http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml The Daily Telegraph (London) May 25, 2002 Prosecutors pay price for Milosevic 'opera' By Neil Tweedie in The Hague The prosecution in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic is facing accusations that its case, conceived as a "grandiose opera", has been badly prepared and poorly executed. Prosecutors led by the Swiss lawyer Carla Del Ponte have blamed their decision to ditch scores of witnesses on the decision of the three judges, led by Britain's Richard May, to give them only 14 months to present their evidence. The prosecution team had expected a process lasting years. A source close to the tribunal said: "It all comes down to Carla Del Ponte's vision of this trial as some kind of grandiose opera. They collected something like 1,200 witness statements and expected the thing to last five years. "And of course the whole thing was rushed - they didn't even issue the indictments until late last year. Remember, we're talking about crimes as far back as 1991." Almost half the witnesses due to give evidence on the conflict in Kosovo, the majority of them victims of Serb atrocities and human rights violations, have been told that they will not be needed, In addition, a mass of scientific evidence relating to massacre sites has been discarded, while cuts are even being made in the number of so-called insider witnesses, former members of the Milosevic regime willing to give evidence against their former master. Substantial cuts in the number of witnesses due to testify on alleged crimes during the earlier wars in Croatia and Bosnia are also planned. The drastic reductions are said by the prosecution to be due to the tribunal's requirement that all its evidence should be submitted by next April. The Kosovo phase of the trial must be finished by July 26 to allow the start of the second phase dealing with the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. "It's like trying to fight with one arm tied behind your back," said Graham Blewitt, spokesman for the prosecutor's office. "We are not happy about this. The onus is on us to prove this man's guilt and we need the time to do it." The prosecution attempted to appeal against the time limit, pleading that it would suffer "irremediable prejudice". But the application was turned down by the tribunal appeals chamber, which said it was not satisfied that such prejudice had occurred. Critics of the prosecution argue that it has only itself to blame for the cuts it is now having to make. The case against Milosevic, they say, is chiefly one of command responsibility. The prosecution simply has to prove that he ordered criminal acts as head of state and head of the armed forces, or failed to prevent such acts when informed of them. But instead, precious time has been wasted on detailing crime scenes in Kosovo - evidence that cannot by itself secure a conviction. The prosecution is now left struggling to include as many witnesses as possible, while Milosevic counters by stretching to the limit the time given to him for cross-examination. His guile appears to have paid off. The prosecution estimates that the former president of Yugoslavia commands 60 per cent of the airtime in court, forcing witnesses to answer mostly irrelevant questions while using his platform to make speeches to his audience in Belgrade. So far, 58 witnesses have testified in the Kosovo phase of the prosecution, leaving 79 to go before July 26. But, thanks to Milosevic's effective delaying tactics, the current turnover of witnesses is usually three a week. That means the court will be lucky to get through 30 witnesses by the deadline, leaving everyone wondering what will happen to the rest. ----------------------- Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
