³⁰²⁸

Monday, 15 April 2002

[Open session]

[The accused entered court]

--- Upon commencing at 9.17 a.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, I've asked for the witness to be kept out of court for just a couple of minutes this morning, and I'm here today with the Prosecutor. We seek a little assistance, not of course any question of rearguing a topic, but we seek a little assistance in relation to the decision given on the 10th of April about the time available to the Prosecution to present its case.

The decision may be found on the LiveNote transcript at 2779, and I think the official transcript starts at 2782.

The concern of the Prosecutor arises, of course, from our duty to present this case, which is indeed set out in the decision that the Chamber gave, and we understand informally that there may be no written decision and it will be this decision to which we must work. So that of course we understand as we do that the Chamber is still considering ways in which evidence can properly be put forward, but the Prosecutor's concerned in light of what is said about the difficulties that face an accused who defends himself which wouldn't face others, bearing in mind that it remains her duty to prove the case. And it's with those matters in mind that we are particularly concerned about the meaning of the word "should," where Your Honour said "We decided that the Prosecution should have one year from today to conclude their case." ³⁰²⁹ The Chamber will understand that we -- we need to know exactly where we are. I have to say that we are doing as we have been from the start of this case everything that's in our power to conduct it in a compact way and to bring the Prosecution's case to as early a conclusion as may be, and that of course underlay the motion that I put in before this decision was announced. But it's the word "should" that we would be grateful for some assistance with, if possible.

JUDGE MAY: If it's not clear, let me make it plain. That is a mandatory order. It is, of course, subject to the unexpected. If there are matters such as matters of illness or other unforeseen circumstance, it may have to be reviewed in the light of that circumstance, but the intention is that that is an order and not any sort of invitation or exhortation.

MR. NICE: Thank you very much. I'm just checking if there is any other (indiscernible).

[Prosecution counsel confer]

MR. NICE: Thank you very much. The witness can come back subject only to this -- there has been an additional piece of paper that came to our attention over the weekend in our continuing search for material that may be Rule 68 in accordance with the system that has been in operation by the Registry that has already been handed, I think, to the accused. But since he doesn't have lawyers representing him and since he's possibly got a lot of papers before him, I want to be quite sure that he knows he's got it. That's all.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Let me deal with two other administrative ³⁰³⁰ matters dealing with that timing. Friday, the hearings will be 9.00 until 12.45. Next Monday, one of our members has a medical appointment in the afternoon, and we will arrange sittings between 9.00 and 3.00.

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE MAY: We will have the witness, please. Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] First of all, I would like to comment. It's absurd that for 14 months -- that 14 months is set as being an insufficient framework for the presentation of this so-called indictment.

Second, this only proves its true character. Second, regardless of the fact that you discussed last week some alleged possibilities for me of communicating with my associates and data gathering, up until the present day, I have not been able to, either in the course of this weekend, to present my associates with any kind of information or to establish contact with a view to preparing material by them, and the explanation I was given why I was not able to do that is that you did not make a ruling or decision to that effect and that therefore, I am not in a possibility -- in -- I'm not able to inform them of any facts or about any of the material that I have received. So I don't understand how they say that no decision or ruling exists on the matter if you discussed it in court last week.

And I also have another comment to make, an objection. I'm still being sent all the documents in English, and as you know, it is your duty to provide me with the documents in Serbian. ³⁰³¹

JUDGE MAY: Let me deal with those matters. The first is the time limits for the Prosecution. That's not a matter for you at all. It's a matter for the Court to determine.

Second, the explanation you were given as to why you should not communicate with your associates was the correct one. A decision has not yet been made. It will be, and you will be told of it. Third, we'll look at the position about documents being disclosed to you.

Mr. Nice, perhaps you could just briefly help us with that.

MR. NICE: I don't know which particular category of documents he's referring to when he says they're only being disclosed to him in English. If he's more specific I will be able to deal with it. We are as a concession and only to help him because he refuses to look at documents, I think still serving him with witness statements of upcoming witnesses shortly before they come to give evidence, and we continue to honour our 68 disclosure in the conscientious way we've done this morning. Those go to him by and large in the languages of the Tribunal.

And incidentally, I think that the time may come when the Chamber will want to review an earlier decision it made about languages that the accused understands. And although I realise that the earlier decision was made, a decision that the material had to be provided to him in Serbian or B/C/S, because it wasn't then known necessarily how competent he was in the English language. It's now perfectly clear on many occasions that he is indeed fluent in the English language. He worked for a long time in ³⁰³² America, and of course he may prefer to speak in his own language, one understands that, but given the enormous amount of expenditure there is on translation, given the enormous amount of money that we are spending time and resources that are being expended in providing him with material twice as often as the Rules require because he declines to look at the material, the Chamber may think that the time has come to review any decision that is premised on the suggestion that he doesn't understand English when he clearly does.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, let us look at that in due course. The witness is here and we should continue with his evidence.

[The witness entered court]

MR. NICE: Certainly.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic. Cross-examination.

WITNESS: KAROL DREWIENKIEWICZ [Resumed]

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] We once again heard an untruth. I did not work in America. That is incorrect. And secondly, even if I do understand what it says in the documents, it does not mean that my associates, who are there to gather information and data for me need necessarily understand it -- them. And I can't be used as a translator and interpreter for them. And I don't see why it is not their duty to translate the documents in Serbian. There is a friend of the Court here who also requires the documents in the Serbian language. So I think this is completely out of order to enter into polemics as to whether I should be given witness statements in English or any other language. Thank you. Now, I have understood that we can continue -- I may continue ³⁰³³ with the cross-examination. Is that right?

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

Q. [Interpretation] We're going to continue where we left off, and that is the following: We can see that through the questions that I asked on the basis of the statements, on the one hand the members of the Verification Mission, and you were the executive head of that mission as we noted, and on the other hand, on the basis of statements made by different terrorist chiefs from Kosovo and Metohija to the effect that the mission served a purpose and that was to save the terrorist activity in Kosovo and Metohija, to regard the army, as Melo Dinaj [phoen] said in the quotation I made.

JUDGE MAY: What is the question? You're putting, are you, that the -- wait a moment. Wait a moment. On the basis of statements made by terrorist chiefs, the mission served a purpose and that was to save the terrorist activity. Is that what you're putting, Mr. Milosevic, as the purpose of the mission?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes. I am saying that the purpose and aim of the mission was without a doubt the preparation of pre-conditions, a pretext for a war against Yugoslavia. That is my first point. And my second point is --

JUDGE MAY: Don't -- you're here to ask questions, not to make points. Now, there are two points you seem to be making or two questions you're asking, which should be put to the witness, and I will put them. Wait a moment -- just wait a moment, Mr. Milosevic. It's not fair for the ³⁰³⁴ witness that you put these things to him. He should have a chance to answer.

One is -- General, will you help us with this: One, it is suggested that the purpose was, as you've heard, in relation to terrorist activity, to save it. And the second is that it was to prepare the ground or as a pretext for a war against Yugoslavia. I don't know if you can deal with those matters.

THE WITNESS: The purpose of the mission was to go in and to verify the -- the agreement that had been made between the OSCE and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which -- and that the agreement was one of the earlier documents that I alluded, I referred to. We felt that we were there to ensure that no war took place. If you recall, in the course of September and early October of 1998, things were indeed tense in the region, and there was a great deal of activity which was looking extremely ominous. NATO did issue certain orders which were made public and which indicated preparation. In the course of that, the agreement between the OSCE and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was made in order to defuse the tension and to attempt a return to normality or a more normal situation. That was certainly how we saw our role, and we expended a considerable amount of effort in attempting to deal evenhandedly with all of the people we came in contact with. So ...

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Are you aware of a statement made - and that's where we left off - by Haradinaj because I want to prove the thesis that Mr. May brought up a moment ago, that is to say, he interpreted it, that they -- in order to ³⁰³⁵ act against Serbia, it was necessary, in order to convince the broad international community to take action against Serbia, it was necessary to usurp or to close off Kijevo and Decani, Prilep, and so on. So Kijevo, Decani, Prilep, those are the places mentioned here. They're all well known places where they caused enormous brutalities and conflicts, atrocities, and those places are known precisely for the fact that the army of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav security forces was accused precisely for the events that took place in those places. Now, is it true that their role was to cause as much bloodshed and conflict as possible and that this should then be verified as being the responsibility of the Yugoslav security forces? Yes or no?

A. No.

Q. All right. I reminded you of his statement that the arrival of the verificators in Kosovo enabled the revival of the KLA, and he even said that the agreement saved the KLA. And then he also said that it did a lot of it to revive the army. He says revive the army. Is that true or not?

A. That is an opinion which is not mine, and I have not heard of that statement before today, or before Friday when it was first mentioned.

Q. This was published in his book and in interviews and so on and so forth, just like many others who, after the occupation of Kosovo, considered that they were in a position to say everything and anything that was to their advantage.

MR. NICE: Your Honour --

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ^{3036 BLANK PAGE 3037}

Q. Now, is it incorrect?

JUDGE MAY: Just a moment, that is not a question.

MR. NICE: That was not a question. We can no longer afford the time for statements from this accused and he is simply again using time to make statements. We must object to that.

JUDGE MAY: Well that's -- very well, Mr. Nice. The objection is noted.

Mr. Milosevic, you hear the point which the Prosecution take. They're right to take it. You can make your speeches in due course, not now. The witness is here, and he should be asked questions.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] These are exclusively questions, and they are the subject we're discussing regardless of the fact that neither you nor the Prosecution like to hear this. And when we're talking about wasting time, we heard the other side --

JUDGE MAY: That is not -- that is not a proper comment. Now, it would be simpler if you just asked questions. One way one could tell if it's a question is if it's short, which it should be. We'll all get on more quickly.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I hope the answer's too.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Perhaps, General, you would bear that in mind too.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Now, going on from your last answer, I make mention of his statement, namely the talks that were held with military observers, as he says, of different armies, and especially the English, American, French, ³⁰³⁸ and Canadian armies. Now, were those negotiations and talks with a view to an explanation and along the lines of the explanation I made or not?

A. No. They were regular meetings between people who had been assigned to liaise with the insurgents, with the Kosovo Liberation Army, because we needed to have regular lines of communication with them so that when incidents occurred we could rapidly get in touch with -- with them as with everyone else in an incident in order to find out precisely what had happened and to defuse the incident as quickly as possible.

Q. And how then can we explain what he says at this end and in explaining the meetings? And he says, "The pre-preparations of NATO for an air campaign was to follow" was a separate subject discussed and that that was the contents of the talks. How can we explain that?

A. I don't believe that the liaison officers assigned by me went to the Kosovo Liberation Army to discuss NATO's preparations for an air campaign. I simply don't believe it.

Q. And do you believe that when speaking of forms of cooperation between the KLA and NATO during the bombing he says, during this period, in the military sense, Kosovo was a joint field for NATO and the KLA. I had advantage, I reaped advantage from the airstrikes and NATO reaped advantage through our activities against the Serb forces, and so on and so forth.

A. During the first month of the air campaign, I was in Macedonia, not in Kosovo. I left Macedonia on the 24th of April and did not return for the rest of the air campaign. So I was not in Kosovo during the air campaign. ³⁰³⁹

Q. All right. And did you know, when you communicated with people of that kind such as Haradinaj, Thaci and others, do you know that they were accused, and I have here a decision for 75 -- for example, that same Haradinaj and the killings, 75 killings, group killings, individual killings, the looting of Serbs, Albanians, policeman and so on. Did you know at the time the kind of people that you were communicating with, and cooperating with. Were you aware of that?

A. We were well aware that they were an insurgent organisation, and we were well aware that they were killing policemen, and at no stage during our time in Kosovo did we ever condone the killing of policemen.

Q. Do you consider them to be a terrorist organisation or an insurgent organisation?

A. I think insurgent is a better word because it's less emotive.

Q. And you consider that terrorist is an emotional and emotive word, do you?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Does that hold true for all terrorists throughout the world or just for the Kosovo terrorists?

A. The only ones I've met face-to-face were the ones in Kosovo. So that's the basis of my judgement.

Q. And in that connection, let us go back for a moment to what you've just been saying as to the goals of the mission. Do you happen to know the Sunday Times articles on the 12th of March, 2000, in which it says that the European diplomats who worked at the time for the OSCE claim that the organisation has been played out by American policy which rendered ³⁰⁴⁰ airstrikes an unavoidable act?

A. We felt we were there to ensure that the situation did not get worse so that things like airstrikes did not have to happen. But we were certainly not feeling that we were being played out by American policy, as you -- as you state, no.

Q. And the French paper L'Humanite wrote about it on the 18th of November, 1999, and in their articles the following was stated: That the vice-president of the parliamentary assembly of the OSCE, a German, his name was Billibina [phoen], he accused the USA that with the help of Great Britain they were undermining the OSCE mission, and here I have a quotation: "Everybody in the OSCE knew that NATO and the USA and Britain did not wish the mission to be a success. I have heard much testimony of people saying that the American instructors trained the Albanian fighters. They explained to them that it was strategically wise to killing Serb policemen in order to cause repression of large dimensions over the Albanian community." That was -- those were the words of the verifier. "I met two colleagues in the field who were doing their tasks -- who were engaged in their tasks of photographing a radar. I thought that our mission had ended when some people thought that they had collected enough data for the start of the bombing." Is that true or not?

A. No, it really isn't.

Q. And is the following true, what he says, that everybody in the OSCE knew that NATO and that the USA and Britain in the first place did not want our mission to succeed. Those words, is that correct?

A. No, absolutely not. ³⁰⁴¹

JUDGE MAY: Was there discussion in the mission along these lines? If you can throw some light on this. These reports apparently were given to journalists and appear to have come from people on the mission, although that may or may not be so. Were views along these lines expressed at the time?

