WELCOME TO IWPRS ICTY - TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 598, April 24, 2009 GOTOVINA DEFENCE ASKS JUDGES TO PRESS EU FOR DOCUMENTS It says files could help prove its clients innocence on some counts. By Simon Jennings in The Hague
COURTSIDE BOSNIAN SERB OFFICER TESTIFIES AGAINST FORMER COLLEAGUES Witness appearing in Srebrenica Seven case directly implicates some of accused in 1995 massacre. By Simon Jennings in The Hague WITNESS TESTIFIES ABOUT MASSACRE IN SOUTH KOSOVO Kosovo Albanian man accuses Yugoslav army of attacking and killing ethnic Albanian civilians. By Rory Gallivan in London FOUR SERB POLICEMEN JAILED FOR SUVA REKA MASSACRE But acquittal of three other defendants provokes anger reaction from victims relatives. By Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade GLAVAS TRIAL ENTERS CLOSING PHASE Prosecution demands prison sentences ranging between five and 20 years for Glavas and his co-accused, while defence calls for acquittal. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb BRIEFLY NOTED: KARADZIC ALLOWED TO GIVE ONLY WRITTEN INTERVIEW Tribunal judge rules that telephone interview could give accused opportunity to disclose confidential information. 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For more information about how you can support IWPR go to: http://www.iwpr.net/donate.html **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** GOTOVINA DEFENCE ASKS JUDGES TO PRESS EU FOR DOCUMENTS It says files could help prove its clients innocence on some counts. By Simon Jennings in The Hague Lawyers of former Croatian general Ante Gotovina have asked judges to order the European Union to step up its efforts to locate what they say are crucial missing documents that could prove their clients innocence on certain charges. The request from the defence team of the general who is on trial for war crimes in The Hague comes after the Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, Javier Solana, informed the court that certain documents sought by Gotovinas defence team from the EU archives may not exist. The claim made in the motion by the Gotovina defence of March 20 that the the missing documents.. were certainly created and certainly existed at one time is doubtful, wrote Solana in a response to Judge Alphons Orie, who had ordered the EU to respond fully to the Gotovina teams request for access to documents in its archives. However, Gotovinas lead counsel, Luka Misetic, contends that at least 51 of a total of 80 missing documents do exist and that Solana has prevented him from getting his hands on them since his team first sought them back in 2007. Solana refused to cooperate at every turn, Misetic told IWPR. Now the documents are missing and again he is not cooperating. The EU rejects the allegations of Gotovinas lawyers, explaining that it has done everything asked of it by the court in terms of disclosing the documents. Solana states in his letter to Judge Orie, who is presiding over the case, The Gotovina defence was given full access to these [European Commission Monitoring Mission, ECMM] archives in an unrestricted and unredacted form on March 10, 2008. Cristina Gallach, Solanas spokeswoman, told IWPR, We have given the Gotovina defence access to the ECMM archives and complied in full with the order of the tribunal of February 28, 2008. Of particular concern to the Gotovina defence team are daily log reports of the ECMM Regional Centre Knin, from between August 4 and 15, 1995. Such reports, it says, contain hourly or even minute-by-minute updates on the situation on the ground during Operation Storm and could provide evidence showing that their client is not guilty of indiscriminate shelling in the Krajina region in 1995. Based on the ECMM commentary in its weekly reports, the Gotovina defence believes that the ECMM log reports are likely to be exculpatory for General Gotovina and will refute allegations of indiscriminate shelling, the lawyers wrote to judges following Solanas letter of April 17. Gotovina is standing trial alongside two other senior Croatian military and police commanders Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak for the illegal shelling of towns across the Krajina region of Croatia during the 1995 military attack known as Operation Storm. The men are charged with a campaign which allegedly involved the killing of civilians, the burning of houses and looting of property in a bid to drive Serbs out of the area and prevent their return. On February 28, 2008, judges in The Hague ordered that the EU grant Gotovinas lawyers access to the ECMM archives which it duly did on March 10 last year. However, the lawyers claim that as many as 80 documents were missing from the archive. But in a letter written by Solana on April 17 to Judge Orie, the former says that as far as possible, it complied fully with the Gotovina teams request when its lawyer, Zoran Zugic, inspected the archives in March 2008. He says 24 of the documents that Gotovinas lawyers claim are missing are in fact in the archive they inspected in March 2008. Twenty four of the documents claimed to be missing are in fact contained in the ECMM archives, and were at the disposal of Mr Zugic on 10 March 2008. However, they were not requested by him, wrote Solana, without