MR. NICE vs. RADIO-TELEVISION SERBIA

www.slobodan-milosevic.org - July 18, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice continued his cross-examination of Gen Bozidar Delic at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Monday.

Prosecutor Nice capitalized on the fact that Gen. Delic and several of his lieutenants believed that the OSCE publication “As Seen as Told” had been written by Natasa Kandic. Nice said that this error of fact proved that Delic and his men had agreed in advance on what they would say in their statements to the tribunal.

Gen. Delic explained that “As Seen as Told” is published in Serbia by Natasa Kandic’s NGO, so it is logical that people assumed that the publisher was responsible for the book’s contents. According to Delic, the logo of Ms. Kandic’s NGO appears very prominently on the book’s cover, which would lead one to assume that they were responsible for the book.

Mr. Nice attacked Gen. Delic for having a negative opinion of Natasa Kandic. Mr. Nice, who professes to speak on behalf of the Serbs, claims that Serbs don’t like Natasa Kandic because she “forces Serbs to confront their history.”  This was as good as Mr. Nice’s cross-examination got.

During his examination-in-chief Gen. Delic brought several video clips from Radio-Television Serbia that contain contemporaneous statements from people during the war. He also brought clips where operations that the army had carried out were filmed by RTS TV crews.

Mr. Nice could not dispute the contents of the videotapes so he resorted to an attacking Radio-Television Serbia instead. Mr. Nice asserted that Radio-Television Serbia is “an instrument of hate” and that its broadcasts are “a wicked weapon of propaganda.”

Mr. Nice further asserted that Gen. Delic could not rely on the video footage because he didn’t film it himself. Hopefully the Judges will remember that line of reasoning the next time Mr. Nice tries to play excerpts from the BBC’s “The Death of Yugoslavia” video.

The prosecution managed to track down an Albanian woman who appeared on one of the videotapes that Delic brought to court with him. On the original video, which was filmed on the spot during the war in 1999, the woman says that she was forced from her home by the KLA.

The same woman, when interviewed by the Mr. Nice’s investigators last-week, denied that the KLA did anything to her and blamed the Serbs instead.

Gen. Deilc pointed out that there is not a single Kosovo-Albanian who will say anything negative about the KLA. Delic challenged Mr. Nice to name just one Albanian, who still lives in Kosovo that openly testified against the KLA under their own name. Mr. Nice, of course, did not take Delic up on his challenge and did not name a single Kosovo-Albanian who would openly agree to testify against the KLA.

Gen. Delic remained cool and collected, as Mr. Nice became more and more hysterical, and more and more liberal in his assertions. Mr. Nice went on to claim that Serbia was a police state and accused the police of killing Slavko Curuvija.

Gen. Delic, who has absolutely nothing to do with the police, simply mocked the prosecutor. He told Mr. Nice that he should give the police this information because they were still trying to catch the killer.
 

Gen. Delic will continue his cross-examination tomorrow.
 

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