WELCOME TO IWPRS TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 527, November 23, 2007 TUDJMAN TRANSCRIPTS SOUGHT AS EVIDENCE Observers say without these documents, the wartime events in Croatia and Bosnia cannot be fully understood. By Enis Zebic in Zagreb
WITNESSES LEFT VULNERABLE BY STRETCHED BOSNIAN COURTS Although victims are frustrated with the slow pace, tribunal officials claim Bosnian courts are doing a good job. By Brendan McKenna and Denza Dzidic in Sarajevo CALL FOR SERBIA TO RELEASE CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS Academics say they want disclosure so that Serbias role in the Bosnian war can be assessed objectively. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo COURTSIDE: ENGINEER DESCRIBES HOW CROAT TROOPS DESTROYED HOUSES While lawyers for two accused Croat generals try to shift blame between the defendants. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb COURT HEARS HOW SREBRENICA MUSLIMS MOVED TO EXECUTION SITES Witnesses at the trial of seven former high-ranking Bosnian Serb officers described how the transport of captured Bosniaks was organised after the fall of Srebrenica. By Simon Jennings in The Hague RE-TRIAL FOR OVCARA MURDERS GETS UNDER WAY The proceedings start amid rumours that a testimony from a Serb officer already acquitted by the Hague tribunal may be central to the case. By Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade BRIEFLY NOTED: JOKIC PLEAD NOT GUILTY TO CONTEMPT Bosnian Serb had refused to give evidence on two occasions. By Simon Jennings in The Hague **** IWPR RESOURCES ****************************************************************** SAHAR JOURNALISTS ASSISTANCE FUND: IWPR is establishing a fund, in honour of Sahar al-Haideri, to support journalist participants in its training and reporting programmes around the world. The Sahar Journalists Assistance Fund will be used to support local journalists in cases of exile or disability, or to assist their families in case of death in service. 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By Enis Zebic in Zagreb International war crimes prosecutors may need Zagrebs permission to admit as evidence transcripts that they say prove Croatias ex-president was intimately involved in an attempt to create a Geater Croatia. The prosecutors are seeking to demonstrate official Croatian involvement in war crimes committed by the leaders of Herceg Bosna, a Croat statelet carved out of neighbouring Bosnia in the early 1990s. Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic were senior political and military leaders of the self-proclaimed state and face 26 charges relating to the expulsion and murder of Muslims. The requested documents detail the conversations of then Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and seem to show Croatian officials believed the West supported them in their undercover bid to prevent a Muslim state being created in Europe. If they want to include those documents as evidence they must seek government approval, said Goran Granic, ex-deputy prime minister of Croatia. In 2002, he agreed with the war crimes prosecutors at the Hague tribunal that they could use the transcripts but only to help their investigation, not as evidence. It was not clear if the Croatian government had received a request for the documents to be used, and the judges are yet to rule on the matter, but defence lawyers in the case said they would oppose their submission. The main question is whether the prosecutors at the Hague tribunal have the right to propose these transcripts as evidence in this case, said Vesna Alaburic, lawyer for Petkovic, a defendant who was a general in Herceg Bosna. She added the protocol for the submission of transcripts, signed in 2002 by chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and Granic, clearly states that these transcripts are submitted to help only in the investigation of facts. We think that all the procedures, necessary for the transcripts to be included as evidence, have not been satisfied, she said. The six defendants are also accused of being part of a joint criminal enterprise to politically and militarily subjugate and ethnically cleanse Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats from parts of Bosnia and to join this territory to a Greater Croatia. Experts on the crimes say that, although the transcripts do not prove individuals involvement in the atrocities, they do show a government-created atmosphere that encouraged such acts. These transcripts reveal one complete political strategy that at least silently approved on different levels some operations which were later classified as war crimes, said Jasna Babic, a journalist of Slobodna Dalmacija who has written a book about war crimes. I really dont know what their legal standing is, but as a journalist I think these transcripts are of the utmost importance, because they show full awareness of government leadership, their plans, their intentions and their agreements. Therefore I think this is something without which the events of the war in Croatia and Bosnia cannot be understood. Most of these transcripts have already been admitted in part or in full as evidence in other trials held at the Hague tribunal. Several of the transcripts allegedly record how Tudjman ordered regular