091027IT

Page 513

1 opening statement is not part of the evidence presentation and that the

2 accused's absence or the absence of counsel during the opening statement

3 does not cause any prejudice to the accused. However, I would like to

4 note that the Appeals Chamber in the decision on appeal against the

5 Trial Chamber's decision number two on assignment of counsel in the

6 Seselj case of 8th December, 2006, seems to take the opposite view. In

7 that case, the Prosecution also has made its opening statement in the

8 absence of the accused. And in paragraph 29 of the said decision, the

9 Appeals Chamber nullified the opening statement in the interest of

10 fairness to the accused. That seems to indicate that the Appeals Chamber

11 felt that the accused should have been present. And as a result of this

12 decision, the Prosecution's opening had to be repeated.

13 That is all I would like to say. Thank you, Your Honour, to

14 listen to this.

15 JUDGE KWON: The Chamber announced its ruling in this case and as

16 to the nature of the -- this case we will discuss at the hearing which is

17 announced earlier on, on Tuesday.

18 So now, Mr. Tieger, it's now for you to open your case. But I

19 would like to ask you to finish slightly before 7.00 p.m. as I would like

20 to say a few more words at the end of this hearing. Mr. Tieger.

21 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President and Your Honours.

22 Approximately three weeks after the largest mass killing on

23 European soil since World War II, the Supreme commander of the forces

24 involved explained in a closed session of his parliament who was

25 responsible for the operation, which saw more than 7.000 men and boys

Page 514

1 killed and 25.000 women, children, and elderly expelled:

2 "The time had come," he said, and I'm quoting, "and I signed

3 Directive 7 to capture Teocak, Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde. The

4 directive was signed and we embarked on it. I was in favour of all the

5 decisions that we made and I support them. All the decisions are

6 recorded in the Supreme Command. I ordered in verbal and written form to

7 attack Zepa and Srebrenica. The time had come."

8 For years, the supreme commander had directed his forces in a

9 campaign to forcibly carve out a mono-ethnic state from a multi-ethnic

10 country. Although Zepa and Srebrenica had eluded his grasp, he had

11 ethnically cleansed vast portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and had

12 surrounded and besieged its capital. Even before that effort began, the

13 supreme commander explained in October 1991 what was coming for Sarajevo.

14 "They have to know that there are 20.000 armed Serbs around

15 Sarajevo. That's insane. They will -- they will disappear. Sarajevo

16 will be a 'karakazan,' a black caldron, where 300.000 Muslims will die."

17 And he described what he envisioned for the Bosnian Muslims in

18 the rest of the parts of Bosnia that he coveted.

19 "They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face

20 of the earth."

21 Your Honours, the events that would follow, the ethnic cleansing,

22 Sarajevo, Srebrenica, reflected the Supreme Commander's disregard for law

23 and humanity in pursuit of what he perceived to be Serbian interests.

24 Just a month before Srebrenica, he confirmed his contempt for the

25 constraints of law, explaining to his parliament that he had ordered the

Page 515

1 taking of United Nations personnel as hostages to show that he was

2 prepared to use "drastic measures." And that the Serbs would "defend

3 ourselves by all means" irrespective of international condemnation. As

4 he had said in October 1991, in anticipation of the international

5 reaction to what he had planned:

6 "Europe will be told to go fuck itself, not to come back until

7 the job is finished."

8 This case, Your Honours, is about that supreme commander, a man

9 who harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred, and fear to implement

10 his vision of an ethnically separated Bosnia: Radovan Karadzic.

11 In July 1990, Radovan Karadzic was simply a psychiatrist in

12 Sarajevo, a city renowned for its charm and diversity, the capital of a

13 multi-ethnic republic. That month, he was elected as president of a

14 newly formed political party, the SDS. Two years later, he was the

15 leader of the self-declared republic known as Republika Srpska, and he

16 controlled 70 per cent of Bosnia's territories.

17 In the course of conquering the territory that he claimed for the

18 Serbs, his forces killed thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats,

19 imprisoned thousands more in squalid and brutal camps and detention

20 facilities, and forced hundreds of thousands away from their homes.

21 Your Honours, this was not the tragic but inevitable consequence

22 of conflict. As noted by the UN Special Rapporteur in October in 1992

23 and as the evidence will prove:

24 "Ethnic cleansing does not appear to be the consequence of the

25 war but rather its goal. This goal, to a large extent, has already been

Page 516

1 achieved through killings, beatings, rape, destruction of houses, and

2 threats ... hundreds of thousands of people," and, Your Honours, that

3 refers to Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, "are being forced to leave

4 their homes and to abandon their belongings in order to save their

5 lives."

6 That goal was reflected in a candid comment by a member of the

7 Republika Srpska parliament to Karadzic and to the other officials

8 assembled there in July of 1992, some very few months after the cleansing

9 began.

10 "We must admit that the Muslims have been planted to us as a

11 people whose executioners we are to be."

12 Your Honours, I'd like to show you a slide. This will show

13 Momcilo Krajisnik, Radovan Karadzic's closest confidant and associate.

14 In this photo, which is taken from a video, you can see him pointing out

15 the territory held by Bosnian forces by late 1992, and that's the

16 horseshoe shaped area that comprises most of Bosnians' territory. And if

17 you look at the top portion and see the arrow, that depicts an area known

18 as Orasje. And Mr. Krajisnik was pointing out in the video that:

19 "Orasje is not yet under our forces -- I mean it's not liberated

20 yet."

