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[Zarana Papic <zpapic@f.bg.ac.yu>]

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Subject: [Fwd: IWPR's Tribunal Update 126]
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 05:06:23 +0200
From: Zarana Papic <zpapic@EUnet.yu>
To: lepa mladjenovic <lepa@EUnet.yu>, Zarana PAPIC <zpapic@f.bg.ac.yu>



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Subject: IWPR's Tribunal Update 126
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 17:49:42 +0100
From: "Alan Davis" <alan@iwpr.net>
Reply-To: IWPR Listmanagers <listmanagers@iwpr.net>
To: info@iwpr.net


Welcome to the 126th issue of Tribunal Update, one of two free e-mail
bulletin services produced by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting
(IWPR)
in London.

Tribunal Update provides a summary of the past week's important events
in
and around the courtrooms of the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Written by Mirko Klarin, one of the leading journalists covering events
in
The Hague, Tribunal Update is a component of IWPR's Tribunal Monitoring
Project for which IWPR gratefully acknowledges the support of the
Swedish
International Development & Cooperation Agency, Ford Foundation, British
Foreign & Commonwealth Office and other sources. This and previous
issues
of
Tribunal Update are available through the IWPR Website: <www.iwpr.net>.

By Mirko Klarin & Vjera Bogadi, assistant reporter.

***************************************************************************
**
STOP PRESS: The latest news, opinion and analysis of today's indictment
of
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will be posted on the Balkan
Crisis
Report pages of our web site <www.iwpr.net> A special issue of Tribunal
Update (127) will appear next week.
***************************************************************************
***

TRIBUNAL UPDATE 126

Last Week in The Hague (17-22 May, 1999)


* Kosovo investigation
* Blaskic trial

=====================================

KOSOVO INVESTIGATION

Pointing out that according to intelligence reports, Serb forces in
Kosovo
are allegedly digging out the mass graves in order to hide evidence of
their crimes, NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea last week concluded "that the
Belgrade authorities are beginning to take the International War Crimes
Tribunal seriously."

Just how wrong he is!

The Belgrade authorities had always been taking the International War
Crimes Tribunal very seriously. Which is why they refused any hitherto
co-operation with the Tribunal, even at the price of maintaining the
so-called "outer wall of sanctions", the continuation of which is partly
due to the non-compliance with the Tribunal's orders. Simply put, the
Belgrade regime can not afford full co-operation with the Tribunal
because
it entails arrests and the transfer of all indicted persons, and the
Kosovo
investigation. That would thoroughly undermine the most fundamental
premises of this regime, which is based on a ten-year conspiracy of
immunity and impunity of the creators and executors of the politics of
ethnic cleansing - first in Croatia, then Bosnia and now in Kosovo. (see
more on the subject in Tribunal Update No. 100).

The part that Belgrade authorities did not take seriously so far is the
readiness of the so-called 'international community' to force FRY to
respect an international law of highest order - the Statute of the
Tribunal
- adopted by the Security Council on the basis of Chapter VII of the UN
Charter. There was insufficient political will for that. On at least a
dozen occasions in the last four years, Tribunal approached the Security
Council with detailed and documented reports on the refusals of Belgrade
to
fulfill Tribunal's warrants and orders, or with pleas to ensure access
for
the Prosecutor to conduct war crimes investigations in the territory of
the
FRY.

Instead of reacting to Belgrade's refusals of co-operation with
sanctions
authorised under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council
usually replied to such reports with mildly-worded Presidential
Statements,
which had only increased the intransigence of Belgrade. It is quite
possible that the present Kosovo investigation would not have been
necessary had the Security Council imposed an appropriately high price
on
Belgrade for their earlier ignoring the orders of the Tribunal. This
would
also have forced Belgrade's hand to effect arrests and transfer of the
indicted, as well as to allow the investigation in the territory of FRY.