giving details of the contents of those documents. However, Gotovinas lawyers are doubtful of Solanas claim, explaining that their team searched the archives and the tribunals office of the prosecutor did so twice, but neither party found the 24 documents. They have asked that the EU now be ordered to hand them over. Beyond these 24 documents, Gotovinas lawyers claim there are 27 documents remaining that are not in the archive and must exist. According to Misetic, the missing documents could exonerate his client on charges of persecution and deportation which the prosecution alleges was largely carried out through a campaign of indiscriminate shelling against civilians. Solana says that the existence of the documents is hypothetical as, according to ECMM reports, monitoring teams that would have made such records were not operating during certain periods in August 1995 due to restrictions on their freedom of movement. But Gotovinas lawyers says they have proof that the missing documents do exist and cite other documents detailing the ECMMs whereabouts in the area on different days during August 1995. There is simply no excuse for why these documents would not have existed or wouldnt have been produced, Misetic told IWPR. Misetic noted that these documents may be part of 24 documents that Solana acknowledges are in the ECMM archive. Misetic and his colleagues also allege that Solana has a conflict of interest in handling their request for the documents following allegations they say he made in 1995 about the illegality of Operation Storm. As Spains foreign minister and Chairman of the EU Council of Ministers, on August 6, 1995, he alleged that the Croatian army was shelling civilian areas and was therefore guilty of war crimes, Gotovinas lawyers contend. Misetic and his colleagues challenge the allegation that Gotovina is guilty of war crimes through indiscriminate shelling and say that, having adopted such a position in 1995, Solana should not be in charge of locating the sought for documents. We would like someone who was not involved at the time to take charge of finding these documents, said Misetic. Theres an appearance of conflict [of interest] and it should be delegated to someone with no personal involvement. Solanas office was unable to address the remarks he allegedly made about Operation Storm. However, it denied that there was any conflict of interest concerning his position in answering the Gotovina lawyers requests. We have found there is no substance whatsoever to allegations made by the Gotovina defence. They are both factually incorrect and misleading, Gallach told IWPR. The EU further insisted that it had provided full access to documents for which it is able to do so. We have carefully analysed the motion submitted by the Gotovina defence and have again consulted [ECMM] archives, said Gallach. We have, on Friday April 17, answered the court as we have been asked to do. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. COURTSIDE: BOSNIAN SERB OFFICER TESTIFIES AGAINST FORMER COLLEAGUES Witness appearing in Srebrenica Seven case directly implicates some of accused in 1995 massacre. By Simon Jennings in The Hague A former officer in the Bosnian Serb army, VRS, who pleaded guilty to the killing of thousands of Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, this week testified against his ex-comrades on trial in The Hague. Momir Nikolic who was sentenced on appeal to 20 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, following his guilty plea in May 2003 gave evidence in the trial of Vujadin Popovic and his six co-accused after being summoned to appear by judges. Nikolic said that Popovic, the former VRS colonel and coordinator of the military police, informed him on the morning of July, 12 1995, that Bosniaks detained by Bosnian Serb forces in Potocari, about five kilometres from Srebrenica, were to be killed. Popovic told me in his usual way of putting things all the Balias have to be killed. That was, in a nutshell, my conversation with Popovic, Nikolic told the court. The ex-assistant chief of security in the Bratunac Brigade later explained that the name Balias was a derogatory term commonly used by the Bosnian Serbs to refer to Muslims. In that period, nearly all officers, lets say 95 per cent of them, used to call Muslims Balias, he said. Nikolic went on to testify that although it was planned that only those Muslims that were suspected of committing war crimes would be separated, what actually ensued was the partitioning of all Muslim males in Potocari from their families. What happened was not something that was customary military practice, what happened was all the men were separated, said Nikolic. He also explained that it was not just able-bodied men who were separated from their families. I can guarantee you with my life that all the men in Srebrenica were separated, irrespective of the fact [of] whether they were able-bodied or not, he said. Among those who were separated were those who were not fit for military service, who were 60 years of age or older. Popovic is standing trial along with six other high-ranking Bosnian Serb military and police officials Ljubisa Beara, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Vinko Pandurevic, Drago Nikolic, Radivoje Miletic and