Today's first witness, B-083, demonstrated again the flimsiness of the Prosecution's case and the desperation of the OTP (Office of the Prosecutor). Why flimsiness? Because, in the absence of anything stronger, the Prosecutors sought to prove that Serbia provided financial aid to the Serbs on the other side of the Drina. But that is a common knowledge, an undisputed fact and certainly not a war crime. And why desperation? They manipulated heavily the testimony of B-083, fabricating his several previously given written statements, tricking him into signing the English version without him fully understanding it and trying to hide that by keeping his entire testimony in the private session.

Only the last 10 minutes of the cross-examination were held in the open session, but it was enough to reveal the whole scam. B-083 thus joined those Prosecution witnesses whom they regretted they had ever summoned: having received only few days ago at The Hague the Serbian version of "his" statements, B-083 corrected in his handwriting practically each and every paragraph, striking them out and adding in the margins his explanations which invalidated the statements in toto.

B-083, introduced only vaguely as an "officer in the Ministry of Defence of Serbia in 1991," started his testimony yesterday, but it lasted only 10 minutes before the proceedings were adjourned for the day and it was in the open session. The only thing Nice covered then was the claim that the Government of Serbia deliberated in one of its sessions in November 1991 the aid for the Serbs in Croatia, and the amount mentioned was in the neighborhood of 92 million DM.

Today, B-083 finished his examination-in-chief, but most of it was in private session. Therefore, the public was unable to follow the explanation about those alleged millions.

Back in the open session, we saw that the examination-in-chief was over and that amicus curiae Stephen Kay was arguing with Mr. May over the allotment of time for the cross-examination, and the constant changing in the order of witnesses.

Each time May spoke, he managed to muddle the issues, "explaining" that indeed the Accused has to be granted a certain amount of time, but he is not to waste it on arguments and quarrels with the witness.

Kay tried to point out this is a technical matter and the main thing is that Nice 'moves like an express train', covering a large number of important issues extremely briefly and superficially, which in turn radically shortens the allotment of time for the Accused and makes it impossible for him to cover those issues at all. He also noticed that it is Nice who leads the most important witnesses, like Kucan was, who was processed in only 1 day. Therefore, the time spent for the examination-in-chief could not be the standard by which the allotted time for the cross-examination is to be measured.

Apparently, the OTP produces a weekly list of witnesses complete with the time planned for each examination-in-chief, and since the general rule has been to allot approximately the same time for the cross-examination, the Accused can plan his questioning accordingly.

But then Nice comes up, drastically cutting the actual time of his questioning of a witness to, say, half an hour instead of the planned two hours, simply by being superficial and thereby setting the low time standard. And, he constantly reshuffles the witnesses, hampering the preparation of the Defense.

Nice tried to prevent the judges from allotting too much time to this cross-examination, by appealing to the Chamber to 'exert pressure on the amicus and the Accused' (I failed to understand what kind of pressure and in relation to what - perhaps to make them shut up).

Nice also half-complained and half-flattered: "I have to note that in a short time the Accused has developed enviable skills of cross-examination." What he meant by that was probably that the Accused was now so much better at it that he could wrap it up in much less time.

The troika in the scarlet robes put their heads together, murmuring for two minutes among themselves and then May pronounced: "An hour and fifteen minutes." Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat, or a generous nobleman tossing coins to a beggar: 15 minutes longer than Nice had for the examination-in-chief.

So, not only haven't we seen what the witness had to say, and how rich were the issues he covered, we also couldn't judge whether an hour and fifteen would be reasonably long enough to cross-examine.

But, that was not all. Milosevic first tried to verify with May that the issue of the place of employment of this witness was not for the private session. May answered he also believed this had been mentioned in the open session. But the moment Milosevic started to mouth his first question, something to the effect of "You have been working…", Nice jumped up, saying: "I believe this could infringe the security measures." May seconded: "Yes, I think it might. We go to the private session." And nearly all of the cross-examination, more than one hour of it, was closed to the public!

When the session again became open again, there were Milosevic and the witness at the end of the careful demolition of the written statements by the latter and of the Prosecution's credibility.

Milosevic said that there was virtually not a single paragraph in these statements that had not been corrected in writing by the witness. B-083 confirmed: "That's right." He explained there were so many mistakes and even some totally unrelated, irrelevant and invented stuff, that he believed it was unfair that Milosevic is to be charged with these things or the Tribunal's time wasted like this.

B-083 used the words "silly" and "preposterous" when describing these passages from "his" statements. He spoke directly to Milosevic: "I apologise to you", and he requested these issues to be disregarded. He said he had made a mistake by being insufficiently cautious, and signing this without having read it or having received it in Serbian.

Milosevic quoted several quite outrageous passages from one of these statements, allegedly in direct speech by the witness: "I'll give you another example of illegal fundraising - the Police had been involved in car theft." He said to the witness: "Here you have added in your handwriting: 'Not correct'." B-083 confirmed this, saying he also wrote that it should be explained to the Accused, along with an apology, the circumstances of this statement.