21 Orasje was a municipality that was over 80 per cent non-Serb, a

22 demographic situation echoed in many of the other areas that were

23 conquered by the Bosnian Serb forces from which Bosnian Muslims and

24 Bosnian Croats were murdered and expelled.

25 And, Your Honours, when I use the word "conquered," I use a word

Page 517

1 used over and over again by the Bosnian Serb army and the Bosnian Serb

2 political leadership to mean taken over by force and cleansed of its

3 non-Serb population.

4 The next photo I'd like you to see, the next video in fact, shows

5 a vantage point from the hills of Sarajevo. And we'll see that shortly,

6 a bit later. In the course of -- and following the conquest,

7 Radovan Karadzic's forces encircled, besieged, and terrorised Sarajevo

8 for years with sniping and shelling, using the city and its inhabitants

9 as pawns through which to retaliate, to exert leverage in negotiations,

10 and to pressure the Bosnian government to capitulate.

11 In July -- I'm sorry, Your Honours, if we could just quickly go

12 to that video, I wanted to show you that vantage point from the hills.

13 You could have a graphic depiction of the advantage of obtaining that

14 strategic location and how it was used later.

15 [Video-clip played]

16 MR. TIEGER: This is Karadzic and Mladic overlooking Sarajevo and

17 looking down on Sarajevo. And the military advantage it conveyed for

18 shelling and sniping is graphically evident.

19 In July 1995, Your Honours, Radovan Karadzic's forces took

20 Srebrenica in their effort to clean out one of the last significant

21 Muslim presences in the eastern part of Bosnia. And over the days that

22 followed, thousands of Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered.

23 The women, children, and elderly expelled, and the Muslims in Srebrenica

24 eliminated.

25 The accused, Your Honours, was both the architect of the policies

Page 518

1 underlying these crimes and the leader of the forces that implemented

2 them. The indictment, as you know, charges Radovan Karadzic with

3 participation in four separate but related joint criminal enterprises.

4 The number one, the campaign to forcibly remove Bosnian Muslims

5 and Bosnian Croats from vast portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a

6 campaign which rose to genocidal levels in certain municipalities.

7 Number two, the protracted shelling and sniping of Sarajevo's

8 civilians to induce and maintain terror.

9 Number three, the taking of UN peacekeepers and military

10 observers as hostages and human shields.

11 And number four, the elimination of the Muslims in Srebrenica to

12 organise killings of the men and expulsion of the women and children, the

13 genocide of Srebrenica Muslims.

14 Your Honours, during the course of this trial you will hear about

15 many of those with whom Radovan Karadzic shared these objectives and who

16 lent their own contributions to the criminal campaign, including such

17 figures as: Slobodan Milosevic, who shared Karadzic's determination to

18 ensure that Serbs in Bosnia were not separated from their motherland

19 Serbia by an independent Bosnia and who provided Karadzic with the

20 military might to conquer Bosnian territory and eliminate their unwanted

21 populations; Ratko Mladic, Karadzic's military commander, who once said

22 that his only concern about Muslims was to make them vanish and who said

23 on the day he entered Srebrenica that now the time had come for Serbs to

24 avenge themselves on the Turks; Momcilo Krajisnik, president of the

25 Bosnian Serb parliament or Assembly - a term you'll hear more

Page 519

1 often - Karadzic's old friend and closest confidant whose kinship with

2 Karadzic and pursuit of their shared objectives was reflected in this

3 description by an Assembly member:

4 "The highest RS leaders, the highest Republika Srpska leaders,"

5 and I'd like that on the screen, please, "first of all Mr. Karadzic and

6 Krajisnik could not sail the Serbian boat and the Serbian people in it in

7 a more successful manner than they did."

8 Biljana Plavsic and Nikola Koljevic, the two Serb representatives

9 on the Collective Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990 and later

10 members of the Republika Srpska Collective Presidency with

11 Radovan Karadzic, whose deference to Karadzic as the leader of the Serbs

12 and whose commitment to the same objectives is reflected in

13 contemporaneous intercepted telephone calls and documents.

14 Plavsic, as the evidence will show, spoke proudly of inviting the

15 paramilitary leader Arkan into Republika Srpska and referred to Muslims

16 as "genetically tainted Serbian material which converted to Islam."

17 Koljevic would consistently echo Karadzic's position that it was

18 neither possible not desirable for people in Bosnia to live together, and

19 he underscored Karadzic's calls for separation and ethnic homogenisation.

20 Plavsic pled guilty to crimes against humanity for the ethnic cleansing

21 in Bosnia in 1992.

22 Mico Stanisic, another member, he was a former member of the

23 Bosnian Serb police or MUP, the term you will more commonly hear. MUP is

24 an acronym for the Ministry of the Interior in the Bosnian language. He

25 became the first minister of the interior for Republika Srpska. His

Page 520

1 police forces oversaw many of the most brutal detention camps and

2 facilities and participated with the Bosnian Serb army in cleansing

3 operations.

4 Regional leaders like Radoslav Brdjanin. He was president of the

5 Crisis Staff for the autonomous regional of Krajina. He was convicted

6 for crimes against humanity in 2004. Brdjanin would describe Muslims as

7 the foul scum on Serb's shoes and praised the Omarska camp as a job "well

8 done." He was among the many municipal and regional leaders promoted or

9 praised by Karadzic following the cleansing of Muslims in their areas.

10 Municipal leaders such Miroslav Deronjic, who orchestrated the

11 cleansing of Bratunac in 1992 and was another of those whose

12 implementation of forcible ethnic separation, was recognised and rewarded

13 by Karadzic in Deronjic's case by his appointment as civilian

14 commissioner for the now Muslim-free area of Srebrenica in 1995.

15 Deronjic pled guilty to crimes against humanity for his role in the 1992

16 cleansings.

