1 Tuesday, 12 February 2002

2 [Open Session]

3 [Prosecution Opening Statement]

4 [The accused entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.30 a.m.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the registrar call the case.

7 THE REGISTRAR: Good morning, Your Honours. Case number

8 IT-02-54-T, the Prosecutor versus Slobodan Milosevic.

9 JUDGE MAY: The appearances, please.

10 MR. NICE: For the Prosecution, the Prosecutor Madam

11 Carla Del Ponte appears; I appear; and the Court will see that I am joined

12 by Ms. Uertz-Retzlaff, who, as the Court will know, has special

13 responsibility for the Croatian indictment; my learned friend Mr. Groome,

14 sitting on the far right, who has special responsibility for the Bosnian

15 indictment; and closest to me, my learned friend Mr. Ryneveld, who has

16 special responsibility for the Kosovo indictment, the indictment that's

17 going to be dealt with chronologically first in this case.

18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Kay.

19 MR. KAY: For the amici curiae, Steven Kay of Queen's Counsel of

20 the bar of England and Wales, Professor Michail Wladimiroff of the

21 Netherlands bar, and Mr. Branislav Tapuskovic of the Yugoslavia bar.

22 JUDGE MAY: Madam Prosecutor, it's now for you to open your case.

23 You will have in mind, of course, our order of the 4th of February

24 relating to this trial and that this part of the trial relates to Kosovo,

25 although you have leave in your opening address to deal with other

1 relevant matters to clarify the issues in the case.

2 Before you address us, let me deal with one preliminary issue. We

3 will grant your motion of the 8th of February for the withdrawal of

4 exhibits and witnesses and the substitution of others. We're pleased to

5 note the withdrawal of over a thousand exhibits, and we would encourage

6 such sensible pruning in the future. And I would add this: We will deal

7 with any outstanding motions or other matters concerning this part of the

8 trial later this week, and we'll deal with the conduct of the trial

9 relating to the Bosnia and Croatia indictments on Tuesday of next week.

10 That's the 19th of February. We will find a convenient moment during the

11 evidence to conduct that hearing.

12 Yes, Madam Prosecutor.

13 MS. DEL PONTE: Thank you, Mr. President.

14 Your Honours, the Chamber will now begin the trial of this man for

15 the wrongs he is said to have done to the people of his own country and to

16 his neighbours. How simple that statement is to make today; how easily

17 those words pass into the record of these proceedings; and yet how

18 remarkable it is that I am able to speak them here. Today, as never

19 before, we see international justice in action.

20 Let us take a moment at the start of this trial to reflect upon

21 the establishment of this Tribunal and its purpose. We should just pause

22 to recall the daily scenes of grief and suffering that came to define

23 armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The events themselves were

24 notorious and a new term, "ethnic cleansing," came into common use in our

25 language. Some of the incidents reveal an almost medieval savagery and

1 the calculated cruelty that went far beyond the bounds of legitimate

2 warfare. The international community was shocked to witness the vicious

3 disintegration of a modern state, and the Security Council of the United

4 Nations was quick to recognise the grave threat caused by the serious

5 crimes it believed to have been committed.

6 This Tribunal is one of the measures taken by the Security Council

7 acting for all Member States of the United Nations to restore and maintain

8 international peace and security. That is our purpose, and our unique

9 contribution is to bring to justice the persons responsible for the worst

10 crimes known to humankind.

11 The crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and the other

12 crimes within the jurisdiction of this Tribunal are not local affairs, and

13 their prosecution may be beyond the capability of national courts. Crimes

14 of the magnitude of those in the indictment before the Chamber affect all

15 of us throughout the world. The law of this Tribunal - international

16 humanitarian law - is the concern of people everywhere.

17 These crimes touch every one of us, wherever we live, because they

18 offend against our deepest principles of human rights and human dignity.

19 The law is not a mere theory or an abstract concept. It is a living

20 instrument that must protect our values and regulate civilised society.

21 And for that we must be able to enforce the law when it is broken. This

22 Tribunal, and this trial in particular, give the most powerful

23 demonstration that no one is above the law or beyond the reach of

24 international justice.

25 As Prosecutor, I bring the accused Milosevic before you to face

1 the charges against him. I do so on behalf of the international community

2 and in the name of all the member states of the United Nations, including

3 the states of the former Yugoslavia. The accused in this case, as in all

4 cases before the Tribunal, is charged as an individual. He is prosecuted

5 on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility. No state or

6 organisation is on trial here today. The indictments do not accuse an

7 entire people of being collectively guilty of the crimes, even the crime

8 of genocide. It may be tempting to generalise when dealing with the

9 conduct of leaders at the highest level, but that is an error that must be

10 avoided. Collective guilt forms no part of the Prosecution case. It is

11 not the law of this Tribunal, and I make it clear that I reject the very

12 notion.

13 I do, of course, intend to explore the degree to which the power

14 and influence of the accused extended over others, but I stress again that

15 the accused is brought before you to answer for his own actions and for

16 his personal involvement in the crimes alleged against him.

17 Your Honours, while I bring the indictment as Prosecutor in the

18 international public interest, I do not mean to ignore the victims of the

19 crimes committed during the conflicts. Much of the development of the law

20 since the Second World War has been designed to prevent members of the

21 civilian population from coming to harm in times of armed conflict. The

22 law itself exists to protect ordinary people not engaged in hostilities.

23 Even so, as Prosecutor, I do not directly represent any individual

24 victim.

25 I do, however, consider it to be part of my function in presenting

1 the case to allow the voice of the victims to be heard. No court can

2 experience the events as the victims themselves did, and no court can be

3 expected to do so. Many victims cannot come before you because they did

4 not survive. Nor is it possible, in the proof of crimes on such a scale

5 as those in the indictments, for any prosecutor to bring all of the

6 surviving witnesses to give evidence in court. Despite that limitation, I

7 am confident that the Prosecution case will present to the Chamber a full

8 picture of the circumstances of the crimes and of their impact on the

9 people against whom they were directed.

10 The case against the accused will be complex. It will be broad in

11 its scope, reflecting the nature of the charges, and yet it will be

12 detailed, as criminal cases must be, where specific features of the

13 evidence are required to be explored in depth. This case will certainly

14 test the criminal justice process itself and will challenge the very

15 capacity of a modern criminal court to address crimes which must extend so

16 far in time and place. I fully accept the responsibility that falls upon

17 the Prosecutor to bring forward evidence to support the indictment.

18 A trial of this nature requires the Chamber to hear evidence from

19 many sources; from individuals, from organisations, and from state

20 officials. The Chamber will receive testimony from high-ranking military

21 figures, diplomats, government representatives, and other persons of rank

22 and function who, for different reasons that the Chamber will understand,

23 cannot be named today. Such persons do not commonly appear in the

24 criminal courts, and receiving their evidence challenges equally the

25 witnesses and the Court.

1 The witnesses must find in themselves the individual courage to

2 give their accounts in public. I will seek to match their strengths by

3 obtaining for them all appropriate measures of protection available under

4 the Tribunal's Rules. Organisations and governments must also find the

5 institutional resolve to place before the Chamber information - sometimes

6 sensitive information - in their possession. In this regard, the trial

7 will test the cooperation of all states, not simply the states of the

8 former Yugoslavia, some of which in the past have obstructed the work of

9 this Tribunal and its Prosecutor. Peoples throughout the world following

10 these proceedings will be watching to see the extent to which their own

11 leaders are committed to achieving the aims of international justice in

12 this forum.

13 This is a criminal trial. It is unfortunate that the accused has

14 attempted to use his appearances before this Chamber to make interventions

15 of a political nature. I can assure the Chamber that in the case before

16 us the Prosecution will not allow itself to be drawn into any such

17 exchanges. This is a Trial Chamber, not a Debating Chamber.

18 I should also make it clear that in the performance of my duties

19 towards this Chamber, I shall not allow myself any advantage from the fact

20 that the accused has chosen not to be legally represented. Under the

21 Statute of the Tribunal, an accused is entitled either to defend himself

22 in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing. He is fully

23 entitled to exercise that choice and to elect to conduct his own defence.

24 By doing so, he does not change the trial process in any way, and the onus

25 upon the Prosecutor to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt remains

1 unaltered.

2 That is the position even where a prosecutor confronts a defence

3 of defiance, or where an accused refuses to recognise the court or, in

4 some way, attempts to undermine the solemnity of the proceedings. I speak

5 for each of the counsel on this side of the table when I say that, as the

6 Chamber will be aware, the Prosecution has scrupulously discharged its

7 obligations at all pre-trial stages of this proceeding. We regularly

8 consider, and will continue to consider with the Chamber and with the

9 amici, whether mechanisms can be applied to reduce any risk adverse to the

10 accused resulting from his attitude to this court.

11 I can further undertake to the Chamber that in their conduct of

12 the trial, Prosecution counsel, in the highest traditions of their

13 profession, will do everything possible, despite the absence of Defence

14 counsel, to assist the Chamber to identify the issues as the evidence

15 unfolds.