Milan Gvero. They all face charges of expelling the Muslim population of Srebrenica and Zepa and murdering all able-bodied men captured from Srebrenica. Beara, Borovcanin, Popovic, Nikolic and Pandurevic are accused of genocide and war crimes, while Miletic and Gvero are indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to the indictment, from the afternoon of July 12 through the entire day of July 13, over 1,000 Muslim able-bodied men in Potocari were separated from their friends and families and transported to Bratunac where they were murdered. The fall of Srebrenica situated in what is now Bosnias Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska led to the slaughter of approximately 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in an act of horror subsequently ruled to have been genocide by both the tribunal and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. When questioned further by the prosecution this week, Nikolic also testified that he met Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the VRS, on July 13 at Konjevic Polje, and asked him what would happen to Muslims captured by Bosnian Serb forces there. Mladic had responded with a double-handed gesture suggesting that they would be killed, Nikolic said. I could not draw any conclusion other than those people were going to be killed, Nikolic said, explaining that this spelt out what would also happen to those captured in Potocari the day before. The way in which [Mladic] reacted made it clear that there would be no difference in the fate between those captured in Konjevic Polje and those who had been separated and detained in Potocari, Nikolic said. That fate was they would be put in detention and later executed. Prosecutor Nelson Thayer also asked Nikolic about who controlled forces stationed along the road from Sandici to Konjevic Polje, that prosecutors allege took hundreds of Muslim prisoners and transported them to detention facilities to be killed. The forces engaged between Sandici and Konjevic Polje were engaged, in my understanding, under the command of Mr Ljubomir Borovcanin, he said. Nikolic was called by judges to give evidence in the trial as a court witness. Judges admitted into evidence a statement made by Nikolic detailing events in Srebrenica in 1995 that he gave to prosecutors as part of his guilty plea in 2003. Judges also accepted a statement dated April 17 this year clarifying those events in the original statement. The prosecution and defence teams of all seven defendants had the opportunity to cross-examine the witness. During his cross-examination, Popovics lawyer, Zoran Zivanovic, questioned Nikolic about the intentions of the VRS in Srebrenica in 1995. He sought to shed doubt on the witnesss testimony due to inconsistencies between what Nikolic stated in his plea agreement with the prosecution in 2003 and the statement he made ahead of his testimony this week. I would like to ask you whether introducing the intentions of the VRS in your statement of facts, as opposed to what you put in your written statement [plea agreement], is a result of your wish to play up to the prosecution office in order to successfully conclude your plea agreement, Zivanovic said. Nikolic denied this was the case and repeatedly told Zivanovic that questions about his plea agreement should be put to his lawyers, as they, rather than he, had drafted that document. In particular, Popovics defence lawyer noted that Nikolic had given two different accounts of what the Bosnian Serb intention was in Srebrenica in 1995. However, Nikolic said both accounts amounted to the same scenario. The goal of the VRS forces was to have the Srebrenica enclave empty of Muslims. Whether it was achieved this way or that does not matter, Nikolic explained. Zivanovic also pointed to the number of Muslim men estimated by Nikolic in his evidence to have been in Potocari in July 1995. While Nikolic had originally estimated that there were between 1,500 and 2,000 Muslim men in Potocari, he later found out that the figure was actually between 400 and 700 men. However, he had not referred to this lower number in his evidence. Could it be that this was left out to make OTP more willing to conclude a plea agreement with you? Zivanovic persisted. My intention was not to ingratiate myself to OTP or any such thing, Nikolic replied. Zivanovic then sought to clarify what Nikolic meant in his statement when he referred to military-aged men from Srebrenica. Popovics lawyer put it to the witness that by this, he had actually meant members of the Bosnian army, but had not explicitly said so in his plea agreement statement in order to cover up the fact that Srebrenica had not been demilitarised. The United Nations Security Council had declared Srebrenica a safe area on May 6, 1993, forbidding any kind of hostility or attack in the region. No. I kept saying Srebrenica as I do now had not been demilitarized. In Srebrenica, there were armed units [of the Bosnian army], Nikolic said. Nikolic was subsequently cross-examined by the remaining defence teams. At the completion of his testimony, the trial will continue with evidence from two further prosecution witnesses after the OTP reopened its case following the completion of all seven defence cases on March 12. Closing arguments of both parties are set to be heard from July 20. Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. WITNESS TESTIFIES ABOUT MASSACRE IN SOUTH KOSOVO Kosovo Albanian man accuses Yugoslav army of attacking and killing ethnic Albanian civilians. By Rory Gallivan in London A witness in the trial of former Yugoslav army, VJ, general Vlastimir Djordjevic said VJ forces attacked and killed ethnic Albanian civilians and set fire to buildings in his home village during clashes in Kosovo in 1999. At the Hague tribunal this week, Hazbi Loku, a teacher from Kotline in the south of Kosovo, confirmed previous statements he had made in which he described what he said were VJ attacks on his village on March 9 and 24, 1999. Loku gave statements about the incidents to the tribunals Office of the Prosecution, OTP, in June 1999, as well as during the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2002, and that of ex-Serbian President Milan Milutinovic in 2006. Djordjevic, who was formerly head of the public security department of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, MUP, is charged for his part in what prosecutors claim was a systematic campaign that resulted in hundreds of deaths and the expulsion of approximately 800,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. This week, Loku said he stood by his testimony in the Milutinovic trial, in which he said that on March 9, 1999, tanks destroyed houses in Kotline and a whole neighbourhood was burned by the VJ. He also gave his account of an incident in the village on March 24 of that year during which, he said, the VJ separated women and children from men. After a group of about 20 of the men tried to escape, soldiers captured them and massacred them by pushing them into holes in the ground, which they then threw explosive devices into, he said. During the Milutinovic trial, Loku named several of the victims of the massacre, and said that he fled Kosovo for Macedonia on the night of March 24. Some of the names mentioned by the witness appear in the indictment against Djordjevic as people killed in Kotline. The examination in-chief-of Loku, which was conducted by prosecutor Matthias Neuner, consisted mainly of Neuner submitting previously tendered documents such as photographs of people identified as victims by Loku into evidence. During his cross-examination of the witness, Djordjevics lawyer Velkjo Djurdjic sought to show that the alleged massacre victims described by Loku were members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, and not civilians. He showed photos of tombstones erected for the men who Loku said were killed in the March 24 massacre which bore the insignia of the KLA, and submitted these into evidence. To cut a long story short, in all of the photographs there is an engraved coat of the arms of the KLA, isnt there? he asked Loku. Loku who had earlier testified that one of the men was wearing civilian clothes when killed confirmed this. Djurdjic also attempted to cast doubt on a statement Loku previously made to the OTP, in which he said that tanks destroyed houses in Ivaja, a neighbouring village of Kotline, on March 8, 1999. He asked Loku how he knew this could have happened when he had not been in Ivaja on that day. Loku said he saw evidence it had happened when he was in the village a few days later. I saw the traces of the tracks of the tanks leading up to the houses; the houses that were destroyed were close to the road, Loku said. Djurdjic also referred to a statement Loku made in the trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, in which the witness referred to fighting between Serb forces and the KLA around Ivaja on March 8. He quoted Loku as saying, Thanks to the KLA, the population managed to escape death, and tendered the portion of the transcript into evidence. Djurdjic also showed Loku photographs, which were taken during a forensic examination by Serbian authorities in Kotline on March 24, 1999, and which had been used in the Milutinovic trial. He asked him whether he recognised one of the photos, which had been marked as showing a house believed to be the KLA headquarters in Kotline. I can see what is marked on the picture, but this could just be speculation by the Serb forces, the witness replied. Djordjevic was originally indicted in 2003 alongside VJ generals Nebojsa Pavkovic and Vladimir Lazarevic and Serbian police general Sreten Lukic. Their case was later joined with that of former Serbian president Milan Milutinovic, Yugoslav army chief of staff Dragoljub Ojdanic and Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic. However, the trial of Djordjevic, who was not arrested until 2007, is being conducted separately. His trial, which began on January 2009, is set to be the tribunals last case relating to crimes committed in Kosovo. In the Milutinovic trial, the former Serbian president was acquitted of crimes against the Kosovo Albanian population, while his five co-defendants were all convicted of some or all of the counts against them. Rory Gallivan is an IWPR contributor in London. FOUR SERB POLICEMEN JAILED FOR SUVA REKA MASSACRE But acquittal of three other defendants provokes anger reaction from victims relatives. By Aleksandar Roknic in Belgrade The War Crimes Chamber of Belgrades