Croatian troops to be secretly sent to Bosnia to set up checkpoints and to support the Croats living there. The Hague prosecution wants to prove there was an international armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, meaning that the Republic of Croatia was involved In that respect it is clear that the transcripts of President Tudjman's conversations about the war with key people in Croatia and Bosnia are of utmost importance, said Anto Nobilo, who acted as a defence attorney in The Hague for a number of years. According to what I read, and I have read lots of those transcripts, specific atrocities were probably not discussed. In respect of proving specific atrocities those transcripts cannot be used. However, they can be used in establishing the political context in which the atrocities took place. He was confident that the transcripts would be accepted as evidence, since, he said, their authenticity is beyond doubt. There was something which is colloquially called parallel systems, including parallel chains of command and parallel politics. One kind of politics was used for the international arena and the other kind for us inside. Therefore to establish the complete truth the transcripts are very important, he said. However, how much weight these transcripts will have and to what extent the court will rely on them are completely different questions. Enis Zebic is a reporter with Radio Free Europe and IWPR contributor in Zagreb. WITNESSES LEFT VULNERABLE BY STRETCHED BOSNIAN COURTS Although victims are frustrated with the slow pace, tribunal officials claim Bosnian courts are doing a good job. By Brendan McKenna and Denza Dzidic in Sarajevo In April, Bakira Hasecic was about to testify to the War Crimes Court in Sarajevo when she had a flashback, the past returned in all its terrifying details. Hasesic, who was raped in the town of Visegrad during the war in Bosnia, had been called to testify in the trial of Zeljko Lelek, who is accused of abusing Bosnian women like her, but found herself unable to speak. All of 1992 came back to me. All of the crimes and how they pushed me into the police station in Foca, Hasecic told IWPR. The judges agreed to give her a break, but while she waited for hours, no one asked if she was hungry or thirsty. She eventually asked court staff for something to eat and they brought her both sandwiches and the bill. It was perhaps a small insult when added to the threatening phone calls and letters urging her not to testify but Hasecic said it illustrated the problems facing courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina as they attempt to bring justice for the war crimes of the past. Hasecic, who heads the Association of Women Victims of the War, has also known women who have fainted, suffered health problems and even killed themselves as the painful memories of the war come back when they tell their stories to prosecutors or testify at trials. There needs to be a change in the mechanism of witness protection itself, she said. But the Bosnian court system is overwhelmed by the aftermath of the 1992-5 war which killed 100,000 people and displaced a million. The courts will take decades to process all the allegations of war crimes that have been made, while many suspects can protect themselves by the simple expedient of going to Serbia or Croatia. Vesna Tancica of the state prosecutors office told a conference in Sarajevo this week that the system lacked staff and resources to investigate cases and try accused war criminals, struggled to obtain military documents, and battled against the rights of people with dual citizenship who can flee across borders to avoid prosecution. Due to the politicisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighbouring countries [some] perpetrators of war crimes are still seen as war heroes, Tancica told the gathering. There is no consensus that perpetrators of war crimes need to be punished regardless of who they are and the positions they hold. Bosnias state prosecutor Marinko Jurcevic said the country needed a streamlined process to secure more plea bargains and to take the pressure off the courts, but added that prosecutors should be more decisive when it came to dropping or continuing with cases. So far prosecutors have lacked the courage to dismiss cases where they simply have no concrete evidence, he said, adding that cases could always be reopened when and if witnesses come forward and evidence is produced. Prosecutors have not done enough, Jurcevic told the conference. If there is no evidence, the charges should be dropped. But no one wants to undertake that. Nevertheless, most observers agree that the legal system is making progress in its battle to bring justice to Bosnias many victims. Since its inception in March 2005, the special department for organised crime of the prosecutors office has issued 38 indictments against 63 suspects, and taken up nine cases handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY. The courts have issued sentences ranging from five to 34 years imprisonment the longest going to Gojko Jankovic for raping captured Bosniak women in Foca. The special department has 312 active investigations ongoing against more than 830 people - including an unspecified number which were passed over by prosecutors