³²⁸⁹⁵

Tuesday, 12 October 2004

[Open session]

[The accused entered court]

--- Upon commencing at 9.06 a.m.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay, we resume this morning to continue with the presentation of the Defence case.

MR. KAY: Yes, Your Honour. Before we start, there is a preliminary -- [German spoken on English channel]

JUDGE ROBINSON: There seems to be a problem with the -- is it the interpretation? Start again, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY: There's a preliminary matter -- [German spoken on English channel]

THE INTERPRETER: Into which language, Your Honour?

JUDGE KWON: We have an interference on the English channel.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Would the registrar advise us, how long that will take to be resolved?

MR. KAY: I'll do it in English and not French. There is a preliminary issue of a witness to be called this morning, who is Mr. Hutsch. Mr. Hutsch is a journalist and war correspondent who has worked in many parts of the world which would be called areas such as trouble spots. He proposes to give evidence in court today largely concerning matters that occurred in Kosovo between 1998 and 1999 when he was acting as a war correspondent for German newspapers and, in relation to his tasks, information was provided to him by sources that he wishes to keep confidential. There are probably only a few matters ³²⁸⁹⁶ concerning his testimony, but it is important to him, as a journalist, that he be able to give his evidence, and in relation to certain matters, keep confidentiality as to the sources that supplied him with information. I discussed this matter with Mr. Hutsch in a meeting, and it is clear that an option such as having closed session or private session testimony would not fulfil any requirements of confidentiality that he needs. The people that he speaks to, the people that he interviews in his role as an investigative journalist have to rely upon him that he will keep certain confidences absolute. He is a working journalist, this is his living and trade, and in many respects people like him perform an important function in the roles of tribunals such as this and other courts because of the work they do, the information they provide, where they happen to be at the times of conflict, and he requires that his confidences be respected.

There is a conjoined issue to this and that concerns his attorney from Germany. He is a German national who has arrived at court today, and he has asked permission that his attorney be present whilst he gives evidence, obviously to protect his interests, if necessary.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Is that in relation to the confidentiality issue or his evidence as a whole?

MR. KAY: Confidentiality issue. It's solely that. And he has taken legal opinion in Germany --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Presumably, Mr. Kay, the confidentiality issue will not arise in your examination-in-chief.

MR. KAY: It wouldn't arise in examination-in-chief. It is a ³²⁸⁹⁷ matter that would probably or could arise in cross-examination. Sometimes the parties, recognising this, achieve their own balance, and when they're down to the last point don't seek to go any further. I don't know what the Prosecution attitude would be on that.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Let us wait until it arises, if indeed it does arise, and then we'll address it at that time.

MR. KAY: The issue for the journalist witness, though, is if the Court then sought to compel him to disclose sources, he is then in an individual position of conflict where he would not want to be in conflict with this Court. And I can foresee --

JUDGE ROBINSON: What does this mean, then? If the matter were determined now prior to his testimony and the decision was that there is no confidentiality, what effect would that have on his evidence?

MR. KAY: I think Mr. Hutsch would have to consider his position, because his job and profession rely upon him providing for the integrity of his position as a -- as a journalist. I know he's at court at the moment, very close to the courtroom, and I wonder if the Trial Chamber would think it appropriate if he was admitted at this stage whilst the discussion was taking place.

JUDGE ROBINSON: I'll consult with my colleagues.

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE ROBINSON: We will deal with the issue, if it does arise, in cross-examination.

Mr. Nice, on the issue of the presence of the lawyer for that purpose, do you have anything to say? ³²⁸⁹⁸

MR. NICE: I don't see any particular need for the lawyer to be present in court. I know the Court has allowed lawyers to be present on a limited number of occasions and I believe there are one or two occasions when it has excluded lawyers in the course of the Prosecution case, notwithstanding requests. I don't see the particular need for the lawyer to be present here within court on this occasion. May I, while addressing you on this point in general terms, say only this: I was given notice by Ms. Higgins half an hour ago that the issue might arise but with very little, almost no detail of how it would arise. If it's going to be suggested that this witness can say, "I was told by X the following, but I'm not prepared to reveal who X is," why, then, we will challenge that evidence as wholly inadmissible because of course it would have absolutely no truth value that the court could attach to it, not knowing who X is, and I not being in any sense or way allowed to cross-examine as to who X is.

If it is intended that the witness produce documents of one kind or another where he says, "Here's the document but I'm not going to say who provided it to me," then different considerations may arise if we are able independently to check on and to express an opinion about the document.

I can see these problems arising -- and there may be others, but I can see these problems arising in the course of the evidence in chief and not just in cross-examination.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you. Yes, Mr. Kay?

MR. KAY: Yes. First of all, the exhibits have been disclosed to ³²⁸⁹⁹ the Prosecutor that the witness would be relying upon. That's two photographs. The information concerns matters that may arise in cross-examination.

The witness, who is extremely concerned about this matter, should have this matter discussed with him by me and his attorney so that he knows the position of the Trial Chamber, and that is something that the witness would want canvassed with him, and I feel it my duty to put it that way, having spoken to him myself and knowing the importance to him of this evidence.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Are you saying you want to have an adjournment to speak to the witness?

MR. KAY: Yes, please, Your Honour.

JUDGE ROBINSON: For how long?

MR. KAY: The matter would probably only take ten minutes.

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay, we'll allow the lawyer to be present in court when the issue arises, but as I indicated, we are of the view that the issue cannot be dealt with in vacu. It should be dealt with when an objection is raised or when the issue arises in cross-examination. We're also of the view that the witness should be called into court now and the matter could then be explained to him. Following that explanation, if you still wish an adjournment, then we'll consider it.

MR. KAY: I have no objection to that -- sorry. I have no objection to that course of action.

I believe that the attorney is outside in this part of the ^{32900 BLANK PAGE 32901} building. I think. We have no clout to produce people in the building, and I've relied on others to try and bring him to an area where he may be admitted access into court.

JUDGE ROBINSON: So for the purpose of this, I'll ask the registrar to have the witness brought in and also to assist in getting the lawyer --

MR. KAY: Yes.

JUDGE ROBINSON: -- into court.

MR. KAY: Thank you.

[The witness entered court]

JUDGE ROBINSON: Let the witness make the declaration.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I declare that I will say nothing but the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth.

JUDGE ROBINSON: You may sit.

WITNESS: FRANZ-JOSEF HUTSCH

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch -- I'll try my best with the pronunciation.

THE WITNESS: No problem at all.

JUDGE ROBINSON: I see you speak some English.

THE WITNESS: Just some.

JUDGE ROBINSON: At the beginning I should say that I have been advised by the interpretation section that interpretation from and into German will be provided, and since there are not enough interpretation booths for five languages, the witness will receive what is called the whispering mode interpretation from English into German from an ³²⁹⁰² interpreter sitting next to him in the courtroom. In order to provide good quality interpretation, therefore, all the participants will have to be even more mindful of the usual concerns affecting interpretation, that is speed and overlapping.

Now, Mr. Hutsch, there is an issue that has been raised by Mr. Kay on your behalf. It relates to the confidentiality of your sources as a journalist. Mr. Kay wanted to have that issue resolved by the Chamber prior to your testimony. However, the Chamber is of the view that it is not an issue that should be determined in vacu. It is an issue that should be determined if and when it does arise, which more than likely would be during cross-examination by the Prosecutor. That is the way the Chamber will proceed.

So we will hear your testimony. Mr. Kay will conduct the examination-in-chief. It does not seem likely that the issue will arise in examination-in-chief. But if and when it does arise during cross-examination, then the Chamber will make a decision on it, and for that purpose the Chamber has agreed that your lawyer may be present in court.

JUDGE KWON: He is already present.

JUDGE ROBINSON: He's here now?

MR. KAY: Yes. Mr. Louschneider, Your Honour, has come into court and is sitting on the far side of the room. I thought it might be more appropriate if he was over on this side and then he could communicate perhaps more easily to me if there was a problem or wanting to raise anything. ³²⁹⁰³

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. Well, he should then leave during the examination-in-chief, and if the issue arises in cross-examination, he may return.

MR. KAY: Yes. That's perfectly all right. Thank you, Your Honour.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Please proceed.

[Witness answered through interpreter] Examined by Mr. Kay:

Q. Could you give the Court your full name, please.

A. Franz Josef Hutsch.

Q. You're a German national; is that right?

A. [No interpretation].

Q. And could you give the Court --

JUDGE KWON: I don't think we get the English translation of what the witness is saying. Go ahead. Let's try.

MR. KAY:

Q. Could you give the Court a brief outline of your working history, starting with your service in the German military.

A. I started a career as a professional officer, and after 14 years and three months my service came to an end and I became a war correspondent.

Q. If you could tell the Court when it was that you started working as a journalist.

A. I started in May 1995 working as a journalist, and on the 3rd of May, 1995, I came into contact for the first time with the war in Bosnia, ³²⁹⁰⁴ and I was sent to Sarajevo to work.

Q. And the medium in which you worked, was that the written media or television or radio?

A. I started working for the print media, for daily newspapers, and in the meantime I worked for radio, television, and the print media.

Q. When you left the German military, what was your -- your rank that you left at?

A. I left the military as major, and I'm now a -- in reserve.

Q. Your first engagement as a journalist was in the territories of the former Yugoslavia, and you spent a period of time reporting on the war that was taking place in Bosnia; is that right?

A. That is correct. From May 1995 to March 1996, I was in Bosnia permanently, uninterrupted.

Q. I'd like, actually, to move to a later phase of your career, which is when you went to Kosovo in 1998 to report on events there. When did you go to Kosovo in 1998?

A. I went in September 1998 to Kosovo, and I left Kosovo in December 1999.

Q. September 1998, can you tell us which was the first location in Kosovo that you went to.

A. Of course I went to Pristina, and then I started establishing contacts, the kind of contacts I need for a potential war area, to enable me to work in this potential war area.

MR. KAY: For the purpose of the witness's testimony from now, Your Honours, it would be useful to have the Kosovo road atlas, Exhibit ³²⁹⁰⁵ 83, which we notified the Court to have to hand. And if a copy of that could be put before the witness. I have a spare, if anyone requires it.

JUDGE ROBINSON: I'd like to find out the witness's age.

MR. KAY:

Q. Your age, Mr. Hutsch?

A. I am 41.

THE INTERPRETER: The witness needs to approach the microphone when he's speaking. He's barely audible to the interpreters.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch, you need to come closer to the microphone when you're speaking.

THE WITNESS: Okay.

MR. KAY: Pristina is at age 7 of the atlas. And just so that we've got a fix on that.

Q. You arrived at Pristina. What sort of situation did you find there when you arrived in September 1998 that would be of interest to this trial?

A. Pristina itself was a city which was very tense but not excessively violent in any way. At that point was it unpeaceful, there were a lot of police on the streets at that time. But first of all, one couldn't see that there were any fights or conflicts on the streets as, for example, was the case in Sarajevo in 1995. So to this extent, first of all it was a very tense atmosphere, but there was no resort to violence.

Q. After taking stock of things in Pristina, you then moved to another area to look at the situation on the ground; is that right? ^{32906 BLANK PAGE 32907}

A. That's correct.

Q. And did you move to Prizren?

A. Yes. I also went to Prizren, but first to Malisevo where I had contacts to the UCK, which seemed to me to be very promising and where I received an offer to accompany the KLA more intensively, and this is something that I considered to be very promising from a journalist's point of view to continue my work in Kosovo. From Malisevo I then came towards Prizren.

MR. KAY: Malisevo can be found at page 10 of the atlas, the right-hand side, just above the letter -- the number 19, M-19.

Q. Malisevo: Can you describe what you found there at that time, which was still in the -- September of 1998, wasn't it?

A. It was -- at that time in Malisevo, this was the headquarters of a defence zone organised by the KLA, commanded by Ekrem Rexha and Komandant Drini, a highly professional man who spoke several languages fluently and was certainly an intellectual who worked in -- was a -- an officer in the Yugoslav army, the VJ, had a great deal of experience, and in Central Kosovo, he was entrusted with the organisation of the KLA in Kosovo.

Q. The purpose of that -- the purpose of that trip being to familiarise yourself with the KLA at an initial level, you told us that you then moved down to Prizren, which we see at page 10 of the atlas again. And if you could tell the Court what the situation was that you found there at this time.

A. Prizren itself, like Pristina, was quiet but tense, and my first lasting impression was that after the Milosevic agreement, the Serbian ³²⁹⁰⁸ security forces had more or less returned to their barracks or withdrawn to their respective areas, and the KLA started very quickly to fill this power vacuum and to re-establish their own positions and to establish themselves there.

Q. This would have been in October of 1998 that you moved down there. When you describe the KLA occupying positions, what sort of positions did they occupy? And perhaps looking at page 10 of our map there showing the Prizren area, if you could identify what areas you were able to observe them occupying.

Perhaps the atlas could be put on the ELMO. That's the overhead projector.

MR. KAY: Usher, if you could assist the witness so that others may see as well.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I think to answer this question it's important, first of all, to say that the area of Prizren, from a purely military point of view, was controlled by what is known as the Dulje pass. That's here.

MR. KAY:

Q. You're looking at page 11 of the atlas there, aren't you?

A. Yes.

Q. Just before Suva Reka?

A. This is the Dulje pass, certainly a strategic significance which had been used by the VJ from 19 -- the turn of the year 1998 to 1999 and during the rest of the war. And from Dulje pass, the Macedonian border can be reached with artillery systems. This position was occupied by the ³²⁹⁰⁹ KLA in October and November, but in the course of the erupting violence in January and February, the position could no longer be held.

Q. Going back to Prizren on page 10 -- just move it slightly to the other way, actually, and up a bit. Other way, please. That region that we see on the atlas there with Prizren down in the bottom right-hand corner, were you able to observe anything about the relative position of the parties of the KLA, VJ in that location?

