1 Monday, 15 April 2002

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 9.17 a.m.

5 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

6 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I've asked for the witness to be kept out

7 of court for just a couple of minutes this morning, and I'm here today

8 with the Prosecutor. We seek a little assistance, not of course any

9 question of rearguing a topic, but we seek a little assistance in relation

10 to the decision given on the 10th of April about the time available to the

11 Prosecution to present its case.

12 The decision may be found on the LiveNote transcript at 2779, and

13 I think the official transcript starts at 2782.

14 The concern of the Prosecutor arises, of course, from our duty to

15 present this case, which is indeed set out in the decision that the

16 Chamber gave, and we understand informally that there may be no written

17 decision and it will be this decision to which we must work. So that of

18 course we understand as we do that the Chamber is still considering ways

19 in which evidence can properly be put forward, but the Prosecutor's

20 concerned in light of what is said about the difficulties that face an

21 accused who defends himself which wouldn't face others, bearing in mind

22 that it remains her duty to prove the case. And it's with those matters

23 in mind that we are particularly concerned about the meaning of the word

24 "should," where Your Honour said "We decided that the Prosecution should

25 have one year from today to conclude their case."

1 The Chamber will understand that we -- we need to know exactly

2 where we are. I have to say that we are doing as we have been from the

3 start of this case everything that's in our power to conduct it in a

4 compact way and to bring the Prosecution's case to as early a conclusion

5 as may be, and that of course underlay the motion that I put in before

6 this decision was announced. But it's the word "should" that we would be

7 grateful for some assistance with, if possible.

8 JUDGE MAY: If it's not clear, let me make it plain. That is a

9 mandatory order. It is, of course, subject to the unexpected. If there

10 are matters such as matters of illness or other unforeseen circumstance,

11 it may have to be reviewed in the light of that circumstance, but the

12 intention is that that is an order and not any sort of invitation or

13 exhortation.

14 MR. NICE: Thank you very much. I'm just checking if there is

15 any other (indiscernible).

16 [Prosecution counsel confer]

17 MR. NICE: Thank you very much. The witness can come back subject

18 only to this -- there has been an additional piece of paper that came to

19 our attention over the weekend in our continuing search for material that

20 may be Rule 68 in accordance with the system that has been in operation by

21 the Registry that has already been handed, I think, to the accused. But

22 since he doesn't have lawyers representing him and since he's possibly got

23 a lot of papers before him, I want to be quite sure that he knows he's got

24 it. That's all.

25 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Let me deal with two other administrative

1 matters dealing with that timing. Friday, the hearings will be 9.00 until

2 12.45. Next Monday, one of our members has a medical appointment in the

3 afternoon, and we will arrange sittings between 9.00 and 3.00.

4 [Trial Chamber confers]

5 JUDGE MAY: We will have the witness, please.

6 Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] First of all, I would like to

8 comment. It's absurd that for 14 months -- that 14 months is set as being

9 an insufficient framework for the presentation of this so-called

10 indictment.

11 Second, this only proves its true character. Second, regardless

12 of the fact that you discussed last week some alleged possibilities for me

13 of communicating with my associates and data gathering, up until the

14 present day, I have not been able to, either in the course of this

15 weekend, to present my associates with any kind of information or to

16 establish contact with a view to preparing material by them, and the

17 explanation I was given why I was not able to do that is that you did not

18 make a ruling or decision to that effect and that therefore, I am not in a

19 possibility -- in -- I'm not able to inform them of any facts or about any

20 of the material that I have received. So I don't understand how they say

21 that no decision or ruling exists on the matter if you discussed it in

22 court last week.

23 And I also have another comment to make, an objection. I'm still

24 being sent all the documents in English, and as you know, it is your duty

25 to provide me with the documents in Serbian.

1 JUDGE MAY: Let me deal with those matters. The first is the time

2 limits for the Prosecution. That's not a matter for you at all. It's a

3 matter for the Court to determine.

4 Second, the explanation you were given as to why you should not

5 communicate with your associates was the correct one. A decision has not

6 yet been made. It will be, and you will be told of it.

7 Third, we'll look at the position about documents being disclosed

8 to you.

9 Mr. Nice, perhaps you could just briefly help us with that.

10 MR. NICE: I don't know which particular category of documents

11 he's referring to when he says they're only being disclosed to him in

12 English. If he's more specific I will be able to deal with it.

13 We are as a concession and only to help him because he refuses to

14 look at documents, I think still serving him with witness statements of

15 upcoming witnesses shortly before they come to give evidence, and we

16 continue to honour our 68 disclosure in the conscientious way we've done

17 this morning. Those go to him by and large in the languages of the

18 Tribunal.

19 And incidentally, I think that the time may come when the Chamber

20 will want to review an earlier decision it made about languages that the

21 accused understands. And although I realise that the earlier decision was

22 made, a decision that the material had to be provided to him in Serbian or

23 B/C/S, because it wasn't then known necessarily how competent he was in

24 the English language. It's now perfectly clear on many occasions that he

25 is indeed fluent in the English language. He worked for a long time in

1 America, and of course he may prefer to speak in his own language,

2 one understands that, but given the enormous amount of expenditure

3 there is on translation, given the enormous amount of money that we are

4 spending time and resources that are being expended in providing him with

5 material twice as often as the Rules require because he declines to look

6 at the material, the Chamber may think that the time has come to review

7 any decision that is premised on the suggestion that he doesn't understand

8 English when he clearly does.

9 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, let us look at that in due course. The

10 witness is here and we should continue with his evidence.

11 [The witness entered court]

12 MR. NICE: Certainly.

13 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic. Cross-examination.

14 WITNESS: KAROL DREWIENKIEWICZ [Resumed]

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] We once again heard an untruth. I

16 did not work in America. That is incorrect. And secondly, even if I do

17 understand what it says in the documents, it does not mean that my

18 associates, who are there to gather information and data for me need

19 necessarily understand it -- them. And I can't be used as a translator

20 and interpreter for them. And I don't see why it is not their duty to

21 translate the documents in Serbian. There is a friend of the Court here

22 who also requires the documents in the Serbian language. So I think this

23 is completely out of order to enter into polemics as to whether I should

24 be given witness statements in English or any other language. Thank you.

25 Now, I have understood that we can continue -- I may continue

1 with the cross-examination. Is that right?

2 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

3 Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

4 Q. [Interpretation] We're going to continue where we left off, and

5 that is the following: We can see that through the questions that I asked

6 on the basis of the statements, on the one hand the members of the

7 Verification Mission, and you were the executive head of that mission as

8 we noted, and on the other hand, on the basis of statements made by

9 different terrorist chiefs from Kosovo and Metohija to the effect that the

10 mission served a purpose and that was to save the terrorist activity in

11 Kosovo and Metohija, to regard the army, as Melo Dinaj [phoen] said in the

12 quotation I made.

13 JUDGE MAY: What is the question? You're putting, are you, that

14 the -- wait a moment. Wait a moment. On the basis of statements made by

15 terrorist chiefs, the mission served a purpose and that was to save the

16 terrorist activity. Is that what you're putting, Mr. Milosevic, as the

17 purpose of the mission?

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes. I am saying that the purpose

19 and aim of the mission was without a doubt the preparation of

20 pre-conditions, a pretext for a war against Yugoslavia. That is my first

21 point. And my second point is --

22 JUDGE MAY: Don't -- you're here to ask questions, not to make

23 points. Now, there are two points you seem to be making or two questions

24 you're asking, which should be put to the witness, and I will put them.

25 Wait a moment -- just wait a moment, Mr. Milosevic. It's not fair for the

1 witness that you put these things to him. He should have a chance to

2 answer.

3 One is -- General, will you help us with this: One, it is

4 suggested that the purpose was, as you've heard, in relation to terrorist

5 activity, to save it. And the second is that it was to prepare the ground

6 or as a pretext for a war against Yugoslavia. I don't know if you can

7 deal with those matters.

8 THE WITNESS: The purpose of the mission was to go in and to

9 verify the -- the agreement that had been made between the OSCE and the

10 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which -- and that the agreement was one of

11 the earlier documents that I alluded, I referred to. We felt that we were

12 there to ensure that no war took place. If you recall, in the course of

13 September and early October of 1998, things were indeed tense in the

14 region, and there was a great deal of activity which was looking extremely

15 ominous. NATO did issue certain orders which were made public and which

16 indicated preparation. In the course of that, the agreement between the

17 OSCE and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was made in order to defuse

18 the tension and to attempt a return to normality or a more normal

19 situation. That was certainly how we saw our role, and we expended a

20 considerable amount of effort in attempting to deal evenhandedly with all

21 of the people we came in contact with. So ...

22 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

23 Q. Are you aware of a statement made - and that's where we left off -

24 by Haradinaj because I want to prove the thesis that Mr. May brought up a

25 moment ago, that is to say, he interpreted it, that they -- in order to

1 act against Serbia, it was necessary, in order to convince the broad

2 international community to take action against Serbia, it was necessary to

3 usurp or to close off Kijevo and Decani, Prilep, and so on. So Kijevo,

4 Decani, Prilep, those are the places mentioned here. They're all well

5 known places where they caused enormous brutalities and conflicts,

6 atrocities, and those places are known precisely for the fact

7 that the army of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav security forces was accused

8 precisely for the events that took place in those places.

9 Now, is it true that their role was to cause as much bloodshed and

10 conflict as possible and that this should then be verified as being the

11 responsibility of the Yugoslav security forces? Yes or no?

12 A. No.

13 Q. All right. I reminded you of his statement that the arrival of

14 the verificators in Kosovo enabled the revival of the KLA, and he even

15 said that the agreement saved the KLA. And then he also said that it did

16 a lot of it to revive the army. He says revive the army. Is that true or

17 not?

18 A. That is an opinion which is not mine, and I have not heard of that

19 statement before today, or before Friday when it was first mentioned.

20 Q. This was published in his book and in interviews and so on and so

21 forth, just like many others who, after the occupation of Kosovo,

22 considered that they were in a position to say everything and anything

23 that was to their advantage.

24 MR. NICE: Your Honour --

25 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

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1 Q. Now, is it incorrect?

2 JUDGE MAY: Just a moment, that is not a question.

3 MR. NICE: That was not a question. We can no longer afford the

4 time for statements from this accused and he is simply again using time to

5 make statements. We must object to that.

6 JUDGE MAY: Well that's -- very well, Mr. Nice. The objection is

7 noted.

