Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 18856

1 Friday, 4 July 2003

2 [Open session]

3 --- Upon commencing at 9.04 a.m.

4 [The accused entered court]

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Madam Registrar, could you call the case, please.

6 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour. Good morning, Your Honours.

7 This is case number IT-99-36-T, the Prosecutor versus Radoslav Brdjanin.

8 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you.

9 Mr. Brdjanin, good morning to you.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Good morning.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: I take it that you can follow the proceedings in a

12 language that you can understand?

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, I can, Your Honours.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you.

15 You are not as tall as the newcomer that we had yesterday, but you

16 behave better.

17 Appearances for the Prosecution.

18 MR. KOUMJIAN: Good morning, Your Honours. Nicholas Koumjian and

19 Ann Sutherland, assisted by Denise Gustin.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. And good morning to you all.

21 Appearances for Radoslav Brdjanin, please.

22 MR. ACKERMAN: Good morning, Your Honours. I'm John Ackerman.

23 I'm here with Aleksandar Vujic and playing music for you. And I noticed

24 before I came up here that there seems to be absolutely nothing going on

25 in Courtroom III, just in case --

Page 18857

1 JUDGE AGIUS: I am not informed, Mr. Ackerman.

2 I see that you have a newcomer on the team?

3 MR. ACKERMAN: No. This is a legal officer, Your Honour.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Oh, I see.

5 MR. ACKERMAN: Who just has decided to come and --

6 JUDGE AGIUS: I thought you had an addition.

7 MR. ACKERMAN: And he's welcome. We're glad to have him with us.

8 If he'd help a little bit it would even be better.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Before I proceed. I see there are several of you

10 coming from the United States. Today is your national day. May I wish

11 you happy national day.

12 So shall we go straight into closed session and bring the witness

13 in, or are there any preliminaries? Because I see a long session ahead.

14 MR. KOUMJIAN: Hopefully --

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

16 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I did just very quickly want to say

17 for the record that we're now several days, us American Defence counsel,

18 appearing illegally before this Tribunal. We still have not -- still have

19 not been issued licences.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: Oh, I see.

21 Mr. Ackerman, I haven't seen President Meron this morning as yet,

22 because I wanted to wish him too many happy returns on the 4th of July,

23 but I will during the first break, and I will check on developments.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I remember last year on the 4th of

25 July we were also working, and you brought us all a fortune cookie. I was

Page 18858

1 wondering if we should expect another fortune cookie.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: No. They gave me just one cookie yesterday, which I

3 gave to someone else.

4 MR. ACKERMAN: Okay.

5 JUDGE AGIUS: So it's over.

6 Yes, Mr. Koumjian.

7 MR. KOUMJIAN: We're ready, Your Honour. Hopefully there won't be

8 any fireworks in the courtroom on this day.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. I can assure you if there -- if there are, or

10 if there will be, I will stay out of it.

11 Let's get into closed session. Are we in closed session? Not

12 yet.

13 [Closed session]

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4 [Open session]

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Relating to Bosanski Krupa municipality.

6 You had an objection based on two grounds: One is that a number

7 of documents which you indicated lacked signatures and official stamps and

8 therefore lacked indicia of reliability. We have already handed down

9 decisions in the past that this argument does not hold water at this

10 particular stage of the proceedings. Absence of signature and official

11 stamp does not necessarily rule out the indicia of reliability; and

12 therefore, all those documents are being admitted.

13 And then you objected also to the admission of certain other

14 documents which you indicated in your response. I have reason to believe

15 that all these documents were disclosed to you, Mr. Ackerman. If you --

16 if I am convinced of the contrary, I can assure you that they will be

17 taken out of the records, but I would invite you again to check with the

18 Prosecution to ensure that they were indeed disclosed to you. I'm

19 referring to P2065, P2070, P2081, P2094. There is indeed as you say in

20 B/C/S missing, P2103, and P2107.

21 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I really need to make something very

22 clear for the record. At no time, I don't believe, am I making

23 accusations against the Prosecutor that they have not given me these

24 documents. But I have received as of this morning just in the -- the

25 documents that I call Prosecution disclosure documents over 65.000 pages.

Page 18944

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. And these were disclosed to you in 2000 and

2 2001.

3 MR. ACKERMAN: In 65.000 pages of documents, I'm going to lose one

4 or two. So I'm not saying they didn't give them to me. I'm just saying

5 it's difficult for me to tell you whether I object because I don't have

6 them in front of me.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. That satisfies me even more than my

8 own decision. And you had no objection with regard to the other

9 documents, so basically our decision is that all the documentation

10 proffered by the Prosecution relating to the Bosanski Krupa municipality

11 is being admitted.

12 Then there was another matter that I am going to decide now, and

13 that is -- relates to the attachments to the statements of Witness 7.243.

14 You remember that we had mentioned this during one of the sittings last

15 week or the week before. We have had since then the response from the

16 Prosecution, taking up what I had mentioned during the open session.

17 Basically the position is as follows: You are not objecting as such to

18 the admission of the statement of Witness 7.243, and that -- therefore his

19 statement is being admitted.

20 You objected to the attachments because you submitted that they

21 were irrelevant, and you also submitted that if the attachments were to be

22 admitted in evidence then you requested that the witness be produced for

23 the examination. You will recall that I tried to have a clarification

24 from the Prosecution and from you what attachments we were really

25 referring to, what your objection was. The position as it has

Page 18945

1 crystallised now seems to be the following: The Prosecution agrees with

2 my remark made during the previous sitting - I don't remember - on the

3 24th of June, namely that the brochure, which was one of the attachments

4 and which bears ERN 0184-8201 to 8206 is of limited relevance and they

5 are no longer seeking its admission. Therefore, our decision is that it

6 will be expunged from -- from the -- from being an attachment to the

7 statement.

8 There was also the book written by that person. We had two

9 copies; one in B/C/S, one in English. I am being told by the Prosecution

10 that they do not seek admission of limited portions of the CD-ROM, which

11 contains two books in English by this witness. The Prosecution seeks

12 admission of all the photos on the CD but not the text. Some of the

13 photos were used by Colin Kaiser in his report and referred to in his

14 testimony. At this point in time, may I ask you if you maintain your

15 opposition now or not?

16 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, yes, because the photos and the text

17 are not separated. If the photos were on there as separate documents, I

18 have no problems with the photos at all.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: All right.

20 MR. ACKERMAN: The problem is with the text. And that comes from

21 Mr. Kaiser's position that the text -- he found the text to be unreliable

22 and not correct.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. All right. So do you want the text.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: No, I do not want the text. That is what I'm

25 objecting to. I don't have any objection to the photographs. If they

Page 18946

1 separate them from the text, it's not a problem.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: So our decision is to admit the photographs. We

3 will not be looking at the text, Mr. Ackerman. So that is the position.

4 We also want to make it clear that we had on the 27th of May,

5 during the testimony of Mr. Colin Kaiser admitted under P1884.127 some

6 of the attachments to the statements of Witness 7.243. And it seems that

7 I am put on record as having stated that the matter of admittance would be

8 revisted just for formality sake when we come to Witness 7.243. The

9 position remains as it was. They are being so admitted but only in

10 relation to what Mr. Kaiser testified and not for any other purposes.

11 So be it. I wish you all a nice weekend, and I hope I will have

12 one too. Thank you.

13 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

14 at 1.49 p.m., to be reconvened on Monday,

15 the 7th day of July, 2003, at 9.00 a.m.

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