⁷³¹⁶

Wednesday, 3 July 2002

[Open session]

[The accused entered court]

--- Upon commencing at 9.03 a.m.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have a question.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, while we're waiting.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I wanted to get an answer to my question. Why did I get the witness statement, statement of the witness who was planned for tomorrow only yesterday? As far as I know, according to all the plans here, witness statements are given a month in advance. It is only in my case that the Rules are violated all the time, even the decisions that you yourselves make. As for the witness Sandra Mitchell, it was really drastic, and the registrar of the court can confirm to you that I got this only yesterday.

Secondly, I cautioned you yesterday that on the 17th of April, when you limited my time for cross-examination to one hour, you said that the other side should give introductory remarks for five minutes. In the meantime, that changed. The other side practically has unlimited time and you've shortened my time to 45 minutes. Lest I be misunderstood --

JUDGE MAY: We've dealt with all these matters. Let me deal with your first point, about the witness.

There seems to be some problem with the transcript. Are we going to get the transcript now?

The accused has raised two points, not for the first time. The first point that he raises is that he is limited to 45 minutes whereas the ⁷³¹⁷ Prosecution are taking longer than the five minutes which was allotted to them. That's a point which we have in mind. However, the five minutes was not a mandatory time. It's necessary sometimes for the witnesses' evidence to be summarised in rather longer form. It's the only opportunity for that evidence to be heard, some of it dealing with horrifying events.

The reason that we limit your time, as I have pointed out often enough, is that you waste it, and the Court has to protect itself against being abused by time wasting.

I turn to your next point. There is a power within the Court to abridge the time allowed for any witness statements, and in the case of the witness you mention, Sandra Mitchell, her evidence, we are told, was served on you on the 27th of June. That was short. However, we have ensured that that witness will not give evidence until tomorrow, so you will have adequate time to prepare for it.

The only point of the Rule is that you should have adequate time to prepare before a witness gives evidence, and that we keep in mind continually when we review these decisions.

Yes. We'll have the next witness.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please.

JUDGE MAY: No. This is not -- Mr. Milosevic, we must get on. Time is short. We cannot spend time arguing -- listening to you arguing points which have been decided. We will hear you --

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] What was said was inaccurate.

JUDGE MAY: We will hear you in due course when we come to deal ⁷³¹⁸ with administrative matters. But during the time for the hearing of witnesses, we need to be hearing the witnesses.

Yes.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honour. The Prosecution calls Mustafa Draga. And while the witness is being brought into the courtroom, I will use the time, if I may, to assist the Court. If you'll turn to the Kosovo atlas 2, page 5. On page 5, the -- between numbers 30 and 40, you will see the quadrangle on the right-hand side of the page. The village is Lecina, and that would be about the left part of that right quadrant, if I can call it that, between 30 and 40, just about an inch or so north of Izbica. That's the area we're going to be talking about with this witness.

[The witness entered court]

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the witness take the declaration.

WITNESS: MUSTAFA DRAGA

[Witness answered through interpreter]

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. If you'd like to sit down. Examined by Mr. Ryneveld:

Q. Thank you. Mr. Draga, I understand, sir, that you are 64 years old and you are a Kosovo Albanian Muslim from the village of Lecina in Srbica, Skenderaj municipality; is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And I understand, sir, that you are married and you have ten ⁷³¹⁹ children; eight sons and two daughters?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it true, sir, that in March of 1999, four of those sons and one of your daughters still lived at home with you and your wife?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, sir, did you give statements to investigators of the ICTY on the 11th and 13th of November of 1999?

A. Yes.

Q. And about a month ago, did you have a chance to read those statements over again or have them read to you in your own language and then appear before a presiding officer of this Tribunal and say that -- make a solemn declaration that those statements are true to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief? Did you do that on the 10th of June -- I'm sorry, on the 8th of March, 2002?

A. Yes.

MR. RYNEVELD: Your Honours, I would like to at this time tender the 92 bis statements of this witness and have those marked as an exhibit. And while that's being done, I propose to use the time by reading a very brief summary of what is contained in those statements.

JUDGE MAY: Within the five minutes.

MR. RYNEVELD: It's a two-page summary, so I'll either have to read fast or skim, yes.

THE REGISTRAR: Excuse me. Prosecution Exhibit 237 and 237A for the redacted version.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you very much. ⁷³²⁰ Your Honours, you've heard that in March of 1999, the witness was an occupant or resident of Lecina, but in July of 1998, he talks about, in his statement, the Serb police entering the area around his village and establishing checkpoints. He indicates that the villages in his area were occasionally shelled and some people were killed. The villages of Padaliste and Citak were partly burned in 1998. The witness and his wife left Lecina and stayed in Mitrovica for three months, while his sons and daughters went on to Montenegro. You will find in his statement that they all returned to Lecina in October of 1998 when the OSCE arrived. In his statement, he describes that on the 25th of March of 1999, Lecina and other villages in the area were shelled from the direction of Bjelica and Padaliste. That shelling continued the following day and he could see the Serb forces getting closer and could observe burning houses. As a result, he and his family were one of the last families to leave for Izbica, which apparently was considered to be a safer place. They left on the 26th of March.

They then stayed in a field, of which you've heard evidence from other witnesses, outside Izbica, together with his family; and he estimates that there were several thousand other refugees in this large field.

On the 27th of March, he observed that villages around Izbica were burning, and he mentions the various villages of Broje, Vojnik, Bllozina, Lower Klina, Jashanice and Ozrim. He indicates that the younger men among the refugees went into hiding in the woods.

On the morning of the 28th of March, 1999, he saw Serb forces ⁷³²¹ advancing towards Izbica and surrounding the village. He estimates that there were about 300 soldiers or even more. He describes their uniforms and the fact that they had Milicija on their uniform sleeves, and he gives a description in his statement of what they were wearing. When those forces arrived, they separated the men from the women, leaving the boys under the age of 13 with their mothers. The troops demanded money from the crowd and the witness saw many people handing over money. Because he didn't have any money, he was hit with a rifle butt by one of the soldiers. They were also verbally harassed. He then describes how one of the police officers lined up the men, divided them into two groups and ordered them to walk in an easterly and westerly direction respectively, towards the woods. He describes the police officer in charge and that there were about 70 men in his group. In his statement, he names 16 of them that he knew from the Lecina area. After walking about 500 metres, the men were ordered to stop and turn around. He saw approximately 30 police officers close to them. He then tells you that the police commenced shooting immediately upon the men turning around. The witness fell to the ground when the shooting started, and another man whom he names, also by the name of Draga, fell over top of him. He was wounded, that is, the man who fell on him. Bullets were striking all around the witness and he heard cries of pain from those who were hit. The witness was not struck by any bullets and remained uninjured but he lay still, under the other man who had fallen on top of him, until the shooting stopped. He describes that what sounded like continuous automatic fire lasted for one or two minutes. ⁷³²² He continued to remain quiet for about 20 to 30 minutes, during which time he heard gunfire from some distance. And then he observed the police set fire to the houses in Izbica. When he thought it was safe, he crawled into the nearby woods where he found some other survivors. They stayed in the woods for the next two days.

He then describes in his statement the aftermath. On Tuesday, the 30th of March, they went to other villages. They buried the dead. They found the bodies of four people killed on the tractors in the field, among them a paralysed woman, Zoja Osmana, who was burned on a trailer. You will recall some months ago hearing from some of the women who talked about this incident as well.

The commander, a KLA commander who was present on the 30th and 31st, made a detailed list of the bodies, and the witness also heard that other bodies were subsequently buried in the same place but he didn't see that. He then describes how he stayed in the woods with hundreds of others for about six weeks, until after NATO arrived in Kosovo, and tells you eventually that he returned to Izbica for three to four days and then back to Lecina where he found his house destroyed by fire, his cows missing, his car burnt, and his tractor damaged. That is a very brief summary of these events. Needless to say, I cannot do justice to his statement in five minutes, but that is an overview. Those are all the questions I have of the witness as well, Your Honour.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you. Yes, Mr. Milosevic. Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic: ⁷³²³

Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Draga, when they separated you, you had been in a group with a number of citizens from many villages around Izbica. Did I understand your statement correctly?

A. Yes. They divided us and lined us up in two and kept us there and insulted us, and they asked us money and then we were struck. And then they divided us in two groups, and one they took to the west and one to the east. I was in the eastern group.

Q. And -- and how many citizens were there in that field, in that meadow where you say that you were surrounded, insulted, et cetera? How many citizens were there?

A. On the 27th, there were 15 or 16.000. And then some went to Tushile and we were 5 or 6.000 left.

Q. There were 15, 16.000 persons on that day when you were being executed?

A. No. When we were executed, we were about 5 or 6.000 of us. On the 27th, many left and the majority went to the village of Tushile.

Q. All right. So when they executed you, there were 5 or 6.000. You say that they separated the men and they took them to be executed. Does that mean that all the rest were women and children?

A. The remainder were women and children, and they sent them off in the directions of Turiqevc and Vojnik.

Q. All right. Out of the 5 or 6.000 of you, only about 150 of you were men, those that they had singled out, as you had put it; is that right?

A. Yes. There were more, but those who were killed were 144. ⁷³²⁴

Q. All right. How far away were you when they executed you? How far away were you from this group of 5.000 persons? You said that you went a few hundred -- a few hundred metres away from them, towards the woods.

A. Excuse me: First they took away the women, the children, and then they divided us into two groups and sent one group to the east and one to the west. The women were -- had taken away about 5 or 600 metres away from us when we were executed. They were walking.

Q. So that means that they first took the women and children, and then there was no one there in the field when they executed you; right?

JUDGE MAY: What is the meaning of that question? It seems absolutely pointless comment, Mr. Milosevic. Of course there were people there when they were -- the executions took place. Are you challenging that the executions took place? Are you challenging the witness's evidence about that?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Of course, of course, Mr. May. Before him you had here Milazim Thaci who explained that he had also been executed. And he was also saved by God, just like Mr. Draga, who was executed by a heavy machine-gun from an eight-metre distance. And the exhibit, the photograph with a shirt with holes in it is one that you admitted. So of course I'm challenging it. I'm challenging this too.

JUDGE MAY: Are you suggesting the witness is not telling the truth about this? Is that the suggestion?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I'm sorry, but the Court is striving to find the truth, and the accused should have been among us and see how people were killed and massacred and how the villages were burned. ^{7325 BLANK PAGE 7326}

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. So you survived because God saved you; right? They missed you. They missed you, judging by your statement, at a distance of only a few metres. They -- they tried to execute you with a heavy machine-gun at close range; right?

A. I was saved by God to come here and testify to the truth, because only God saved me from the Serbian police. Because they shot me. They massacred people, they burned, they slaughtered people.

Q. All right, Mr. Draga. In your statement, you describe the following: That they separated you out of this big group of people and took you a few hundred metres away, towards the woods. And now you say that previously, this group of people out of which you were singled out was taken somewhere and then you were taken towards the woods. What is correct; the first or the second?

A. I'm sorry, because you're trying to provoke me. But first they separated the women and sent them to Turiqevc. Then they lined up the men in the road and they insulted us, and then they said, "What relationship do you have to Thaci?" And then they divided us into two groups and they sent one group to the west and one to the east. I was in the eastern group and Milazim was in the western group.

These are just your provocations. And that's what I said in my statement, and these things are true.

Q. All right. Let's be very precise about this. In the statement, you did not mention that, first of all, they took all these people away. And now you claim that they took all these people away somewhere before ⁷³²⁷ they executed you, and you say that they took them 5 or 600 metres away. That means that they had to see that, they had to see when you were being executed, these 5 or 6.000 people. Didn't they have to see that? Yes or no.

MR. RYNEVELD: Your Honours --

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. RYNEVELD: -- before the witness --

JUDGE MAY: Yes, the witness should have the opportunity of dealing with it. Can he read a statement?

Just a moment, Mr. Draga, we'll try to sort this out. Can he read the statement, do you know?

MR. RYNEVELD: I do believe he is able to. Whether or not his glasses -- or whether he needs them, that's something I don't recall. But just the last suggestion by the accused, if I could invite you to turn with me to page 4 of the English version of the admitted statement, the second full paragraph specifically says: "The women and children were moved farther away from us and then told to start walking in the direction of Turiqevc." Then he talks about splitting them up into east and west. So what the accused is saying to this witness is not fair because it's right in his summary.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. He says: "This group go to the east. This group go to the west. The group I was in --" let us go through it. "The group I was in numbered about 70 men. We were then told to walk in the direction indicated." Then there's a description of the policemen. Then there is the names of the people who were in his group. ⁷³²⁸ "We walked, I would estimate, for approximately 500 metres, not more, up the hill towards the east side of the valley." Policemen shouted at them. "We turned round," et cetera.