8 Mr. Milosevic, you hear the point which the Prosecution take.

9 They're right to take it. You can make your speeches in due course, not

10 now. The witness is here, and he should be asked questions.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] These are exclusively questions, and

12 they are the subject we're discussing regardless of the fact that neither

13 you nor the Prosecution like to hear this. And when we're talking about

14 wasting time, we heard the other side --

15 JUDGE MAY: That is not -- that is not a proper comment. Now, it

16 would be simpler if you just asked questions. One way one could tell if

17 it's a question is if it's short, which it should be. We'll all get on

18 more quickly.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I hope the answer's too.

20 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Perhaps, General, you would bear that in mind

21 too.

22 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

23 Q. Now, going on from your last answer, I make mention of his

24 statement, namely the talks that were held with military observers, as he

25 says, of different armies, and especially the English, American, French,

1 and Canadian armies. Now, were those negotiations and talks with a view

2 to an explanation and along the lines of the explanation I made or not?

3 A. No. They were regular meetings between people who had been

4 assigned to liaise with the insurgents, with the Kosovo Liberation Army,

5 because we needed to have regular lines of communication with them so that

6 when incidents occurred we could rapidly get in touch with -- with them as

7 with everyone else in an incident in order to find out precisely what had

8 happened and to defuse the incident as quickly as possible.

9 Q. And how then can we explain what he says at this end and in

10 explaining the meetings? And he says, "The pre-preparations of NATO for

11 an air campaign was to follow" was a separate subject discussed and that

12 that was the contents of the talks. How can we explain that?

13 A. I don't believe that the liaison officers assigned by me went to

14 the Kosovo Liberation Army to discuss NATO's preparations for an air

15 campaign. I simply don't believe it.

16 Q. And do you believe that when speaking of forms of cooperation

17 between the KLA and NATO during the bombing he says, during this period,

18 in the military sense, Kosovo was a joint field for NATO and the KLA. I

19 had advantage, I reaped advantage from the airstrikes and NATO reaped

20 advantage through our activities against the Serb forces, and so on and so

21 forth.

22 A. During the first month of the air campaign, I was in Macedonia,

23 not in Kosovo. I left Macedonia on the 24th of April and did not return

24 for the rest of the air campaign. So I was not in Kosovo during the air

25 campaign.

1 Q. All right. And did you know, when you communicated with people of

2 that kind such as Haradinaj, Thaci and others, do you know that they were

3 accused, and I have here a decision for 75 -- for example, that same

4 Haradinaj and the killings, 75 killings, group killings, individual

5 killings, the looting of Serbs, Albanians, policeman and so on. Did you

6 know at the time the kind of people that you were communicating with, and

7 cooperating with. Were you aware of that?

8 A. We were well aware that they were an insurgent organisation, and

9 we were well aware that they were killing policemen, and at no stage

10 during our time in Kosovo did we ever condone the killing of policemen.

11 Q. Do you consider them to be a terrorist organisation or an

12 insurgent organisation?

13 A. I think insurgent is a better word because it's less emotive.

14 Q. And you consider that terrorist is an emotional and emotive word,

15 do you?

16 A. Yes, I do.

17 Q. Does that hold true for all terrorists throughout the world or

18 just for the Kosovo terrorists?

19 A. The only ones I've met face-to-face were the ones in Kosovo. So

20 that's the basis of my judgement.

21 Q. And in that connection, let us go back for a moment to what you've

22 just been saying as to the goals of the mission. Do you happen to know

23 the Sunday Times articles on the 12th of March, 2000, in which it says

24 that the European diplomats who worked at the time for the OSCE claim that

25 the organisation has been played out by American policy which rendered

1 airstrikes an unavoidable act?

2 A. We felt we were there to ensure that the situation did not get

3 worse so that things like airstrikes did not have to happen. But we were

4 certainly not feeling that we were being played out by American policy, as

5 you -- as you state, no.

6 Q. And the French paper L'Humanite wrote about it on the 18th of

7 November, 1999, and in their articles the following was stated: That the

8 vice-president of the parliamentary assembly of the OSCE, a German, his

9 name was Billibina [phoen], he accused the USA that with the help of Great

10 Britain they were undermining the OSCE mission, and here I have a

11 quotation: "Everybody in the OSCE knew that NATO and the USA and Britain

12 did not wish the mission to be a success. I have heard much testimony of

13 people saying that the American instructors trained the Albanian fighters.

14 They explained to them that it was strategically wise to killing Serb

15 policemen in order to cause repression of large dimensions over the

16 Albanian community." That was -- those were the words of the verifier.

17 "I met two colleagues in the field who were doing their tasks -- who were

18 engaged in their tasks of photographing a radar. I thought that our

19 mission had ended when some people thought that they had collected enough

20 data for the start of the bombing." Is that true or not?

21 A. No, it really isn't.

22 Q. And is the following true, what he says, that everybody in the

23 OSCE knew that NATO and that the USA and Britain in the first place did

24 not want our mission to succeed. Those words, is that correct?

25 A. No, absolutely not.

1 JUDGE MAY: Was there discussion in the mission along these

2 lines? If you can throw some light on this. These reports apparently

3 were given to journalists and appear to have come from people on the

4 mission, although that may or may not be so. Were views along these lines

5 expressed at the time?

6 A. The OSCE is a very broad church, sir, and we were there with the

7 people that were given to us by the sending states, and everybody had

8 their opinion, yes. And it was not an area in which free speech was

9 rigorously stamped down upon. And so within the mission, there were a

10 variety of views of what the -- the potential of the mission to keep going

11 and to do its job was. Some people were more optimistic than others.

12 Some were more determined than others to make it work.

13 JUDGE MAY: Thank you.

14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

15 Q. The Sunday Times in March 2000 says as follows: "The American

16 intelligence agents recognise the fact that they have helped in the

17 preparation and training of the KLA before NATO bombed Yugoslavia. This

18 recognition caused bitterness on the part of European diplomats who said

19 that this undermined efforts for a political solution to the conflict

20 between the Serbs and the Albanians."

21 Do you know about that?

22 A. I never came across these American agents who were training the

23 Kosovo Liberation Army. I heard the odd rumour of individual misguided

24 people who were with the Kosovo Liberation Army who were not from that

25 region. They were not described to me as American, and I never met them,

1 but there were persistent rumours that there were one or two people in a

2 soldier of fortune role with the Kosovo Liberation Army. As I say, I

3 never saw them.

4 Q. And do you consider that CIA agents did not take part in your

5 mission?

6 A. None were identified as such.

7 Q. According to the writings of the British press, your press, Walker

8 acknowledged that the CIA almost certainly took part in the days before

9 the airstrike. Is that true or not?

10 A. I think you need to talk to Walker about this.

11 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Is Mr. Walker a witness? You must remind me.

12 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Your Honour.

13 MR. NICE: It's not a matter that I'm in a position to deal with

14 at the moment.

15 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Yes.

16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

17 Q. Is it true that the functionaries of the CIA supervised the truce

18 in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 and had links with the KLA and gave out

19 American manuals for fighting the Serb army and the Serb police? And this

20 is something that appeared in the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times wrote

21 about it. Is that correct?

22 A. Again, I'm not aware of it. And I do have to say, I don't believe

23 absolutely everything that I read in the Sunday Times.

24 Q. And is what it says afterwards true, in continuation, when the

25 OSCE withdrew from Kosovo one week before the airstrikes last year, many

1 of its satellite telephones and systems for global location were given

2 secretly to the KLA for use, which -- for the commanders -- enabled the

3 commanders of the guerrillas to remain in contact with NATO and KLA in

4 Washington and KLA had mobile telephones and the mobile telephone of

5 General Clark, too. Is that correct or not?

6 A. The KLA certainly had access to satellite phones, yes. We did not

7 leave phones behind for them. They already had them. And when we

8 moved -- when we evacuated the mission down to Macedonia, we received

9 information via those phones which we had not left with them but which

10 they had anyway of what was going on in terms of human rights abuses.

11 Q. And who did you get that information from, from the KLA?

12 A. In some circumstances, yes.

13 Q. The Sunday Times also states that the KLA recognised that it had

14 long-term links with American and British intelligence services. Shaban

15 Shamata, who is included in the attempt to destabilise villages where the

16 majority Albanian population in Serbia stated that in 1996, in Northern

17 Albania, he had a meeting with the British, American, and Swiss with --

18 with American, British, and Swiss agents. Is that incorrect as well? So

19 the essence of it is -- what I'm asking you is links with American and

20 European intelligence services. Would you say that that was incorrect as

21 well?

22 A. I was in Germany and Sarajevo in 1996. I was not in Northern

23 Albania. I simply don't know anything about this, and indeed I didn't

24 even know that the Swiss had secret agents.

25 Q. Agim Ceku, the commander of the KLA, established contacts with

1 the Americans in the course of his work in the Croatian army, which was

2 modernised with the help of this cooperation for professional resources

3 and the -- it is MPRI, a company specialised in military training and

4 equipment, and the staff of that company spent some time in Kosovo

5 together with other companies, Dincor [phoen] was another company, which

6 helped in the programme for training and equipping the Bosnian army. Are

7 you aware of the journeys of members of that company to Kosovo, both those

8 two companies and their staff to Kosovo? Are you aware of that?

9 A. I am aware of both companies. Dincor was the contractor through

10 whom the Americans hired the people that they contributed to the Kosovo

11 Verification Mission, because they had an internal difficulty in not being

12 able to second serving military to the Kosovo Verification Mission. So

13 they were taken on individually by Dincor and then further seconded to the

14 OSCE. The MPRI organisation, as far as I'm aware, was in Bosnia runnings

15 the train and equip programme. That was running down and shedding quite a

16 lot of manpower, and some of the people who worked for

17 MPRI stopped working for MPRI in Bosnia and applied to Dincor to become

18 members of the Kosovo Verification Mission in a different capacity and

19 some of them were taken on. To a degree, I believe it was a matter of

20 expediency that these were American people who had some knowledge of the

21 region, in some cases spoke the language, and were available very

22 quickly. And so Dincor took them on and they worked for Dincor when they

23 were with us. I'm not aware that MPRI had a presence in Kosovo at all.

24 Q. That means that both of these companies that worked in Bosnia were

25 transferred to work in Kosovo, to be involved in the same kind of work in

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1 Kosovo. Is that what you're saying?

2 A. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the MPRI hired

3 people in Bosnia to do a job. That job finished in the course of 1998.

4 Some of these people were taken on by Dincor to do a different job within

5 the Kosovo Verification Mission. For MPRI in Bosnia, they were teaching

6 the federation army tactics. In Kosovo working with Dincor, they were

7 verifiers with our mission the same as the rest of us were. There was

8 emphatically no training carried out.