16 Your Honours, permit me to say a further general word about the

17 context in which the witnesses who may come before the Chamber will give

18 their evidence as this trial progresses. It has been said many times that

19 my mission as Prosecutor is to bring before the institution the persons

20 who are believed to be most responsible for crimes in the former

21 Yugoslavia. The International Community expects persons at the very

22 highest levels of command and leadership to be brought to justice here in

23 The Hague. That task is the very definition of my mandate as Prosecutor,

24 and it is the essence of the purpose of the Tribunal.

25 With the trial of this particular accused, we reach a turning

1 point of this institution. The proceeding upon which the Chamber embarks

2 today is clearly the most important trial to be conducted in the Tribunal

3 to date. Indeed, it may prove to be the most significant trial that this

4 institution will ever undertake. It is thus a trial that must inevitably

5 mark the path towards the conclusion of the work of this Tribunal, even

6 although that day is still some way off.

7 The trial also marks a change, as the Court will discover, in that

8 many people who have inside information are making the decision that it is

9 right and better for them to assist the Tribunal by giving evidence and by

10 making their mark in the record of humanity.

11 I recognise that this trial will make history, and we would do

12 well to approach our task in the light of history. Sadly, ours is not the

13 first inquiry into atrocities committed in the Balkan region. Listen to

14 the words of the Chairman of the International Commission to Inquire into

15 the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. Baron d'Estournelles de

16 Constant is writing of the wars in 1912 and 1913. He makes the point at

17 the conclusion of his introduction to the report published in 1914 that

18 the real culprits are not the Balkan peoples, and he goes on to say this:

19 "The true culprits are those who misled public opinion and take

20 advantage of the people's ignorance to raise disquieting rumours and sound

21 the alarm bell, inciting the country and, consequently, other countries

22 into enmity. The real culprits are those who by interest or inclination,

23 declaring constantly that war is inevitable, end by making it so,

24 asserting that they are powerless to prevent it. The real culprits are

25 those who sacrifice the general interest to their own personal interest

1 which they so little understand, and who hold up to their country a

2 sterile policy of conflict and reprisals. In reality, there is no

3 salvation, no way out either for small states or for great countries

4 except by union or conciliation."

5 Your Honours, no words could better set the scene for the matters

6 this Chamber will now try.

7 [Interpretation] Let me make some comments in the French language

8 before I give the floor to my colleagues, to Senior Trial Attorney

9 Mr. Nice. He will probably need four or five hours, because that will be

10 the very core of the indictments. Then the other senior attorney, Dirk

11 Ryneveld, will speak in respect of the details of the basic crimes in

12 Kosovo, approximately one hour.

13 Let me say, Mr. President, these few closing remarks: An

14 excellent tactician, a mediocre strategist, Milosevic did nothing but

15 pursue his ambition at the price of unspeakable suffering inflicted on

16 those who opposed him or who represented a threat for his personal

17 strategy of power. Everything, Your Honours, everything with the accused

18 Milosevic was an instrument in the service of his quest for power. One

19 must not seek ideals underlying the acts of the accused. Beyond the

20 nationalist pretext and the horror of ethnic cleansing, behind the

21 grandiloquent rhetoric and the hackneyed phrases he used, the search for

22 power is what motivated Slobodan Milosevic. These were not his personal

23 convictions, even less patriotism or honour or racism or xenophobia which

24 inspired the accused but, rather, the quest for power and personal power

25 at that.

1 The trial which commences today will evoke the tragic fate of

2 thousands of Milosevic's Croatian, Bosnian, Albanian victims. To read

3 about the sufferings endured by these countless victims and survivors is

4 unbearable. Yet the accused, Milosevic, also caused other victims. And

5 now, Your Honours, I am thinking about the Serbs. The Serbian refugees

6 from Croatia, from Bosnia, from Kosovo abused by Milosevic, whose fears

7 were fed and amplified and manipulated to serve Milosevic's criminal

8 plans. Many paid with their lives; most lost their homes and their

9 futures. These men and women must rightly be counted among Milosevic's

10 victims, just as the citizens of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, who

11 now must reconstruct the exsanguinated country which Milosevic, the

12 accused, bequeathed to them.

13 The history of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the

14 fraticidal conflicts of another age which it brought about is a complex

15 process which must be written by many people. This Tribunal will write

16 only one chapter, the most bloody one, the most heartbreaking one as well;

17 the chapter of individual responsibility of the perpetrators of serious

18 violations of international humanitarian law. It is up to other courts to

19 make the moral, historical, or even psychological diagnosis of the accused

20 and to analyse the social, economic, and political dynamic which

21 constituted the basic fabric of the crimes that we are going to consider.

22 The apparently inevitable concatenation of fear and hatred,

23 political manipulation, the sinister role of some of the media but also

24 the heroism of the resistance and those who opposed him throughout the

25 former Yugoslavia, the survival of dignity and civil spirit and humanity,

1 all of these are mechanisms which must be analysed, dissected, and

2 explained because it is imperative to respond to the victims' demand for

3 truth, "victims" in the broadest sense of that term, and to reduce the

4 risks of seeing this played out again in another place in the world and,

5 in particular, in the Balkans. But here, more modestly, it is Slobodan

6 Milosevic's personal responsibility which the Prosecution intends to

7 demonstrate for the crimes ascribed to him, nothing but that, but all of

8 that.

9 This is the contribution of justice, and we wish to make it

10 dispassionately, recalling the words of Ivo Andric pronounced at the

11 Jewish cemetery of Sarajevo, and I quote:

12 "If humanity wishes to be worthy of that name, must organise its

13 common defence against all international crimes, erect a barrier which is

14 sound and sure and truly punish all those who murder individuals and

15 people."

16 And I thank you very much, Your Honours. I thank you for your

17 attention.

18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

19 MR. NICE: On a day in November 1991, at the fall of Vukovar in

20 Croatia, a man - I think he was 58 - and his wife, fearing the worst, went

21 to the hospital to find protection. What happened was that the men taken

22 away by Yugoslav army soldiers, eventually to a farm called Ovcara where

23 they were beaten, jumped upon by the soldiers, subject to various

24 indignities, the man, who will be a witness before this Tribunal, along

25 with six others, I think, had the chance good fortune of knowing one of

1 the soldiers personally.

2 So those seven were picked out and, indeed, six of them, I think,

3 survived. The other 260 were slaughtered. Thousands died in the conflict

4 in Croatia, and perhaps at least 170.000 or more were deported. And so

5 that account is an example of the misery and, indeed, of the criminality

6 with which we will be dealing in the indictment that comes first in time

7 chronologically, the Croatian indictment.

8 A year or thereabouts later, in Visegrad, Bosnia, a young woman,

9 heavily pregnant, found the town taken over by Yugoslav soldiers and, I

10 think, others, a group called the White Eagles, of which we will hear, was

11 involved. Because of what was happening, she and many other people took

12 to the woods at night. Indeed, she gave birth to her daughter in the

13 woods, at night. And it would appear from evidence that we do have that

14 she gave that daughter a name, but we can't tell you what the name is.

15 In due course, that woman, her baby, and many others, including

16 some 45 members of her extended family, were taken, on the basis of a

17 promise that they would be travelling in a Red Cross bus, to a house that

18 had been prepared for them with petrol on its carpets and presumably

19 floors. They were burnt alive, and the baby's screams were heard for some

20 two hours before it too succumbed.

21 So that is one crime to represent the thousands killed in the

22 Bosnian conflict, well over 7.000; a conflict that involves hundreds of

23 thousands - two, three - deported.

24 We move on seven years to the third indictment and to another and

25 different story involving a mother and daughter. This time not a young

1 daughter or a daughter unborn, but to a girl of about 20; old enough to

2 think that she was perhaps an adult launched on life; young enough, no

3 doubt, to have been regarded by her mother as the daughter she truly was.

4 This is at a place called Kozica and thereabouts.

5 At this site, as the Court will, in due course, hear, some 50

6 women were gathered together for safety. Again, by deception, and under

7 guard of abusing soldiers, they were taken not to a mosque as they were

8 promised, but to a house that was capable of being made secure; the

9 mother, from whom you will hear, and her 20-year-old daughter. The

10 daughter was one of several women, mostly young, who were taken out from

11 time to time by the abusing soldiers, returning in a state of obvious

12 fear, it being perhaps a matter of inference what happened to them.

13 Later, eight women, I think five young and perhaps three a little

14 older, were taken again; one of them the 20-year-old daughter. The house

15 was tied up with wire, as the remaining women could see. They feared they

16 were going to be burnt alive, but that didn't happen. In due course, they

17 escaped, or they were let out, in fact. But the mother did not find her

18 daughter. In the weeks that followed, when she was free to revisit the

19 area, she searched, hopelessly looking for the daughter who was, in due

20 course, found by those representing the international community doing

21 their distressing work. She and the other seven women last taken out were

22 found at the bottom of three different wells into which they had been

23 thrown, probably alive, and after who knows quite what had happened to

24 them.

25 That account may serve as but one representation of what happened

1 in Kosovo where at least four and a half thousand people died, but

2 estimates rise to ten, and where over three-quarters of a million people

3 were forcibly moved from Kosovo or forcibly removed within it.

