GENERAL IVASHOV CONCLUDES HIS EVIDENCE

www.slobodan-milosevic.org – November 24, 2004

Russian Army General, Leonid Ivashov concluded his testimony at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday. Practically the entire day was taken-up by Mr. Nice’s cross-examination of the witness.

Mr. Nice was very keen to obtain information that would compromise or expose Russian intelligence sources, and General Ivashov refused to divulge these state secrets to Mr. Nice. Ivashov’s refusal to disclose state secrets sparked tension between him and the tribunal.

It is worth noting here that spies have infiltrated the ICTY prosecutor’s office. Graham Blewitt, who served as the deputy prosecutor for the ICTY, admitted this to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad in an interview that was published on June 19, 2004.

In the interview Blewitt said, “They [the Americans] did not only come to assist. The US also wanted to know what was happening inside the tribunal.”
 

“Once, I have tested them,” Blewitt continued. “We had a reorganisation and people had to move to other rooms. I placed the Americans at the end of the corridor. They protested by saying: ‘But now we can no longer see who is visiting the chief prosecutor’. We all laughed. They didn’t make a secret of the fact that they frequently visited their embassy. Sometimes they said ‘I have to leave early, since I have to go to the embassy’, but since we didn't pay their salary, we had no control over them."

In light of the revelations coming from the former ICTY deputy prosecutor it becomes obvious that Mr. Nice was more interested in obtaining counter-intelligence information for the Western secret services than in conducting any sort of cross-examination.

In spite of Mr. Nice’s nefarious activities, General Ivashov was still able to provide interesting testimony. Ivashov testified that all steps were taken by the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities to prevent and punish war crimes. He testified that the interior ministry arrested its own servicemen when they used excessive force, or violated orders mandating the proper treatment of civilians.

Mr. Nice even made an astonishing admission himself. Nice admitted that employees of the American defence contractor MPRI worked in the Kosovo Verification Mission, and that MPRI was providing training for the KLA.

General Ivashov was able to testify that Russian and Serbian intelligence had tapped the telephone of Hashim Thachi, the leader of the KLA terrorist organisation. Through that wiretap a conversation between Thachi and Madeline Albright was intercepted. According to Ivashov, Ms. Albright, in September 1998, promised Thachi a referendum on Kosovo’s independence if he would allow NATO to deploy its troops in Kosovo.

Other than that, Nice endeavoured to waste as much time as he possibly could. He read out endless passages from documents of the Contact Group. Ivashov repeatedly had to explain to the prosecutor that the Contact Group is not an official organ, and that he did not agree with many of its conclusions.

Mr. Nice was not successful in his attempts to discredit the witness, but he was successful in wasting an entire day of Milosevic’s defence case, which has been limited to 150 days whereas the prosecution was given nearly twice as long to present its case.

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