WELCOME TO IWPR'S TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 533, 11 January, 2008 NICE ASSESSES ICTY PROSECUTION RECORD Former deputy prosecutor speaks frankly about controversies surrounding tribunal prosecution policy. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo
GLAVAS REFUSED PERMISSION TO ATTEND PARLIAMENT A judge hearing case of newly elected war crimes suspect rules his presence not necessary at the inaugural session. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb COURTSIDE: UN OFFICER DESCRIBES VRS ADVANCE INTO SREBRENICA Witness says Serbs obstructed peacekeeper patrols within the enclave prior to its fall. By Simon Jennings in The Hague BRIEFLY NOTED: BOSNIA TIGHTENS GRIP ON WAR CRIMES SUSPECTS' SUPPORT NETWORK Measures are being taken against family members of war crimes fugitives suspected of helping them escape justice. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo SESELJ TRIAL SUSPENDED AT PROSECUTION REQUEST But the suspect firmly opposes another delay in his trial. By Simon Jennings in The Hague **** IWPR RESOURCES ****************************************************************** NEW PUBLICATION: SYRIA PRESS MONITOR. Weekly round-up of news and opinion from the Syrian national and diaspora press. 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For more information about how you can support IWPR go to: http://www.iwpr.net/donate.html <http://www.iwpr.net/donate.html> **** www.iwpr.net <http://www.iwpr.net> ******************************************************************** NICE ASSESSES ICTY PROSECUTION RECORD Former deputy prosecutor speaks frankly about controversies surrounding tribunal prosecution policy. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo Sir Geoffrey Nice, a prominent British lawyer and former prosecutor in the case against ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, probably didn't expect to be on the cover of last week's special edition of the Croatian political magazine Globus dedicated to the ten most important personalities and newsmakers in Croatia in 2007 - all of them Croats bar Nice. However, those who regularly read newspapers in the region were not surprised that Nice proved to be so popular. He recently received a lot of media attention there - and in the rest of former Yugoslavia - for his open criticism of the ex-Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and the alleged concessions she made to the Serbian government to persuade them to cooperate with the Office of the Prosecutor. I met a tired-looking Nice in Sarajevo on a cold December morning in the lobby of his hotel. He said he hadn't slept much the night before because of a loud Christmas party in the hotel restaurant. He had protested about the noise, but his pleas had been ignored. He seemed, though, only slightly annoyed by the incident, displaying the sort of patience and composure that served him well at the tribunal. A Queen's Counsel and one of Britain's leading barristers, he was knighted last year for his work at the court. Nice, 62, was recruited to the tribunal's Office for the Prosecutor, OTP, in 1998 and was involved in several important cases, most notably serving as deputy prosecutor in the Milosevic trial. When Milosevic died in March 2006, only a few months before his mammoth trial was due to finish, some observers suggested that prosecutors were partly to blame for the failure to secure a conviction. They argued that the trial would have been much shorter had the indictment against Milosevic not been so ambitious, covering three wars spanning almost ten years. But Nice disagrees with this assertion. "The question about [Milosevic's indictment] being over ambitious often enough stems from the question whether the trial was too long. The length of the trial was determined as much as anything else by Milosevic's ill health and by his determination to conduct every aspect of the defence case on his own, and the judges feeling obliged or being compelled to yield in one way or another to those facts or factors," he said. Nice claims that had the proceedings been conducted five days a week, with normal trial days of about five hours, the case would have probably lasted a total of two years, which he says is not too long. "The breadth of the indictments was chosen because it was thought appropriate, and I thought this was right, to look at the overall behaviour of Milosevic and his developing criminality - if it was criminality; his responsibility over time for the crimes that were committed. And that's what an international criminal tribunal is for," he added. Milosevic's trial was probably the largest international trial ever held, with Nice conducting all aspects of the investigation, as well as the presentation of the case in court. Nice agrees that the decision of the then chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, to focus the entire case solely on Milosevic was a big mistake, because when he died, the case ended. Had