WELCOME TO IWPRS ICTY - TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 557, June 27, 2008 SLOVENES ISSUE INDICTMENT FOR 1991 CONFLICT Former Yugoslav army colonel insists his men behaved correctly and only fired on legitimate Slovene military targets. By Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade
COURTSIDE: KOSOVO JOURNALIST ON TRIAL FOR CONTEMPT Prosecutors ask for 15,000 euro fine for editor who revealed protected witness name in Haradinaj trial. By Simon Jennings in The Hague US ENVOY BLAMES CROATIA FOR SERB EXODUS Ex-ambassador says Zagreb did nothing to prevent the removal of Serbs from Krajina during 1995 operation. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb BOSNIAKS SHOT TEN BY TEN Witness testify about abuses committed by Serb paramilitaries, and allege linkage with Vojislav Seseljs volunteers. By Denis Dzidic in Sarajevo BRIEFLY NOTED: ZUPLJANIN HOLDS OFF ON PLEA Defendant says identity change while on the run was meant to put would-be assassins off his trail. By Simon Jennings in The Hague CROATIAN SERB LEADER CLAIMS TRIAL WAS UNFAIR Milan Martic suggests Hague prosecutors favour Croats over Serbs. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb STANISIC, SIMATOVIC GRANTED PROVISIONAL RELEASE Judges discount relevance of a police investigation suggesting Serbian doctors fabricate ailments to help war crimes suspects. 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By Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade A state prosecutor in Slovenia has filed an indictment against a former colonel in the Yugoslav Peoples Army, JNA, for crimes against civilians committed in this former Yugoslav republic in July 1991. Berislav Popov, who was stationed in Varazdin in Croatia at the time, says neither he nor the men under his command did anything wrong. My unit didnt do anything in the sense of war crimes, because no one was executed by shooting or hanged or arrested, Popov told IWPR. We didnt destroy anything in anger and we didnt attack first. I didnt do anything of my own volition, but obeyed army rules, principles and ethics. This action was based on [Yugoslav] federal government orders and military commands. After Slovenia declared independence on June 25, 1991, the JNA moved to retake control of border crossings. We came to help state border staff re-establish order at Yugoslav border crossings, said Popov. During clashes between the Slovenian Territorial Defence and the JNA which started on June 27, 44 Yugoslav army soldiers and 18 Slovenes were killed. Twelve foreign nationals were also killed in the conflict, mainly journalists and truck drivers who strayed into the line of fire. Ten days later, Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Yugoslavia, concluded a peace deal with the Slovene government, and the JNA pulled out of the country. This is not the first time Popov has found himself the subject of legal proceedings. The District Court in Zagreb sentenced him in absentia to 15 years imprisonment for war crimes in Varazdin during the Croatian war that followed, along with his commanding officer General Vlado Trifunovic and Colonel Sreten Raduski. The Belgrade Military Court also sentenced Popov, Trifunovic and Raduski to spells in prison for treason because they surrendered the JNA base in Varazdin, handing the Croatian army a substantial arsenal of weaponry and equipment. The three men were granted amnesty in January 1996. The Hague tribunal has not sought to prosecute anyone for crimes committed during the ten-day campaign in Slovenia. Prosecutor Zarko Bajek told the Belgrade daily Politika he was not optimistic that Popov would ever face trial, and therefore the district court had not issued an arrest warrant. He told the newspaper that he took over Popovs case this year, after a colleague retired. The Slovene group Helsinki Monitor agrees that Popov should not be brought to trial. Neva Miklavcic Predan, the head of Helsinki Monitor, said the Slovene judiciary had been investigating for 17 years with no results. He believed that the case will ultimately be dropped. They are trying to create the impression that the JNA committed horrible war crimes in Slovenia, but this is not the truth, she said. On the other hand, war crimes were committed against the JNA. In Rozica, several civilians were killed, but those civilians had been used by the Slovene Territorial Defence as a live shield. Even some foreign citizens, truck drivers and children were killed behind the barricades. Everything was covered up to show that the Territorial Defence was the victim, she added. All past cases against former JNA generals have been dropped because of lack of evidence, she said. Looking at the report by Slovene prosecutors I concluded that the JNA didnt commit war crimes. They described petrol station robberies and the theft of sandwiches, she concluded. Popov described how his motorised brigade, which had been dispatched to Slovenia from Varazdin, encountered barricades and live shields as it moved along the highway. On a bridge called Brotherhood and Unity there was huge truck with a Polish registration plate and lots of other vehicles being used as a barricade. I couldnt allow them to stop me. When we had