17 In short, Your Honours, the scale of this effort required the

18 participation of many persons, but standing astride the conquest of

19 Bosnian territory as the undisputed leader of the Bosnian Serbs

20 throughout was Radovan Karadzic. His leadership was reflected in his

21 many positions of authority, was acknowledged by his colleagues

22 consistently, and was attested to by Karadzic himself. He was president

23 of the SDS, the controlling party throughout the conflict, from its

24 inception throughout the whole course of the war; he was president of the

25 National Security Council, the emergency body which served as a de facto

Page 521

1 Collective Presidency from just before the commencement of the take-overs

2 until approximately 15 May 1992. He was elected president of the

3 Presidency on the 12th of May, 1992, and in December 1992 became the sole

4 president.

5 In these roles, Your Honours, as you will learn, Karadzic was

6 vested with significant de jure powers including supreme commander of the

7 army. But as you will also learn and as the evidence will also

8 demonstrate, Karadzic's extensive de jure powers only begin to capture

9 his overall authority. As a member of the Bosnian parliament said to a

10 JNA general in April 1992, and this is before Karadzic formally assumed

11 the position of president of the Presidency:

12 "Now we are waiting for Karadzic to return from Europe and tell

13 us what we are to do next. I personally think, General, that I won't do

14 anything until he returns. When he comes, whatever he tells us we will

15 do. He is for now the supreme commander and we have no other commander.

16 The Federal Yugoslavia on the one side and the Serb people in the

17 situation they are in on the other. We have our commander, it is that

18 man, we must obey him ..."

19 Or let's hear Radovan Karadzic describe it himself,

20 characterising virtually everyone in official structures as his

21 assistants.

22 "As Commander-in-Chief and president of the state, I can say that

23 one can only wish to have assistants as I do: In the Presidency, the

24 Assembly, the government, the generals I have in the army, such as

25 Ratko Mladic, Manojlo Milovanovic, the members of the General Staff,

Page 522

1 corps commanders, commanders of special units of the Ministry of

2 Internal Affairs ..." his assistants.

3 Your Honours, from this platform of leadership, Karadzic, in the

4 words we saw earlier, steered the Serbian boat toward the goals he set, a

5 Serbian state on what he considered to be historically Serbian territory,

6 which was finally free of those he saw as eternal enemies, in which Serbs

7 could no longer be threatened by enemies from within.

8 Let me turn briefly, if I may, to the nature of the evidence that

9 you will hear during this trial and the witnesses from whom you will

10 hear. I've already directed the Court's attention several times to

11 documents emanating from the accused himself or from the representatives

12 and organs of Republika Srpska. And, indeed, much of the evidence in

13 this case, Your Honours, will come from the contemporaneous words of the

14 participants themselves. They'll come from official documents such as

15 transcripts of the Bosnian Serb Assembly, Bosnian Serb Presidency,

16 government, Crisis Staffs, military and police reports and orders,

17 speeches and rallies, and other contemporaneous documents. These

18 documents reveal events and objectives in ways that are sometimes subtle

19 and sometimes shockingly explicit.

20 The Prosecution will present these documents to Your Honours,

21 thus in many instances placing you figuratively at key events or

22 meetings. And you will also have the benefit of many intercepted

23 telephone conversations, which will allow you to see or hear the

24 contemporaneous words of many participants, including the accused

25 himself, as they were spoken.

Page 523

1 And, Your Honours, you will also hear from many witnesses, of

2 course, these are witnesses from various sources and areas, witnesses

3 including representatives of international organisations who warned

4 Karadzic repeatedly, but to no avail, that crimes must cease; witnesses

5 who are insiders, that is, persons who work directly with

6 Radovan Karadzic or other members of the JCE and whose testimony will

7 confirm - however reluctantly on their parts - the inescapable

8 conclusions that emerge from the documents themselves and which describes

9 Karadzic's control of events. And you will hear from some of the victims

10 themselves.

11 Many of these crimes, of course, have been the subject of

12 previous litigation, and they are indeed reflected in the proven

13 judicially noticed facts as well as the written statements and

14 testimonies of those persons who previously testified. This will obviate

15 the need to ask these victims to once again revisit their sufferings and

16 tragedies. Nevertheless, their voices, still compelling and powerful,

17 are reflected in those documents.

18 For example, Your Honours, you will hear from witnesses, or you

19 will read the evidence of witnesses, who describe how they lived

20 peacefully with Serb neighbours for many years until nationalism became

21 prominent; who will describe how they saw their Serb neighbours being

22 armed and discussing war; how the police in their municipalities were

23 ethnically divided; how these victims were increasingly marginalised and

24 threatened; how their municipalities were forcibly taken over by Serb

25 forces; how their villages were shelled and destroyed; how they were

Page 524

1 arrested or rounded up with other non-Serbs and sent to camps where

2 detainees lived like animals and were abused, raped, and killed; how they

3 were transferred from camp to camp in the network of detention facilities

4 and camps that spanned the municipalities; how they were eventually

5 exchanged, a euphemism for their expulsion from Bosnian Serb-controlled

6 territory after signing documents relinquishing their property to the

7 Bosnian Serb state; how their homes were burned and their religious sites

8 destroyed.

9 And, Your Honours, you will also hear from Sarajevo residents who

10 lived in constant terror, day after day for years, knowing that they or

11 their loved ones were targets. And you will hear them describe how,

12 during the course of that siege, they huddled in basements, burning

13 scraps for warmth, terrified about exposing themselves to shelling and

14 sniping, but forced to do so by hunger, thirst, and cold; of living in a

15 city where everyday activity was life-threatening and no place was safe.

