MILOSEVIC "TRIAL" SYNOPSIS: OCTOBER 28, 2003
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - October 28, 2003

Michel Rivière, a correspondent of the French TV channel "Arte," testified against Slobodan Milosevic today. Mr. Rivière was on assignment in Hungary when he met up with some refugees who were from Kozluk. They told him some stories, and so he decided to go to Kozluk to see if what they were saying was true.

Mr. Rivière went to Belgrade to get press credentials so that he could film in Bosnia. Of course they couldn't give him the proper credentials in Belgrade, so the people at the Tanjug agency told him to go to Pale and get his accreditation there from the SRNA agency.

On July 20, 1992 Mr. Rivière crossed the Drina River near Zvornik, where the VRS provided him a military escort and sent him on to Pale. When he got to Pale he received his accreditation, and was then free to film anything he wished with no restrictions and no escort.

After receiving his accreditation papers he went to a bar in Pale that was owned by a Muslim in order to eat some dinner. At this bar he and his cameraman met two members of the paramilitary formation called the "White Eagles." He talked to them for 2 hours but didn't get their names. So in "court" he called one "the man with the pistol" and the other one "the man with the knife." Both men had been drinking and they were drunk - "the man with the knife" was apparently more drunk than "the man with the pistol."

According to Mr. Rivière the drunk "man with the knife" said that they had killed all the Muslims in Kosluk. Of course none of what the drunk man allegedly said in the bar was on the video tape and so all we have is Renée's word on this. But none the less it should be obvious how desperate the Hague Tribunal must be for "evidence" since it is admitting hearsay about what some unidentified drunk men told some Frenchman in a bar.

Then according to Rivière, after he finished eating, he went to the White Eagle's base in Pale. He did film this and on the video tape you could see a bunch of young men fooling around in front of the camera, and not much else. Then they went on a bus ride, and he filmed this too. They came back to the base, and then went on another bus ride. Nobody fired a shot and nobody shot at them. Nothing happened, and Mr. Renée got that on tape.

The next day Mr. Rivière went to Sarajevo and attempted to film the city from the top of a hill that overlooked the city. While standing on the top of the hill (which was in Serb territory) Muslim snipers from inside of Sarajevo fired shots at him, and this is the only footage he had of actual shots being fired.

On his trip to Bosnia Mr. Rivière saw one dead body, a Serb who had been killed somewhere near Zvornik. He didn't see any dead Muslims. While he was in Pale he filmed the ruins of some buildings on Serb territory that the Muslims had destroyed over the course of the fighting.

Mr. Rivière never did go to Kozluk, and so he never did verify if what he was being told by the refugees was true, but what this witness says doesn't matter anyway since other witnesses have testified about that.

While on his Bosnian adventure, this witness saw a dead Serb, saw some Serb buildings that had been destroyed, went for a couple of bus rides with the White Eagles, ate had dinner at bar in Pale that was owned by a Muslim, and ultimately got shot at by Muslim snipers in Sarajevo. How any of this is evidence against President Milosevic I'll never know.

The next witness was a secret witness who testified under the pseudonym of "B-1345." B-1345 was a sad case, he was from Sarajevo, he lived near the frontlines and he lost his wife and his father in the war there. He didn't actually see them getting killed and so he is really a witness to nothing, but he has a sad story to tell and so that is probably why he was called to testify. Undoubtedly, forcing this man to relive such tragic events as the loss of his closest family members can produce some good propaganda for the prosecution, even if their is no evidentiary value to his testimony.

B-1345 lost his wife in the explosion at the Markale market, but he wasn't there, and never saw the shell. He also lost his father but didn't arrive on the scene until an hour after he was already dead. His situation is certainly a sad one, but since he wasn't there he isn't actually any sort of witness.

President Milosevic attempted to make some use out of B-1345. He asked him if he knew about the investigations that had been conducted regarding Markale, but "judge" May said he couldn't ask about that.

President Milosevic then produced a map of the showing the ethnic make-up of Sarajevo that was based on the 1981 census of the SFRY. The map was color coded and showed the areas where Serbs were the majority, where Muslims were the majority, and where Croats were the majority.

The witness, who had served in the ABiH, was unable to read the map, and so President Milosevic couldn't ask him about the map. But the point that was being made with the map was that the Serbs weren't laying any sort of siege on Sarajevo. Serbs had always lived in Sarajevo they weren't occupiers - they lived there, and the fighting was primarily along the lines where the various ethnic communities were divided.

The witness did confirm that the ABiH was in Sarajevo and that there were innocent casualties on both sides, but he couldn't identify where the opposing parties had their positions at.

The "trial" ended 15 minutes early today.

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