no other option, our tank opened fire on the truck, he said. There was a big fire. We put it out and were ready to continue our march, which was meant to be top secret although everyone knew where we were going. In the village of Berzaj women, children and elderly people formed a live shield. We fired one burst of shots in the air and they ran. No one was injured. Between Berzaj and Radenci, Popov said, the troops broke through several similar barricades. Then they were ambushed, when people forming a live shield suddenly lay down on the ground, and Slovene forces fired over them at the JNA. Our officer Mustafa Hadziselimovic was killed then. Not one civilian was killed; I dont know about the Territorial Defence members. The resistance was stronger as we moved closer to the state border. At the entrance to Gornja Radgona, there were train wagons full of heavy rocks on the tracks. A day later, he said, a peace deal was concluded with the Territorial Defence, but the Slovenes continued to attack at night. Then we shot at facilities they were using for military purposes. Of course we shot one sniper on a local church and several snipers who were in houses, he said. Were they civilians? And then they accused me of barbaric acts. After seven days, the unit returned to base in Varazdin with five dead, 17 injured and 30 captured. Some 20 military vehicles had been destroyed, Popov said. Popovs lawyer, Milan Stanic, complained that the Slovene prosecutor sent the indictment to his clients home address rather than to the Serbian justice ministry. Also, the indictment was in Slovene, and I dont know what crimes Popov was accused of, Stanic told IWPR. Bruno Vekaric, a spokesman for the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutors Office, said his office had not been informed of the indictment. Popov cant be transferred to Slovenia because there is no provision for that in Serbian law or in any law in the region. But he could have problems if he tried to leave Serbia because the Slovene judiciary could ask for an international arrest warrant, he told IWPR. Aleksandar Roknic is an IWPR-trained journalist in Belgrade. COURTSIDE: KOSOVO JOURNALIST ON TRIAL FOR CONTEMPT Prosecutors ask for 15,000 euro fine for editor who revealed protected witness name in Haradinaj trial. By Simon Jennings in The Hague Hague prosecutors this week accused the editor of a newspaper in Kosovo of showing reckless indifference towards the tribunals rules by publishing the name of a protected witness, but the defence argued that the witnesss identity was already a public secret. Baton Haxhiu published a newspaper article that referred by name to a witness who was meant to be testifying anonymously at the trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army commanders Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj. Haradinaj, until recently prime minister of Kosovo, was acquitted on April 3 of charges relating to the murder, rape, torture and deportation of Serb civilians during the 1998-99 conflict. The court noted at the time that a high proportion of prosecution witnesses said they were afraid to give evidence. The trial chamber gained a strong impression that the trial was being held in an atmosphere where witnesses felt unsafe, the final judgement says. The indictment against Haxhiu accuses him of contempt of court on the grounds that he revealed the identity of a protected witness and that in doing so he knowingly and wilfully interfered with the administration of justice. Haxhiu admitted publishing the witnesss name, but said the article did not constitute a revelation of the name of the witness. The subject of the article, he said, was the tribunals investigation into allegations that the witness in question was pressured by Kosovos sport and culture minister Astrit Haraqija and his colleague Bajrush Morina. These two individuals were charged by the tribunal on April 25 for persuading the witness not to testify against Haradinaj. Given that Mr Haraqija and Morina were under investigation in this matter, I thought that the whole affair had become public, which in a way gave me the right to write about it publicly, Haxhiu said. Haxhiu was informed of the protected witnesss identity by an official with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, who subsequently left his post. The editor argued that it was important to disseminate information about public figures because if citizens were kept in the dark regarding the development and the activity of their political leaders, their life and future might be put in peril. Never did I intend to threaten the witness or his family, and never did I want to undermine his evidence in the trial against Ramush Haradinaj, he told the court. I have been a supporter of the view that this tribunal has contributed to the process of reconciliation throughout Yugoslavia and in Kosovo, Haxhiu added. The prosecution, which is asking for a 15,000 euro fine, called just one witness tribunal investigator Peter Mitford-Burgess, who interviewed Haxhiu on February 6 in Pristina. Mitford-Burgess testified that the accused said he had sought neither legal guidance nor the advice of the tribunal before publishing the name. The prosecution said