A. The OSCE is a very broad church, sir, and we were there with the people that were given to us by the sending states, and everybody had their opinion, yes. And it was not an area in which free speech was rigorously stamped down upon. And so within the mission, there were a variety of views of what the -- the potential of the mission to keep going and to do its job was. Some people were more optimistic than others. Some were more determined than others to make it work.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. The Sunday Times in March 2000 says as follows: "The American intelligence agents recognise the fact that they have helped in the preparation and training of the KLA before NATO bombed Yugoslavia. This recognition caused bitterness on the part of European diplomats who said that this undermined efforts for a political solution to the conflict between the Serbs and the Albanians."

Do you know about that?

A. I never came across these American agents who were training the Kosovo Liberation Army. I heard the odd rumour of individual misguided people who were with the Kosovo Liberation Army who were not from that region. They were not described to me as American, and I never met them, ³⁰⁴² but there were persistent rumours that there were one or two people in a soldier of fortune role with the Kosovo Liberation Army. As I say, I never saw them.

Q. And do you consider that CIA agents did not take part in your mission?

A. None were identified as such.

Q. According to the writings of the British press, your press, Walker acknowledged that the CIA almost certainly took part in the days before the airstrike. Is that true or not?

A. I think you need to talk to Walker about this.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Is Mr. Walker a witness? You must remind me.

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Your Honour.

MR. NICE: It's not a matter that I'm in a position to deal with at the moment.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Yes.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Is it true that the functionaries of the CIA supervised the truce in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 and had links with the KLA and gave out American manuals for fighting the Serb army and the Serb police? And this is something that appeared in the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times wrote about it. Is that correct?

A. Again, I'm not aware of it. And I do have to say, I don't believe absolutely everything that I read in the Sunday Times.

Q. And is what it says afterwards true, in continuation, when the OSCE withdrew from Kosovo one week before the airstrikes last year, many ³⁰⁴³ of its satellite telephones and systems for global location were given secretly to the KLA for use, which -- for the commanders -- enabled the commanders of the guerrillas to remain in contact with NATO and KLA in Washington and KLA had mobile telephones and the mobile telephone of General Clark, too. Is that correct or not?

A. The KLA certainly had access to satellite phones, yes. We did not leave phones behind for them. They already had them. And when we moved -- when we evacuated the mission down to Macedonia, we received information via those phones which we had not left with them but which they had anyway of what was going on in terms of human rights abuses.

Q. And who did you get that information from, from the KLA?

A. In some circumstances, yes.

Q. The Sunday Times also states that the KLA recognised that it had long-term links with American and British intelligence services. Shaban Shamata, who is included in the attempt to destabilise villages where the majority Albanian population in Serbia stated that in 1996, in Northern Albania, he had a meeting with the British, American, and Swiss with -- with American, British, and Swiss agents. Is that incorrect as well? So the essence of it is -- what I'm asking you is links with American and European intelligence services. Would you say that that was incorrect as well?

A. I was in Germany and Sarajevo in 1996. I was not in Northern Albania. I simply don't know anything about this, and indeed I didn't even know that the Swiss had secret agents.

Q. Agim Ceku, the commander of the KLA, established contacts with ³⁰⁴⁴ the Americans in the course of his work in the Croatian army, which was modernised with the help of this cooperation for professional resources and the -- it is MPRI, a company specialised in military training and equipment, and the staff of that company spent some time in Kosovo together with other companies, Dincor [phoen] was another company, which helped in the programme for training and equipping the Bosnian army. Are you aware of the journeys of members of that company to Kosovo, both those two companies and their staff to Kosovo? Are you aware of that?

A. I am aware of both companies. Dincor was the contractor through whom the Americans hired the people that they contributed to the Kosovo Verification Mission, because they had an internal difficulty in not being able to second serving military to the Kosovo Verification Mission. So they were taken on individually by Dincor and then further seconded to the OSCE. The MPRI organisation, as far as I'm aware, was in Bosnia runnings the train and equip programme. That was running down and shedding quite a lot of manpower, and some of the people who worked for MPRI stopped working for MPRI in Bosnia and applied to Dincor to become members of the Kosovo Verification Mission in a different capacity and some of them were taken on. To a degree, I believe it was a matter of expediency that these were American people who had some knowledge of the region, in some cases spoke the language, and were available very quickly. And so Dincor took them on and they worked for Dincor when they were with us. I'm not aware that MPRI had a presence in Kosovo at all.

Q. That means that both of these companies that worked in Bosnia were transferred to work in Kosovo, to be involved in the same kind of work in ^{3045 BLANK PAGE 3046} Kosovo. Is that what you're saying?

A. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the MPRI hired people in Bosnia to do a job. That job finished in the course of 1998. Some of these people were taken on by Dincor to do a different job within the Kosovo Verification Mission. For MPRI in Bosnia, they were teaching the federation army tactics. In Kosovo working with Dincor, they were verifiers with our mission the same as the rest of us were. There was emphatically no training carried out.

Q. You are categorical in that, are you?

A. Yes. To the best of my knowledge, that is how I remember it.

Q. On the 18th of November, 1999, the French newspaper L'Humanite says that the vice-president of the parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, Willy Wimmer, accused the USA for undermining the mission in Kosovo in conjunction with Great Britain. There is a quotation from there: "In every possible way they sabotaged the peace plan that the OSCE had worked on patiently. They supported the members of the KLA who were fighting instead of supporting Rugova's moderates. The Yugoslav side supported the peace plan from October, but the KLA systematically violated it, and this obviously did not suit the purposes of some circles." Is that correct?

A. Not to the best of my knowledge. When the agreement was signed in October 1998, it was very much the intention that there should be a similar agreement between the OSCE and the Kosovo Albanian community, and strenuous efforts were made by Ambassador Chris Hill, an American diplomat, to get such agreement. That effort went on well into December of 1998 before it was finally concluded that it was not going to be ³⁰⁴⁷ possible to get such an agreement. We were very keen that such an agreement should happen, and a lot of contact was made with Rugova to attempt to get him to take a more leading role in -- in Kosovo at the time, which he was rather reluctant to do.

Q. The same newspaper writes about the testimony of a verifier who said, "I have heard many testimonies of many people who claim that American instructors were training Albanian fighters. They explained to them that it is strategically wise to kill Serb policemen in order to cause large-scale repression over the Albanian community." Are you aware of that or not?

A. No. We were entirely opposed to the idea of the KLA killing policemen. We made it clear to them that this was not the way to gain any support for their cause and that to kill the policemen of a sovereign state inside that state is emphatically wrong, and we said so many, many times.

Q. They also assert that the KLA forced the Kosovars to join refugee convoys in order to make the west react as soon as possible in this way. The local security of the OSCE compiled reports on local observers and later on these reports were destroyed. They carefully recorded the attitude of each and every individual towards the KLA. Are you aware of that?

A. There were a number of surveys done by different pieces of the mission. I'm not aware of all of them. No, I'm not aware of every one of them.

Q. Are you aware of the following, Deutsche Welle, Dr. Albishtar ³⁰⁴⁸ [phoen] for the strategic studies centre from the university in Zurich, on the 5th of December, 2000, he spoke about the role of intelligence services, the CIA, at a very early stage built its connections. This is well known from the talks that were held last year in Switzerland. The KLA was practically trained by an American organisation during the war and inter alia it consisted of former officers of professional army. This link exists and links to other intelligence services are something that I am not aware of. This is what Dr. Albert Stahl claims from the centre of strategic studies from the university in Zurich. On the 5th of December, 2000 for the Deutsche Welle...

Not -- are you aware of this? Not Stahl's claims, but again I'm asking you about the substance of this, his claim, rather, what he is saying, is it correct or not?

A. I am not aware of CIA activity training the KLA, no.

Q. Although the German newspaper says that CIA agents who before the attack on Yugoslavia supported and helped the KLA --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, there's no point. The point has been made. The witness has said he is not aware of it. So we need to move on to another topic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, this is the core of the matter.

JUDGE MAY: It may be, but as far as this witness is concerned, he's said he's not aware of it. He can't help us any more. If you've got evidence about it you can call it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ³⁰⁴⁹

Q. Have you heard of Heinz Lockweih, a retired Brigadier General of the Bonn Vizier, who until 2000 was a member of the German delegation to the OSCE in Vienna? He also participated in the negotiations on arms control on the basis of Dayton, and he also published a book, and he -- "Hans Hien Lacra" [phoen], he published another book, "A War That Could Have Been Avoided". Have you heard of him?

A. No, but there's an awful lot of retired brigadiers from the German army.

Q. He published a book. That's why I had assumed that you -- well, he claims that the KLA enjoyed unequivocal support of the West?

MR. NICE: Your Honour, can I raise a point?

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. NICE: And it's a point that rises in stark form with this question that's about to start, but it arises with all the material that's been put in this morning. The accused is clearly cross-examining on extracts of material rather than putting in the material in full. That's always a problem. It's true it saves a lot of time, but the proper way to put material in is to put in the whole document so that one can check on its context, and we've had earlier examples of the accused cross-examining significantly out of context in relation to documents. But when we come to an example like this and he asks of a particular work, whether the witness knows the author, if the witness doesn't know the author, what conceivable value can there be at this stage in going on and trying to ask him about the contents of a book which the witness hasn't reviewed, we won't be able to review to check on its context, and takes us no further? ³⁰⁵⁰

JUDGE MAY: It depends on what the book says. It may be that the witness can answer the question, maybe not, but we don't know what the question is. It's not -- it's not -- in cross-examination, of course, it's not the question that matters, it's the answer. Now, it may be that the witness can assist on a particular point. He may or may not. But one has to bear in mind in this case that this is an accused in person, a litigant in person, and therefore the rules which are applied to a professional advocate have to be considered in that light. He must be entitled to some leeway. But of course sources should be identified so that you can check them.

MR. NICE: Preferably presented at the time so we can look at them.

JUDGE MAY: True. Yes. What is it you want to put from the book? And perhaps you can give us the page, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] First of all, I want you to make it impossible for my time to be taken away from me. So it's not the book at all. It is its various positions.

Thirdly, whoever does not believe that these positions are not contained in this book can check it out. And whoever is bothered by this can consider this to be my positions, that I am double-checking by putting questions to this witness. It's all the same to me. So I am asking you whether it's true that the KLA enjoyed unequivocal support of the West.

A. It isn't true, no. We didn't go there to support the KLA. We went there to stop a bad situation from getting worse, and to try to make ³⁰⁵¹ it better, and eventually to hold an election.

Q. When NATO got involved in the conflict by clearly taking a position against the Serbs by turning its potential only against the Serbs by threatening, and did this make it true that the KLA had the largest military alliances, their allies in order to achieve their objectives? Is that correct or is that not correct?

A. That is not how NATO saw what it was doing, although I hesitate to speak for NATO because at the time I was not serving with NATO.

Q. And did you notice that the American President, on the 24th of March, 1999, in his speech to the American people, put in the very first place not the humanitarian catastrophe but the reliability of NATO?

JUDGE MAY: That's not something the witness can deal with.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, it's a generally known fact. I'm asking him whether he noted that.

JUDGE MAY: You can give evidence about it in due course.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This was Clinton's public appearance, and it's very easy to put that into evidence.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Also, are you aware that the same thing was said by Clark on CBS news in May 2001, the 15th of May, 2001, inter alia [In English] "What Milosevic never really understood was this wasn't a conflict strictly about Kosovo. It wasn't even a conflict ultimately about ethnic cleansing. It was a battle about the future of NATO, about the credibility of the United States as a force in world affairs."

JUDGE MAY: Are you asking the witness whether he can shed any ³⁰⁵² light on that? Is that what you want to know?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] No. I'm saying does this, in his opinion, reveal the background and the true reasons for the aggression against Yugoslavia. And his mission served the same function. That's my question.

A. No. I think what we were there to do was to prevent a humanitarian disaster, and I thought that at the time, and I still think it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Since a number of verifiers obviously did not share your views, is this correct, this what the Italian verifiers said, and what was published in the geostrategic review called Limas in which it says that the Americans sabotaged the OSCE mission and also a quotation is made. So this is Limas, an Italian geostrategic review. These are Italian verifiers as well. [In English] "In my view, he had two primary aims. One was to infiltrate personnel into the theatre with intelligence tasks and for special forces activities, preparatory work for a predetermined war."

[Interpretation] I'm waiting for the interpretation to finish. [In English] "The other was to give the war the impression that everything had been tried and thus create grounds for public consent to the aggression we perpetrated."

[Interpretation] Is this correct or not?

A. I would certainly say that we did try everything. We certainly were not there to infiltrate people into the theatre with intelligence ³⁰⁵³ tasks and for special forces activities, no. We were there to carry out the task according to the agreement, in the best way we could, imperfect though it was, and without the cooperation of many of the people on the ground.

Q. The Italians say in this same source material: [In English] "Criticise Walker and his British chief of operation, Karol John Drewienkiewicz for ejecting any cooperation with Serb authorities." [Interpretation] Is that correct or not? Did they criticise you? Did individual members of the mission criticise you or did they criticise you amongst themselves without you knowing about it?

A. I can recall moments when everybody was not absolutely convinced that -- of a particular course of action. At that point, the decision was made by the head of mission, and we got on with it. It was not a popularity contest. It was a mission to try to stop bad things from happening. And if in doing that occasionally a nose got put out of joint because somebody was told, "We have heard all of the opinions, now, let's get on with the decision that the head of mission has given us," maybe occasionally, yes, noses got put out of joint, but we were there to be effective. We were not there for a beauty contest.

