VOJISLAV SESELJ - DAY 12: ACCORDING TO MR. NICE, SPEAKING ABOUT WWII-ERA FASCIST CRIMES INCITES HATRED
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - September 15, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Geoffrey Nice continued his cross-examination of Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj at the Hague Tribunal’s trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday.

Mr. Nice continues insist that the things Dr. Seselj said about Milosevic between 1993 and 1996 are true. Seselj claims that he was engaged in bitter conflict with Milosevic at that time and that he made false statements against Milosevic for his own political purposes.

This is not the first time that Dr. Seselj has recanted his earlier statements about Milosevic. Dr. Seselj brought several volumes of his written work to court with him today; these volumes include his writings and full transcripts of most of his public statements. Seselj highlighted at least seven previous occasions where he had disavowed the things he said about Milosevic during the mid-1990s.

Mr. Nice played several video clips in court today. He played a clip from the BBC program “The Death of Yugoslavia” and yet again the subtitles were wrong. This time the BBC’s subtitles were attributing words to Seselj that did not correspond with Serbian words that were actually coming out of his mouth on the tape.

Nearly every time Mr. Nice plays that stupid BBC tape a new problem is found with its subtitles. “The Death of Yugoslavia” program has given Mr. Nice so many problems that he has had to have the whole program re-translated by the tribunal’s interpreters.

Today Mr. Nice accused Dr. Seselj of inciting hatred by speaking about the crimes committed by the Ustasha during World War II. In Mr. Nice’s opinion, speaking about the crimes committed by the Ustasha incites hatred against Croats.

As usual Mr. Nice’s logic is flawed. If one uses Mr. Nice’s logic then Jewish Holocaust memorials victimize and incite hatred against Germans. But then again, it was Mr. Nice’s so-called “genocide expert” (Dr. Ton Zwann) who testified on January 21, 2004 that the Ustasha were the victims of genocide.

Mr. Nice accuses Milosevic for Seselj’s alleged “hate mongering” because Milosevic “permitted” Seselj to speak. It is this type of convoluted “logic” that has become the hallmark of the prosecution case.

Mr. Nice asked Seselj several questions about the conflict in Vukovar. Seselj explained that the fighting started in Vukovar after the Croatian ZNG attacked the JNA barracks and the Orthodox Church building.

During this exchange, Mr. Nice inadvertently damaged the credibility of one of his own witnesses. He played a video clip, allegedly filmed in Vukovar, of a “Serbian Chetnik” interviewed by his witness Dr. Van Linden. First of all, this Chetnik spoke English. Seselj and Milosevic both found this quite amusing, Seselj asked the tribunal to play the video without any interpretation so that all of Serbia could see the spectacle of an English speaking Chetnik.

The second problem was that the alleged “Chetnik” was with a group of people who were flying the Croatian checkerboard flag together with a cheap homemade forgery of a Serbian Chetnik flag. Seselj said that whoever made the flag was “a real ignoramus,” adding that he didn’t believe this was a real Chetnik, but rather a Croat telling Van Linden what he wanted to hear.

Mr. Nice accused Seselj because the Serbian Radical Party advocates the deportation of illegal aliens, in particular the 360,000 illegal Albanian immigrants squatting in Kosovo.

Mr. Nice is trying to convince everybody that advocating the deportation of illegal aliens is the same thing as advocating ethnic cleansing. This is a serious matter. Here we have an international tribunal seriously entertaining the notion that deporting illegal aliens constitutes ethnic cleansing.

The deportation of illegal aliens is not a crime. No country on Earth would allow part of its territory to be flooded by illegal immigrants. Deporting illegal aliens is the obligation of every state to its citizens. Those 360,000 Albanians are citizens of Albania, they should be sent back to Albania where their own government should take care of them.

Even though he should have done it, and he had an obligation to do it, Milosevic didn’t take any measures to deport the Albanians who were in Kosovo illegally. The fact that he allowed illegal Albanian aliens to remain in Kosovo, at Serbia’s expense, proves just how absurd the claim that he ethnically cleansed Albanians is.

Mr. Nice also accused Seselj over certain events at Hrtkovci. Several people have claimed that Seselj read out a list of Croats who should be expelled from Hrtkovci.

Seselj denied reading out a list. He said that an activist of the Serbian Radical Party read out a list of Croats from Hrtkovci who had already left to join the Croatian ZNG. Seselj claims to have a videotape of this event that he will use to corroborate his testimony.

Mr. Nice ended the day by asking Seselj to explain statements he had made about the now infamous video of Skorpions supposedly executing Srebrenica Muslims near Trnovo.

Seselj began to explain that Trnovo is a long way away from Srebrenica, and that it would be absurd to drive six people halfway across Bosnia just to shoot them, adding that it would be even more absurd to videotape the whole thing.

Seselj claims that his legal advisors have evidence proving that the tape was edited, and that it was filmed by at least two different cameramen.

The fact that the tape has been doctored is manifestly obvious to anybody who watches it. There are parts of the tape where the video is not synced up to the audio, where the audio is recorded at a speed much slower than the video.

Anybody who has ever owned a camcorder knows that you cannot record the video and the audio at two different speeds at the same time on the same tape. When you record videotape it moves over the heads at a constant speed, and the audio and video are recorded at the same time.

The only explanation for the discrepancy between the audio and the video is that somebody doctored the tape.

Even though he had said he would finish today, Mr. Nice will continue to cross-examine Dr. Seselj when the trial resumes on Friday.

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