MR. RYNEVELD: That's the point, Your Honour, I was trying to make, that the witness [sic] said that he hadn't said it in his statement and it's not fair to suggest that.

Perhaps we could supply a copy in the Albanian language to the witness. I'll try to be on my guard where there are unfair characterisations of his statement put to him in the questions, but I can't get them all.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, you must not mislead witnesses by putting to them things which are inaccurate. It's neither fair to the witness nor is it right that you should try and mislead the Court in this way.

Now, let the witness have a copy of his statement.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I just want to establish, Mr. May, how far away from them all these people in the group were.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I'm going to read it.

JUDGE MAY: No. No need to read it for the minute. Mr. Milosevic, you can ask that. That is a perfectly fair question. But what you mustn't do is mischaracterise what a witness has said in his statement.

Now, the question, Mr. Draga, for you, is this: How far -- when the execution took place, how far away were the main group of people?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] They were about 500 metres away - ⁷³²⁹ they were walking - more.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. And you were going, as I understood now that this part of your statement was read again, you were going uphill in relation to them.

A. We were going up the hill to the hill where they executed us. But these seem to me provocative questions because these are true events. These are not -- this is not false testimony.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Draga, you must bear with us. The accused is entitled to ask some questions to establish the truth and to clarify events. So if you would just bear with him and just deal with the questions. If the questions are unfair, as you've seen, he'll be stopped.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Excuse me. I'm sorry, on your account too, because we had considerable --

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. Since you were uphill compared to that group and the group was 500 away from you, does that mean that this group of people were eyewitnesses to that execution and that you were being executed at a distance of 500 metres, in plain sight of this large group of people, 5 or 6.000 people?

A. These people were walking towards Turiqevc and Klina. I don't know whether they were able to see it or not. They were being escorted as they walked. They were walking away.

Q. I can understand that, but I assume that at a distance of 500 metres, shooting is heard loud and clear. So when there is shooting, do you suppose that this is something that can attract one's attention and ⁷³³⁰ that if you are standing on a hill while being executed, people at the foot of the hill can see it?

JUDGE MAY: He's already answered that. He said he doesn't know whether the people could have heard or seen or not.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. All right.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Excuse me. The policemen were not more than four or five metres from us, not 500 metres. They were all on the right.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right, Mr. Draga. This whole issue is clear to me. Could you tell me now, if you know, specifically in your area, that from the 24th of March until the 29th of March, important battles were waged between our army and the police on the one hand and the KLA on the other?

A. As far as I know, the KLA didn't fight at all because it was unable to. It didn't have weapons.

Q. So you are saying the KLA had no weapons and that's why they didn't fight at all?

A. Well, it had weapons. It had some terrible guns. It didn't have guns and tanks and heavy equipment.

Q. All right. And do you know that in your area there were about two and a half thousand members of the KLA and all of them were armed? Are you aware of that?

A. I don't know that there were 2.500. I didn't see very much of them because I didn't stay at home very much.

Q. And could you please tell me how many you did see? You didn't see ⁷³³¹ two and a half thousand, but how many did you see?

A. I saw a dozen. I didn't take much interest in these matters at all.

Q. Well, then, later, as far as I understood also from the statement of Milazim Thaci and from other events, you were saying that a funeral had been organised. And we have already established that this funeral was organised by the KLA. Is that true or not?

A. There were more civilians. There weren't many KLA members at the funeral. It was Sadik Xhemajli who was the first to organise it, and he organised the lists of names. There were very few members of the KLA present that day.

Q. Well, this Sadik Xhemajli, a commander of the KLA, was he there?

JUDGE MAY: That presupposes that the witness knows, if it's true, that he was commander of the KLA.

Was he the commander of the KLA?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Sadik Xhemajli wasn't commander of the KLA. It was merely he who organised the funeral that day in Izbica. I don't know whether he was a commander or not.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. So you don't know whether he was a commander. All right. And is it correct that some young men from your own village were also members of the KLA?

A. There were some. How many there were, I don't know.

Q. And could you tell me, were there any Serbs living in your village? ⁷³³²

A. There were.

Q. What was your relationship with the Serbs?

A. To a certain extent, it wasn't -- they weren't too bad. Average. But then later on, these relations were totally disrupted.

Q. You said in your statement that in the summer, in July 1998, the Serb police came to your area; is that correct?

A. 1998? Yes. The Serbian police came in 1998, and they took me to the police station and beat me several times.

Q. And could you now tell me, please, where is that in your statement? I couldn't find it. Perhaps someone can assist me. This part when you say that in 1998, too, you were taken to the police and beaten up.

A. Yes. They took us in 1998, because in 1999, we fled as far as we could.

Q. You say in the beginning of your statement, last paragraph, in the summer of 1998, in July, the Serbian police came to the area and established checkpoints. Things became tense, and so on and so forth. Shelling of the village. Many people left the area for their own safety. Some of them went to Montenegro, others took Kosovska Mitrovica. We left our home and we were away for almost three months. We went to Kosovska Mitrovica and we stayed there while our sons and our daughter went to Montenegro.

You don't mention anywhere that you were taken to the police station in 1998 and beaten up. Why didn't you mention such an important thing? ⁷³³³

A. I didn't mention -- this was before 1998 that they took me, not in 1998.

Q. All right. When before 1998?

A. I don't know the date. But they took me from the yard, and they didn't even allow me to put my clothes on. And for three days in succession they kept me.

Q. Was it in 1997, 1996?

A. 19 --

THE INTERPRETER: [Previous translation continues]... says the witness in Serbian.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] 1997.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. What time in 1997?

A. It was in winter.

Q. Does that mean in end 1997 or in early 1997?

A. It must have been the end of 1997.

Q. And why were you taken to the police station?

A. They took us because after 1991, we had no peace. We've never -- we've always had trouble and we've been beaten.

Q. So starting with 1991, you were beaten?

A. You know all these things very well. I don't know why you're asking.

Q. All right. And do you know and can you tell me, at that time in 1998, in July, when you say that the police established checkpoints, what happened before that to cause the police to come? What is it that ^{7334 BLANK PAGE 7335} happened in your area to make the police come and establish checkpoints?

A. Nothing happened. What happened were your orders. And as the whole world can see, an innocent population and defenseless people ...

Q. Does that mean that you know absolutely nothing about things that happened in your area? You know nothing about killings, kidnappings, crimes committed by the KLA at that time when the police established checkpoints, or you know something at least?

A. I don't know anything. I was in Mitrovica. I was in the hills. I don't know what was going on.

Q. Well, before the police established checkpoints - that means before July 1998 when you say the checkpoints were established, after which you left the village - do you know what had happened before that time, while you were still in the village?

A. Nothing happened. We didn't dare go to the checkpoints. In the last ten years, we've had no end of trouble. I don't know why you're asking questions, because you know yourself what happened.

Q. All right. And do you know -- or, rather, is it true that it was precisely in that period, in the month of March, the so-called 145th Brigade of the KLA was in your area? Have you heard about it?

A. I don't know where they were stationed, so I don't know anything about a brigade with this number.

Q. Fine. Do you know anything about any brigade without a number or with a different number?

A. I said I wasn't interested where -- as to who they were, where they were. I wasn't interested. I was only interested in my own family, ⁷³³⁶ looking after my family and staying with my family.

Q. Was perhaps the reason for the establishment of the checkpoints the presence of the KLA in your area?

A. I don't know. I think you would know that better than I do.

Q. All right. In your statement, you say that on the 25th of March, before the NATO bombing of Serbia, Serbs came into the village of Lecina; is that correct?

A. When NATO bombed, they entered into Leqina. I think it was the 26th. The 25th, they set off, and the 26th, they burnt the whole neighbourhood down.

Q. All right. You say on the 25th of March. That is on the page which ends with 36. The number is long. You say the day before NATO started bombing the Serbs.

Do you know that the bombing started actually on the 24th?

A. I know.

JUDGE MAY: According to the English translation, that's what it says. "On the 25th of March, the day after NATO commenced the bombing offensive against the Serbs."

So in English, it looks like he's right on the date, if that was the date.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right, Mr. May. In B/C/S, it says differently, and that's why I quoted it. And if you think it's incorrect, have the B/C/S version checked again. But let me ask another question.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ⁷³³⁷

Q. You said NATO started bombing the Serbs. Did NATO bomb only the Serbs in Kosovo or they bombed all of Kosovo and all of Yugoslavia?

JUDGE MAY: Well, that's not a question for the witness. Was there any bombing in your area, any NATO bombing?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] There was nothing from NATO.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, if the witness says that NATO started bombing the Serbs and I ask him a question about it, whether the NATO bombed only the Serbs or they bombed Kosovo and all of Yugoslavia, I suppose it's a legitimate question.

JUDGE MAY: No. He's given his evidence. He can give evidence about what he saw or heard himself. As for the wider matters, they're matters which we'll have to decide.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That means that he speaks in his statement about things that he had not seen with his own eyes. And I'm sticking to his statement, and I have to make a selection from his own statement, dividing things into those that he saw with his own eyes and those he didn't.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Where did you get the information that Serb forces shelled the Lecina? Did you see that yourself?

A. I didn't say that Serbian forces did the shelling. It was Serbian military forces, not NATO, that carried out this bombardment. And the Serb -- and the NATO forces didn't bomb either the Albanians or the Serbs but simply the Serb forces.

Q. All right. Did you see the shelling of the Lecina village? ⁷³³⁸

A. Excuse me. Whose bombardment?

Q. I mean any shelling of the village. Did you see the shelling of Lecina village? That's what I'm asking.

A. There was no bombing. I'm not talking about the Klina e Ulta, I'm talking about our village. There were mortars and there was shelling.

Q. But did you see yourself what you're talking about?

A. There was no way of seeing. We -- we saw because bullets came around our feet.

Q. What bullets came around your feet?

A. Excuse me, what kind of bullets? The bullets that they were shooting. They were mostly mortars, but they had other things.

Q. So what fell around your feet were mortar shells. Is that what you're saying?

A. It was mortars that were fired in the hills where we were hiding, but I don't know what those provocative questions are about.

Q. I'm trying to establish whether you had seen the shelling of Lecina village, and I hear from you that projectiles were falling around your feet. And then, in the next breath, you say those were mortar shells. I'm trying to establish whether it's really true, whether you're really saying that mortar shells were falling around your feet.

A. These things are true, whether they were mortars or grenade throwers or machine-guns. But we were trying to get away and we couldn't.

Q. And where were you at the time? Were you in the village or up in the hills?

A. On that day, on the 26th, they were shelling at 5.00, and they ⁷³³⁹ shelled my brother's house and shells fell in my yard too. And then I stayed in the hills of Izbica, and every day they were shelling with mortars from Broje and from Vojnik.

Q. Tell me, please, what was it that they shelled every day? Was it your village or the hills where you were hiding?

A. They shelled the hills and the woods for a week on end, until we got the bodies out at Izbica, and they were shelling continually until they allowed us to fetch the bodies.

Q. All right. So you saw bodies near Izbica. And these bodies, were they the bodies of people executed by a firing squad?

A. They were the bodies of the men who were shot and executed. They were burned. Most of them had lost half their heads. It was the machine-gun fire. I don't know what kind of fire it was.

Q. All right. But you've just told us that you were hiding up in the hills which were being shelled, and then later you came and saw bodies near Izbica and started gathering the corpses. Is that correct?

A. I'm talking about the day of the funeral, because I can't -- I didn't see anything more of the bodies. I was trying to save my own life.

Q. Wait a second, Mr. Draga. You explained a moment ago, and I'm following the sequence of your explanations, and will you be so kind as to tell me whether I'm right.

Your village of Lecina was shelled. Due to that shelling, as projectiles were falling around your feet, you ran away to the hills. You were hiding there. The hills were shelled, and then you reached Izbica, saw the bodies, and started picking them up. That's what you have told us ⁷³⁴⁰ a moment ago. Is that what happened?

A. When I came out of Leqina, there were -- there was shelling, and the executions were on the 28th of March, on the day of Bajram. And these were your police. And then the police said to us, "This is Bajram. You can slaughter lambs. We're going to slaughter you."

Q. And that's what they told you, that they would slaughter you?

A. That's what they said.

Q. Why didn't you write that in your statement? It's such an important thing.

A. It's possible I didn't remember to write it. But that is what happened.

Q. So from these hills where you were hiding after you had fled from your village, Lecina, and from the shells that were falling, you came and you gathered bodies around Izbica; is that right?