A. Prizren was such that Ekrem Rexha was being excluded from the UCK position. It's an old city, but Ekrem Rexha was a man who focused on achieving some sort of cohabitation after the war. This was one of the reasons why he was later murdered by the KLA.

Prizren itself was characterised by the fact that many MUP and VJ people went back to the -- their barracks after the agreement. There were long columns withdrawing back into Prizren. The KLA had a commander south of Prizren and fired at patrols in this area, but as far as I could observe, there were no major losses on the part of the Serbian armed forces, and they focused mainly in the area between -- in this triangle, and they tried to set up small commando troops which would then later be in a position to attack Serbian patrols and Serbian security forces. But one must say that during the set-up of the KVM, which took some time, there were local agreements which had been negotiated by the KVM which meant that Serbian patrols could go through areas which were occupied by the KLA. The KLA withdrew to the edges of these areas and to let the patrols pass. Then once they had passed, the KLA occupied these areas once again. ³²⁹¹⁰ And in some villages, Prizren to Velika Krusa, there was a corridor of about five kilometres, and this was certainly a conventional means of avoiding escalation, but I did not know whether this agreement was also in force outside this defence zone Pastrik. I cannot say that.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay, just take the witness back to the first part of that answer. He referred to a man who focused on achieving some sort of cohabitation, but we didn't get -- or I didn't get the name of the man.

MR. KAY:

Q. You referred to a KLA commander, I believe, whom you described as having had service in the VJ, and the Court is interested to know his name. Perhaps you could spell it, which would help everybody.

A. Ekrem, E-k-r-e-m, Rexha is R-e-x-h-a, and he was known as Drini, D-r-i-n-i.

Q. You referred to the local agreements that you were able to observe in some areas where there would be a mutual assertion over the territory at different times. Could you perhaps point out on the ELMO precisely, so far as you know, the area that you're talking about.

A. Well, I was mostly in Malisevo as my base, and from there I went out several times with some of the troops of the KLA. The triangle is Karlovac, Suva Reka, Prizren. And I could observe that this also worked in Oblaca, but 15 to 20 kilometres north of Suva Reka where I was able to observe that this similar process was repeated several times.

Q. And the areas you indicated there were the right-hand side of map 10, around Malisevo, and then over on the left-hand side to Suva Reka on ³²⁹¹¹ map 11?

A. Yes. This was the 122 Brigade of the KLA, and the 2nd Battalion of the 121 KLA brigade, the 123 Brigade in Malisevo, and the 125 Brigade north of Prizren --

Q. You indicated --

A. -- were in these areas.

Q. You indicated the 121 Brigade as being in that area to the west of Stimlje.

A. Yes.

Q. During this period - I'm going to take now from October until the Christmas so that we cover a scope of three months - did you see any violations of the cease-fire agreement which had come into force in the October?

A. There were several infringements of the cease-fire agreements to the extent that it was tactics of the KLA to have hit-and-run attacks on the Serbian patrols, to watch out for them, to try to force them into a trap and to try to provoke the excessive reactions of the troops. So they tried to attack the troops or the patrols from behind, to attack the police officers. And we knew that there were certain to be unreasonable reactions of the Serbian security forces here.

So this time was characterised by the fact that the KLA tried to fill the power vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Serbian forces and strategically important positions, for example, the Dulje Pass, where the object was to control the pass, which I thought in military terms this is rather strange, because as a commander I could not accept that ^{32912 BLANK PAGE 32913} particularly in the course of such an agreement to leave an area over to the enemy. A classical example of classic peacekeeping would have been to occupy these areas with blue helmet UN troops.

Q. You described what was happening, and I think we can take it from the description of your area you were travelling in that broad area that you've outlined between pages 10 and 11 of the atlas; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. And during this period, were you attaching yourself to any of the particular parties in the conflict? Did you spend your time with the KLA or did you spend your time with the VJ, or was it a mixture?

A. My -- I mainly spent time with the KLA, but as a journalist, I reject this procedure, but you could regard me as an embedded journalist of the KLA, which meant that during the NATO air raids, I remained in Kosovo and I was with the KLA.

Q. Still dealing with this period before the Christmas, the KLA that you were involved with, could you give a description of their general level of armament, military capability?

A. The KLA, from summer 1998 until spring 1999, tried to reorganise themselves in military terms. And the loose impression that I had, I saw that they formed effective brigades which were organised in hierarchies. They had brought these together to defence areas, the commanders were then taking charge, and it was quite clear that the KLA was receiving reinforcements, not only ammunition and weapons which were becoming more and more modern, but they were also reinforced in terms of staff. From Western Europe Kosovo Albanian young men came flooding back. ³²⁹¹⁴ They had a very brief military training, which I personally considered to be insufficient, but this was done in Albania and in various training camps in Kosovo, and they were then put into companies, battalions, and brigades. The forces became established, and they systematically started occupying areas.

Militarily speaking, I would regard this phase as a reorganisation of armed forces and the establishment of a cohesive fighting force and fighting command.

Q. As a person of reasonably long military service, you were obviously familiar with hearing the results of gunshots or firing of weapons. Are you able to distinguish between particular sounds of firing of weapons?

A. Yes, of course, because I was also trained as a military observer for the United Nations, and this was part of our daily business, precisely to do these things.

Q. Just for the record, where was your UN duty as a military observer?

A. In Georgia.

Q. The arm equipment, the weapons that the KLA had, are you able to give a summary of that, what you saw at this period before the Christmas?

A. Yes. The emphasis was on the infantry, and each soldier had a Kalashnikov, different types of Kalashnikovs from different countries, to the basic equipment. They also had the RPG-7, which is a very effective weapon and one of the best anti-tank devices of its kind. There were also Spiders and Spenglers, which were very modern. They have a range of up to ³²⁹¹⁵ three and a half to four kilometres. There were also artillery systems and mortars of various calibres, but also small field howitzers. There were also pick-ups and four-wheel vehicles to pick up troops very quickly. There were also an increase of trained officers, officers who are capable of controlling air attacks from the ground, to identify targets, and to make areas safe for the air force.

What was not available unless they were captured, this was armed vehicles and such which were normally not available to the KLA.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay. Mr. Hutsch, you speak of the KLA being organised in brigades. Do you have in mind the classical notion of a brigade? What was the size? What was the complement?

THE WITNESS: In the brigade, it's -- it didn't have an established size as we know it. Normally we're talking about 7.000 soldiers if you apply NATO standards, but it was very different. A brigade could be a small brigade. Later, in the south-east of Kosovo, we could have something like 700 soldiers in a brigade. But it could be larger. For example, Brigade 121, as far as I can estimate in October, November, December, had a staff of 1.800 soldiers. But you couldn't say that you have a system of one brigade which could be transposed to another brigade in terms of size.

But the structures were the same. We had a structure with three infantry battalions, a structure with a fire support system, an artillery system with mortars. We had reconnaissance departments in each brigade, and also, as the time progressed from 1999, for each defence zone there were special units, special operation forces. ³²⁹¹⁶

MR. KAY:

Q. Again at this period before Christmas -- I'm going to take this in two stages. This period before Christmas, were you able to identify any other nationalities amongst the KLA forces other than Kosovo Albanians?

A. Yes. In particular, there were officers of Arab origin. These officers were -- I wrote about later in a report. The forward air control officers, they were from -- I think the term -- there was an American from the MPRI who recruited these officers from the Mujahedin brigades of the Bosnian army as mercenaries, and they offered them a great deal of money. These officers were then trained in Turkey, and from spring 1998, from February in particular, they were sent to the KLA in Kosovo as forward air control officers to plan and carry out --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch --

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] -- anti-air raids.

JUDGE ROBINSON: -- I gather from what you say, then, that those who were from other origin were officers. They were not foot soldiers? Are you distinguishing between officers and ordinary soldiers?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Absolutely. They were officers who had been recruited. They had a very good training in English, and they were trained to organise air operations, air raids. And in terms of quantity, each brigade had one of these officers who was particularly well-protected. And during the war, these officers, the more became -- there were more available and so they were able to delegate further down the hierarchy of the battalion.

And there's one particular example that I have published in the ³²⁹¹⁷ Netherlands: There is an asylum procedure where one of these men -- his name is Almedin, his family name is Almic. At the moment he is in the -- going through an asylum-seeking process in Amsterdam, and he is applying for asylum in the Netherlands.

This man, in 1998, he deserted, and he then came through a circuitous route to the Netherlands. He has documents with him which clearly prove that he was trained in Turkey. These documents all are signed by Clark Campbell.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Since the foreigners were confined to the officer rank, does that mean, then, that there were few in number?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, quite clearly. I would say the total number, at least my impression is that it's between 80 and 120.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY:

Q. Again a general question in terms of uniforms of the KLA that you were able to see at this period. How were they dressed? How were they turned out? Were they in an official military uniform, or was there a variety of clothing?

A. Well, there were very many different types of clothing. Some soldiers had a German uniform with a Swiss army jacket. Some soldiers were in jeans with a black parka. The only thing that the KLA had in terms of uniform, and then increasingly so after December, was that these signs that we all know, the KLA sign which characterises a KLA fighter as a KLA soldier by his insignia.

Q. That's a sort of reddy-orange badge? ^{32918 BLANK PAGE 32919}

A. Yes, this red badge with the yellow writing and with the Albanian eagle.

Q. In terms of the activities of the KLA, we've been addressing issues of a military nature. Were there any other activities other than of a military nature that you were able to observe from those units you met and spent time with?

A. It was clear that there was an interchange of organised criminality on the one hand and operational command on the other, and it was certainly the case that with an ammunition transport at the same time this was combined with transport of smuggled goods to bring these goods out of Kosovo. In the south of Kosovo, this was a transit area for women who were forced to become prostitutes in Europe. It was clear that with the ammunition transports that drugs were also transported in the other direction, so that Kosovo, so to speak, was a transit route for traffic of every description. And the KLA was, therefore, able to spend a great deal of money to equip themselves to a very high standard of technology.

Q. And the levels of command that you met, you obviously met the foot soldiers. How high up in the command structure did you meet the KLA officers?

A. Well, Harading Thaci, Hasim Ceku, for example, were people of a certain command level that I met.

Q. And again, how was it structured? Were you able to observe how they were made up, how the command structure of the KLA was working?

A. After my subsequent research and what I observed from the outside, in 1997, 1998, the hierarchy was rather on a level where people sort of ³²⁹²⁰ reacted more or less spontaneously, and it had the sort of characteristic of individual terror attacks.

And then in summer, in particular after Holbrooke and Junik visited the KLA, there was a restructuring of the KLA with the rather mysterious and sudden appearance of Hasim Ceku on the KLA stage. And from then the intellectual and also the practical implementation of the structure of an army could be recognised, and this developed on a daily basis.

Q. I want to turn now to the Christmas period, which is before an incident that occurred at Racak. Was there a change in the scale of the conflict around the Christmastime?

A. For me, the Christmas offensive, which is not absolutely the right term because this was a term which described the military operations in the area of Podujevo, to put an emotional aspect on it, the Christmas offensive, so to speak, was so that the Serbian officers first lost their patience.

If you look at the map --

Q. Is it page 10?

A. Well, I would suggest we look at page 7. It's difficult to see here, but Podujevo and then Pristina. What you can see clearly, on the one hand you have this road between Podujevo and Pristina. On the other hand you have the railway line. The situation in December was such that on the one hand the area between Mitrovica and Pristina, there was heavy fighting going on after the KLA succeeded in cutting off the transit road between Mitrovica and Pristina. If you look at the military situation in ³²⁹²¹ Kosovo, these are the two main supply routes which the Serbian security forces used to supply their troops. There were other possibilities via Vitina and Gnjilane to enter Kosovo, but for various reasons this route is not to be considered.

In this area between Banido [phoen] and Libano [phoen], the KLA succeeded in interrupting not only the road but also the railway line. And from the heights and the woods on the eastern part of this street, they were able to control this area with artillery and anti-tank equipment.

So the security force, in particular the VJ, had to open up this street again in a counter-offensive. And from -- as far as I can see in military terms, this made sense in order not to cut off supplies. I heard rumours that this operation was supported by a tank company which then came from Serbia to Kosovo, but I have -- haven't been able to find any evidence of this, especially in the analysis of the foreign office and the German Defence Ministry to which I had access as a journalist.

Q. You directed our attention to page 7, which shows one of those supply routes, one railway line. If we turn over to the page 6 as well, we see the other railway line, which is east of Pristina going from Kosovo Polje, up to Mitrovica, through Vucitrn.

A. That is the second one, and then -- this was the second supply line which was interrupted up to spring 1999. It was attacked again and again by the KLA to interrupt the supplies of the Serbian security forces. And in the area of Obilic, there are still a large number of minefields ³²⁹²² which they have started to clear, and the VJ was compelled, therefore, to lay these minefields on both sides of the railway line to prevent the advance of the KLA to these two very important supply routes.

Q. Those supply routes which we've looked at on pages 6 and 7 of the railway lines that you've identified, was it just the railway lines that was involved or were the roads involved as well?

A. Yes. Both areas were affected, not only the rail connections but also the road. But the mobile commands on the part of the Serbian security forces into -- in this area was made very difficult because of the terrain. The terrain made it very difficult for the highly mobile command. And this is my interpretation of the decision, therefore, to open up the street from Podujevo to Pristina.

Q. The traffic, then, down this route, Mitrovica to Kosovo Polje and Pristina, the traffic down that route was what? What was carried? You said it was the major supply lines into Kosovo. Was it commercial traffic, military traffic?

A. Both. Of course for every military supply line you have a civilian supply line, but commercial goods, foodstuffs were brought into Kosovo from Serbia. On the other hand, it was also the route where fuel, petrol, diesel, oil, was brought for the Serbian security forces. And there was also the exchange of soldiers along the route or ammunition was supplied. So all kinds of goods, supply goods, were sent along this route.