B-083 only got the Serbian version 5 days ago. Apparently, the OTP Investigator Gerald Sexton had tricked the witness into signing the English version years ago, saying he'll be able to 'explain everything at The Hague', but then B-083 found out that practically everything had been invented or too liberally interpreted, but as if the witness had been quoted verbatim complete with the inverted commas ("I'll give you another example…"). The witness now stated that, if he only had a chance to write his statement with his own hand, "we would not be having 1 minute of this discussion'.

Here's another gem: Milosevic said that one of the statements contained the claim by the witness about our state budget, which had 'one secret segment, called a black fund'. B-083 simply said there's no way he could have said that.

Judging by some other examples from the OTP's work of fiction that Milosevic quoted, B-083 spoke to the Investigator quite broadly and openly about the situation in the Ministry of Defense, where internal squabbles and embezzlements were rife (and for which, as Milosevic pointed out that 2 Ministers had been arrested at that time), and cunning Mr. Sexton took it all and gave it a nice spin, necessary for the Indictment.

B-083 had clearly misunderstood what it meant to give a statement for the court, presuming it meant one should open up one's heart and spill out every large and tiny office happening, giving the Investigator a free hand to weave a story out of it, not even bothering to read what the nice, understanding gentleman wrote in his name. Now he was understandably angry at being bamboozled.

B-083 continued to complain about some of his former misbehaving office colleagues even to Milosevic, saying that some of those who did it were still holding their high positions today "and you and me are sitting here". Milosevic drove the point home: "What possible connection all these things could have with what's going on here?" The witness answered: "None whatsoever."

Gradually, B-083 and Milosevic began to discuss those events in almost friendly manner, chatting and not bothering to keep the pause between questions and answers, like in a normal conversation. Milosevic would quote another invented passage and they would together marvel at how brazen the OTP had been, the witness repeating 'I have never said something like that'.

B-083 even volunteered in his explanation of one particular instance that he had 'never went there to inspect', forcing Nice to interject: "I do not know whether the witness is aware he's in the open session?" May also interrupted the cozy chat once, warning both not to overlap, reminding witness he is "here to testify" and Milosevic is "here to cross-examine," and not to have a conversation. Milosevic was quite pleased with himself for exposing once more the sleazy modus operandi of the OTP and disrupting so successfully this show trial, that he calmly answered to May he was quite pleased to have the opportunity to chat with this man, whom he has never met before.

Milosevic and the witness even tried to establish the method of creating certain passages of the statements by the OTP. The problem was, as many times before with those written statements, that there were no questions to which these statements were answering, only the unbroken, spun story.

B-083 was guessing what the original questions by the Investigator must've been: probably the Investigator asked, for instance, what would be the regular chain of command in the government for any given issue. He got a detailed answer about the whole structure with the President of the Republic at the top of the pyramid. Then the OTP retold this explanation as if it had been an answer to a specific accusation against Milosevic.

B-083 used the ship metaphor, describing the subordination, but he was not answering the question of whether the captain organized the piracy. It was as if the Investigator had asked: Who runs the ship? and got the answer: The captain, who has officers under him. Then, the Investigator spun the question this way: Who organized the piracy using this ship? , and coupled it with the original question: The captain, who has officers under him.

It was obvious that both Milosevic and B-083 were displeased when Mr. May announced that there were only 5 minutes left, so they quickly tried to cover several more inventions (Milosevic quoting them and asking whether they were correct, the witness answering: "Not a chance. Please, disregard this.") They parted almost friends, I'm sure.

Mr. Tapuskovic got his 2 minutes, and he used them to clarify the only issue from the testimony mentioned by the witness in the open session - those millions of Deutsche Marks requested/planned/given by Serbia to the Serbs in Croatia. He wanted to make a distinction between the sums requested and planned and those actually paid. B-083 confirmed that he personally handled some of these payments, but these were all amounts in dinars, it was aid and hardly the amount stated. Tapuskovic was pleased: "I have no further questions."

Nice had a chance for a redirect, but guess what? The public couldn't see it, again. He said: "We have a couple of additional questions, but they're for a private session." And the screen went blank.

I would suggest much simpler explanations: these people did not volunteer to testify for the Prosecution, they had been summoned or/and threatened into it with possible indictments against themselves. And then the following happened: for instance, Captain Dragan had NOT changed his testimony nor succumbed to a powerful aura, but had been bamboozled by the OTP in the same manner as today's witness B-083.

Their original written statements had been liberally invented, suggestively worded and devoid of questions by the Investigator and they were tricked into signing. Not having seen the examination-in-chief of B-083, I can only suppose that it had been pretty much like that one of Captain Dragan: Prosecutor Nice rushing, skipping and sliding through the invented statement 'like an express train', sometimes not making sense at all, leaving the witness to stare in disbelief and to simply say 'yes' to whatever construction proffered. Too bad there was this damned cross-examination and the possibility to demonstrate that the testimony was not at all what the witness has signed, meant or wanted to say.

The second witness today, who is to continue tomorrow, is an expert on history from Harvard (the font of knowledge for the ICTY), who testifies about the Serbian nationalism in 20th century as she had penned it in her report commissioned by the OTP. The very definition of an expert must've been wildly stretched after the ICTY set up shop.