16 And, Your Honours, you will hear from victims from Srebrenica,

17 victims who were driven by Serb forces from one area to the next in parts

18 of Eastern Bosnia, ultimately arriving in Srebrenica with others who had

19 been ethnically cleansed, where there were -- where they lived in

20 wretched conditions; from mothers who, after the fall of Srebrenica,

21 tried in vain to shield their boys from being taken from them to the

22 killing fields; from men who were forcibly taken from their families in

23 Srebrenica and were moved to mass execution sites but miraculously

24 survived by feigning death.

25 And over the course of the trial, you will also hear the evidence

Page 525

1 that reveals how and why these crimes were inflicted on these victims,

2 people who had the misfortune of being the wrong ethnicity on land that

3 others wanted; evidence which demonstrates that Radovan Karadzic sought

4 to ethnically separate Bosnia, claiming large portions of its territory,

5 its ethnically mixed territory, for Bosnian Serb living space in which,

6 he believed, Serbs could no longer be threatened by their historical

7 enemies, land which, in the words of the accused, had to be "clean" and

8 which was made so by his forces.

9 Your Honours, I'd like now to turn to discuss that evidence in

10 greater, although necessarily abbreviated, detail. But before turning to

11 the implementation of the common purpose to forcibly remove

12 Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from territory claimed by the

13 Bosnian Serbs, and then in turn I'd like to discuss Sarajevo and

14 Srebrenica.

15 I'd like first to direct your attention to the accused's

16 establishment of and control over the Bosnian Serb political bodies and

17 military forces which were necessary to do so. Because Radovan Karadzic

18 did not merely step into a position of power; he, along with like-minded

19 compatriots, created and then he led the bodies and forces necessary to

20 implement his objectives.

21 Now, first, Your Honour, if I may, some elementary but

22 nevertheless important background points. If I can have the map of

23 Yugoslavia on the screen, please.

24 Yugoslavia was a federal state, as I'm sure you're aware,

25 comprised of six republics and two autonomous provinces. Although the

Page 526

1 vast majority of Serbs in Yugoslavia lived in Serbia proper, there were

2 also sizeable Serb -- ethnic Serb populations in Croatia and in Bosnia.

3 In Bosnia the Serbs comprised approximately 31 per cent of the population

4 in 1991. Muslims in Bosnia were the majority population, although not

5 the absolute majority, at 44 per cent. And ethnic Croats constituted

6 approximately 17 per cent of the population.

7 Now, Bosnia had a deserved reputation as an ink-spot or

8 leopard-skin republic, one in which the ethnicities were intermingled.

9 Even in municipalities where one nationality was an absolute majority,

10 there was often a sizeable percentage of other ethnic groups. And you

11 can see that in the two demographic maps I'll show. The first depicts --

12 is a municipality map, which depicts the majority population in each

13 municipality by colour. Green represents Muslims, red represents Serbs,

14 blue Croats. The bar -- the bar, as you see on this bar graph, emerging

15 from the municipalities represent the extent of the minority population

16 in those municipalities.

17 And Your Honours will have an opportunity during the course of

18 the trial to consider the demographics of Bosnia in greater detail with

19 that map and with the following one as well. And this simply depicts the

20 demographic distribution in Bosnia without the municipalities'

21 statistical breakdown, and, I think, graphically illustrates the ink-spot

22 or leopard-skin nature of Bosnia.

23 Your Honours, following the breakdown of the communist system in

24 Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, elections were held in Bosnia and

25 elsewhere in 1990. Three nationalist parties were established: The

Page 527

1 Muslim SDA party, the Serb SDS, and the Croat HDZ, each of which received

2 a percentage of votes largely corresponding to their demographic share of

3 the population. The SDS would prove to be a powerful machine with

4 President Karadzic at its helm. It took a large number of seats in

5 parliament or the Assembly, as it was called, and acquired many important

6 posts in the Bosnian political sure. Biljana Plavsic and Nikola Koljevic

7 were two of the seven members of the Collective Presidency of Bosnia.

8 Momcilo Krajisnik became president of the Assembly upon nomination by the

9 SDS or, more precisely, by his old friend Radovan Karadzic. These

10 Bosnian Serb officials reported to and collaborated with Karadzic, as you

11 will hear from witnesses and as you will also see in documents and

12 intercepts.

13 The SDS reached into virtually every municipality. Karadzic, in

14 fact, boasted that the SDS Main Board was able to reach the most remote

15 village in two hours due to its structure. With SDS members of local

16 communes within the municipalities responsible for 10 to 20 households

17 personally. It was also a hierarchical organisation, with Karadzic

18 clearly in command.

19 And let me direct your attention to Karadzic's own words at the

20 time reflecting that fact. This is an intercepted telephone conversation

21 in October of 1991, and this is Karadzic speaking:

22 "Tell them not to dare ever again and ... that they are never to

23 do anything independently from the centre because they will be suspended

24 and the people will be told about what they are doing."

25 Or another:

Page 528

1 "Once the party has adopted a policy, anything else is treason.

2 Anything outside the adopted policy is treason ... I will signal to the

3 people, People, this man is a traitor."

4 And one more, this is Dr. Karadzic again speaking in

5 January of 1992:

6 "Let them go fuck themselves. Whoever makes a mistake, I will

7 suspend him and throw him out of the party. I don't give a fuck. Why

8 should I do that? People do understand me well. I will get there,

9 suspend the shit-heads, and choose, appoint other people ..." and goes

10 on, as you see, in that intercept.

11 As president of the SDS, Radovan Karadzic was a hands-on leader

12 who maintained direct contact with SDS and regional leaders in the field.