at the Hague tribunal who wont have time for the trials before the court is closed down in 2010. And so far the ICTY is very pleased with the results, said Refik Hodzic, the ICTYs outreach coordinator for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The cases that have been transferred were tried according to the highest international standards, he told IWPR. And the state court, though lacking the resources of the ICTY and the ability to relocate protected witnesses to other countries, has become one of the best in the region at witness protection, he added. However, the sheer scale of the crimes committed during the war in Bosnia means that local courts will have to shoulder much of the burden of prosecutions, while alternative systems need to be discovered to deal with some of the crimes. There has to be an understanding that if all the courts in Bosnia work only on these cases, with all the resources in the world, we would need 30 or 40 years to get through 10,000 people, said Hodzic. It has to be understood in the country here that this is a process that will go on for years and decades. But the local courts would struggle to take work from the War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo, because they lack staff, money, equipment and experience, said Nerma Jelacic, Bosnia country director for the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network and a veteran war crimes trial watcher. I dont know of any local court that applies witness protection, she said. They dont have the capacity to deal with more than one or two war crimes cases at a time. Theyre completely under-equipped especially in terms of investigative ability. The situation before these courts needs to come to attention. Many of the local prosecutors at the conference echoed that complaint and called for more resources from the government. However, Hodzic noted that some of the obstacles to war crimes trials will have to be tackled at a higher level. Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro all have legal or constitutional measures barring extradition, meaning suspects can flee across the border to avoid prosecution in Bosnia. It is something that the governments need to deal with, said Hodzic. It would be tragic if we were to see that just a simple act of crossing a border can protect someone from a court order which deals with possible responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hasecic agreed that things are improving, but shes frustrated with the slow pace. It has improved from last year to this year, but at this rate it will take 600 years, she said, adding that the perceived impunity and the fact that many perpetrators are in police forces - having secured their positions as veterans of the war - is a major obstacle for those displaced by the war to return home. But frustrated as she sometimes is, Hasecic also sees hopeful signs. Her organisation collects victim and witness statements for the prosecution and encourages witnesses to come forward. And because of their work, and the courage many women have shown in testifying about being raped, she is starting to see men overcome their shame by admitting to having been sexually abused in detention during the war. They stated that when they saw how brave the women were, they thought that they should come forward and stop the silence and look the war criminals in the eyes, she said. Brendan McKenna and Denza Dzidic are IWPR reporters. CALL FOR SERBIA TO RELEASE CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS Academics say they want disclosure so that Serbias role in the Bosnian war can be assessed objectively. By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo A group of international scholars, legal experts, and rights activists have signed an open letter demanding that the minutes from wartime meetings of Serbias Supreme Defence Council, SDC, be made public. The letter, which has been signed by 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights activists and journalists, was sent to the Serbian government, as well as the presidents of the International Court of Justice, ICJ, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY on October 10. In the letter, the group are demanding the minutes be disclosed to the public so that Serbias role in the 1992-95 Bosnian war can be assessed objectively. In February this year, the ICJ handed down its verdict in Bosnias lawsuit against Serbia, acquitting Serbia of direct involvement in genocide in the plaintiff country. During this case, the Bosnian team requested that an uncensored version of all SDC documents be made available to this court and accepted into evidence. The documents - which Serbia handed over to the ICTY prosecution so that they could be used in the case of former president Slobodan Milosevic - have been marked as confidential and are still not available to the public. On receiving the documents, the ICTY is thought to have promised not to disclose them to the ICJ. This decision followed a deal between chief ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and Serbias ex-foreign minister Goran Svilanovic, outlined in a letter she sent to him in May 2003, in which she agreed not to challenge Serbias right to protect its national interests in relation to the