Q. But they also say that they criticised you, and they say here, this is a direct quote [In English] "[Previous translation continues]... to human rights. For controlling the mission's information flow, and most serious of all, for using the mission to make contacts with UCK rebels and train them to guide NATO to targets in the subsequent bombing." [Interpretation] Is this correct or not? This is what the members ^{3054 BLANK PAGE 3055} of your mission have said.

A. It was certainly part of our role to make contact with the KLA, so that when an incident occurred, we could talk to both sides of the incident in order to, first, find out the rights and wrongs of it, and secondly, to try to calm the situation down. You can only do that if you have access to the KLA as well as the Serb security forces. So yes, we did do that. We were not doing it in order to train the rebels. There were moments, I have to say, when in discussing events with the senior Serb officers I attempted to train them in explaining the difference between proportionate response and disproportionate response, but I didn't seem to make much progress in that.

Q. In connection with this, they said that some members of the commission trained the KLA to guide the NATO bombers to various targets. The Italian verifies says, [In English] "[Previous translation continues]... bombing began on March 24, Serb security forces set out to root out all suspected UCK indicators. These operations are very probably at the heart of what NATO has described as ethnic cleansing."

JUDGE MAY: So what is the question?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] My question is whether this is correct, but I haven't finished.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. [In English] "[Previous translation continues]... testified to a low level of violence as well as UCK provocation." [Interpretation] Is this correct or not?

A. By March the 24th, we were in -- in Macedonia, and our only ³⁰⁵⁶ contact with what was going on in Kosovo was from people who left Kosovo after we had left, and we met them and they told us what was happening, and as I have mentioned, some satellite phone communications primarily with the KLA in which we were given information of other human rights abuses.

Q. Is this correct, what the Italian verifiers also said: [In English] "[Previous translation continues]... was an occasion -- was an occasion for Walker and the US State Department to denounce the Serbs for breaking the truce. Europeans saw things differently. The Albanian rebels with US encouragement versus the dramatically provoking Serb attacks in order to justify NATO coming in on their side of the conflict."

JUDGE MAY: I think the witness is -- the witness has dealt with this point of view. He's already given his evidence about it. So there's little point continuing on this point.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. We will get to this later, but since it is in the same place, I think that it would be useful for us to hear your opinion about this matter that the Italian verifiers have also referred to. Very briefly, this is an opinion of a relatively brief description of something that we shall get to later.

[In English] "In January, Walker settled the score with his European critics by bringing the world media over to this side -- to his side. This was the political significance of the famous Racak massacre. On January 15, Serb police had carried out a pre-announced operation accompanied by observers and television cameras against UCK killers ³⁰⁵⁷ believed to be hiding out in the village of Racak. As the Serbs swept into the village, the UCK gunmen took refuge, took refuge on surrounding high ground and began firing on police, as TV footage showed. But the Serbs sent forces around behind them and many UCK forces were trapped and shot. After the Serb forces withdrew that afternoon, the UCK again took control of the village, and it was the KLA who led Walker into the village the next day to see what they describe as victims of massacre. It may be, as Serb authorities claimed and many Europeans tended to believe that the victims were in fact killed in the shootout reported by police and then aligned to give the appearance of a mass execution or massacre. In any case, the extremely emotional --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the witness is here to answer questions and not to listen to long quotations.

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, for Judge May.

JUDGE MAY: In order that the matter can clearly be dealt with, he should be asked about the various parts of these allegations. It's, first of all, suggested that the Serb police carried out a pre-announced operation.

Just one moment. Do you know anything about that, General?

THE WITNESS: Yes. It was certainly the case that in this area, it was stated that there will be an operation against whoever carried it out. We will find the people who did it, and we will deal with them. I remember General Loncar saying this to me in the same meeting in which he got the phone call which told him that three policemen had been killed. ³⁰⁵⁸ At the time, I said I was extremely sorry to hear of the loss of his policemen.

It was certainly pre-announced. What was not announced was precisely where, when, and at what level the operation was carried out. But that was rarely given to us.

JUDGE MAY: Was the firing between KLA gunmen and the Serb forces?

THE WITNESS: There was a -- I believe there was a KLA presence on the outskirts of the village when the attack started on Racak, yes.

JUDGE MAY: Did the KLA lead Walker into the village, as far as you know?

THE WITNESS: The KLA were in the village when we got there on the Saturday morning with Walker, yes.

JUDGE MAY: Did they, as far as you could see, lead him into the village? That's what's alleged.

THE WITNESS: No. They were in the village, and we went into the village. We were perfectly capable of getting in there ourselves.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic, what is the rest of the quotation?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Do you think in view of everything that I've just said that it would be a correct assessment, which is something that the Italian verifiers are talking about precisely, that this kind of conduct on the part of Walker, [In English] "Impossible pretense of the OSCE mission." [Interpretation] Therefore, that conduct put to an end all ³⁰⁵⁹ pretenses of neutrality on the part of your mission?

A. No. That was not the way we saw it. We saw the Racak operation as being hugely disproportionate in view of the degree of force that was used. And further, we sincerely believed that the way we found the bodies in the gully on the hillside was the way they had been left when they had been killed. We saw no evidence of having moved bodies around or having jumbled them up to make it look as if they had been brought -- they had been killed there whereas -- instead of them having been killed elsewhere and brought together. We saw no evidence whatsoever of that.

Q. We'll get back to Racak later on. But I'm interested in your opinion, your opinion about -- how shall I put it? -- a brief, a short assessment of this whole mission of yours which, according to the Italian verifiers, was as follows: [In English] "[Previous translation continues]... of international missions, it would be hard to find such a chaotic and tragically ambiguous enterprise."

[Interpretation] Do you agree with that assessment?

A. It was certainly ambitious, and because no preparations had been made for it before the mission was authorised, it was extremely confusing when the mission was being started up. It was chaotic, and it was my job to get order out of chaos, and I did that to the best of my ability with some very able subordinates.

Q. When did you start coming up meeting the commanders and the heads of the KLA terrorist groups?

A. The first time I crossed into a KLA position was on the afternoon of December the 25th, 1998. ³⁰⁶⁰

Q. After that, were your meetings frequent or how frequent were they, your meeting with them?

A. My meetings with them were not frequent. I used liaison officers to communicate with them wherever possible. I suppose I went into KLA positions between six and eight times in the course of the mission.

Q. A total of eight times in the course of your mission. That was of the most number of times you talked to the KLA, is that it?

A. That was the most time I talked face-to-face with them. I had many, many discussions with my liaison officers about what their attitudes were and about what they might do next. And so I don't think that was the only contact I had with them. I had a lot of contact with them, but usually through my liaison officers, who because they were assigned to deal with the KLA permanently were better able to -- to establish a working relationship with the KLA.

Q. What about Walker? Did he have daily contacts with them?

A. No.

Q. How frequently did he have contacts with them?

A. Somewhat less than me, I would say. So if I -- if I went into KLA positions between six and eight times, he probably went in four to six times, I would think.

Q. Not counting Racak or counting Racak? Which?

A. I was not counting Racak, but you can add that to both, I suppose.

Q. And what did you talk about when you met?

A. We normally went in with a specific purpose such as to bring the ³⁰⁶¹ eight VJ soldiers back. And we went in and discussed that matter which was the pressing matter at hand. We didn't engage very much in philosophical discussions.

Q. That means, in fact, that you had meetings when there were crisis situations, to discuss them, such as the taking of prisoners and arresting soldiers and so on. But apart from those situations of crisis, what did your talks have to do with?

A. From the end of December, we were -- we felt that we were in a fairly permanent crisis in that no sooner did one incident die down when another incident blew up. We only got the eight Serb soldiers off the top of the hill at Stari Trg on the Wednesday and Racak happened on the Friday. There wasn't much let-up between incidents to contemplate our navels.

Q. That -- so in practical terms, that would mean that you only discussed crisis issues and incidents and nothing else when you had your contacts with the KLA, yes or no?

A. That was how it came to work out as far as I was concerned. I always went -- I only went into a KLA location if there was something I needed to go in about. I didn't make a habit of going in to socialise.

Q. And did you receive reports on incident situations -- incidents and situations of this kind? Not you personally, I mean the mission itself. When incidents occurred, did you get information from the Serb and other non-Albanian inhabitants?

A. Yes, to a degree. We got information from anybody who was prepared to give us information and then we compared all different the ³⁰⁶² information, looked at where it had come from, and made a judgement as to what had probably happened in reality.

Q. I'm talking about the complaints and reports with respect to kidnappings, violations of human rights, violence that the KLA undertook. Did you receive reports and complaints from the Serb and other non-Serb population about that?

A. Yes, we did.

Q. And what was usually the subject of those complaints and reports?

A. The subject varied, but it was normally about ceasefire breaches or allegations of bad behaviour by one side or the other. We attempted to -- to record this and to try to find out what had actually happened. And if it was possible to come to a conclusion on which side the violation lay, then we made that judgement. It was not always possible.

Q. And did the families complain to you of people who had been kidnapped and killed, for example?

A. Yes. Yes, on both sides.

Q. And did you -- how do you mean both sides? The police didn't kidnap anybody, but it was the KLA that did the kidnapping. Now, did you do anything to have those kidnapped people returned, the people who had been taken? Did you undertake an investigation or make any attempt to do so except for these eight soldiers, apart from them?

A. Yes, we did actually get some other people back. And on the day that the nine -- the nine KLA who had been held captive, who had been captured in the border ambush, when we handed them back over to the KLA, we also took delivery of five kidnapped Serbs who we were able to return ^{3063 BLANK PAGE 3064} to their families. That was certainly another incident that springs immediately to my mind.

Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, do you distinguish between kidnapped civilians and terrorists seized at the border who were armed during an attempt, illegally and in armed fashion, to cross the border, those who had been arrested by the legitimate forces of a state guarding its borders? Do you make a distinction between those two? You seem to have equated them now?

A. No. I said that they were -- they are remembered bringing those five Serbs back. There is certainly a difference, yes. And at the time we made it clear absolutely clear that the ambush on the border was a legitimate act of the forces of a state defending its borders and it was a grave ceasefire violation by the KLA, yes.

Q.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, we're going to -- Mr. Milosevic, the time has come for an adjournment. We're going to adjourn for quarter of an hour. You can go on then.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] How many minutes?

--- Recess taken at 10.35 a.m.

--- On resuming at 10.55 a.m.

MR. NICE: Before --

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. NICE: Just to remind Your Honours, the witness is available today, having made suitable arrangements, but not, I think, beyond.

JUDGE MAY: That message may not have got through, but --

MR. NICE: The Court may remember that I originally said there ³⁰⁶⁵ were problems about his being here today but he reorganised things so he could be here today but not after.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, perhaps you could bring your cross-examination to a close today.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Up until what time? How long are we working for today?

JUDGE MAY: We are working until 12.45 -- 1.45, quarter to two, and we will have one more break.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, that's a very short period of time. He took --

JUDGE MAY: Yes. He took over six hours. Let's see how we get on, and we'll review the position at the end of the day.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Are you conscious of the fact that since the arrival of the mission there was a precipitant increase in the number of crimes committed by the KLA terrorist organisation?

A. Not as such, no. I don't think -- compared with when, I think, would be my question.

Q. Well, compared to the situation before the arrival of the mission. That's what I'm comparing it to, because it was almost at zero level before the mission's arrival, their activities or, rather, the crimes that they perpetrated. And statistics show just how much this was increased very suddenly under the mission's protection. Are you aware of those facts?

A. Not as you state them, because one of the things we kept asking ³⁰⁶⁶ for was a baseline for all of this sort of stuff, and it was consistently not produced.

Q. And was this schematic, that is to say, that they escalated with their crimes legitimately and that the security forces were legitimate in reacting, and then the mission accused the Serbian security forces according to a cliche, that is to say, that they used excessive use of force. Was that the general plan and schematic?

A. No. That was not how we saw it. The KLA, when we arrived, had stated that they would observe a ceasefire. As I have mentioned, we had wanted a firmer agreement with the Albanian side generally, but that was not forthcoming. But there was the declaration of a ceasefire, and at the start, that -- that was held to a degree. However, there were certainly cases of individual incidents involving the KLA which we deplored, but we understood that an insurgent organisation cannot be as disciplined and be able to get orders down to its -- its people, as quickly as a government set of security forces which have got much better chains of command and a proper code. There aren't codes for insurgents.

Q. How many times did you go to Dragobilje?

A. Specifically, I think probably once.

Q. Did you meet their chiefs on that occasion?

A. Yes. I went there in order to discuss how we were going to get them to Rambouillet, because we had to get them onto an aircraft in order to go to Rambouillet to be part of the Albanian delegation, the Kosovo Albanian delegation.

Q. Does that mean that Dragobilje was the centre of their main ³⁰⁶⁷ chiefs?

A. They met in different locations from time to time. That was the location that I went to in order to meet them.

Q. And did you have your own substation there, if I can put it that way, or one of your permanent offices there?

A. One of my -- we had a liaison officer there all the time with the KLA, or just about all of the time, yes.

Q. What about KDOM? Did it have its station there too?

A. I -- I assume by that you're referring to the US KDOM, which is the one that stayed in being all of the time, and I think they were there from time to time, but I'm not aware they had a permanent presence there.

Q. But your presence was permanent; is that right?

A. It was pretty permanent. The liaison officer came out from time to time to talk to me or to other people, but their -- it was the intention that there was always one of my people there for the KLA to talk to if they needed to.

Q. And what about the presence of your representatives? Was that there to protect the chiefs of this terrorist organisation? Is that why they were there, the chiefs in Dragobilje?

A. No. They were -- seemed quite capable of looking after themselves, and I don't think our presence as unarmed people in largely soft-skinned vehicles acted as -- as any protection, no.

