were killed between 2003 and 2007, and one survived an assassination attempt. Its not surprising that so many witnesses refused to testify and had to be subpoenaed - their life and lives of their relatives were in danger. Although it was not immediately clear whether the prosecutors would appeal the judgment, Vukcevic said he expected them to do so. Merdijana Sadovic is IWPRs Hague tribunal programme manager. Aleksandar Roknic is an IWPR-trained reporter in Belgrade. COMMENT: ICTY ARCHIVE MUST BE OPEN TO ALL Political leaders should seek full and open access to tribunal archive rather than debate its final resting place. By Robert Donia in Michigan and Edina Becirevic in Sarajevo As the tribunal moves closer to its mandated closure in 2010, a public debate has erupted over the final disposition of the institutions rich archival collections. In recent weeks, the three members of the Bosnian presidency have been deadlocked over a chorus of popular demands to house the tribunals archive in Sarajevo after the court completes its work. They have been debating the wrong issue. In preparing to render its final decision, the United Nations Security Council has asked an advisory commission, headed by former tribunal prosecutor Richard Goldstone, to provide recommendations by the end of this year on the final physical location and terms for use of the tribunals archive after 2010. The commission, and almost all commentators on the issue, have addressed and debated extensively the ultimate ownership and location of the archive. We believe that, contrary to widespread popular understanding, locating the archive in Bosnia, or in another former Yugoslav republic, will do little or nothing to facilitate investigations of the regions history or events during the wars of the 1990s. On the other hand, lifting the veil of secrecy from various document collections within the archive would be a major contribution to fostering understanding of the regions recent past. The archive of the ICTY is a vast and invaluable collection, and its holdings will be indispensible for anyone researching or investigating events of the 1990s, in any former Yugoslav republic. But most importantly, it is a digitised archive. Over the past 15 years, ICTY employees have scanned virtually every document and made many of them searchable, so that anyone with appropriate access to the tribunals computers can find references to a person, place, word, or topic among the millions of documents gathered by tribunal investigators. But most documents, though readily findable and easily called up by identifying number, are not currently accessible to the public. Large portions of the collection have been acquired by tribunal investigators under conditions that eliminate or restrict their access. The many benefits of the ICTY thoroughly modern system of searching documents are largely nullified by complex, wide-ranging restrictions on their use. THE COST OF SECRECY The excessive secrecy surrounding the tribunals documents has kept victims, advocates, scholars, and journalists in the dark about many events during the recent wars. This was illustrated by the genocide case Bosnia brought against Serbia at the International Court of Justice, in which the UN's highest court cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the Bosnian war of the early Nineties. The Bosnian legal team was prevented by tribunal secrecy policies from seeing the full, unredacted minutes of Yugoslavias Supreme Defense Council, documents which were used in secret and in unredacted form in late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevics trial at the ICTY. Those documents no doubt contributed to the ICTY trial chambers preliminary ruling that the prosecutions evidence warranted retaining the charge of genocide. But the critical portions of these documents, redacted by officials from Serbia, are still inaccessible to the public. The case of the SDC minutes illustrates that the key question is not the physical location, nor the ultimate ownership of the tribunals archive, but rather universal access to its documents. The collections gatekeepers at the UN are unlikely to provide universal unrestricted access, but at the very least, the UN should establish a mechanism for declassifying documents upon appeal from a potential user or a sovereign state. Every potential user should have the benefit both of the archives advanced digital search capabilities and access to all relevant documents. Potential users currently have no advocate for their interests, nor even a rudimentary knowledge of how the tribunals vast collections are organised. THE OPPORTUNITIES OF ACCESS Over the past decade, we have both worked with small selections of the ICTY documentary base. We have had the opportunity to glimpse the organising systems that are used every day by investigators, attorneys, and judges to access the tribunals vast documentary resources. Information is accessed principally by computer, available internally to anyone with a password and a rudimentary knowledge of how the various kinds of documents are catalogued. Based on our knowledge of documents and practices, we expect that in the future, these resources will most commonly be used like this: an investigator with a computer linked to the internet, sitting anywhere in the world, will access a tribunal website. The user will initiate a computer search, typing in the topic on which he or she desires information, by defendant, date, name, place, topic, or evidence registry number an eight-digit number assigned by the ICTY to each page of documentation it processes. The user will then be directed to some number of documents which contain the search terms submitted. Such a