A. We went to Izbica on the 26th. We got out of our houses, and the boys and the women went out earlier. I went out in the evening. On the 26th -- on the 27th, we stayed there all day. On the 28th, they came about 10.00, although I didn't have a clock, and the police came and surrounded us and divided us from the women and lined us up, insulted us, asked for money, beat us. And as I said before, they sent us towards the east and the west. And the bodies lay there from Sunday and Wednesday. And I wasn't saying that I collected the bodies from the woods or that there were bodies when I went out of Leqina that day. These seem to me to be pointless questions.

Q. Well, you just repeated your story from the beginning now, which ⁷³⁴¹ does not correspond to what you said awhile ago concerning your flight from the village of Lecina.

JUDGE MAY: No. He made it quite plain. If anything, it was you, Mr. Milosevic, who have been confusing the issue by your questions. His story is quite clear about where he went.

Now, time is wearing on. I should think you have two or three more questions.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Please. This is a photograph of the OTP. Who made this photograph of the killed near Izbica?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could you please be so kind as to have this photograph shown.

MR. RYNEVELD: I wonder if I might see it before it's shown to the witness.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] By all means. By all means, do take a look. Is it exactly that photograph, Mr. Ryneveld?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I can't see very well, but Liri Loshi did that, and Mr. Thaci.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. So that photograph was taken. These are the persons who were executed, right, the persons that you are talking about?

A. Yes.

Q. Were you in that group of people? Were you or were you not?

JUDGE MAY: Which group of people? ⁷³⁴²

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Which group?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Well, you say -- I mean, you say that there was a group of people that were executed by the Serb police, and this photograph was taken by this -- I can't remember his name right now, the name of the person you mentioned.

A. Liri Loshi made the photograph. I said they executed us in two groups, one in the west, one in the east. I was in the east. And I carried bodies with my sons and with the tractor, where they had lain from Sunday until Wednesday.

JUDGE MAY: Do you recognise that scene that's shown in the photograph?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes. This is in the meadow where we carried all the bodies.

JUDGE MAY: The bodies were carried down there and laid out; is that right?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No. We -- we laid them out to be put in the graves, and we put numbers on them. We carried them by tractor because it was a long way.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Now, Mr. Milosevic, have you got any more questions about the photograph?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Please. Well, we have to clarify this photograph, because this photograph was taken as if people had fallen there, not as if they had been brought there. It's not that they look as if you had brought them ^{7343 BLANK PAGE 7344} there and placed them there.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Would you please have the photograph shown on the monitor.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Is this a photograph of executed persons or of persons who were brought in?

JUDGE MAY: He has given his evidence about this. It's a scene which he says he recognises. Just a moment. The bodies were brought there, and he's described that, and put in the meadow. Now, we've had evidence about this photograph, Mr. Ryneveld, as I recollect.

MR. RYNEVELD: Your Honours, Liri Loshi is on our witness list, would have given evidence but will be coming later on, the one who took --

JUDGE MAY: But it's been produced, hasn't it?

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes, we do have this. But I did want to indicate that the witness has testified that he can't see. That is what I understood his evidence to be. Your Honour may have got the impression from the witness that he recognised the scene in this photograph as being a location where they took bodies. That is not what I understood. I might deal with that on re-examination.

JUDGE MAY: You can deal with it in re-examination.

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic, your time is now up. Mr. Tapuskovic, have you any questions for this witness?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] But I haven't finished even with the ⁷³⁴⁵ photograph, Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: You've had -- you have had your 45 minutes. It's a matter for you how you spend it, and you've wasted much time with this witness anyway.

Yes, Mr. Tapuskovic.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honours. I would just like to clarify something with this witness. Page 5, paragraph 4, the last sentence of the English version.

Questioned by Mr. Tapuskovic:

Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Draga, a short while ago, you said that you did not know whether Sadik Xhemajli was a commander of the KLA.

A. I don't know whether he was commander or not. What I mean is that he took part in the funeral.

Q. But in your statement that we are dealing with today and that you gave on the 11th --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, could you hand the photograph back, because we'll just get it clarified with counsel at the end. Could you hand the photograph back. We'll get it clarified and then you can get it back. Thank you.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It is their photograph, Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, but it's your copy. Yes. Yes, Mr. Tapuskovic.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. In your written statement, Mr. Draga, you said the following: "This detailed list of 144 bodies was made by Sadik Xhemajli who was local ⁷³⁴⁶ KLA commander." That's what you said when you first gave your statement and that differs from what you said here today. How do you explain this?

A. That's what I said before, and that's what I say now.

Q. So he was the local commander of the KLA?

A. I don't know whether he was commander or not. What I'm saying is he was the main organiser in the funeral on that day.

Q. It says something completely different here, but if that's what you're saying, I mean --

JUDGE MAY: We can read that. Yes, Mr. Ryneveld.

MR. RYNEVELD: Very briefly. Thank you, Your Honour. Re-examined by Mr. Ryneveld:

Q. Witness, do I understand you to say that your eyesight is not very good at the moment?

A. That's right.

Q. When you looked at the photograph -- perhaps you could just take that photograph in your hand, if you would, please. See the photograph to the left there?

A. I can -- I can pick up the photograph, and I can see that it's -- I can't really see it very well, but I believe it's that meadow where the bodies are. Here was the meadow, the graves were over here in a row, and the bodies were laid over here.

Q. Are you able to tell by looking at that photograph whether that is a photograph of the bodies where they were before you picked them up or whether or not it is the location where you and others took the bodies to? ⁷³⁴⁷ Are you able, with your eyesight, to be able to tell us for sure whether you know which of those two scenes it may be?

A. I can't make it out. It looks more like the place where we took the bodies to, the meadow.

Q. Thank you.

JUDGE MAY: But you're going to call Mr. Liri who called the --

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes. Dr. Liri Loshi is the man who was there, and I will show -- you have already seen his video. The reason Your Honours have had evidence of that, in the opening I showed a very brief clip of this, and I will select no more than a three-minute portion showing the three groups, of which this is one.

JUDGE MAY: So effectively we will be returning to this particular photograph and we can have it clarified then by the person who took it.

MR. RYNEVELD: By the person who took it; that's correct.

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Draga, for coming to the Tribunal to give your evidence. It's now concluded. You're free to go.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you. And perhaps I spoke rather hastily.

JUDGE MAY: No more than anybody else.

[The witness withdrew]

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Saxon.

MR. SAXON: Good morning, Your Honours. The Prosecution will call Mr. Hani Hoxha. While we're waiting for the witness, his evidence is relevant to two pages in the Kosovo atlas. That would be page 24 and page ⁷³⁴⁸ 10.

[The witness entered court]

JUDGE MAY: Does the witness have to wear dark glasses for some medical reason?

MR. SAXON: I believe he does, Your Honour. These are prescription glasses. His eyesight is not the best.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Yes. Take the declaration, if you would.

WITNESS: HANI HOXHA

[Witness answered through interpreter]

JUDGE MAY: The usher has the declaration. If you would read it out, please.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

JUDGE MAY: And if you would like to take a seat. Examined by Mr. Saxon:

Q. Sir, is your name Hani Hoxha?

A. Yes.

Q. Mr. Hoxha, were you born on the 16th of May in 1937?

A. Yes.

Q. Were you born in the city of Gjakove in Kosovo?

A. Yes.

Q. Mr. Hoxha, on the 22nd of April, 1999, did you give a statement to representatives of the Office of the Prosecutor concerning the events that you witnessed and experienced in Kosovo during 1999? ⁷³⁴⁹

A. Yes.

Q. And on the 14th of March of this year, 2002, in Gjakove in Kosovo, did you have an opportunity to review a copy of the statement that you gave in 1999 in the presence of a representative of the Office of the Prosecutor and a presiding officer appointed by the Registrar of this Tribunal?

A. Yes.

Q. And Mr. Hoxha, on that occasion in March 2002, did you confirm that the copy of the statement that you reviewed was a true and accurate copy of the statement that you provided in April of 1999?

A. Yes.

MR. SAXON: Your Honour, I'd like to ask the Trial Chamber's permission to go into private session very briefly to discuss a matter related to a protected witness.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

[Private session]

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[Open session]

MR. SAXON: Your Honours, Hani Hoxha is a Kosovo Albanian man, a Muslim, who spent 40 years teaching sports and physical education in Kosovo. When the events described in this statement occurred, he was nearly 62 years old.

Mr. Hoxha first describes the events that occurred in his neighbourhood of Gjakove in late March 1999, when Serb forces entered the compounds of his neighbours and killed Mr. Shefqet Pruthi and Mr. Avni Ferizi. When the relatives of these victims spoke to the local police about these killings, they were told: "Go and complain to NATO." Following these killings, Mr. Hoxha, his wife, and his daughter Flaka, decided to seek shelter in the compound of Mr. Hoxha's older daughter Tringa and her husband Lulezim Vejsa. For several days and nights, 24 persons - men, women, and children - stayed in the Vejsa compound. During the nights, the 21 women and children would stay in a basement underneath a business operated by Lulezim Vejsa. The three competent adult men present, Hani Hoxha, Lulezim Vejsa, and Behar Haxhiavdija, would keep watch outside in the courtyard of the compound or ⁷³⁵⁴ in the main house.

On the fifth night, at about 12.15 a.m., between the 1st and 2nd of April, 1999, Mr. Hoxha was woken up because a vehicle was trying to break through the gate and enter the Vejsa compound. Previously, the men and women present in the compound had agreed that if Serb forces attempted to break in, the men would flee because it was believed that the Serb forces would only harm the Kosovo Albanian men present and would not harm women and children. After he saw eight to ten uniformed men, some wearing masks, enter the compound, Mr. Hoxha fled over several walls and left the compound. However, Mr. Hoxha remained hidden close by and heard gunshots, the sounds of burning homes, and the sounds of voices saying, "Spare me. Don't kill me."

After hiding for seven or eight hours, Mr. Hoxha returned to the Vejsa compound. There he found that the basement where he last saw his family members had been burned, as well as the home of his son-in-law, Lulezim Vejsa, which had collapsed to the ground. In another burned home in the same compound, Mr. Hoxha found the burned body of Hysen Gashi, the uncle of Lulezim Vejsa. On that evening, Mr. Hoxha lost his wife, two daughters, and five grandchildren, and a total of 20 persons were killed in the Vejsa family compound. Mr. Hoxha was subsequently told by a survivor that the victims were shot and burned in the house.

Mr. Hoxha decided to join a column of Kosovo Albanian persons leaving the city of Gjakove and heading for the border of Albania. This column was about three kilometres long. The column of people passed ⁷³⁵⁵ through the old part of Gjakove, which had been completely burned by this time. At the exit of the town, policemen directed the Albanians to throw away their identification papers. Several kilometres outside of Gjakove, the column was stopped by members of the Yugoslav army. Everyone in the column was forced to sit down for several hours, and then the column continued again. As the column approached the border, Mr. Hoxha saw Yugoslav army soldiers transporting elderly Albanians on tractor trailers towards the border. Closer to the border, Serb police again asked the persons in the column for their identity documents. Mr. Hoxha eventually crossed the border into Albania and made his way to Tirana.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Saxon, this is the incident, the murders which are also referred to as being in Milos Gilic Street; is that right?

MR. SAXON: That is correct, Your Honour. Absolutely right.

JUDGE MAY: And in the indictment, I'll be reminded, is there a schedule referring to it?

MR. SAXON: There is, Your Honour. I'm afraid to give you the wrong reference number, but there is.

JUDGE KWON: I think it's on Schedule G. During the adjournment, could you prepare to answer my question regarding the clarification whether Lulezim Vejsa was the son-in-law of the witness.

MR. SAXON: That's correct, Your Honour.

JUDGE KWON: He doesn't appear on the schedule or is that a different name?

MR. SAXON: Because the son-in-law survived, Your Honour.

JUDGE KWON: Yes. Thank you. ⁷³⁵⁶

JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn now. It's the appropriate time. Mr. Hoxha, could you remember during the adjournment, please, not to speak to anybody about your evidence, although it hasn't really started, until it's over. We're going to adjourn for twenty minutes, so would you be back, please, just after ten to the hour.

--- Recess taken at 10.32 a.m.

--- On resuming at 10.55 a.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Before I ask my questions, I would like to draw your attention to one thing. There are two more witnesses to which I wish to draw your attention. Ismet and Behar Haxhiavdija. Their statements are very much linked to the statements of this witness, and there are major discrepancies among them. And I would think it reasonable to hear these witnesses in succession and then it would be much clearer to everyone what had really happened, because Ismet Haxhiavdija says in his statement that Gjakove was shelled almost every night all night, beginning with the 24th of March. According to my information, this specific locality, the Milos Gilic Street, was hit by a NATO bomb. And you have just heard Mr. Saxon, too, saying in his summary that the house was razed to the ground.