Q. So that would include materials for the population's daily living, would it? ³²⁹²³

A. Yes, if you would interpret it like this.

Q. You've described now to the Court that period up to Christmas and what you were able to observe from that period when you were largely embedded with the KLA. Is there anything else you wish to add to that picture in the period before Christmas?

A. Well, for me there was one thing: There was a clear difference to the experience I had in Bosnia, where my experience of the war was over six, seven months until the Dayton Agreement. My impression was more and more that things were being staged. The KLA seemed to be advised by a very good PR agent. There were situations where refugees were kept in the woods until Western journalists visited the refugee camps. There were situations where the civil population were kept in the villages which were being attacked by the Serbian security forces, and the civilians were prevented from leaving the villages. So it was more of a staged war rather than the war I experienced in Bosnia. So this was an incredible difference if you compare the two situations.

Q. Those activities that you've described, were they in any particular area that you were working in or --

A. Well, we're talking about the Drenica region where this was a daily occurrence. We are talking about the Central Kosovo region, Stimlje or Urosevac, later in the area west of Kacanik, where, in particular, in what is known as the "elephant foot."

Q. That's -- Kacanik can be found down on page 12 of the atlas. Turning now to the period after Christmas, and the Court has heard ^{32924 BLANK PAGE 32925} evidence about an incident in Racak. Did you attend Racak on the occasion of the visit of Ambassador Walker?

A. On the 16th of January, a Saturday, I went -- I drove to Racak with Walker. It was an unusual situation because, for most journalists, the main area of fighting was in the area between Mitrovica and Pristina where heavy fighting was going on. And there were systematic attacks on villages. So hardly any journalists concentrated on the fighting around Racak. And we were informed that there had been a massacre in Racak.

Q. Racak -- Racak we can find on page 11 of the atlas, just to the south-east of Stimlje.

Were you in Prizren in the morning of the 16th of January?

A. I was in Pristina, because I spent Christmas with German colleagues in Pristina. And also in the first week of January I had left Kosovo simply to get some fresh air. I went to Macedonia and on -- was back in Kosovo on the 10th of January.

Q. And were you with other journalists and other monitors from the OSCE that morning when a convoy set off to Racak?

A. I was there with several colleagues. We had breakfast together. When we were informed -- I was informed by my interpreter that the OSCE organises too much, but they wanted to bring some journalists to Racak because there had been signs of a massacre. And I think we were 40 to 50 journalists. We drove to Racak together with several OSCE teams and with Walker.

It wasn't organised to the extent that we have to meet at such-and-such place and all of us will leave together, but it just ³²⁹²⁶ happened like this. We drove after Walker. We formed a convoy which then arrived in Racak.

Q. Had you been to Racak before when you were in the area around Stimlje?

A. No, not at all. Racak, for the operation command of defence zone 2 had no value. This was the 2nd Battalion of the 122nd Brigade. The important area was Stimlje, where the commander concentrated. But for me this was of subordinate interest, so I had never been to Racak before.

Q. Just so that we've got a scale of the convoy that you described, about how many people and how many vehicles arrived in Racak with Ambassador Walker?

A. I guess about 20 vehicles, maybe 25 vehicles, and about 60 people who arrived with Walker. But at this particular time, there were KVM teams on site and also other journalists were there when we arrived. We arrived about midday.

Q. The scene, then, in Racak when you arrived was what? Can you describe where you arrived in Racak and what you saw when you arrived?

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] -- road which you can see indicated in red. We came from Stimlje along this red route to Racak. We entered from the north, and at the entrance to the town or among the -- we stopped the cars at the first houses.

The situation was that the KLA were on the slopes, to be seen on the slopes around the town, in the north-west. And at -- in the east, in the town itself, I saw ten KLA fighters myself. Some of them wore ³²⁹²⁷ uniform, different items of clothing from military supplies, but there were two PU fighters, that is police fighters of the KLA were dressed in black with white armbands with the insignia PU.

I didn't go into the town myself. The group of journalists split up. Some went -- had already gone into the town with KLA fighters because it was said that bodies had been found.

I went to the southern part of the town with Walker where we went up a slope, along the bed of an old stream, and on both sides there were bushes growing, and there we met -- we came across a group, a pile of bodies.

Q. You have seen many photographs of -- of the scene at Racak, I take it; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. A word has been used, ravine, to describe like a gully where the main group of bodies was found. Is that the area you're indicating?

A. Yes. It was about the height of a man up to about shoulder level. It was a dried-out riverbed. That is precisely what we had. There were several forks in different areas, and the bodies were lying in different parts.

MR. KAY: The Court has seen photographs of this in Exhibit 156, and I don't propose to go through those at this stage, but just for reference if it assists the Judges.

Q. You described the KLA near the town, in the town, ten of them. Did you recognise any from your periods that you'd spent working with the KLA? ³²⁹²⁸

A. There were mostly young fighters, and among the older ones I didn't really know any of them. One or two of them I had seen as part of the 121st Brigade when I visited this brigade, but it would be too much to say that I knew their names.

For example, there was a commander I had seen because he had set up a supply base in the town. His nom de guerre was Roca [phoen], and he had been known in some areas as a Foreign Legionnaire.

Q. You described a group of KLA being on the outside of the town, up in the hills there. Are you able to tell us how many and what their position was?

A. Well, the task of these units was clearly to secure the area around Racak, to provide some sort of defence ring around the town. I think there were about a hundred of them, but it's difficult to estimate. There may have been 30 fewer or even more in this rather difficult terrain. But I think you could talk about a company which had the task of securing this area.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay, we're coming up to the time for the break.

MR. KAY: We can stop there for the moment, Your Honour.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch, we're going to take an adjournment. It will be for 20 minutes, 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 10.30 a.m.

--- On resuming at 10.54 a.m.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Please continue, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY: Thank you, Your Honour. ³²⁹²⁹

Q. Before the break, Mr. Hutsch, we were dealing with Racak, your arrival there. You told us about a number, maybe up to a hundred, KLA on the surrounding hilltops. Were you able to tell if they were from a particular brigade or any other information about them?

A. The soldiers said, as I was also told afterwards, they were clearly part of the 2nd Battalion of 121 Brigade. It wouldn't make any sense anyway in such an extremely complex situation such as the one around Racak at the time. That would not have made sense to change troops, move them around and use another brigade or another battalion instead. That would not make any military sense and could also hardly be organised, certainly not within one night.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay. You say that they were clearly part of the 2nd Battalion of the 121 Brigade. How many soldiers would have been in that brigade? You have told us the numbers vary in each brigade.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] This brigade, as I intimated, had a strength of about 1.800 soldiers, 121 Brigade at that time had a classical structure of three battalions through the brigade. The battalion in question, the 2nd Battalion, had about 600 soldiers.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY:

Q. In terms of uniform, was this a KLA brigade that had a consistent uniform or was there a variety of clothing that was worn?

A. In principle, the set-up was such that the UCK, with the exception of the special forces, special operation forces and the military police, so-called PU, had no uniform which was the same everywhere, and the same ^{32930 BLANK PAGE 32931} applied to 121 Brigade.

Q. So those soldiers of the KLA you saw in Racak that day had on a variety of uniforms?

A. Different parts of a uniform, sometimes civilian clothes, but they were already equipped with a badge which marked them as members of the KLA.

Q. And did they have weapons?

A. Yes. They were equipped with Kalashnikov rifles. I've seen now and then some state-of-the-art sniping rifles of different types. There was the Russian Draganov rifle, there were some Italian sniping rifles, down to American models. These were all in use. I'm not entirely sure because it wasn't always clearly visible, when you entered this town and looked up to the hill on your right, I think I saw a Spigot rocket, but perhaps it could have been something else, a Spengler, for example.

Q. As part of the situation on the ground that day, you've described the OSCE as being present. What sort of force of numbers did they have in Racak?

A. Altogether there were about 10 OSCE verifiers who I observed myself. I think there must have been far more than that. Another thing remarkable for a place where allegedly such serious fighting had taken place was that there were actually amazingly little traces of such fighting to be seen. For example, there were very few spent cartridge cases lying around anywhere.

Q. We've heard evidence about OSCE monitors being on the hills above Racak, looking down into it. Were you aware of them? ³²⁹³²

A. I have seen individual orange-coloured jeeps with the KLA fighters. They had contact there, they monitored these forces.

Q. The first place, then, that you saw dead bodies in Racak was at the ravine. Could you describe the scene, then, and the group, telling us how many were in your group, what the sort of make-up of people was - we've seen film of this during the course of the trial - and what happened when that group came across the bodies in the ravine.

A. First of all, it started with individual bodies which were spaced something like 10, 15 metres away from each other. Then there was a larger group of bodies. These bodies were partly dreadfully mutilated almost through different shot wounds. Some of them were head-shots, some of these were people who had been hit from the front. I can remember seeing the corpse of one old man who still wore the Albanian traditional hat, and his left -- the left half of his face was completely shot away, and the back of his head had exploded.

There were also, among these bodies, the corpses of many older men. And without having checked in every case, I would guess they were between sort of late 40s, early 50s. Approximately two-thirds of these men would have been more than 50 years of age, and for me this meant it was very clear that they were not the potential recruited by the KLA. What was also surprising here was the fact that there were very few cartridge cases, particularly looking at the injuries shown by these corpses. I was struck by that.

Something else which I noticed was that we could move freely between these bodies, and some of my colleagues actually rearranged these ³²⁹³³ bodies so as to photograph them better, and Ambassador Walker did not try to prevent this from happening when it happened. So from a forensic point of view, and obviously I'm not a forensic specialist or a police reporter or anything of that kind, but I thought that was a highly strange way of dealing with a crime scene, changing the bodies. And also, Mr. Walker had directed us to an area where, from a forensic point of view, we were actually destroying evidence.

Q. Coming upon the scene of the bodies, where were you in relation to Ambassador Walker? Where was he in relation to the group that was proceeding to the ravine?

A. Together with a colleague, we were partly members of the group, but we also walked outside again because I wanted to look from outside at the scene, particularly as we went further in. And it is my habit, when such a place is entered, I go back to my old sort of life as a soldier, and I want to get a special impression and be able to judge that from a military point of view. That is, after all, my job. So I think there was a range of 30, 40 metres around the group, the Walker group. That was the usual area where they used to be. But when exactly from leaving the town to when we found the bodies, where I've been exactly at each time, every metre of ground, I couldn't tell you now.

Q. This group coming across the bodies at the ravine at this stage, how many -- how many were in it?

A. That was a group of between 25 and 40 people. Mr. Walker, his Albanian interpreter who some people say was also his political advisor, there were other people from the OSCE and journalists. ³²⁹³⁴

Q. Were you present when Ambassador Walker came across the bodies?

A. Yes. I saw myself how he walked among the bodies and was very, very close to these corpses.

Q. And what was his reaction?

A. He kept saying that this was unthinkable and this was one of the greatest crimes against humanity, and he used the word "massacre" time and again.

Q. Did anyone take -- take care of the area where the bodies lay, of the crime scene?

A. There were monitors. They were on the margins, standing there, but nobody really cordoned off the crime scene, as I would have expected, which was done at a later stage when mass graves were discovered in Kosovo and Bosnia. I have seen that there, too, that you have special tape cordoning off a crime scene. There was none of this here. Nor did I see anybody securing the site in the sense of making sure that traces weren't destroyed, photographs would be taken, drawings made. I saw nothing of that kind taking place.

Q. You described interference with the bodies. Any other interference in the site that you were able to notice?

A. Some colleagues put some cartridge cases into their pockets, more or less as a souvenir. Some colleagues, as I said, touched the bodies, moved them into different positions. And initially, for me it was quite clear that the bodies were all sort of lying downhill. So afterwards, there was a great mess in the position of bodies.

Q. Just so we've got a position on this, what time were you at the ³²⁹³⁵ ravine looking at the bodies when this was happening?

A. That was about lunch-time plus/minus half an hour. Around 12.00.

Q. On the 16th of January.

A. That is correct.

Q. Did you notice Ambassador Walker doing anything else other than making those comments? Did he take any other steps or anything that you were able to notice?

A. He frequently made phone calls. Who he was speaking to, I don't know. Whenever he made a phone call, he moved away from the group a little. However, he did make very frequent calls, and among us journalists this led to some discussion, because we thought with this kind of crisis management, it was surprising to see him with this press trip, if you can call it that, not being handed to his deputy. One would have expected him not -- he should have been doing the crisis management, but he was marketing what happened, and that did lead to some excited debate among us journalists.

Q. The deputy, for the record, was whom?

A. Well, I could have imagined that General Drewienkiewicz could have done this. At least, for most of us journalists it would have seemed a preferable solution, particularly because it was so clear all the time. Military questions were asked which Mr. Walker could not answer because the event was a military event.

Q. Having considered the scene at the ravine, where else did you go after that? If you'd take us further on your route through Racak from that moment. ^{32936 BLANK PAGE 32937}

A. It was about 2.00, 2.00, 1400 hours, that I left the scene of the crime, went down to the town and left for Pristina. Basically this was because I was given a different assignment by my own paper, but the other reason was I wanted to finish my report. I was then also working freelance, and I wanted to launch this into a different media. I had seen enough to be able to assess the situation.

I had talked to individual KLA members in the town itself and returned to Pristina to be able to send off my report in time.

