JUDGE ROBINSON'S ACTIONS PROVE THAT POLITICS AND PROPAGANDA ARE THE NAME OF THE GAME AT THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - June 15, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

The trial chamber cut Slobodan Milosevic’s re-examination of defense witness Gen. Obrad Stevanovic short on Wednesday. Presiding Judge Patrick Robinson cut off the re-examination and said that he was “absolutely disgusted” by Slobodan Milosevic’s conduct. He angrily accused Milosevic of “abusing the court shamelessly.”

What was the horrible offense that Milosevic perpetrated against the tribunal? He dared to question the authenticity of the videotape allegedly depicting the execution of six Srebrenica Muslims that Mr. Nice played during Stevanovic’s cross-examination.

Of course the tribunal did not put it in those terms. The argument, which was advanced by the prosecution and accepted by the trial chamber, was that questions related to the contents of the video and/or its authenticity did not rise out of cross-examination.

Mr. Nice argued that the tape was not played for the truthfulness or authenticity of its contents. The prosecutor said that he only played the tape to see if the witness could identify any of the people on it.

Mr. Nice claimed that Milosevic’s questions regarding Srebrenica were intended to influence public opinion. The trial chamber agreed with Mr. Nice and that’s what prompted the trial chamber to cut-off the re-examination.

Mr. Nice’s argument is non-sense; it simply isn’t true. The prosecutor did far more than just ask the witness to identify people on the tape. He made a number of claims about the tape during cross-examination. He claimed that the tape depicted Muslims from Srebrenica being executed by a group called the “Skorpions.” He claimed that the Skorpions were a unit of the Serbian MUP. Mr. Nice also claimed that thousands of Muslims from Srebrenica shared the same fate as the six depicted on the videotape.

Under the tribunal’s rules, Milosevic has the right to use re-examination to present documents and ask questions that refute the case put to the witness during cross-examination. That is the whole point of re-examination, and that’s all Milosevic was doing.

This incident is really illustrative. Milosevic was prevented from re-examining his own witness because the tribunal was concerned with politics. They were concerned that the political effect of his questions would be harmful to their agenda. Anybody who saw what happened today and still believes that the Hague Tribunal is a legitimate court of law is a fool. The Hague Tribunal is not a court of law; it is an instrument of politics.

Need more proof? On June 14th, ICTY president Theodore Meron appeared on the American TV network PBS, as a guest on the “News Hour” program. PBS correspondent Ray Suarez interviewed him; take a look at what Meron had to say about the potential capture of Radovan Karadzic and this videotape:

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk about those senior people. You mentioned your hope that Ratko Mladic will be in custody soon. Carla del Ponte, the United Nations high commissioner, spoke very directly of how she hoped his arrest was imminent. Why is there this sudden drumbeat? What information do you know that is leading people to be so optimistic about his apprehension, and what about Radovan Karadzic?

THEODORE MERON: Well, I will not talk about information as a judge. I'm neither a prosecutor nor an investigator. I do not deal with the police, the arrest aspect. But what I can tell you that for the first time, I sense a real recognition by the government in the area that they must do what they're obligated to do -- to the tribunal, to the United Nations Security Council, to the international community, and they realize that it is in their interest to do so.

You have shown earlier today the chilling video of some of the acts which, apparently, occurred in Srebrenica. I don't want to speak to the forensic, evidentiary aspects of the tape, but let me tell you this: There is no question that this tape is having -- has been having a real impact on public opinion in the region.

I think it will act as a very strong antidote to the rampant denial that we have seen in countries like Serbia, for example. They did not want to realize how terrible were the events in Srebrenica, in its character, in its magnitude. Srebrenica atrocity is reminiscent, really, of the events that occurred during the Second World War. And we in Plaecia (ph) The Hague just about a year ago reached a very important judgment in the case of Gen. Karadzic (sic) where we called the events in Srebrenica by their proper name -- genocide.

/ / / END EXCERPT / / /

Meron believes that the tape is having “a real impact on public opinion” among the Serbs, which he apparently thinks will be linked to the capture of Radovan Karadzic.

Politics is what this is all about; the tribunal wants to use this tape to turn the Serbian people against Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic so that they will be handed-over to the tribunal. The tribunal played the videotape at Milosevic’s trial because they know that it is broadcast in Serbia and everybody would see it.

The tribunal cut-off the re-examination of Gen. Stevanovic because they were afraid that Milosevic would expose the tape as a fraud, and ruin the political effect that they think they’re having.

Before they cut him off, Milosevic did manage to do some damage to the allegations made by Mr. Nice.

Mr. Nice tendered a packet of documents and witness statements that he said proved the authenticity of the tape. One of the statements said that the tape was authentic because the person giving the statement had made a copy of it.