9 Q. You are categorical in that, are you?

10 A. Yes. To the best of my knowledge, that is how I remember it.

11 Q. On the 18th of November, 1999, the French newspaper L'Humanite

12 says that the vice-president of the parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE,

13 Willy Wimmer, accused the USA for undermining the mission in Kosovo in

14 conjunction with Great Britain. There is a quotation from there: "In

15 every possible way they sabotaged the peace plan that the OSCE had worked

16 on patiently. They supported the members of the KLA who were fighting

17 instead of supporting Rugova's moderates. The Yugoslav side supported the

18 peace plan from October, but the KLA systematically violated it, and this

19 obviously did not suit the purposes of some circles." Is that correct?

20 A. Not to the best of my knowledge. When the agreement was signed in

21 October 1998, it was very much the intention that there should be a

22 similar agreement between the OSCE and the Kosovo Albanian community, and

23 strenuous efforts were made by Ambassador Chris Hill, an American

24 diplomat, to get such agreement. That effort went on well into December

25 of 1998 before it was finally concluded that it was not going to be

1 possible to get such an agreement. We were very keen that such an

2 agreement should happen, and a lot of contact was made with Rugova to

3 attempt to get him to take a more leading role in -- in Kosovo at the

4 time, which he was rather reluctant to do.

5 Q. The same newspaper writes about the testimony of a verifier who

6 said, "I have heard many testimonies of many people who claim that

7 American instructors were training Albanian fighters. They explained to

8 them that it is strategically wise to kill Serb policemen in order to

9 cause large-scale repression over the Albanian community."

10 Are you aware of that or not?

11 A. No. We were entirely opposed to the idea of the KLA killing

12 policemen. We made it clear to them that this was not the way to gain any

13 support for their cause and that to kill the policemen of a sovereign

14 state inside that state is emphatically wrong, and we said so many, many

15 times.

16 Q. They also assert that the KLA forced the Kosovars to join refugee

17 convoys in order to make the west react as soon as possible in this way.

18 The local security of the OSCE compiled reports on local observers and

19 later on these reports were destroyed. They carefully recorded the

20 attitude of each and every individual towards the KLA. Are you aware of

21 that?

22 A. There were a number of surveys done by different pieces of the

23 mission. I'm not aware of all of them. No, I'm not aware of every one of

24 them.

25 Q. Are you aware of the following, Deutsche Welle, Dr. Albishtar

1 [phoen] for the strategic studies centre from the university in Zurich, on

2 the 5th of December, 2000, he spoke about the role of intelligence

3 services, the CIA, at a very early stage built its connections. This is

4 well known from the talks that were held last year in Switzerland. The

5 KLA was practically trained by an American organisation during the war and

6 inter alia it consisted of former officers of professional army. This

7 link exists and links to other intelligence services are something that I

8 am not aware of. This is what Dr. Albert Stahl claims from the centre of

9 strategic studies from the university in Zurich. On the 5th of December,

10 2000 for the Deutsche Welle...

11 Not -- are you aware of this? Not Stahl's claims, but again I'm

12 asking you about the substance of this, his claim, rather, what he is

13 saying, is it correct or not?

14 A. I am not aware of CIA activity training the KLA, no.

15 Q. Although the German newspaper says that CIA agents who before the

16 attack on Yugoslavia supported and helped the KLA --

17 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, there's no point. The point has been

18 made. The witness has said he is not aware of it. So we need to move on

19 to another topic.

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, this is the core of the

21 matter.

22 JUDGE MAY: It may be, but as far as this witness is concerned,

23 he's said he's not aware of it. He can't help us any more. If you've got

24 evidence about it you can call it.

25 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

1 Q. Have you heard of Heinz Lockweih, a retired Brigadier General of

2 the Bonn Vizier, who until 2000 was a member of the German delegation to

3 the OSCE in Vienna? He also participated in the negotiations on arms

4 control on the basis of Dayton, and he also published a book, and he --

5 "Hans Hien Lacra" [phoen], he published another book, "A War That Could

6 Have Been Avoided". Have you heard of him?

7 A. No, but there's an awful lot of retired brigadiers from the German

8 army.

9 Q. He published a book. That's why I had assumed that you -- well,

10 he claims that the KLA enjoyed unequivocal support of the West?

11 MR. NICE: Your Honour, can I raise a point?

12 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

13 MR. NICE: And it's a point that rises in stark form with this

14 question that's about to start, but it arises with all the material that's

15 been put in this morning. The accused is clearly cross-examining on

16 extracts of material rather than putting in the material in full. That's

17 always a problem. It's true it saves a lot of time, but the proper way to

18 put material in is to put in the whole document so that one can check on

19 its context, and we've had earlier examples of the accused cross-examining

20 significantly out of context in relation to documents. But when we come

21 to an example like this and he asks of a particular work, whether the

22 witness knows the author, if the witness doesn't know the author, what

23 conceivable value can there be at this stage in going on and trying to ask

24 him about the contents of a book which the witness hasn't reviewed, we

25 won't be able to review to check on its context, and takes us no further?

1 JUDGE MAY: It depends on what the book says. It may be that the

2 witness can answer the question, maybe not, but we don't know what the

3 question is. It's not -- it's not -- in cross-examination, of course,

4 it's not the question that matters, it's the answer. Now, it may be that

5 the witness can assist on a particular point. He may or may not. But one

6 has to bear in mind in this case that this is an accused in person, a

7 litigant in person, and therefore the rules which are applied to a

8 professional advocate have to be considered in that light. He must be

9 entitled to some leeway. But of course sources should be identified so

10 that you can check them.

11 MR. NICE: Preferably presented at the time so we can look at

12 them.

13 JUDGE MAY: True. Yes. What is it you want to put from the

14 book? And perhaps you can give us the page, Mr. Milosevic.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] First of all, I want you to make it

16 impossible for my time to be taken away from me. So it's not the book at

17 all. It is its various positions.

18 Thirdly, whoever does not believe that these positions are not

19 contained in this book can check it out. And whoever is bothered by this

20 can consider this to be my positions, that I am double-checking by putting

21 questions to this witness. It's all the same to me.

22 So I am asking you whether it's true that the KLA enjoyed

23 unequivocal support of the West.

24 A. It isn't true, no. We didn't go there to support the KLA. We

25 went there to stop a bad situation from getting worse, and to try to make

1 it better, and eventually to hold an election.

2 Q. When NATO got involved in the conflict by clearly taking a

3 position against the Serbs by turning its potential only against the Serbs

4 by threatening, and did this make it true that the KLA had the largest

5 military alliances, their allies in order to achieve their objectives? Is

6 that correct or is that not correct?

7 A. That is not how NATO saw what it was doing, although I hesitate to

8 speak for NATO because at the time I was not serving with NATO.

9 Q. And did you notice that the American President, on the 24th of

10 March, 1999, in his speech to the American people, put in the very first

11 place not the humanitarian catastrophe but the reliability of NATO?

12 JUDGE MAY: That's not something the witness can deal with.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, it's a generally known fact.

14 I'm asking him whether he noted that.

15 JUDGE MAY: You can give evidence about it in due course.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This was Clinton's public

17 appearance, and it's very easy to put that into evidence.

18 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

19 Q. Also, are you aware that the same thing was said by Clark on CBS

20 news in May 2001, the 15th of May, 2001, inter alia [In English] "What

21 Milosevic never really understood was this wasn't a conflict strictly

22 about Kosovo. It wasn't even a conflict ultimately about ethnic

23 cleansing. It was a battle about the future of NATO, about the

24 credibility of the United States as a force in world affairs."

25 JUDGE MAY: Are you asking the witness whether he can shed any

1 light on that? Is that what you want to know?

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] No. I'm saying does this, in his

3 opinion, reveal the background and the true reasons for the aggression

4 against Yugoslavia. And his mission served the same function. That's my

5 question.

6 A. No. I think what we were there to do was to prevent a

7 humanitarian disaster, and I thought that at the time, and I still think

8 it.

9 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

10 Q. Since a number of verifiers obviously did not share your views, is

11 this correct, this what the Italian verifiers said, and what was published

12 in the geostrategic review called Limas in which it says that the

13 Americans sabotaged the OSCE mission and also a quotation is made. So

14 this is Limas, an Italian geostrategic review. These are Italian

15 verifiers as well. [In English] "In my view, he had two primary aims.

16 One was to infiltrate personnel into the theatre with intelligence tasks

17 and for special forces activities, preparatory work for a predetermined

18 war."

19 [Interpretation] I'm waiting for the interpretation to finish.

20 [In English] "The other was to give the war the impression that

21 everything had been tried and thus create grounds for public consent to

22 the aggression we perpetrated."

23 [Interpretation] Is this correct or not?

24 A. I would certainly say that we did try everything. We certainly

25 were not there to infiltrate people into the theatre with intelligence

1 tasks and for special forces activities, no. We were there to carry out

2 the task according to the agreement, in the best way we could, imperfect

3 though it was, and without the cooperation of many of the people on the

4 ground.

5 Q. The Italians say in this same source material: [In English]

6 "Criticise Walker and his British chief of operation, Karol John

7 Drewienkiewicz for ejecting any cooperation with Serb authorities."

8 [Interpretation] Is that correct or not? Did they criticise you?

9 Did individual members of the mission criticise you or did they criticise

10 you amongst themselves without you knowing about it?

11 A. I can recall moments when everybody was not absolutely convinced

12 that -- of a particular course of action. At that point, the decision was

13 made by the head of mission, and we got on with it. It was not a

14 popularity contest. It was a mission to try to stop bad things from

15 happening. And if in doing that occasionally a nose got put out of joint

16 because somebody was told, "We have heard all of the opinions, now, let's

17 get on with the decision that the head of mission has given us," maybe

18 occasionally, yes, noses got put out of joint, but we were there to be

19 effective. We were not there for a beauty contest.

20 Q. But they also say that they criticised you, and they say here,

21 this is a direct quote [In English] "[Previous translation continues]...

22 to human rights. For controlling the mission's information flow, and most

23 serious of all, for using the mission to make contacts with UCK rebels and

24 train them to guide NATO to targets in the subsequent bombing."

25 [Interpretation] Is this correct or not? This is what the members

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1 of your mission have said.

2 A. It was certainly part of our role to make contact with the KLA, so

3 that when an incident occurred, we could talk to both sides of the

4 incident in order to, first, find out the rights and wrongs of it, and

5 secondly, to try to calm the situation down. You can only do that if you

6 have access to the KLA as well as the Serb security forces. So yes, we

7 did do that. We were not doing it in order to train the rebels. There

8 were moments, I have to say, when in discussing events with the senior

9 Serb officers I attempted to train them in explaining the difference

10 between proportionate response and disproportionate response, but I didn't

11 seem to make much progress in that.