Haxhiu showed reckless indifference and wilful blindness to the tribunal order to protect the witness. According to Mitford-Burgess, the accused admitted during the interview that he was aware of the tribunal regulations and that in publishing the name he broke a rule of the tribunal. Mitford-Burgess also confirmed that the tribunals rules were available on its website in Albanian. Prosecutor Vincent Lunny then showed the court a clip of Haxhiu giving a television interview in Kosovo earlier this month when he was on provisional release from custody in The Hague. Haxhiu told the TV journalist what charges he faced at the tribunal and gave details of his custody, despite the fact that the terms of his release barred him from discussing his case with the media. Responding to an objection from the defence that the video was not relevant to the trial, Lunny replied that the violation was indicative of Haxhius state of mind his reckless disregard for the rules [of the tribunal]. The defence said that the video clip actually cast the accused in a positive light, since it showed him telling his interviewer he could not talk about the case. Defence counsel Christian Kemperdick did not call any witnesses in defence of his client, but offered written statements as evidence. He contended that the identity of the protected witness was already a public secret. The witness was known to certain Kosovans and therefore it was not news to read his name in the newspaper, he said. Kemperdick argued that the name of the witness was not disclosed in the manner required for the tribunal to find the accused in contempt. Once [an identity] loses the characterisation of being a secret it cannot be disclosed any more, he explained. In its closing statement, the prosecution said the tribunals order to protect the witness identity was not important to Haxhiu. It claimed that the article itself proved he knew about the protective measures, because it twice refers to the witness as protected. Kemperdick concluded by arguing for a lenient sentence, should the trial chamber find Haxhiu guilty. He countered the prosecutions argument that Haxhiu had repeatedly shown disregard for the tribunal, telling the court that he had testified twice on behalf of the prosecution and was a reliable witness. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. US ENVOY BLAMES CROATIA FOR SERB EXODUS Ex-ambassador says Zagreb did nothing to prevent the removal of Serbs from Krajina during 1995 operation. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb A former United States ambassador in Zagreb, Peter Galbraith, said this week that a 1995 Croatian military operation did not amount to the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, but that the destruction of property which followed the attack looked like a concerted attempt to stop the community returning. In testimony before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, Galbraith, who was US envoy in Croatia from 1993 to 1998, accused the authorities in Zagreb of welcoming the exodus and tolerating serious breaches of human rights. His testimony forms part of the trial of Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac. Gotovina, Cermak and Markac are indicted for war crimes against Serbs committed by troops under their command during and after the offensive known as Operation Storm, the objective of which was to retake territory held by rebels since 1991. The expulsion of Serbs wasn't a goal, but a consequence, said Galbraith. In previous testimony at the trials of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic, Galbraith has said there was no ethnic cleansing during Operation Storm, because most Serbs had fled before the army arrived. It is estimated that some 200,000 Serbs left the region around the time of the offensive. You could not cleanse those who were not there, Galbraith told the tribunal this week. According to the indictment, the generals took part in a joint criminal enterprise designed to drive the Serb population from Croatia. It says that at least 30 people were killed in Knin and at least 150 across Krajina between August and November 1995. Croats did not commit ethnic cleansing in Krajina, although they committed serious breaches of human rights, said Galbraith. The Croatian authorities either ordered or allowed the mass destruction of Serb property in former Krajina to prevent the return of the population. I consider that to have been a thought-through policy, he said. In the first days after the Croatian army arrived in Knin, US embassy reports suggested there were widespread killings of Serb civilians and destruction of their houses, the witness said. In Galbraiths opinion, this happened on the orders or with the tacit approval of the Croatian leadership, with the military either present or participating in these actions. Responding to a question from Gotovina's defence, Galbraith said major human rights violations the killing of Serbs who had stayed, and the burning and looting of Serb property did not occur during the first days of the operation, but afterwards. Croatia was an organised country, its army the most disciplined in the former Yugoslavia, and therefore I cannot accept that the illegalities