District Court this week convicted four Serbian former police officers of the murders of 50 Kosovo Albanian civilians in what was widely considered to be one of the worst atrocities committed during the 1998-99 Kosovo war. However, three of their co-accused were released, after being acquitted on all charges. Forty-eight out of 50 victims who were executed by Serbian forces in the village of Suva Reka on March 26, 1999, were members of the Berisha family. At the end of the trial, which began in October 2006, former police commander in Suva Reka, Radojko Repanovic, and ex-policeman Sladjan Cukaric were each sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of participating in the massacre. Another former policeman, Miroslav Petkovic, and an ex-member of the Serbian State Security Service, Milorad Nisavic, were sentenced to 15 and 13 years respectively. Three other accused former commander of the Special Police Unit Radoslav Mitrovic, and ex-policemen Nenad Jovanovic and Zoran Petkovic were acquitted of all charges and released after the verdict was delivered. According to the judgement, Mitrovic, who was a prime suspect in this case, was found not guilty because no-one from his unit was in Suva Reka on the day of the massacre. Jovanovic and Petkovic were acquitted due to a lack of evidence, the judges said. Prosecutors and defence lawyers of each of the four convicted men have already announced they intend to appeal the verdict. In the judgement read out on April 23, the judges said this was the worst single massacre of civilians to occur during the Kosovo war, and the victims included 14 children, two babies, a pregnant woman and a 100-year-old woman. The crime took place in the spring of 1999, during clashes between the Serbian police and Yugoslav army, VJ, on one side and the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, on the other. The judges found in their ruling that on March 26, the defendants rounded up members of the Berisha family in their village of Suva Reka, killing several elderly men with machine-gun fire before forcing the rest of the family into a pizza restaurant and throwing hand-grenades at them. According to prosecutors in the case, those who showed any signs of life were shot in the head, and the bodies were then transported to a mass grave in Prizren, where they were initially buried. Some body parts of the victims of the Suva Reka massacre were also unearthed at a secondary mass grave in Batajnica near Belgrade, in an apparent attempt to hide the atrocities. Autopsies of the remains found both in Prizren and Batajnica showed the victims were not killed in a battle, but executed. Explaining the sentences handed down to the four convicted men, presiding judge Vinka Beraha-Nikicevic said, The court established that they acted together with the aim to kill [members of the ethnic] Albanian population in Suva Reka on March 26, 1999. Many eyewitnesses said that Repanovic ordered Cukaric, Petkovic and other policeman to round up and execute Albanian civilians detained in the Calabria pizza restaurant. She said that according to witnesses, Petkovic and Cukaric shot at the women, children and elderly men, as they tried to run away from the police. Shortly after the verdict was handed down, Serbias War Crimes Prosecutors Office said it would appeal against the three acquittals. We dont think the justice has been served, said Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for the prosecutors office. He added that the court heard testimonies from 128 witnesses, which should have been enough for a different outcome. Dragoljub Todorovic, a lawyer who represents the victims family, told IWPR that the courts decision to acquit the prime suspect and the highest-ranking of the seven accused, Radoslav Mitrovic, was scandalous. Mitrovics lawyer, Goran Petronijevic, told IWPR that he was satisfied with the judges decision, adding that the court still hasnt established all facts related to the massacre in Suva Reka. This was a very serious crime and it has to be fully investigated, he said. One relative of the victims, Idriz Hadzija, told the media that after this verdict particularly the acquittal of the three defendants he couldnt fully trust the Serbian judiciary. In the end, they tricked us, after three years of court proceedings, said another family member, Dzelal Berisha. Aleksandar Roknic is an IWPR-trained journalist in Belgrade. GLAVAS TRIAL ENTERS CLOSING PHASE Prosecution demands prison sentences ranging between five and 20 years for Glavas and his co-accused, while defence calls for acquittal. By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb The war crimes trial of Croatian politician Branimir Glavas, former military commander Ivica Krnjak, and four other accused, resumed at the Zagreb County Court this week after doctors dismissed Krnjaks request for an adjournment on health grounds. Prosecutors accuse the six of being former members of military unit the Uskocka Satnija company, and have charged them with war crimes against ethnic Serb civilians in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991. The indictment against them contains charges related to the so-called Garage case, in which victims were tortured and killed in the garage of an Osijek municipal building, and the