documents. However, ICJ judges refused to demand these transcripts from the ICTY or to order Serbia to hand over the uncensored minutes of the SDC meetings, saying they had enough evidence to make a judgement in this case. Signatories of the letter are now saying that this was a politically motivated decision which may have altered the outcome of the ICJ case - and prevented the country being found guilty of genocide. We, members of the international academic community, believe that this decision - reached without a review of all the available evidence - amounts to a miscarriage of justice and a betrayal of the principle that international criminal law should act to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, said the letter. There has been much speculation that the SDC documents could have been valuable for Bosnias ICJ case against Serbia, and could have helped prove the link between Belgrade and Bosnian Serb forces. This may also explain why Serbia has been so reluctant to reveal them in full. It is reasonable to surmise that, had the uncensored minutes of SDC meetings been put before the ICJ, the verdict might have gone differently and Serbia might have been found guilty of genocide, continued the letter. The fact that the court decided not to ask for these minutes leads us to believe that the court's conduct of the case, as well as its verdict, was influenced by political considerations. The signatories blame both the ICJ and the ICTY for failing to uphold the principles of international law. According to them, the ICJ made a huge mistake by not demanding these documents from Serbia - a request which could not have been ignored. On the other hand, the ICTY's concession to Serbia was the result of a political agreement reached by Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte with the Serbian government, and is therefore evidence again that the international courts have allowed politics to interfere with the legal process, they claim. As representatives of the academic community from all over the world, we demand that the international public be told the whole truth. We therefore request that the full and uncensored minutes of the SDC meetings be made public, so that the role of the Serbia in the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian war can be assessed objectively. Signatories of the letter include historians Noel Malcolm and Marko Attila Hoare; former ambassador to the United Nations and chairman of the Security Council Diego Arria; French publicist Sylvie Matton; award-winning British journalist Ed Vulliamy; and human rights activist Sonja Biserko. Merdijana Sadovic is IWPRs Hague programme manager. COURTSIDE: ENGINEER DESCRIBES HOW CROAT TROOPS DESTROYED HOUSES While lawyers for two accused Croat generals try to shift blame between the defendants. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb A military engineer this week told a Zagreb war crimes court how men in Croatian army uniforms wantonly demolished Serb-owned villages when they were forced to retreat from the Medak Pocket in 1993. Jozo Nenadic accused the top commanders in the government and the army of having ordered the demolition, saying it only happened after then-interior minister Ivan Jamjak toured the area. He was addressing the trial of Generals Mirko Norac and Rahim Ademi, who are accused of being in command of troops that killed at least 29 Serb civilians, many of them women and elderly people, during the operation. The indictment also alleges that five Serb prisoners of war were killed. Croatia sent troops in 1993 to seize the Medak Pocket, a Serb-held patch of land that they feared could provide a launch pad for Serb forces wanting to cut Croatia in half. If the 9th brigade wanted to destroy houses, they had a military justification to do it during the incursion, because there were no houses without weapons, and the concept of nationwide defence made every house a bunker. They took guns, and cases of ammunitions out of almost every house, said Nenadic. But he said he had been shocked to see houses being destroyed during the retreat, which was forced on Croatia by the United Nations. People in Croatian Army uniforms conducted the demolition and the arson [of houses] after the action, but I do not know who they were because I had never seen them before, said Nenadic. But Nenadic had words of comfort for Ademi, who nominally commanded the troops on the ground. He said the then head of the army Janko Bobetko had led the operation himself, and often issued orders bypassing both then-defence minister Gojko Susak and commanders in the field. Bobetko wanted to have the main role in every operation, from Operation Maslenica to Operation Storm, and always found a way to communicate with the executors of the action. This meant the chain of command leading through Minister Susak was often skipped, he said. He described a meeting in the hotel Velebno after the battle, when Bobetko even mocked Ademi for his Albanian surname. When Ademi tried to say something, Bobetko told him that he did not have anything to do with it and did not even know Croatian well, recalled Nenadic. A standard tactic of the defence teams has been to try to shift the blame between the two defendants, and a defence witness for Norac did more of the same this