that occurred after [Operation] Storm were spontaneous, Galbraith told the court. The Croatian authorities did not make a serious effort to bring the situation under control, he said. In addition, officials also worked to stop Serbs who had fled from coming back, for example issuing orders to confiscate the property of anyone who failed to return within 30 days. Galbraith said President Franjo Tudjman, Croatias first post-independence head of state, and the people around him wanted an ethnically clean country. Tudjman, named as the first accused in the indictment, died in 1999. According to the witness, the late president had the idea of an ethnically homogenous Croatia and believed the local Serbs posed a threat to the homogeneity of his country. Galbraith noted that the US government took an understanding attitude towards Operation Storm at the time, but insisted he would not have asked Washington to give it the green light if he had believed Tudjman intended to remove the Serbs. The diplomat said he expressly told Tudjman and the Croatian authorities of their obligation to protect Serb civilians and prisoners of war. He also warned them that there must be no repeat of the serious abuses committed during the earlier Medak Pocket operation conducted in 1993. Galbraith confirmed that the US made representations to Tudjman on the eve of the operation asking him to protect civilians and comply with international humanitarian law, and said this message was then relayed by the then defence minister Gojko Susak to his subordinates. In contrast to testimony given earlier in the trial by United Nations officials such as Andrew Leslie, who commanded the UN Confidence Restoration Operation, Galbraith said Knin was not randomly targeted during the first days of Operation Storm. The damage from shelling was not large-scale and the city was left largely undamaged, he said, adding that this information came from embassy staff who unlike UN personnel were allowed to move around Knin during the first days of the offensive. His Gotovinadefence counsel Greg Kehoe rejected the prosecutions suggestion that Tudjman rejected a final peace offer before launching Operation Storm and imposing a military solution. The defence argues that Zagreb had been open to a peaceful outcome for Serb-held areas prior to the operation. The trial continues next week. Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR-trained journalist in Zagreb. BOSNIAKS SHOT TEN BY TEN Witness testify about abuses committed by Serb paramilitaries, and allege linkage with Vojislav Seseljs volunteers. By Denis Dzidic in Sarajevo A protected witness this week gave an eyewitness account of how Bosniak detainees in the village of Drinjaca were taken out and shot in batches of ten, and how he managed to escape. The witness, identified as VS 1064, was giving evidence to the Hague tribunal in the trial of Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, SRS. Seselj is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Serb paramilitaries, as part of a project to carve out a Greater Serbia between 1991 and 1993. Prosecutors say he was involved in recruiting and funding SRS party volunteers as paramilitaries. Seselj is also accused of encouraging the creation of a homogenous Greater Serbia and inciting Serbs to fight Bosniaks and Croats as part of a joint criminal enterprise to force non-Serbs out of parts of Croatia and Bosnia. The witness told the court that at the beginning of the Bosnian war of 1992-95, Bosniaks from villages near Zvornik were rounded by Serb forces and detained in the hall of a cultural centre in Drinjaca. According to the witness, the detainees were told that they would be questioned by military investigators, who never materialised. Instead, he said Serb paramilitary forces whom he described as Arkans men entered the facility. Arkans Tigers were a Serb paramilitary force led by Zeljko Arkan Raznatovic, who are suspected of committing numerous crimes during the Bosnian conflict. Raznatovic was murdered in Belgrade in 2000. Arkans men beat about 30 Bosniaks severely, and when they left, their leader warned us that later that day we would be visited by the Chetniks, said the witness. The term Chetnik originally applied to Serbian guerrillas in the Second World War. In the early Nineties, nationalists and paramilitaries identified with them and appropriated the name, but this was not a cohesive group. To complicate matters, the other sides in the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts used the term Chetnik as a blanket pejorative term for Serb forces. That same evening, witness 1064 said, a large group of men dressed in grey uniforms, some with Chetnik-style insignia, entered the hall and asked for ten volunteers. No one volunteered, so they picked ten Bosniaks and took them outside, after which we heard shots, and I assumed that theyd killed those ten men, and then they came back and picked another ten, said VS 1064. The witness himself was in the fifth group to be picked out. When we reached the place from where the shots had come, one of the people up front yelled for us to start running, and then the Chetniks started shooting, he said. I got shot in the hip and fell to the