4 Those then, in some statistical way, and with just those examples,

5 are the subject matter of this trial and these indictments.

6 Having said what I've said, the Court may want to know that I

7 shall return rarely, if at all, to such distressing material again. And

8 why?

9 First, as the Prosecutor has herself said, it is for the witnesses

10 to come to this Tribunal and to give their accounts, and it is to them

11 that we shall look for the proper record. Of course they will be but a

12 tiny fraction of those who suffered, but the Court will want to know that,

13 for the most part, they are anxious to give their evidence; and indeed,

14 even those whose statements may be admitted by the provisions for the

15 acceptance of written material in this Tribunal, for the most part, they

16 want their contribution to be public and clear as to who it is who's

17 making it. So we leave it to the witnesses.

18 Second, the distressing and emotive potential of this sort of

19 evidence has, in truth, only one forensic value, point of forensic value,

20 point of forensic significance, to this trial. The accused, as, of

21 course, is obvious, is charged in respect of these events. The issue is,

22 or may be, did he know they were happening? Of course he did. Not only

23 would matters have been reported to him, but in these days when the press,

24 radio, and television bring wars to our homes as they occur, he cannot not

25 have known. And therefore the question is if the Chamber is, in due

1 course, satisfied that he lay behind what was happening, why did he

2 continue; why did he not stop these things that were occurring?

3 And third, as a reason for sparing the Chamber an excess of

4 distressing material, this: This accused and others who may come to this

5 Tribunal, or indeed to other tribunals, must know that whatever the

6 underlying facts of crimes charged against them, trials will be conducted

7 in a calm and unemotional manner.

8 And perhaps one last reason why we should treat these events as

9 dispassionately as possible, perhaps what, say the Prosecution, the

10 accused did. He did not confront his victims. He was able to view what

11 was happening from the distance of high political office, and, if the

12 Prosecution's case is right, he had these crimes committed for him by

13 others.

14 This trial, as, again, the Prosecutor has correctly explained,

15 will not be making findings as to history. Matters of history always

16 leave scope for argument, for doubt between historians. But history, even

17 distant history sometimes available to this Court through the witnesses,

18 will have a relevance from time to time in showing what the accused

19 thought, what those identified in indictments as his co-perpetrators

20 thought, what his compliant supporters thought, and what was available in

21 history to fire up the emotions, particularly nationalist emotions,

22 however little this particular accused might personally and genuinely have

23 held those nationalist views.

24 For procedural reasons, this trial will start with evidence about

25 Kosovo, despite that conflict coming last in time. But, in a way, this

1 may be curiously appropriate, for Kosovo features from first to last in

2 the sequence of tragedies with which we are concerned, as well as holding,

3 so it is said, a place in the hearts of Serbs and Albanian Kosovars as the

4 cradle of their respective civilisations.

5 The 1974 Constitution of the Republic of Yugoslavia gave Kosovo,

6 as it did Vojvodina, semi-autonomous status. In fact, very considerable

7 independence. Little-known Kosovo, little Kosovo, barely over a hundred

8 kilometres from end to end, was hardly on anybody's lips outside

9 Yugoslavia and on few people's tourist plans. It lies, of course, in the

10 southern part of the Republic of Serbia, which is itself or was itself one

11 of the constituent republics of the socialist Yugoslavian republic.

12 President Tito died in 1980. It may be that Serb nationalists

13 believed that Tito had kept Yugoslavia together by weakening Serbia when

14 he organised the semi-autonomous provinces within it. Maybe the phrase

15 "weak Serbia, strong Yugoslavia" explained what he had done and why Serb

16 nationalists felt as they did about it.

17 Released from shackles, however beneficent of Tito, exposed the

18 population of Yugoslavia as a whole and its leaders to new experiences,

19 new opportunities and new temptations, and it was Kosovo that showed early

20 signs of enthusiasm for change. As early as March or April of 1981,

21 massive student demonstrations occurred in its capital Pristina, in the

22 town of Prizren and elsewhere, and the slogan "Kosovo Republika" was

23 heard, coming as a surprise and indeed as a shock to many in federal

24 Yugoslavia.

25 At the same time, Serbian communists, and maybe Serbs without

1 political affiliation, were becoming free to grumble about their historic

2 lot and about Kosovo. The Serbian view may have included that it was they

3 who had been the valiant victors in World War I, the chief architects of

4 the new Yugoslavia, the valiant victims of World War II, those who had won

5 in law -- in war but lost in peace and all or very many Serbs were willing

6 to complain about Kosovo.

7 Interestingly, at that early time, Kosovo may have found some

8 support in the republic, in northern Slovenia, perhaps because seeing what

9 was going to happen or what was happening in Kosovo, the Slovenians had

10 anxieties for themselves. But the prevailing culture, perhaps difficult

11 for outsiders to understand or to feel, was that this was a place where to

12 speak in nationalistic terms was genuinely unacceptable, something likely

13 to bring criminal sanctions. May it be that as thought became free, in

14 part, at least, it was easy for it to become distorted? And the Chamber

15 will hear, I have no doubt, in the course of evidence, of a memorandum of

16 the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts that was leaked in 1986. It's a

17 memorandum, of course, of genuine intellectuals, and they were able, in

18 1986, to put their names to the following lines, and I quote, in

19 translation, of course:

20 "The physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide against

21 the Serb population of Kosovo and Metohija is the serious, serious defeat

22 of Serbia."

23 They went on in the memorandum to say:

24 "Except in the wartime period, never have the Serbs of Croatia

25 been so threatened as today."

1 That, then, the reaction of intellectuals in 1986 of Serb

2 persuasion to what was beginning to happen in little Kosovo.

3 How slight was the face -- the threat that the Serbs really faced

4 compared with the threats that were to face others later? How could they

5 sensibly use in that context the notion of genocide of culture? But the

6 prevailing culture was one that could produce such thought, and there was

7 much talk at the time of Serbs being vulnerable and under threat, concern

8 that the massacres of World War II, where they had suffered badly, so

9 badly, would happen again, concern that they would be drowned by the

10 Albanians in Kosovo or that they would somehow be exploited and oppressed

11 politically and economically.

12 It was onto to this scene that this accused was propelled or

13 propelled himself. And a question may arise, when we consider this part

14 of the history on the evidence, how this man, rare among former communist

15 leaders, was able to effect the transition from party leadership under the

16 old regime to party leadership under the new. Was he a brilliant and

17 kindly leader or was he simply a man who had the sharpest appreciation of

18 how to retain control through manipulation?

19 The fate of the late Ivan Stambolic may provide some answer. This

20 man was mentor, in the political sense, to the accused, his protege. He

21 sent his protege to Kosovo to quell unrest. He gave him an opportunity.

22 It was an opportunity, and I'm afraid it's of course now all too well

23 known, he gave him an opportunity which he took.

24 Your Honour, we'll look now briefly at a piece of footage. Even

25 if it is well-known, it will have to be part of the evidence in this

1 case. It's footage of the April 1987 meeting in Kosovo.

2 If the booth could assist us.

3 [Videotape played]

4 MR. NICE: To what extent, if any, that incident was stimulated

5 and planned matters little. It was that phrase that, "You will not be

6 beaten," and the response of others to it that gave this accused the taste

7 or a better taste of power, maybe the first realisation of a dream. It

8 gave him an opening.

9 The man who had sent him, his former mentor, Stambolic, rapidly

10 lost power. The accused gained power. By the 23rd of September of 1987,

11 at the 8th Session of the Serbian Communist Party, the accused achieved

12 superiority over Stambolic, and in due course he was removed on the basis

13 of what it may be was a totally incorrect or even forged document, and the

14 accused became head of the ruling Communist Party.

15 It's perhaps worth having in mind that it can never have been easy

16 or that easy for a Serb communist to gain wide popularity. Serbs may have

17 treasured institutions like the monarchy or the Orthodox church or even

18 the Chetnik movement that had been suppressed by communism, and it may be

19 that Bosnian Serbs in particular felt this strongly and saw less or little

20 good in communism. So for a former communist such as -- or a communist

21 such as this accused to gain wide support was tricky, difficult, and he

22 had to unite, if he was to have and retain power, the communist left and

23 the anti-communist right. He had to obtain support of Serbs in Serbia

24 proper but also elsewhere in Yugoslavia. He had to weld them together,

25 although much later, or later in any event, he would have to be releasing

1 them, individuals, when their purpose was served, and large groups of them

2 in Croatia and Bosnia when his efforts at joinder failed.

3 By 1988 and into 1989, the accused was enjoying considerable

4 support. It was something called the Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution,

5 manifest in Vojvodina in something well-known I think, as the yoghurt

6 revolution because of what was thrown, and also in Montenegro. And to

7 give us a taste of the times, it was in the course of these rallies, this

8 Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution, that pictures of the accused were

9 everywhere, borne aloft in demonstrations. And perhaps as a result both

10 the Provincial Government of Vojvodina and the Republican Government of

11 Montenegro became places where support for the accused could be found.

12 Indeed in Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic, as President of Montenegro, came to

13 be a great supporter of this accused.