Q. Other than the scene at the ravine, did you go to any other of the places where bodies were found?

A. No. I was not at the bodies which were found within the town itself. There was a direct line going east from that dried up riverbed. I did not go there. I have heard from colleagues who did go, but something which was said from all sides and which later on the Finnish forensic commission led by Dr. Ranta confirmed was the fact that not one of these bodies had been raped in any way. There were some German newspapers where journalists were not within this group who had not gone to Racak with us saying that some of these corpses had also been mutilated and obviously as journalists in Kosovo that made it difficult for us, particularly when we had to pass a Serb forces checkpoint. It meant that they really checked us carefully. Sometimes we had to kneel next to our vehicles or lie down on the ground, so there was no longer any freedom of movement. As German journalists, that was something which was done for 10, 14 days or so afterwards.

Q. Moving on from Racak, then, did you continue to base yourself in ³²⁹³⁸ the region you've been describing today or did you move to another area?

A. The way I assessed the situation for myself was that, given the conditions, particularly the repressions I suffered under as a journalist meant I could not move about freely in Kosovo. Even my press accreditation could not help me any more. So I decided to join the KLA completely in the Malisevo area, and in early January I first left Kosovo to go to Macedonia, on the one hand to relax a bit but on the other hand also to obtain some more material and also get some more reliable information about what was supposed to take place in Rambouillet. And it was mid-February when I returned to Kosovo through the so-called elephant foot.

Q. Just taking that period, then, after Racak when you move out, you go to Macedonia, and before you come back in, what did you find in Macedonia in relation to the KLA that you had attached yourself to? First of all, tell us which region in Macedonia you went to.

A. There were, in principle, two ways of leaving Kosovo and going to Macedonia. One was using -- it was using the two main supply routes of the KLA into Kosovo. I'd like to show you these routes so as to illustrate the situation. Let's use this map here.

Q. Is that -- is that page 12?

A. Yes. Oh, it's this one. This is the area called Kacanik. It is the so-called elephant foot here, the way it continues at the bottom. It does resemble the shape of an elephant's foot. And here we have one of the main supply routes -- by the way, it is still being used by the KLA, or what we now call successor organisations. ³²⁹³⁹ Here are the Radusa mines. Radusa is on the Macedonian side. And there is a way of going underground in Kosovo, entering the old mines, and leaving on the Macedonian side. What you need to imagine is frequently people use donkeys for transporting goods, and they are sent through these mines to the other end respectively. So you can always permanently, as it were, cross the border underground.

There is a second way of leaving Kosovo. That was in the area of Vitina, specifically Panovcervci [phoen], which in 2001 in the Macedonian crisis played a crucial role.

So these were the two routes, and I used them for leaving, i.e., returning to Kosovo. But these were also the main supply routes for the KLA, because the Serb security forces had very largely sealed, apart from the Dragas area, and defended the border elsewhere, because it made clear that there was a great interest there.

What many people saw in Macedonia -- I spent a lot of time in the Western Macedonia, in the Tetovo area, and we saw there there was a lot of re-supply, particularly of freshly trained young soldiers, but also a fresh supply of modern handguns in particular. Some of them American M16s for special forces or recon groups or units.

Q. When you left -- when you left Kosovo and went into Macedonia, you spent time with the KLA supply chain, if you like. And are you able to describe to the Court how well the system worked for the supply chain at this time?

A. The system was perfectly planned. It also meant that from March onwards in the area between Kacanik, Vitina, Gnjilane, this whole area, ³²⁹⁴⁰ there were virtually no fighting. Even in Strpce, Urosevac, Kacanik, that was defence zone 6, the number of brigades could be reduced to one. So there was only 126 Brigade used to hold the area around Kacanik in the area between Vitina and Gnjilane and later on there were only three brigades with an overall strength of about 800 fighters. The objective was very clearly that the Serb security forces were not to be provoked any more. The idea was to keep the situation calm enough to get supplies into the country and then to distribute them throughout Kosovo, focusing on Prizren, Pec, and the Drenica region.

Q. The level of equipment that was coming into Kosovo at this time from Macedonia was -- was how much? Are you able to quantify it in any way?

A. I once saw a document with the KLA saying they had a daily need of supply goods of all kinds amounting to 2.5 to 3 tonnes, and that is indeed what they were able to use.

Q. You've described supplies. What about people? Were any new forces being added to the KLA after this period in terms of people?

A. On the one hand, there was a training system within Kosovo. For example, perhaps you would allow me to show you very briefly. On page 16.

Q. Yes.

A. There was a large training camp between Kotlina and Pustanik owned by the KLA and even in 2001 this was still an active training camp when the KLA became active in Macedonia as well. There was a huge training camp with about 200 recruits passing through that camp. In the Zelino village, for example, near Tetovo, there was also a training camp, ³²⁹⁴¹ and this was a collection point for recruits which were then brought through the elephant foot into Kosovo, using this route here I'm showing you: East from Jegunovce, past here, the elephant foot, and into Kosovo. There are several interviews. There is even footage, colleagues have published this already, and there are many interviews with recruits who went into Kosovo. The number of these recruits, also based on what my colleagues told me, I would guess of at the least 3.000 in April and May.

Q. For reference purposes, looking at map 16, just to the north-east there of Skopje is the elephant foot, as we can see it, with the yellow borderline marked; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Was there any offensive by the KLA from this position around the springtime of 1999?

A. In early February, the KLA prepared an offensive of 161, 162 Brigades in the area west of Kacanik. This offensive was clear because the brigades received more manpower and more equipment, and then there was a very well-devised hit-and-run tactics employed to send these brigades to an area west of the highway from Kacanik, Deutz, towards Pristina. And they attacked patrols in that area, thus provoking the counter-attacks by Serb security forces I indicated earlier.

Q. So moving up from map 16 into map 12, moving south of Kacanik up into -- towards Urosevac; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. We described the level of military support before Christmas. I want to look at the military support now in this period, which takes us ³²⁹⁴² from, say, Racak mid-January to the time of the NATO bombing. Were you able to notice anything about the equipment supply levels for the KLA at this time?

A. Yes. Supplies had been intensified noticeably. By spring 1999, that also included modern night vision equipment, partly even thermal imaging equipment. That means night vision equipment of the second and third generation. It also comprised, in particular, anti-tank weapons but also ground-air missiles of the type Stinger and Strelovac, a Russian model. It also comprised medical equipment ranging from analgesics to dressings.

Q. You mentioned Rambouillet earlier. That's the period from February and March 1999. Was there any large offensive? You've described the incursions; was there any large offensives up from the south towards Urosevac?

A. The defence zone 6 in this area was tasked by the General Staff of the KLA to initiate an offensive towards Urosevac. Offensive, in KLA terms, was an increased number of ambushes being laid, ambush attacks, down to massive attacks against individual villages, particularly in the Strpce region, where at least until March of that year there was a Serb majority population. These offensives were prepared and then commenced on 28 February with an attack against the Kacanik police chief, who died in this attack. The clear objective was to tie down Serb forces, to provoke the Serb forces, and to accompany the Rambouillet negotiations with the images which became very well known. In other words, images where Serb forces were shooting at Kosovo Albanian villages. ³²⁹⁴³

Q. The -- the sense of that military strategy by the KLA going up from the south through Kacanik, could you comment about that as your -- A, from your investigations, the time you spent there in this period, as well as your knowledge of military matters.

A. It was clearly a situation that these tactics can be compared to throwing a pebble into water, and then you create this -- a slight wave, and you would react to that with force out of proportion. That was the tactic employed. When we're looking at Gajre, the fighting around Gajre, which is south of Kacanik, I could only follow acoustically what was happening from Kotlina, but what was very clear was that after the attack strong Serb security forces, I would estimate about 200 strong, attacked Gajre after the attack and destroyed Gajre. It was very clear that at that time the KLA had a very great deal of interest in calling on people to flee their villages. So they actually purposefully created fear by telling people that the villages would in the future be attacked here, Straza, Ivaja, and Picevac up in the north. There the people living in the villages were asked to leave the villages, go into the woodland areas and were actually prevented from returning to their villages again. As I observed it, the normal pattern of behaviour when Serb security forces had attacked a village and left again, the people tended to return to their villages and came to sort of arrangements again with conditions of life, which were hard enough for the civilian people already. But here the people were kept in these forests in order to initiate a refugee crisis.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch, could you just elaborate on the ³²⁹⁴⁴ description, the metaphor that you used describing the KLA tactics as comparable to throwing a pebble into water, creating a slight wave and then reacting out of proportion.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The reaction was such that it was enough to attack a Serbian patrol. Usually these were MUP patrols. And once the attack had taken place and there were indications on the Serbian side where this attack was coming from, then the place was attacked. The attacks can be considered like this: That early in the morning large forces occupied the area. They formed two rings, an outer ring and an inner ring. The inner ring, as far as I could see, was always provided by MUP, and the outer ring was organised by the VJ. The population was told by loudspeaker to leave the villages, to go to certain checkpoints. The population was given a certain amount of time, a varying amount of time, to reach the checkpoints, from half an hour to one hour.

I didn't have the impression that there was a uniform procedure applied, and there was the threat to attack the village if the KLA didn't vacate the position. And mobile loudspeakers were used to inform the population and the KLA fighters to go to certain checkpoints, and after an hour they started attacking the villages. And the attack was done to a degree of hardness and a degree of escalation that consisted of mortar fire, artillery fire. Sometimes heavy weapons were used for hours. Now -- anti-aircraft rockets.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you. What I didn't understand is, in your metaphor, who threw the pebble into the water? Was it the KLA? ³²⁹⁴⁵

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The pebble into the water was thrown by the KLA, because they attacked the patrol. And the recurrent wave, this strong wave, was on the part of the Serbian security forces. So they provoked, on the one hand, and then there was a reaction to this provocation on the other.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY:

Q. You described the movement of villagers under the direction of the KLA, which had been a change in what you had seen before; is that right?

A. No. The provocation was continuous since I was there in September in Kosovo, but it wasn't so perfidious. This -- the degree of perfidy changed. Today in German we would say that they had updated it, it had been refined.

Q. Yes. I think something got lost in translation there. I was actually talking about the movement of people you described.

A. Okay. The behaviour to the village population was such that this intensified in autumn. I had evidence of people being prevented going back to their villages, or they were called upon to leave their villages. In spring 1999, at least you can see there was a certain systematic approach to this.

Q. And the population having been prevented by the KLA from going back went where having moved from their villages? In what you saw.

A. Well, they finally went into the woods. At the Kacanik offensive, the KLA, there was a larger refugee camp in this forest south-east of Kacanik, in this area. There was a refugee camp to the south of Kotlina ³²⁹⁴⁶ towards Pustanik. About 800 to 1.000 civilians were there from the entire region. There was a refugee camp in the border area at Straza where people were kept.

Q. This period from February down to March and the NATO bombing, was your concern largely, if not exclusively, that area south of Urosevac down to Kacanik and the elephant foot? Is that where you were?

A. As I said, until mid-March, I was in this area. About the 10th, 11th of March, again I went to Malisevo along this road to Kacanik, Urosevac, through the woods to Stimlje Racak, to this street the Dulje pass, it was Malisevo, and what I saw in the two and a half weeks in this region was precisely that.

Q. The population, then, that was being told to leave the villages and go into the woods or elsewhere, what sort of numbers are you able to tell us were concerned with this?

A. Well, I'd rather talk about what I saw in the refugee camps, because there you have rough numbers. In this southern area of Kacanik and west of Kacanik, I would talk about, say, 5.000, and this would have to be multiplied by the number throughout Kosovo in its entirety. This is an estimate. It is simply my own opinion, but I think you're talking about a six-figure number.

Q. So what did you see building up here in terms of these -- these people?

A. The aggression potential on both sides was clearly higher, and it was quite clear. And I derived this from various conversations with the KLA, that they were simply waiting to free Kosovo. These were their ³²⁹⁴⁷ original words. In many talks, I think this was representative of the atmosphere within the KLA.

At that time, from mid-March, I know on the 16th of March because this was part of the mandate of the 162nd Brigade, that there was -- there were British soldiers in uniform, a reconnaissance party was there, and they observed the Dulje pass and observed the positions of the 15th Serbian Brigade.

Q. This is the time of Rambouillet. That was continuing, as we've said, from February into March. Those KLA officers that you were dealing with, how did they view Rambouillet and its effect on the process that was taking place concerning Kosovo? What was their attitude?

MR. NICE: On this topic, Your Honour, before we move on --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: -- it might be helpful to know whether these are names that the witness is prepared to divulge or not. It's becoming very generalised but the topic is becoming of some importance, arguably.

MR. KAY: I'll ask the witness.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes.

MR. KAY:

Q. Are you able to identify the KLA commanders that you would have had discussions with over Rambouillet?

A. Yes, of course, but I think they are also known to you in the documents that I have seen. These names are already known. We're talking about Cabucala [phoen], we're talking about Ramush Haradinaj, we're talking about Ali Ahmeti. ³²⁹⁴⁸

Q. I'm just slowing you down because they are important names and people have to record them and they're known well to you, but we would like to make sure that we get the identities right so that all the parties have the information.

The first name you gave, perhaps --

A. Saban Sala, one of -- who still plays a major role in the KPC. We're talking about Ali Ahmeti. In 2001 he used this area in terms of logistics. Ramush Haradinaj -- I see the names are spelled wrongly. Saban Sala is correct. Ali Ahmeti is A-l-i and then A-h-m-e-t-i. Ramush is written R-a-m-u-s-h, Haradinaj, H-a-r-a -- yes, just like that. So we're also talking about Gezim Ostreni, we're talking --

Q. Spell. Sorry, Mr. Hutsch, but so we get it right on the record.

A. G-e-z-i-m O-s-t-r-e-n-i. Another name in this context is Tahir Sinani; T-a-h-i-r, the second name S-i-n-a-n-i.

Q. Any other names you would care to add, again in this context, because it's obviously important?

A. There are so many, but as I said before, they are also in the documents which have already been submitted to you. These are only the topics from the first row. We would then have to go into further detail.

Q. That's enough detail for everyone to work on. And then perhaps you could tell us about their attitude toward the Rambouillet peace process.

