JUDGE MARINKOVIC DESTROYS MR. NICE’S CROSS-EXAMINATION

JUDGE MARINKOVIC DESTROYS MR. NICE’S CROSS-EXAMINATION
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - April 6, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Mrs. Danica Marinkovic, the Investigating Judge who led the inquiry of events in the Kosovo village of Racak on January 15, 1999 was cross-examined by prosecutor Geoffrey Nice at the Hague Tribunal’s trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday.

Her testimony resumes after a nearly 2-week break in the proceedings taken for the Easter holidays. Her evidence dealt with the forensic evidence that she gathered in Racak. She testified that she found evidence of KLA activities in Racak including, trenches, weapons, machinegun nests, bunkers, and shell casings in the hills overlooking the village. In the village itself she found the KLA’s headquarters, which contained weapons, KLA duty rosters, and uniforms.

During her examination-in-chief, a number of videotapes were exhibited, these tapes showed the police entering Racak, and the presence of OSCE and media representatives on the spot at the time. It is clear from the tapes that there was a firefight between the police and the KLA. The tapes contained footage of the trenches, weapons, and various other proof of KLA activity.

Judge Marinkovic’s testimony also dealt with autopsies that international forensic teams from Serbia, Belarus, and Finland performed on the 40 bodies that were found in the village. The autopsies revealed that the bodies had been killed from gunshot wounds that came from several different angles, from different weapons, and from a long distance. The autopsies revealed that 37 of the 40 bodies had gunpowder traces on their hands, which means that they had been firing weapons.

From the forensic evidence, it is obvious that there was no massacre in Racak. There was a clash between the Police and armed members of the KLA terrorist organization, in which a number of terrorists were killed.

The forensic evidence is clear and convincing. There is no point in attempting to contest it. Mr. Nice saw this, and focused his cross-examination on character assassination in stead.

Mr. Nice led his cross-examinaion with an article Natasa Kandic wrote for B92’s website. Ms. Kandic, who Mr. Nice praised as “the conscious of the Serbs,” claimed, without naming a single source that some police had been ordered to kill an Albanian family by Judge Marinkovic.

This was too much, even for the tribunal, and Judge Robinson scolded Mr. Nice for leveling such a severe allegation on such a flimsy basis. He told the prosecutor to provide corroborating evidence for such an extreme accusation. Mr. Nice could not provide anything besides Ms. Kandic’s baseless assertion, and so he dropped the issue saying that he was “only concerned with the reputation of the witness.”

In spite of getting burned once, Mr. Nice persisted in praising Ms. Kandic, he said that she “publishes what others don’t have the courage to.” Mr. Nice went on to read from the same report. Ms. Kandic claimed that Judge Marinkovic had covered-up evidence connected to the killing of Fehmi Agani, a Kosovo-Albanian politician.

Judge Marinkovic dismissed Ms. Kandic’s remarks as absurd. She then pulled out the case files concerning the Agani case. The files reveal that Agani was killed by the KLA, and not by the police as Ms. Kandic claimed. Agani was a leading member of the LDK party, which was connected to FARK (a Kosovo-Albanian paramilitary group that rivaled the KLA).

Mr. Nice was amazed that Judge Marinkovic had the files handy. The befuddled prosecutor asked her how she knew that he would rely on Natasa Kandic’s articles. As if he were on a mission to prove that he had lost his mind, Mr. Nice asked the witness if she was receiving intelligence information from inside of the OTP.

Mr. Nice went on to ask the witness questions about her personal life and her family, specifically about her husband, and whether he had participated in Kosovo-Serb demonstrations during the 1980s.

When he finally turned his attention to Racak, he did not ask very much about the forensic evidence. Instead, he criticized Judge Marinkovic for not taking statements from witnesses.

This proved to be a weak line of cross-examination for the prosecutor, because it was outside of Judge Marinkovic’s mandate to take witness statements if the public prosecutor did not ask for them. Secondly, videotapes, and other forensic evidence exist. Whatever people might have said does not matter when there is hard physical proof, including videotapes that prove what actually happened.

The only piece of forensic evidence that Mr. Nice tried to refute was Judge Marinkovic’s observation that a lot of the corpses were wearing identical leather belts.

Mr. Nice showed her pictures of dead bodies who he claimed were “victims” from Racak. Mr. Nice observed that the corpses in the pictures he showed were all wearing different belts.

Judge Marinkovic pointed out that there were leaves on the trees in the pictures that Mr. Nice was showing. These could not be the same bodies from Racak, because there were no leaves on the trees in the middle of winter. The events in Racak took place on the 15th of January, in the dead of winter; there would not have been leaves on the trees.

Then Judge Marinkovic really turned the tables on Mr. Nice. She asked him where the pictures were taken, and he didn’t know.

Mr. Nice had almost two weeks to prepare his cross-examination over the Easter break, but he was remarkably ineffective.

Surprisingly, Mr. Nice did not attempt to challenge her testimony that Albanian judges kept their jobs. The indictment claims that Kosovo Albanian judges were fired en-masse during the early 90s. Judge Marinkovic’s testimony directly contradicts that claim, and Mr. Nice did not attempt to challenge her.

In stead, Mr. Nice wasted his time (and everybody else’s) by quoting Natasa Kandic’s hysterical nonsense, and asking the witness irrelevant questions about her husband.

Mr. Nice failed miserably, he was unable to challenge the forensic evidence regarding Racak, he failed to damage the credibility of the witness, and he did not even bother to challenge other very important aspects of her testimony that directly contradict indictment.

President Milosevic began his re-examination of Judge Marinkovic late on Wednesday. He will complete his re-examination when the trial resumes on Thursday morning.