12 Q. In connection with this, they said that some members of the

13 commission trained the KLA to guide the NATO bombers to various targets.

14 The Italian verifies says, [In English] "[Previous translation

15 continues]... bombing began on March 24, Serb security forces set out to

16 root out all suspected UCK indicators. These operations are very probably

17 at the heart of what NATO has described as ethnic cleansing."

18 JUDGE MAY: So what is the question?

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] My question is whether this is

20 correct, but I haven't finished.

21 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

22 Q. [In English] "[Previous translation continues]... testified to a

23 low level of violence as well as UCK provocation."

24 [Interpretation] Is this correct or not?

25 A. By March the 24th, we were in -- in Macedonia, and our only

1 contact with what was going on in Kosovo was from people who left Kosovo

2 after we had left, and we met them and they told us what was happening,

3 and as I have mentioned, some satellite phone communications primarily

4 with the KLA in which we were given information of other human rights

5 abuses.

6 Q. Is this correct, what the Italian verifiers also said: [In

7 English] "[Previous translation continues]... was an occasion -- was an

8 occasion for Walker and the US State Department to denounce the Serbs for

9 breaking the truce. Europeans saw things differently. The Albanian

10 rebels with US encouragement versus the dramatically provoking Serb

11 attacks in order to justify NATO coming in on their side of the conflict."

12 JUDGE MAY: I think the witness is -- the witness has dealt with

13 this point of view. He's already given his evidence about it. So there's

14 little point continuing on this point.

15 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

16 Q. We will get to this later, but since it is in the same place, I

17 think that it would be useful for us to hear your opinion about this

18 matter that the Italian verifiers have also referred to. Very briefly,

19 this is an opinion of a relatively brief description of something that we

20 shall get to later.

21 [In English] "In January, Walker settled the score with his

22 European critics by bringing the world media over to this side -- to his

23 side. This was the political significance of the famous Racak massacre.

24 On January 15, Serb police had carried out a pre-announced operation

25 accompanied by observers and television cameras against UCK killers

1 believed to be hiding out in the village of Racak. As the Serbs swept

2 into the village, the UCK gunmen took refuge, took refuge on surrounding

3 high ground and began firing on police, as TV footage showed. But the

4 Serbs sent forces around behind them and many UCK forces were trapped and

5 shot. After the Serb forces withdrew that afternoon, the UCK again took

6 control of the village, and it was the KLA who led Walker into the village

7 the next day to see what they describe as victims of massacre. It may be,

8 as Serb authorities claimed and many Europeans tended to believe that the

9 victims were in fact killed in the shootout reported by police and then

10 aligned to give the appearance of a mass execution or massacre. In any

11 case, the extremely emotional --

12 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the witness is here to answer questions

13 and not to listen to long quotations.

14 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, for Judge May.

15 JUDGE MAY: In order that the matter can clearly be dealt with, he

16 should be asked about the various parts of these allegations. It's, first

17 of all, suggested that the Serb police carried out a pre-announced

18 operation.

19 Just one moment.

20 Do you know anything about that, General?

21 THE WITNESS: Yes. It was certainly the case that in this area,

22 it was stated that there will be an operation against whoever carried it

23 out. We will find the people who did it, and we will deal with them. I

24 remember General Loncar saying this to me in the same meeting in which he

25 got the phone call which told him that three policemen had been killed.

1 At the time, I said I was extremely sorry to hear of the loss of his

2 policemen.

3 It was certainly pre-announced. What was not announced was

4 precisely where, when, and at what level the operation was carried out.

5 But that was rarely given to us.

6 JUDGE MAY: Was the firing between KLA gunmen and the Serb

7 forces?

8 THE WITNESS: There was a -- I believe there was a KLA presence on

9 the outskirts of the village when the attack started on Racak, yes.

10 JUDGE MAY: Did the KLA lead Walker into the village, as far as

11 you know?

12 THE WITNESS: The KLA were in the village when we got there on the

13 Saturday morning with Walker, yes.

14 JUDGE MAY: Did they, as far as you could see, lead him into the

15 village? That's what's alleged.

16 THE WITNESS: No. They were in the village, and we went into the

17 village. We were perfectly capable of getting in there ourselves.

18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic, what is the rest of the

19 quotation?

20 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. Do you think in view of everything that I've just said that it

22 would be a correct assessment, which is something that the Italian

23 verifiers are talking about precisely, that this kind of conduct on the

24 part of Walker, [In English] "Impossible pretense of the OSCE mission."

25 [Interpretation] Therefore, that conduct put to an end all

1 pretenses of neutrality on the part of your mission?

2 A. No. That was not the way we saw it. We saw the Racak operation

3 as being hugely disproportionate in view of the degree of force that was

4 used. And further, we sincerely believed that the way we found the bodies

5 in the gully on the hillside was the way they had been left when they had

6 been killed. We saw no evidence of having moved bodies around or having

7 jumbled them up to make it look as if they had been brought -- they had

8 been killed there whereas -- instead of them having been killed elsewhere

9 and brought together. We saw no evidence whatsoever of that.

10 Q. We'll get back to Racak later on. But I'm interested in your

11 opinion, your opinion about -- how shall I put it? -- a brief, a short

12 assessment of this whole mission of yours which, according to the Italian

13 verifiers, was as follows: [In English] "[Previous translation

14 continues]... of international missions, it would be hard to find such a

15 chaotic and tragically ambiguous enterprise."

16 [Interpretation] Do you agree with that assessment?

17 A. It was certainly ambitious, and because no preparations had been

18 made for it before the mission was authorised, it was extremely confusing

19 when the mission was being started up. It was chaotic, and it was my job

20 to get order out of chaos, and I did that to the best of my ability with

21 some very able subordinates.

22 Q. When did you start coming up meeting the commanders and the heads

23 of the KLA terrorist groups?

24 A. The first time I crossed into a KLA position was on the afternoon

25 of December the 25th, 1998.

1 Q. After that, were your meetings frequent or how frequent were they,

2 your meeting with them?

3 A. My meetings with them were not frequent. I used liaison officers

4 to communicate with them wherever possible. I suppose I went into KLA

5 positions between six and eight times in the course of the mission.

6 Q. A total of eight times in the course of your mission. That was of

7 the most number of times you talked to the KLA, is that it?

8 A. That was the most time I talked face-to-face with them. I had

9 many, many discussions with my liaison officers about what their attitudes

10 were and about what they might do next. And so I don't think that was the

11 only contact I had with them. I had a lot of contact with them, but

12 usually through my liaison officers, who because they were assigned to

13 deal with the KLA permanently were better able to -- to establish a

14 working relationship with the KLA.

15 Q. What about Walker? Did he have daily contacts with them?

16 A. No.

17 Q. How frequently did he have contacts with them?

18 A. Somewhat less than me, I would say. So if I -- if I went into KLA

19 positions between six and eight times, he probably went in four to six

20 times, I would think.

21 Q. Not counting Racak or counting Racak? Which?

22 A. I was not counting Racak, but you can add that to both, I

23 suppose.

24 Q. And what did you talk about when you met?

25 A. We normally went in with a specific purpose such as to bring the

1 eight VJ soldiers back. And we went in and discussed that matter which

2 was the pressing matter at hand. We didn't engage very much in

3 philosophical discussions.

4 Q. That means, in fact, that you had meetings when there were crisis

5 situations, to discuss them, such as the taking of prisoners and arresting

6 soldiers and so on. But apart from those situations of crisis, what did

7 your talks have to do with?

8 A. From the end of December, we were -- we felt that we were in a

9 fairly permanent crisis in that no sooner did one incident die down when

10 another incident blew up. We only got the eight Serb soldiers off the top

11 of the hill at Stari Trg on the Wednesday and Racak happened on the

12 Friday. There wasn't much let-up between incidents to contemplate our

13 navels.

14 Q. That -- so in practical terms, that would mean that you only

15 discussed crisis issues and incidents and nothing else when you had your

16 contacts with the KLA, yes or no?

17 A. That was how it came to work out as far as I was concerned. I

18 always went -- I only went into a KLA location if there was something I

19 needed to go in about. I didn't make a habit of going in to socialise.

20 Q. And did you receive reports on incident situations -- incidents

21 and situations of this kind? Not you personally, I mean the mission

22 itself. When incidents occurred, did you get information from the Serb

23 and other non-Albanian inhabitants?

24 A. Yes, to a degree. We got information from anybody who was

25 prepared to give us information and then we compared all different the

1 information, looked at where it had come from, and made a judgement as to

2 what had probably happened in reality.

3 Q. I'm talking about the complaints and reports with respect to

4 kidnappings, violations of human rights, violence that the KLA undertook.

5 Did you receive reports and complaints from the Serb and other non-Serb

6 population about that?

7 A. Yes, we did.

8 Q. And what was usually the subject of those complaints and reports?

9 A. The subject varied, but it was normally about ceasefire breaches

10 or allegations of bad behaviour by one side or the other. We attempted

11 to -- to record this and to try to find out what had actually happened.

12 And if it was possible to come to a conclusion on which side the violation

13 lay, then we made that judgement. It was not always possible.

14 Q. And did the families complain to you of people who had been

15 kidnapped and killed, for example?

16 A. Yes. Yes, on both sides.

17 Q. And did you -- how do you mean both sides? The police didn't

18 kidnap anybody, but it was the KLA that did the kidnapping. Now, did you

19 do anything to have those kidnapped people returned, the people who had

20 been taken? Did you undertake an investigation or make any attempt to do

21 so except for these eight soldiers, apart from them?

22 A. Yes, we did actually get some other people back. And on the day

23 that the nine -- the nine KLA who had been held captive, who had been

24 captured in the border ambush, when we handed them back over to the KLA,

25 we also took delivery of five kidnapped Serbs who we were able to return

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1 to their families. That was certainly another incident that springs

2 immediately to my mind.

3 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, do you distinguish between kidnapped civilians

4 and terrorists seized at the border who were armed during an attempt,

5 illegally and in armed fashion, to cross the border, those who had been

6 arrested by the legitimate forces of a state guarding its borders? Do you

7 make a distinction between those two? You seem to have equated them now?

8 A. No. I said that they were -- they are remembered bringing those

9 five Serbs back. There is certainly a difference, yes. And at the time

10 we made it clear absolutely clear that the ambush on the border was a

11 legitimate act of the forces of a state defending its borders and it was a

12 grave ceasefire violation by the KLA, yes.

13 Q.

14 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, we're going to -- Mr. Milosevic, the

15 time has come for an adjournment. We're going to adjourn for quarter of

16 an hour. You can go on then.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] How many minutes?

18 --- Recess taken at 10.35 a.m.

19 --- On resuming at 10.55 a.m.