14 But his successes were not without difficulties. In October of

15 1988, there were demonstrations in Kosovo again against Serb nationalism

16 and against the threats to the Kosovar economy and indeed its autonomy.

17 In November 1988, there were moves in the Kosovo Communist Party where

18 people less loyal to this accused were replaced by those more loyal to

19 him, and that was followed in February of 1989 by massive strikes, in

20 particular of Albanian miners, against the threat of the revocation of

21 Kosovo's autonomy.

22 Can we get another snapshot of this accused at about this time?

23 At the end of February or beginning of March of 1989, there was a

24 demonstration. The subject was nationalism. We'll see the video in just

25 a second.

1 The accused spoke to a crowd of perhaps up to a million

2 demonstrators in Belgrade. He spoke of settling accounts with Kosovo

3 leaders and promised decisive action, but perhaps interesting is this: He

4 kept the crowd waiting for a full 24 hours and then only spoke to them for

5 four minutes.

6 Can we see the clip?

7 [Videotape played]

8 MR. NICE: Well, the accused had learned, it may be thought, to

9 use the power of a crowd. And in that interchange with the crowd, he

10 responded to what was asked of him. And the man, Vllasi, featured in the

11 communist shuffle that I referred to recently, was, I think, arrested the

12 following day.

13 But the powers of crowds are limited and, ultimately, reversible,

14 as we will all recall from seeing on our television screens how it was

15 that this accused eventually lost power so many years later.

16 I return then to Kosovo, a continuing problem. In March of 1989,

17 the Kosovo Assembly itself passed constitutional amendments contrary to

18 its own best interests, abandoning or losing control of police, education,

19 economic policy, the choice of the official language, and its veto powers

20 over further changes of the Serbian constitution. At the time it passed

21 those amendments, the Assembly building was surrounded by tanks and there

22 was uncertainty, in any event, as to whether the appropriate majority for

23 the changes was present.

24 It would not be surprising if such actions against Kosovo brought

25 reaction. And I suppose the only surprise that one might have in mind now

1 and, as we look at the chronology, for the next few years of the

2 chronology is that the reaction of Kosovo, or of the Kosovo Albanians, was

3 as muted and peaceful for a time as it was. Peaceful, perhaps, because

4 Kosovo was left waiting, so far as it was concerned, for an eventual happy

5 outcome; waiting, it may be on the accused's part, if he dwelt on it at

6 all, for Kosovo's turn to come. People, at the time of the conflicts in

7 Croatia and Bosnia, would say cynically or jokingly that, in the end, it

8 would end at Kosovo.

9 On the 28th of March of 1989, the Assembly of Serbia approved the

10 constitutional changes and revoked the autonomy of Kosovo granted in the

11 1974 constitution. More strikes, massive in scale, responded to by brutal

12 repression; up to 100 demonstrators killed, a thousand people put on

13 trial, including many of the Albanian elite. But this did not affect the

14 accused's rise. For on the 8th of May, the time that these things were

15 happening, he became, not by popular vote but by the mechanism of the

16 state appropriate at the time, President of Serbia.

17 This trial is about the climb of this accused to power, power that

18 the Prosecution will invite the Chamber to say, in due course, was

19 exercised without accountability, responsibility, or morality. Such

20 climbs cannot be accomplished alone. The help of fellow travelers is

21 required, however quickly they may leave or be made to leave the moving

22 vehicle, and from time to time we should just consider some of these men,

23 co-indictees, some of them in the Kosovo indictment; others named as

24 co-perpetrators in the Croatia and Bosnia indictments.

25 Borisav Jovic, whose photograph is on the overhead projector,

1 became Vice-President of the collective Presidency of Yugoslavia. It's a

2 body composed of various representatives of the states and the

3 semi-autonomous provinces. This man was one of the accused's closest

4 collaborators in the early days of the joint criminal enterprise charged

5 against him, and was President of the Presidency itself of Yugoslavia

6 between 1990/1991, for a year.

7 Through this man and others like him, say the Prosecution, this

8 accused exercised effective control over the Presidency - the Presidency -

9 serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Yugoslav army, at that time known by

10 the acronym JNA, and he was able to achieve that control despite being,

11 the word "only" would be inappropriate, really, but only President of

12 Serbia.

13 Perhaps I should just add this: Those who did not live in federal

14 states and who look at them from a different experience may be tempted to

15 think that it must be the case that the federal body is, in some way, all

16 embracing of, larger than, more powerful than, the constituent states.

17 That would be an easy mistake to make in respect of the former Yugoslavia,

18 and it may well be the case that the federal body was weaker at various

19 times, and certainly at the time with which we are concerned, than the

20 individual state of Serbia. But that's for later determination.

21 Returning to the man Borisav Jovic. In June of 1990, as the

22 evidence will reveal, the accused shared with Jovic his view that the

23 amputation of Croatia, the secession of Croatia, was to be exercised in

24 such a way that various opstinas/regions of Croatia remain with us, with

25 Yugoslavia. At the same time, another man who becomes important at this

1 time, General Veljko Kadijevic, agreed with that notion; that Serbian

2 opstinas, in the event of the loss of Croatia, should remain with us, the

3 "us" then being, at least at that time, Yugoslavia. A seemingly innocent

4 goal but one that could be used to explain and to justify territorial

5 aggression and crimes against humanity in the coming years.

6 That general, General Kadijevic, along with General Adzic, the

7 Chief of Staff of the JNA, the Yugoslavian army, assured both Jovic and

8 this accused that the military would in no case allow the Croatian police

9 to occupy certain particular Croatian cities which were, by that point,

10 under Serb control.

11 A word about the word "police," as I shall use it in the course of

12 this opening and as will be used extensively in the trial. The Ministry

13 of the Interior is known as the MUP, M-U-P, or the Ministry of the

14 Interior Police is known as the MUP, the M-U-P. It comes in two parts:

15 the conventional police, dealing with crimes, traffic, and so on, and

16 another part which, to the uninitiated, resemble far more a military

17 force, with substantial weaponry and appropriate vehicles.

18 The relationship of Jovic and Milosevic before and during the war

19 in Croatia, which we will be turning to in due course, will show in detail

20 how this accused, although the President of Serbia, exercised control over

21 that Presidency of which I have referred and the army of which the

22 Presidency was Commander-in-Chief.

23 Another point begins to emerge about this accused.

24 First, guilty, culpable people often forget to do, at the time,

25 what their innocence should have them doing. We may find in the case of

1 this accused, in the years that are to come, little or no expression of

2 regret for what was happening to the victims of these conflicts; no

3 sympathy. What thought process could enable him, whatever he was doing,

4 to suffer this form of mental blindness?

5 Well, now, part of the answer to that question may lie in the

6 mechanism by which he controlled events. By being notionally separate

7 from the body that was, in law, doing things - in this case, the

8 Presidency of which he was not a member - he controlled events because he

9 controlled the people who constituted the body that, as we will say in due

10 course, did evil. So it was that body, not he who bore responsibility.

11 Never him; no regrets; no shame.

12 Moving on just a little with Borisav Jovic, before we return to

13 the chronological examination of events. We will discover that from

14 October 1991, when there were absentees from the Presidency because the

15 representatives from Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina

16 did not exercise their powers, the Presidency became what was known as a

17 Rump Presidency, headed by a man called Branko Kostic, sometime

18 Vice-President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, named as a

19 co-perpetrator, with Borislav Jovic playing a key role in it. And then it

20 was the Rump Presidency influenced, if not controlled, by the accused that

21 was able to control the Yugoslav People's Army, the JNA, the Territorial

22 Defence units and volunteer units acting in coordination and under the

23 supervision of the JNA, and so on. So, so much, for the time being, of

24 that man.

25 We will, no doubt, hear in this case from at least one

1 constitutional expert. It's right that the Chamber should have that

2 material before it, although there is a limit to the relevance of

3 constitutional law to a man who, as the Prosecution say, regarded the law

4 as an instrument of rule rather than a controller of rulers. And the

5 quick reality may be this: The units I have just described as being

6 subordinated to and controlled by the Rump Presidency, in due course, that

7 committed the gravest of crimes, was simply, however indirectly, under the

8 authority of this accused. And the Rump Presidency acted without

9 dissension to execute his policies so that the man Jovic would share

10 responsibility for what was done by the army. But we'll come to that in

11 due course.

12 Returning to the rise of this accused, and returning to Kosovo, we

13 come to the 28th of June of 1989. Another, I think, famous clip, but we

14 must show it and it must be entered into the evidence of this case.

15 On that day, there was celebration of the 600th anniversary of the

16 Battle of Kosovo. I shan't trouble the Chamber with the detail of why

17 that battle, which was indeed a loss by Serbians, was celebrated in the

18 way it was.

19 The event occurred at a place called Kosovo Polje in Kosovo. An

20 enormous number of people attended. The accused was the lead speaker.