Duct Tape case, in which eight men were gagged with tape and shot by the Drava river. The trial, which began 18 months ago, was initially due to enter its final phase on April 20 with the closing arguments for the defence. But the hearing was postponed after Krnjaks lawyers said he had to go into hospital and have surgery on clogged veins in his throat. Attorney Domagoj Resetar justified his client's failure to appear in court by presenting a medical document showing Krnjak had been hospitalised in Osijek. However, it transpired that presiding judge Zeljko Horvatovic called the hospital and was told that Krnjak was not there, and so ordered his detention and transfer to the hospital of Zagreb prison. Since it is necessary to establish Krnjak's [state of] health on the day of each hearing, the only possible way to do it is while he is in detention, said the judge, adding that the court felt Krnjak was trying to stall and delay the proceedings after the prosecution presented its closing arguments last week. Krnjak has already asked for health checks six times this year. A team of doctors who examined him on April 22 told the court that in their opinion there is no need for hospitalisation and surgery, prompting the panel of judges hearing the case to schedule the resumption of the trial over the protests of the defence team. Krnjaks lawyer Resetar said that continuing with the case was a violation of Krnjak's human rights and constitutional right to health care. Meanwhile, Krnjak's wife filed a request at the court for the judges hearing the case to be dismissed, accusing them of negligence, abuse of office and failure to provide assistance. Her request was dismissed immediately, with the explanation that she was not a party in the proceedings and was therefore not entitled to make any such request. The proceedings have already been halted several times, mainly because of the resistance of the main accused, Glavas, a powerful parliamentary deputy from the Slavonia region. As it advances towards European Union membership, and despite mixed feelings from the press and public, Croatia has made efforts to come to terms with war crimes committed by its own citizens against ethnic Serbs, who have been traditionally viewed in the country as the villains of the 1991-95 war. Glavas, known for his fiery nationalist rhetoric during the conflict, is the highest-ranking official to have been indicted for war crimes. One of the founders of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, he was expelled in 2005 after clashing with party leader and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader over Sanaders pro-European policies. When the investigations of the cases in the indictment first started, Glavas denied all wrongdoing, saying they were politically motivated and orchestrated by his rivals. He went on a 37-day hunger-strike in protest, and, in early December 2006, was released from custody. The investigating judge ruled he was too ill to attend hearings, and the case was suspended until February 2007. In April 2007, Glavas was formally indicted by an Osijek court on charges of war crimes against Serbs, and returned to custody, where he started a second hunger strike. An additional indictment was issued against him a month later. His trial began in October that year, but was this was interrupted following his re-election to the Croatian parliament in the November 2007 general election, which gave him immunity from detention. In July 2008, the trial was adjourned until September because of the poor health of Krnjak and another accused, Gordana Getos Magdic. Under Croatian law, when there has been a break of more than two months in proceedings, a re-trial is mandatory. In their seven-hour closing statement last week, the prosecution demanded guilty verdicts for all accused for war crimes against civilians, and for prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years, saying it had proved they were guilty of systematically planned and organised crimes. Prosecutors Jasmina Dolmagic and Miroslav Kraljevic said they managed to prove that the accused were guilty despite the passage of time and lack of physical evidence, for which they criticised the relevant institutions that did not do their job. They argued that the presentation of evidence was also hampered by pressure exerted on witnesses. Many witnesses from Osijek tried not to antagonise the first defendant Glavas, said Dolmagic. Prosecutors said that both systematically planned and organised crimes were committed by the same group of people, not just out of revenge, but also for purposes of intimidation. Dolmagic said that in the Garage case, Glavas was guilty because as head of the National Defense Secretariat and de-facto commander of a military unit he was aware that civilians were arrested and tortured, yet rather than acting to prevent the atrocities and punish those responsible, he tried to cover up the crimes. In the Duct Tape case, prosecutors said they proved that Glavas and Krnjak ordered the accused members of the unit, Dino Kontic, Tihomir Valentic and Zdravko Dragic, to arrest, torture and execute eight Serb civilians on the bank of the River Drava. The orders were issued via defendant Magdic, they say. They added that all the victims were Serb