20 MR. NICE: Before --

21 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

22 MR. NICE: Just to remind Your Honours, the witness is available

23 today, having made suitable arrangements, but not, I think, beyond.

24 JUDGE MAY: That message may not have got through, but --

25 MR. NICE: The Court may remember that I originally said there

1 were problems about his being here today but he reorganised things so he

2 could be here today but not after.

3 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, perhaps you could bring your

4 cross-examination to a close today.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Up until what time? How long are we

6 working for today?

7 JUDGE MAY: We are working until 12.45 -- 1.45, quarter to two,

8 and we will have one more break.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, that's a very short period of

10 time. He took --

11 JUDGE MAY: Yes. He took over six hours. Let's see how we get

12 on, and we'll review the position at the end of the day.

13 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. Are you conscious of the fact that since the arrival of the

15 mission there was a precipitant increase in the number of crimes committed

16 by the KLA terrorist organisation?

17 A. Not as such, no. I don't think -- compared with when, I think,

18 would be my question.

19 Q. Well, compared to the situation before the arrival of the mission.

20 That's what I'm comparing it to, because it was almost at zero level

21 before the mission's arrival, their activities or, rather, the crimes that

22 they perpetrated. And statistics show just how much this was increased

23 very suddenly under the mission's protection. Are you aware of those

24 facts?

25 A. Not as you state them, because one of the things we kept asking

1 for was a baseline for all of this sort of stuff, and it was consistently

2 not produced.

3 Q. And was this schematic, that is to say, that they escalated with

4 their crimes legitimately and that the security forces were legitimate in

5 reacting, and then the mission accused the Serbian security forces

6 according to a cliche, that is to say, that they used excessive use of

7 force. Was that the general plan and schematic?

8 A. No. That was not how we saw it. The KLA, when we arrived, had

9 stated that they would observe a ceasefire. As I have mentioned, we had

10 wanted a firmer agreement with the Albanian side generally, but that was

11 not forthcoming. But there was the declaration of a ceasefire, and at the

12 start, that -- that was held to a degree. However, there were certainly

13 cases of individual incidents involving the KLA which we deplored, but we

14 understood that an insurgent organisation cannot be as disciplined and be

15 able to get orders down to its -- its people, as quickly as a government

16 set of security forces which have got much better chains of command and a

17 proper code. There aren't codes for insurgents.

18 Q. How many times did you go to Dragobilje?

19 A. Specifically, I think probably once.

20 Q. Did you meet their chiefs on that occasion?

21 A. Yes. I went there in order to discuss how we were going to get

22 them to Rambouillet, because we had to get them onto an aircraft in order

23 to go to Rambouillet to be part of the Albanian delegation, the Kosovo

24 Albanian delegation.

25 Q. Does that mean that Dragobilje was the centre of their main

1 chiefs?

2 A. They met in different locations from time to time. That was the

3 location that I went to in order to meet them.

4 Q. And did you have your own substation there, if I can put it that

5 way, or one of your permanent offices there?

6 A. One of my -- we had a liaison officer there all the time with the

7 KLA, or just about all of the time, yes.

8 Q. What about KDOM? Did it have its station there too?

9 A. I -- I assume by that you're referring to the US KDOM, which is

10 the one that stayed in being all of the time, and I think they were there

11 from time to time, but I'm not aware they had a permanent presence there.

12 Q. But your presence was permanent; is that right?

13 A. It was pretty permanent. The liaison officer came out from time

14 to time to talk to me or to other people, but their -- it was the

15 intention that there was always one of my people there for the KLA to talk

16 to if they needed to.

17 Q. And what about the presence of your representatives? Was that

18 there to protect the chiefs of this terrorist organisation? Is that why

19 they were there, the chiefs in Dragobilje?

20 A. No. They were -- seemed quite capable of looking after

21 themselves, and I don't think our presence as unarmed people in largely

22 soft-skinned vehicles acted as -- as any protection, no.

23 Q. And was Walker in Dragobilje?

24 A. He was not with me when I went, but I know he went there on at

25 least one occasion.

1 Q. And do you know whom you met at the time? Could you give us the

2 names of the people you met, and the names of the people he met?

3 A. I could not without going back to my notebooks. The people that I

4 met were the people, who at the time, were the three people at the top of

5 the KLA.

6 Q. And what were their names?

7 A. I would need to check my books because I can't remember them

8 offhand.

9 Q. And you haven't got them with you, I assume.

10 A. I'm afraid not.

11 Q. And who did you talk to about your impressions after touring

12 Dragobilje?

13 A. My impressions, well, I would have talked to Walker and to Keller,

14 the head and the deputy head of the mission, because at the time, we were

15 very concerned about ensuring that the -- the designated people were

16 facilitated in their journey to Rambouillet.

17 Q. Well, it is common knowledge who the people were in Rambouillet.

18 Were they the same people that you talked to in Dragobilje?

19 A. They were among the people who went to Rambouillet, yes.

20 Q. And did you have any contacts with the families of the abducted

21 Serbs, the members of those families?

22 A. Not personally, no.

23 Q. And when you talked to the heads of the terrorist organisations in

24 Dragobilje, did you do anything to have them return the citizens that they

25 had seized?

1 A. As I recall it, the moment at which I went to Dragobilje was after

2 the five Serbs were returned to their families. When I went to Dragobilje

3 it was February, and we brought the five elderly Serbs back in late

4 January.

5 Q. And what about the representatives of the mission whom you say

6 contacted the families of the abducted Serbs? Did they take on any

7 responsibilities towards those families vis-a-vis those families? Did

8 they make any promises to them?

9 A. They were meetings from time to time between members of the KVM

10 and the families of the missing Serbs and indeed families of missing

11 Albanian civilians as well, and that was quite a regular feature. It was

12 not done by me. It was done by another part of the mission. But I was

13 aware that it was going on. And it was obviously a cause of concern that

14 abducted people were returned on both sides.

15 Q. And did you score any results except for those five that you've

16 just mentioned?

17 A. I think there was one other, but I can't remember it precisely

18 because I wasn't involved in it.

19 Q. And did they tell you that Glodjan Dragobilje was the biggest

20 prisons for abducted Serbs and Albanians?

21 A. No.

22 Q. Did you know that the abducted civilians were taken to the KLA

23 headquarters in the village of Glodjani?

24 A. No.

25 Q. Do you know that they were subjected to torture and then killed

1 and thrown into the canal which supplies water for Lake Radonic?

2 A. No.

3 Q. Do you know that there is detailed photo documentation and reports

4 on those crimes?

5 JUDGE MAY: He doesn't know. He can't answer it.

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.

7 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

8 Q. Is it true that no plan existed to expel Albanians from Kosovo and

9 Metohija?

10 A. At the time I was in the Kosovo Verification Mission until we

11 evacuated the mission on the 20th of March, I was not aware of a plan to

12 expel the Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija.

13 Q. Does that mean that you saw nothing and heard nothing that would

14 indicate the existence of such a plan?

15 A. I saw no plan. Nobody talked to me about a plan. The behaviour

16 of some of your security forces was not always compatible with wanting

17 them to stay in the location that they were, however.

18 Q. And were you aware that the security forces never acted against

19 terrorists when they were in groups together with civilians?

20 A. No, that was not my impression. My impression was that your

21 security forces were quite prepared to go against groups of the KLA when

22 they -- there were civilians present.

23 Q. But even American representatives, during 1998, were fully aware

24 of the fact that action was not taken in those places where there was a

25 danger of having civilians harmed. Were you aware of that fact, that no

1 action was taken where civilians could have been harmed? Yes, no?

2 A. No.

3 Q. Is it correct that Serb representatives at the meeting with your

4 mission on the 4th of December, 1998, criticised the mission for not

5 having started verification and that they requested that the process be

6 initiated immediately?

7 A. Yes. And we could have got going a lot quicker if we'd had a lot

8 more cooperation from your people.

9 Q. So you think that the fault for a lack of cooperation is

10 exclusively on the side of the Yugoslav authorities?

11 A. Put like that, yes.

12 Q. And is it correct that on that occasion, the representatives of

13 Serbian Yugoslavia, or, rather, the representatives of the authorities

14 requested that the ceasefire violations of the KLA be discussed?

15 A. That was probably -- that was probably among the discussions,

16 yes.

17 Q. And is it correct that you did not want to discuss that on that

18 occasion?

19 A. I cannot remember that. That was not the main thrust of that

20 particular meeting.

21 Q. Well, let me remind you. You speak about that on page 14,

22 paragraph 3 of your statement with regard to both of these questions that

23 I've just put to you.

24 On that occasion, were the areas that caused concern indicated?

25 A. The areas that were causing us concern were the fact that we were

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1 not being helped to build up the mission quickly, that bureaucratic

2 procedures were being used to slow down the entry of the mission into

3 Kosovo and its build-up. And the main purpose of the meeting, as I recall

4 it, was to ask for assistance in speeding up the various bureaucratic

5 procedures so that we could hire buildings and get visas issues far more

6 quickly than was happening.

7 Q. Well, did you obtain the faster issuing of visas?

8 A. It never got particularly fast, no. We actually asked if a

9 suboffice of the visa section could be located down in Pristina so that

10 the passports did not have to be carried physically from Pristina to

11 Belgrade and back and that was never -- that was never put into action.

12 So passports always had to be sent all the way up to Belgrade and all the

13 way back, and it took many days to get visas.

14 Q. How many days was it actually?

15 A. It depended, but it was never fast.

16 Q. But how many days?

17 A. I remember that my visa, to go from a single-entry visa to a

18 multiple-entry visa, I believe it took six working days for my passport to

19 be moved up to Belgrade, to be stamped and to come back. But that's only

20 my recollection.

21 Q. But all that time you were in Kosovo. That is not being denied.

22 A. That is correct. But the other place that visas were being issued

23 very slowly was that verifiers who were being called forward to the

24 mission were being -- were in their own countries, were going to the

25 Yugoslav embassy in that country, and it was taking on average two weeks

1 to get a visa from the Yugoslav embassy in that country. So they were

2 slowed down from coming into the country.

3 Once people were in Kosovo, if they needed to go down to

4 Macedonia, for instance, to meet the next lot of verifiers to arrive at

5 Skopje airport, then this was not possible if you only had a single-entry

6 visa. So it complicated the life of the mission. It made us less

7 effective than we otherwise would have been.

8 Q. And did you bear in mind the fact that in Vienna, where the OSCE

9 headquarters are, there was a possibility for members of your mission to

10 obtain visas in an express manner, so to speak?

11 A. Not specifically, but then the mission did not all come through

12 Vienna. They came directly from their country of origin to Skopje and

13 from there up to Kosovo. There was no reason for them to go via Vienna.