21 The full speech we'll, of course, pay consideration in due course. The

22 Chamber may think it is a skilful speech of great power, reflecting on how

23 Serbs used to feel guilty for their role but should no more, how Serbs had

24 been the bringers of freedom; basically how Serbs did and were good. But

25 there was one passage even in June 1989 that merits particular attention,

1 and the clip that I will now ask to be played will show us what it was.

2 [Videotape played]

3 MR. NICE: Can we just pause that for a minute, please? Your

4 Honour, I'm sorry. I was hoping that might be translated by the booths.

5 If it's not happening --

6 JUDGE MAY: Maybe that's something you can deal with during the

7 adjournment, which we will take shortly.

8 MR. NICE: Yes.

9 JUDGE MAY: At a convenient moment.

10 MR. NICE: I'm entirely in the Court's hands, certainly.

11 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters are ready.

12 MR. NICE: [Previous translation continues] ... earlier than I

13 thought you would be rising.

14 JUDGE MAY: I have a message that the interpreters are ready, so

15 let's try again.

16 [Videotape played]

17 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover] "Comrades, at this place, at this

18 place in the heart of Serbia, on the Field of Kosovo, Kosovo Field, six

19 centuries ago, a full 600 years ago, one of the greatest battles of that

20 time took place. The Kosovo heroism for six centuries has inspired our

21 creativity, has fed our pride, and does not allow us to forget that we

22 were once a large army, a proud army, a rare army who in its loss was not

23 vanquished.

24 "Six centuries later - today - we are once again fighting battles

25 and faced with battles. They are not armed battles, although such battles

1 are not excluded either. But regardless of the nature of those battles,

2 the battles cannot be won without the decisiveness, the courage and

3 perseverance, and all the good qualities that were ever present a long

4 time ago on the field of Kosovo."

5 MR. NICE: So armed battles, armed struggle was not being excluded

6 even at that stage.

7 And one other point about this gathering and what was said at it,

8 which we will look at in the course of the trial: Happening on the

9 territory of Kosovo, a speech that contained references to the values of a

10 multi-ethnic society but not one word about the Kosovo Albanians.

11 By the end of 1989, it may be appropriate to remind ourselves the

12 fate of Romania's President Ceaucescu may well have caused fear in the

13 minds and hearts of those who would be facing strong anti-communist

14 sentiment generally. The skill and ability of this accused was to use

15 such developing sentiments of anti-communism and to turn them, by reliance

16 on nationalism, to his own advantage, for in the same way has he

17 understood the power of the crowd, he appreciated that nationalism was a

18 force.

19 I return to what the Prosecutor has already said but in slightly

20 different terms to the same effect: Was the accused a nationalist?

21 Maybe; maybe not. In the same way as he most probably was not in any way

22 a racist.

23 There are those who believe in causes, and there are those who can

24 seem to believe in causes. Only they know at the time which may be the

25 truth. Others have to wait until later to discover from a careful

1 examination of patterns of events whether the cause was an object of

2 genuine pursuit or the passport to something else. The Chamber may in due

3 course decide, if it thinks it has to, but the Prosecution invites caution

4 before finding sincere adoption of a nationalist Serbian cause by this

5 man.

6 We come to the disintegration of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia

7 in January of 1989. I needn't trouble you with the video clip for the

8 meeting where the Slovenes and Croats left the party, although they

9 remained in the Presidency of the former Yugoslavia for another two and a

10 half years. The Chamber may remember from other sources how the Slovenes,

11 I think, arrived at the last meeting with their suitcases ready for a

12 quick getaway.

13 Following that meeting, further demonstrations in Kosovo. Kosovo

14 again. Demonstrations crushed by police; 27 killed. Now not an

15 incidental but a figure of comparative, not acceptability but something,

16 for of course a disintegrating society can have all too easily a

17 corrupting effect on one's approach or the approach of people there to

18 things like that.

19 And we then reach the stage in the overall development of the

20 history of the elections elsewhere and the growth of the nationalist

21 parties elsewhere.

22 I don't know if that's a convenient moment or not.

23 JUDGE MAY: Yes, it would be convenient. We will adjourn.

24 Would the registrar just come up, please.

25 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

1 JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn now until half past eleven.

2 --- Recess taken at 11.00 a.m.

3 --- On resuming at 11.30 a.m.

4 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Kay.

5 MR. KAY: Yes, Your Honours. A matter I should raise before the

6 Court before Mr. Nice continues with his opening, and it's merely to put

7 it on the record and give an explanation because some people may have been

8 concerned with what happened in the adjournment, although, for our part,

9 we're not.

10 The accused passed a number of informal comments about the

11 Prosecution opening to Mr. Tapuskovic of a very general nature which we

12 heard and which was translated for us and not in the way of detailed

13 instructions or anything like that, and the amici obviously listened to

14 what was being said by him. We just raise this so that there is a

15 clarification, if there is any communication by the accused to the amici

16 during the court session, to find out what the position is as Your Honours

17 would see it.

18 JUDGE MAY: Well, the difficulty is this: that during the court

19 session or when the accused is going in and out of court, it's clearly

20 disruptive if there are conversations going on. It's better, if there are

21 any conversations, that they take place out of court and not while he's

22 going in and out. So if you wish to speak to him or he wishes to speak to

23 you, then you must ask and, no doubt, leave will be granted.

24 MR. KAY: Thank you for that clarification, Your Honour.

25 MR. NICE: We come to the elections of the spring of 1990.

1 In Croatia, the Croatian Democratic Union, known by its initials

2 HDZ, won a plurality of votes and the majority of seats in the Croatian

3 Parliament, the Sabor, and elected the late Franjo Tudjman as its

4 President.

5 Can we just have a look at a plan.

6 We, of course, owe a duty to be evenhanded in the presentation of

7 this chronology, as indeed in the presentation of all the evidence in this

8 case, and therefore at this time, as we look at this plan - the first time

9 we've looked at it - it shows, of course, Croatia surrounding

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina, it shows the particular areas of interests for the

11 Serbs, but just for the present purpose, it just shows a couple of points

12 for identification purposes really. Because at this early stage, it's

13 worth noting that Croat armed forces, at this stage, were already

14 attacking the Serbs from time to time; in particular, they attacked some

15 Serb civilians, notably in Eastern Slavonia, which we can see in red, and

16 indeed there were war crimes committed in the Gospic area, which is not, I

17 think, shown specifically but which is over to the west, now the subject

18 of a high-profile trial itself in Croatia.

19 We will probably leave that map on the overhead projector, I

20 think, for the time being and move on.

21 While the Croats of Croatia were moving towards a nationalist

22 position and government, the attacks on Kosovo Albanians were continuing,

23 and the delegates to their Assembly in Kosovo passed what was an

24 unofficial resolution declaring Kosovo an equal and independent entity

25 within the republic. Sorry, of course this map doesn't show Kosovo. We

1 all know where it is. In due course, for any who don't, maps will be on

2 the overhead projector, making that clearer.

3 JUDGE MAY: Yes, there's some interruption coming from one of the

4 booths which we can overhear. Maybe something can be done about it.

5 MR. NICE: While that's being dealt with, Your Honour, I am aware

6 that there is, of course, a new language being dealt with in this

7 Tribunal, and although probably it would have been desirable for me to

8 move at the measured pace I'm adopting in any event for interpreters with

9 whom I'm familiar, it's particularly appropriate with new interpreters

10 that I don't go too fast.

11 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

12 MR. NICE: With that unofficial resolution passed, perhaps

13 unsurprisingly, the Serbian Assembly reacted by dissolving the Kosovo

14 Assembly; a further substantial attack on Kosovo's integrity.

15 The accused's Communist Party was changing, mutating into the new

16 party that he was to lead, the Serbian Socialist Party or SPS, coming into

17 being on the 16th of July of 1990, the accused becoming its President, the

18 party being and becoming one of, if not his main, lever of power.

19 A word also about that party. It remained the most powerful party

20 in Serbia until the autumn of the year 2000. The accused was its

21 President throughout save for a period between May 1991 and October 1992

22 when the man Borisav Jovic, of whom we've already seen and heard a little,

23 was President.

24 This party controlled institutions on the Serb republic and the

25 Yugoslav federal level. The accused had de facto power at those levels

1 through the party regardless of which function he held, whether as

2 President of Serbia, as he was from 1990 to 1997, or President of the

3 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 until 2000. Through his party,

4 he could control the Presidency of, first, the socialist republic, later

5 the federal republic and the Serbian Assemblies. He controlled that which

6 I have already described as the Rump Presidency, giving him control over

7 the army, and the parliamentary majorities of the SPS gave him control

8 over parliaments in both Serbia and Yugoslavia.

9 The powers of patronage he exercised were enormous. Key

10 government posts were filled by party members. Some of those names, and I

11 shan't list all of them, who were appointed effectively by the party and

12 thus by this accused, include Jovic, to whom we've heard; Kostic of the

13 Rump Presidency to whom we've referred; Nikola Sainovic, a Deputy Prime

14 Minister of the federal republic in due course and who will feature later;

15 Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Serbian Minister of Internal Affairs, again who will

16 feature later; Milan Milutinovic, President of Serbia from 1997, who will

17 feature in our later discussions; and Mihalj Kertes, the Federal Deputy

18 Minister of the Interior and Serbian Minister without portfolio and

19 Director of the Federal Customs Agency, a man of great significance, in

20 due course, when we consider the way control of events was subject to

21 control of money.

