GEN. GOJOVIC CONCLUDES HIS TESTIMONY
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - March 22, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

General Radomir Gojovic, the head of the Legal Directorate at the Yugoslav Defense Ministry during the 1999 Kosovo war, continued his testimony at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice spent most of the day engaged in a futile attempt at cross-examination. Mr. Nice began by accusing the military judiciary of being derelict in its duty because it did not investigate claims that a massacre had taken place at Racak in February 1999.

Gen. Gojovic had to spend a great deal of time explaining to Mr. Nice that the military judiciary did not investigate Racak because the Army was nowhere near Racak at the time. The military judiciary only investigated matters that involved the military.

Gen. Gojovic patiently explained to the prosecutor that the district court in Pristina was tasked with investigating Racak, not the military.

Mr. Nice unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the credibility of the witness by bringing up statements from people who had spoken out against him. Among his detractors were the lawyers of an accused that Gojovic had convicted when he was a judge, a military prosecutor that Gojovic had fired for being a drunk and getting into a fist-fight, and the ubiquitous Natasa Kandic.

Mr. Nice did not deny that a number of soldiers were prosecuted both during and after the war for crimes they had committed in Kosovo. Nonetheless, he went on to accuse the Serbian judiciary of being remiss in its duty to carry out criminal prosecutions after the end of the war.

Gen. Gojovic explained to the untoward prosecutor that certain cases could not be prosecuted after the war because UNMIK refused to cooperate with the Serbian judiciary, and the Military Technical Agreement prevents Serbian police and military personnel from going to Kosovo to conducting investigations.

Mr. Nice scoffed at the notion that UNMIK was uncooperative, and challenged Gojovic to give an example of non-cooperation. The witness easily rose to the prosecutor’s challenge and pointed to an example where UNMIK refused to help the Serbian judiciary arrange for an Albanian woman to testify against a VJ soldier who had been charged with raping her.

In re-examination from Milosevic, the point against UNMIK was sharpened even further. Gen. Gojovic confirmed that UNMIK maliciously blocked the work of the Serbian courts, especially when it intervened to prevent Hungary from extraditing Agim Ceku to Serbia last year.

Gen. Gojovic testified that UNMIK has failed in its duty at every turn. Failure to cooperate with the Serbian Judiciary is the least of the problems with UNMIK. Under UNMIK’s auspices, 300,000 non-Albanians have been ethnically cleansed from Kosovo. Rampaging Albanian mobs, which freely operated under the watchful eyes of 40,000 KFOR and UNMIK personnel, have destroyed almost 200 medieval Christian churches in Kosovo, and murdered scores of non-Albanians.

The Judges, desperate to keep evidence against UNMIK out of the trial transcript, pretended not to understand the relevance of the evidence about UNMIK and prohibited Milosevic from pursuing that line of questioning.

The relevance is obvious. Mr. Nice derided the witness and accused him of being a liar when he testified that UNMIK would not cooperate with the Serbian judiciary. This evidence is directly related to the credibility of UNMIK, and its disinclination towards carrying out its mandate as defined by Resolution 1244.

During the cross-examination Mr. Nice implied that an inadequate number of soldiers were prosecuted for crimes. In spite of the prosecutor’s opinion, the fact remains that Gojovic supplied documentation that shows more than 2,000 VJ soldiers had been convicted of crimes in Kosovo, by the military judiciary, as early as May 15, 1999.

In spite of the round the clock NATO bombing, and in spite of KLA’s terrorist attacks, the Yugoslav military judiciary persevered and continued to discharge its duty. Gen. Gojovic said that charges were brought every time evidence of a crime was uncovered. He testified that there were no exceptions to that rule.

During the cross-examination Mr. Nice asked if the military judiciary undertook investigations into claims of ethnic cleansing on the basis of what was being reported by CNN and the BBC.

In a fruitless effort to sharpen his point out, Mr. Nice played a CNN video clip where the reporter accused the Serbs of ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately for Mr. Nice, the CNN reporter was quite the little drama queen. The camera opened on a shot of the Yugoslav flag flying at a border crossing, and the reporter commented, “Expelled under the symbol of Serbian nationalism, these Albanian refugees…” and it went on like that.

Of course the military judiciary did not waste its time investigating the fictitious claims of CNN. It would be like expecting the Pentagon to launch an inquiry every time Al-Jazeera accuses American soldiers of an atrocity.

In re-examination, Milosevic asked Gen. Gojovic about the CNN clip. The witness said that the reporter was acting ridiculous, as if he were some sort of sports commentator. He said that the commentary about the Yugoslav flag at the border being “the symbol of Serbian nationalism” demonstrated that the story was crude propaganda; adding that it is common for all nations to fly their flag on their border posts.

During the cross-examination, Mr. Nice brought up the fact that the VJ exhumed the bodies of 101 ethnic Albanians at Izbica. According to the witness the exhumations were made in order to carry out identifications, autopsies, and to learn the circumstances of their deaths.

Documentation concerning the exhumations is publicly available from the military judiciary, and it was part of the documents that Gojovic brought with him to the ICTY. After the investigations, the bodies were buried at a military instillation in central Serbia. Mr. Nice said that this was evidence of a cover-up. Mr. Nice said that the Serbian Government was hiding the bodies to conceal evidence of its alleged crimes.

As President Milosevic pointed out, Mr. Nice’s reasoning has one flaw, it was never a secret that those bodies were exhumed and brought to central Serbia. Therefore it is ridiculous to speak of hiding bodies, especially when the operation isn’t a secret and when the relevant documents are available to the public.

After Gen. Gojovic concluded his testimony, Judge Danica Marenkovic took the stand. Mrs. Marenkovic was the investigating Judge who investigated the alleged massacre at Racak in January 1999. She is an ethnic Macedonian and was elected to her judgeship in 1984 by the Kosovo Assembly.

Because she began her testimony late in the day, things did not get past her CV. She will continue her testimony tomorrow.

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