other Serbian top military and political leaders been indicted with him, he said, "the trial process would not have ended with Milosevic's death, because there would have been others against whom it would have continued. "And it is easy to argue that it should have been against others, because however much one might like to say that Milosevic was the most powerful of all the personalities present, operations were done through governmental mechanisms for which others might have born more responsibility." In several interviews he gave to the media in Croatia and Bosnia over the last few months, Nice expressed strong disagreement with Del Ponte's indictments policy, saying she was too eager to prove that the tribunal was not anti-Serb, and that such a policy led to some very weak indictments, particularly those against certain former Bosnian army and Kosovo Liberation Army officers. Turning to the nature and status of the tribunal itself, Nice said it is "clearly a political court", and that prosecutors working there are in a difficult position, because "this court has to serve political objectives identified by the UN when it was set up. "But meeting those political objectives is one thing, and adjusting the standards by which you make a decision on whether you should indict someone where his liberty is at stake is another. And the political consideration should never under any circumstances outweigh the responsibility to apply the letter of the law in deciding whether to indict someone." Another subject that Nice is often asked about is the furore surrounding the transcripts of Serbia's Supreme Defense Council, SDC, which the tribunal acquired in controversial circumstances. He is one of the few people who had a chance to read the unredacted version of the documents which, many observers believe, could prove Serbia's alleged involvement in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia in the early Nineties. Not surprisingly, he carefully avoids questions about the content of these documents, but he does confirm that what's in them is very important. Serbia handed over a large portion of SDC transcripts to the tribunal several years ago so that they could be used in the case against Milosevic. But the Serbian government also demanded that the documents, for the most part, remain confidential. Nice never hid his disagreement with Del Ponte's decision to grant Serbia's demand for the transcripts to be concealed. "I could see no justification in law ever for these documents being subject to the protection that was afforded them, and from that it follows that I can see no justification for them being subject to continued protection. It is extremely important that they should be made available in full," he said "But let me issue a health warning - the documents do not provide in any sense a simple answer to any of the outstanding questions. They provide much more context, they provide much more detail, they provide more evidence about the states of mind of, not just Milosevic, but other people sitting in that council, and would have enabled fact- finders and decision-makers to make better and deeper judgments about what was going on." In April last year, Nice wrote open letters to the International Herald Tribune and Croatia's daily Jutarnji list, in which he stated adamantly that he never supported Del Ponte's decision to grant Serbia's requests for the SDC transcripts to be kept confidential. He also claimed that there was "no conceivable reason for making a deal with Yugoslavia. It served only one purpose: to keep Belgrade's responsibility from public scrutiny and, significantly, from the International Court of Justice". These letters won him many supporters in Croatia. Explaining their decision to include Nice on list of the country's top ten personalities for 2007, the editors of Globus said that in his open letters he "exposed, as much as it was in his power, the functioning of Del Ponte and her political decisions, which led to concessions to the Serbian government that are impossible to understand". Merdijana Sadovic is IWPR's Hague tribunal programme manager. GLAVAS REFUSED PERMISSION TO ATTEND PARLIAMENT A judge hearing case of newly elected war crimes suspect rules his presence not necessary at the inaugural session. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb Croatian war crimes suspect Branimir Glavas was refused permission to attend the opening of parliament this week, despite having been elected to the chamber late last year. Judge Zeljko Horvatovic ruled that his presence was not necessary at the first sitting, even though Prime Minister Ivo Sanader earlier said he would attend the inaugural session. Glavas has been on hunger strike for two months to protest the refusal of the Zagreb court trying him for war crimes to release him from custody, and his health has deteriorated significantly. On January 11, the same day as the inaugural session, Glavas was released from prison due to his poor health. It is unclear when his trial will resume. While ex-general Glavas, along with six other Croatians, is accused of murdering Serb civilians at the beginning of Croatia's 1991-5 war of independence, he remains a popular politician in his native Osijek, a city in the far east of the country. Glavas is on trial with Dino Kontic, Ivica Krnjak, Gordana Getos Magdic, Mirko Sivic, Tihomir Valentic and Zdravko Dragic. This week, the trial chamber also heard allegations from some of the other defendants that the police had sought to extort confessions from them. Although Dragic earlier confessed to police that he participated in the killings, he told the court he had been tricked into it by his cousin, police officer Vjekoslav Tapsanj. Although he admitted membership of a patrol unit headed by a now-dead war crimes suspect, he said he was only in that unit between November and Christmas 1991 and never fought with it. Dragic claimed he had been threatened with another prosecution, and also offered the status of a protected witness if he testified against Glavas and the other co-accused. "In the worst case scenario, I was to get two or three years in prison, but the probability was that I would be a free man. It should say in that statement that the act was conducted under compulsion," he said. Dragic said Tapsanj had shown him a statement on a computer screen and told him, "Here is everything, read, learn and that is how you are going to testify." Another controversy emerged regarding a meeting between former Osijek chief of police Vladimir Faber and the sister of defendant Getos Magdic. Getos Magdic, who has been in custody for more than 14 months already, accused Osijek chief of police Vladimir Faber of trying to force her sister to pass on instructions to her to accuse Glavas of ordering the murders. She said Faber had offered her a shorter prison term in exchange for her testifying against Glavas. Ana Marija Getos recorded the meeting, and a transcript was published in the Nacional news weekly. Sanader ordered an emergency investigation into the affair, while Glavas's attorneys have demanded that Faber be removed from the Parole Commission The interior ministry said on January 9 that the meeting had been conducted entirely at Faber's own initiative and without its knowledge. The state attorney's office, meanwhile, said that while it did not know the meeting had taken place, it could not question Faber's professional integrity. The trial this week also heard from Kontic's defence. He denied all charges in the so-called "Sellotape case", in which the defendants are accused of covering their victims' mouths with sticky tape and dumping their bodies in the river Drava. Serb civilian Radoslav Ratkovic is the only survivor of the crime. Kontic dismissed allegations that he drove Dragic, who is his brother-in-law, to the site where the civilians were allegedly killed. "I drove Zdravko Dragic during the war, I don't remember exactly where but certainly I didn't drive him to any kind of execution, neither was I present during such a thing," said Kontic. Kontic also said he had never seen Ratkovic before. Valentic also denied ever knowing Ratkovic, "I didn't know him, nor did I know he was hurt, like it says in the indictment." Valentic said he would never harm anyone, whatever religion they were. He said, for example, that he had saved one Serbian family from Sarvas by bringing them to Osijek. Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR journalist in Zagreb. COURTSIDE UN OFFICER DESCRIBES VRS ADVANCE INTO SREBRENICA Witness says Serbs obstructed peacekeeper patrols within the enclave prior to its fall. By Simon Jennings in The Hague A former United Nations observer in the Bosnian "safe area" of Srebrenica this week testified that Bosnian Serb forces, VRS, were already present in the enclave in the run-up to its takeover in July 1995. He said that their presence hampered the movement of the UN peacekeeping forces. "They prevented us going further towards the ceasefire line, meaning they were already inside the enclave," Kenyan Colonel Joseph Kingori told the tribunal in The Hague. Kingori served as a UN military observer during the fall of the demilitarised zone of Srebrenica during the summer of 1995. More than 8,000 Bosniaks were killed after the town fell to the VRS in the largest act of mass murder in Europe since World War Two. He was testifying at the trial of seven high-ranking Bosnian Serb military and police officials - Vujadin Popovic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Ljubisa Beara, Vinko Pandurevic and Drago Nikolic - who face genocide and war crimes charges, and Radivoj Miletic and Milan Gvero, who are accused of blocking aid and supplies to Srebrenica. Before the tribunal's winter recess, Kingori described events in the UN-protected region before and after the advance of forces from Republica Srpska, the self-proclaimed Serb statelet in Bosnia. Popovic's defence counsel put it to Kingori