14 Q. But you did have 1.300 members of your mission who had visas

15 nevertheless, and I imagine that the difference, the remainder up to

16 2.000, was not due to the fact that they could not obtain visas.

17 A. By March, the strength of the mission had gone up to 1.379, that

18 is correct. From Christmas until March, the mission gained strength at a

19 rate of about a hundred a week. We had hoped we would get it up to 2.000

20 by April.

21 Q. Why was it so slow?

22 A. It was fast by the standards of missions like this that are built

23 one person at a time. It took the same amount of time for the United

24 Nations' mission in Kosovo to build up to a similar strength when they

25 came in in June. It basically took them about the same amount of time to

1 get to 1.300 strong. It is a fact of life that when you're calling for

2 people individually, then you have to have 1.300 sets of negotiations with

3 the people and look at their curriculum vitae, call them forward. There

4 aren't formed units of these people waiting to -- to come forward in the

5 way that a military unit would do so with all its equipment.

6 Q. If the same time was required for the United Nations, after the

7 10th of June, just as you needed during the Verification Mission and the

8 1st that I mentioned did not require any visas, in view of their arrival

9 in Kosovo, that practically means that visas had no effect whatsoever in

10 terms of the speeding up or slowing down of the entire process; is that

11 correct?

12 A. No.

13 Q. Well, how come that the same time was required for the United

14 Nations when they did not have any problems with visas, the problems that

15 you have been indicating that you allegedly had them.

16 A. I did not allegedly have them, I did have them. I think you would

17 need to compare the manning lists. The United Nations mission certainly

18 was built up at about the same rate. However, they required a greater

19 number of policemen in their mission, and policemen are even harder to get

20 than the people we were getting. We did not have any many policemen in

21 our mission, because again, they're not standing around waiting to be

22 called forward.

23 Q. And on the occasion of the meeting that you had with the Yugoslav

24 representatives, did they indicate to you that on the road between Pec and

25 the area up near Nis there is KLA gunfire and that Malisevo was abandoned

1 by the population because of KLA activities and that the KLA was not

2 exercising restraint? Did they point out all these elements to you?

3 A. The road between Pec and Nis is about 150 miles long, as I recall

4 it. So I would need more precision in that question.

5 The discussion of what was going on in Malisevo certainly

6 happened; Malisevo was a hot spot at the time.

7 Q. But is it correct that at the meeting that was held between the

8 representatives of the Yugoslav government with you and Walker on the 9th

9 of December, that they asked that the KVM stop supporting the KLA and that

10 they ask that the international community stop giving financial support to

11 the KLA from banking sources in the West?

12 A. Yes, I remember that allegation being made, and I remember

13 Ambassador Walker rebutting it very, very sternly.

14 Q. Do you think that he rebutted it with good reason when it is known

15 that through banking channels from the West, money was being earmarked for

16 the KLA? Are you aware of that?

17 A. I am really not aware of the sources of funding of the KLA, no.

18 Q. Is it correct that the Yugoslav army called the KVM to come and

19 carry out an inspection with regard to ceasefire violations to the east

20 of Prizren on the border on the 14th of December when some terrorists got

21 killed?

22 A. Yes, but it was to the west of Prizren.

23 Q. And was it confirmed to you then by your own patrols that there

24 had been fighting and that large quantities of equipment had been found?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. Is it correct that this was a long column of the KLA?

2 A. Yes. We believe it was about 145 strong.

3 Q. And is it correct that the KVM got approval to visit the

4 imprisoned KLA members, those who were taken prisoner during that

5 incident, that is?

6 A. Very much later, yes. At the time that these -- that the nine

7 prisoners were taken prisoner, that was, as you say, mid-December. As I

8 recall it, it was the end of the first week or the beginning of the second

9 week of January when we were granted access to these prisoners in Nis, and

10 that was in the context of the negotiations to get the -- your eight

11 soldiers off the hill at Stari Trg where they were being held prisoner.

12 Q. Is it correct that these prisoners, during the visit of

13 Ciaglinski, your associate to the prison in Nis, told him that this was a

14 KLA column for reinforcements and precisely this bit of information, that

15 it was 145 members of the KLA?

16 A. Yes. You'll be able to ask him when he appears, but that was

17 certainly what he reported back to me, yes.

18 Q. And is it correct that then they stated that they had been

19 mobilised into the KLA against their own will, and then they went to

20 Albania where they were trained?

21 A. Yes. That is my understanding.

22 Q. And is it correct that all of them during the conflict, the clash

23 on the 14th of December, that they were all armed?

24 A. I cannot say that, but most of them appear to have been armed,

25 yes.

1 Q. And is it correct that -- that terrorists killed, on the 14th of

2 December, some young Serbs in the Cafe Panda in Pec?

3 A. There was a killing in the Panda Bar in Pec, and some Serb youths

4 were killed. And we never really worked out who to attribute those

5 killings to. There was no clear evidence in either direction.

6 Q. Are you aware of the fact that the terrorists who committed this,

7 who carried out this attack, escaped to Kapemice, that part of town which

8 was practically a hotbed of the KLA in that town?

9 A. That was -- I never heard that before, and I was not aware of any

10 effective police follow-up that might have found that out either.

11 Q. According to all their reports, all the traces led in that

12 direction. Did you know about that?

13 JUDGE MAY: The witness said he wasn't.

14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

15 Q. When the other side was questioning you, they said that four young

16 men were killed. However, six young men were killed, if you remember. Do

17 you remember even Obradovic, a high school student was killed, Vuleta,

18 Glozdenovic, also a student. Zoran Stankovic, also a pupil. Dragan

19 Trifkovic, also a pupil. Svet Ristic, pupil. Ivan Radovic, a university

20 student. And the father of Ivan Radovic, Bogdan Radovic, was kidnapped.

21 His mother and grandmother were beaten up by KLA terrorists.

22 JUDGE MAY: One thing at a time.

23 General, can you help any more about this incident?

24 THE WITNESS: I cannot remember precisely how many people were

25 killed in the Panda Bar attack. I believe that a number were killed

1 outright and some died later, and it was between four and six. I can

2 certainly remember that. I mean, it was an extremely unfortunate

3 incident. We were not able to come to any conclusions as to the motives

4 behind it, and nobody ever claimed responsibility for it.

5 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

6 Q. The very fact that the perpetrators fled, and along parallel

7 lines, one of the killed had his father abducted, and I read this out to

8 you. He had previously been head of the municipal committee of Pec, does

9 that sufficiently speak of how absurd and monstrous it is to claim that

10 anybody but the KLA could have done this?

11 A. No, because there have been some quite well-documented incidents

12 elsewhere within the Balkan theatre of incidents looking like one thing

13 and turning into another, and that was why we never ascribed blame or

14 culpability without going into it in some detail.

15 Q. And do you know whose speciality this was, to create victims on

16 their own side in order to accuse the other side of having done it, both

17 in Bosnia and in Kosovo?

18 A. No, but I can recall grenade attacks on Albanian properties, as

19 well as against Serb properties during the time I was in Kosovo. So

20 neither side had a monopoly of these events, I'm afraid.

21 Q. And do you remember that in Bosnia this was standing practice with

22 that well-known event of the alleged shelling of the bread line in

23 Sarajevo, the alleged --

24 JUDGE MAY: This goes beyond the realm of the witness's evidence.

25 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

1 Q. All right. Is it correct that at the meeting with the KVM on the

2 15th of December, the representatives of the government brought up an

3 accusation, that the KLA was being supplied from America by some special

4 weapons because the members of the KLA had been found to have a number of

5 such weapons?

6 A. Yes, I recall that allegation being made, and again I recall it

7 being refuted vigorously by Ambassador Walker.

8 Q. And do you know that Floren Krasniqi, an Albanian from New York

9 involved in the construction business, and one of the main financiers of

10 the KLA, described how certain weapons were exported from America thanks

11 to the fact that these exports were actually being sent to hunting

12 societies in Albania? Do you know of that confirmation of what you say

13 that Walker refuted?

14 A. No, but I can observe that most of the weapons that I saw in the

15 hands of the KLA were Kalashnikovs.

16 Q. We're not talking about Kalashnikovs here. We're talking about

17 special weapons that had been imported from America. You know nothing

18 about this then; right?

19 A. I am not aware of it, no.

20 Q. Is it correct that at the meeting with the representatives of the

21 MUP you had suggested that the number of forces be decreased and that they

22 could not accept that because they were concerned about the security and

23 safety of their own men? Did that seem logical to you?

24 A. This was in connection with the -- the police garrison at

25 Malisevo, which we were convinced was an impediment to the inhabitants

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1 coming back to Malisevo because the police presence was so heavy. And we

2 established a permanent presence of the KVM in Malisevo, and I then went

3 to the police chief and suggested that he reduce the presence there

4 because we felt it was threatening. It was not like a normal police

5 station. It was more like a fort under siege with armoured cars

6 outside of it.

7 Q. And are you aware -- actually, this question pertains to this

8 specialty of the KLA to kill their own people and then accuse the other

9 side of having done it. Are you aware that there is a witness of the

10 Prosecution, not somebody that I have brought up, somebody that they had

11 brought up, anyway, this person says that at places where there were not

12 police attacks that they organised their own attacks against peaceful

13 villages. Are you aware of this practice?

14 A. Not specifically, no, because if we had been aware of it, we would

15 have commented on it publicly. When you find a naked dead body by the

16 road at 8.00 in the morning, it's very difficult to work out who killed

17 him or her.

18 Q. I am talking about a protected witness for the Prosecution who

19 asserts that they organised attacks of their own against peaceful villages

20 and that these were --

21 JUDGE MAY: The witness has dealt with this. He has given his

22 evidence about it as far as he can. Now, move on to another topic.

23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] Well, that is the subject. Jako

24 Krasniqi, Hashim Thaci, Sulejman Selimi, and Rexhep Selimi organised an

25 entire series of killings of Albanians, especially those --

1 JUDGE MAY: That is what you say. The witness has given his

2 answer.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am asking him not about what I am

4 saying but about what I have been reading from the statement of this

5 protected witness. He is a protected witness because he is an Albanian.

6 JUDGE MAY: It doesn't matter. Now, let us -- Mr. Milosevic, the

7 cross-examination is to put things to the witness, not for argument. Now,

8 you've asked him about this practice, as you allege, and he has said what

9 he can about it. There's no point going on putting other things to him.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] However, I'm asking whether it is

11 logical for the executive chief of the Verification Mission to know or not

12 to know about the multitude of these crimes that were committed by this

13 groups headed by Thaci, Krasniqi, Selimi, and others. So this question

14 directly has to do with what he was duty-bound to monitor and report on,

15 and it has to do with the testimony of your witness here, the Prosecution

16 witness, not something that I have been saying just off-the-cuff. I am

17 asking him questions related to the subject matter that he was actually

18 dealing with in Kosovo. That's what he was there for. And you have the

19 same thing --

20 JUDGE MAY: You can ask him about the practice that you put

21 forward. Now, is there something else you want to ask him about?