civilians who were arrested by three uniformed men and brought to a house in Osijek's Dubrovacka Street where they were tortured. They were all tied up in the same way with duct tape and executed on the same spot by the Drava with one bullet to the head, prosecutors say. Kraljevic says that the indictment in the Duct Tape case was based on statements previously made by Magdic and Dragic to the Osijek police, in which they admitted their involvement in the abduction of civilians. Dragic admitted that he had attempted to kill Radoslav Ratkovic, the only person to have survived the executions by the Drava. Although the two accused later withdrew their statements during the trial, saying they had been pressured into making them by the police, Kraljevic noted that both the Supreme Court and the trial chamber in the case found that their original statements were not made under coercion. Dolmagic said that the victims in both cases were civilians who were in no way connected with hostile actions against Croatia by its Serb minority, which set up a rebel state in the Krajina region. They were civilians who didn't want to leave their city, and who shared the destiny of their fellow citizens, Dolmagic said. Responding in his closing argument on April 22, the defence lawyer of Branimir Glavas, Drazen Matijevic, asked for his clients acquittal, saying that Croatia was the only country trying those who had liberated it, and repeated his clients accusation that the charges were politically motivated. The defence teams of each accused called for the aquittal of their respective client. After the closing words of all defence teams, the court is expected to start deliberations on the verdict. Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR-trained reporter based in Zagreb. BRIEFLY NOTED: KARADZIC ALLOWED TO GIVE ONLY WRITTEN INTERVIEW Tribunal judge rules that telephone interview could give accused opportunity to disclose confidential information. By Simon Jennings in The Hague The long-running dispute between Radovan Karadzic and the Hague tribunal over him giving a media interview from his cell appears to have been resolved after the courts vice-president upheld a decision to allow him only written contact with a journalist. Judge OGon Kwon ruled on April 21 that the courts registry had correctly applied the rules of the United Nations prison in denying the former Bosnian Serb president the use of a telephone to conduct an interview with Zvezdana Vukojevic, a journalist from the Dutch magazine, Revu. Karadzic has been in custody in The Hague since July 2008 and is awaiting trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including two for genocide committed in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The vice-president ruled on February 12 that Karadzic would be allowed to give an interview, overturning the registrys initial decision not to permit this. Judge Kwon ruled that while the interview could not be face-to-face at the prison, it could take the form of written communication, telephone calls, or whatever other means the Registrar deems appropriate. Subsequent to Judge Kwons ruling, the registry authorised Karadzic to conduct the interview by letter, prompting the accused to complain that he should be allowed to speak to the journalist by telephone. He argued that human rights principles required the court to offer him the least restrictive means available to contact the journalist, and should therefore allow him to do so by telephone. He said that written communication lacked the spontaneity of a telephone interview and that the media would not be interested in an interview conducted via written communication. However, the registrar argued that using a telephone for the interview could interfere with Karadzics imminent trial by giving him the opportunity to disclose confidential information a view supported by Judge Kwon this week. Unlike instantaneous contact over the telephone, all written correspondence from [Karadzic] to Ms Vukojevic can be thoroughly checked by registry staff to ensure that no confidential information is contained therein before the correspondence is conveyed to Ms Vukojevic, wrote the judge in his ruling. He also ruled that the registrar had rightly addressed fears that a telephone interview could prompt concerns about security at the prison. Karadzic is the first war crimes suspect to gain permission to give an interview to the press from custody in The Hague. The former wartime head of the Bosnian Serb administration wants to speak to the media about a deal he allegedly made with former United States envoy Richard Holbrooke, who he claims promised him immunity from prosecution in The Hague in return for stepping down from politics in 1996. Holbrooke has denied making the agreement. While Karadzic has repeatedly claimed that the alleged agreement makes him exempt from proceedings at the court, judges have ruled that even if such a deal had been made, it would have no bearing on the trial. That decision was confirmed on appeal on April 6, but Karadzic has claimed that he has more evidence on the agreement and has said he intends to file a further motion claiming immunity. 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. 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