that no member of "Dutchbat", the UN peacekeeping force in Srebrenica, had reported that Serb forces had crossed into the enclave before it fell. "The [VRS] were to the southern side. When we patrolled, we could talk to them. They were inside the enclave, but if you told them that they said, 'No'," said Kingori. Kingori also told the court that members of the VRS told military observers they did not want Muslims in the enclave. "They did not want Muslims supported by fundamentalists in their midst. They felt uncomfortable with Muslims there because they felt it belonged to the Serbs," he said. The prosecution alleges that the military and police officers on trial planned and undertook the "separation" and the "forced movement of the population" at Srebrenica. It also seeks to prove that they ordered the execution and burial of able-bodied Bosniak men and boys in the enclave after it fell to Serb forces in July 1995. This week, the witness described to the court the way in which the Serb army seized the Dutch observation posts. He said the Dutch had refused to remove the observation posts when told to do so by members of the Bosnian Serb army. Kingori also dismissed defence claims that artillery attacks were launched by the Bosnian army on Serb-held territory beyond the Srebrenica enclave. He testified that he and his colleagues neither witnessed nor were informed about such attacks. "We did not notice any heavy weapons firing shells over to the other side," he told the tribunal. The defence teams have also tried to show that Kingori and other UN observers did not fulfill their observation tasks inside the protected enclave, and have cited reports made by senior commanders from the Bosnian army saying that ammunition and weapons were transported into it. The reports state that attacks were made on outlying Serb positions in order to occupy their forces, thus preventing them from launching attacks on Bosniaks elsewhere in central Bosnia. However, under cross examination, Kingori denied that Bosnian army troops in the enclave had armed themselves significantly and therefore violated the demilitarisation agreement between the two sides. "All the heavy weapons were in the custody of Dutchbat," Kingori told the tribunal. The counsel for the defence then informed the witness that a former deputy commander of Dutchbat had testified before the tribunal that he had heard that Bosniaks inside Srebrenica had between 4,000 and 4,500 items of light weaponry and mortars. "I was not aware that they had these weapons. I was not aware," replied Kingori. "If all these facts are correct, I really don't understand how we didn't know about that," he added, explaining that, in order to justify their failings, senior army officials may not have reported events exactly as they happened. Kingori denied that Bosniaks who went to the nearby town of Tuzla to pick up supplies to sell in the market also brought back weapons and ammunition. "No. Not as far as I am aware. It was food stuffs. But we never went anywhere to inspect what they were bringing back," he said. Kingori explained that he doubted the Bosniaks brought in weapons because they were inspected by Bosnian Serb soldiers as they returned from Tuzla. Kingori told the tribunal that by June 1995, UN military observers were seeing soldiers walking around Srebrenica equipped with only light weapons. "You cannot compare these weapons with the kind of weaponry that was with the [VRS] - artillery shells, rocket launchers and all that," he said. "I am not saying there were no military activities but it definitely could not have been a [government army] brigade in that particular area." Popovic's defense counsel concluded cross examination by questioning the independence of Kingori's reports. The witness replied, "My reports were never biased at all... [They are] just based on the truth as I saw it on the ground." Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. BRIEFLY NOTED BOSNIA TIGHTENS GRIP ON WAR CRIMES SUSPECTS' SUPPORT NETWORK Measures are being taken against family members of war crimes fugitives suspected of helping them escape justice. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo Bosnian Serb police seized this week travel documents belonging to the family of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, indicted by the Hague tribunal for genocide and other war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The operation was ordered by the international administrator in Bosnia, Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, and was carried out on January 10 in the village of Pale, near Sarajevo, where Karadzic's family lives. According to a statement from Lajcak's office, passports belonging to Radovan's wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic, son Aleksandar, daughter Sonja Karadzic-Jovicevic, and son-in-law Branislav Jovicevic were seized. The order was issued at the request of the Hague tribunal, and in close cooperation with relevant