week. On November 21, Croatian Secret Service operative Luka Jagic told a completely different story to Nenadic, saying that Ademi had been in charge of the operation. The action was commanded by Ademi who issued a written command about the attack which was delivered on the field after a few days, and later he gave a spoken command for the retreat, said Jagic, who said all the commands came from the headquarters commanded by Ademi. Jagic said Sector 1, which was controlled by Norac, existed only on paper, despite Bobetko having decided to create it. Ademi disputed the witnesss testimony, saying he was not in command of the operation. He also denied the order to attack was delayed, and said the order to retreat had not just been verbal. Earlier this week, the trial heard from a Serb who had been part of a group of around 50 Serb soldiers sent to bolster the defences in the Medak Pocket a few days before the Croatian forces attacked. He said the village of Divoselo, where he was based, was mainly occupied by aged civilians, although a number of them were armed. The Serb Territorial Defence Forces were meant to provide a sense of security for the civilians although in the end they did not fire a single round, he said. After the Croatian forces started shelling the village, he along with around seventy civilians and soldiers escaped on foot, walking for three days and nights. He thought the Croatian soldiers must have seen them, and decided to let them pass. The trial of Ademi and Norac this week also heard testimony from eljko Karan, the chief of the department for forensic medicine in the Bosnian Serb-held town of Banja Luka. He examined corpses that the Croatian forces handed over to the Serbs, as well as those found by the United Nations. He said that several of the victims showed the characteristic body positions of people who had been burned alive, but he did not find any signs of torture, sexual abuse or mutilation on the 72 bodies he examined. He concluded that most of the people died during military operations, although one body had two stab wounds in the chest and one dead woman had cut fists and burns over more than a third of her body. The trial will resumes on November 26. Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR reporter in Zagreb. COURT HEARS HOW SREBRENICA MUSLIMS MOVED TO EXECUTION SITES Witnesses at the trial of seven former high-ranking Bosnian Serb officers described how the transport of captured Bosniaks was organised after the fall of Srebrenica. By Simon Jennings in The Hague A former military policeman told the Hague tribunal this week how Bosniaks from Srebrenica were crammed into buses that took them away to be shot. Mile Janjic told the court that he had been counting the men as they were evacuated from Potocari, the village were civilians had gathered to seek shelter from the United Nations base, on July 12 and 13, 1995. He said members of the military police were escorting buses to Bratunac. The buses were only designed to hold 52 passengers, but police forced more people onto them. You had the seats and you had the isles. 15 to 20 people could fit there, he said. Recalling how the number of Bosniaks around the UN base increased over the two days, the witness explained, When the number of buses increased there was a crowd and it became compounded by the process of separating the men from women. Janjic was testifying at the trial of seven high-ranking Bosnian Serb military and police officials - Ljubisa Beara, Vujadin Popovic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Vinko Pandurevic and Drago Nikolic - who face genocide and war crimes charges, as well as Radivoj Miletic and Milan Gvero, who are accused of blocking aid and supplies to Srebrenica. Another accused from the same indictment, Zdravko Tolimir, will be tried separately, because he was arrested only after the trial of the other seven accused had already started. The prosecution alleges that the indicted officers planned and participated in the separation and the forced movement of the population at Srebrenica and that they planned and ordered the execution and burial of Bosniak men and boys in the enclave after it fell to Serb forces in July 1995. At least 8,000 Bosniaks were killed in the massacre, the largest act of mass murder in Europe since World War Two. The Bosnian Serb armys records show that up to 9,000 people were transported away from Potocari by bus or truck on the two July days in 1995. Large trucks carried up to 140 people, mostly women and children, said Janjic. He estimated that on July 12 between 10 and 15 busloads of Bosniaks left Potocari and that on the following day there were as many as three times this number. According to Janjic, members of the special police, rather than of the military police, were in charge of separating the men from their families. I was present throughout the two days The military police did not participate in separating able-bodied men from women, he told the court. Both the military police, including defendants Ljubisa Beara and Drago Nikolic, and the special police stand accused of removing the Muslim population from Srebrenica and planning the murder of all able-bodied men. Janjic has already given evidence twice. In February, he testified at the trial at the Bosnian war crimes