If, as Jamie Shea thinks, Belgrade authorities are now beginning to take
anyone seriously, then it's NATO. But - again - it's not the NATO's
high-tech air campaign they worry about. The Belgrade regime can afford
more than just a few NATO bombs - as we have seen in the recent months -
possibly even more than NATO can afford to drop on the FRY. What the
Belgrade regime can not afford, however - and is now taking seriously -
are
the NATO threats to take the 'notorious' Prosecutor Louise Arbour with
them
into Kosovo when they finally get there. This would enable her and her
investigators to freely search for and investigate the sites of alleged
Kosovo crimes.

The present attempts to remove traces of crimes - if the intelligence
reports are correct - show that the threat is taken seriously. Another
confirmation that Belgrade fears this more than anything else is the
agreement of last October on the cessation of the military and police
campaign and the withdrawal of the Serb forces from Kosovo that
Milosevic
accepted only after the U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke agreed to erase any
mention of the 'notorious' Arbour and her Kosovo investigation in the
agreement. It is now, however, clear that Milosevic is afraid that he
will
no longer be given the choice to decide whether Arbour and her
investigators enter Kosovo together with the international forces or
not,
which is why the evidence of crimes is now being removed.

The problem for Milosevic, however, lies in the fact that the evidence
of
the removal of traces of crimes can in itself represent part of a
convincing case that the crimes had been committed. NATO claims that
they
hold evidence of the removal of criminal evidence. "In two cases that we
have been monitoring," Jamie Shea said last week, "they have tried to
hide
evidence of mass graves. On 14 May Serb forces exhumed 50 ethnic
Albanian
bodies from a mass grave near the ferro-nickel processing plant in the
town
of Glogovac. Another mass grave containing ethnic Albanian civilians
killed
on 18 April near Lipljan has also been exhumed and the villagers of the
locality were obliged to rebury the bodies as individual graves. We also
have reports of efforts to rebury bodies from mass graves at sites where
NATO bombing has occurred, and also to rebury bodies in areas that were
formerly controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army."

That Belgrade authorities this time have reason to take NATO threats
seriously was also confirmed at a last week's briefing at the U.S. State
Department.  In a process not entirely unlike a court presentation of
evidence, the briefing took its participants frame-by-frame through a
series of video recordings of the burial of the victims of massacre in
the
Kosovo village of Izbica, and parallel to that, the aerial recording of
the
entire area. The first was filmed by a Kosovar journalist, Liri Losci,
and
shows bodies of 127 elderly men allegedly killed by the Serb forces.
Upon
the withdrawal of those forces the local inhabitants had allegedly
returned
to the village and discovered the bodies, identified them and buried
into
three rows of individual graves. The aerial recording, showing clearly
visible graves, was made two weeks later and shown at the April 17
briefings at NATO and the Pentagon. Official Serbian sources
categorically
denied claims of massacres and graves, and the Serbian Television
reporters
who visited the village of Izbica reported that no graves were to be
seen
and that the entire affair was yet "another example of the manipulation
of
the Western media by Kosovo Albanians."

By matching videotape recording with aerial imagery, and comparing the
position of trees, fields, buildings and fresh graves, U.S. government
analysts claim that both recordings point to the same location. Copies
of
the entire material have already been forwarded to the Tribunal's Office
of
the Prosecutor. Spokesperson James Rubin thus explained reasons for the
publication of this material:

"The fact of the matter is, we decided to release this combination of
video
imagery with overhead imagery so that it won't matter if the Serbs
destroy
the evidence. This is the kind of evidence that makes it not necessarily
relevant that the investigator goes to that location. Because if you
have
refugee accounts, you have a videotape, you have overhead imagery and
you
have a whole other set of information, you don't necessarily need the
kind
of direct evidence that would be normally needed. The reason why we put
this information -- feel comfortable putting it out -- is because we
have
what we need and what we think can provide a compelling case. Given that
the video was released, it's very possible the Serbs may choose to
destroy
this evidence. But with the combination of the video and the overhead
imagery, they can't destroy that."