local law enforcement agencies. "These four persons are in one way or another the subject of orders by the Bosnian state court, a decision by the Bosnian Council of Ministers, international financial and travel sanctions, and ongoing criminal investigations for their role in the support network of Radovan Karadzic. Today's actions build upon these measures," the statement reads. "The international community has made it clear that it expects the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to cooperate fully with the Hague tribunal, playing a proactive role in apprehending all remaining indictees and dismantling their support networks. [The] decision complements measures undertaken by the local authorities and by other international actors." Karadzic has been on the run ever since he was indicted by the Hague tribunal in 1995 and his whereabouts remain unknown. Earlier this week, Bosnia's state prosecutor's office launched an investigation of 42 people suspected of aiding indicted war crimes suspects, including members of Karadzic's family. Among the suspects is former deputy chief of the Republika Srpska State Security Center, Ljuban Ecim, who, according to the Banja Luka daily Nezavisne Novine, was recently arrested in Belgrade on drug smuggling charges. He is suspected of being one of the main organisers of the network aiding and abetting Karadzic and other fugitives. Ecim is also on the European Union's and United States' black list, which includes all persons suspected of helping and financing Hague indictees. The daily also claims that the prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into family members of the other three Hague indictees still on the run - Ratko Mladic, Goran Hadzic and Stojan Zupljanin. Merdijana Sadovic is IWPR's Hague programme manager. BRIEFLY NOTED SESELJ TRIAL SUSPENDED AT PROSECUTION REQUEST But the suspect firmly opposes another delay in his trial. By Simon Jennings in The Hague The war crimes trial of Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj was suspended this week after the prosecution moved to disqualify one member of the trial chamber hearing his case, Judge Frederik Harhoff. Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, is on trial at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity including persecution, extermination, murder and torture carried out in Croatia, Bosnia and northern Serbia between 1991 and 1993. The prosecution filed its motion for Judge Harhoff's disqualification based on the fact that he was a member of a human rights group which interviewed a certain Isak Gashi in 1993, as part of its own investigation into atrocities in the Balkans. Gashi has now been called upon by the prosecution to testify in the case. According to the counsel for the prosecution, Christine Dahl, due to his activities back in 1993, Judge Harhoff had been "involved in the investigation" and "the independence of the judiciary [was] at stake". Dahl also explained that she was not so much concerned about bias as the fact that "justice must be done and be seen to be done". The defendant immediately opposed the motion, claiming that the prosecution was trying to delay the trial in order to gain time to make preparations. "For almost five years I have been waiting for this trial and the prosecution is not ready. I have waited for too long and do not want to wait any longer," Seselj told the court. He further argued that, rather than an actual judicial body, the group Judge Harhoff had been working for, the Danish Helsinki Committee, was a non-governmental organisation carrying out political surveys. Gashi is a former member of the Yugoslav rowing team and was a refugee in Denmark when he spoke to the committee. He has already given evidence at the tribunal's trials of Dusko Tadic, Slobodan Milosevic and Momcilo Krajisnik. He has previously made it known that he does not believe his "Danish statement" is an accurate record of what he told the Danish Helsinki Committee. In response to the prosecution's motion, tribunal president Fausto Pocar appointed a three-member panel to consider Judge Harhoff's position. The panel will rule whether the judge's previous contact with Gashi is likely to compromise his independence and impartiality in the case. If the prosecution's motion is upheld by the panel, whose ruling cannot be appealed, then Pocar will appoint another judge to hear the remainder of the case. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. **** www.iwpr.net <http://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; International Justice Senior Editor: Merdijana Sadovic; Translation: Predrag Brebanovic, and others; Project Director: Duncan Furey. IWPR Project Development and Support: Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Strategy & Assessment Director: Alan Davis; Chief Programme Officer: Mike Day. **** www.iwpr.net <http://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. 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