Q. And was Walker in Dragobilje?

A. He was not with me when I went, but I know he went there on at least one occasion. ³⁰⁶⁸

Q. And do you know whom you met at the time? Could you give us the names of the people you met, and the names of the people he met?

A. I could not without going back to my notebooks. The people that I met were the people, who at the time, were the three people at the top of the KLA.

Q. And what were their names?

A. I would need to check my books because I can't remember them offhand.

Q. And you haven't got them with you, I assume.

A. I'm afraid not.

Q. And who did you talk to about your impressions after touring Dragobilje?

A. My impressions, well, I would have talked to Walker and to Keller, the head and the deputy head of the mission, because at the time, we were very concerned about ensuring that the -- the designated people were facilitated in their journey to Rambouillet.

Q. Well, it is common knowledge who the people were in Rambouillet. Were they the same people that you talked to in Dragobilje?

A. They were among the people who went to Rambouillet, yes.

Q. And did you have any contacts with the families of the abducted Serbs, the members of those families?

A. Not personally, no.

Q. And when you talked to the heads of the terrorist organisations in Dragobilje, did you do anything to have them return the citizens that they had seized? ³⁰⁶⁹

A. As I recall it, the moment at which I went to Dragobilje was after the five Serbs were returned to their families. When I went to Dragobilje it was February, and we brought the five elderly Serbs back in late January.

Q. And what about the representatives of the mission whom you say contacted the families of the abducted Serbs? Did they take on any responsibilities towards those families vis-a-vis those families? Did they make any promises to them?

A. They were meetings from time to time between members of the KVM and the families of the missing Serbs and indeed families of missing Albanian civilians as well, and that was quite a regular feature. It was not done by me. It was done by another part of the mission. But I was aware that it was going on. And it was obviously a cause of concern that abducted people were returned on both sides.

Q. And did you score any results except for those five that you've just mentioned?

A. I think there was one other, but I can't remember it precisely because I wasn't involved in it.

Q. And did they tell you that Glodjan Dragobilje was the biggest prisons for abducted Serbs and Albanians?

A. No.

Q. Did you know that the abducted civilians were taken to the KLA headquarters in the village of Glodjani?

A. No.

Q. Do you know that they were subjected to torture and then killed ³⁰⁷⁰ and thrown into the canal which supplies water for Lake Radonic?

A. No.

Q. Do you know that there is detailed photo documentation and reports on those crimes?

JUDGE MAY: He doesn't know. He can't answer it.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Is it true that no plan existed to expel Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija?

A. At the time I was in the Kosovo Verification Mission until we evacuated the mission on the 20th of March, I was not aware of a plan to expel the Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija.

Q. Does that mean that you saw nothing and heard nothing that would indicate the existence of such a plan?

A. I saw no plan. Nobody talked to me about a plan. The behaviour of some of your security forces was not always compatible with wanting them to stay in the location that they were, however.

Q. And were you aware that the security forces never acted against terrorists when they were in groups together with civilians?

A. No, that was not my impression. My impression was that your security forces were quite prepared to go against groups of the KLA when they -- there were civilians present.

Q. But even American representatives, during 1998, were fully aware of the fact that action was not taken in those places where there was a danger of having civilians harmed. Were you aware of that fact, that no ³⁰⁷¹ action was taken where civilians could have been harmed? Yes, no?

A. No.

Q. Is it correct that Serb representatives at the meeting with your mission on the 4th of December, 1998, criticised the mission for not having started verification and that they requested that the process be initiated immediately?

A. Yes. And we could have got going a lot quicker if we'd had a lot more cooperation from your people.

Q. So you think that the fault for a lack of cooperation is exclusively on the side of the Yugoslav authorities?

A. Put like that, yes.

Q. And is it correct that on that occasion, the representatives of Serbian Yugoslavia, or, rather, the representatives of the authorities requested that the ceasefire violations of the KLA be discussed?

A. That was probably -- that was probably among the discussions, yes.

Q. And is it correct that you did not want to discuss that on that occasion?

A. I cannot remember that. That was not the main thrust of that particular meeting.

Q. Well, let me remind you. You speak about that on page 14, paragraph 3 of your statement with regard to both of these questions that I've just put to you.

On that occasion, were the areas that caused concern indicated?

A. The areas that were causing us concern were the fact that we were ^{3072 BLANK PAGE 3073} not being helped to build up the mission quickly, that bureaucratic procedures were being used to slow down the entry of the mission into Kosovo and its build-up. And the main purpose of the meeting, as I recall it, was to ask for assistance in speeding up the various bureaucratic procedures so that we could hire buildings and get visas issues far more quickly than was happening.

Q. Well, did you obtain the faster issuing of visas?

A. It never got particularly fast, no. We actually asked if a suboffice of the visa section could be located down in Pristina so that the passports did not have to be carried physically from Pristina to Belgrade and back and that was never -- that was never put into action. So passports always had to be sent all the way up to Belgrade and all the way back, and it took many days to get visas.

Q. How many days was it actually?

A. It depended, but it was never fast.

Q. But how many days?

A. I remember that my visa, to go from a single-entry visa to a multiple-entry visa, I believe it took six working days for my passport to be moved up to Belgrade, to be stamped and to come back. But that's only my recollection.

Q. But all that time you were in Kosovo. That is not being denied.

A. That is correct. But the other place that visas were being issued very slowly was that verifiers who were being called forward to the mission were being -- were in their own countries, were going to the Yugoslav embassy in that country, and it was taking on average two weeks ³⁰⁷⁴ to get a visa from the Yugoslav embassy in that country. So they were slowed down from coming into the country.

Once people were in Kosovo, if they needed to go down to Macedonia, for instance, to meet the next lot of verifiers to arrive at Skopje airport, then this was not possible if you only had a single-entry visa. So it complicated the life of the mission. It made us less effective than we otherwise would have been.

Q. And did you bear in mind the fact that in Vienna, where the OSCE headquarters are, there was a possibility for members of your mission to obtain visas in an express manner, so to speak?

A. Not specifically, but then the mission did not all come through Vienna. They came directly from their country of origin to Skopje and from there up to Kosovo. There was no reason for them to go via Vienna.

Q. But you did have 1.300 members of your mission who had visas nevertheless, and I imagine that the difference, the remainder up to 2.000, was not due to the fact that they could not obtain visas.

A. By March, the strength of the mission had gone up to 1.379, that is correct. From Christmas until March, the mission gained strength at a rate of about a hundred a week. We had hoped we would get it up to 2.000 by April.

Q. Why was it so slow?

A. It was fast by the standards of missions like this that are built one person at a time. It took the same amount of time for the United Nations' mission in Kosovo to build up to a similar strength when they came in in June. It basically took them about the same amount of time to ³⁰⁷⁵ get to 1.300 strong. It is a fact of life that when you're calling for people individually, then you have to have 1.300 sets of negotiations with the people and look at their curriculum vitae, call them forward. There aren't formed units of these people waiting to -- to come forward in the way that a military unit would do so with all its equipment.

Q. If the same time was required for the United Nations, after the 10th of June, just as you needed during the Verification Mission and the 1st that I mentioned did not require any visas, in view of their arrival in Kosovo, that practically means that visas had no effect whatsoever in terms of the speeding up or slowing down of the entire process; is that correct?

A. No.

Q. Well, how come that the same time was required for the United Nations when they did not have any problems with visas, the problems that you have been indicating that you allegedly had them.

A. I did not allegedly have them, I did have them. I think you would need to compare the manning lists. The United Nations mission certainly was built up at about the same rate. However, they required a greater number of policemen in their mission, and policemen are even harder to get than the people we were getting. We did not have any many policemen in our mission, because again, they're not standing around waiting to be called forward.

Q. And on the occasion of the meeting that you had with the Yugoslav representatives, did they indicate to you that on the road between Pec and the area up near Nis there is KLA gunfire and that Malisevo was abandoned ³⁰⁷⁶ by the population because of KLA activities and that the KLA was not exercising restraint? Did they point out all these elements to you?

A. The road between Pec and Nis is about 150 miles long, as I recall it. So I would need more precision in that question. The discussion of what was going on in Malisevo certainly happened; Malisevo was a hot spot at the time.

Q. But is it correct that at the meeting that was held between the representatives of the Yugoslav government with you and Walker on the 9th of December, that they asked that the KVM stop supporting the KLA and that they ask that the international community stop giving financial support to the KLA from banking sources in the West?

A. Yes, I remember that allegation being made, and I remember Ambassador Walker rebutting it very, very sternly.

Q. Do you think that he rebutted it with good reason when it is known that through banking channels from the West, money was being earmarked for the KLA? Are you aware of that?

A. I am really not aware of the sources of funding of the KLA, no.

Q. Is it correct that the Yugoslav army called the KVM to come and carry out an inspection with regard to ceasefire violations to the east of Prizren on the border on the 14th of December when some terrorists got killed?

A. Yes, but it was to the west of Prizren.

Q. And was it confirmed to you then by your own patrols that there had been fighting and that large quantities of equipment had been found?

A. Yes. ³⁰⁷⁷

Q. Is it correct that this was a long column of the KLA?

A. Yes. We believe it was about 145 strong.

Q. And is it correct that the KVM got approval to visit the imprisoned KLA members, those who were taken prisoner during that incident, that is?

A. Very much later, yes. At the time that these -- that the nine prisoners were taken prisoner, that was, as you say, mid-December. As I recall it, it was the end of the first week or the beginning of the second week of January when we were granted access to these prisoners in Nis, and that was in the context of the negotiations to get the -- your eight soldiers off the hill at Stari Trg where they were being held prisoner.

Q. Is it correct that these prisoners, during the visit of Ciaglinski, your associate to the prison in Nis, told him that this was a KLA column for reinforcements and precisely this bit of information, that it was 145 members of the KLA?

A. Yes. You'll be able to ask him when he appears, but that was certainly what he reported back to me, yes.

Q. And is it correct that then they stated that they had been mobilised into the KLA against their own will, and then they went to Albania where they were trained?

A. Yes. That is my understanding.

Q. And is it correct that all of them during the conflict, the clash on the 14th of December, that they were all armed?

A. I cannot say that, but most of them appear to have been armed, yes. ³⁰⁷⁸

Q. And is it correct that -- that terrorists killed, on the 14th of December, some young Serbs in the Cafe Panda in Pec?

A. There was a killing in the Panda Bar in Pec, and some Serb youths were killed. And we never really worked out who to attribute those killings to. There was no clear evidence in either direction.

Q. Are you aware of the fact that the terrorists who committed this, who carried out this attack, escaped to Kapemice, that part of town which was practically a hotbed of the KLA in that town?

A. That was -- I never heard that before, and I was not aware of any effective police follow-up that might have found that out either.

Q. According to all their reports, all the traces led in that direction. Did you know about that?

JUDGE MAY: The witness said he wasn't.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. When the other side was questioning you, they said that four young men were killed. However, six young men were killed, if you remember. Do you remember even Obradovic, a high school student was killed, Vuleta, Glozdenovic, also a student. Zoran Stankovic, also a pupil. Dragan Trifkovic, also a pupil. Svet Ristic, pupil. Ivan Radovic, a university student. And the father of Ivan Radovic, Bogdan Radovic, was kidnapped. His mother and grandmother were beaten up by KLA terrorists.

JUDGE MAY: One thing at a time. General, can you help any more about this incident?

THE WITNESS: I cannot remember precisely how many people were killed in the Panda Bar attack. I believe that a number were killed ³⁰⁷⁹ outright and some died later, and it was between four and six. I can certainly remember that. I mean, it was an extremely unfortunate incident. We were not able to come to any conclusions as to the motives behind it, and nobody ever claimed responsibility for it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. The very fact that the perpetrators fled, and along parallel lines, one of the killed had his father abducted, and I read this out to you. He had previously been head of the municipal committee of Pec, does that sufficiently speak of how absurd and monstrous it is to claim that anybody but the KLA could have done this?

A. No, because there have been some quite well-documented incidents elsewhere within the Balkan theatre of incidents looking like one thing and turning into another, and that was why we never ascribed blame or culpability without going into it in some detail.

Q. And do you know whose speciality this was, to create victims on their own side in order to accuse the other side of having done it, both in Bosnia and in Kosovo?

A. No, but I can recall grenade attacks on Albanian properties, as well as against Serb properties during the time I was in Kosovo. So neither side had a monopoly of these events, I'm afraid.

Q. And do you remember that in Bosnia this was standing practice with that well-known event of the alleged shelling of the bread line in Sarajevo, the alleged --

JUDGE MAY: This goes beyond the realm of the witness's evidence.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ³⁰⁸⁰

Q. All right. Is it correct that at the meeting with the KVM on the 15th of December, the representatives of the government brought up an accusation, that the KLA was being supplied from America by some special weapons because the members of the KLA had been found to have a number of such weapons?

A. Yes, I recall that allegation being made, and again I recall it being refuted vigorously by Ambassador Walker.

Q. And do you know that Floren Krasniqi, an Albanian from New York involved in the construction business, and one of the main financiers of the KLA, described how certain weapons were exported from America thanks to the fact that these exports were actually being sent to hunting societies in Albania? Do you know of that confirmation of what you say that Walker refuted?

A. No, but I can observe that most of the weapons that I saw in the hands of the KLA were Kalashnikovs.

Q. We're not talking about Kalashnikovs here. We're talking about special weapons that had been imported from America. You know nothing about this then; right?

A. I am not aware of it, no.

Q. Is it correct that at the meeting with the representatives of the MUP you had suggested that the number of forces be decreased and that they could not accept that because they were concerned about the security and safety of their own men? Did that seem logical to you?