13 Their reliance on him as well as the command structure of the SDS is

14 illustrated by this intercept with Radoslav Brdjanin, the Western or

15 North-Western Bosnia leader who became, as I mentioned earlier, president

16 of the Crisis Staff for the Autonomous Region of Krajina. And this is

17 Dr. Karadzic again:

18 "Fuck it. You keep calling me about every trivial matter and I

19 have 5.000 things on my mind. If you are capable of governing Krajina,

20 then do it properly, damn it ... don't make me ... of everything ...

21 don't call me about every minor problem. I am not your nanny. You have

22 power in your hands and you have presidents of municipalities through

23 whom you can exercise power until we achieve autonomy. So you cannot --

24 you cannot call me about every detail. You should exercise power

25 vigorously and to the fullest ... call each and every municipality

Page 529

1 president and keep checking if it has been implemented and accomplished."

2 Now, Your Honours, Radovan Karadzic knew that the disintegration

3 of Yugoslavia meant that republics might seek independence and that Serbs

4 in Croatia and Bosnia might become minorities in the new countries that

5 were then established. And from virtually the beginning of the SDS,

6 Karadzic made clear that such a possibility would be resisted by Serbs by

7 force if necessary. As he said in 1990, as early as 1990, should Serbs

8 be out-voted in the Bosnian Assembly on changing Bosnia's state

9 character, that is, independence from Yugoslavia:

10 "... all conditions for a civil war would be in place, because

11 the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina are no longer helpless but very

12 powerful and united."

13 And Milosevic, Karadzic's powerful ally, echoed those words

14 saying flatly in January of 1991:

15 "Any division into several states that would separate parts of

16 the Serbian people and put them into separate sovereign states cannot be

17 acceptable, more precisely, it is completely out of the question."

18 And Karadzic and Milosevic would work together to prevent this,

19 first insisting that Bosnia remain in Yugoslavia; but as that prospect

20 began to seem increasingly unlikely, Karadzic moved to the next step.

21 And I'm quoting him now from a session of the Deputies' Club in

22 February of 1992:

23 "That's why we started on another track: A Serbian Bosnia and

24 Herzegovina. Our sovereign right, our army."

25 This would mean that Bosnia could become independent, but not

Page 530

1 with the territories that Karadzic considered to be Serb. Karadzic's

2 ultimate goal was unification with Serbia, that is, a single Serbian

3 state, and he assured his followers that he would not rest until they had

4 achieved such a goal, a single Serbian state as in ancient times. But he

5 reminded them that this might be achieved incrementally. And

6 Radovan Karadzic's unity with Milosevic on this issue meant that he could

7 count on Milosevic's support, both political support, logistical support,

8 and military support, they would work together to ensure this objective,

9 first in Croatia and then in Bosnia. Because before Bosnia, Croatia made

10 the first move toward independence, and the response by Croatian Serbs in

11 the summer and fall of 1991 to Croatian independence foreshadowed what

12 would later happen in Bosnia.

13 With the assistance of the Milosevic-controlled JNA, that is, the

14 Yugoslav national army, the most powerful military force in the area,

15 along with paramilitary forces from Serbia and volunteers from Bosnia,

16 Croatian Serbs seized and cleansed of its ethnic Croats approximately

17 one-third of Croatian territory. Many of the same incremental steps

18 toward ethnic separation and many of the same personalities such as

19 Milosevic, Jovica Stanisic, Arkan, Vojislav Seselj were relied upon by

20 the Croatian Serbs and would re-appear in Bosnia.

21 Karadzic worked with Milosevic to ensure that Croatian Serb

22 leaders Milan Babic and Milan Martic followed the strategic line, and

23 Karadzic mobilised his municipality chiefs to supply manpower to fight in

24 Croatia, as reflected in this intercept:

25 "I gave the order -- I gave the order to all the municipalities

Page 531

1 there and all the presidents of the municipalities ... I gave the order

2 to provide 10.000 people there in one week."

3 Now, meanwhile, as this was happening, efforts by Karadzic and

4 Milosevic in Bosnia in 1991 to reach an agreement with Bosnian president

5 Alija Izetbegovic or other Bosnian leaders that Bosnia would not pursue

6 independence had proven unsuccessful. And as a result, the prospect of

7 Bosnian independence, this prospect so resisted by Karadzic and

8 Milosevic, loomed larger. By October 1991, the Bosnian Assembly, or

9 parliament, met to consider a memorandum of independence. Karadzic

10 appeared at the Assembly to tell the Bosnian Muslims and Croats what

11 would happen if they adopted the memorandum and moved toward

12 independence. I would like to play that now.

13 [Video-clip played]

14 MR. TIEGER: And by the disappearance of the Muslim people,

15 Karadzic meant that they would be physically annihilated. That same

16 week, he reminded his brother that 12 per cent of Serbs had made "a hell

17 in Croatia" and that in Bosnia this would mean "war until their

18 extinction."

19 And in another intercepted telephone call that week, again the

20 same week that he made the speech we just heard, he forecast in detail

21 the bloodshed that he would unleash down to the attitude he would take

22 toward the expected international reaction.

23 "They should be thrashed if they start a war, they will ...

24 they ... they'll disappear ..."

25 And his interlocutor:

Page 532

1 "There'll be rivers of blood, but ...

2 "Karadzic: They will disappear, that people will disappear from

3 the face of the earth if they -- if they start now. Our offer was their

4 only chance. Even that was too much, what we offered them ...

5 "They have to know that there are 20.000 armed Serbs around

6 Sarajevo. That's insane. They will -- they will disappear. Sarajevo

7 will be a 'karakazan' where 300 Muslims will die. They're not right in

8 the head."