A. It was clear that the KLA had planned or were expecting a major offensive or the NATO attacks. They made use of this time to prepare themselves for this war in terms of logistics, to distribute troops, to ³²⁹⁴⁹ occupy positions, to occupy strategic positions, to define key targets, and simply to use this time to organise, reorganise, and to structure.

Q. Foreign military support, were you able to observe at this period before the NATO bombing if there was any assistance being given to the KLA?

A. Well, apart from the permanent assistance in the training camps of the KLA, which was done by MPRI and other mercenary companies, with the exception of the British troop at the Dulje pass, I saw no other recognisable assistance on the ground, and I didn't see that there was any inclusion of other NATO liaison officers who were active in Kosovo.

Q. Any addition to the KLA military, to their troops? Any fresh recruits, if you like, and if so, where were they from?

A. Yeah. The flow of recruits was immense from three sides coming into Kosovo; through the two Macedonian routes I described before, and then also the way across the Albanian border, so that there was an immense influx of young, freshly trained soldiers for the KLA precisely at this time, who then were distributed among the various battalions to let them fight in this area.

Q. Before we turn to the 24th of March and the commencement of the NATO bombing, was there any other matter that you could see occurring that you were aware of that would be of significance in this context?

A. Preparations before the air raids, no. It was simply an atmosphere of waiting, to try to prepare for what was going to happen.

Q. The NATO bombing commenced on the 24th of March, 1999. Whereabouts were you at that time so that we can get a fix on this? ³²⁹⁵⁰

A. During the course of the 24th, I was with a reconnaissance troop of the KLA going towards Prizren and wanted to go to the Prizren area to see the reaction on the part of the Serbian security forces who had a very strong contingent in Prizren, and it was important for me to see how they would react.

Q. Did you have any information in advance that the NATO bombing was going to occurring on the 24th of March?

A. The information about the beginning of the NATO attacks reached the main headquarters and the defence zone area 2 on the 24th at about 2.00 in the afternoon.

Q. And then what did you experience that particular day, on the 24th of March?

A. In the headquarters of defence zone 2, they started making operational plans for the coming days. Key targets were formulated, which were to be attacked first; among others, the Dulje pass with this control post for the artillery. And it was also obvious that an evacuation plan was in preparation with which systematically Albanian villages could be evacuated in order to protect them from attacks from the Serbian security forces.

Q. So were you able to observe an increase, then, in the numbers of people who were outside of their homes or villages or towns who were collecting together?

A. The KLA commanders and in the brigades were called upon to set up a list of priorities for the evacuations of the towns and villages. To indicate the villages, to pass on this information, a messenger service of ³²⁹⁵¹ the KLA command was set up. They had contact with satellite telephones with safe links to Albania. These officers had identification papers with them whereby they were able to take over the command of certain areas if necessary.

There was a communications system which was supported electronically, on the one hand, but it was also screened, and there was direct communication with these selected officers on the one hand and the individual regional commanders on the other. And they could give direct orders as to which villages should be evacuated where. So the population was then asked, for example, to leave the village in the direction of Albania or Macedonia.

Q. Again so that we can get a picture of this, are you able to identify on the atlas the regions you're talking about where you were able to observe this happening? And if you could do that slowly so that the Court is able to identify for the record.

A. For example, the location of the village of Malusha, close to Malisevo, were one of the first to be asked to leave the village in the direction of Macedonia. The population of Gajre, here, was also asked to leave the village. The military objective was to have an area around Malisevo which could be used by their own operations command, and there were very hard and bloody battles in this town, so that the civil -- the civilian population were taken out of the combat area, but also this provided a possibility of using these towns and villages for the purposes of the KLA.

Q. And we're looking at map page 10. Again, any other areas where ³²⁹⁵² you were able to see this happening after the NATO bombing started on the 24th of March?

A. Yes. The same happened with the KLA between Orahovac and Suva Reka. This is on page 11, in this area. These were on the list of priorities of the villages which were to be evacuated, where the population was asked to leave.

Q. Again, proceeding through the nearly a hundred days of the NATO bombing, where else were you able to observe this -- this pattern occurring of the KLA asking people to -- to move out?

A. I think what I could see on the part of the KLA, it took place in this particular area, but in parallel, there were also villages attacked by Serbian security forces. So this also resulted in the evacuation of the civilian population. So there's a very clear mix. Both sides then caused the movements of the civilian population, that is after the 23rd of March.

Q. During the period of the NATO bombing campaign, did you remain in Kosovo or did you move out into Macedonia or Albania? Where were you?

A. At this time, I went to Macedonia several times, via the routes I already mentioned, for various reasons. So I believe I was about two-thirds of the war in Kosovo and one-third in Macedonia, and here mainly in the Tetovo region.

Q. And in that period did you witness any fighting, any military operations?

A. I saw how paramilitary forces of the Serbs attacked the town of Velika Krusa. ³²⁹⁵³

Q. That's on map page 10. To assist the Court, perhaps if you could again indicate. Just south of Orahovac, on the railway line that you'd indicated before.

A. Yes. During this attack, I -- I was in the forest to the east of Velika Krusa. The attack started, as far as I recall, with the preparation on the 25th, early in the morning, towards 7.00, where snipers and advance observers attacked a water tower between Bata Krusa and Velika Krusa. They occupied this water tower and they had a very good view to Velika Krusa. They had -- they were supported by artillery. And in the afternoon, in the open fields in this area, there was a mortar position set up. And the next situation was that about -- about midday, many women, old people, and children left the village, towards the forest. There were clearly a few younger men, because Velika Krusa at that time was not defended by any means by the KLA. There were no armed KLA fighters in the village, and the attack started towards 3.00, 3.30 in the afternoon.

Q. The firing that took place, were you able, from your military experience, to judge what type of firing it was?

A. I think, and also after my research, it was a paramilitary group, infantry group with very little in the way of mortar preparation or artillery preparation. I couldn't swear to it, but between three and four rounds were fired and the paramilitaries then entered the town. I heard single shots, and afterwards, I heard systematic rounds being fired within the town that I could hear from outside the town.

JUDGE KWON: Mr. Hutsch, if you could describe the paramilitaries ³²⁹⁵⁴ more in detail; how they looked like or what they wore.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The uniforms were -- they looked like normal American wood -- forest -- camouflage uniforms; brown, beige, black, green. The paramilitaries were usually masked. They were about 100 strong - more or less the company - and they wore these bush hats. Later research showed that these units were identified as so-called Frenki Boys, a unit commanded by Frenki Simatovic.

JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

MR. KAY: Thank you, Your Honour.

Q. In dealing with -- with the conflict, there's been evidence and it's been mentioned about Operation Horseshoe. Is that a phrase with which you're familiar?

A. This term Horseshoe Plan I heard for the first time in the publications of the international press after a press conference of the German minister of defence, Rudolf Scharping, on the 7th of April. And first of all, I thought the entire thing was implausible, because the movements of the Serbian security forces that I could see didn't follow a system or military plan. Later, research from October 1999 to March 2000 showed that this operation plan described by Minister Scharping on the 7th of April and presented by him didn't arise from Belgrade but was originated in the German Ministry of Defence.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, again I think we are arguably moving outside material that this witness should be speaking about in speaking of research from October 1999 to March 2000. He's speaking of something that I think is likely to be covered by other witnesses on the accused's ³²⁹⁵⁵ witness list and is the subject of some controversy within Germany. But unless he's done the research himself, I'm not sure it's going to help us very much to have it second-hand from this witness.

MR. KAY: I think wait for it, because that was going to be the next series of questions and why I raised the subject in the first place.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes.

MR. KAY:

Q. Did you speak to anyone in the German Ministry of Defence concerning this plan that was outlined by the Minister Scharping? And if so, can you identify who you spoke to and what their role was in relation to the Horseshoe Plan.

A. The Horseshoe Plan, and this was crucial for me, that was also my story, the one I published which is probably available to you, was that a head of department Colonel von Kajdacsy, head of department --

Q. Spelling.

A. U, that's -- he's written S-U umlaut -- Cap S, Roman numeral II, and then number 3. And in March 2000, I spoke to Colonel von Kajdacsy. However, before that, several people of the German Defence Ministry had said he had invented the name Horseshoe Plan and were even told he had created it. What this means is that apparently on instructions of the minister himself, he did what he did. And by the way, the German intelligence service, BND, on 5 April 2000 -- sorry, I have to correct myself; 1999, actually warned against using this plan.

Q. Did you speak to any individual who claimed credit for the -- for the plan as it was used by Minister Scharping? ³²⁹⁵⁶

A. I spoke with Kajdacsy, and he indirectly confirmed in this talk with him that what I said was true, and I also published that in my articles. When I asked him whether he was the originator of said operation, Kajdacsy told me he did not speak Serbian nor did he speak Croat. You know that the question is, "Is the name for this Operation Potkova," Serbian, or "Potkovica," Croat. And I then said to him again, Mr. Kajdacsy, did you write this plan? Are you, as it were, the forger of Mr. Scharping's plan? And he said again he spoke neither Serb nor Croat. And I said, then I will write what my sources have confirmed, namely that you came up with this. And then he said with a sigh, "Well, then you need to do what your conscience tells you."

Q. You mentioned two spellings of horseshoe there, one in Croat. If you could just, for the record, spell that, and then the Serbian word for "horseshoe," if you could just spell that.

A. The name was published at the press conference and used throughout by Minister Scharping as "potkova." "Potkova" is a Croat name for a horseshoe whereas the Serbian name would be "potkovica."

Q. Any other direct information that you are able to give concerning this -- this matter of Operation Horseshoe? You told us about Kajdacsy. Anyone else that you spoke to about it concerning the validity of it as a plan?

A. I spoke with General Naumann about this. I quoted him in one of my articles, too, and he said unequivocally that NATO had not taken this material when Minister Scharping had offered it, because A, no second NATO partner was willing to confirm its validity; and B, because I quote ³²⁹⁵⁷ General Naumann, it was more analytical material, in inverted commas. I also had a telephone interview with Ms. Del Ponte's predecessor in office, Louise Arbour, also gave material to Minister Scharping and I published a quote where Louise Arbour told me that she would have taken this had it been a proper operation with a cover page and a stamp and a signature. That would have been a smoking gun for her. But as it was, it was nothing but a nice bedtime story.

Q. We're dealing here with conversations that you've had, and I want to go back to another issue. And actually I'll finish Kosovo first before I go to that.

You've described what you were doing in Kosovo at this period. Did you interview refugees at all in the camps while you were in Macedonia?

A. In my visit in Macedonia, and also later, I discussed the matter with several refugees, and I simply had a very different impression there. The people have seen unthinkable things. They had to go through unspeakable suffering. But there was one major difference to Bosnia, namely young women sort of came and offered up the stories of their rape, and some of them actually sold their stories for money to journalists. That was a major difference to what I saw in Bosnia. In Bosnia the women were far more reticent with telling the story of their rape. Many of them did not mention it at all. I can remember spending a good two weeks meeting regularly with one woman, also to get her to tell me just what had happened to her so I could then write a portrait about this young woman. In Kosovo, this was different everywhere. There were one or two ³²⁹⁵⁸ women where my impression was very like what I saw in Bosnia, but that was definitely not the case all over the place. In Bosnia it was very different.

Q. Another feature of the times that I'd like you to tell us, if you know anything about it, and that concerns any leaflets dropped by aeroplanes during the period of the NATO bombing campaign or even before that, if you came across any such instances.

A. What I saw was several leaflets being dropped depending on target groups. Serb security forces were informed about the situation, about what was happening. There were also within the German parliament statements made by the defence committee of the German parliament reflecting serious discussions intended to ask the media no longer to broadcast anything from Serb television but substitute such images by material provided by the German Ministry of Defence and Ministry of the Interior, images which would have been taken by drones. This went even down to debates as to whether it might make sense to have electronic means of interfering with Serb broadcasting.

I have these documents available, so I could see there were debates, there were plans doing just that.

Q. Did you read any leaflets about -- or written by any figures within the KLA?

A. No. I did not see any leaflets being dropped with Hashim Thaci's signature or Mr. Ceku's signature or that of anyone else from the directorate of the KLA or from the General Staff.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Another five minutes. ³²⁹⁵⁹

MR. KAY:

Q. This period, then, during the NATO bombing, you've told us about the time you spent between the two places, Macedonia, Kosovo. Were you filing regular reports to your newspaper?

A. I did file regularly, and my reports were printed. I primarily talked about what happened in Velika Krusa. Many reports on that. But I also provided reports on life within Kosovo in this black box where nobody really wanted to know anything about it or nobody knew what life in there was really like.

Q. At the conclusion of the bombing campaign, 10th of June, 1999, what did you do after that? Did you remain in the region?

A. I stayed in the region, and I finished and concluded my Kosovo stay with a seven-part series published in December 1999, in which I attempted to study the question of within six months what had changed in Kosovo, and above all, what were the opportunities for the people in Kosovo to live together again.

Q. Moving on now to that other subject I was going to deal with.

MR. KAY: Your Honour, it's probably better to start it as a fresh topic, and I don't want to pad out too much.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Kay. We shall take an adjournment now. 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 12.12 p.m.

--- On resuming at 12.35 p.m.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Continue, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY: Thank you, Your Honour. ³²⁹⁶⁰

Q. Mr. Hutsch, I'll only be a short period of time, and your lawyer Mr. Louschneider has joined us for the cross-examination stage. Moving on from Kosovo, you initially told us about your period that you spent in Bosnia. And I want to ask you about a particular conversation that you had with General Mladic. Is it correct that you interviewed General Mladic concerning Srebrenica?

A. That is correct.

Q. Can you give the Court the date of that interview?

A. That was in March 1996.

Q. Whereabouts were you when you interviewed him?

A. In Sarajevo, where he is today.

Q. And did you question him about what happened at Srebrenica?

A. I asked him what had happened in Srebrenica, and the way he answered the question to me was that the East Bosnian enclaves had to fall in order to enable the peace plan for Bosnia.