22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I do not understand your question.

23 Of course I want to ask him about a great many things, but it seems to me

24 that this is a very important qualification of carrying out a series of

25 crimes against Albanians, where they had a personal interest of their

1 own.

2 JUDGE MAY: Now, the question is do you know of attacks on

3 Albanians, as I understand it, by the KLA?

4 THE WITNESS: As such, sir, no. There were a -- there was a

5 series of killings which went on throughout January and early February,

6 which ran at the rate of about four a week, and we were not able to find

7 out who was carrying them out and neither was the Serbian police who were

8 there in considerable numbers and had rather better access to forensic

9 science than we had with our people.

10 JUDGE MAY: So it's -- so that it's clear, this is killings of

11 Albanians?

12 THE WITNESS: It was killings of Albanians and of Serbs. Both

13 groups were involved, sir.

14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

15 Q. I understand this -- I do not understand, rather, this need to

16 strike a balance between criminals and the other side all the time, but

17 anyway, do you know about this particular case when a group headed by

18 Hashim Thaci beat up Luzer Buhara [phoen] from Cerovik who worked as a

19 traffic policeman in Pristina? They burned his house down. And then

20 Thaci used a knife to draw various symbols on his chest, to carve them.

21 All of this is dealt with in the testimony of this Albanian witness. Are

22 you aware of that?

23 A. No.

24 Q. And do you know that this same Hashim Thaci who carved symbols on

25 the chest of Albanians, do you know his photograph with Madeleine Albright

1 and Clark and Blair taken together with this group?

2 JUDGE MAY: This is all a matter of general comment. It's not for

3 this witness to deal with.

4 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

5 Q. And can he answer a question of ethics? Clark, Albright, Blair

6 and others taking photographs with him, can that be --

7 JUDGE MAY: No. It's not for him to answer.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. I'll skip over many

9 questions because it seems that I will not have enough time once again to

10 ask everything I want to ask.

11 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

12 Q. Is it true that when the soldiers were exchanged they had

13 noticeable signs of abuse, of maltreatment, and physical mistreatment on

14 them?

15 A. Yes. Yes. They had definitely been beaten up.

16 Q. And is it true that revolted citizens set up barricades throughout

17 Kosovo at the time to protest against the fact that the state wasn't

18 taking more energetic measures to combat terrorism when it was allowing

19 things of this kind to happen at all?

20 A. It is true that barricades were set up. They looked more like

21 paramilitaries to me because they were wearing black ski masks to hide

22 their faces, and they were carrying long-barrelled weapons in public. I

23 was surprised that the police did not do something about it.

24 Q. What they looked like to you is one question and whether they were

25 civilians is another question. Do you consider that they were civilians

1 or not?

2 A. They were dressed in -- generally in black leather jackets, and

3 they could have been civilians or they could have been off-duty members of

4 the security forces.

5 Q. And do you happen to know, just as an aside, of the orders -- are

6 you aware of the orders to the effect that each unit in Kosovo was

7 duty-bound immediately to disarm and take into custody any kind of

8 paramilitary unit in its area of responsibility? Are you aware of that?

9 A. No, I wasn't, and it certainly did not happen that day, which I

10 think was the 6th of January.

11 Q. I don't know what day it happened. What I'm asking you is whether

12 you were aware of an order issued to that effect and that it was respected

13 and acted upon?

14 A. I was not aware of the order. It was certainly not being

15 respected and acted on when I personally encountered these paramilitaries.

16 Q. You insist on saying that they weren't citizens but that they were

17 paramilitary formations, is that right, paramilitary units?

18 A. They looked like paramilitaries to me. They worked as a group,

19 and they gave orders to the civilians who were bystanders.

20 Q. And is it true that on the 15th of January, in the Decani area, a

21 member of the Verification Mission was wounded?

22 A. Two members of the Verification Mission were wounded.

23 Q. Yes, that's what I'm talking about, two members.

24 A. Two members, yes.

25 Q. Is it true that on that day KVM vehicles were led by two MUP

1 vehicles and that the KLA opened fire and wounded two representatives of

2 the international people and wounded a local man too?

3 A. It is certainty the case that the KVM vehicles were in the same

4 general area as the MUP vehicles. It is my recollection that the KVM

5 vehicles were leading the MUP vehicles. And it's certainly true that we

6 later discovered it was the KLA who had carried out the shooting.

7 Q. But what was quite obvious, that is that the column was targeted

8 in which there were MUP vehicles too, was that not sufficient for you to

9 observe that this was in fact being done by the KLA?

10 A. No. I was very concerned that it was a come-on and that Serbian

11 police might well have carried out the shooting.

12 Q. So you assume that the Serb police shot at the column in which

13 there were members of the Serb police, is that it?

14 A. Yes, because the two sets of vehicles were quite separated. I

15 think there were between 50 and 100 yards between them.

16 Q. So that means only direct recognition by the KLA could finally

17 change your judgement. That is to say that it wasn't the Serb police,

18 that the Serb police were innocent victims being innocently accused.

19 A. After this incident, I discussed with the people who came under

20 fire, one of whom is Richard Ciaglinski, and having spoken to as many

21 people as I could who were there on the ground in the incident, I drew my

22 conclusions.

23 Q. So ultimately only after direct recognition by the KLA did you put

24 away any doubt that had fallen on the Serb police force as suspects.

25 A. As I recall it, I spoke to everybody who had taken part in this

1 incident, and when I reviewed everything, which by this stage was 2.00 in

2 the morning, I concluded that I didn't know who had done it, but the

3 balance of probability pointed at a come-on by the MUP. Simultaneously,

4 we were asking our people who were with the KLA to get to the KLA

5 commander and to ask him his version of the event.

6 In the course of the next day, I was told by my people with the

7 KLA that the KLA had admitted it was their people who had done it. We

8 then encouraged them to own up to this. They declined and so we then

9 stated in a press statement that it had been done by the KLA who had

10 admitted it. That was the sequence of events.

11 Q. What about the sequence of events? Does it not lead you to

12 conclude or at least lead others to conclude the criteria which you use to

13 base your judgements and conclusions on and that you always assume that it

14 must be the Serbs who are at fault, regardless of what happens --

15 A. No.

16 Q. -- the Serbs were to blame?

17 A. No. That was not my judgement. My judgement at the time was

18 based not only on what had happened when the firing took place but what

19 had happened during the earlier part of the day when there'd been quite a

20 lot of talking between my verifiers and the Serb police who were very

21 adamant that we should not go forward with them when they went. And it

22 was in fact to change over the garrison of a location that they went

23 forward. And we were going with them to make sure that the garrison was

24 changed over and not reinforced. But it was based on all of those

25 conversations that took place and were reported to me, and the

1 circumstances of the shooting, that I concluded at the time that the

2 balance of probability was that the Serbs had shot at my verifiers. That

3 was my judgement then.

4 Q. All right. The reasons are clear and -- why you changed them

5 later on. Is it true on the 15th of January - that is my next question

6 - that you sent Maisonneuve to Racak, the Stimlje municipality?

7 A. Yes, that's correct.

8 Q. Is it also correct that on the 15th of January, the inhabitants of

9 Racak told him that there were a number, not many, of people who had been

10 killed and arrested and several wounded?

11 A. That was what he was told by the people who were -- whom he met as

12 dark was falling that Friday afternoon. The situation was very confused

13 at the time, and he perceived the priority then as evacuating the

14 wounding, which is what he did. There were also unconfirmed reports that

15 a number of men had been taken away by the police, but they were

16 unconfirmed at the time.

17 Q. Yes, but that was a discussion with the inhabitants of Racak that

18 he had and the report that he tabled to you.

19 A. That is correct. But you have to remember that those people had

20 spent the afternoon in their houses under fire, not exactly able to

21 congregate in the streets and to find out precisely what was going on.

22 Each person was giving his or her view of what they had seen from their

23 very limited standpoint.

24 Q. And did you make a selection of those statements, statements about

25 that according to a criteria of how the Serbs -- what the Serbs could be

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1 blamed for and what they could not be blamed for? Because according to

2 what Maisonneuve said, there was no foundations for an accusation against

3 the Serbs, of blaming the Serb security forces for what had happened.

4 A. I don't recall Maisonneuve making any comment like that, but all

5 of the reports from that period have been produced as -- as evidence and

6 are available.

7 Q. We know what those reports were like. And is it true that in

8 Racak you came one day later, that is to say on the 16th, together with

9 Walker, and that you found members of the KLA there?

10 A. Yes, that's correct.

11 Q. Is it also true that the members of the KLA would not allow you to

12 leave Racak without having a meeting with Walker?

13 A. That is correct.

14 Q. And is it also true that Walker surprised you when he condemned

15 the FRY government and attributed the blame to that government for what

16 had happened in Racak?

17 A. I was surprised at the time that he was as specific as to refer to

18 the event as a massacre. However, I do agree with what he said.

19 Q. Well, if you agree, how could he have surprised you then?

20 A. Because it was in the middle of a press conference and we had not

21 discussed this before the event. It came out, as I recall, as an answer

22 to a question.

23 Q. Do you know that Hashim Thaci, in an interview to the BBC on the

24 24th of March, 2000 said the following and I quote, "That a unit of the

25 KLA was active in Racak and that many members of the KLA courageously died

1 in fighting the Yugoslav forces."

2 A. I've got no doubt that the KLA may well have been present in

3 Racak, but I never saw that as a justification for flattening the place

4 with artillery.

5 Q. Was Racak flattened when you arrived on the scene in Racak?

6 A. There was considerable damage to many of the houses, yes.

7 Q. Well, can you then use the term "flattened", if that's what

8 happened?

9 A. It was certainly attacked with artillery and heavy-calibre weapons

10 in a way that was inappropriate to counter an insurgent operation in my

11 view.

12 Q. But there is proof that that is not correct, that the artillery

13 was used, that that is incorrect.

14 A. I'm not aware of that.

15 Q. We'll come to that later. Now, do you know that on the Internet

16 you can find a statement by Madelaine Albright given to the BBC and she

17 says that preparations were necessary for the incident in Racak and that

18 the fans were flamed in order to exert pressure on the European allies in

19 order to effect military intervention.

20 A. You must ask her about that.

21 Q. Well, I'm asking you, whether you were aware of it, whether you

22 knew anything about a statement to that effect.