Another document provided by Mr. Nice showed that a Srebrenica-Muslim who was reported “missing” after the fall of Srebrenica was exhumed at Trnovo. Of course Trnovo is the place where the videotape was allegedly filmed. The only problem was that the body had been exhumed in 1993 – the person in question had been dead for at least two years before Srebrenica fell, yet he is counted among the seven or eight-thousand victims of the so-called “genocide”.

In response to Mr. Nice’s allegations that the Serbian MUP had taken part in atrocities at Srebrenica, Milosevic asked questions about the case of Drazen Erdemovic and the 10th Sabotage Detachment.

In 1996 the Serbian police arrested Erdemovic in Novi Sad and charged him with war crimes for the execution of 1,200 Srebrenica-Muslims. Stevanovic explained that Erdemovic was handed over to the Hague Tribunal because he was a Croatian citizen and because he wanted to go to The Hague in stead of standing trial in Serbia.

When Erdemovic arrived in The Hague he confessed to personally killing hundreds of Muslims from Srebrenica. Erdemovic only served four years in prison. Had he been convicted of the same crime in Serbia he would have likely been given the death penalty, according to Stevanovic.

Stevanovic testified that a group known as “Pauk” was arrested in Serbia in February of 2000. He said that every member of that group had been part of the same 10th Sabotage Detachment as Drazen Erdemovic had been in Srebrenica. The group was a mercenary group that had also been active in Zaire. It was a multi-ethnic group Muslims, Serbs, and Croats were all members. In 2001, after Milosevic was overthrown in the Coup d’etat of 5 October 2000, the DOS government set the “Pauk” members free.

Evidence that Serbia arrested the perpetrators of crimes in Srebrenica directly contradicts Mr. Nice’s assertion that members of the Serbian Interior Ministry committed crimes in Srebrenica.

Milosevic claims that the 10th Sabotage Detachment (later known as “Pauk”) was in the service of foreign intelligence, and that it perpetrated a large-scale massacre of Srebrenica-Muslims. To bear the point out he read statements from members of DutchBat who claimed that the atrocity was staged, and from Gen. Philippe Morillon who told the French parliament that "I was convinced that the population of Srebrenica was the victim of a higher interest, of a state reason, the raison d'etre, but this higher interest which was located in Sarajevo and New York but certainly not in Paris. Had I been able to evacuate all those who had wanted me to do so at the time that I intervened in Srebrenica, we could certainly have saved a number of human lives."

According to a recent article by American political analyst Stella Jatras: Ibran Mustafic (a Muslim member of the B-H parliament) gave an explosive interview on Aug. 15, 1996, to Slobodna Bosnia ("Free Bosnia," A Sarajevo newspaper). Mustafic was quoted as saying that the betrayal of Srebrenica "was consciously prepared and that the Bosnian president and the army command were involved in this business," and that was to sacrifice Srebrenica in order to gain sympathy of the West. Of his internment in a Serbian jail, he writes, "I should have died. They [the Bosnian Muslim authorities] don't appreciate living people. They appreciate the dead because they cannot talk."

Everything is clear; Srebrenica was staged from the beginning by the Bosnian Muslim regime and their foreign backers. The videotape is just part of the show, the tribunal doesn’t care about establishing the truth; they only care about politics and public perception – in a word: propaganda.

After the re-examination of Gen. Stevanovic was unceremoniously cut-off, Dragan Jasovic was cross-examined by the prosecution.

Jasovic has already given evidence in chief. He is the Serbian police officer that had the documents and witness statements proving that 30 of the 40 bodies found in Racak belonged to KLA members.

Jasovic first came to the tribunal as a prosecution witness in the Limaj case, he was added to the list of Milosevic’s defense witnesses when Mr. Nice informed the court that Jasovic was a policeman who’s name featured in the exhibits of Danica Marinkovic.

In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the same Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) that called Jasovic as its witness in the Limaj case is now trying to destroy his credibility in the Milosevic case.

Mr. Nice wasted nearly the entire day reading statements taken from Kosovo-Albanian witnesses by OTP investigators over the last couple of weeks. Unsurprisingly, the Albanians did not admit to willingly collaborating with the Serbian Police against the KLA.

Mr. Nice spent the entire day reading statements from Albanians who claimed that they either never gave a statement to Jasovic or that he obtained statements from them by torturing them. The only thing less surprising than the statements that Mr. Nice obtained were the denials from Jasovic.

There is no comparison between the statements taken by the OTP investigators and the evidence given by Jasovic.

Jasovic took statements from witnesses contemporaneously, and solely for the internal use of the police. He had no motivation to “cook-up” or extort false statements from witnesses. His documents were not generated for use in the trial. Nobody knew he would be testifying until very late.

The statements taken by the OTP were generated explicitly for use in the trial, and they were taken more than five years after the fact. Furthermore, the oppressive conditions imposed on Kosovo by the KLA give Albanians who did collaborate with the Serbian police against the KLA a very compelling reason to lie and deny it now.

Jasovic’s cross-examination will continue when the trial resumes on Thursday.

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