website already exists. It contains transcripts of every word spoken in every trial held so far, but unfortunately these trial transcripts are not yet digitally searchable. They could be so within weeks if the appropriate technology were applied. Only in rare circumstances will a user need to see the original document - to verify a stamp or signature, to evaluate the typewriter with which a given document was prepared - whereas an army of users will be able to search through millions of documents and identify each occurrence of a given word. Indeed, a large number of documents in the tribunal archive are not originals. For example, tribunal researchers have withdrawn hundreds of thousands of documents from archives in the Bosnian federation, but only for a limited period of time in order to give them an evidence registry number and scan them. Then, in most instances, researchers returned the documents to their archive of origin, with the exception of document seizures conducted by the NATO-led Stabilisation Force in Bosnia, SFOR, and other forced acquisitions. The tribunal archive is left holding a verified copy of the original, plus a conveniently searchable digital image of the document. To verify its authenticity further, an investigator will need to go to the regional archive holding the original. Here, as in most instances, the scanned, electronic copy is as good as it gets in the tribunal archive, and the digital image has the great advantage of being searchable, identifiable, and called up in seconds for the investigators review. But here enters the true barrier to widespread use of the tribunals resources. The investigator may be told that the document being sought is sealed, for 10, 15, 25 years, or forever - and therefore inaccessible. Even worse, many documents may be withdrawn from the searchable database in the UNs zeal to protect its member states from embarrassing revelations. THE COSTS OF MAINTENANCE The huge physical bulk of the tribunals archives will become an enormous, unwieldy burden on the city or state where it ends up. Users seated in front of computers in New York, Vienna, Zagreb, Belgrade, Prijedor, and even in their homes in Sarajevo, will not want to discard the enormous advantages of the digital search and plow through the vast, unwieldy physical archives. Meanwhile, the storage, preservation, and maintenance of this vast trove will impose enormous expenses on custodians of the physical holdings. A new, large structure must be constructed to house such a collection, complete with climate control and physical security required for a collection physically larger than any archive in Sarajevo today. Many observers have concluded that the two most serious candidates for the final physical disposition of the archive are in Budapest and The Hague. Although the future location is not of much value to the city or state where the archive will ultimately reside, the interests of the institution itself would best be served by keeping its archive in The Hague. That city is the global centre of international institutions of jurisprudence, including the International Criminal Court, ICC, and the ICJ. Furthermore, the new tribunal prosecutor has argued for extending the tribunals existence, in some skeletal form, to retain the capacity to try Karadzic and Mladic should they be turned over after 2010. The worst conceivable option would be to divide this extensively interwoven collection of documents so that no single collection would be an authoritative repository, a situation fraught with possibilities for falsification and the destruction of documents. THE CENTRAL ISSUE At present, the tribunal makes documents public only as they are accepted into evidence at trial or by decision of chambers or the office of the registry. Tribunal officials have favoured secrecy over disclosure - often with good reason - during the institutions active life. That must change after the institution closes, but it will not change without considerable pressure from UN member states and potential archive users. We hope that the political leaders of Bosnia and others concerned with the tribunal archive will shift their debate to become advocates of open access, rather than wasting their time on determining the graveyard in which the physical archive will ultimately rest. Edina Becirevic is a senior lecturer at the University of Sarajevos Faculty of Criminal Justice Sciences. Robert Donia is a professor of history at the University of Michigan and was an expert witness at a number of trials held at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. SIX CROATIANS INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES Human rights groups say better late than never, but veterans associations maintain no crimes were committed. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb Six Croatian ex-military police were this week indicted by Zagreb prosecutors for war crimes committed in the Pakrac region - a move welcomed by human rights NGOs and opposed by veterans associations. The former officers are charged with the murder of 16 Serb civilians in 1991 near the town of Pakrac, which formed a dividing line between Croatian and Serbian forces during the 1991-95 war. Damir Kufner and Dario Simic were arrested a month ago. Zeljko Tutic, Tomislav Poletto and Ante Ivezic were detained two weeks later, while Pavle Vancas was apprehended last week. The indictment states that members of Kufner and Simics units entered Serbian houses, claiming to be searching for weapons. However, when they failed to find any, they nevertheless seized the occupants by force. The men, who were attached to the 76th battalion of the Croatian National Guard, ZNG, are accused of then holding