Therefore, it is indubitable that we could see things much more clearly if we followed the course of action I suggested. And now I can start asking my questions.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, there's nothing we can do about that. It's for the Prosecution to arrange to have witnesses here. Those ⁷³⁵⁷ witnesses, as I recollect, were on the list and were, no doubt, sent home during the break which has occurred.

Is that right, Mr. Saxon?

MR. SAXON: That's absolutely correct, Your Honour. And the witnesses for this particular crime site were previously scheduled to testify essentially in sequence. However, when the accused became ill, it simply become untenable to keep them here for such a long period of time and we had to rearrange the order.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I'm not forgetting that the witness whose family was a victim cares to know, to find out why they had suffered and were killed.

Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

Q. [Interpretation] What was the reason for you and your family to seek shelter in the basement of your house?

A. The reason was that on the 25th of May, in my neighbourhood, as I said in my declaration, in my statement, there were killings going on. Houses were being burnt down. And that night, my direct neighbour was killed. Another witness told the Court about him, about his death. And then the -- my -- his neighbour, or my indirect neighbour, a very good friend who had studied in Belgrade, was killed. He was executed in the courtyard of his house.

And on the next day, the funeral services of Gjakove came and took away the two corpses. And when they did that, there was panic in the neighbourhood. I didn't really know what was going on at the time, ⁷³⁵⁸ because later I realised the night before, in the great market in Gjakove, the great market was burnt down and people had been executed. But that I only discovered later on.

The next day, my daughter Flaka insisted that we go to her second sister --

Q. Mr. Hani, please. Would you answer my questions. Did Serbian forces ever shell or bomb Gjakove?

A. You would know that better than I do. What I know is that your forces executed my wife and children and girls. Then they burnt down my house which I built with such -- such -- managed to build with such difficulty over the last years.

Q. Please tell me why, from when and for how long, was Djakovica without electricity?

A. Up until 6.00 or 7.00 in the evening, there was no electricity. It was constantly interrupted.

Q. You say that around midnight you saw flames. How come, if you were in the basement?

A. I wasn't in the basement at that time. You're mistaken here.

Q. How high is the wall which you mention on page 2, the wall which you said you leaned on when you were alarmed by that incident? How tall is that wall?

A. Probably about a metre and a half or a metre 70. But they were -- it was difficult to get out.

Q. At what distance from your houses were the houses which were on fire? ⁷³⁵⁹

A. What date are you talking about?

Q. I am talking -- or, rather, we are talking about your description of houses on fire, the houses you observed while leaning on the wall.

MR. SAXON: Your Honour.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. SAXON: The witness, quite rightly, asked the accused what date he was asking him about, because in his statement, the witness describes two different occasions when he was against the wall as homes were being burnt nearby, and I think the accused could clarify what part of the statement --

JUDGE MAY: Well, it's clear. If I may interrupt, Mr. Saxon. Paragraph 3 -- perhaps the witness could have his statement. In fact, that might help. Let the witness have a copy of his statement. Mr. Hoxha, you are being asked about an occasion, and if you look in the third paragraph of your statement, you say you leaned on a wall, watching the homes of your neighbours burning, you say, which was very close. Can you help us with how far away that was? That was the question.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] To the right of my house was a house which was about ten metres away. Towards the north, there was a house which was 15 or 20 metres. On the other side, there was a house which was three or four metres away from my house; quite nearby.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Were all of those houses on fire?

A. All -- all the three houses and two cars were on fire. ⁷³⁶⁰

Q. In your statement, you said that at the moment, when you were standing, leaning against the wall and watching the houses burn, a vehicle was trying to break through the gate of the compound, but they failed because the gate was strong. How long did this attempt to break through last? You can see that on page 3 of your statement.

A. At one moment they tried to break through the gate, but it's quite difficult. It's an iron gate that I have. They tried. And I was in the courtyard at the moment. Everyone else was in the basement, my wife and my daughter Flaka and the neighbours whose houses were being burnt at that time.

After that attempt, they left and they went to the next house of Shefqet Pruthi, and they got in. Quite awhile went by. They got into the courtyard, and Shefqet Pruthi, with a candle in his hand, went back around the house. They went after him and executed him. They took his daughter, or they took a daughter, brought her out, and they cursed her. One of them said, "We're going to have fun with you tonight, girl." And she said, "Don't touch me. I'm still young. I'm only 15 years old." And one of them struck her, slapped her.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Mr. Hoxha, would you just wait for the next question, please.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. You said that after failing to break through your gate, they broke into the house next door. Does it mean they broke into a house which was already burning or not?

A. No. They -- there was -- there were two houses, a modern one and ^{7361 BLANK PAGE 7362} an old one. One belonged to Shefqet Pruthi and his wife and daughter, and the other house was where the grandfather lived.

Q. Right. You answered no, and we can move on. What were you doing while they were trying to break through your gate? You said you happened to be in the courtyard. What were you doing there? Did you run to take cover? What did you do?

A. As I said, it was an old house behind the new house, and I had taken shelter there. And at a certain moment, I thought that my house was going to be burnt too. And so I went out to see what would happen and tried to intervene to save my family members who were still inside the house, whereas the neighbouring house was burnt after Shefqet was executed. And then they continued on to the next house in the same manner, and continued executing people.

Q. So you said they broke into the neighbour's compound. Did you see that vehicle and the people inside it?

A. I didn't see anything because there's a high wall in between. But I heard a lot of noise, and I saw the next day that the gates had been forced open. And I heard the noise and the cursing because, according to what Arta said, there were 20 to 30 people. I heard a lot of voices. That moment, I didn't know what was happening because it was night. And on the first night when the market was burnt, there was no information at all.

Q. And for how long were you away between that moment and the moment when you found out what you said you later learned about what had happened? ⁷³⁶³

A. Which moment do you mean?

Q. If I understood you correctly, you have just explained that you were not able to see from your courtyard inside the neighbour's courtyard because of the high wall, and at that moment, you didn't know what was going on in there. But as I understand, you found out the next morning. So from that moment when you were on the other side of the wall and the next morning when you found out what had happened, where were you in the meantime, in the interim?

A. After the execution of Shefqet Pruthi, I went out from the basement to the yard to see whether my own house was being burned or not so that I could evacuate the members of my family. At the moment when Shefqet and Avni Ferizi and an old woman were executed, at that moment I left my house and I saw that all the members of my neighbour's family had left their house and had joined me. And we discussed with my neighbours what was happening, and at a certain point I told them all to get into my house. And they all went in, and I stayed in the yard, and at that moment I thought, Well, how should we act? I was wondering. Meanwhile, because the phones were still working, Arta Pruthi, whose father had been executed, called my daughter Flaka and told her that her father had been killed. And my daughter left the house, looked through the rooms to find him, and I was in the yard outside, and when dawn came, my daughter came out and told me that Uncle Shefqet had been killed.

Q. All right.

A. [Previous translation continues]... Please don't interrupt me. At ⁷³⁶⁴ that moment, I went in and woke up my wife and we went out to Shefqet's wife, and at that moment, I thought that the deceased was in the room but he was still out in the yard. And I asked the lady, "Why is Shefqet not here? Perhaps you should tell the police." And then Shefqet Pruthi, there was his uncle, Hasan Pruthi, who has been a witness. I went to inform Hasan --

JUDGE MAY: Now, Mr. Hoxha, I'm afraid we must stop you. Time is limited, and the accused has only a limited time for his cross-examination. Therefore, he must be able to ask such questions as he wants. Of course you can explain matters if you want, but we'll hear the next question.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Sir, I understood you as saying that you had seen your neighbour Mr. Shefqet going out into the courtyard, holding a candle. I will read out to you from page 2 of your statement where you say: "As soon as those people broke into the courtyard, they set your [as interpreted] house on fire." Full stop. "My neighbour, Shefqet Pruthi, went out with a candle in his hand."

Why would Shefqet be holding a candle with all the flames blazing all around him?

JUDGE MAY: That is something for Mr. Shefqet to have answered if he could have done. It's not for this witness.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I only wish to understand his description of events.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ⁷³⁶⁵

Q. This man is going out, holding a candle, jumping across the wall, with attackers running in pursuit. Have I understood this correctly?

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Hoxha, can you help us about this? Was this something you saw or something you were told, that he was being pursued by the attackers?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I didn't say that I saw Shefqet with a candle in his hand. This was told to me by his daughter Arta. Perhaps it's not properly translated in my statement, but I said in my statement that I didn't see him but I said that Arta saw him.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. We've cleared this up. How many people were there in the courtyard? You didn't see this either. Somebody else told you about it; isn't that right?

A. I didn't see a number of people. I heard noises. I heard shouting. Whereas Shefqet's daughter Arta said that there had been 20 or 30 people.

Q. All right. All right. Now I understand, because I couldn't understand it from your statement. Does that also mean that his daughter and wife climbed upstairs to the second floor, as you say in your statement? It's something they told you. You couldn't have seen it with your own eyes, could you?

A. All these things are what Arta Pruthi said, and I've got nothing to say on my own account about these matters. She is alive and his wife is alive; you can ask them yourself.

Q. All right. You said Shefqet's daughter called your daughter on ⁷³⁶⁶ the telephone around 3.00. That's what I understood you as saying a moment ago. What were you doing between midnight, when you came out, until 3.00?

A. Staying in the yard of my house, because I couldn't sleep and I was frightened they could come back again.

Q. And did Shefqet's daughter tell you that she got out of the house or did you see her get out of the house?

A. I said that they got her by the hand and threw her out.

Q. And do you know how they -- how she managed to find out that the attackers had killed her father? Did she see that herself?

A. She did, and his wife did too. The execution took place at a distance of -- at a range of two or three metres. And this needs no comment.

Q. And did you manage to see whether the attackers wore any uniforms or, rather, if so, what kind of uniforms they had and whether they had any uniforms at all? Did you manage to identify, at least in the roughest possible terms, these attackers?

A. You say that you don't have much time, but I didn't -- I didn't say -- I said I didn't see these people myself, that this is the account of Arta Pruthi.

Q. All right. In connection with Avni Ferizi, did you see that? All of this with Pruthi, you did not see. This belongs to his daughter's statement. Avni and the vehicle breaking in through his door, did you see that yourself? This is in paragraph 5 of page 2 of your statement.

A. I saw the body of my closest friend. And about how it happened, ⁷³⁶⁷ it was his wife Vjollca who told me how it happened. I didn't myself see the execution.

Q. All right. Even this event that you explain that has to do with Avni, you didn't see that either. When did she describe this to you?

A. On the next day. I stayed in the yard of Avni Ferizi and in Shefqet's yard, going from one to the other. I was always on the move until the police came. And then I stayed there until the hearse came and they took Avni and Shefqet away, and escorted only by Shefqet's sister because it was great danger to go to the cemetery. So that is how it happened.

Q. All right. Since you didn't see any of that, now I'm putting the following question to you: Could you hear them? Because you say that you were in the yard and they were a few metres away from you.

A. I heard the noise in my neighbour's yard. I heard cursing in Serbo-Croatian.

Q. All right. But did you hear the gunshots? And generally speaking, all of that.

A. Yes, I did. I heard shooting. I heard shouting. And of course you could hear the shooting even better.

Q. All right. If all of -- if all of it happened the way you put it in your statement, how is it possible, then, that you did not decide to leave from there?

A. I left the next day.

Q. And how long did you stay at the place where you went to?

A. Until the 1st or 2nd of April when the other massacre took place ⁷³⁶⁸ on this street.

Q. All right. Before we get to this 2nd of April, after this first event, what did the families tell you, these families that had provided information to you? Why hadn't they fled from town? You even say that their wives had avoided being killed, went to the police, asked for an investigation in no unequivocal terms, spoke to lawyers, et cetera. Can you explain all of that?

A. When we went to the police, the police said, "Go and complain to NATO," as if NATO had killed them.

Q. Was there perhaps truth in that, that this was a consequence of the bombing?

A. That's absolutely ridiculous.

Q. All right. Tell me, then, why were the bodies of the persons killed not buried by the family? Why is it the Municipal Assembly people who came on the next day in a vehicle to bury them? That is on the next page.

A. You must ask the two widowed ladies about that.

Q. And you say that the funeral was carried out in the absence of the family. Did somebody forbid the family and relatives to attend the funeral? Or let me put the question more specifically: Did the police ban the family from the funeral?

A. In the yard where the bodies were put in the coffins, the undertaker and the driver and Shefqet Pruthi's sister got into the car because no other room in the car to take them to the cemetery, but the other members of the family were there, present in the yard. But for the ⁷³⁶⁹ rest, I do not know.