22 It may not be easy to understand the real nature of a political

23 party in the accused's Serbia. It may be fair to describe it as the only

24 real employer, certainly of people at a certain level, with the accused

25 appointing people to high office, the party controlling the payroll.

1 By this patronage, he exercised enormous power, which included

2 control over media outlets, particularly Radio Television Serbia, RTS, and

3 the publishing company Politika, because directors of these firms almost

4 exclusively were members of the party, and it was individuals loyal to the

5 accused that filled the top posts. Likewise did he have control over the

6 National Bank of Serbia, the National Bank of Yugoslavia, and that Federal

7 Customs Administration associated with the man Kertes.

8 Almost all directors of major Serbian state companies, men who had

9 enormous power and control, were members of the party. Their jobs, their

10 incomes, their homes depending on that affiliation and on the patronage of

11 the accused.

12 In addition and coming later, in 1995, the accused's wife, Mira

13 Markovic, founded a party called the Yugoslav United Left, or JUL, a small

14 party but a place which would be home for those committed socialists and

15 former communists for whom the nationalist tendency of the SPS was

16 unacceptable. Small though the JUL was, it was a force to combine with

17 the accused's party - two parties in the one family - and between 1995 and

18 2000, the parties joined forces in coalition governments on the federal

19 and republican level bearing responsibility for all-important decisions,

20 including those in relation to state security and international policy.

21 Thus an outline of political control, and I return to the

22 chronology.

23 In September 1990, on the 7th of September, indeed, many Kosovo

24 Albanian delegates of their Assembly, as it had been, proclaimed a

25 Constitution for the Republic of Kosovo. On the 28th of September, the

1 Republic of Serbia promulgated a new Constitution which had wide-ranging

2 effect, by Article 135, nullifying any obligations it owed to the rest of

3 the country and, by Article 72, usurping two paramount federal functions;

4 national defence and foreign relations. It may be thought that this was a

5 secessionist document in substance.

6 Meanwhile, in November 1990, turning to Bosnia and Herzegovina,

7 multi-party elections were called. And at the republic level there, the

8 voting was as follows: The SDA, the party of the Bosnian Muslims, came

9 first with 86 seats; the SDS, the party of the Bosnian Serbs, second with

10 72; and the HDZ Croat party, 44 seats.

11 Here we have three national nationalistic parties, and they

12 formed, for the time being, a coalition government dividing up power in

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

14 Let us focus on the SDS, the party of the Bosnian Serbs, its

15 leader, Radovan Karadzic, its leadership including Momcilo Krajisnik and

16 Biljana Plavsic, co-perpetrators and, of course, awaiting trial here. The

17 platform of that party was the unification of all Serbs within one state.

18 The SDS, regarding the separation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the

19 socialist federal republic, as it still was, as a threat to the interests

20 of the Serbs.

21 Looking ahead, but only briefly to 1993, in an interview, the

22 woman member of those three, Biljana Plavsic, said the following, and I

23 quote:

24 "In order not to have any fear as to what will happen, I would

25 prefer us to cleanse Eastern Bosnia from the Muslims. They have

1 introduced the term 'ethnic cleansing' to denote a perfectly natural

2 phenomenon and qualified it as a war crime."

3 She went on:

4 "Muslims originate from the Serbs, but it is spoiled Serbian

5 genetic material which has converted to Islam and then naturally from

6 generation to generation the gene has condensed. It has deteriorated

7 further."

8 Thus when looking at the SDS, the views of one of its leaders.

9 Meanwhile, in Serbia, on the 9th of December, 1990, this accused

10 was elected again President of Serbia, but now not by internal mechanisms

11 but by a popular mandate, giving him an authority greater than any of his

12 colleagues or, it may be thought, those whose election was indirect.

13 Staying with the map and looking at the various areas, hopefully

14 coloured yellow, green, blue, and red, on the 24th of December, Croatian

15 Serbs in Knin announced the creation of a Serbian Autonomous District and

16 declared their independence from Croatia.

17 Back in Kosovo, as moves for independence elsewhere in the

18 Federation of Yugoslavia were gathering pace, in Kosovo suppression was

19 continuing. Throughout late 1990 and 1991, thousands of Kosovo Albanian

20 doctors, teachers, professors, workers, police, civil servants were

21 dismissed from their job simply on account of their being Kosovo

22 Albanians. The local court was abolished; many judges were removed. And

23 violence against Kosovo Albanians increased.

24 I pause to ask ourselves this, a question of curious importance,

25 as we will later see: Who lived in Kosovo? How many? Only estimates are

1 available for the population of Kosovo in 1991 because the Kosovo

2 Albanians boycotted the census that was administered that year. General

3 estimates are that the population during the time period relevant to this

4 indictment was between 1.800.000 and 2.100.000, and of that number,

5 approximately 85 or 90 per cent were Kosovo Albanians; 5 to 10 per cent,

6 Serbs; and some other smaller groups.

7 The significance of those figures? Significant in themselves in

8 light of what was to happen to those people, particularly when we see

9 later, much later, how this accused was to attempt to misrepresent the

10 very strong balance of the population in favour of the Kosovo Albanians.

11 On the 22nd of January, 1991, the accused and President Momir

12 Bulatovic of neighbouring Montenegro, in a joint press release, proclaimed

13 to the world that existing Yugoslav borders "have never been the

14 boundaries within which individual Yugoslav nations live," drawing a

15 distinction between state and nation.

16 On the 5th of February of 1991, Serbia established ministries of

17 its government, as proposed by the accused, including a ministry

18 specifically to have links with Serbs outside Serbia. It was this

19 ministry that assisted the SDS, the party of the Serbs in Bosnia, to

20 establish that Serb republic to which we will be turning later.

21 On the 23rd of February of 1991 - now, I'm not sure that it is

22 exactly that date - in February 1991, the accused visited the head office

23 of that party to be greeted by Karadzic, Krajisnik, and Plavsic. In all

24 their presences, Karadzic told the journalists present this: "We do not

25 see that this should be discussed, Serbs living exclusively in a joint

1 state. Just as it is natural that rain falls, it is quite natural for

2 Serbs to live in the same state." The party's expression of purpose was

3 clear.

4 But it wasn't all plain sailing for the accused. In March of

5 1991, demonstrations against him, this time in respect of his control of

6 the media, soon to become the most serious challenge to his regime,

7 demonstrations that were violently suppressed by both the police and the

8 army. I will not trouble you with footage of these demonstrations, but we

9 will see later the degree to which this accused was prepared to use force

10 on those of his own who took against him.

11 But with these demonstrations the accused was embattled, and it's

12 interesting to observe that Karadzic of the Bosnian Serbs came to his

13 rescue to the extent that, in any event, threatening violence with these

14 words: "If demonstrations are a weapon," he said, "it has to be said that

15 we have so much pressure from Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina that a million

16 of them are ready to go to Belgrade and demonstrate." So the accused,

17 threatened at home, could turn for help to Serbs abroad, a symbiotic

18 relationship. Serbs abroad were to seek and have assistance from the

19 accused, at any event, for as long as he could give it.

20 So Yugoslavia reached a deep crisis with the events I have

21 described in summary, leading the accused to famously declare that

22 Yugoslavia was finished. Deadlock in the Presidency led to the

23 following:

24 The very representatives on the Presidency, those from Serbia,

25 Montenegro, Vojvodina, and Kosovo, who may have been under the control of

1 the accused, resigned, subsequently to rejoin. Why did they resign? The

2 evidence may satisfy the Tribunal, in due course, that their resignation

3 was part of a complicated attempt at a coup, in the course of which

4 General Kadijevic was to take over the army. The accused was to play his

5 part, which he did by saying the things he said and, for example, at a

6 secret meeting, telling local government leaders that Serbia was de facto

7 at war and saying this: "If we don't know how to work and run the economy

8 well, we surely know how to fight well," saying, "It's always the

9 powerful, never the weak who dictate frontiers," and announcing on

10 television that he was organising police reservists to prevent rebellions

11 in Kosovo and elsewhere. He stated, "Serbia would no longer be bound by

12 decisions of the Federal Presidency," control its Rump though he did.

13 That position or those positions of the accused have, of course,

14 been stated on many occasions; namely, that the borders of the Yugoslav

15 states were irrelevant and merely administrative and would have to be

16 changed before any republic could become independent. So far as the

17 accused was concerned, borders were only borders if they were for people.

18 Only people could become independent. But, of course, people could not

19 take their land with them, which meant, in the logic of these arguments,

20 that people would be forced off their lands to allow people to have the

21 borders that they wanted.