A. This was in connection with the -- the police garrison at Malisevo, which we were convinced was an impediment to the inhabitants ^{3081 BLANK PAGE 3082} coming back to Malisevo because the police presence was so heavy. And we established a permanent presence of the KVM in Malisevo, and I then went to the police chief and suggested that he reduce the presence there because we felt it was threatening. It was not like a normal police station. It was more like a fort under siege with armoured cars outside of it.

Q. And are you aware -- actually, this question pertains to this specialty of the KLA to kill their own people and then accuse the other side of having done it. Are you aware that there is a witness of the Prosecution, not somebody that I have brought up, somebody that they had brought up, anyway, this person says that at places where there were not police attacks that they organised their own attacks against peaceful villages. Are you aware of this practice?

A. Not specifically, no, because if we had been aware of it, we would have commented on it publicly. When you find a naked dead body by the road at 8.00 in the morning, it's very difficult to work out who killed him or her.

Q. I am talking about a protected witness for the Prosecution who asserts that they organised attacks of their own against peaceful villages and that these were --

JUDGE MAY: The witness has dealt with this. He has given his evidence about it as far as he can. Now, move on to another topic.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] Well, that is the subject. Jako Krasniqi, Hashim Thaci, Sulejman Selimi, and Rexhep Selimi organised an entire series of killings of Albanians, especially those -- ³⁰⁸³

JUDGE MAY: That is what you say. The witness has given his answer.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am asking him not about what I am saying but about what I have been reading from the statement of this protected witness. He is a protected witness because he is an Albanian.

JUDGE MAY: It doesn't matter. Now, let us -- Mr. Milosevic, the cross-examination is to put things to the witness, not for argument. Now, you've asked him about this practice, as you allege, and he has said what he can about it. There's no point going on putting other things to him.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] However, I'm asking whether it is logical for the executive chief of the Verification Mission to know or not to know about the multitude of these crimes that were committed by this groups headed by Thaci, Krasniqi, Selimi, and others. So this question directly has to do with what he was duty-bound to monitor and report on, and it has to do with the testimony of your witness here, the Prosecution witness, not something that I have been saying just off-the-cuff. I am asking him questions related to the subject matter that he was actually dealing with in Kosovo. That's what he was there for. And you have the same thing --

JUDGE MAY: You can ask him about the practice that you put forward. Now, is there something else you want to ask him about?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I do not understand your question. Of course I want to ask him about a great many things, but it seems to me that this is a very important qualification of carrying out a series of crimes against Albanians, where they had a personal interest of their ³⁰⁸⁴ own.

JUDGE MAY: Now, the question is do you know of attacks on Albanians, as I understand it, by the KLA?

THE WITNESS: As such, sir, no. There were a -- there was a series of killings which went on throughout January and early February, which ran at the rate of about four a week, and we were not able to find out who was carrying them out and neither was the Serbian police who were there in considerable numbers and had rather better access to forensic science than we had with our people.

JUDGE MAY: So it's -- so that it's clear, this is killings of Albanians?

THE WITNESS: It was killings of Albanians and of Serbs. Both groups were involved, sir.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. I understand this -- I do not understand, rather, this need to strike a balance between criminals and the other side all the time, but anyway, do you know about this particular case when a group headed by Hashim Thaci beat up Luzer Buhara [phoen] from Cerovik who worked as a traffic policeman in Pristina? They burned his house down. And then Thaci used a knife to draw various symbols on his chest, to carve them. All of this is dealt with in the testimony of this Albanian witness. Are you aware of that?

A. No.

Q. And do you know that this same Hashim Thaci who carved symbols on the chest of Albanians, do you know his photograph with Madeleine Albright ³⁰⁸⁵ and Clark and Blair taken together with this group?

JUDGE MAY: This is all a matter of general comment. It's not for this witness to deal with.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. And can he answer a question of ethics? Clark, Albright, Blair and others taking photographs with him, can that be --

JUDGE MAY: No. It's not for him to answer.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. I'll skip over many questions because it seems that I will not have enough time once again to ask everything I want to ask.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Is it true that when the soldiers were exchanged they had noticeable signs of abuse, of maltreatment, and physical mistreatment on them?

A. Yes. Yes. They had definitely been beaten up.

Q. And is it true that revolted citizens set up barricades throughout Kosovo at the time to protest against the fact that the state wasn't taking more energetic measures to combat terrorism when it was allowing things of this kind to happen at all?

A. It is true that barricades were set up. They looked more like paramilitaries to me because they were wearing black ski masks to hide their faces, and they were carrying long-barrelled weapons in public. I was surprised that the police did not do something about it.

Q. What they looked like to you is one question and whether they were civilians is another question. Do you consider that they were civilians ³⁰⁸⁶ or not?

A. They were dressed in -- generally in black leather jackets, and they could have been civilians or they could have been off-duty members of the security forces.

Q. And do you happen to know, just as an aside, of the orders -- are you aware of the orders to the effect that each unit in Kosovo was duty-bound immediately to disarm and take into custody any kind of paramilitary unit in its area of responsibility? Are you aware of that?

A. No, I wasn't, and it certainly did not happen that day, which I think was the 6th of January.

Q. I don't know what day it happened. What I'm asking you is whether you were aware of an order issued to that effect and that it was respected and acted upon?

A. I was not aware of the order. It was certainly not being respected and acted on when I personally encountered these paramilitaries.

Q. You insist on saying that they weren't citizens but that they were paramilitary formations, is that right, paramilitary units?

A. They looked like paramilitaries to me. They worked as a group, and they gave orders to the civilians who were bystanders.

Q. And is it true that on the 15th of January, in the Decani area, a member of the Verification Mission was wounded?

A. Two members of the Verification Mission were wounded.

Q. Yes, that's what I'm talking about, two members.

A. Two members, yes.

Q. Is it true that on that day KVM vehicles were led by two MUP ³⁰⁸⁷ vehicles and that the KLA opened fire and wounded two representatives of the international people and wounded a local man too?

A. It is certainty the case that the KVM vehicles were in the same general area as the MUP vehicles. It is my recollection that the KVM vehicles were leading the MUP vehicles. And it's certainly true that we later discovered it was the KLA who had carried out the shooting.

Q. But what was quite obvious, that is that the column was targeted in which there were MUP vehicles too, was that not sufficient for you to observe that this was in fact being done by the KLA?

A. No. I was very concerned that it was a come-on and that Serbian police might well have carried out the shooting.

Q. So you assume that the Serb police shot at the column in which there were members of the Serb police, is that it?

A. Yes, because the two sets of vehicles were quite separated. I think there were between 50 and 100 yards between them.

Q. So that means only direct recognition by the KLA could finally change your judgement. That is to say that it wasn't the Serb police, that the Serb police were innocent victims being innocently accused.

A. After this incident, I discussed with the people who came under fire, one of whom is Richard Ciaglinski, and having spoken to as many people as I could who were there on the ground in the incident, I drew my conclusions.

Q. So ultimately only after direct recognition by the KLA did you put away any doubt that had fallen on the Serb police force as suspects.

A. As I recall it, I spoke to everybody who had taken part in this ³⁰⁸⁸ incident, and when I reviewed everything, which by this stage was 2.00 in the morning, I concluded that I didn't know who had done it, but the balance of probability pointed at a come-on by the MUP. Simultaneously, we were asking our people who were with the KLA to get to the KLA commander and to ask him his version of the event. In the course of the next day, I was told by my people with the KLA that the KLA had admitted it was their people who had done it. We then encouraged them to own up to this. They declined and so we then stated in a press statement that it had been done by the KLA who had admitted it. That was the sequence of events.

Q. What about the sequence of events? Does it not lead you to conclude or at least lead others to conclude the criteria which you use to base your judgements and conclusions on and that you always assume that it must be the Serbs who are at fault, regardless of what happens --

A. No.

Q. -- the Serbs were to blame?

A. No. That was not my judgement. My judgement at the time was based not only on what had happened when the firing took place but what had happened during the earlier part of the day when there'd been quite a lot of talking between my verifiers and the Serb police who were very adamant that we should not go forward with them when they went. And it was in fact to change over the garrison of a location that they went forward. And we were going with them to make sure that the garrison was changed over and not reinforced. But it was based on all of those conversations that took place and were reported to me, and the ³⁰⁸⁹ circumstances of the shooting, that I concluded at the time that the balance of probability was that the Serbs had shot at my verifiers. That was my judgement then.

Q. All right. The reasons are clear and -- why you changed them later on. Is it true on the 15th of January - that is my next question - that you sent Maisonneuve to Racak, the Stimlje municipality?

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. Is it also correct that on the 15th of January, the inhabitants of Racak told him that there were a number, not many, of people who had been killed and arrested and several wounded?

A. That was what he was told by the people who were -- whom he met as dark was falling that Friday afternoon. The situation was very confused at the time, and he perceived the priority then as evacuating the wounding, which is what he did. There were also unconfirmed reports that a number of men had been taken away by the police, but they were unconfirmed at the time.

Q. Yes, but that was a discussion with the inhabitants of Racak that he had and the report that he tabled to you.

A. That is correct. But you have to remember that those people had spent the afternoon in their houses under fire, not exactly able to congregate in the streets and to find out precisely what was going on. Each person was giving his or her view of what they had seen from their very limited standpoint.

Q. And did you make a selection of those statements, statements about that according to a criteria of how the Serbs -- what the Serbs could be ^{3090 BLANK PAGE 3091} blamed for and what they could not be blamed for? Because according to what Maisonneuve said, there was no foundations for an accusation against the Serbs, of blaming the Serb security forces for what had happened.

A. I don't recall Maisonneuve making any comment like that, but all of the reports from that period have been produced as -- as evidence and are available.

Q. We know what those reports were like. And is it true that in Racak you came one day later, that is to say on the 16th, together with Walker, and that you found members of the KLA there?

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. Is it also true that the members of the KLA would not allow you to leave Racak without having a meeting with Walker?

A. That is correct.

Q. And is it also true that Walker surprised you when he condemned the FRY government and attributed the blame to that government for what had happened in Racak?

A. I was surprised at the time that he was as specific as to refer to the event as a massacre. However, I do agree with what he said.

Q. Well, if you agree, how could he have surprised you then?

A. Because it was in the middle of a press conference and we had not discussed this before the event. It came out, as I recall, as an answer to a question.

Q. Do you know that Hashim Thaci, in an interview to the BBC on the 24th of March, 2000 said the following and I quote, "That a unit of the KLA was active in Racak and that many members of the KLA courageously died ³⁰⁹² in fighting the Yugoslav forces."

A. I've got no doubt that the KLA may well have been present in Racak, but I never saw that as a justification for flattening the place with artillery.

Q. Was Racak flattened when you arrived on the scene in Racak?

A. There was considerable damage to many of the houses, yes.

Q. Well, can you then use the term "flattened", if that's what happened?

A. It was certainly attacked with artillery and heavy-calibre weapons in a way that was inappropriate to counter an insurgent operation in my view.

Q. But there is proof that that is not correct, that the artillery was used, that that is incorrect.

A. I'm not aware of that.

Q. We'll come to that later. Now, do you know that on the Internet you can find a statement by Madelaine Albright given to the BBC and she says that preparations were necessary for the incident in Racak and that the fans were flamed in order to exert pressure on the European allies in order to effect military intervention.

A. You must ask her about that.

Q. Well, I'm asking you, whether you were aware of it, whether you knew anything about a statement to that effect.

A. Not as stated like that, and I do not necessarily agree with it seeing it now.

Q. However, this belated recognition of the US Minister reminds us of ³⁰⁹³ a statement made --

JUDGE MAY: That's not a proper question. That's a comment by you.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I ask the proper question?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Do you know of a statement made by the vice-president of the parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the German, Wimmer, a rare European dignitary who did not think that the TV massacre was --

JUDGE MAY: That sounds like another comment by you. Just ask the question. What is it?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. The question is: Are you aware of the statement made by the vice-president of the parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE which states as follows, "We refute the manipulations being carried out by the television footage with the intention of provoking a NATO intervention in Kosovo or everything would point to the creation of certain reactions so when I see certain images and photographs, we -- it makes us issue automatic orders to our soldiers."

THE INTERPRETER: Could the accused please slow down when reading.

JUDGE MAY: You're asked to slow down. You're asked to slow down when reading.

General, can you help with this? First of all, do you know about this statement?

THE WITNESS: I don't know this particular diplomat. I know he ³⁰⁹⁴ wasn't on that hillside with me, and I know what I saw on that hillside, and it was not manipulation by the media. It was dead men who had been gunned down in cold blood, as far as I was concerned.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. And do you know the assertion that those people had been brought there, because you and Walker arrived when the village was already under KLA control. You arrived 16 hours after their entrance into the village, and the time -- and this meantime when they could have done everything. Are you aware of that?

A. I'm aware that there was a lapse which -- of which most was night-time when we were not there, before we got there. I do not believe that the KLA manipulated this -- this scene so that you would -- your forces would get the blame. I believe what we saw was what happened.

Q. And do you know that in Racak the members of the so-called 121st brigade were present, Agim Selak and, or rather the Sadik Salja Battalion, and that's where the head of the Nerodim Operative Zone was in the house of Nosti Mikmeki [phoen]. Are you aware of that? That was precisely in Racak.

A. No.

Q. And do you happen to know that up until the 15th of January, the members of the KLA terrorists in the Racak area had killed a policeman Sinisa Mihajlovic, Nazmija Aluri, Svetislav Pesic, Sasa Jankovic, Ranko Djordjevic, and then some civilians, Mista Seli [phoen], and Enver Gashi? And before that, in November, that they had set fire to Dzema Batica's house in Racak. And later on, immediately prior to the intervention, they ³⁰⁹⁵ killed a policeman by the name of Svetislav Pesic from an ambush several days prior to the intervention against the terrorists in Racak? Are you aware of that, of this pretext, of went before?