court in Sarajevo of four of his colleagues from the Bratunac brigade military police. His testimony is being used and re-examined as evidence in the current case against the military officers. He also testified as a defence witness at the trial of his former commander, Vidoje Blagojevic, before the Hague tribunal. Blagojevic was sentenced to 15 years on appeal in May this year for his role in the Srebrenica massacre. On November 21, another witness, Dragan Jovic, described how prisoners at the school in Rocevic were lying on the floor of the gym which was three quarters full of civilians and soldiers. According to Jovic, the prisoners were then transported in trucks to gravel pits in the area of Kozluk, about three kilometres away. Jovic was a driver for the commander of the Bosnian Serb armys second battalion and transported military police for the operation. He said he was sent to ask a Bosnian Serb who had recently lost his brother whether he would like to come and execute the people from Srebrenica as revenge, but the man did not agree to do so. On arrival at Kozluk, the prisoners were unloaded and taken away and must have been shot, Jovic told the court. However, he said he hadnt seen or heard their execution. It was none of [my] business, so I didnt look, he said. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. RE-TRIAL FOR OVCARA MURDERS GETS UNDER WAY The proceedings start amid rumours that a testimony from a Serb officer already acquitted by the Hague tribunal may be central to the case. By Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade A second re-trial of 17 Serbs accused of war crimes in Croatia started this week in Belgrade, their previous trials having collapsed over procedural irregularities. The 17 individuals, who are ex-paramilitary troops and former members of the Territorial Defence, TO, force, are accused of killing around 200 Croat prisoners at Ovcara farm in eastern Croatia. The massacre came after the Yugoslav army captured the town of Vukovar in November 1991, and is one of the most notorious crimes of the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. Serbias supreme court controversially overturned the Belgrade District War Crimes Chambers verdict last year, saying it had failed to prove the case indisputably and had violated its own procedures. A first re-trial was halted when a new judge had to be appointed. The new case may hinge on the willingness of two ex-Yugoslav army officers to testify. One of them, Miroslav Radic, who was earlier this year acquitted of responsibility for the Ovcara massacre, may have to be forced to speak at this new trial. The commander of the Vukovar Territorial Defense, Miroljub Vujovic, and his deputy commander Stanko Vujanovic, ordered the killings of some of the prisoners of war. They ordered that groups of 30-40 captives be loaded onto a trailer and transported in 5 or 6 batches to the execution site at Grabovo, located approximately 1 km away from Ovcara, said the indictment. The remaining captives were taken out in groups of 7 to 8 and lined up in front of a previously dug pit, where the accused Vukovar TO members approached the shot persons who were still showing signs of life and killed them by gunshots to the head. Subsequently, the corpses were buried in the pit and the earth flattened over by a bulldozer. All 17 men, of whom 15 were convicted and sentenced to between five and 20 years at the previous trial and two acquitted, plead not guilty. Judge Vesko Krstajic, the president of the court, said he may call ex-officers Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin, who were also tried for involvement in the massacre, to testify. Radic was acquitted by the ICTY, while Sljivancanin received five years in prison. Alongside Mile Mrksic, who was sentenced to 20 years, they made up the notorious Vukovar Three. But Borivoje Borovic, who defended Radic at the ICTY, told IWPR his client would not give evidence. He doesnt owe anything to anyone and he doesnt know anything about the Ovcara massacre, he said. It is impossible for Radic to go to the court and give testimony. In Croatia, an indictment against Radic is still in force. I dont think this indictment has any legal strength, but it still exists. His statement cant help anyone in this case. No civil, military or paramilitary structure helped Radic defend himself in the Hague tribunal. So, he doesnt owe anything to anyone. But lawyers for the defendants were prepared to insist on his appearance, according to Rajko Jelusic, the lawyer for Miroslav Djankovic, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison the first time round. We expect and we are certain that Miroslav Radic will testify at this trial, said Jelusic. Meanwhile, pressure is growing in Serbia for officers to be put on trial for war crimes, since the Vukovar Three case largely acquitted the Yugoslav army of responsibility, and passed it onto paramilitary and local volunteer forces. The Hague tribunals verdict in the Vukovar Three case has contributed to minimising the armys part in Ovcara and the domestic war crime prosecutors office has been discouraged in their attempts to shed some light on the armys role in the massacre, said the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Fund, FHP, in a statement issued