ground. After a few minutes one of the Chetniks saw that I might still be alive. He fired several more shots and one hit me in the shoulder, said the witness. According to VS 1064, once the soldiers had left he managed to escape. The witness said he lost his father and three brothers in the Drinjaca massacre. One of his brothers was a minor. When asked to describe Chetnik soldiers, the witness 1064 said he believed Chetniks and Seseljs men were one and the same thing. I consider them one army with one commander, he said. In the courtroom, defendant Seselj objected to this testimony and claimed that this particular witness had never mentioned Seseljs men before, not to the OTP [Office of the Prosecutor], or the Hague court investigators or even when testifying at the trial of [former Yugoslav president] Slobodan Milosevic in 2003. The judges also heard this week from another protected witness, identified as VS 1060, whose testimony related to the activities of a group of Serb paramilitaries in Grbavica, a suburb of Sarajevo. According to this witness, after Grbavica fell into Serb hands in April 1992, he and other Bosniaks were forced to work for the Bosnian Serb Army. We worked digging trenches and building bunkers there was no choice about it. Serb soldiers with guns came and took me to work, recalled the witness. He recalled seeing one group of men memorable for their black uniforms, long beards and hair and Chetnik insignia. The Chetniks had their own commander, who was called Slavko Aleksic, and they were based near the old Jewish cemetery in Grbavica, he said. When asked whether this group operated independently of other Serb forces in the city, the witness replied that he believed it was part of the Bosnian Serb Army. However, he also claimed to have heard Serb soldiers saying that Aleksic was his own boss and answered only to Vojislav Seselj. The witness testified that Bosniak civilians in Grbavica were beaten and killed by Serb soldiers. When asked whether Chetniks committed such crimes, he indicated he had not been present where these forces were operating. During cross-examination Seselj thanked the witness for his testimony, describing it as truthful and just. His only question was to ask the witness to restate the fact that he had no direct knowledge as to whether Aleksics men murdered, tortured or plundered. The witness replied that he had no such knowledge, because he never worked either with Chetnik groups or near them. I only said what the word on the street was, he added. The witness also confirmed he did not know for a fact whether Aleksic really answered to Seselj or not. The trial continues next week. Denis Dzidic is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo. BRIEFLY NOTED: ZUPLJANIN HOLDS OFF ON PLEA Defendant says identity change while on the run was meant to put would-be assassins off his trail. By Simon Jennings in The Hague When former Bosnian Serb police commander Stojan Zupljanin made his first appearance in front of tribunal judges in The Hague this week, he refused to enter a plea in relation to the charges read out to him. However, he did indicate that he would contest the charges, saying that he would prove all the untruths in the indictment. Zupljanin was arrested outside Belgrade on 11 June, eight years after he was indicted by the Hague tribunal. Although he initially claimed he was not Stojan Zupljanin and that the Serbian authorities had arrested the wrong man, a DNA analysis confirmed his identity and he was transferred to The Hague last week. A former head of the Banja Luka Security Services Centre and aide to Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, the accused faces charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war. The allegations include persecution, murders, extermination and deportation, all committed against civilians in northwestern Bosnia between April and December 1992. Tribunal rules allow Zupljanin 30 days after his initial appearance to enter a plea. The former security chief informed the judges of his reasons for changing his identity while on the run from the tribunal. He claimed that Serbian president Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, wanted to eliminate him, together with three other top Bosnian Serb fugitives, in the interests of Serbia and Republika Srbska. He was one of the four senior Bosnian Serb leaders indicted by the tribunal who have evaded capture until now. Karadzic, Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, and Goran Hadzic are still at large. Zupljanin told the court that in his bid to evade assassination he underwent enormous suffering and made superhuman efforts to survive. He said he had long sleepless nights, and would sometimes wish to be taken to the Hague tribunal. He told the court he hoped his fellow fugitives do not follow him to The Hague. I wish that they remain at large forever, he said. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. CROATIAN SERB LEADER CLAIMS TRIAL WAS UNFAIR Milan Martic suggests Hague prosecutors favour Croats over Serbs. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic this week told his appeal hearing at the Hague tribunal that he had not been given a fair trial. Last year, the tribunal sentenced Martic to 35 years in prison for crimes committed during the early Nineties against Croats and other non-Serbs in Croatia. "I expected a fair trial, but apparently I was very wrong," Martic told the appeals chamber on June 26. The trial judges, he claimed, seemed to draw inspiration from Dante's Divine Comedy, where the gates of Hell bear the inscription, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Martic, who was variously president, interior minister and defence minister of the rebel Serb-held Krajina region in Croatia, was convicted on 16 counts including murder, torture, deportation, attacks on civilians and the wanton destruction of civilian areas. Judges found that he had taken part in a joint criminal enterprise, along with the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, which aimed to create a unified Serbian state through a campaign of violence against non-Serbs in parts of Croatia and Bosnia. The initial indictment was issued in July 1995. Martic surrendered to the tribunal in May 2002, after seven years on the run. This week, Martic also criticised the fact that prosecutors in the trial of the Croatian generals who commanded Operation Storm, the offensive that ended Serb control in Krajina, are not questioning the legality of that operation. Operation Storm brought an end to Krajinas self-declared autonomy, established after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. Krajina covered roughly a quarter of Croatias territory. It was terrible, after everything that happened, to hear the prosecution and the defence agree that Operation Storm was a legitimate operation," said Martic. "That was classic aggression," he said, adding that all Croatian operations bore the traits of genocide. "But neither the tribunal nor the prosecutors were interested in that, and a fascist state was created in the heart of Europe." Three generals, Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak, are on trial for crimes committed by troops during and after the offensive. Their lawyers have said that the findings against Martic would help their clients defence. During his trial. Martic often complained of unequal treatment, asking why prosecutors charged him with war crimes while certain Croatian politicians went free. The Appeals Chamber will hand down Martics final sentence at a later date. Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR-trained journalist in Zagreb. STANISIC, SIMATOVIC GRANTED PROVISIONAL RELEASE Judges discount relevance of a police investigation suggesting Serbian doctors fabricate ailments to help war crimes suspects. By Simon Jennings in The Hague Two former high-ranking Serbian officials, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, have been granted provisional release by the tribunals appeals chamber, after it dismissed evidence presented by the prosecution suggesting that doctors in Serbia were falsifying medical reports. Stanisic and Simatovic are charged with giving instructions to secret units of the Serbian state security service, which committed crimes against non-Serb civilians in Croatia and Bosnia during the war in the former Yugoslavia. The trial has been delayed since it got under way on 28 April as Stanisic is suffering from poor health including osteoporosis, kidneystones, pouchitis and depression. On May 26, the trial chamber granted the two accused provisional release, taking into account Stanisics defence counsels argument that it would provide him with the optimum conditions for recovery. The prosecution appealed against the decision, saying the release should not be granted in view of an article from the Serbian newspaper Blic and a press release issued by the countrys government stating that the interior ministry had arrested police officers, lawyers and doctors on suspicion of complicity in protecting individuals accused of war crimes. The press release alleges that lawyers bribed police officials and doctors to provide false documents in order to help secure the release of suspects. Prosecution submitted that the case would undermine the credibility of medical reports from institutions where Stanisic would be treated. But the appeals chamber ruled that because the newspaper article contained no evidence that Stanisics lawyers or doctors were in any way connected with the investigation, these matters would not be taken into account in a decision on his release. The appeals chamber rejected the prosecutions allegation that Stanisic was exaggerating his illness, pointing to medical reports submitted to the tribunal. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** ICTY - TRIBUNAL UPDATE, which has been running since 1996, details events and issues at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in 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 ICTY - Tribunal Update are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. ICTY - 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. ICTY - TRIBUNAL UPDATE: Editor-in-Chief: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Senior Editor: John MacLeod; Editor: Caroline Tosh; Project Manager: Merdijana Sadovic; Translation: Predrag Brebanovic, and others. 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