Q. Did you discuss with him at all the planning of the attack on Srebrenica?

A. I discussed the attack plan with him. In particular, I tried to discuss with him to what extent he had received or might have received instructions from Belgrade. In that context, Mr. Mladic stated unequivocally that he had not received any orders from Milosevic; his contact was Radovan Karadzic.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Why did you ask him that question?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Because together with several colleagues, I had attempted back then to try and look behind what had ³²⁹⁶¹ happened in Srebrenica. We had tried to find out whether there had been a link between Belgrade and Pale at the time.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY:

Q. Did he express how he viewed his relationship with Mr. Milosevic?

A. In this interview, he did not go further than state what I said before. He would not -- he said he would not accept any orders from Belgrade. We talked about theoretical scenarios. The interview ended up in a yes, no, yes, no game which no longer provided any information, so that we could only use that one statement of his, that he would not accept any orders.

Q. And just for the record, did you publish that interview, the --

A. That interview was published, indeed, yes. It's also available on the web.

Q. Was that the only interview you had with General Mladic or did you have any others?

A. No. That was the only interview I did with him.

Q. And for the record as well, is it right that you interviewed Mr. Milosevic on one occasion?

A. Yes. That was in 1998. We had a 20-minute interview, discussing the situation in Serbia. But only in Serbia. We left out all other areas and specifically discussed the situation in Serbia.

Q. So the conflicts that we're concerned with here were not the subject of that interview?

A. That is correct. ³²⁹⁶²

MR. KAY: I have no further questions. Thank you.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you, Mr. Kay. Mr. Milosevic, any questions?

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please. Microphone, please.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have this other microphone. Perhaps the other one is working. The other one seems to be working. I listened with great care to the examination-in-chief, and this kind of examination is just one further argument to you, Mr. Robinson, that you ought to give me back my right to examine the witness myself. This witness knows a great deal. For instance, he knows about the fact that --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, if you have questions of the witness to add to, to complement, to supplement the examination-in-chief, this is your opportunity. I don't want a speech. I don't want a regurgitation of arguments that we have already heard. There is no need to go over ground that we have already covered. The question of the assignment of counsel is in another forum.

Do you have any questions?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, all I want to do is to present arguments which speak to what I have been claiming. For example, this witness knows full well that --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Then ask the questions. Ask the questions of him.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, I don't wish to use scraps of right that you're giving to me as compensation for taking away ³²⁹⁶³ that right in the first place.

JUDGE ROBINSON: I take it you have no questions to ask. Mr. Nice.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] When you give me back my right, then I shall ask that you recall this witness for me to examine him.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice. Cross-examined by Mr. Nice:

Q. Mr. Hutsch, quite a lot of territory to cover, and as you will appreciate, we didn't know the detail of what you were going to say in advance. We've been able to find some of your material on the net, but I fear not all of it. I don't know if you have copies of your published materials with you.

A. There are at least three boxes which I couldn't move here because I've just returned from Afghanistan.

Q. You haven't brought any samples or any of the particularly significant filings with you?

A. I had submitted some of my articles to the Defence, but obviously not a whole range of everything, because I do not see myself as an instrument of one of the two sides here. I am merely a neutral observer stating the things I did observe, and I want to make clear that I do not belong to one side. I am not a tool of one or the other side.

Q. It may be that I think you'll have to come back tomorrow because we won't finish today, but it may be that I would ask you to make ³²⁹⁶⁴ available such articles that you brought with you simply because we haven't been able to find them on the Internet.

And let's come straight away to your last bit of evidence about speaking to General Mladic. You say that's published on the web. Under what title? How do we find that on the web, because we haven't found it yet.

A. It should be -- if you enter sort of Mladic into Google that should be available, because the interview was translated into English and published in the English language.

Q. [Previous translation continues] ... facility indeed to even search in German as well, so we'll find it, but did you make handwritten notes of that interview?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. Do you have those with you today?

A. No. As I said, I did not bring any documentation with me with the exception of some notes I made over the past eight days for myself.

Q. Subject to what we may see when we look at the published interview, he said to you these two things: That he would not accept orders from Belgrade.

A. That is correct.

Q. But that the Eastern Bosnia enclaves had to fall for there to be a peace plan.

A. That is correct.

Q. Did you pursue that point, the fact that they had to fall, to discover what he meant by that? ³²⁹⁶⁵

A. That was exactly the point I tried to question him to get more precise answers, more details, but he did not go into detail what exactly this was supposed to mean. He simply said in a more general remarks -- a more general remark that one didn't need a patchwork in order to arrange peace for Bosnia.

Q. I'll probably come back to this when I've read the interview rather than to waste time and then -- and then do something twice, but your recollection, please: To you was he saying one way or another that he had contact with Milosevic at the relevant time, or was he denying having contact with him?

A. No. He simply said he would not accept any orders. He did not mention anything about contacts with Mr. Milosevic.

Q. We'll come back to that, then, when I've found the interview, if I succeed in doing so overnight.

I'll ask you matters arising from your evidence pretty much in sequence and then deal with some topics comprehensively, I hope. You've been giving your account of things that KLA leaders said to you, and you've been using the word "impression." In order to give evidence, have you refreshed your memory from any of your notes or from your articles or not?

A. I did have short discussions with Mr. Kay, and there were questions arising from that which I tried to look up again, but I think we've spent about six hours with each other, and basically what I've been saying is from my recollection of events. So I did not re-examine my archives. I didn't go back to the photographs I took, for example, in ³²⁹⁶⁶ Velika Krusa or in Kosovo in general. I did not do that.

Q. When you've attributed effectively to particular KLA leaders particular stated positions, you haven't had the chance to go and look at a note, you're still just relying on memory?

A. That is true. I have really intensively dealt with these people for four or five years.

Q. For four or five years. The KLA you mean?

A. Yes. That is an issue which still keeps us busy and I'm sure will keep us even more busy in the next years.

Q. Starting at the time of this conflict when you went there in 1998, you've been in contact with the KLA since then, have you?

A. Yes.

Q. And maybe if we're better at searching the Internet, may we find more articles that you've written about the KLA in recent years?

A. Yes.

Q. We'll see what we can do. But under your name?

A. Under my name, too, but -- oh, no. That's going to be next Saturday. A radio broadcast will be made on NDR, German northern television/radio, where I'm going to give an eight-minute contribution on the situation in Kosovo. I kept reporting on the KLA, on Kosovo, and on what is happening within the KLA.

Q. And your seven-part series, who was that for, because we haven't tracked that down either.

A. That was Hamburger Abendblatt.

Q. Matters of detail, you spoke of some of the KLA soldiers being ³²⁹⁶⁷ trained in Turkey. Are you able to help us? Was this trained officially by the Turkish government or by the army, or just trained as a matter of fact in Turkish territory?

A. They were trained on Turkish territory but by MPRI. I have, concerning the time period, there was Almedin Alic from 16 December 1997 to 19 March 1998, he was trained in Turkey. Then there was --

Q. When you say "trained in Turkey," there is nobody in a Turkish official position to help us with this?

A. No, nobody from the Turkish official side.

Q. That's fine. Now, you've estimated 80 to 120 foreign officers. What nationalities?

A. For -- starting with Bosnian Muslims to Algerians. Primarily, actually, Algerians, but there were also Saudis, Egyptians, Moroccans, the people who served in the Mujahedin brigades.

Q. And where do you make this estimate from? Is it that you saw 120 and recognised 120 or did you see a certain number in the area where you were and extrapolate that figure? Just what -- what does your evidence amount to?

A. Concerning the piece I wrote for NDR for that, which has been quoted by other authors as well, I had done further research in Kosovo, Macedonia. And on that occasion, I found out that the degree of supplies for these brigades was very high. In other words, every brigade had one of these forward air controllers. Later on, a massive battalion. So I then extrapolated the figure, and on a personal basis my estimate would be 80 to 120, but I never published that because it is a personal estimate ³²⁹⁶⁸ and it is not a number for which I have another source.

Q. And although we've dotted backwards and forwards between pages of the map, your personal experience is all in the south of Kosovo; correct?

A. Central Kosovo, Malisevo and south of that, and then south-east, yes.

Q. Yes. So that we perhaps can have a look at it on an overall map in a minute, but it's only a portion of Kosovo for which you have direct evidence.

A. Absolutely. I'm a reporter who is, as it were, looking from the perspective of a small frog at a huge dung heap. So I can look at certain angles but I don't have the overview. I can talk about what happened in individual cases but I cannot judge and will not judge what happened in Kosovo in totality, as it were.

Q. And coming into Kosovo when you did, you come in after the decade in which human rights organisations had been recording and reporting to the accused on human rights violations?

A. I did observe violations of human rights, and obviously looking at this from a Western European or Western angle, I do not find these acceptable. If MUP sets up a checkpoint and people are being searched in a way which is out of proportion, brutal, when their human rights are being violated, for example, by withholding the right to give information or receive information, that is what Vitun Sura [phoen] has always talked about and that is definitely something I observed too.

Q. Yes. I'm grateful for that answer, but my point - my fault for not expressing it better - is you weren't there. You didn't have personal ³²⁹⁶⁹ experience of the human rights violations in the decade leading up to your arrival in 1998.

A. I do not have personal experiences from the time before September. However, on my arrival in Pristina, as I stated, I did observe this very tense atmosphere which also entailed observing many checkpoints that the MUP had set up where there were attacks against members of the civilian population.

Q. And just to get the sequence of events, of course you came after the massacre at the Jashari compound, where women and children had been killed, but you probably knew of it.

A. I knew about Srebrenica and what was happening in Srebrenica because I had attempted to get to Srebrenica, however, stopped at Tuzla.

Q. Lost in translation. The Jashari compound.

A. I thought you meant Potocari. I'm sorry. No. The attack -- the Jashari clan incident was not something I experienced myself, no.

Q. It was at this stage of your evidence, and I am still dealing with your evidence in the order in which you gave it, that you first gave reference to staged war, using the word "staged." Can you remember and point us to the first newspaper article in time that you wrote about or where you wrote about a staged war?

A. That was again for Hamburger Abendblatt, a story about the Horseshoe Plan, so-called, which was originally my story for which I spent a half a year researching it. When I wrote this article, Semi-truths In War, and my then editor-in-chief had done this title, actually, and I put together the results of my research in two articles. ³²⁹⁷⁰

Q. And that's in 2000, is it?

A. That was in 2000, yes.

Q. Let's, since you mention it, let's dispose of most of my papers and the Horseshoe Plan. The horseshoe plan. You have been following the evidence in this case or not?

A. No.

Q. You know, I suspect, from your inquiries into the alleged Horseshoe Plan that not only did Louise Arbour deal with it in the way she did with you but that it doesn't feature in the indictment in this case?

A. Yes, I'm aware of that.

Q. It's been dealt with by the British government in a committee report. Have you read that committee report?

A. No, I did not read that.

Q. There again it is agnostic as to whether there was any plan going by the name of Horseshoe. And "Horseshoe" is very much a German national interest and controversy, isn't it?

A. Yes. If I see this correctly, there were two things. There was an analysis done by a member of a Bulgarian secret service who analysed the weekly and daily reports of the OSCE and used this in order to help confirm certain arguments. And there were intercepts from Austrian news agencies which went and looked at radio and telephony communications in Kosovo and Serbia which they intercepted. And both these things together were then handed to the governments, and it then turned into what was emerged -- what emerged in Germany as the Operation Horseshoe. That is the status of my research, that is what I stated, and I still maintain ³²⁹⁷¹ that that is part of the German story here.

I also referred to General Naumann's statement, who made very clear that in order to assess the situation in Kosovo by NATO, the German operational plan Horseshoe played no role whatsoever.

Q. There has been evidence in this court that the word "Horseshoe" may have been attached to a much earlier military plan but with a totally different purpose, the purpose of defending the area from an attack coming from the south.

A. I was -- I noticed that, too, but obviously as you said, that would have made the plan pursue a very different objective. Then it wouldn't have been to arrange ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, then it would have been a defensive operation which would have a very different use of force, a very different tactical and operative challenge.

Q. Whether or not the name Horseshoe attaching to an earlier plan somehow got borrowed in the exercise that happened in Germany and led to the controversy involving Scharping, the fact is that Horseshoe is actually a localised German issue and we can disregard it.

A. Yes. I mean, that is certainly your justified assessment.

Q. Just to complete that, because there may be further witnesses notified as coming, it's the subject of a -- or was the subject of an extensive German television programme on Panorama series, and that programme itself drew reaction from the government. I think Minister Blum took a contrary view and so on and so forth. Let's turn to the next topic you dealt with briefly, and I can deal with it similarly briefly. You've spoken of winter exercises, ³²⁹⁷² speaking of -- or Christmas exercises; winter, I think. There were extensive winter exercises involving the VJ, were there not?

A. Yes, but I didn't really consider them to be exercises, because I thought they were Christmas offensive, because exercise has the character of an exercise which was certainly not the case, because people died and it can no longer be regarded as an exercise.

Q. And this is the VJ, for example, deploying troops in a heavy-handed way in Podujevo and killing people?

A. Yes. There were fights in this case, especially the KLA were directly involved and the KLA fighters were killed. But I think this brings us to a philosophical problem as to whether the killing of soldiers in this way can be calculated. But as far as I am aware of the Geneva Convention and the -- the Hague Convention, we're talking about uniformed soldiers. But I -- I don't see how this can be -- there were also attacks on the civilian population during this Christmas offensive.

Q. Indeed. And you'll be familiar with the OSCE publication "As Seen, As Told." You will be familiar with its rigorous method of preparation.