23 A. Not as stated like that, and I do not necessarily agree with it

24 seeing it now.

25 Q. However, this belated recognition of the US Minister reminds us of

1 a statement made --

2 JUDGE MAY: That's not a proper question. That's a comment by

3 you.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I ask the proper question?

5 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

6 Q. Do you know of a statement made by the vice-president of the

7 parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the German, Wimmer, a rare European

8 dignitary who did not think that the TV massacre was --

9 JUDGE MAY: That sounds like another comment by you. Just ask the

10 question. What is it?

11 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

12 Q. The question is: Are you aware of the statement made by the

13 vice-president of the parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE which states as

14 follows, "We refute the manipulations being carried out by the television

15 footage with the intention of provoking a NATO intervention in Kosovo or

16 everything would point to the creation of certain reactions so when I see

17 certain images and photographs, we -- it makes us issue automatic orders

18 to our soldiers."

19 THE INTERPRETER: Could the accused please slow down when

20 reading.

21 JUDGE MAY: You're asked to slow down. You're asked to slow down

22 when reading.

23 General, can you help with this? First of all, do you know about

24 this statement?

25 THE WITNESS: I don't know this particular diplomat. I know he

1 wasn't on that hillside with me, and I know what I saw on that hillside,

2 and it was not manipulation by the media. It was dead men who had been

3 gunned down in cold blood, as far as I was concerned.

4 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

5 Q. And do you know the assertion that those people had been brought

6 there, because you and Walker arrived when the village was already under

7 KLA control. You arrived 16 hours after their entrance into the village,

8 and the time -- and this meantime when they could have done everything.

9 Are you aware of that?

10 A. I'm aware that there was a lapse which -- of which most was

11 night-time when we were not there, before we got there. I do not believe

12 that the KLA manipulated this -- this scene so that you would -- your

13 forces would get the blame. I believe what we saw was what happened.

14 Q. And do you know that in Racak the members of the so-called 121st

15 brigade were present, Agim Selak and, or rather the Sadik Salja Battalion,

16 and that's where the head of the Nerodim Operative Zone was in the house

17 of Nosti Mikmeki [phoen]. Are you aware of that? That was precisely in

18 Racak.

19 A. No.

20 Q. And do you happen to know that up until the 15th of January, the

21 members of the KLA terrorists in the Racak area had killed a policeman

22 Sinisa Mihajlovic, Nazmija Aluri, Svetislav Pesic, Sasa Jankovic, Ranko

23 Djordjevic, and then some civilians, Mista Seli [phoen], and Enver Gashi?

24 And before that, in November, that they had set fire to Dzema Batica's

25 house in Racak. And later on, immediately prior to the intervention, they

1 killed a policeman by the name of Svetislav Pesic from an ambush several

2 days prior to the intervention against the terrorists in Racak? Are you

3 aware of that, of this pretext, of went before?

4 A. I am aware that there was violence there before, and therefore it

5 was the duty of your police forces to investigate the crimes properly,

6 take evidence, arrest the people, put them on trial, and send them to jail

7 if you find them guilty, but that was not what happened.

8 Q. Well, you know why an investigation was not possible at the time.

9 A. I am not aware of any attempt to carry out a proper police

10 investigation before the 15th of January.

11 Q. And are you aware of the fact that the investigating judge of the

12 court in Pristina, Danica Marinkovic, a woman judge, tried on several

13 occasions to go out and investigate in Racak but she was not able to do so

14 because of the fighting? She had to do this three days later also on pain

15 of gunfire?

16 A. I certainly met her on the Sunday and offered to escort her

17 personally into the village. She declined.

18 Q. And do you know that the entire village was encircled by trenches

19 and bunkers, that they were all round the village, and even behind the

20 village, towards Jezerske Planine, the mountains, there was another line

21 or row of trenches?

22 A. I am aware that there was one quite long trench, probably about

23 between 50 and 80 yards or metres long, that I walked over on my way up

24 the hill to the gully. That was the only trench that I was aware of.

25 Q. And did you go round the whole village and its environs to see how

1 many bunkers and trenches there were or did you only take note of the one

2 you actually had to jump across, walk over?

3 A. I did not go looking for other trenches.

4 Q. A moment ago, we established, not very clearly though, that you

5 were informed about this police action in advance. That is to say that

6 the Verification Mission had been informed of this police action

7 beforehand and that your people were present on the 15th of January, that

8 they were in Racak.

9 A. No. I don't think we were informed specifically. We were

10 informed when -- when the policemen were killed a week earlier, General

11 Loncar said to me, "We will -- we will take action against that," yes. We

12 very rarely were told, "There is going to be an operation at a certain

13 place at a certain time with the following object in view." That is what

14 we would have hoped to have received, that sort of information, so that we

15 could then be there to make sure that no serious abuses took place. But

16 it was very rare that that happened, and it did not happen on this

17 occasion at Racak.

18 Q. But a moment ago, you confirmed by stating a name and surname that

19 your man Maisonneuve was in Racak on the 15th of January.

20 A. He was -- yes, he was. I sent him there at about half past two in

21 the afternoon from Pec, and he did that because we had got reports coming

22 in that there was firing into the village, that village and neighbouring

23 village, by heavy calibre weapons by your forces. As a result of that, he

24 went down to that location, which was not strictly in his area of

25 operations, but I was very concerned that I wanted someone senior and very

1 experienced on the spot.

2 Q. Yes. But there must have been some other verifiers with him who

3 were in Racak on the 15th.

4 A. And they reported to him, and their report is part of the reports

5 that have been laid before the Court.

6 Q. And that's the whole point, that the verifiers who were there on

7 the 15th of January saw nothing of what you and Walker, who came later on

8 after a pause in which the KLA brought in the bodies and put them in that

9 gully, you saw nothing of that sight?

10 A. Maisonneuve arrived as dusk was falling. He stayed within the

11 village. Nobody told him that there was something to go and see up in the

12 gully. He had no idea that such a thing had taken place. It was an area

13 where there had been a very major firefight during the day, and I would

14 certainly not have expected him to go wandering off into the gathering

15 gloom on the off chance of finding something about 300 metres from the

16 village. Which direction would he have gone in?

17 Q. You've said yourself now that there was major -- a major firefight

18 in Racak, and your statements were that the security forces had come and

19 perpetrated a massacre over the civilians. Now tell me what happened.

20 Was it a firefight or was it a massacre of civilians?

21 JUDGE MAY: I think we've exhausted this topic. The witness has

22 said everything that he can say about it. His opinion will not assist us

23 any more, and there will be other witnesses who can give evidence about

24 it.

25 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

1 Q. And do you know that in addition to your own verifiers who entered

2 Racak on the 15th that there was a television crew from Associated

3 Press.

4 A. Not specifically, no. They didn't report to us.

5 Q. But they published in the information media what they saw,

6 nevertheless.

7 A. Then it's available.

8 Q. Of course it is. Do you know that there were no civilians in the

9 village and that the villagers, already during the summer, had left Racak

10 because of the operations under way in the area? Except for a few

11 exceptions, perhaps.

12 A. I think one of the reports that was placed before the Court last

13 week detailed at one stage a statement of what the population of Racak was

14 and the fact that food aid was needed for them. So, yes, we did know that

15 some of the inhabitants of Racak had fled, but some were still there.

16 Q. It was winter, and eyewitnesses say that there was smoke coming

17 out of just one chimney, which was where the headquarters of the KLA was,

18 which is where equipment was found --

19 JUDGE MAY: The witness -- the witness can't deal with this.

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.

21 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

22 Q. Eyewitnesses say that there was shooting all over and that the

23 shooting stopped only around 1600 hours. Does that coincide with your own

24 findings?

25 A. No. My findings were that the shooting into Racak stopped before

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1 the shooting stopped that was going into all of the other villages and

2 that because there was the sound of shooting going on, that the people in

3 Racak did not realise that the fire had lifted in their specific area and

4 so were very surprised to suddenly see the -- the MUP arriving in the

5 middle of the village.

6 Q. I have here a few witnesses from Racak who are also not my

7 witnesses but the witnesses of this false Prosecution. For example,

8 Nesret Shabani says on the 15th of January in Racak there was a real war

9 that was going on.

10 JUDGE MAY: You can -- you can deal with this with other

11 witnesses. This witness came the next day. You can ask him about his

12 evidence, but we're -- if going to get much further going over this

13 ground about which he can't really answer.

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, this is not a witness who

15 is merely testifying about what he had seen. He is the executive chief of

16 the Verification Mission, and it is assumed that he knew or had reason to

17 know the facts that were used in such a way in the war against

18 Yugoslavia. Therefore, I do have the right to question him by invoking

19 other witnesses, because it was his duty to collect these facts. So the

20 question would then have to be why did he not collect these facts from

21 these witnesses? Because he was in charge of the Verification Mission.

22 JUDGE MAY: That is --

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So --

24 JUDGE MAY: That is a question he can be asked.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That's why I'm putting it.

1 JUDGE MAY: [Previous translation continues]...

2 THE WITNESS: The reports that were put together on the night of

3 the 15th represented all the information we had at that moment and had

4 obviously come from a variety of sources. Some of it was the eyewitness

5 reports of my verifiers, some of it had been the answers to questions from

6 them to the villages. As you have seen, the facts were not immediately

7 apparent, and we found out more as time went on, and that is often the

8 case. It was not a very clear situation. It was getting dark. Everyone,

9 all of the villagers that were in the village, were very frightened and

10 confused. There were wounded people. It was not a clear situation.

11 We dealt with the situation that we found. We made the report as

12 best we could. And then as we got more reports overnight, we went back,

13 and looked again, and then saw what had not been seen the afternoon

14 previous. Nobody attempted to cook the books, and every one of these

15 reports is as it was written at the time.

16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

17 Q. In connection with this selective presentation of information,

18 both in this case and in all other cases --

19 JUDGE MAY: That is a comment. We're going to -- yes, it is.

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It is not a comment. I am putting

21 forth a request to you. In view of your authority, you should adopt a

22 writ of disclosure which would make it incumbent upon the American,

23 British, French, and every other service to disclose the information they

24 have not only about this case but other cases where things were rigged in

25 order to accuse the Serb side for the crimes that were committed by the

1 other side. And if you do not have the authority to order that, then you

2 cannot be in charge of these proceedings at all, actually.

3 JUDGE MAY: That is a totally different matter as to disclosure,

4 and if you have an application about it, we'll obviously consider it.

5 Meanwhile, it's nothing to do with this witness.

6 We'll adjourn now for another quarter of an hour.

7 --- Recess taken at 12.15 p.m.

8