A. I am aware that there was violence there before, and therefore it was the duty of your police forces to investigate the crimes properly, take evidence, arrest the people, put them on trial, and send them to jail if you find them guilty, but that was not what happened.

Q. Well, you know why an investigation was not possible at the time.

A. I am not aware of any attempt to carry out a proper police investigation before the 15th of January.

Q. And are you aware of the fact that the investigating judge of the court in Pristina, Danica Marinkovic, a woman judge, tried on several occasions to go out and investigate in Racak but she was not able to do so because of the fighting? She had to do this three days later also on pain of gunfire?

A. I certainly met her on the Sunday and offered to escort her personally into the village. She declined.

Q. And do you know that the entire village was encircled by trenches and bunkers, that they were all round the village, and even behind the village, towards Jezerske Planine, the mountains, there was another line or row of trenches?

A. I am aware that there was one quite long trench, probably about between 50 and 80 yards or metres long, that I walked over on my way up the hill to the gully. That was the only trench that I was aware of.

Q. And did you go round the whole village and its environs to see how ³⁰⁹⁶ many bunkers and trenches there were or did you only take note of the one you actually had to jump across, walk over?

A. I did not go looking for other trenches.

Q. A moment ago, we established, not very clearly though, that you were informed about this police action in advance. That is to say that the Verification Mission had been informed of this police action beforehand and that your people were present on the 15th of January, that they were in Racak.

A. No. I don't think we were informed specifically. We were informed when -- when the policemen were killed a week earlier, General Loncar said to me, "We will -- we will take action against that," yes. We very rarely were told, "There is going to be an operation at a certain place at a certain time with the following object in view." That is what we would have hoped to have received, that sort of information, so that we could then be there to make sure that no serious abuses took place. But it was very rare that that happened, and it did not happen on this occasion at Racak.

Q. But a moment ago, you confirmed by stating a name and surname that your man Maisonneuve was in Racak on the 15th of January.

A. He was -- yes, he was. I sent him there at about half past two in the afternoon from Pec, and he did that because we had got reports coming in that there was firing into the village, that village and neighbouring village, by heavy calibre weapons by your forces. As a result of that, he went down to that location, which was not strictly in his area of operations, but I was very concerned that I wanted someone senior and very ³⁰⁹⁷ experienced on the spot.

Q. Yes. But there must have been some other verifiers with him who were in Racak on the 15th.

A. And they reported to him, and their report is part of the reports that have been laid before the Court.

Q. And that's the whole point, that the verifiers who were there on the 15th of January saw nothing of what you and Walker, who came later on after a pause in which the KLA brought in the bodies and put them in that gully, you saw nothing of that sight?

A. Maisonneuve arrived as dusk was falling. He stayed within the village. Nobody told him that there was something to go and see up in the gully. He had no idea that such a thing had taken place. It was an area where there had been a very major firefight during the day, and I would certainly not have expected him to go wandering off into the gathering gloom on the off chance of finding something about 300 metres from the village. Which direction would he have gone in?

Q. You've said yourself now that there was major -- a major firefight in Racak, and your statements were that the security forces had come and perpetrated a massacre over the civilians. Now tell me what happened. Was it a firefight or was it a massacre of civilians?

JUDGE MAY: I think we've exhausted this topic. The witness has said everything that he can say about it. His opinion will not assist us any more, and there will be other witnesses who can give evidence about it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ³⁰⁹⁸

Q. And do you know that in addition to your own verifiers who entered Racak on the 15th that there was a television crew from Associated Press.

A. Not specifically, no. They didn't report to us.

Q. But they published in the information media what they saw, nevertheless.

A. Then it's available.

Q. Of course it is. Do you know that there were no civilians in the village and that the villagers, already during the summer, had left Racak because of the operations under way in the area? Except for a few exceptions, perhaps.

A. I think one of the reports that was placed before the Court last week detailed at one stage a statement of what the population of Racak was and the fact that food aid was needed for them. So, yes, we did know that some of the inhabitants of Racak had fled, but some were still there.

Q. It was winter, and eyewitnesses say that there was smoke coming out of just one chimney, which was where the headquarters of the KLA was, which is where equipment was found --

JUDGE MAY: The witness -- the witness can't deal with this.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Eyewitnesses say that there was shooting all over and that the shooting stopped only around 1600 hours. Does that coincide with your own findings?

A. No. My findings were that the shooting into Racak stopped before ^{3099 BLANK PAGE 3100} the shooting stopped that was going into all of the other villages and that because there was the sound of shooting going on, that the people in Racak did not realise that the fire had lifted in their specific area and so were very surprised to suddenly see the -- the MUP arriving in the middle of the village.

Q. I have here a few witnesses from Racak who are also not my witnesses but the witnesses of this false Prosecution. For example, Nesret Shabani says on the 15th of January in Racak there was a real war that was going on.

JUDGE MAY: You can -- you can deal with this with other witnesses. This witness came the next day. You can ask him about his evidence, but we're -- if going to get much further going over this ground about which he can't really answer.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, this is not a witness who is merely testifying about what he had seen. He is the executive chief of the Verification Mission, and it is assumed that he knew or had reason to know the facts that were used in such a way in the war against Yugoslavia. Therefore, I do have the right to question him by invoking other witnesses, because it was his duty to collect these facts. So the question would then have to be why did he not collect these facts from these witnesses? Because he was in charge of the Verification Mission.

JUDGE MAY: That is --

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So --

JUDGE MAY: That is a question he can be asked.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That's why I'm putting it. ³¹⁰¹

JUDGE MAY: [Previous translation continues]...

THE WITNESS: The reports that were put together on the night of the 15th represented all the information we had at that moment and had obviously come from a variety of sources. Some of it was the eyewitness reports of my verifiers, some of it had been the answers to questions from them to the villages. As you have seen, the facts were not immediately apparent, and we found out more as time went on, and that is often the case. It was not a very clear situation. It was getting dark. Everyone, all of the villagers that were in the village, were very frightened and confused. There were wounded people. It was not a clear situation. We dealt with the situation that we found. We made the report as best we could. And then as we got more reports overnight, we went back, and looked again, and then saw what had not been seen the afternoon previous. Nobody attempted to cook the books, and every one of these reports is as it was written at the time.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. In connection with this selective presentation of information, both in this case and in all other cases --

JUDGE MAY: That is a comment. We're going to -- yes, it is.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It is not a comment. I am putting forth a request to you. In view of your authority, you should adopt a writ of disclosure which would make it incumbent upon the American, British, French, and every other service to disclose the information they have not only about this case but other cases where things were rigged in order to accuse the Serb side for the crimes that were committed by the ³¹⁰² other side. And if you do not have the authority to order that, then you cannot be in charge of these proceedings at all, actually.

JUDGE MAY: That is a totally different matter as to disclosure, and if you have an application about it, we'll obviously consider it. Meanwhile, it's nothing to do with this witness. We'll adjourn now for another quarter of an hour.

--- Recess taken at 12.15 p.m.

--- On resuming at 12.30 p.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Just a digression, since I checked this during the break. You said, concerning the crime in the Panda cafe when six young Serb men were killed, you said that you could not establish and you are claiming even now that you do not know who did this. In diagram DZ that you presented here on page 7, this is a chronology of events, under 44 you wrote, in relation to this crime in the Panda cafe, the attack of the KLA on the Panda cafe if Pec. Is that correct or is that not correct?

A. I would need to be reminded of it.

JUDGE MAY: Have we got the tab number for the chronology?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It is the diagram called the chronology, but you can check that later, because I would like to save time.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. You wrote, "Attack of the KLA on the Panda cafe in Pec." This is under item 44 in what you called the chronology. Diagram DZ. ³¹⁰³ Now let's go back to Racak. Yesterday when you spoke about yet another event when members of the KLA were killed, you said that underneath you saw a big puddle of blood. How come you didn't see any blood in Racak at this place where this execution was allegedly carried out? How come there was not a pool of blood there when there were far more people there than in the incident that you had described yesterday?

A. I think you are talking about the -- my description of the Rogovo killings, when a number of people had been killed inside a minibus and their blood was dripping out of the minibus into the farmyard, and it was mud and slush on the surface of the ground.

At Racak, the ground is -- is not so muddy and is more sandy, as I recall it, and so there was not the same opportunity for blood to puddle. However, there was blood at the -- associated with each body that I saw at Racak, but they were not piled in one place with a non-porous surface underneath them so the blood was able to collect and run in the way that it did out of the back of the minibus. I think that's the point you're wanting me to comment on.

Q. Yes. Actually, you did not mention at all this particular element in your description of events. So where were the casings then if that is where the execution was carried out? How come there were no casings anywhere?

A. They were -- I looked around out to about five metres around the gully and did not find any shell casings. I did not go further out because there was brush and scrub all around, and it would have taken a long time to have gone round and examined all the way out to, say, 30 or ³¹⁰⁴ 40 metres out, which is a range from which these people could have been killed.

Q. We are going back to the statements related to Racak. A Prosecution witness says that there was a real war in Racak on that day and that the KLA was in the village on that day. This is Nesret Shabani, a witness from Racak. Also, there is a Prosecution witness Drita Emini who claims -- she claims that they had trenches, that the local villagers helped the KLA dig trenches two or three months before this alleged massacre and that they worked at night.

JUDGE MAY: The witness has given his evidence about the trenches. He's given his evidence about what he knows. Now, these are all matters of pure comment.

The tab number for the chronology is 63 in the bundle, and the entry, number 44, is as the accused put it to the witness. Yes. Let's move on to something else.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. This lady witness, do you know that a witness from Racak claims that trenches had been dug at least a month before this alleged massacre, and yesterday you claimed that these were freshly dug trenches, and this applies to the part that you had skipped?

JUDGE MAY: Well, that's a new point, freshly dug or not.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, I think the evidence is the trench over which this witness stepped was newly dug. There will be other evidence about trenches as we'll see, for example, when we look at the material related to Racak, generally, perhaps the consideration of a binder in ³¹⁰⁵ relation to that location.

THE WITNESS: It was my opinion that the trench I saw was newly dug because the spoil did not have grass growing out of it, which would have done if it had been there for some time.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. I asked you how come you did not know that there were witnesses who assert that three months before that they had dug trenches and that they finished them a month before that, and how could there have possibly been grass in the middle of the winter. This was the 15th of January. Grass could not grow during the winter between the 15th of December and the 15th of January.

JUDGE MAY: What is the point? What's the point for the witness?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The point is that there is a major difference involved between what the witness has been asserting and what the witnesses who are the inhabitants of Racak have been asserting.

JUDGE MAY: If that is right, you could comment on it in due course.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. We also have Xhamajl Beqiri, a witness from Racak, who confirmed on the 15th of January in Racak, that there were members of the OSCE, that is OSCE verifiers were there. This is also a Prosecution witness.

JUDGE MAY: You can ask the witness about it when he or she comes. We are also going to hear, are we not, from the OSCE witnesses who came here or at least one of them. Maisonneuve I believe. ³¹⁰⁶

MR. NICE: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, you can ask them.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Are you aware of these statements of witnesses from Racak when you were collecting facts -- no? No, you don't know about it?

A. No.

Q. And do you know that this witness claims that OSCE verifiers were by Berisha's brook in Racak?

A. The reports of that have been placed before the Court represent the facts as we knew them in Pristina that night. And as I've said before, they changed as -- as we got more facts in, our understanding of what had happened changed.

Q. Eyewitnesses say that around 1600 hours, gunfire had ceased, policemen were still in the trenches that they had taken, and after them the observers arrived, the OSCE observers, and TV crews. Are you aware of that?

A. I am not aware of it, but I have to observe that this was happening on the same afternoon that we had just taken two casualties, and the one thing we had done was put out an all stations message saying for crying out, stay back a bit. So this was not a moment at which everyone was in a race to get to the target area ahead of the police. This was a moment when everyone was perhaps holding back a bit for justifiable reasons.

Q. Witnesses claim that fighting was taking place on a two or three kilometre long front line and that there were terrorists who had been ³¹⁰⁷ killed at several places. Did you have a report about that from your representatives who were in Racak on that day?

A. I recall the report saying that there was firing into villages along a two to three kilometre front line, yes. I was not aware that there had been specifically KLA members killed, otherwise it would have appeared in the reports.

Q. And are you aware that according to the Human Rights Watch report and the reports of the journalists who were with Walker on the 16th of January, it said that many of the bodies had obviously been mutilated, their nails pulled out, et cetera. Are you aware of this kind of report, and are you aware of the fact that this was not the truth?

A. I was aware that one corpse had been beheaded, and we never knew who did it. And certainly it was never attributed to the Serb security forces.

Q. Well, later on it was established that all the persons killed -- it was established by all the forensic expertise carried out later that they were all killed by firearms and that the injuries to the bodies were inflicted later by animals. Are you aware of that?

A. I -- I believe I recall some of that, but I believe the beheading of the one individual was actually done with an axe.

Q. Well, this was not shown by any of the expert findings, any of the forensic findings. Do you know about what the Human Rights Watch said, that the army and police unselectively attacked civilians, burnt houses, and that they had orders to kill all the inhabitants over the age of 15? Do you think that such statements were made for those purposes, that is to ^{3108 BLANK PAGE 3109} say, to create this kind of a sensational crime?

JUDGE MAY: It's not for the witness to answer.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Christoph Shatello [phoen], a journalist of Le Monde, in his report from the scene, he said that after the Associated Press left and the police left that the OSCE mission entered in three vehicles. They found at first one killed person, one dead person, and a few wounded people. Are you aware of that? These were your observers.