9 And he went on:

10 "I don't know, now I will have to talk to them openly, People,

11 don't screw around, there are 3-, 400.000 armed Serbs in Bosnia and

12 Herzegovina. What are you thinking of? Plus there's the army and the

13 hardware and everything. Do you think you can just secede like Croatia?

14 And they are literally going ... yesterday they told us, at these

15 negotiations of ours between the Assembly sessions, that a sovereign

16 Bosnia means an independent Bosnia if Yugoslavia doesn't ..."

17 And then he would continue in the conversation:

18 "We will not force them to do anything, but they simply don't

19 have any way to carry out a secession. I think that this is a clear to

20 the army and clear to everyone it will be a real blood-bath ..."

21 And further, Karadzic said:

22 "He's talking about with Europe."

23 His interlocutor said:

24 "It'll be terrible."

25 And then Karadzic said:

Page 533

1 "And Europe will be told to go fuck itself, not to come back

2 until the job is finished."

3 Despite that threat, as you'll learn, Your Honours, the

4 memorandum was adopted. And from that point forward, Radovan Karadzic

5 and the Bosnian Serb leadership moved forward to build the structures to

6 ethnically separate Bosnia. As Karadzic said to Slobodan Milosevic in a

7 telephone conversation on October 24th, 1991:

8 "We cannot allow this, we have to -- to prepare everything and we

9 have prepared everything to create a factual situation which cannot

10 be ... on which they will break their teeth ... there is no price under

11 which we will live with them in some state. There is no price, it's

12 over."

13 And then he continued:

14 "These are calculated steps, and we have to establish authority

15 and control over our territories so that he will not be able," -- and by

16 "he" he is referring to Alija Izetbegovic, "he will not be able to get

17 sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia doesn't control 30 per cent of

18 the territory, Bosnia won't control 60 per cent of the territory!"

19 And over the next few months, Karadzic transformed the SDS into

20 the bodies where he would implement forcible ethnic separation.

21 The first structure, Your Honours, was the Bosnian Serb Assembly,

22 the club of the SDS deputies in the Bosnian parliament, and the delegates

23 to the parliament were commonly called deputies. That club of SDS

24 deputies was transformed into the Bosnian Serb Assembly. That Assembly

25 was led by Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzic's closest associate, and it was

Page 534

1 established on October 24th, 1991, the same date as the telephone call

2 with Milosevic that you just saw. At the Assembly's inaugural session on

3 October 24th, Karadzic underscored the need for separation from Bosnian

4 Muslims and Bosnian Croats. The Serbs, he insisted, were faced with the

5 same destruction as in World War II, faced with "the same plans, the same

6 criminals, and the same victims."

7 He also emphasised to the deputies of the newly formed Assembly:

8 "This is a historic step. This is the step with which the

9 Serbian people are breaking the last illusions, recognising their enemies

10 and rounding up their being in such a way that they can never be attacked

11 again from inside."

12 The Bosnian Serb Assembly was a valuable instrument for

13 disseminating policy to the field and for receiving information about

14 events on the ground from the many officials who gathered at the

15 Bosnian Serb Assembly. Krajisnik, for example, explained why so many

16 municipal representatives were present at Assembly sessions saying:

17 "That is the best way to keep our people aware of what is going

18 on. We have seen that the people were leaving Assembly sessions with a

19 clear vision of what they were supposed to do."

20 And that clear vision came from Karadzic, although not technical

21 or formally a member of the Assembly, he was variably the key speaker,

22 advancing and explaining his policies. And his authority as leader of

23 the Bosnian Serbs was evident at virtually every session. Heres one

24 deputy and a quote that reflects that:

25 "I know that Karadzic, as the president of the SDS, is truly the

Page 535

1 leading figure among the Serbian people. And five of his sentences are

2 enough to change the entire course of the session ..."

3 After the establishment of the Bosnian Serb Assembly in October,

4 a Council of Ministers was selected in December. This body consisted of

5 the leading Serb ministers in the existing Bosnian government and was

6 essentially a government in waiting. Now, the term "government,"

7 Your Honours, does not mean the entire political structure, but it refers

8 to the body comprised of the various ministries, that is, the

9 Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defence, and

10 so on; and at the top of that government, a mandator or a president or

11 prime minister - you'll hear all three terms - who would coordinate the

12 work of the ministries in the government. This was one branch of the

13 Bosnian political structure and then one branch of the Bosnian Serb

14 political structure along with the other two most significant branches:

15 The Assembly and the Presidency.

16 The Council of Ministers, as I say, the precursor to the

17 government, was another vehicle for implementing Karadzic's policies and

18 calculated steps. As he told the Bosnian Serb regional leader on the

19 first day of the council's meeting, that is, their inaugural meeting:

20 "We have all of that in the plans, we have all the moves in the

21 envelopes, they must not do it before we do it in the whole of Bosnia ...

22 we will have a Council of Ministers today, there is -- we have done

23 everything today. We have plans for everything."

24 The Council of Ministers would give way in March of 1991 to the

25 government - and, again, that government consisted of the various

Page 536

1 ministries and the same structure with a mandator or president of the

2 government at the top of that structure. And, Your Honours, you will

3 hear from members of the government who will tell you that

4 Radovan Karadzic considered himself to be the government. And you will

5 also have an opportunity to read contemporaneous remarks of other

6 officials such as this one at the Bosnian Serb Assembly in 1993:

7 "Mr. President, your responsibility is the biggest one, but you

8 cannot do everything. You have taken supreme, executive, and all other

9 power upon yourself ... the task of the government is defined. However,

10 you didn't give anything to government to do."