Q. All right. They did not go to the funeral because there was no room in the vehicle or because they were afraid of someone, as you had put it a short while ago? What is it they said to you?

A. The reason is the second one that you gave.

Q. All right. I understood this to mean the following: You decided to run away, but where? To Lulezim's house which was 500 metres away. Why there?

A. On that day when Shefqet and Avni were buried, my neighbourhood was emptied of people entirely. Everybody went away. I stayed with my wife, with my daughter Flaka, and the daughter of the deceased until 5.00 or 6.00 in the evening. And at the insistence of my daughter, we went to my other daughter's, Tringa, because we were very scared. And I saw my closest friend, who had always called me "Uncle," killed. I saw these houses burned, and you can imagine the state of this 15 or 16-year-old girl, how she felt in these terrible scenes. So at her insistence, we decided to go to my second daughter's, Tringa, and at that moment she was very much relieved that we went to her because she was rather relieved to see her sister and father.

Q. All right. You mentioned in your statement that during the day -- that is to say this atrocity was committed during the night, and then you said in your statement that during the day, life in Djakovica was as normal. I'm going to remind you. This is page 3, paragraph 3, when you say: "We decided to go to Lulezim's house, to my son-in-law's house, Lulezim Vejsa, and my daughter Tringa Vejsa, we did not see anyone on the ^{7370 BLANK PAGE 7371} roads and streets except army and police and their vehicles, who did not talk or do anything to us. Luli ran a bar with pool tables and, underneath that shop, was a basement. In there, about 24 or 25 people spent the night in there. The next day, all people went back to Luli's home, which is part of the same compound. Life was almost normal during the day although there was some fear."

What do you mean by that, "life was almost normal during the day" in Djakovica after these events?

A. I didn't go out in the town, and I didn't see what was happening there. And on the date when I went to my daughter Tringa, I stayed there until the 2nd of April, and I didn't leave the house for a single moment. I didn't see what was happening in the town at all. Perhaps it's wrongly translated, because there can be no question of normal life when people are living in cellars without any chance of going out to buy food or anything of that kind. There was no kind of normal life in Gjakove in those days.

Q. That's not what you said. What you say is: "Life was almost normal during the day, although there was some fear." Full stop. That's the entire sentence. "Life was almost normal during the day, although there was some fear." That is the whole sentence. But let us go on. Did NATO bomb Djakovica?

A. As far as I know, no.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I did not hear the interpretation. Let me just have a look at the transcript.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ⁷³⁷²

Q. All right. So you say no. And were you afraid that Djakovica might be bombed?

A. By whom?

Q. Were you afraid of bombing? All of Kosovo, all of Yugoslavia was bombed, and Kosovo the most.

A. You mean the NATO bombing?

Q. Yes, yes, the NATO bombing.

A. Never. We had a party when NATO intervened because we thought that they would help us and save us.

Q. So you were not afraid that somebody might get hurt or killed in the bombing?

A. We weren't afraid because we were certain that NATO wasn't going to kill people but was going to rescue people.

Q. All right. If you yourself say that people sought shelter in basements, is seeking shelter in basements a good way of seeking shelter from the army, the police, people who are on foot? What's the difference then between seeking shelter in basements and seeking shelter in other parts of houses if a person is not seeking shelter from bombing?

A. It was a reflex response, and in the ordinary house of my brother, there was not room for all these people and so we inevitably had to go to a cellar.

Q. I understood your statement to say that around midnight again some attackers barged into the yard of the house that you were in and they opened fire from their automatic rifles. Who were they shooting at? This is page 4, paragraph 1. ⁷³⁷³

A. These people, when they got into the yard, the first thing they did was to fire on the main door of the house where I was sheltering during that night. And they woke me from my sleep. I had nodded off, although I was dressed in jacket and trainers. And my wife and all the women who were there said that if anything happened, we should have -- we should go, we men. And that was the procedure, because we thought that they would never do anything to the women. And I still cannot conceive how somebody can kill a child of two or an elderly woman. And I think that the only thing that could be done would be to ask for a public apology.

Q. Well, nobody can imagine that, and this is how most people do become victims in the war.

Tell me, did you see the attacker then? Who were they shooting at? How many of them were there?

A. When they first came into the yard, I could see that there were about eight, ten. No doubt other people -- others came in, but at that point I was on -- I was fleeing, and I was very ashamed of running away because only ten metres away there was my wife and daughter and other members of my family. And still today I feel ashamed that I have survived and they, my wife and daughter, did not.

Q. You mentioned that the attackers -- that's what you say, that the attackers may have been members of the local police which had otherwise harassed the local Albanian population. Does that mean that you were not sure who the attackers were?

A. I didn't know the assailants, but there was another document in ⁷³⁷⁴ existence which -- which was given to me by a human rights activist there who made a statement, who saw these people. And I identified all the perpetrators of this massacre. If you are interested in this, this can be offered in evidence.

So a person does exist who saw these people and identified them all.

Q. So who were the attackers then? If this person had identified them, then I imagine you know who these people were. Were they members of the local police? You say they might have been members of the local police. That's what you say in your statement.

A. I made this statement. If the Court sees fit, it can be given to you as well.

JUDGE MAY: How were the attackers dressed?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I'm -- my eyesight is rather poor and it was also dark, and I was unable really to see these things. So I can't say precisely what kind of uniform they had, but I saw that some had regular police uniforms.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Tell me, please, what is a regular police uniform? The normal blue one that policemen wear in the street; is that right?

A. Yes, a normal uniform. You know what they look like. This is not an important issue for me. The important thing is that 20 people were executed and were burned.

Q. Well, it's important who did that too. So they did not have any camouflage uniforms. They had regular uniforms, these people did. At ⁷³⁷⁵ least some of them, as you had put it.

A. You know better who did this.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Hoxha, we fully understand how you feel about this, of course. The event was a terrible one. But as you will appreciate, the Court has to try to determine what happened and who was responsible. So any help that you can give should be given, if you can. Were any of the attackers, as far as you could see - and if you can't, just say so - but if you could see, were any of the attackers in camouflage uniforms or not?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, there were. There were, but statements about this do exist from the person who saw them with his own eyes. So that would suffice. It would suffice to call him.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. But --

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] To call and hear the evidence of this person in question.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, but I don't know if we're going to hear it or not, and at the moment you're giving evidence, so would you do the best that you can, please.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. You say that your eyesight is very poor. With this poor eyesight, what did you manage to see out of all the things that you described?

JUDGE MAY: That's too general a question for him to be able to answer. Now, if you've got a specific question, you should put it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ⁷³⁷⁶

Q. All right. After these attackers barged in, when you started running away across the walls -- as I can see in your statement, you say that some wooden boards fell around you and constituted some kind of a shelter. This is page 4, paragraph 2. I realise that you did not continue running. You stayed there for eight hours. How did all of this manage to fall on you and how did you manage to stay there for eight hours? Did someone come looking for you?

A. No. The boards didn't fall on me. But where I was sheltered, there were two walls. I was between two walls and didn't know how to get out. But at the end of the wall, there was another wall, and I remained there because I couldn't go backwards, because something bad would happen to me if I did. It was very narrow in there. There were a few boards in there. Later, I discovered that a carpenter had been working in that area, and so I stayed there for as long as I mentioned. I don't remember. And then I went back to the house where I'd been the night before.

Q. All right. I understand that. This is paragraphs 3 and 4 on page 4. I understood that you returned. So you spent eight hours there and then you returned. And now, tell me, what was the name of the neighbour who walked up to you in the yard? You mention him on page 5, paragraph 4.

A. Babalia is his surname. He's in Canada at the moment. When he saw me in the courtyard, he was surprised, because I was really from another neighbourhood. He asked, "Why are you here? What are you doing here?" And I told him I'd taken shelter. And from that -- from that position, I saw that the house had been destroyed and was razed to the ⁷³⁷⁷ ground. And there I went and found members of my family, and I saw some smoke, but I saw from the house next door, I saw the late Hysen Gashi, whose body was entirely blackened and burned. And at that moment, I thought the worst had happened.

This neighbour who joined me, when we went out to the ordinary house where we'd been the previous night, that house had been completely razed to the ground, and this neighbour said to me that he had seen a fragment of human flesh. At that moment, I thought the worst had happened because that's how bad news comes to us.

I didn't allow myself to investigate, because I was there. I wanted to have a clear memory of my daughters. I didn't want to see my family burned. And at that moment, they took hold of me and took me to another place three houses away.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, your time would normally be up, but on this occasion you can have another ten minutes to put some more questions to the witness.

From what you said earlier, it appears that you're going to allege that this killing was due to bombing. If that's right, if that suggestion is one you're going to make, you should put it to the witness so he can have the chance to deal with it.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, precisely, Mr. May. I do intend to raise this question with the witness on the basis of what he himself said a minute ago. He mentioned two elements; the house was razed to the ground and there were parts of human flesh.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] ⁷³⁷⁸

Q. Parts of human flesh and a house razed to the ground. Isn't that a clear indicator that this was done by a bomb, the result of a bomb? Yes or no. Carbonised bodies and a house razed to the ground, isn't that --

JUDGE MAY: Let him answer.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, not at all. The executions were -- took place from a distance of one metre. The daughter of my daughter, Sihane, was very -- a personal who moved around a lot, quickly. And at the moment of the execution of her mother and her sister, she managed to get away. And one of the executors chased her and shot her there where she was. So there was -- there was a living witness who saw all these things.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Well --

A. I'm just waiting for the interpretation. One of the executors said -- who was perhaps a better person than the other, said, "That's enough shooting. Stop." And the other people -- the other guy said, "No, we're going to execute them all because these are the people who asked for NATO."

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Hoxha, you were there yourself at the time in the neighbourhood. Was there any NATO bombing that night on your neighbourhood, a bomb which could have hit your house or the house that your family were in?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No. There was no bomb that would destroy Luli's house because my house is next door and it's still intact. There's no way a bomb could destroy a house in that way. ^{7379 BLANK PAGE 7380}

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Well, that's a question for experts to decide. I'm just asking you for the record. You claim there was no bombing that night in that particular locality where your house is. What exact date are we talking about?

A. We are talking about the night of 1st and 2nd of April.

Q. The night between the 1st and the 2nd of April. Thank you. Where were those police forces and, generally speaking, where was the police while you were searching through the burnt house and moving elsewhere that day? Where were the police?

A. What police? There was nobody at that house at the time. And then my neighbour found me, but I didn't see anybody else, because there were 44 other people killed in this neighbourhood on that night besides the 20 that I have been talking about, and there were more than 60 people killed in the neighbourhood on that night.

Q. All right. How do you know that so many people were killed that night?

A. There are data in the possession of the citizens of Gjakove. I would like all this to be a lie, Your Honour, and to go to prison myself, but it's not a lie. I don't think that there's anybody who could say -- stand and say that my wife has been killed, my daughter has been killed, all these members of my family have been killed. There are the graves. There are documents of the FBI. And I never thought I would be here to say this. And maybe, maybe some of those people have taken refuge in Serbia maybe boast of the numbers they have killed. ⁷³⁸¹ I used to teach Serbian pupils for a long time. Unfortunately, I believe that there are even former pupils of mine who are on the list of people who perpetrated crimes.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hoxha, was there any NATO bombing in that locality in the days preceding the 1st and 2nd of April?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] As for the bombing of Gjakove, I didn't see it. And according to what I hear, all I know is that the military barracks was bombed on the way out of the city and also the building of the Secretariat for Internal Affairs in the eastern part of the city. I only know about bombing of these two buildings. I don't know of any other bombs falling on Gjakove. And I believe that the consequences of bombing are quite different, if you look at them, from the consequences of the kind of attack that I've been talking about.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. Mr. Milosevic.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. After this, you decided to leave the town. How do you explain that the army of Yugoslavia was so considerate to provide the transport for elderly people to the border, for the people who had decided to leave their homes?

A. We walked from Gjakove. It was a column about two or three kilometres long, walking through a burnt, charred city. On the way out from Gjakove at the city limits, the regular police, with the army there, took away our identity cards and our documents. I handed them over. And then we walked to a meadow two or three kilometres away from Gjakove, and there they gathered us. And we weren't even allowed to stand up. We were ⁷³⁸² squatting there. And at that moment --

JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. Mr. Hoxha, we must bring this cross-examination to a close.

Mr. Milosevic, two more questions.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. You stated that out of the -- from the events you described until the time when you left the town, the Yugoslav army, the police and other authorities never offered you any real assistance. That's what you said. They didn't offer you any real assistance. What kind of assistance did they provide?