A. That sounds like the first people arriving and, yes, that is consistent with the reports that we put together on the Friday evening in Pristina.

Q. Yes, but can't you see the discrepancy between your verifiers when there was this conflict between the KLA and the police and also the period after 1600 hours when the village was taken? What about this difference, this time difference involved between then and when you came there with Walker? Doesn't that say anything to you?

A. We went there as soon as we became aware that something really bad had happened, and that was on Saturday morning. I made that clear in my previous evidence. We were not aware that there were a large number of people up on the hillside who had been killed at any stage on Friday night.

Q. And do you know that in a statement for the Canadian news this same man, Shatello, said that he arrived in Racak at about 1600 hours where he came across the police, that the operation was difficult, effective, and clean? ³¹¹⁰

A. Well, that's clearly his view.

Q. And a cameraman belonging to Associated Press made a press statement saying that it was a crystal clear operation. He says that from the very beginning, he followed the fighting, and he has a film on -- he has footage of it which in France created --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, no good putting these to the witness. Just a moment. If you've got the footage, you can show it to us, but it's no good going on with this, asking the witness about it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. And do you know that Le Monde of France wrote that there was practically no civilian population in Racak, that they had fled the previous year with just a few exceptions and had not returned?

JUDGE MAY: He's given his evidence about it. It doesn't matter what Le Monde says. It's this evidence we're concerned with.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. I'm talking about a journalist who was on the spot and who is of course an eyewitness and who says himself that he wasn't able to understand the mystery of it, the mystery that took place with Walker's statement and the alleged massacre.

Do you know that eyewitnesses state that the real fighting was in fact in the forests, because members of the KLA had withdrawn to the forests above the village?

A. I was not aware of that, no, but I'm not sure it's relevant.

Q. But some questions are relevant. Some of the questions asked by ³¹¹¹ journalists publicly in the information media, for example. And one such question is the following, which is interesting: How could the policemen had rallied so many men and taken them peacefully to execution, their execution, when they were under fire, because they were being shot at from all the surrounding hills. And the shooting went on the next day and the following day, when the investigating judge was shot at too?

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, it's not for the witness to say. The fact is he went there and that's his evidence, and you haven't challenged it, and he saw the corpses. That's his evidence. You haven't challenged that.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am challenging the testimony precisely now and asking how that was possible.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. The question is: Was there any logic in somebody collecting up citizens under a whole rainfall of bullets and take them to an execution of any kind?

JUDGE MAY: That's not for the witness.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. How about the gully next to the village that was not noted by the villagers and OSCE observers who entered the village and talked to the villagers and looked for the wounded?

A. This was between 200 and 300 metres from the nearest house, as I recall. It was getting dark. Nobody indicated that there was anything up there that should be gone and looked at, and it was not our practice to go off-road, in the dark, at this stage. As I've previously said, we had ³¹¹² just had two verifiers wounded. We were not going to go out into the dark on the off chance of finding something when there was no indication that there was anything to find. It would have been stupid.

Q. And does the very fact that from that time on, when nothing was found of what you found the next day, whether it is contestable that from that time when the police withdrew, at least 15 to 16 hours went by, during which time the village was under the control of the KLA while you went with Walker to find those dead?

A. There was certainly a time lapse, yes, and I've stated what I saw, and when I saw it, and what my impression was.

Q. And do you consider it could be justified that three days later, Figaro from the spot published an article, "Kosovo, Doubts of a Massacre," in which he asked himself whether Ambassador Walker had been too -- too hurried in accusing the Serb security forces of having cold bloodedly ...

JUDGE MAY: I'm going to stop these questions because it doesn't matter what Figaro or anybody else says about it. What matters is what this evidence says at the time. You've heard what the witness said. He's told you what he saw and what his opinion was. Now, you can ask about that. But putting what these journalists said is of no assistance to anybody. If you want to call them, call them by all means, and we'll hear their evidence in due course. But meanwhile, we're just wasting time.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, on that topic, can I just make one -- two very short points. Mr. Wladimiroff tells me that the amici do have questions they wish to ask this witness. In relation to the witness who is to be called tomorrow, there are some quite important procedural ³¹¹³ matters. They won't take more than a couple of minutes but Mr. Ryneveld would like to deal with them in a couple of minutes for everyone, not least the accused having all the material he must have for tomorrow.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, Mr. Wladimiroff, one of the amici curiae, will conduct the cross-examination if there is enough time to do so. But I should like at this point in time, in view of the ongoing matters, and I'd like to refer to Rule 90 which gives you the authorisation, and I do understand this, this does come under the competency and the authority of the Court, to avoid the unnecessary wasting of time, and I'm sure you'll see to that. However, I do consider that the manner of procedure today, where it was stated in advance that this witness is at the Court's disposal only for today in some way brings you into a situation which --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Tapuskovic, we have these matters in mind, and I'm going to ask the witness if he will return, if that's what you want me to do.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] No, no.

JUDGE MAY: What is -- what is the point?

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] I don't understand, and I'm trying not to take up even a little of your time. What I want to say is that I know you are there to decide upon matters of this kind and you will do so when time is consumed unnecessarily, but when the Prosecution says in advance that somebody's going to be at the disposal of the Tribunal for only for today, that makes the problem more difficult. Now, the witness ³¹¹⁴ is here and it is up to you to assess. You are the ones who are to assess when his testimony is to come to an end. But if somebody states in advance that he's only here for one day, then that jumps the gun so to speak. Of course you are the ones to decide, and I completely agree with that. I just wanted to draw your attention to the matter.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, and what we'll do is ask him at a convenient time to come back.

Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't think the time for cross-examination of this witness can be limited. He is a witness who is testifying to the entire work of the mission. He has brought hundreds of pages of various documents, and during the examination-in-chief, he spent over a day and a half discussing, and these testify to who pulled the trigger during the aggression.

JUDGE MAY: We agree. He is an important witness. He's given lengthy evidence. In due course we shall ask him if he can, at a convenient time, to come back. Now let's go on.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I think it is logical for us to continue the examination until we exhaust all the questions and not to have the witness return.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Now, my question is the following: In view of the indisputable fact after so much time had gone by from the withdrawal of the police to the arrival of the verifiers, that the KLA had the village under its control, was the KLA able to -- ³¹¹⁵

JUDGE MAY: We have been over this. You've made your point. The witness has answered as best he can, which is dealing with the matters he knows about, and he's dealt with it. Now, it sounds to me, very much, you're coming on to the matters which we will have to resolve at the end of this case, and there's no further assistance to be gained by remaking points to the witness. It's mere argument.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. I am asking him whether in his opinion the KLA could have collected up the bodies in that time lapse and could they have taken them there to that collective area where they put the bodies all together?

JUDGE MAY: The only question is from what the witness saw, would it be consistent with that discussion?

THE WITNESS: It was not consistent with what I saw, and that was not the impression I gained then or now.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. You said that the verifiers were in Racak on the 15th, but before that you also said that they were not officially invited, not officially called. However, the British member of the Verification Mission, according to what he told the Guardian, because the Guardian quotes his statement, his name was Nel Strechen [phoen], he says he was officially called to go to Racak before the operation, and that was the first public recognition that the Verification Mission was -- had been previously informed about the operation in Racak. Is that correct or not?

A. I'm not aware of that statement.

Q. And are you aware of the conclusion by the Frankfurt Arunja ³¹¹⁶ [phoen] of the 21st of January which cautions on the following: "Nothing would have been as fatal as the abuse of NATO --

JUDGE MAY: Doesn't matter.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. -- for terrorist purposes in Kosovo."

JUDGE MAY: It's irrelevant what the newspaper thinks.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Well, how then is it possible that on the very next day and the day after when the teams arrived to carry out an inspection that unarmed villagers launched an attack on them? How was that possible?

A. If you're -- I believe you're referring to the judge Marinkovic going into the village in the course of Sunday, and at that point there was a KLA presence in the village. We had spoken to them, and as I recall it, they had stated that they would allow the judge into the village without there being any violence if she came on her own, if we brought her. If a large police presence came into the village, then they would shoot at it. She chose to go into the village with a large police presence, and she got shot at.

Q. And do you feel -- does it seem to you that this whole thing was abused? People are saying here that I refer to the press, but Racak was abused precisely in the press to create a general atmosphere to be used as a pretext against the aggression against Yugoslavia?

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, it's not a matter for this witness. These are irrelevant questions as far as his evidence is concerned.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ^{3117 BLANK PAGE 3118}

Q. All right. Then tell me what you think. Why Finland, the Helenna Rantov [phoen] of Finland, first gave recognition to Yugoslav pathologists and then without challenging their findings had her personal attitude of being undefined in her personal position and standpoint?

A. You would need to ask her that.

Q. But this is not a personal question, a question addressed -- it has to do with relationships, the relationship to what happened. Why you did Ms. Rantov say she had to consult the representatives of the Foreign Ministry for her to be able to give her professional findings, to state her professional findings? What has the Foreign Ministry got to do with forensic expertise?

JUDGE MAY: That's a rhetorical question. The witness can't answer it?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. You saw the photograph of Walker with the whole team of people next -- and the Albanian next to the body with the Albanian white cap on the man's head. How is it possible for somebody to be hit in the head and have his cap remain on his head, which is like the shell on an egg? When people jump out of their shoes when they are hit in this way, whereas this man has his white cap intact on his head. Did you have in mind that this could possibly be a rigged scene for television purposes and the distribution of bodies there and how they were piled up?

A. That was -- that certainly was one of the thoughts that went through my head as I was going up the hill. By the time I had seen the bodies and the way they were piled together, I concluded, to the best of ³¹¹⁹ my knowledge, that they had not been moved, that they had been killed where they lay. That was my opinion at the end of my time on the top of that hill in the gully, and it remains my opinion. And if I was a terrorist, I wouldn't go around with a white hat on.

Q. Well, that's precisely what I'm claiming, that he didn't go around with a white hat on but that somebody placed it on his head afterwards, because forensic experts say that from a shot of that kind and a wound with that kind, your eyes would pop out let alone a cap being displaced from your head. He wasn't born with a cap on his head.

A. It was my view at the end of my time in that gully on that hill that those people had been killed where they lay. I did not think the bodies had been interfered with.

Q. And this movement of the bodies from the place where you saw them and transporting them to the local mosque before all the investigations had been conducted does that act present one of a series of evidences to show that the whole thing was rigged? Would that indicate that to you?

A. No. We were not entirely in charge of what was going on up on that hill. However, that was one of the reasons why we took quite so much video footage of where everyone was and what their wounds were, so that we had the best possible evidence in the circumstances that we were able to get. We didn't have on hand instantly available a forensic team to be able to bring it in and to carry out a proper scene of crime investigation.

Q. And do you know about Thaci's statement, in addition to the one that I quoted at the beginning, that many members of the KLA had died in ³¹²⁰ Racak and that Racak was a turning point for the West to become convinced of the need for military intervention?

A. I haven't heard that statement specifically, no.

Q. To bear that out, we have a statement from another KLA fighter to German television, to the effect that him and his co-fighters attacked the police intentionally in order to provoke a conflict and thus --

JUDGE MAY: There's no point asking -- there's no point asking the witness. And if you're going to try and rely on material like that, you must put it before the Trial Chamber at the proper time.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. How then do you explain the explanation given by Danica Marinkovic, the investigator judge from Pristina, and she is one of the best-informed people, quite obviously, into this event in Racak, who says at the very outset, "I found it rather strange, Walker's associate's behaviour rather strange, General Drewienkiewicz, who tried to prevent us from going to the crime scene." Is that true or not?

A. No. I said that I was very happy to go with her to the crime scene. What I did not want was to have more fighting flare up and get more people injured.

Q. And do you know that in the minutes in the report it says that a heavy [indiscernible] 12.7 millimetre machine-gun was found, two pistols, two automatic rifles, 7.63, six of those, two sniper rifles of Chinese production, 12 mines with a hand rocket launcher, 7.820 bullets of different calibre, 3 portable radio stations, sanitary material, and uniforms with insignia. Do you know about all these items from the ³¹²¹ minutes and report?

A. No. And at the time, we asked that a joint investigation be carried out and this sort of evidence be made available and this was never done.

Q. Then do you acknowledge that the investigating court of the district court in Pristina conducts an investigation and that their report is a relevant fact to learn the truth about the events that took place? Would you acknowledge that?

A. Only provided that the weapons produced could be linked to the deceased, which would be normal forensic practice.

Q. That's precisely what they found. They found those weapons on the spot where the deceased were. Is that contested or not?

A. Yes. Yes, absolutely. At the time, I said if there are weapons, then let us see them, and let us see the evidence linking the weapons to the corpses, and this was never done. And we asked several times.

Q. Is the connection not enough, the weapons and the bodies? And in the forensic report, looking at 37 bodies when the paraffin [as interpreted] glove was taken off, that it was established that they had in fact shot from fire arms?

A. This evidence was never made available to us. This is the document that was handed over to the accused this morning, so it is available. The passage that he's reading from, he's reading in the Serbian. In fact, in the English, it reads as follows: "When we arrived in the village of Racak," this is the judge's report, "I was informed by police representatives that during the search of the terrain, members of ³¹²² the MUP RS Ministry of the Interior of Serbia had found weapons and parts of military uniforms and they had taken everything with them." It goes on to say everything on the site was photographed. So this is an example of how the document really ought to be made available to the witness so that he can comment on it. I'll make mine available to save time and then it can go on the overhead projector if that's of assistance.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Put -- it goes on the projector.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't want them to take up my time, because the Prosecutor has used -- Mr. Nice has used far more time, and I beg him not to use up my time because I have quite a few more questions to ask.