Another news, however, worries friends of the Tribunal even more than
the
alleged removal of evidence of Kosovo crimes. It is the increasing tide
of
rumors that Louise Arbour may leave Tribunal to take up a seat on the
bench
of the Canadian Supreme Court. The rumors provoked a journalist's
question
at the last week's briefing of the OTP's spokesperson, Paul Risley,
whether, by offering her such a position, somebody is in fact trying to
'remove' Arbour, who is the greatest obstacle to any new "deal" with
Milosevic. In his reply, Risley only referred to Arbour's statement of
the
previous day (Thursday 18 May) that the Canadian Supreme Court job has
not
been offered to her, but that she would consider taking it if it were.
If
Arbour were to ever make up her mind on such an offer, Risley added, "it
will be the most difficult decision in her life."

The four-year mandate of Louise Arbour expires at the end of September
next
year. Taking into account the present 'Cold War' climate at the Security
Council, should Arbour leave it will be difficult to imagine the West on
the one side and Russia and China on the other ever agreeing on the
choice
of any new Chief Prosecutor, let alone a tough-minded one.

In the case of Russia, which is one of the 'founders' of the Tribunal,
it
not only has a disagreement with the West over the NATO aerial campaign
against Yugoslavia, but also now has second thoughts regarding its
functioning. In this respect, Russia has accepted part of the
'arguments'
against ICTY presented by Belgrade. The Russian Foreign Minister, Igor
Ivanov, for instance last December at a meeting of the Peace
Implementation
Council in Madrid, sharply and aggressively criticized the policy of the
so
called "sealed indictments", forcing Arbour to give him a lesson in
international law before the ministerial audience (see Tribunal Update
No.
106).  Russia had also blocked tougher measures against Belgrade at the
Security Council for their refusal to grant visas to Prosecutor Arbour
and
her team of Kosovo investigators.

Taking all this into account it is obvious that in any future selection
process at the Security Council, Russian Federation would make sure it
does
not unwittingly approve someone as independent-minded as Arbour.


BLASKIC TRIAL

In the continuation of the cross-examination of General Tihomir Blaskic,
Prosecutor Gregory Kehoe last week came to the point of the gravest
individual act of crime in the indictment, the massacre at the Central
Bosnian village of Ahmici, where on 16 April 1993 over one hundred
Muslim
civilians were murdered and all Muslim houses, business premises and two
mosques were torched and torn down. In previous direct examination,
Defence
Counsel Anto Nobilo spent nearly three weeks at the same event (see
Tribunal Update Nos. 114, 116 and 117), trying to prove that the
defendant
neither planned nor ordered the crime, and that he had done all in his
power to investigate and punish the responsible individuals. During the
direct examination, General Blaskic attributed the responsibility for
the
massacre in Ahmici to a unit of the Bosnian Croat Defense Council (HVO)
Military Police from the town of Vitez, whose commander was one Pasko
Ljubicic. Blaskic also alleged that the orders for the crime came from
some
'above' instance, unknown to him.

Since there is no direct evidence that Blaskic had ordered the crime,
the
Prosecutor focused in his cross-examination on proving other elements of
his responsibility for the atrocity in Ahmici. At first, Kehoe last week
pointed that Blaskic, with his "general and imprecise order" issued a
day
before the massacre had in effect given the Military Police a carte
blanche
to act where and how they wished. Kehoe further doubts Blaskic's claim
that
he only heard of the crime on 22 April, in a conversation with the
commander of UNPROFOR's British Battalion, Colonel Bob Stewart. Colonel
Stewart is scheduled to appear before the Tribunal on 17 June, and his
testimony - it was announced last week - will be public. This is in
variance to the testimonies by General Morillon and Ambassador Thebault,
who will be witnessing in a closed session because they requested
protective measures.

According to the Prosecutor, the "claim that the commander of the
Operative
Zone (Blaskic) had been unaware for full six days of the atrocity
committed
mere five kilometers away from his headquarters is illogical." Kehoe
also
presented evidence that a number of people around Blaskic, including
Dario
Kordic - who is also being tried for Ahmici in a separate trial - had
found
out about the massacre of Muslim civilians on the day the crime was
committed. The judges also appear to find it illogical that Blaskic as
the
commander of the Bosnian Croat forces (HVO) in the Operative Zone of
Central Bosnia did not know about events in his own area of
responsibility.
"You did not know, or did not want to know?," was the question addressed
to
him by the Portuguese judge Almiro Rodrigues.