A. What sort of help? I didn't have any help from anybody. And all those people who were with me didn't get any help from anybody. I only got some help from a peasant woman who gave me two pills, tranquilisers, because all the people who were around me at the time thought I was going to die myself. Because you can imagine the state of my mind at that time because my wife and two daughters had been executed.

Q. And was any assistance offered to people who were miserable, afflicted, who were in a very difficult situation? Was any assistance offered by the Yugoslav army, the police, the Yugoslav authorities, that you could see?

A. If we can call it help, I saw two or three tractors that carried people, but I don't think that you can call this help because you know what purpose this was for. It was to secure -- it was for transport, and we should have had human transport, not transport for beasts.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Mr. Tapuskovic, is there anything you want ⁷³⁸³ to ask this witness?

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, in view of what Mr. Hoxha had gone through, I didn't think I would have any questions, but only with regard to what's on page 2, paragraph 3. Questioned by Mr. Tapuskovic:

Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Hoxha, you said that NATO bombs only fell on military barracks which had already been vacated at the time. Now you mention there was only one barracks. Was there one or several barracks in the vicinity of Djakovica?

A. Around Gjakove there is one military barracks, two or three buildings there. There is another military barracks in the centre of town, but there were no soldiers there. There are KFOR soldiers there at the moment.

Q. I would like to know about this one in the centre of town. Was it bombed?

A. No. They were buildings which were built by the Italians before 1936, and they're still in the same form, the same style they were in. And at the moment, there are once again Italian soldiers in them. So they weren't damaged at all. There was no bombing there, no.

Q. At the police station which was targeted by NATO bombs, is it located between buildings, between houses occupied by people?

A. No. The building -- that's the first building at the outskirts of Gjakove, coming from Prizren, and there are no real homes around it. On one side of the -- is the Secretariate for Internal Affairs. I heard that the building -- I only heard that the building had been bombed, because I ⁷³⁸⁴ was in Albania at the time.

Re-examined by Mr. Saxon:

Q. Mr. Hoxha, I only have one question. You mentioned that more than 60 people were killed in that neighbourhood of Gjakove on the night between the 1st and 2nd of April. Can you recall the name of that neighbourhood, please?

A. I wasn't from that neighbourhood. My daughter lived there. But it was called Milos Gilic at the time. I think -- Gilic at any rate, but I think Milos was the first name.

Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Hoxha.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Hoxha, thank you for coming to the Tribunal to give your evidence. It is concluded, you are free to go.

[The witness withdrew]

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Saxon, I wanted to comment on the statement that we just admitted. It's a matter that arises in relation to many of the statements that we receive here. They are presented in a manner that suggests that what is written is direct, original evidence, when in fact it is hearsay evidence. Now, it is true that in the Tribunal we admit hearsay evidence if it is relevant, but the matter is important for two reasons: Firstly, if in fact it is hearsay evidence and not direct evidence, then we may end up attaching more weight to it than it deserves. It arose in relation to Arta Pruthi and Avni Ferizi. The second way in which it is important is that we may admit the statement in its entirety under 92 bis without cross-examination and then that could be very misleading. ⁷³⁸⁵ There's another way in which it is misleading. It is misleading to the cross-examiner, because when you read on page 1 in English the references to Arta Pruthi and Avni Ferizi, you're led to believe that the witness is testifying to things which he actually saw when that's not the case. And if the cross-examiner is not sufficiently careful to ask the question to elicit the answer that this is something which the witness did not see, then that would be totally overlooked and the cross-examiner would be misled into believing that was original, direct evidence. In my view, it is not the fault of the witness, it is the fault of the person who is taking the evidence, the investigator, and I think you should have your authorities look into this, because we do admit statements in one form or another, and the accuracy of the statements is a matter of great importance.

MR. SAXON: May I respond, Your Honour? Your Honour, the point is certainly well taken. The members of the Office of the Prosecutor do endeavour, as best as they can, to clarify in statements that are drafted on behalf of witnesses when the witness is speaking from personal knowledge and when such a witness is not. We will certainly endeavour, even more strongly in the future, to take extra care in this regard. With respect to the statement of the last witness, Mr. Hoxha, I'd like to respectfully point out to the Chamber that I believe a careful reading of the text, the examples that Your Honour Judge Robinson just gave to me, actually indicates that the witness was speaking from information that he received from another person. The paragraphs that you just referred to me, the witness says: "I found out that my neighbour ⁷³⁸⁶ Shefqet Pruthi was killed then when Shefqet's daughter Arta telephoned my daughter at about 3.00 a.m. in the morning." So there is certainly at least an indication, although I'm certainly in accordance with Your Honour that perhaps it could be indicated more strongly, that this witness received his information on this particular event from someone else. Regarding the killing of Mr. Pruthi, the very bottom of page 2, going on to the top of page 3, the witness says: "I heard the shots at the time but I did not see him killed." So certainly the reader is put on notice that some of the information regarding these events the witness did not see firsthand.

Having said that, we will certainly take -- we will certainly give the strongest consideration to the comments of Your Honour.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you, Mr. Saxon.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Saxon, before we adjourn, there's one other matter. A future witness is K30. I am not sure whether there's an application to have him called under Rule 92 bis. I suspect there is. But in any event, we've looked at that, and we're of the view that he should be called live.

MR. SAXON: Your Honour, that was also the Prosecution's view, so we're not intending to file an application.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Thank you very much. We will adjourn now. Twenty minutes.

--- Recess taken at 12.10 p.m.

--- On resuming at 12.30 p.m.

[The witness entered court] ⁷³⁸⁷

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly --

JUDGE MAY: Let the witness take the declaration.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

JUDGE MAY: If you'd like to take a seat.

WITNESS: ALI GJOGAJ

[Witness answered through interpreter]

MS. ROMANO: Your Honours, the witness will be referring to several places, and they can be found at pages 10 and 11 of the atlas.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you. Examined by Ms. Romano:

Q. Mr. Gjogaj, can you please state your name for the Court.

A. My name is Ali Gjogaj.

Q. When were you born, Mr. Gjogaj?

A. I was born on the 25th of November, 1963.

Q. And are you of Gypsy origin?

A. No.

Q. What is your origin?

A. I am Ashkalli, Albanian speaking Ashkalli.

Q. And what do you do for a living?

A. I am -- work for the city of Prizren. I'm a gravedigger.

Q. Mr. Gjogaj, you provided the Office of the Prosecutor two statements, one on 27 February 2000, and another one on the 24th of June, 2000; is that correct?

A. Yes. ^{7388 BLANK PAGE 7389}

Q. And you also, in a meeting that you had with the presiding officer appointed by Registrar, you had an opportunity to review the two statements that you gave before, and you confirm that they are correct and true?

A. Yes.

MS. ROMANO: Your Honours, the Prosecution submits the statements into evidence.

Q. Mr. Gjogaj, at that meeting you also made an addendum, a short addendum to your statement. That's correct?

A. I don't know what addendum you're talking about.

Q. You just -- you complemented it with some more information, one paragraph.

MS. ROMANO: Can the usher show the witness.

Q. Do you remember signing that, Mr. Gjogaj?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Thank you.

MS. ROMANO: The testimony of the witness is the following: The witness is 38 years old, and in 1999, he was employed by the Hygijena cleaning company as a gravedigger. In the spring, April or May, 1999, police escorted the witness, with about 15 other diggers from the Hygijena company to the village of Pusto Selo, Orahovac municipality. Diggers from other areas joined them en route, also escorted by police. They were directed to assist in the exhumation of the bodies from victims of Pusto Selo and in the reburial of these bodies in different locations, including Zrze and Dushanovo, Prizren. ⁷³⁹⁰ On arrival in the village Pusto Selo, the witness noticed Serb military already present. The police instructed the witness and others to exhume bodies. He estimates that they exhumed about 90 bodies. The witness cannot describe the bodies as they were wrapped in blankets or sheets.

The witness, with others, took the bodies in trucks to Pristina where they left them guarded by police. The following day, they returned to unload the bodies into two garages opposite Pristina hospital mortuary. Police ordered the witness to assist in the reburial of the dead. He buried bodies in Zrze cemetery. Others were taken, with other gravediggers, in the direction of Orahovac. Some days later, the witness collected ten bodies from the garage and took them to the graveyard in Dushanovo, Prizren, for burial.

The witness also assisted in the burial of three others from the garages into the graveyard in Prizren. All the victims mentioned above were from Pusto Selo.

On 24 May 2000, the witness identified a site outside Prizren known as "the fire range" to ICTY investigators, giving the following account: About 20 -- about 8.00 one evening in April 2000, the witness, with others from the Hyginea company, went to the firing range, a site known to him as a military training range. Photos of this site can be found in the Suva Reka binder. I believe it is Exhibit number 166, tab 4. There are several photos of that site.

On arrival there, he saw two excavators and three trucks. Police were present and it was dark. He saw men dressed in green uniform dig two ⁷³⁹¹ holes. He describes one as four metres square. About two metres down, bodies were exposed. The witness assisted in taking the bodies from the ground into the trucks. He describes the victims as men, women, and seven or eight children. He estimates between 80 or 90 bodies were taken from one hole which he describes as four metres deep. The witness describes the vehicle that the bodies were placed in as red/white refrigerated Mercedes, 19/21. He describes seeing police in camouflage uniform digging in the other hole and saw bodies from there being also loaded into a similar truck.

The same evening as the witness was working in the firing range, he was ordered to go to a refuse tip on the road to Suva Reka. Using another refrigerated vehicle, he went with other gravediggers and describes seeing some excavator as used in the range. The hole was about two metres square, three deep. At about a metre and a half, he saw more bodies, men and women. The witness assisted in exhuming about 20 bodies. These were placed into the refrigerated truck.

That's all, Your Honours.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you. Yes, Mr. Milosevic. Exhibit number first.

THE REGISTRAR: Prosecution Exhibit 239 for the original and 239A for the redacted version.

Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

Q. [Interpretation] You are employed as a gravedigger in the Hygijena company in Prizren. What is the year you got a job in that company?

A. It was after the war. ⁷³⁹²

Q. Where did you work before that?

A. I worked for the same company. I worked for the Vocar enterprise in Prizren.

Q. On what job?

A. Street cleaner.

Q. So your occupations included street cleaner and gravedigger, the latter after the war. Did I understand you correctly?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you go to school at all?

A. No. I'm not educated. I've only got five classes behind me.

Q. All right. Let us go briefly through your statement and then I'll have a couple of questions for you.

On page 1, you said that with some of the managers in that enterprise, men -- a man called Buda specifically, you went to the village to collect bodies in the spring of 1990 [as interpreted] and that the son of the company manager, Mirko, was one of the policemen who was escorting you. You don't know his last name. You know the son. You know his name is Mirko, but you don't know the name of the manager of your enterprise. Do you know his name?

A. He's called Mirko. The director of our enterprise is called Jova.

JUDGE MAY: The transcript should reflect that it was in the spring of 1999, not 1990, as recorded.

Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. You say on page 3 something about the place where you did the ⁷³⁹³ exhumation. You don't know whether it was a cemetery, you don't know whether there was a mosque. You didn't see a mosque or a minaret. Why do you stress that? Did the investigator ask you questions about a cemetery, a mosque, a minaret? Why do you explain that you don't know whether it was happening on a cemetery -- at a cemetery? Why do you say that there was no mosque nearby?

A. In the village of Pastaselle where we went, we could first of all not -- first of all, we went there to fetch the bodies, but we went with an excavator but the excavator broke down on the way. And so after a few days later, the same policeman came and spoke to our director there in the office that he had and gave our director the order and gave us a car, and we went to the village of Pusto Selo. And when we went there, to Rahovec, we were received by the Serbs, the police, and the army, and we were also met by some workers from the Rahovec municipality. When we arrived, they gave us the order to get -- take the bodies away as fast as possible. And we took them away as soon as we could and took them to the morgue in Prizren. After a few days --

Q. I'm asking you something else. I'm asking you why you say that you don't know whether it was at the cemetery and why you say that you don't know whether there was a mosque there.

A. I didn't see a mosque. And we were ordered by the Serbian police to take away the bodies as soon as possible.

Q. All right. So it was due to the speed that you didn't see the mosque. Then you also say that you saw wooden signs by all the graves, and you do not -- with numbers, and you did not remember the largest ⁷³⁹⁴ number. Do you remember any one of the numbers?

A. Yes, I remember.

Q. Which number did you remember?

A. There were numbers up to 90.

Q. So you do remember the largest number after all.

A. I saw that number at the end.

Q. All right. This Mirko who you mention was a policeman. You say that Mirko and other policemen were there. I don't know what they were doing there. Mirko was taking pictures of all the bodies that had been dug up; is that right? That's what you said. Took pictures of all bodies. And then some refugees were putting white stickers with numbers on all the body bags; is that right?