22 But back to the coup, if coup it was. If the army was to take

23 over, then perhaps it lost its nerve and failed, and so Jovic and the

24 others returned to the Presidency. He, of course - that is, the accused -

25 continued to control the members of the Presidency, some of them being

1 changed about this time, further to fit in with his own desires. There

2 was a replacement - I needn't trouble you with the names at the time being

3 - in respect of Kosovo, that replacement being organised not by the

4 Kosovo Assembly but by the Serbian Assembly. Kostic came to represent

5 Montenegro, Yugoslav Kostic came to represent Vojvodina, and Borisav Jovic

6 stayed as the representative of Serbia, so that the accused controlled

7 four of the eight votes on the Presidency and could paralyse the Yugoslav

8 government at will.

9 Of those four, the Prosecution's case is that it was Jovic and

10 Kostic who were his primary agents through whom he directed actions of the

11 Serbian Bloc, matters covered in the memoirs of one of them and subject of

12 evidence we will lead.

13 On the 29th of March of 1991, again famously, the accused met

14 President Franjo Tudjman in Karadjordjevo to discuss the partition of

15 Bosnia and Herzegovina between Serbia and Croatia. The accused promised

16 Croatia the territory of what was described as the 1939 banovina. I'll

17 come to that briefly when introducing the Croatian indictment. The

18 agreement left little, very little for the Muslims. It was to be, in the

19 vernacular, a carving up of another territory.

20 In March 1991, the conflict intensified. Serb police forces

21 attempted to consolidate power over areas with significant Serb

22 populations, and Serb police, headed by Milan Martic, a co-perpetrator in

23 one of these indictments, took control of a police station in Pakrac,

24 which is in Western Slavonia.

25 If you could just put the map back on very briefly to remind

1 them. Thank you. Western Slavonia, shown on the map.

2 At Plitvice, in the Krajina towards the west, famous beautiful

3 lakes, the Serbs attacked a bus carrying Croatian policemen. Another

4 battle erupted. The JNA army deployed troops, issuing an ultimatum to the

5 Croatian police to withdraw from Plitvice. The consequence of that,

6 something to be repeated on other occasions, was to leave the Serb

7 attackers in the area with the spoils that they had achieved by the time

8 of the intervention of the army.

9 By March of 1991, another body had been formed. It was called the

10 Supreme Command Staff, and it gradually assumed command authority over the

11 army. The picture we see here is of Adzic, the JNA Chief of Staff, on the

12 left and Kadijevic on the right. The title of the photograph, with its

13 date which is a little hard to say, but it's 1991, and I think it's the

14 12th of March, is "Meeting of the Supreme Command."

15 Now, the Supreme Command was something that should only have

16 existed in wartime, but it was set up now. And later Kadijevic told Stipe

17 Mesic, whose present role is well-known, that the accused had wanted him

18 to found the Supreme Command Staff and that Kadijevic had cooperated with

19 him since the remaining Serbian leadership, as he said, reflecting a use

20 of the word "Chetnik" that is not favourable, the rest of the Serb

21 leadership were even greater Chetniks than he. Well, that view that the

22 others were worse, was that a view that some others, even international

23 diplomats, may, in due course or at the time, have allowed themselves to

24 think? And if they and all of them thought it, were they ultimately to be

25 proved wrong?

1 On the 15th of May, Serbian delegates blocked the election of

2 Stipe Mesic to President of the Presidency, leaving Yugoslavia without a

3 head of state. At that same time, a little later, the 29th of May, the

4 accused brought Karadzic, whose party may be seen as an offshoot of the

5 Croat party with the same initials, into the plan.

6 We will play now, with the assistance of the booth, a tape of an

7 intercept. It's between the accused and Karadzic. It discusses getting

8 arms for part of Bosnia.

9 Before we play it, can I forecast what you will be hearing? The

10 accused tells Karadzic to call the army General Uzelac, Commander of the

11 Banja Luka Corps and a man in charge of units in Western Salvonia, to

12 arrange a meeting with him on the highest level. About the armament of

13 local Serb populations, the accused says this: "All men you give, you

14 have to stay and protect houses and territory and block the HDZ centres

15 will be armed and give everything they need. We'll transport that by

16 helicopter."

17 When Karadzic asks whether they could get weapons for Territorial

18 Defence, the accused answered: "It's not a problem."

19 If we could hear the tape, please.

20 [Audio cassette played]

21 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

22 "R: O.K. Then, let's do it. We are ready - there are 170 people

23 in Mrkonjic and 150 in Sipovo who are ready to go to Kupres.

24 S: Is Uzelac authorised for that too?

25 R: No, no. Yes, I think he is, yes.

1 S: Well, then tell him we can't discuss every detail like this.

2 R: O.K. O.K. Then these 150 and 170 men will go to Kupres. And

3 we already have 750 men there at Kupres.

4 S: So it's important for us that the JNA battalion be at Kupres

5 and that everything goes well."

6 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I'm not sure whether that reflected

7 entirely my forecast but this is one of a number of intercepts now

8 available, and the intercept that I had in mind reflects the consent that

9 I said and reveals the contribution to arms for Karadzic by this accused.

10 I move on.

11 Elsewhere, the world was not entirely asleep however much it might

12 later have been criticised for lack of awareness. As early as the 20th of

13 May of 1991, the United States Congress announced entry into force of the

14 Nickles Amendment banning economic assistance to Yugoslavia due to

15 repression in Kosovo. The accused was to learn that playing the

16 nationalist tune came with a price. But this was only the beginning of

17 the price or the cost. Huge costs in money but, of course, significantly

18 in lives lost and ruined was to lie ahead.

19 August the 1st, 1991, brings us to the start of the period covered

20 by the indictment first in time, the Croatia indictment. Let us take

21 stock.

22 A great deal has, of course, been written about this man. This

23 trial starts with a blank sheet of paper and writes on it only that which

24 can be spelled out by evidence. The Prosecution should perhaps express

25 some forecast of what that evidence will reveal in general terms

1 consistent with what the Prosecutor has already explained to you.

2 A clever and ambitious man will be revealed. Not a racist in the

3 sense of someone determined to live only with fellow Serbs, not an

4 idealist; someone concerned more, if not exclusively, with the maintenance

5 of personal power. A man who we must not contrast the figure we see here

6 and in the earlier hearings who speaks of defending his people, of the

7 unfair wars against the Serbs, casting himself as victim, with a person

8 who could bring a million people to their feet waiting for just a few

9 minutes of his time. A complex man. A man who would leave no traces if

10 he could avoid them or who indeed destroyed traces of his control. A man

11 who, in order to do that, avoided large meetings where those attending

12 could always find support for disagreement or dissension in others; and a

13 man who, perhaps as a result, preferred one-to-one encounters, personal

14 control, where those with him could not be sure of the loyalty or the

15 disloyalty of others. A man who was prepared to use different objectives

16 to stimulate different people: All Serbs in one state, anti-capitalism,

17 or when dealing with the International Community, the preservation of the

18 integrity of the former Yugoslavia, as appropriate summaries of his

19 position. A man who it may be thought counted on the short-term memories

20 of observers and who was able later to play the peacemaker. A man, it may

21 be, who simply regards those as fools who cannot see how easy it is to say

22 one thing and to do another.

23 Looking at the case overall, the Prosecution's case is that the

24 overall transaction that links the three indictments together is to be

25 found in a transaction that from first to last has the accused being

1 concerned by forcible removal of non-Serbs from areas of the former

2 Yugoslavia, to have and to control a centralised Serbian state, to do so

3 by gaining from Croatia and Bosnia or retaining in Kosovo territory that

4 fell within his plan. In language created by the facts of this case, he

5 did that by ethnic cleansing.

6 May I indulge myself once only in this opening to this extent: Is

7 "ethnic cleansing" a phrase that should, if there is man with ingenuity

8 to do it, be abandoned and replaced by words that better describe the real

9 horror of what is contained within those two words lest the understatement

10 implicit in the word "cleansing" should ever permit any offender to feel

11 free to do that which he or she would not do if these acts were correctly

12 described? Not having that ingenuity myself, I must stick to the phrase

13 that these facts created.

14 Looking at the accused, and in the vernacular, from first to last

15 he wanted as much as he could get, as we will reveal, as much as he could

16 get away with and as much as he could keep, providing that the price was

17 not too high in territory or power; a flexible man who did not waste time

18 with dreams. And this may have marked him off from some of those with

19 whom he was concerned, "he" pursuing a personal, "they" an idealistic

20 agenda.

21 At the outset, he thought he could have it all, perhaps, a new

22 Yugoslavia; himself a second Tito. That impossible, the central Serbian

23 state to be carved out of Croatia and Bosnia, all the while keeping Kosovo

24 in an iron grip. This all to be effected by the forcible removal of

25 non-Serbs whenever and wherever they posed a challenge. Possibly simply

1 to satisfy the hatreds of those who implemented his will.

2 As we look at the three indictments that make this trial, and in

3 due course the Chamber may be satisfied that in Croatia and in Bosnia he

4 was involved in war that he could afford to win but didn't, Kosovo was

5 something he could never afford to lose, but he did.

6 The accused carried out his aim or objective of control and

7 domination by Serbs over territory with different co-perpetrators who were

8 all part of a common plan. The plan was achieved through various means or

9 methods, many of the methods used involving the commission of crimes under

10 the Statute of this Tribunal, this case providing a case example of how

11 state machinery may be used for pursuing criminal objectives.