recently. Lawyer Dragoljub Todorovic, who represents the families of the victims of Ovcara, told IWPR that army officers must bear responsibility for what happened, since they had created the conditions that allowed local forces to commit war crimes. He hoped the retrial would help bring that about. I disagree with the tribunals verdict in the Vukovar Three case and I think that Sljivancanin was responsible for the Ovcara massacre. Now that the Ovcara case has started again, I think the indictment is stronger then ever, he said. A spokesman for the war crimes prosecutors, meanwhile, said any trial of officers would have to wait until after this new trial had been completed. Most senior officials have denied any knowledge of the killings and blamed them on their subordinates - a position repeated this week by ex-defence minister Veljko Kadijevic. Croatian police have issued an arrest warrant for the former minister, but he is currently safely under the protection of the Russian authorities. He said in an interview with Serbian state television that the armys security commander, General Aleksandar Vasiljevic, did not tell him about the massacre. Maybe you won't believe me, but the first time I heard about Ovcara was when I had retired, he said. Vasiljevic, who testified as a prosecution witness at the Slobodan Milosevic trial in The Hague, said he too found about the massacre only two years after it happened, in 1993. He said Kadijevic had been informed of the crime by the chain of command leading from Mrksic, who was the commander of the troops in Vukovar. Aleksandar Roknic is an IWPR reporter in Belgrade. BRIEFLY NOTED: JOKIC PLEAD NOT GUILTY TO CONTEMPT Bosnian Serb had refused to give evidence on two occasions. By Simon Jennings in The Hague Dragan Jokic, former chief of engineering of the Zvornik brigade of the Bosnian Serb army, VRS, has pleaded not guilty to the charge of contempt of court at the Hague tribunal this week. Jokic, who was sentenced by the court to nine years imprisonment for aiding and abetting atrocities committed during the Srebrenica massacre, was charged with contempt of court after refusing to testify at the trial of seven high-ranking officers of the Bosnian Serb military and police. Ljubisa Beara, Vujadin Popovic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Vinko Pandurevic, Drago Nikolic, Radivoj Miletic and Milan Gvero are charged with crimes allegedly committed at Srebrenica and Zepa in 1995. On two occasions when Jokic was called to give evidence - on October 31 and November 1 - he declined to read the solemn declaration or answer questions, claiming he was not mentally fit to testify. As a result, the tribunal judges indicted him for contempt of court, saying he had knowingly and willingly interfered with the administration of justice. Jokic is currently being held at a detention unit in The Hague, awaiting transfer to an as yet unspecified country to serve the rest of his sentence for his involvement in the killing, extermination and expulsion of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995. His refusal to testify came despite a subpoena issued by the trial chamber last month ordering him to do so. His identity was also to be protected, while his entire testimony was to be heard in closed session. Following the plea, the counsel for the defense, Branislava Isailovic, requested the trial be postponed by three weeks in order to allow her more time to prepare her case. Her request was based on the need to call upon one witness and one expert and provide written statements that needed translation. The trial chamber granted her request and set the trial date for December 10. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** TRIBUNAL UPDATE, the publication arm of IWPR's International Justice Project, produced since 1996, details the events and issues at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, at The Hague. These weekly reports, produced by IWPR's human rights and media training project, seek to contribute to regional and international understanding of the war crimes prosecution process. The opinions expressed in Tribunal Update are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. Tribunal Update is supported by the European Commission, the Dutch Ministry for Development and Cooperation, the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges general support from the Ford Foundation. TRIBUNAL UPDATE: Editor-in-Chief: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Senior Editor: John MacLeod; International Justice Senior Editor: Merdijana Sadovic; Translation: Predrag Brebanovic, and others; Project Director: Duncan Furey. IWPR Project Development and Support: Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Strategy & Assessment Director: Alan Davis; Chief Programme Officer: Mike Day. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** IWPR builds democracy at the frontlines of conflict and change through the power of professional journalism. IWPR programs provide intensive hands-on training, extensive reporting and publishing, and ambitious initiatives to build the capacity of local media. Supporting peace-building, development and the rule of law, IWPR gives responsible local media a voice. 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