A. The refugees attached numbers to the bodies. They stuck them on, and they photographed them. The main person was Buda. There was Jova, Mirko, but I didn't know the policeman.

Q. All right. You say that you took this to the morgue, to Pristina, and it says here on page 4: "The guard at the morgue in Pristina said to us that the Court had asked the police in Prizren to examine the bodies. In Prizren, there was no one to carry out a post-mortem. As far as I know, Dr. Hidajet only examined the wounds on the bodies. He never carried out a post-mortem. He did not examine the bodies from Pusto Selo."

That means that these corpses were taken to the morgue, they were photographed by the police, and these bodies were carried in order to have a post-mortem carried out; is that right? ⁷³⁹⁵

A. They didn't do these autopsies at the morgue in Prizren, although this word "autopsy" is not very familiar to me. They took them directly to Prishtina where they did this autopsy, and no doubt Dr. Hidajet did it, although I wasn't there.

Q. All right. All right. You are talking about the photographs that were taken of these dead and about their transport to the morgue and about the court in Prizren asking for a post-mortem to be carried out, et cetera. Then further on, on page 5, you say that three bodies that were entered at the town cemetery in Prizren, that you had also exhumed, were charred. Were these victims of bombings, the charred bodies, I mean? Did you have any idea as to how these people had lost their lives?

A. We had no idea. These bodies came from Pastaselle. The graveyards at Pastaselle, they were full of civilian people. They were elderly people, people without any kind of - how can I put it? - without -- without any kind of problems with the police, but they were taken and maltreated and who knows what they did.

Q. Wait a minute, please. I'm asking you about what you were testifying about. I'm asking you about the carbonised bodies that you had exhumed. I was quoting from your statement.

Did you find anything out about that? What was it that killed these people?

A. I don't know who killed them. They only sent us there to fetch them. I didn't see who killed them, although it is well-known who killed them.

Q. All right. Tell me, then -- let's not dwell on this any longer. ⁷³⁹⁶ Can you say more specifically the day and month in 1999 when you refer to the spring of 1999, when you say you went to Pristina, to the morgue, and these exhumations and post-mortems and photographs that were taken, et cetera? When was this more specifically?

A. I don't remember the exact date because I don't have an education. And I just know that sometimes we worked and sometimes we didn't. We were -- we were people who were compelled to work, and I can't remember dates and times.

Q. Actually, that means that at that time, you were not a gravedigger, at that time in the spring of 1999. You were a cleaner at this other company.

A. That's right. I was a cleaner. But at that time, even cleaners were forced to do this kind of work. We were forced to do this by the police and the army, and we were like their tools, because the bodies were decomposing and there was a terrible smell, and it was weeks before we could recover from this.

Q. All right. Tell me, where was this cemetery from which you exhumed 90 bodies and then transferred them to the morgue in Pristina where photographs were taken and then these bodies were taken for post-mortems, et cetera. Where was this?

A. The cemetery was the cemetery in the village of Pastasella.

Q. Yes. So that was in Pusto Selo. You say that the school was about 300 metres away from the graveyard; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Does that mean that this place where you were digging up graves, ^{7397 BLANK PAGE 7398} near the centre of the village?

A. It was the centre of the village because the school was nearby, and there was a suitable place nearby, a meadow, where they were buried one by one, these bodies.

Q. All right. Since this was a village, were there other villagers who attended the exhumations?

A. No. There were only us workers, and there were soldiers and policemen.

Q. And how many graves did you dig up personally?

A. I said I myself didn't exhume them. There were workers who exhumed them, and we carried them by trucks. There were some workers over here and some over there, and there were some who were specially to dig up the bodies and bring them to the trucks.

Q. All right. So what was your job, then? You did not drive a truck, did you?

A. No.

Q. So what was your job, then? You were not digging up the graves, you were not driving, so what did you do? Did you carry them in and out or what?

A. I carried them. When the workers got them out of the graves, they left them on the meadow, and my colleagues and I took them and carried them up to the trucks.

Q. All right. You say, during this operation that you carried out, that you do not remember the number involved. So on the basis of what do you claim that you exhumed 90 bodies? ⁷³⁹⁹

A. When I went after the war with the investigators of the ICTY, I saw 90 holes that had been dug up, but -- so this number has come out now.

Q. Yes. So as for the number 90, you do not testify to that from the time when you were carrying these bodies to the morgue, but you are talking about the time when you went with the ICTY investigator to the place to find it, and that's when you counted the holes. This was after the war; right?

A. What did you say? I didn't understand.

Q. This number is a number that you established after the war, that is to say, when you went with the ICTY investigator.

A. Yes.

Q. Now, could you explain what the procedure was of putting the bodies into the bags when you took them out. You say that the policemen took pictures of every body with a -- with a photo camera, and then the bodies were put into bags. How did all this take place?

A. The workers got out -- got the bodies out, and then they prepared their faces. And then some of the police photographed these unknown, unidentified faces, and other workers put them in bags and we took them to the trucks.

Q. And that's where stickers were put with numbers. I assume that those were the numbers of the photographs that were taken. What was on these stickers?

A. There weren't numbers on the photographs, but there were numbers on the bodies, assigned to then when they were exhumed. I don't know if you understand. ⁷⁴⁰⁰

Q. Not quite, but let us go on. In what condition were these bodies that were being placed into the bags?

A. They were in very poor condition. They smelled. I think you can imagine what it's like approaching a decomposed body.

Q. Were all the bodies in the same condition?

A. I wasn't able to see. Perhaps some had limbs that were cut off, but the workers put them in the bags as quickly as possible and took them to the trucks.

Q. And in addition to photographs, was any other information collected before the bodies were put into the bags? Were lists made? Were any details recorded except for the photographs that were taken before the bodies were put into the bags?

A. No.

Q. Then you also say that you put them into two trucks and transported them to the hospital in Prizren; is that correct?

A. That's right.

Q. After the hospital in Prizren, you took them to the hospital in Pristina; right? Or did these bodies remain behind in the hospital in Prizren?

A. I said before. First of all, we brought the bodies from Pastaselle to the morgue in Prizren, and they stayed there several days, and then we took them, in the course of several days, to Prishtina where they had their autopsies done, and we took them to different villages and buried them there. I said this before.

Q. Does that mean that when you were transporting them to different ⁷⁴⁰¹ villages, that during this post-mortem, these bodies were identified as well, that it was established who these people actually were?

A. I don't know. There are others who know very well. We were workers; just exhume them and bring them from the morgue.

Q. Yes. Yes. You say that you transported them to different villages. When you drove them to different villages, did you hand them over to the members of their families or to who?

A. No. There were no relatives there. But some bodies from Pastaselle were -- were sent to Rahovec, some remained behind in Zrze, and some of them remained behind in Dushanovo. And three bodies, finally, were left in the Prizren city cemetery.

Q. Are those the three that were buried later at the cemetery, the ones you said had been carbonised?

A. Yes.

Q. On page 4, you say that you returned some bodies to Prizren and that you were told to put them at another place so that they would not be confused with the other bodies; is that right?

A. What did you say? I didn't understand.

Q. You said, on page 4, that you returned some of the same bodies to Prizren and that you were told to put them elsewhere so that they would not be confused with yet other bodies. Is that correct?

A. No.

Q. Did you return bodies on which a post-mortem had been carried out? Did you return them to the hospital in Pristina, or did you just transport them to the various villages there? ⁷⁴⁰²

A. I said before: When the bodies had their autopsies done in Prishtina, we brought them to the Prizren morgue, and then we distributed them among the villages. We sent them to the villages.

Q. All right. Please. You said that what I quoted to you was not correct, and it says here on page 4, paragraph 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 6, just two sentences. The second sentence is: "We were told to put them at a place that was different to avoid mixing the bodies." Does that mean that these bodies had already had post-mortems carried out on them so they didn't want them to be confused with the other ones, or what?

A. The bodies were totally decomposed, and the three bodies buried in the Prizren cemetery, they were left as the truck brought them.

Q. All right. Please. All right. You say in your statement that all the bodies were in bags and that you did not see any clothing or any other belongings. Is that correct?

A. No.

Q. Two paragraphs later, you say: "All the bodies were in bags. All the -- all the body bags were closed. I never saw any clothes or other belongings of the deceased."

I'm just asking you whether that is correct. And it says so in your statement, so I cannot establish what this is all about.

A. What did you say once again, please? I didn't understand.

Q. I asked you whether it was correct what you wrote in your statement. Did you write this statement? Did you write this statement?

A. Yes.

Q. Then you wrote in your statement: "All the body bags were closed. ⁷⁴⁰³ I never saw any clothes or any other belongings of the deceased." Is that what you wrote? Did you write that?

A. Yes.

Q. Does that mean that you do not know what kind of bodies were in these closed bags at all?

A. No. I saw them.

Q. All right. Did you open the bags and did you look, or are you saying that the bags were closed and you didn't see anything else?

A. I was able, at the Prishtina morgue, when they were preparing the bodies, some bags were torn and I saw the bodies.

Q. Oh, all right. Now you've given me an explanation. And on the same page, you mention Dr. Hidajet, and you say: "As far as I know, Dr. Hidajet only examined the wounds."

Do you personally know Dr. Hidajet?

A. I know Dr. Hidajet as a doctor, but I have no other connection with him.

Q. Yes. And did you attend this examination? Were you present during the examination that he carried out?

A. Dr. Hidajet did not carry out the autopsy on bodies from Pastaselle.

Q. All right. If you were not present during the examination, on the basis of what can you say that an autopsy was not carried out when you were not present there? Because on page 4, you say: "When we arrived at the morgue at the hospital in Pristina, we unloaded the bodies and we were told to go away and come back in a few hours." ⁷⁴⁰⁴

A. We unloaded them, and we loaded them up, because there were Serbs at the Prishtina hospital who didn't want to get their hands dirty with decomposed bodies, so we did it.

Q. All right. You were some kind of a group, a mobilised group, a group that was mobilised in order to carry out that job, as far as I understood.

Please, could you explain the following to me: On page 5, paragraph 1, you say: "The bodies were already in a state of decay. I never saw a single face. Even if I had seen them, I would not have been in a position to recognise them because of what I've just said." The question is: How do you know that they were in a state of decay when you say that they were in bags and that the bags were closed?

JUDGE MAY: He's already said that he saw some when the bags were open in the morgue. So he's answered that.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, may I remind you there's another part of his evidence, about the exhumations on the firing range, and you've had 35 or so minutes already, if not more.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I hope I'm going to get to that as well. I do have these questions for him too. Then I'll have to omit some things.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Please, just give me a brief answer to this question: You say in paragraph 2 on page 5, when speaking about carbonised bodies, about three carbonised bodies, you say that these were elderly people and that they ⁷⁴⁰⁵ were civilians. Can you explain on the basis of what you drew such a precise conclusion that these were elderly people and that they were civilians when these bodies were carbonised?

A. You could see some of the garments and moustache and part of the bone structure which hadn't been charred. Part of a moustache we could see and part of the garments, the clothing, were still visible. And you could see an old person, what an old person looks like from his face.

Q. So you drew your conclusions on the basis of the bone structure whether these were elderly people or younger people. Do you have any qualification for that? Because you say that you have completed half of elementary school.

A. I didn't understand what you're saying.

Q. All right. Let me move on to my next question, because it's no use putting such questions to you, obviously.

On page 5, paragraph 6, you say that two or three days later, you loaded 45 to 65 bodies. Doesn't this difference seem a bit too big for you in respect of such figures, 45 and 65? How many did you load after all? Did you load 45 or 65? Because the difference is all of 20. That's what you refer to in your statement.

A. I remember when I gave my statement I said at the beginning that I didn't have school education, and so I couldn't know how many bodies had been loaded on the trucks. The Serb police and army told us to get rid of the bodies as quickly as possible and take them to the morgue in Prizren.

Q. All right. However, on page 5, one paragraph before last, you say that the forensic team exhumed these bodies and only 15 graves had been ^{7406 BLANK PAGE 7407} dug up. What happened to the other bodies and graves?

A. Where do you mean?

Q. What did you say? Sorry? I didn't understand.

A. I didn't understand what you were saying. What are you talking about? Where do you mean?

Q. I said that on page 5, one paragraph but last, you saw -- you were shown the graves. All the bodies were buried in body bags. You saw that 15 graves had been opened, and you are probably referring to the investigator. You mention 15 graves. Where is this difference between 45 and 65 if only 15 graves had been opened? What you --

JUDGE MAY: I don't follow the question. That presupposes, presumably you're saying, that there was one grave for every body. The evidence, as I understood it, that these were mass graves, but I could be wrong.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Were those individual graves that you referred to in here or were they graves where several people were buried together? Was every body buried individually?