Presiding Judge Claude Jorda of France, noted with incredulity: "You are
a
commander who knew nothing. Everyone knew about Ahmici but yourself!"
Blaskic, however, continues to claim that he not only did not know
anything, but also did not even doubt Military Police reports of clashes
with Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the region of Ahmici, which is why he
felt no need to check them at the time.

During the direct examination by his Defence Counsel, Blaskic claimed
that
two days after he learned of the crime, on 24 April 1993, he ordered an
investigation. The Prosecutor, on the other hand, doubts this too since
there is no written evidence of his order. Blaskic replied that verbal
orders were usual practice in his staff Headquarters, and that the
written
order was issued later, on 10 May 1993, because he was unsatisfied with
the
speed of the investigation that was carried out by his assistant in
charge
of security, Ante Sliskovic.

Prosecutor Kehoe sees the issuance of the written order in a different
light, though. He claims that Blaskic only issued it after a visit by a
UN
delegation which demanded an investigation into the Ahmici atrocity;
after
receiving warnings by international investigators; and after the
European
Union threatened economic sanctions against Croatia over Ahmici. Last
but
not least, Prosecutor claims, Blaskic was inspired to act by the news of
the preparations of a United Nations Tribunal for war crimes that was
finalised with a Security Council Resolution 827 of 25 May 1993 which
established the ICTY.

Since the results of the first investigation did not satisfy him,
Blaskic
claims that in August 1993 he ordered another investigation, the results
of
which were allegedly never communicated to him. Blaskic claims that they
were forwarded directly to the HVO Intelligence Service Authority in
Mostar. Since he knew nothing of the results of the investigation,
Blaskic
was unable to punish the perpetrators. The Prosecutor, however, claims
that
Blaskic was never - not even later when he became the head of the HVO
General Staff - "interested in finding the names of the perpetrators of
the
heaviest crime committed during his military career in Central Bosnia."
Kehoe concluded that noone was ever punished or prosecuted for the
Ahmici
atrocity.

The Defence fielded a thesis that the report of the last investigation
would prove Blaskic's innocence but that they, despite all efforts, were
unable to obtain a copy of it. This is to say in a roundabout way that
certain parts of the military and political structures of the so-called
Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia (HZ H-B) do not wish to see Blaskic
prove his innocence at a price of pointing the blame at others. Just who
are those 'others' Blaskic purports to ignore - or does not wish to
acknowledge the knowledge of. "Give us a name," asked Kehoe last week,
but
Blaskic replied that he neither ordered the crime in Ahmici nor knows
who
did. He thinks it was not Pasko Ljubicic, commander of the unit of
Military
Police that committed the crime on 16 April 1993, either.

Blaskic voluntarily surrendered himself to the Tribunal in April 1996,
and
judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen from Guyana last week asked him why did he do
it. "If you considered the crime in Ahmici the central part of this case
and that the HVO investigation into the atrocity proved your innocence -
then why did you surrender yourself to the Tribunal without guarantees
that
you will have access to the report," Judge Shahabuddeen asked. Blaskic
replied that that he had foreseen certain difficulties with the
collection
of evidence, but believed firmly that as soon as the trial started the
most
important documents for his defence would have been made available
either
to his Defence team or to the Prosecution. He did not say whether he
would
have done the same - i.e. surrender himself - had he known that he would
be
denied access to those documents.

The cross-examination of General Blaskic will continue next week.

*********************************
        Tribunal Update 126
Written by: Mirko Klarin & Vjera Bogadi
  Translated by: Predrag Zivkovic
       Edited by: Alan Davis
*********************************

"Tribunal Update" is produced under IWPR's Tribunal Monitoring Project.
The
project seeks to contribute to regional and international understanding
of
the war-crimes prosecution process.

Articles are available, with permission, for republication.

*************************************************

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a London-based
independent
non-profit organisation supporting regional media and democratic change.

Lancaster House
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London N1 9LH,
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Tel: (44  171)  713  7130
Fax: (44 171) 713 7140
E-mail:info@iwpr.org.uk
Web address: www.iwpr.net

The opinions expressed in "Tribunal Update" are those of the authors and
do
not
necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR.

Copyright (C) 1999 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

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