11 But again, Your Honours, let's hear it from Radovan Karadzic

12 himself:

13 "Believe me, the government is mine. I am responsible for its

14 functioning."

15 As for the Presidency or chief executive position, Your Honours,

16 it was Karadzic again. As mentioned before, he was the president of the

17 SDS throughout, in what was basically a one-party state. He was

18 president of the National Security Council from March of 1992 until

19 May of 1992, that functioned basically as a Collective Presidency or as

20 an equivalent. He was president of the Collective Presidency from

21 May of 1992 until December of 1992 and then sole president of the

22 RS thereafter until 1996. The only point at which anyone else was even

23 nominally president was when Plavsic and Koljevic were named acting

24 presidents from late February 1992 until the establishment of the

25 Collective Presidency in May of 1992. And when that happened, Koljevic

Page 537

1 himself stated that Karadzic had been named as:

2 "The man who is the most obvious choice and has done more than

3 all the rest of us for both the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and for

4 Serbdom in general. I need not mention his name. You all know I am

5 referring to Dr. Radovan Karadzic."

6 But it was Karadzic who advised that for appearance sake in the

7 eyes of the international community, because Plavsic and Koljevic had

8 been elected to the Bosnian Presidency in 1990, they should continue to

9 have that title. Thus, the republic-level bodies in the Bosnian Serb

10 political structure through which Karadzic's policies would be

11 implemented were established with Karadzic firmly in charge. And he also

12 moved forward during this period to ensure that local bodies were in

13 place for the upcoming seizure of power.

14 In late 1991, that is, in December of 1991, Radovan Karadzic

15 disseminated this document commonly known as Variant A and B. It's the

16 instructions for the organisation and activity of organs of the Serbian

17 people in Bosnia and Herzegovina in a state of emergency. The

18 instructions were divided into two options or variants: Variant A, for

19 municipalities where Serbs were a majority; and Variant B, where they

20 were not. You can see that in the middle part of the screen. And it was

21 also divided into two stages or levels of activation, the second a more

22 intensive level. And we see that at the bottom of the page.

23 The first level, Your Honours, emphasised monitoring and

24 preparations, including forming Crisis Staffs, Serbian municipalities,

25 and other municipal organs, establishing communications, making

Page 538

1 preparations for taking over the police, and for activating the TO or

2 Territorial Defence. That was another part of the Yugoslav defence

3 system which was maintained by each republic in each municipality as a

4 kind of a locally localised militia, which you may already be somewhat

5 familiar with.

6 That was stage one of the instructions. Stage two was the

7 activation of those prepared measures. The Serbian municipal government

8 was to start functioning, Serbs to be mobilised into the police force,

9 and the police station to be taken over.

10 Now, after dissemination of this document, Karadzic tasked one of

11 the members of the Council of Ministers to ensure that he was -- to

12 ensure that it was being implemented and to report to Radovan Karadzic

13 about the status of preparations and the level of implementation in

14 preparation for take-overs. And on February 14th, 1992, as Bosnian

15 independence became even closer, Karadzic activated the second level of

16 Variant A and B.

17 "That is why we called you today, to intensify, to introduce the

18 'second level' and to intensify the functioning of the government at any

19 cost and on every single millimetre of our territory."

20 But again, perhaps it's best to let Karadzic himself explain the

21 significance of this document and the establishment of local authorities

22 to carry out the separation. And this is Radovan Karadzic talking to the

23 Assembly in 1995 and looking back on what had been accomplished:

24 "Please, remember how we used to work before the war. Everything

25 was as clear as day in the municipalities where we were majority and in

Page 539

1 those where we were minority. Do you remember the Instruction A and

2 Instruction B? We had Crisis Staffs, and it was clear that they were the

3 authority. They could make mistakes, but they were still the authority.

4 The people were not left without the authority because there was a

5 Crisis Staff."

6 Karadzic also continued during this period of time to remain in

7 close contact with his local officials, including through direct personal

8 contacts such as the telephone calls we saw earlier or through personally

9 meetings; through emissaries to the municipalities; and through plenary

10 sessions attended by both republic-level officials and prominent local

11 officials. Nevertheless, political organs, whether at the republic,

12 regional, or local level, would be insufficient alone to effect the

13 separation, the forcible separation. Armed forces would be needed, and

14 they were established as well, a separate Bosnian Serb police, armed

15 units under SDS control, and behind them the powerful JNA to back them

16 up.

17 First, Your Honours, let me briefly address the Bosnian Serb

18 police or MUP. Now, from the outset of his tenure as president of the

19 SDS, Karadzic closely monitored the appointment of police officials

20 within the joint MUP, within the Bosnian MUP, receiving reports and

21 giving instructions to the top Serbian personnel within that joint MUP.

22 He worked particularly closely with Momcilo Krajisnik -- Momcilo Mandic,

23 excuse me, who was then a high-ranking Serb official in the joint MUP and

24 who later became the Republika Srpska's first minister of justice.

25 You will see intercepts with Mandic and other Serb officials then

Page 540

1 serving in the joint MUP in which Karadzic dictates personnel

2 appointments and other issues. These intercepts, in which he is

3 alternately referred to as Mr. President or boss, again reflect his

4 pre-eminent status.

5 Now, as events moved closer toward the independence of Bosnia,

6 steps were taken to accelerate the creation of a separate Bosnian Serb

7 police force. And as Mandic said to Karadzic in a December 1991

8 telephone conversation during the course of which Karadzic complained

9 that they couldn't speak completely freely because their phones were

10 tapped, saying:

11 "... fuck the party leader if he's being tapped by his own

12 police."

13 Mandic:

14 "That's right."