civilians captive in an improvised prison in the village of Ribnjak. They are charged with subjecting the prisoners to physical and psychological abuse before killing them by the side of fish ponds, and throwing the bodies into the water. Media reports have suggested that guards at the ponds would often find bodies washed up on the banks. Evidence shows that while Croatian police visited the scene of the crimes in 1991, made reports and filed indictments, these were never acted upon. The arrests are based on evidence originally gathered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, during its investigation of Tomislav Mercep, the commander of reservist police units. Although he was never indicted by this court, the tribunal forwarded its findings to Croatias state attorney. For a few years, ICTY prosecutors have been delivering documents to local prosecutors in the former Yugoslavia as part of regular cooperation, said Olga Kavran, a spokesperson for the tribunal. Local prosecutors then continue the investigation until they believe they have enough evidence to issue an indictment. The documents concerned crimes against Serbs in the Vukovar and Pakrac regions committed by members of ministry of internal affairs, MUP, reservists under Merceps command. However, the 76th battalion was a part of ZNG and later the Croatian army and so not under his command. Five members of Merceps unit - Munib Suljic, Sinisa Rimac, Igor Mikola, Miro Bajramovic and Branko Saric - have already been convicted for other crimes in the Pakrac area. War veterans say the six former members of the military police arrested recently are not guilty. The powerful Croatian Disabled Homeland War Veterans Association, HVIDRA, protested against the latest indictment, producing a joint statement of support signed by ten veterans associations in the region. Our boys havent killed Serb civilians. They are indicted for something they didnt do, Stipan Grgic, the local HVIDRA president, told a news conference. But Vesna Terselic, head of the Documenta NGO, said the association was placing pressure on potential witnesses. People already find it hard to testify because of the pressured environment in which they live, Terselic told IWPR. Human rights NGOs hope that this case might give witnesses of other war crimes the confidence to come forward. Terselic added that the government was also to blame for Croatias deficiencies in confronting the past, citing the case of the powerful politician Branimir Glavas as an example. Parliament allowed him to be released from custody while his six co-defendants remain in detention during their trial. But its not just that - [Glavas] was elected to the parliamentary board for human and minority rights, despite being on trial for war crimes, added Terselic. Terselic said there was room for optimism, There are some changes for the better and this latest investigation confirms it. However, human rights experts are still unsatisfied with the time it takes to mount prosecutions, although they are pleased that crimes are not being forgotten. Better late than never, Professor Zarko Puhovski, a prominent member of Croatian Helsinki Committee, told IWPR. Puhovski said he expected the proceedings would lead to a reexamination of Merceps actions. However, he does not expect the commander to face any legal action, because he suffered a stroke last year. He is currently too ill to attend any trial, he said. Nevertheless, Puhovski said it was important that the case should demonstrate how senior military officials helped create the conditions in which war crimes could occur. Most of the war crimes in that period happened outside of official control. But some of them occurred when the police officers were exposed to speeches of hate, after which they went and committed crimes. Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR-trained journalist in Zagreb. ARGUMENTS HEARD AGAINST ORIC JUDGMENT Prosecutors say two-year sentence for former Bosnian army commander is inadequate, while defence demand acquittal. By Simon Jennings in The Hague Lawyers representing Naser Oric this week rejected prosecutors new theories in their appeal against the former commanders conviction for war crimes committed in Bosnia in 1992 and 1993. The prosecution are coming up with new theories all the time. Its a different case we hear today from the case which was in the indictment, defence lawyer John Jones told the court in his opening remarks. Oric was sentenced to two years in prison in June 2006 for failing to prevent the murder and cruel treatment of Serb prisoners detained in Srebrenica between December 1992 and March 1993. Shortly after the trial chambers verdict, both the prosecution and defence teams launched an appeal and this week they presented their arguments to the tribunals appeals chamber. Orics trial has captivated former Yugoslavia since it began in October 2004. Seen by many Bosnians as a hero, Orics sentence sparked anger among Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia who saw it as highly lenient. A Serbian blogger reacting to the trial chambers verdict at the time remarked on Belgrades B92 website, If a Serb were tried for the same crimes, he would be sentenced to at least 20 years in prison. The prosecution - which sought an 18-year prison sentence at the end of the proceedings - this week appealed for Orics two-year term to be extended on account of its leniency and also because they allege that the commander failed to investigate crimes committed by his subordinates in the months before December 1992. Meanwhile, Orics defence team argued for his acquittal on all charges. The prosecution contends that the trial chamber made a mistake in not concluding