JUDGE MAY: He is saying that the position should be made clear so that it's fair, and it's fair to the witness and it's fair to those who have to deal with this case.

If it goes on the overhead projector. Thank you.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation].

Q. So what is on the ELMO?

A. The statement that I read says that the following weapons were found that day, and it lists a number of weapons, and there is nothing that I can see that links the people that were -- we found dead with these weapons. These weapons could have been in the basement of any police station anywhere throughout Kosovo. Every police station has got plenty of these weapons available. And so I do not believe that this specifically links the people that were killed with these weapons. And if ³¹²³ it did, it was not a capital offence to own a weapon.

Q. You have placed on the ELMO precisely the passage that I read from the investigating judge's report, and the figures are the same, the numbers are the same. And do you consider that a police unit that is being shot at from the surrounding hills by members of the KLA and who are withdrawing from the village should leave heavy machine-guns and automatic rifles behind and sniper rifles behind, bombs, ammunition, and all the rest of it, at the disposal of those who will undoubtedly enter the village as soon as they leave or should they collect up all these things and take them with them?

A. It entirely depends upon the circumstances. The fact that is being alleged is that these weapons were associated with the people that were killed, and this does not appear to carry out that association, to prove it, and nor does anything that I encountered at the time.

Q. That merely confirms that the OSCE observers and KLA terrorists were very well synchronised. That is without a doubt?

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, that is not an appropriate question unless it is somehow suggested that this witness was synchronising his reports. Now, is there anything else you want to ask about this judge's report? We may have to make it an exhibit.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. From what you say, that is that you asked the investigating judge to enter without a police escort, you said that the villagers were angry then that they were armed and that as soon as they saw the police, they would open fire. Is it true that the investigating judge asked you how ³¹²⁴ come the villagers were armed? And instead of an answer, you threatened her and said that she would be to blame if there was fresh bloodshed and that he personally would then bring the judge in question before The Hague Tribunal. Was that your conversation with the lady, this investigating judge?

A. Yes, that was more or less the conversation I had with her. I told her that I held her responsible for any more bloodshed that took place there. It was entirely up to her if she went in, but if she did, that I would personally hold her responsible. I made that clear at the time.

Q. And do you know when an investigation was finally carried out, as far as I remember from the reports this was on the 18th, that they went round the trenches above the village and the surrounding hills and that they found picks and axes and that the trenches were full of casings, 7.62 millimetre ones produced in China, and that at the top of the hill which was called Vis, that they found a bunker covered with some timber and some soil and inside the bunker was a stove and a sniper nest by the bunker which had sandbags to protect it. And a mount for another machine-gun and a large number of 12.7 millimetre casings? Are you aware of that from that same report?

A. No. No, I'm not. I did not ever come across that bunker. It certainly was not in the area that I walked around, which was no more than 30 or 40 yards from the gully. I didn't go straying across the rest of the hillside.

Q. And the fact that you did not go uphill does not mean that all of ³¹²⁵ the things mentioned in the report were not there. Yes or no? Is it your assertion that the investigating judge invented this report?

A. She reported, I am sure, what she was told, but I don't know the extent to which there was proper linkage between the weapons that it is alleged these dead people were associated with and the people themselves. I have yet to see any such linkage. Anybody can go down into the cellar of the police station and pick up a selection of stuff and take it up onto a hillside and say, "There we are. We killed them because they are terrorists, and here are their weapons." That is just as plausible suggestion as this report.

Q. In the report, it also says that in the yard of a house, they found a mine of a hand-held launcher, and also that in that house they found records on duty and also bags and ammunition with clips of ten bullets per piece and then Chinese made shells and also many meals, American made, cigarettes, et cetera, et cetera, and that this was the local headquarters. Are you aware of that?

A. No, I wasn't.

Q. And are you aware of the statement that this seemed that these were victims of war, of war operations, which was later said by forensic experts, and that all other injuries were caused by rats and birds and other rodents and animals attacking the bodies? Are you aware of that?

A. I am not aware of the full content of the forensic report. I know the forensic report was carried out. I never saw the full copy of it.

Q. How come you didn't manage to see the report for -- for three years' time? ^{3126 BLANK PAGE 3127}

A. It was given to Walker, and that was the basis on which the forensic team was prepared to hand it over, to Walker only.

Q. And do you think that this confirms my claim, that is that Walker rigged this incident so that he would justify the aggression?

A. No. Absolutely not.

Q. Then why would the forensic report, the expert report, be a secret thing given to Walker only?

JUDGE MAY: It's not -- it's not for this witness to answer that.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I think it's for the public to answer a good many of these things.

JUDGE MAY: No. If it's relevant, it's for this Trial Chamber to answer.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. The experts who accompanied the investigating judge describe the operations carried out by the KLA from the nearby hills and that they had trouble examining the corpses. They were accompanied by your observers and also the secretary of the Finnish embassy and that's how they managed to get them to the institute. I imagine that none of this is being challenged.

A. What specifically are you stating, please?

Q. That the corpses were collected and that they were collected under fire, under KLA fire, that is, and they were trying to make it impossible to carry the corpses to the institute. All the time while the corpses were being carried away and while the forensic expertise was being carried out, your representatives were present. Is that true or is that not ³¹²⁸ true?

A. As I recall it, the bodies were brought down from the hill in the late afternoon of the Saturday, and then I think on the Monday the police went back into the village in great force and removed the corpses from the mosque where they had been brought on the Saturday. And I think the police presence in Racak in order to bring the bodies out was -- had to be quite great. I was not there on the Monday.

Q. Professor Slavisa Dobricanin, an expert, one of the experts who carried out the examination, claims that the findings of this examination indicated that all the corpses were of people who were killed by gunfire, by firearms, and that they were shot at from a distance except for one occasion, one case where, as he says, "We found one unconfirmed case of the fire -- the gunfire coming from 70 or 80 centimetres, possibly from a trench." Are you aware of these findings? Are you aware that all forensic experts, including, as far as I can see here, Dr. Dunjic, who testified and whose written report I have, he testified here, they all claim that from an expert point of view there was no difference between their findings and the findings of the Finnish experts and the opinion of the Belorussian experts and that all the examinations were carried out in the presence of all the experts who were working on this particular matter.

JUDGE MAY: Can you help us to that?

THE WITNESS: I'm -- as I recall it, it was reported that one of the bodies had powder burns, which indicated that it had been shot at close range, but none of the others had powder burns that so indicated ³¹²⁹ extreme closeness. So, yes, I recall that much.

I also recall Walker telling me, in the context of the Finnish forensic report, that there was nothing into it that was inconsistent with his view that this had been a massacre.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Do you find it logical that there can be such a major discrepancy in terms of conclusions? The forensics experts claim that all the persons were killed in a war conflict, during the fighting, and Walker, in spite of this fact, claims that nothing --

JUDGE MAY: It's not for this witness, not for this witness. He's given his evidence. Now, these may well be matters for the Trial Chamber to determine when we've heard all the evidence, but I suggest we move on to another topic now.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. The report of the investigating judge, and I have a copy of it here, says that on the surrounding hills, trenches were found, and there's a series of elements involved, the equipment that I had already mentioned and quoted. There were bunkers there that were protected by sandbags, et cetera. You say that you did not go to see that because you did not go some 30 metres further than that. Did the members of your Verification Mission go to see the bunkers and the surrounding area of Racak? Did they confirm everything that the investigating judge, Danica Marinkovic, said, and was that the case or not?

A. To the best of my knowledge, her report was never made available to us, and certainly I was not aware that there were other bunkers up on ³¹³⁰ the hill some distance away from the gully, and I only became aware of that I think when I was first shown a map a few weeks ago.

MR. NICE: The investigator in the case or the investigator in this particular part of the case has prepared a very large map. You've already seen it in some form, and it shows some other bunkers.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Are you aware that on the basis of the report that was compiled by the forensic experts and the investigating judge that an official record was made by the district attorney in Pristina and the investigating judge in Pristina? And it says there that there is no doubt that anybody's death in this war conflict was caused by a crime, a criminal offence. All action taken was directed at repelling the attack carried out by terrorists, the so-called KLA, and all of it was done in accordance with the law on the interior.

A. I'm sorry. This -- this investigation was not carried out jointly. There was a request that we did take part in the investigation, and if we had, then we would have had an opinion on Judge Marinkovic's report. From what I saw of her actions there, they were fairly cursory and did not involve proper evidential procedures as I understand them.

Q. As for procedures that would be appropriate, this was made impossible by the KLA. That is why an on-site investigation of restricted proportions was carried out a few days later. I hope you're not denying that, because according to procedure, an on-site investigation had to be carried out straight away.

A. Then it could have been done straight away. It could have been ³¹³¹ done on the Saturday.

Q. Yes, but who made it impossible for the investigating judge to carry out this investigation? Because the investigating judge, as we all know tried to carry out an on-site investigation straight away but KLA gunfire repelled her and she was in a position to do so only three days later. So who made this impossible for her?

JUDGE MAY: The witness has given evidence about this. General, I don't think we're going to get much further today. Mr. Milosevic, we're going to bring this to an end for today. General, it's clearly right that the accused should have an opportunity to cross-examine which is roughly similar to the time taken by the Prosecution. And in those circumstances, we're going to have to ask you to come back.

THE WITNESS: Very good.

JUDGE MAY: Could you find a date in the next two months or so convenient to yourself to come back.

THE WITNESS: May I discuss it outside with your people, sir?

JUDGE MAY: Not we hasten to say our people, but you may discuss it with the Prosecution, just of course limited to that point, we make that clear, and not to discuss any other part of the evidence. If you'd do that, we'd be grateful.

We will hear the remainder of the cross-examination. Mr. Milosevic, this is an important witness. It's right you should have the same time roughly as the Prosecution. You can have another two hours, in our judgement. You don't have to take that time in cross-examination, ³¹³² but when the witness comes back, you can have up to that time. That will in fact give you rather more than half an hour more than the Prosecution.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I think that this is wrong and not in the interest of justice and the truth, because one cannot compare the time of the Prosecution that used its right by the Prosecution and witness reading out questions and answers throughout the examination-in-chief. It was not as you had envisaged it at first, that they would have only their notes by way of a reminder. We have been following this. They have been reading the questions and answers.

The witness brought in a great amount of different papers, and when we tried to strike a balance between the two, I think this would only be fair if I did not have any restrictions in the cross-examination of this witness. If you are looking at things this way, first of all, you're restricting my time --

JUDGE MAY: We do not agree. We have to consider what is fair in the context of a long case. We have to consider the balance between the two, and in order also to get through the case expeditiously. Now, that's our decision as far as this witness is concerned. We will hear you for up to two hours. We will then hear the amicus and any re-examination. General, if you would like to come back, as I say, at a date which is convenient, if you could find one, please. That's all today.

[The witness stood down]

MR. NICE: Your Honour, before Mr. Ryneveld deals with tomorrow's witness --

JUDGE MAY: If the witness would like to go. ³¹³³

MR. NICE: Another witness matter for later in the week. Wednesday's witness is a protected witness. He's only coming in tomorrow night, therefore, will probably not be available to be called first thing on Wednesday in light of the necessity to go through the proofing with him. If by Wednesday morning tomorrow's witness has been concluded, we will then seek to take the first series of 92 bis witnesses ahead of who would otherwise be Wednesday's witness, and I'd ask that the accused be ready to deal with that.

JUDGE MAY: Very well.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] And can we know who the witness is tomorrow?

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, just so --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone for Judge May, please.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, so the accused has the position, the witness tomorrow is...

MR. NICE: Ciaglinski, and Mr. Ryneveld is just going to deal with him now.

JUDGE MAY: And you will seek either to call a protected witness.

MR. NICE: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: -- who is on the list --

MR. NICE: Correct.

JUDGE MAY: -- or the first of the 92 bis witnesses.

MR. NICE: Correct.

JUDGE MAY: Now, it would -- just to make it plain, it would only be the first of those that you would seek to call. ³¹³⁴

MR. NICE: Depending on cross-examination, the first one or two or however many we get through in a short period of time.

JUDGE MAY: Well, we will start with tomorrow's witness anyway and see how we get on.

Yes, Mr. Ryneveld.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honours. Your Honours, very briefly, the purpose of my application now is to seek permission to disclose a previously redacted statement of a witness. The history of that -- unusual as that may sound, as is that on the 11th of December, 2001, the Prosecution submitted a motion to the Trial Chamber with respect to the statement of the witness Ciaglinski in order to protect the identity of an individual referred to in that statement. On the 4th of January 2002, the Trial Chamber ordered that the redaction be permitted and accordingly a redacted statement was in fact disclosed to the amici and to the accused.

During a proofing session yesterday with the witness Ciaglinski, discussion about that redacted portion revealed that there was an additional important bit of information and evidence which has been summarised in a document that has been in fact distributed to the Trial Chamber, to the accused, and to the amici in one page. It's four paragraphs and it's our summary of the additional summary of evidence. The difficulty with it is that this information is in context to the paragraphs for which redaction was sought and approved. In other words, the redacted paragraphs, all though they don't contain this information, are contextually relevant. And the purpose of the redaction was a form of ^{3135 BLANK PAGE 3136} Rule 70 request by the witness. The witness, Ciaglinski, has granted permission to the prosecution to disclose this evidence, but I cannot serve the redacted -- or the unredacted statement which is contextually relevant without being in breach of your order.

So that's the context of the application, and I don't want to do something without seeking your permission to serve the full statement.

JUDGE MAY: You will have the permission of the Trial Chamber to serve the full statement.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honour.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you. We will adjourn now. Nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.43 p.m., to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 16th day of April, 2002, at 9.00 a.m.