A. There was one grave for each body. The bodies were buried individually.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That means one body per grave, Mr. May, not mass graves, although it seems that this term is more favoured here.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Further on on the same page, you say that you did not transfer ⁷⁴⁰⁸ bodies from the garage to Suva Reka. That's page 6, paragraph 8. And then you say that you did transfer them to Suva Reka. Which is true, that you did or you didn't take them to Suva Reka?

A. We didn't send any bodies to Suhareke. We sent them to Rahovec, Zrze, Dushanovo and to Prizren. We didn't send any bodies to Suhareke.

Q. I'm reading from paragraph 3 from below, from the bottom, on page 6: "You asked me if I transported any bodies from the garage to Suva Reka. I did not do that, and I do not know that anyone else transported bodies from the garage to Suva Reka."

All right. I'll slow down. Next paragraph: "However, me, Shefki, and Xhevdet transported six or seven bodies to a place close to the bus station in Suva Reka." Therefore, would you please answer: Did you or didn't you transfer bodies to Suva Reka? You have it both ways in your statement.

A. No. I wasn't at work that day.

Q. What you wrote here in your statement was actually written by someone else, wasn't it?

A. I made the statement, and I said what I did.

Q. On page 7, paragraph 1, you mention a massacre in Pusto Selo. What kind of massacre is that? Do you know of any massacre in Pusto Selo?

A. There wasn't a massacre, but there were 90 graves where -- near where a massacre had taken place.

Q. What massacre are you talking about and what do you know about it?

A. I saw people who had been murdered.

Q. Of what ethnicity were the people whose remains you dug up and who ⁷⁴⁰⁹ were later sent for autopsies, placed stickers on, et cetera, et cetera, taken photographs of? What ethnicity were they?

A. I don't know.

Q. You don't know. And the period that you describe in your statement coincided with the NATO aggression; is that right?

A. What did you say?

Q. I said the period that you describe in your statement is the time of the NATO aggression, the time when NATO bombed Yugoslavia and Kosovo, of course, in Yugoslavia. Is that the same time?

A. It was when the bombing of Yugoslavia took place.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, I must tell you you've got less than five minutes left if you want to ask some questions about the rest of his evidence.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I will, I will. I just want to ask him one more question.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Among the dead that you described, were there any victims of the bombing?

A. I didn't see any victims of the bombings. I know that there was NATO bombing, but I didn't see any of the victims, especially when I was at the cemetery. There were Serb attacks. That's what it was.

Q. And is it true that you transported victims of NATO bombings to the hospital for identification and autopsies in order to establish their identity and cause of death?

JUDGE MAY: When are you suggesting that happened? ⁷⁴¹⁰

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Are you asking me?

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It is he who claims that this happened in the spring of 1999. As you know, spring begins in end March and ends in end June. So the NATO bombing lasted the entire spring, and he's talking about spring. I'm only suggesting what he claims.

JUDGE MAY: Let me interrupt you to clarify it. So what you're putting is that the bodies from Pusto Selo which he assisted in exhuming and taking to Prizren, were victims or may have been victims of the NATO bombing. Is that the suggestion?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am asking him whether he had buried and carried any bodies of victims who were killed by the bombing. That was my question, and you heard it, Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Well, it wasn't at all clear.

JUDGE KWON: Mr. Gjogaj, you say you don't remember the exact date when you helped the exhumation. Is that right? It was just the spring of 1999.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, that's right.

JUDGE KWON: But in the addendum which you saw earlier, it says: "This statement refers to an occasion in April or May 1999 when I was directed by police to assist in the exhumation of bodies." How did you remember that it was in April or May? Is it correct? Was it in April or May 1999?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I remember my -- maybe the end of April. I can sort of remember the month, but I don't know exactly. ⁷⁴¹¹

JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. Please. We have two of your statements. You gave one on the 27th of February and the 1st of March, year 2000. You gave your second statement in June, that means some three months after the first one.

In the second statement, you speak of some exhumations from the firing range and their placement in a refrigerator truck. Since this is a major event, how come you didn't mention it as being involved in in your first statement? When did that happen? I heard the other side explaining that it was in April 2000. Was it really in April 2000, as the other side put it, or was it at a different time?

A. Yes. It's true. Maybe there is a mistake. I said the same thing at the time, but there might have been a mistake. The firing range was later. But it could have been a bit earlier than I stated.

Q. All right. Now I'm asking you about this second statement. All these things that you mention in your second statement, which is completely new compared to the first statement of 27 February and March 1, 2000, given in Prizren, why didn't you mention any of these things in your first statement? Why is it that you remember and mention these things only in the statement dated 24th June 2000, the refrigerator truck and the firing range? When did that event occur?

A. I think I told you from the start I don't really remember dates. They sent us to work there in the night, in the middle of the night.

Q. All right, then. Could you tell me, were you working as a ⁷⁴¹² gravedigger already when you did this job that you mention in your second statement? Were you by that time already employed as a gravedigger?

A. No. They -- I was working for the town, but they told four workers who were employed by the town to do this job.

Q. All right. Fine. Tell me now, when did that happen? I'm not asking you about whether it was daytime or night-time. What month was it?

A. It could have been April. Middle of April.

Q. So when you were going to Pusto Selo, Prizren, Pristina, and all these things that you mention in your first statement, you remembered them well, and you omitted only that one thing which you remembered later and described in your second statement.

JUDGE MAY: I need to understand this. The statements which I have -- and perhaps, Ms. Romano, you could help us about this. The statements that I have from the witness are dated February or March 2000. I'm sorry.

MS. ROMANO: Just a second. Yes.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. And the first one I have -- the next one I have is June.

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

JUDGE MAY: June, 2000.

MS. ROMANO: That is correct. The first one is 27th February and the second one is 24th June, both --

JUDGE MAY: So I don't understand the accused's point. What point is he making?

MS. ROMANO: The Prosecution doesn't understand. ⁷⁴¹³

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, you can ask two more questions. You've had the best part of an hour with this witness, which is beyond your usual time.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Let us clear up one thing. Ms. Romano, in her introductory statements regarding the events described in the second statement, said that they happened in April 2000. Maybe she will now say that it was a slip of the tongue, but that's what she said, and you can check it in the transcript.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] He describes what happened --

JUDGE MAY: Describing events in a statement of June 2000, describing events which occurred in April and May 2000. This is why I say I don't understand the point that you're making.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That is why I'm saying that in April 2000, Mr. May, there were no Serb authorities or Serb police in Kosovo. Starting with June 1999, there are no Serb authorities or Serb police in Kosovo. That's the point I'm making, Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. What's being put is that there were no Serb policemen in Kosovo at this time. Mr. Gjogaj, can you help about that?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The police and the Serb army were there.

MS. ROMANO: Your Honour, I'm afraid I'm not understanding right now. The events are in 1999, in April 1999. The witness is testifying about events in April and May 1999. ⁷⁴¹⁴

JUDGE MAY: On the firing range.

MS. ROMANO: Exactly.

JUDGE MAY: The events then are 2000, as I understand it.

MS. ROMANO: Just in the firing range.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MS. ROMANO: But the first ones are in April and May 1999.

JUDGE MAY: We are dealing with two sets of events. One at Pusto Selo in 1999 in the spring, the next a year later on the firing range. Now, if I'm wrong about that, I can be corrected.

MS. ROMANO: No, Your Honour, you're correct. But he's mentioning police went in which event. That's why I don't understand what --

JUDGE MAY: I imagine in 2000. Now, Mr. Milosevic, you've got two more questions.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Have we cleared up when this other event occurred, in 2000 or in 1999?

JUDGE MAY: He's told you 2000. Now, let's move on.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] It was written in my declaration.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please. If what he is claiming -- if what he is claiming went on or happened in the year 2000, in April 2000, then I'm not interested in it at all, because in 2000, there were no Serb authorities there at all.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. We've heard your point and we've heard his evidence on it.

Now, Mr. Tapuskovic, very quickly, please, if you have any questions, because you've got six minutes left. ^{7415 BLANK PAGE 7416}

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I'll really try very hard, but there are three major discrepancies between the two statements, three very important points. Page 3, second paragraph from the top in the first statement.

Questioned by Mr. Tapuskovic:

Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Gjogaj, you've said that what has already been read out to you, that you were not able to see what the bodies looked like when they were dug up. That's page 3, paragraph 2 from the top in the English version, and page 4 in the English version, you say: "When the bodies were put back in the bags, all the bags were closed. I never saw any clothes on the bodies." That's what you said in the first statement; do you remember that?

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Tapuskovic, that point has already been made by the accused and to go over it again isn't going to assist.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Yes, I know, Your Honour, but it will. Would you please compare it, Your Honours, with the second statement, page 3, paragraph 6. "All the bodies were dressed in civilian clothes." How does the witness explain this?

JUDGE MAY: Is he dealing with the same incident? There are two statements, and it may well be he's dealing with different incidents. Yes, Ms. Romano.

MS. ROMANO: I have to point out that there was a mistake in the summary given. That is what is creating, probably, the confusion. On May 2000, he visit the site with investigators of the Office of the Prosecutor, but the events happened in April 1999. That's why I was ⁷⁴¹⁷ referring. All the events happened in 1999, the first one and the second one.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Yes, Mr. Tapuskovic.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] In that case, Your Honours --

JUDGE MAY: Let Mr. --

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have an objection.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, page 5, paragraph 4 of the English version, it says verbatim: "You ask me whether I had seen a burnt village or young people among the deceased." And he answers: "The ones I saw were elderly people." That's what he said in the first statement. And in the second one, he says that he had seen seven or eight children. How does he explain that?

JUDGE MAY: Yes. How do you explain that?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes. The children were at the firing range where we dug out the bodies. But in Pastaselle, there were no children. That was -- the children were at the firing range in Prizren.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation] And my third point, Your Honours: In his first statement, he says that those bodies that had been dug up were put back and reburied. And now in his new statement, he mentions refrigerator trucks. Can he explain whether all those bodies that had been dug up and reburied are the same bodies he's referring to in the second statement? Because in his first statement, he said that all the bodies that had been dug up had been placed back in the same graves.

JUDGE MAY: Can you help us to that, Mr. Gjogaj? ⁷⁴¹⁸

MS. ROMANO: Excuse me, Your Honour. Not in the same graves.

JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. Let the witness answer.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes.

JUDGE MAY: Can you deal with it, please.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The bodies for each person were placed in bags. They were in bags, in body bags.

MR. TAPUSKOVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Were they reburied, put back in the graves?

JUDGE MAY: I think we're going to have to deal with this tomorrow.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No.

JUDGE MAY: There's no point trying to go on. There's a muddle about these statements.

Mr. Gjogaj, would you come back, please, tomorrow, when we will get this straightened out.

Yes. We will adjourn now. 9.00 tomorrow morning. Mr. Gjogaj, could you remember not to speak to anybody about your evidence during this adjournment.

Mr. Milosevic, we'll deal with it tomorrow.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, but I have one remark that cannot wait. Just one.

JUDGE MAY: What is it?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] One question that I want to clear up. Please, Mr. Gjogaj, the event involving the exhumation on the firing range, that happened in the year 2000; isn't that correct? ⁷⁴¹⁹

JUDGE MAY: What event?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The one he describes in his second statement, the exhumation at the firing range and the refrigerator trucks. That happened in year 2000, didn't it?

JUDGE MAY: What we're going to do is this: We're going to adjourn now.

Mr. Gjogaj, there is no need to go into it. We cannot possibly go on in this way.

Clearly there must be clarification and the Court needs to clarify what's happened. The continual references to the first or the second statement --

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This clarifies a lot, Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Don't interrupt. We'll go on tomorrow. It is, Ms. Romano, a problem of having these statements, these statements which are not clear, and it leads to confusion.

MS. ROMANO: I tend to agree with you, Your Honour, and the only thing the Prosecution can say is that, in an attempt to clarify the matter, that's why we created the second statement, and sometimes a third statement. It's our attempt also to clarify the matter as best as we can.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That's precisely why it's clear.

JUDGE MAY: I am asked to remind you, and I do, Mr. Milosevic, that you will get a chance to re-examine or cross-examine further, a short chance, in the light of this confusion.

Yes. Tomorrow morning, 9.00.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.46 p.m., ⁷⁴²⁰ to be reconvened on Thursday, the 4th day of July, 2002, at 9.00 a.m.