A DOUBLE STANDARD FOR
CROSS-EXAMINATIONS
www.slobodan-milosevic.org
December 7, 2005
Written by: Andy
Wilcoxson
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed on Wednesday with Mr.
Nices cross-examination of Gen. Krsman Jelic, the commander of the 243rd
Armored Brigade of the Yugoslav Army.
Mr. Nice spent the first hour and
twenty minutes asking the witness questions about the manner in which the army
compiled documents.
Ultimately this exercise led to the Tribunal issuing
an order to for the Serbian authorities to produce the war diaries of the 243rd
Armored Brigade and its subordinate battalions by Friday. Unfortunately, these
documents may not exist. They may have been destroyed during the NATO bombing,
or they may have been lost when the VJ left Kosovo.
Several defense
witnesses have already presented their war diaries to the Tribunal, and in every
instance their war diary has confirmed their oral testimony.
Mr. Nice
complains that he does not have access to documents and that defense witnesses
do not bring contemporaneous material to court with them. The only problem is
that the prosecutor is wrong. The prosecution has served a million pages of
documents, and defense witnesses have been bringing contemporaneous documents to
court thousands of them. Mr. Nices problem is that those documents just dont
say what he would like them to say.
As far as cross-examination arising
from Gen. Jelics actual testimony went, Mr. Nice spent most of his time
asserting that the VJ took part in the anti-terrorist operation at Racak on
January 15, 1999. Gen. Jelic spent an equal amount of time denying that the army
took part.
The prosecutor embarked on the same tired strategy that he
uses in all of his cross-examinations. He makes an assertion and then accuses
the witness of lying if the assertion is not agreed with. Undeterred that the
witness does not adopt the assertion, Mr. Nice proceeds to base his following
questions on the denied assertion.
After Jelic denied that the army took
part in Racak, Mr. Nice asked a series of questions that pre-supposed that the
army took part in Racak. The witness was forced to repeat time and again that
the army was not involved with any fighting in Racak.
Mr. Nice read two
documents to Jelic, one was a document of the VJ general staff dated January 16,
1999. This document literally said, "an element of the forces of the 243rd
Armored Brigade is sealing off Racak where (MUP) forces are engaging the Shiptar
terrorist forces".
The second document that Mr. Nice read was Gen.
Jelic's own daily report for January 15, 1999. This document stated that the MUP
was fighting terrorists in Racak and that "None of our forces entered the
village of Racak".
The documents confirm exactly what the witness has
been saying all along. They confirm that the MUP was fighting Albanian
terrorists in Racak and that the Army did not take part in the fighting. The
Army was on the road 1 km outside of Racak, providing security, and sealing off
the terrorists.
According to Mr. Nice, these documents proved exactly the
opposite of what they said. Mr. Nice said that Jelic's daily report for January
15th, which literally said "none of our forces entered the village of Racak,"
actually meant that the VJ did enter Racak. Mr. Nice said that Jelic knew that
"horrible things had happened in Racak" so he wrote that the VJ did not enter in
order to cover-up the involvement of the military.
Mr. Nice did not
explain who Jelic would have been trying to conceal anything from by writing
this in his daily report. The document was only written to inform the command of
the Pristina Corps of what was happening on the ground. Why would Jelic, if he
were taking part in the conspiracy that Mr. Nice alleges, lie to his commanders,
who according to Mr. Nice were involved in the same conspiracy?
Mr. Nice
spent hours asserting that the Army was in Racak and that it took part in a
massacre there, and the witness denied it over and over again. This sort of
cross-examination would have never been permitted during the prosecution case.
The tribunal never would have allowed Milosevic to spend hours making the same
assertion ad-infinitum to a prosecution witness who disagreed with
it.
Milosevic would have been told, The witness has already answered,
now move to another topic or well bring the cross-examination to an end.
Milosevic was threatened with the premature termination of his cross-examination
hundreds of times during the prosecution case. Of course no such threats have
ever been made against Mr. Nice, no matter how irrelevant or repetitious his
cross-examination gets.
This is basically how the day went today: Mr.
Nice made assertions and the witness denied them. Gen. Jelic stuck to the
testimony he gave during his examination-in-chief, and Mr. Nice accused him of
lying.
Of course Gen. Jelic did not stoop to Mr. Nices level. He did
not engage in the sort name-calling that has become the hallmark of Mr. Nices
cross-examinations. He simply dismissed the prosecutors slurs by saying,
Thats your opinion Mr. Nice.
Mr. Nice also questioned the witness about the Joint
Command. The prosecution alleges that the Joint Command was an illegal body that
allowed Milosevic to bypass the legal chain of command. Gen. Jelic gave the same
explanation as all of the witnesses before him. He said that the Joint Command
was a body established to coordinate the activities of the Army and Police. He
said that all of his orders came to him through the regular chain of
command.
Mr. Nice will continue to cross-examine Gen. Jelic when the
trial resumes tomorrow. In other trial related news, the Judges announced that
Lt. Col. Janos Sel will continue his cross-examination sometime next week. They
also announced that the last hour of tomorrows hearing will be devoted to the
question of whether the defense will be given more time to present its
case.