A. Yes.

Q. And although obviously one is not suggesting that every word of what it says is necessarily accurate, there are always human failings, you have no particular reason to doubt the conclusions reached in that book, do you?

A. In individual points, yes, because if these connections are established which haven't been scientifically proved but what the general ³²⁹⁷³ statements "As Seen, As Told" and also what I've observed myself, I have no problem in saying that of course - and I've said this several times in my statement - there was always an eruption of violence and excessive violence, caused by provocation, at least in most cases, as far as I could see, by the KLA.

Q. We'll come to what you say about in most cases in due course, but on the topic of the winter exercises, we have evidence before us, some from this book but also from a witness called Ciaglinski. Would you agree with the assessment that the winter exercises themselves indicated that something was being prepared? They were preparations for future acts?

A. Well, I wouldn't say so. The reports of the German foreign office and the Federal Ministry of Defence say clearly that during the winter offensive there were no remarkable reinforcement of the forces in Kosovo from the outside. Also, there's an analysis of the German Ministry of Defence on the 17th of March. They came to precisely the same conclusion, that it could not be established that the Serbian security forces in Kosovo were to be reinforced.

Also, one assumes that the KLA would make every effort to continue their hit and run tactics and to provoke the inclusion of NATO into the conflict. This is a report of the German Ministry of Defence and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The wording is exactly the same, and this was on the 17th of March.

Q. But we've had evidence, you see, that included in the winter exercises were the deployment of troops outside their barracks. You'd accept that? ³²⁹⁷⁴

A. Yes, of course.

Q. That --

A. There were artillery positions. There were armoured units. There were infantry units outside as well.

Q. There was a block or restriction on conscripts returning home. They had to stay where they were. Do you accept that?

A. Well, recruits and the soldiers of the VJ had -- all leave was cancelled in their cases, and --

Q. But there was ammunition coming in trains, and along with tanks at Kosovska Mitrovica and being deployed around Kosovo. Do you accept that? This is part of the evidence we've had?

A. Yes.

Q. There was an increase in the general type of MUP present on the ground, they now being seen to have a much higher quality of equipment. Do you accept that?

A. Absolutely.

Q. And so seeing all these things together at about Christmastime, do you not allow for the possibility that what you're seeing there is an act of preparation for things to come?

A. Well, you're asking about my personal assessment. That is one variant as to how you could interpret this, but as you could interpret in a different way if you were a military witness to see how the opponents have withdrawn, given up their position of strength. The opposition was then using or taking advantage of this situation to rearm. And what you've described from the MUP and the VJ would be done on the other side ³²⁹⁷⁵ as well. Because the military commanders have responsibility for the soldiers and the lives of the soldiers. And also, the soldiers are also writing letters to their wives and mothers, and I don't think that anyone would simply stand by and observe. That is a matter of interpretation. But if you ask me for my interpretation, it is as I've said.

Q. Well, dealing with interpretation, you've already spoken of General Klaus Naumann, an officer whom you no doubt respect. His assessment of all that he saw happening in Kosovo was that the VJ operation required preplanning and preparation, and he estimated that it would be three or four months of preparation that would have been required.

Now, you were only -- I say "only." I don't mean -- you were in a part of Kosovo, and that was the only part on which you had direct experience. Do you have any reason to doubt General Naumann's assessment of a three- or four-month period of preparation being required for the military action that he saw conducted by the VJ?

A. Well, I'm not aware that General Naumann was in Kosovo himself, but apart from that, the security forces, the Serbian security forces in Kosovo, as when I -- when I came to Kosovo in September, they were at a very high level of equipment, training, and alarm, and I doubt whether these forces that had been fighting for months with the KLA, that they really required further preparation time for military operations, because they were already involved in military operations. And militarily speaking, there was no need for them to continue preparations, because for a soldier to perform his normal duties, to load a tank with ammunition or ³²⁹⁷⁶ to refuel the tank, the time of three to four months, I think, required for this is something I would doubt.

The German Ministry of Defence concludes in its secret analysis, which you have all seen, that from January onwards the main target of the VJ and the MUP was to compensate for the weakness in terms of infantry. And you don't need three to four months to do so, because the training was continuing uninterrupted in Serbia and also in parts of Kosovo.

Q. I'm going to move forward. Perhaps I'll deal with it now and then come back to where I was in the chronology of your evidence. At the end of this unhappy event, there were thousands of refugees outside Kosovo. You know that they were interviewed in a rigorous way by those for the "As Seen, As Told" book and also for the Human Rights Watch book "Under Orders." That rigorous method of interviewing witnesses is entirely different, isn't it, from your method, which was to speak to just a few people from time to time?

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, he hasn't answered the first part of the question so I don't think you should proceed to the second part.

MR. NICE: Very well. I was taking a nod as acknowledgement, and I shouldn't have done.

Q. At the end of this event there were thousands of refugees outside Kosovo; correct?

A. Yes.

Q. They were interviewed, as you know, on a disciplined way for both "As Seen, As Told" and for the book "Under Orders."

A. Well, I think we have to clarify one point. The question from the ³²⁹⁷⁷ Defence, I described Velika Krusa. In Velika Krusa, I could smell the blood. I saw skulls. I saw a child which had been cut up and hung up. I saw burned remains of bones, and I saw bodies in almost every house. And this is part and parcel of what we are talking about now. Let me emphasise once again I am not the instrument of one party. I just wanted to clarify that.

Q. I understand, and I accept it, and you'll discover by the end of the questions I have to ask of you that we may not be at odds, you and I, very much at all, but I need your assistance.

When you spoke to people in Macedonia or elsewhere, it wasn't your job and therefore it wasn't your practice to speak to those witnesses with the rigorous pro forma, tick-box or whatever it was document that "As Seen, As Told" and "Under orders" interviewers used.

A. I think that my way of conducting interviews includes the responsibility that I have to my interview partner. As a wartime journalist, you're seen as a kind of therapist, and you cannot -- you don't have time to work with all of these people in detail. A lot of what these people were reporting, things which were horrible, inconceivable, but in some cases these people were very imprecise. I heard again and again from refugee camps in Macedonia that people had been in areas where paramilitary forces came, and I tried to check this, and people reported of paramilitary forces but not Arkan. And this shows you how these interviews take place.

For me, it's always important to find a second source of what I hear from these people, and -- ³²⁹⁷⁸

Q. Yes.

A. -- it's incredibly difficult to corroborate these terrible things from a second source.

Q. But the reason I give you that opportunity to consider the difference between your inquiries and these that underlie these books is this: If the proper conclusion from the interviews of a large number of refugees - and this is of course a matter for the Court - but if the proper conclusion is, in due course, that there was planning on driving Kosovo Albanians out, that trains and buses were organised for that purpose and that all their documents of identification were taken away in an organised way at the border by the VJ, this does suggest a longer period of planning than you allowed for in your answer, doesn't it?

MR. KAY: I don't think he can deal with questions like this, Your Honour. It's taking other materials, asking him to comment on it, whether it may be right or wrong, and it doesn't deal with the scope of the witness's own experience and evidence which he's come to tell the Court about rather than give his judgement on other materials. I'm not sure that it helps the process at all.

MR. NICE: Your Honour --

JUDGE ROBINSON: I agree. Mr. Nice, you have been plugging away at this, the method of inquiry. You should move on to another topic.

MR. NICE: As Your Honour pleases, but just to explain my position, this witness volunteered, as it were, a lack of planning so far as the VJ is concerned. That is not something we accept. And I think from his answer already given, it's clear that on different premises he ³²⁹⁷⁹ will reach different conclusions. And in my respectful submission, I am allowed to make that point but I will take Your Honour's ruling and move on.

MR. KAY: I don't want us to indulge in speeches over issues, because it's gone far enough already this morning with this witness, and he should be asked questions - his time is valuable - that he can deal with from his own testimony.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. Mr. Nice, move on to another topic.

MR. NICE: Yes, certainly. May I just check one other thing to see if I've got the date of this.

Q. You have spoken of the build-up of forces in the last couple of months of 1998 following the Holbrooke agreement. Would you -- and you were there in September. At the beginning of that period, would you accept that the VJ army could have destroyed or eliminated the KLA as it then was, at the beginning of that period, very quickly?

A. Well, the -- they didn't have the strength of infantry. The KLA had a highly mobile force if you consider that in individual pick-ups and four by fours they had small teams of a maximum of five people on the road. And they conducted ambushes and then disappeared back into the forests and the mountains. And what the Serbian forces could achieve was to attack settlements and groups of houses, to put them under fire with changing success. But they would not have been in a position to destroy the KLA. And in addition, one of the first interviews I did with Adem Thaci [phoen], he said that two-thirds of Kosovo had already been occupied. There was an underground army in the position to control ³²⁹⁸⁰ two-thirds of Kosovo, according to their own statements. Even if you detract a certain amount of this as propaganda, this shows very clearly the capabilities of this underground army.

My views were that the Serbian security forces could only operate in large convoys and that individual vehicles were always the victims of ambushes and attacks by the KLA.

MR. NICE: To remind the Court, incidentally, the proposition I raised comes again from Klaus Naumann's evidence, and the Court may remember that it comes from an interview or discussion he explains he had with the accused.

Q. What was apparent to you as an increase in the KLA resources would have been equally apparent to anyone else, wouldn't it, who had an interest in the conflict?

A. I think that it's one of the major problems here, that there was a certain assistance to the KLA. So there is an interest here in trying to interpret one's own role. And then the NATO didn't have anyone in Kosovo. I know the reports from a German colonel in Kosovo was always entitled "Manipulation and massacre," in this order. NATO, as one of the conflict parties, had an interest in representing their role in a different way. I think this is beyond discussion, and I think one can conclude that there is an organisation, if you go to Globocica and if you look at the pictures of an incredibly large area covering six to eight football fields --

Q. My mistake if you've misinterpreted the focus of my question. When I say it could be understood by others, including the VJ. They could appreciate a build-up of resources by the KLA. ³²⁹⁸¹

A. I'm sure that the Serbian forces saw this development within the KLA and they noticed that the difference between a sniper with a Draganov gun was not so efficient as the sniper with the most modern equipment from Europe or the USA.

Q. Very well. You then turned to some material on Racak. I may have some more to ask you about Racak tomorrow, but I think I can probably deal with what I want to deal with now.

So far as your arrival is concerned, you went with Ambassador Walker, and did that route take you past a decapitated body at the entrance to the village, and did it take you past some other individual bodies of elderly or older men on the left and right as you went up to the gully?

A. Yeah. I heard of a decapitated body near the mosque, which I didn't see with my own eyes. The bodies are said to be individual bodies in the farmhouses to the left and to the right. I saw some photographs of colleagues' who showed a body purposefully covered with planks of wood, but I didn't see this with my own eyes. I found the first bodies when I came into the riverbed which I saw and then consequently described.

Q. Now, only a couple of things about those bodies, because you've already explained that they didn't have the outward signs of being KLA soldiers or anything like that, did they?

A. No. I saw absolutely no uniform parts on these bodies. There was no military shoes, there was no KLA insignia on the bodies, and I saw no weapons either, which would have indicated them belonging to the KLA. Let me emphasise -- emphasise once more, about two-thirds, I can only check on ³²⁹⁸² this from my memory, but two-thirds of them were end of 40s, beginning of their 50s.

Q. You spoke of their bodies being moved to some degree by your colleagues. We've had one bit of evidence about, I think, a head being moved in order to look at the face to see who it was, but are you suggesting any greater degree of movement of the bodies than that, or was it just turning bodies over so that they could be seen?

A. No. It was a change. There were bodies lying on their side or on their backs. They were put upright, for example, at the edge of the slope so that they would have a bit of shade so that the excessive head wounds wouldn't be seen in a photo to be published. And they were taken from their original positions.

Q. Very well. Gun casings were found in the gully, weren't they?

A. Yes.

Q. The injuries to the men in the gully were nearly all to the head, the fatal injuries to the head; is that right? Where there were injuries to the body through clothing, the location of the injury on the body matched the entry position of the wound on the clothing; correct?

A. Yes. I didn't actually go there and conduct some sort of forensic examination of these bodies. That is not my task as a journalist. I can, however, confirm that I saw a great variety of different head injuries. I cannot agree with the opinion of some French colleagues who said there was sort of a lack of brain matter and who actually published things like that.

I think from my own journalistic point of view, I think this sort ³²⁹⁸³ of approach is to be rejected. I don't have to check as if I were some peeping Tom and see whether there is brain matter, yes or no, and pronounce on that. I think that the images which were present, and I particularly remember this old man with his traditional Albanian head gear whose left half of his face was completely removed, the back of his head had been blown off, that sort of image stays with you, and I think this is very much enough to explain to the readers and to the global public what happened.

Q. You expressed your concerns about the failure to preserve the site in a way that might be appropriate for a crime site. You've expressed your concerns about the way Mr. Walker dealt with the incident himself, but I don't -- I've been trying to work out from what you're saying whether you're trying to suggest any more than that. You're not suggesting other than that Mr. Walker found the site in the way that you've described it, for the first time?

A. I don't think the crime scene was secured in any way or had been examined sufficiently by that time. What surprised me was that at this very early stage, Mr. Walker already spoke of a massacre and a crime against humanity when he just entered the area. These are very clearly defined terms. However, it was not ultimately clear what had actually happened in Racak.

I discussed this with some colleagues who had been Racak the day before, who had seen the fighting going on and described it as one of the normal, in inverted commas, scenes in Kosovo, and that is why we were all so surprised to suddenly hear of Racak. Our main focus had been the area ³²⁹⁸⁴ between Mitrovica and Pristina where there was heavy fighting going on. Racak was a bit of a surprise for us.

Q. You told us at a later stage in your evidence, but I'll relate it to Racak in case you can help us. You've told us at a later stage in your evidence about how you'd have concentric circles of the VJ and the MUP on a particular village, the attack being mounted first by the VJ, or by the MUP or by paramilitaries under the protection of the VJ; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you what you see at Racak, in general terms, fit with that sort of attack method?