12 The evidence will show that the accused had a central role in

13 different although closely related joint criminal enterprises, each

14 involving the commission of the various crimes under the Statute.

15 In relation to the activities of the accused in different

16 locations, the accused used the structure of the Federal Republic and of

17 Serbia to accomplish this scheme agreed with others, the shared criminal

18 intent on all occasions, including the commission of the gravest crimes

19 against the non-Serb population, in an effort to gain or retain control

20 over territory, ensuring Serb domination.

21 The systematic and organised way in which the attacks against the

22 non-Serb civilian population was carried out reveal carefully designed

23 schemes and strategies within the overall plan. He used his control and

24 influence over elements of the army, first the JNA, later known as the VJ,

25 over the MUP that I've already described, over individual politicians;

1 over the political and military leadership of the Republika Srpska to be

2 declared in due course in Bosnia, and in all cases using many resources at

3 his disposal to ensure the efficient schemes designed to achieve the

4 overall plan. He had a fundamental role in the planning, organisation,

5 financing, support, and direction of the execution of the plans. He was

6 thus an essential participant in the criminal enterprises to the extent

7 that, without him, it is hard to conceive of any of them.

8 The Croatian indictment, which I must summarise for its potential

9 significance in the immediately forthcoming part of the case concerning

10 Kosovo, but which I must obviously deal with at sufficient detail for the

11 accused, who may not have taken the opportunity of reading the materials

12 provided to him, to understand what he faces.

13 Croatia, briefly, having been a medieval state on the front lines

14 of the fighting of the Ottoman Empire, became part of Yugoslavia in 1918,

15 negotiated autonomy in 1939. At that stage, including within its

16 territory, territory that was later to be part of Bosnia, called the

17 banovina, part of northern or north-western Bosnia. In World War II,

18 Croatia was divided between Tito's Partisans and the fascist Ustasha,

19 after the war became a republic of the new socialist Yugoslavia.

20 The indictment in this case, as public as they all are, and it

21 would be inappropriate for me to expand on the allegations in great

22 detail, sufficient to say this: Included in the Croatian indictment are

23 crimes against humanity such as persecution, murder, deportation, which

24 offences have to be committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack

25 against the civilian population. That's all contrary to Article 5 of the

1 Statute. The indictment includes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions

2 of 1949, such offences as killing and torture. For these offences, the

3 victims have to be persons protected under those conventions, there having

4 to be a connection with an international armed conflict. That's Article 2

5 of our Statute. Third, there are offences charged as violations of the

6 laws and customs of war, such as murder, wanton destruction, and so on,

7 contrary to Article 3 of our Statute.

8 This indictment not being about matters of history is not about

9 justification for Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia or the merits of the

10 Croat-Serbs revolt. It's not about Milosevic's backing the Croatian-Serb

11 cause. It is only concerned with crimes and his individual responsibility

12 for them, a responsibility he bears by his support for very specific acts

13 and particular people and the things that they did.

14 In the spring of 1990, thus Croatia left the communist fold with

15 its new government under Franjo Tudjman.

16 The map again.

17 Serbs from rural areas launched a rebellion in August 1990 in the

18 area called the Krajina, green. For those unfamiliar with it, there's

19 always the potential confusion because there's another Krajina to be

20 referred to across the border south and east in Bosnia. We're concerned

21 here with the Croat Krajina.

22 In that Krajina lived about half of the total number of Serbs that

23 lived in Croatia. The rest of the Serbs lived peacefully substantially

24 throughout the war in other parts of Croatia.

25 The rebellion of those Serbs would have detached about a third of

1 Croatia from the rest of its territory and did so, as we will discover,

2 for a full year, despite the continuation of the federal Yugoslavia.

3 Those authorities did nothing to help and everything to worsen the

4 situation. And indeed, although not charged for that period, ethnic

5 cleansing took place with many Croats fleeing in the face of initial

6 attacks.

7 But on the 25th of June, 1991, Croatia itself declared

8 independence. The Krajina Serbs declared their own separation from

9 Croatia and their annexation to Serbia. They also declared union with

10 that other Krajina in Bosnia to which I have referred.

11 The Krajina Serbs were led by a duo of former communists turned

12 nationalists, leaders of the Serbian democratic, SDS, party; first their

13 President, Milan Babic; and second, their police chief, Milan Martic, both

14 co-perpetrators.

15 Under the direction and the direct involvement of the Serbian MUP,

16 in particular of the man Jovica Stanisic, shown here, and another man,

17 Frenki Simatovic, also shown, a local Territorial Defence and the Martic

18 police force was set up. Stanisic, at the time, was chief of state

19 security for the Republika Srpska as of March 1991.

20 At the same time in Eastern Slavonia, blue [sic], local Serbs also

21 declared their separation from Croatia, declaring themselves to be part of

22 the socialist federation. Their leader, Goran Hadzic, and under the

23 direction of the Serbian MUP with its official, Radovan Stojicic, and a

24 man, Zeljko Raznjatovic, they established Territorial Defence with police

25 units. The second name is, of course, the real name of someone far better

1 known, the late Arkan.

2 Let us not forget Western Slavonia, where -- sorry, if I said

3 blue, I meant red the last time, but never mind. We've dealt with red.

4 We'll now go to blue.

5 Western Slavonia, where the Yugoslav army and the paramilitaries

6 of a man called Vojislav Seselj, president of a radical party which openly

7 espoused a particular creed were active. The creed openly espoused by the

8 man Seselj went by the title of "Greater Serbia." It's a phrase that is

9 bound to be heard in this court. We will not ourselves encourage its

10 excessive use for fear that our shorthand may lead to a brevity of

11 thinking. We don't particularly associate it as a title with the approach

12 of the accused whose purposes we have already separately described. That

13 he might rely on the support of people who had perhaps extreme nationalist

14 views going by particular titles is, again for reasons already given, not

15 surprising.

16 War followed, and with it, the crimes. The accused, in order to

17 play his part in what was to develop in Croatia between the Croatian Serbs

18 in the areas described and others, had the following at his disposal: The

19 army, the Territorial Defence units of the Krajina and of Slavonia,

20 Martic's police. He also had the Territorial Defence of Serbia, his own

21 to command, and of Montenegro. He had the Serbian Interior Ministry, his

22 own by law to control, and, as we will discover, a broad array of

23 paramilitaries tied in one way or another to the units just cited.

24 All those units on this territory committed a widespread, criminal

25 campaign with extermination or murder of hundreds of Croats and non-Serbs

1 in the various places listed in the indictment, including Vukovar and

2 Dubrovnik; the prolonged and routine imprisonment and confinement of

3 thousands of Croats and other non-Serbs in detention facilities in Croatia

4 and elsewhere, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina; torture, beatings

5 and killings of Croats in those detention centres; forced labour of Croat

6 and non-Serb civilians detained and sometimes not detained; sexual

7 assaults of Croat and non-Serbs; also perpetrating unlawful attacks on

8 Dubrovnik and undefended Croat villages throughout the territories that

9 we've specified in the indictment; the beating and robbing of Croat and

10 other non-Serb civilians; the torture and beatings of Croat and other

11 non-Serb civilians during and after their arrest.

12 In addition, the deportation or forcible transfer of at least

13 170.000 Croat and other non-Serb civilians from the territories in which

14 they had an interest, including the deportation to Serbia itself of at

15 least 5.000 inhabitants from Ilok; 20.000 from Vukovar; and the forcible

16 transfer to locations within Croatia of 2.500 inhabitants from Erdut,

17 which I think we were able to see on the map but we needn't put it up

18 again.

19 Finally, there was the destruction of homes, public/private

20 property, cultural institutions, historic monuments, sacred sites of Croat

21 and other non-Serb populations in Dubrovnik and elsewhere. A pattern for

22 these attacks will be found in the evidence; for example, surrounding of

23 villages by Serb forces, often the JNA, the army; entering of forces,

24 often the Territorial Defence, the police, or paramilitaries; killing of

25 inhabitants - sometimes a few, sometimes many, sometimes all; expulsion of

1 survivors, if any; looting of homes; destruction of villages by fire or

2 explosives.

3 As I say, we must use the word "ethnic cleansing." It happened

4 over and over again, done by different units in different places, so that

5 it became the rule, not the exception. It was something that was, in due

6 course, to happen in neighbouring Bosnia, and then later still in Kosovo.

7 The evidence shows that the forces I've cited operated together

8 towards a single goal at the direction of this accused. The objective of

9 all the parties matched that of the Serbian Bosnian leader, Radovan

10 Karadzic, treating the war in Croatia as an integral part of the overall

11 Serbian conflict, with a single goal, responsive to a single master.

12 How did the accused manage those Krajina and Slavonian Serbs,

13 whose territories we've looked at on the map? Here is a report of one of

14 their meetings early in May 1991. It's on the video, although of course

15 it's in translation. The original documents I have available, of course.

16 If Your Honour will just give me a minute, I'll try to find my own

17 version. It's a little hard to read on the document we have there.

18