that the prison guards who murdered and abused Serb prisoners were members of the military police and therefore under Orics command in the months leading up to December 1992. It further argued that even if the prison guards who committed the crimes were not members of the military police, they would still have been under Orics command. The trial chamber was not satisfied that the guards were identified as members of the military police but we say it should not have stopped its enquiry there, prosecutor Michelle Jarvis told the court. Regardless of whether these individuals were identified as members of the military police or not, the real question was were they under [Orics] effective control? Not only does the prosecution believe that the prison guards were under Orics command but it also submits that, despite knowing about their crimes in the autumn of 1992, he failed to punish them. It contends that Oric, in his failure to act, was complicit in aiding and abetting the crimes. Prosecutor Christine Dahl sought to press home the trial chambers finding that Oric knew about prisoner mistreatment, by arguing that he failed to use this knowledge to investigate and punish the perpetrators. Mr Oric is liable because he had actual knowledge of sufficiently alarming information that triggers a duty to investigate, to further inquire, said Dahl. And when he sees prisoners beaten and bloody he knows that something is going terribly wrong. Jones responded to the prosecution submissions by branding them a daisy chain of liability. He said the defence had had to adopt a belt and braces approach in order to challenge any new theories advanced by the prosecution. Jones contended that in terms of command responsibility, Oric was three or four times removed from the guards who committed crimes. He compared the remoteness of Orics responsibility to the line of an old English song, I've danced with a man, who's danced with a girl, who's danced with the Prince of Wales. Addressing Dahls arguments directly, Jones emphasised that it was not the prisoner abuse that was being disputed but Orics responsibility. We did not challenge that these prisoners were beaten. Its not a question of bloody faces, he said. Its a question of who the guards were under and whether Oric knew of the measures taken. Jones emphasised that there was no evidence pointing to an identifiable subordinate under Oric who had committed the crimes. Turning to what he referred to as the crux of the case, Jones argued that the Serb prisoners were being detained both at the police station and at a second facility by civilian, rather than military, police. According to Jones, the military police should not be held responsible for the crimes since mistreatment was occurring in the civilian police station that came under the auspices and authority and responsibility of the civilian police and the civilian authorities right up to the civilian war presidency. Citing evidence that in his opinion was not given sufficient weight by the trial chamber, Jones argued that the guards were subordinated to the chief of the civilian police and not to Oric. But prosecutor Paul Rogers rebutted Joness argument. He pointed to an abundance of evidence including minutes of military meetings in October 1992, that show the guards were military police and under military control, and not the control of the war presidency. Its quite clear that the military were directing the operation of the military police, Rogers told the court. While the defence seeks Orics acquittal on all charges against him, Serbs in both Bosnia and Serbia hold the Bosnian commander as guilty even beyond the bounds of his indictment. They accuse him of antagonising Serbs in the region throughout the war and blame him for provoking the Bosnian Serb massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. But a source of debate at trial was the Serb prosecution witnesses who testified in support of the defences arguments. Some Serb survivors from the prison in Srebrenica testified that Oric did not do anything wrong and even treated them favourably. Also in Orics favour was his cooperation with the tribunal and his youth - he was only 25 at the time the crimes were committed. The trial chamber ruled that while it would not give too much weight to his age, it could not fail to take into consideration the enormous burden that was cast upon him at the age of 25 while the situation in Srebrenica was desperate. But in its appeal this week, the prosecution further challenged the trial chambers finding that the chaos and lawlessness in Srebrenica during 1992 and 1993 was a mitigating factor in Orics responsibility for the crimes. The prosecution contended that in fact the opposite was true - that the situation in the region should have made the risk of crimes more apparent. It had to be clear to everybody that Serb captives could be exposed to abuse, said prosecutor Jarvis. The appeals chamber will announce its verdict at a later date. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. SESELJ CONTROLLED SRS VOLUNTEERS Witness also says he recalls hearing defendant order them to fight in Srebrenica. By Denis Dzidic in Sarajevo A former volunteer with the Serbian Radical Party, SRS, said its leader Vojislav Seselj was in charge of party volunteers in the area of Croatia where he is alleged to have been responsible for war crimes. The indictment against Seselj alleges that in 1991, volunteers from his party committed crimes in the Croatian town of Vukovar and in Western Slavonija, a part of Croatia seized by Serbs and retaken by Croats in a 1995 offensive. He is also accused of inciting Serbs to drive Bosniaks and Croats out of parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Prosecutors say Seselj espoused and encouraged the creation of a homogenous Greater Serbia through his inflammatory speeches and actions. At the Hague tribunal this week, a protected witness, introduced only as VS033, described Seselj as the boss and in control of party volunteers, who were entitled to a salary, days off and a pension through certificates handed out by the SRS war staff. The witness, most of whose testimony was given in closed session, recalled seeing Seselj receiving a bag of money from local Serbian politicians in Western Slavonija. According to the witness, Seselj worked closely with the government in Serbia, too, so Serbian police knew the volunteers would be passing through the territory under their jurisdiction, and would merely wave their buses through. He also said he recalled hearing that Seselj ordered SRS volunteers to Srebrenica to fight alongside Serbias paramilitary force the Red Berets. The witness described how he joined the first group sent by the SRS to Western Slavonija. They traveled through Bosnia into Western Slavonija, he said, where they were housed by Yugoslav Peoples Army, JNA, forces in a camp near the village of Vocin. Witness VS033 explained that the group was under the command of Radovan Novacic, who was appointed by the SRS and remained in constant touch with the partys war staff. Novacic insisted on discipline and obedience. He refused to accept drunks or criminals in the volunteer units and would send them back to Serbia. He had a lot of trouble with Seselj because of this, and Novacic even confessed to me that Seselj wanted him dead, said the witness. Seselj rejected the entire testimony of the witness, who was convicted by a Serbian court and sentenced to three years imprisonment in 1996 for several attacks on non-Serbs in Belgrade. Seselj called him a terrorist and challenged his credibility as a witness. During cross-examination, Seselj produced transcripts from the trial of the witness which stated that he threw explosive devices into a mosque and a Catholic church in Belgrade, and also placed several explosives in the cars of ethnic Albanians living in the capital. Although the witness accepted that the transcripts were genuine, he said that his past behaviour was a result of post-war syndrome and added that he made sure no one was hurt during the incidents. I was bitter because of everything that I saw during the war, and most of us volunteers were forgotten by the government. Thats why I did those things, said the witness. Asked by the judges whether he had committed the crimes under the orders of any organisation, the witness replied he had been a member of the Serbian Volunteer Humanitarian Fund which worked in the same building as the SRS at that time. Seselj denied any connection between the two organisations. Seselj also produced a statement from a friend of the witness, Aleksandar Gajic, who said that VS033 had been offered a large amount of money to lie and testify against Seselj by prosecutors at the court. According to the statement, the witness will say Seselj and SRS committed war crimes, and in turn he will be given money by Hague prosecutors. The witness said his friend had been coerced into writing the statement and said it was full of lies. Seselj also said Natasa Kandic, director of the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Fund, FHP, put the witness in touch with Hague prosecutors and then coached him before he testified. I did meet Natasa Kandic, however I wasnt prepared for my testimony. Also, I was put in touch with Hague prosecutors by Ljubisa Petkovic, commander of the war staff of the SRS party, not by her, replied the witness. The trial continues next week when the court will hear recordings of Seseljs public speeches. Denis Dzidic is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** TRIBUNAL UPDATE, the publication arm of IWPR's International Justice Project, produced since 1996, details the events and issues at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, at The Hague. These weekly reports, produced by IWPR's human rights and media training project, seek to contribute to regional and international understanding of the war crimes prosecution process. The opinions expressed in Tribunal Update are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. Tribunal Update is supported by the European Commission, the Dutch Ministry for Development and Cooperation, the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges general support from the Ford Foundation. TRIBUNAL UPDATE: Editor-in-Chief: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Senior Editor: John MacLeod; Project Manager: Merdijana Sadovic; Translation: Predrag Brebanovic, and others. w: Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Strategy & Assessment Director: Alan Davis; Chief Programme Officer: Mike Day. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** IWPR builds democracy at the frontlines of conflict and change through the power of professional journalism. IWPR programs provide intensive hands-on training, extensive reporting and publishing, and ambitious initiatives to build the capacity of local media. Supporting peace-building, development and the rule of law, IWPR gives responsible local media a voice. Institute for War & Peace Reporting 48 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7831 1030 Fax: +44 (0)20 7831 1050 For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, go to: www.iwpr.net ISSN 1477-7940 Copyright © 2008 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** If you wish to change your subscription details or unsubscribe please go to: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=s&m=p