A. What happened in Racak, I saw traces of gunshots on individual buildings. They could have been made by a 20, 30-millimetre shot, also by a handgun. So it might well be true that that was an attack following the tactics outlined by the MUP. However, whether these forces might have been reinforced on the 15th by paramilitary or other forces is not something that I'm aware of nor did I see that with my own eyes.

Q. And your filing that day, because you slightly cut your visit short or your inspection short, your filing that day would have been with which newspaper?

A. At that time I reported for the newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt.

Q. Unless you have a copy of that one with you, do you?

A. As I said to you, we have been moving and there are lots of boxes. I had no idea what you would need and what you would want. In nine years' time, a journalist writes and publishes an awful lot.

Q. Before we get to the -- ³²⁹⁸⁵

MR. NICE: Perhaps I can just explain to the Court. Of course where I receive for the first time information in quite a lot of detail, as with this witness, I am concerned that I should let you know before I finish exactly what we don't contest in any way. I can't do it in advance because I didn't know what he was going to say, but I hope that by tomorrow I will be in a position to make clear what is not in any way contested as it will probably help you in the long-run.

Q. On deportations and expulsions, you've given an account of people being asked to move to forests and then coming back, but this relates to a few sites in your particular area. Would that be correct?

A. Yes. This refers to what I can charge.

Q. We've had various figures of population -- forced population movements, from various sources, within Kosovo in various times of 1998. Are you able to help us at all with those figures? Because if so, I'll put them to you because we've had them from other evidence, but if you're not able to help with those figures, I'll leave them with other witnesses, you see.

A. I can only put these figures in a context where I can extrapolate, as I said, to a six-digit figure on the basis of conversations with colleagues who had observed matters at other places. So I do assume we are speaking six digits. And I tried to say that we were talking about people displaced on both sides. These refugees will not all have been caused by the KLA going in there and saying, "Now you have to leave your houses." Many people would have been fleeing the fighting, would have been running to escape an attack on their villages. So it is clear, and I ³²⁹⁸⁶ think I emphasised this several times, these figures were the result of the behaviour of both parties to that war.

Q. Yes. And you appreciate that the case here against this accused includes that the movement is driven largely or wholly by Serb forces.

A. To assess whether the movement was caused wholly or exclusively by Serb forces is not something I feel called upon to assess. What I can say is that in the area which I myself saw with my own eyes, I would have said it was evenly balanced. It was very normal procedure adopted by the Kosovo Albanian villages that when there was an attack, or when there was even Serbian forces approaching, they would leave their villages. However, normally in the evening they would return and go back to living in their villages. That was the normal behaviour.

Q. I think we've had some evidence of that, and of course it would be a broadly sensible thing to do, to leave, if you see the Serb forces arriving, wouldn't it?

A. Absolutely.

Q. I'm just going to ask you about a few of the sites that are referred to in our indictment to see if you can help us with particular dates. Can you help us at all with what was happening in Orahovac at about the 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th of March?

A. There was an attack from the south by Serb security forces, and the attack led to Orahovac. The man who really was involved in that very much was Erich Ratfelder, a German journalist for the TAZ newspaper. I am not sure myself whether he saw this with his own eyes, but he really studied that issue closely. As far as I am concerned myself, I did hear ³²⁹⁸⁷ about this attack on Orahovac, and I discussed it several times with the aforementioned Erich Ratfelder, but I think you would need to discuss that yourself with Mr. Ratfelder.

Q. Did you see anything of the convoy of refugees coming from Orahovac?

A. There was a convoy, and it was linked between Orahovac and Suva Reka north of another place, and it would then go on via Prizren, Strpce, to the bypass. Yes, I did see a refugee convoy going on that road. That must have been around the 27th, the 28th.

Q. And this would be around 4.000 people?

A. Yes, I would say that number is correct.

Q. Escorted by both the army and the police?

A. Yes.

Q. Incidentally, did you ever see or find yourself at a border where people were being deprived of their identification papers, having their number plates taken from their cars?

A. That's what I tried to tell you when you interrupted me. Glogocica, at the border crossing there was an area six to eight football pitches large. It was a tractor cemetery one might say. I did take pictures of it. You could see lots of red tractors there. And Glogocica, I think it was the 9th or even the 10th of June when I found the remains of burnt identity documents which had been taken away from people, that is correct. Particularly in the waiting time before being allowed to cross the border to which -- you know the Macedonian authorities had closed the border at first and refugees had to wait before passing the border. So it ³²⁹⁸⁸ was fairly clear that for many kilometres these people were sort of building up, as it were, bunched up towards Kosovo again.

Q. I'm sorry to interrupt. As I'm sure you appreciate, interruptions are to try to focus our questioning. But since you were able to help us with this, did you see VJ taking documents away from people on a routine basis or did you ever see them taking them away from people in convoys, which is something we've also heard of?

A. This area around Glogocica is an area where I can give you some statements. There were members of the 241st Mechanised Brigade on duty. I think it was the 3rd Battalion, but I not -- I wouldn't swear to that. What is a fact, though, is that what was basically border control operations, which they did, but the control of refugees was effected by MUP units. Particularly remarkable in this context was the fact that the Glogocica school building was approached by a white Mercedes, heavily guarded white Mercedes. Someone would leave that car and would be received with great military honour, apparently, and time and again this person gave instructions after which something was happening at that border crossing point. However, I have no idea who that man in the Mercedes was. I only saw this several times through my binoculars.

Q. Did you ever speak to any soldier or MUP policeman about their removing of identification papers from refugees?

A. I discussed it with soldiers, and they said that they were soldiers and they had no police functions. The same comes out of letters which I found later on in Glogocica, letters which had been written but not yet sent by soldiers of the VJ. However, several times MUP policemen ³²⁹⁸⁹ who sometimes had a somewhat mysterious, very ambiguous being where during the day they worked as police officers and during the night they were members of a paramilitary unit, they always confirmed the same thing; in other words, yes, taking away documents was done but there were also violations of human rights, and they admitted that. Moreover, the MUP building in Prizren, and if I remember correctly that was 14th, 15th, 16th, one of these days, of June, was actually stormed by the German armed forces and that building shows very clearly that the PU, the police unit of the KLA, had sort of settled in the torture chambers that MUP had had in that building.

Q. The removal --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, we can work until 2.00.

MR. NICE:

Q. The removal of the documents of which these MUP policemen made written admissions was clearly then done according to what they said or what they wrote under orders. They were acting under instruction to take the documents away.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] What's the matter with this microphone? Well, the microphone seems to be on but there is some interference.

What I wanted to say is that there is complete distortion of this. It's being distortedly interpreted. I'm hearing what he's saying because we talked for two days. When the German -- when the MUP in Prizren was ³²⁹⁹⁰ attacked, they organised a premises which were organised by the KLA, not the MUP. So the theses are constantly being reversed. They're put upside down, and they're being manipulated. That's what he's talking about.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, you will have an opportunity in re-examination to raise this issue.

Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: Thank you.

Q. My question that you hadn't yet got around to answering because of the interruption was that the MUP policemen were clearly acting under instructions to take [not audible] --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, no sound.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you. The decision of a single, let me just call it ordinary beat policeman, that was not the decision of just one lone policeman. It was clearly organised.

MR. NICE:

Q. Can we move to the next scene. Would you know anything personally of what was happening in Prizren between the 25th of March of 1999 and the 11th of April?

A. No. Not personally.

Q. Skenderaj between the 26th of March and the 2nd of May, would you have known anything of that?

A. No. I was walking at the time.

Q. Suva Reka between the 25th of March and the 27th of March?

A. I saw the aftereffects of Suva Reka around the 28th. At that time it was clear there had been attacks from the north, from the heights ³²⁹⁹¹ around the Dulje pass down into Suva Reka. It was also clear, and I'd actually been able to hear that, that the artillery positions at the Dulje pass had provided artillery support for an attack on Suva Reka. It was also clear that at that time houses were on fire, particularly on the margins of the village. There were also isolated houses on fire. I saw that with my own eyes.

I also still heard individual shots being fired from Suva Reka, which meant we avoided actually going to that area ourselves.

Q. Did you see a convoy of people, as large as 5.000 in number, being shepherded by the police, I think it was?

A. What I saw was the convoy from Orahovac, because for a time we walked in parallel to the forests -- to the road, walked in the forest. And I think that was the convoy I saw. I did see several convoys on that road going towards the bypass I mentioned, towards Glogocica. Now, where exactly the people in these convoys came from and what the reason for their flight or displacement was is not something I'm not aware of, but I know there were immense numbers, often treks of refugees stretching over several kilometres, really, moving painfully across that bypass. And the Serb civilian population in some area threw tomatoes at them or hurled insults at them. That, I think, is not in dispute.

Q. You've spoken of burning houses. Did you see, either at this scene or elsewhere, signs of looting by the Serb forces?

A. In Suva Reka itself, I did not see that, but I can confirm such action from Stagovo. Stagovo you can find looking at map 12, map page 12 of the atlas. That is a village north of Kacanik. ³²⁹⁹²

Q. What looting did you see there?

A. There I observed looting when the VJ was retreating. I made photographs at the time which are published where there was a civilian vehicle, and at the back there was even the Albanian flag as a sticker on that vehicle, and that car was actually fully stuffed with all sorts of goods from the village; TV sets and things like that. And the tanks, V80 tanks in the main, they were full of toys, children's toys hung on them. And the village itself was totally devoid of any Albanians.

Q. Any first -- thank you. Any firsthand knowledge of Pec in the same period, 25th of March to the 28th of March?

A. As I said, I saw refugee treks on the Djakovica road towards Prizren, but I have no information and have not made observations myself in the Pec area. I was not there. It was a different defensive zone, too. So I've never been there.

Q. Mitrovica?

A. No.

Q. And if we move on to Djakovica?

A. No. As I said, refugee treks from Djakovica, but no incidents.

Q. Gnjilane?

A. No, in Gnjilane, no. In Vitina I did see, and here in particular the village of Kabas.

Q. Can you give us the map reference for that?

A. That's on map page 12 of the atlas. Vitina, that's in the area here, 30:80. Kabas Has, that's south of Vitina. In Kabas, there was the strategic reserve of the VJ. They were housed there. They also had M-80 ³²⁹⁹³ tanks. That's a T-72 imitation. And both in Kabas and in a forested valley I could myself observe looting, but this looting only took place when the VJ and the Serb security forces were withdrawing.

Q. Nearly finished on this topic. Orahovac between the 25th of March and the 16th of April?

A. No.

Q. Kacanik?

A. Kacanik I only saw on different sort of walks into Kosovo. I saw houses burning in Kacanik. I heard shots being fired, and I observed the group of refugees going towards Djeneral Jankovic. I also saw a refugee camp. I visited that refugee camp several times. That is south-east -- not south-west, south-east of Kacanik between Djurdjev Dol and Nikovce in the forest. That's a refugee camp houses between 10 and 15.000 Kosovo Albanians. And this camp was actually was maintained for almost the duration of that war.

Q. Decani? Decan or Decani? And finally for those sites covered in the indictment as, I think, Vucitrn?

A. [No interpretation].

MR. NICE: Your Honour, I know we can sit until 2.00, but if the Court would be prepared to rise now, I'd be very grateful because I can just check on what there is outstanding in order to make matters swifter tomorrow.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. We'll rise. Mr. Nice, you said you were going to try to track down the interview with Mr. Mladic.

MR. NICE: I'm certainly going to try to do that. And of course ³²⁹⁹⁴ if we get it in advance and if the Court would like to have it in advance, I'll make it available.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, we would. Any help you can give in that regard, Mr. Kay?

MR. KAY: Yes. We'll try and do that.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch, we will adjourn until tomorrow morning at 9.00 a.m.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, just before we do adjourn, if in the course of our researches this afternoon we find that there are -- that we're mystified as to a publication that we should be searching for, may we, through Mr. Kay with your leave, ask a question of the witness so we can find out where we should be looking?

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, for that purpose and that purpose only. We are adjourned.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Perhaps one matter. I am not really prepared to be here tomorrow. I only expected to be here today and I have a very important professional engagement which necessitates my leaving tonight.

JUDGE ROBINSON: We were not aware of that, Mr. Kay.

MR. KAY: No, I wasn't either. I don't know whether the witness is able to make any arrangements, make any telephone calls to try and alter that, because it would not really be in his interests to have to return on another occasion and all those arrangements that have to be made as well as the resources.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch, do you understand what counsel is ³²⁹⁹⁵ saying? If you can't be here tomorrow, then your evidence will have to be taken again at a subsequent date, and it would be better if it is possible for you to try to arrange to be here tomorrow.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I will certainly try. Worst case, I may first of all have to travel back today and come back tomorrow morning. That is probably the only sensible solution. I had been told very clearly that my statement was originally planned to be tomorrow but it had then been moved to today, so I have this very important professional engagement, so at the very least I have to be -- I have to take up that possibility tonight. So what I could offer is probably return tomorrow to make my statement.

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hutsch, then, would returning on Thursday be more convenient for you?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thursday would be even worse, I'm afraid, because I have a very important meeting with two colleagues. We are planning to write a book on Srebrenica, which is to be published next year, and we've got a very important meeting that should have been scheduled to start tomorrow. Now, I would move that to tomorrow afternoon so that the other appointment I have I can do this afternoon so I can be back on time tomorrow morning but would then leave tomorrow afternoon. If that was an acceptable compromise, I think we could agree to do that.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. That would be -- that would be acceptable, yes. Thank you very much.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Then we'll do that. Thank you. ³²⁹⁹⁶

JUDGE ROBINSON: We're adjourned.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.59 p.m., to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 13th day of

October, 2004, at 9.00 a.m.