15 Karadzic:

16 "Motherfuckers."

17 Mandic:

18 "It's not your police, you're going to get ours."

19 Now recall the Council of Ministers' meeting that I referred to

20 earlier. They were formed in December of 1991 and their first meeting

21 was in January, January 11th of 1992. They had that meeting with

22 Karadzic present, and the Council of Ministers decided that the

23 priorities were:

24 "Defining the ethnic territory and establishing government

25 organs ..."

Page 541

1 And so in February of 1992, Mandic, Mico Stanisic, and other

2 leading Bosnian Serb members of the then-joint MUP met to begin

3 implementing "the need for Serbian power to be felt in Serbian

4 territories."

5 They established a board with Mandic responsible to:

6 "Carry out all the necessary preparations for the functioning of

7 the Serbian MUP after the adoption of the Constitution of the

8 Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

9 And so by 18 March, Karadzic would be in a position to say to the

10 Assembly, that is, the Bosnian Serb Assembly:

11 "... it will be happening in a flash and the set-up of the

12 de facto situation based on our documents ... we shall announce our

13 withdrawal from MUP, not to mention that we have already obtained the

14 badges."

15 And on March 31st, 1992, Mandic sent a dispatch to all levels of

16 the police, declaring that the joint MUP, the Bosnian MUP, the ethnically

17 mixed MUP was abolished and a separate Bosnian Serb MUP had been

18 established. Despite pleas for unity from the Bosnian minister of

19 interior and from the police trade union, the RS MUP was formed and moved

20 forward.

21 And over the course of the following months and years, beginning

22 with the take-over of Bijeljina on the 31st of March, 1992, the police

23 took part in take-overs, disarmament, and ethnic cleansing of

24 Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats in Serb-claimed areas. Immediately

25 following the establishment of the Bosnian Serb army, the VRS, on the

Page 542

1 12th of May, 1992, Mico Stanisic formed war units from the

2 Ministry of the Interior which were subordinated to the army for

3 operations but remained as intact units under the leadership of a police

4 official.

5 The police ran many of the camps in which Muslim and Croat

6 civilians were held such as Omarska and Prijedor, Susica camp in

7 Vlasenica, Kula in Sarajevo and committed some of the most significant

8 mass murders, such as the Vlasic mountain massacre in August of 1992 of

9 more than 200 recently released detainees.

10 Heading the MUP in 1992, as I mentioned, as its first minister of

11 interior was Mico Stanisic. As Stanisic assured the Assembly in

12 November of 1992, he implemented Karadzic's policies.

13 "I as a man have followed policies of the SDS Presidency and our

14 deputies in the former state, I have always followed these policies."

15 Your Honours, let me briefly mention the JNA, the powerful

16 military force that assisted and backed these take-overs. You've already

17 heard the October intercepts in which Karadzic expressed great confidence

18 in the army's crushing response to the prospect of Bosnian independence.

19 Karadzic would continue to count on Milosevic and the military might of

20 the JNA both directly and also to arm his SDS military formations. As

21 Karadzic said about the JNA in July of 1991:

22 "What is this if not a Serb army?"

23 And the JNA's shift from an all people's army toward a force

24 aligned with Bosnian Serb interests is captured in a couple of documents

25 that I'll show you now. The first document was issued by the Yugoslav

Page 543

1 minister of defence in December of 1991. It leaves little doubt about

2 the ethnic group with which the army sided, declaring as the first

3 priority for accomplishing the ultimate objectives of the war:

4 "... the protection of the Serbian people ..."

5 Those are the ultimate aims. The second document was issued

6 approximately four months later by the JNA head of a military district in

7 Bosnia and reveals that the document we just saw from the minister of

8 defence was swiftly implemented. That document reflects that

9 approximately 70.000 Serb volunteers were armed by the JNA and SDS in the

10 municipalities all around Bosnia in anticipation of the take-overs. That

11 document quotes:

12 "JNA distributed 51.900 pieces of armament, and SDS 17.298."

13 And, Your Honours, as you'll see in that document, this

14 corresponds precisely to the number of volunteers, as also reflected.

15 Your Honours, that's the police and the JNA, already two powerful

16 military forces. But I want to talk briefly about the SDS military

17 units. And I'll allow Karadzic's close associate just to speak about

18 that to you. This is Jovan Tintor, leader of the Serbs in Vogosca, one

19 of the Sarajevo municipalities, and close associate of the accused.

20 "... I went from municipality to municipality and created

21 military formations on order from my president ... we created brigade

22 commanders down to platoon commanders. All this was done by SDS."

23 But again, Your Honours, let's hear it from Karadzic himself:

24 "We made various calculations and agreements with Yugoslavia. We

25 decided to set up the TO, the Serbian brigades, which were indeed led by

Page 544

1 the SDS ... but not as a party army, but as a people's army ... the core

2 of the army existed in every municipality. I would like to hear in which

3 municipality it did not exist."

4 And Karadzic also explained:

5 "Distribution of weapons was carried out thanks to the JNA. What

6 could be withdrawn was withdrawn and distributed to the people in the

7 Serbian areas. But it was the SDS which organised the people and created

8 the army, it was an army. Together with the police, those were the armed

9 forces of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They created

10 the space, liberated and created the space."

11 And, Your Honours, when we return, I would like to talk to you

12 about what that space was and who it was liberated from.

13 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Tieger.

14 We will have a break for 25 minutes. We'll resume at 4.00.

15 --- Recess taken at 3.34 p.m.

16 --- On resuming at 4.02 p.m.

17 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Mr. Tieger.

18 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President.

19 Your Honours, in the previous session, I described the bodies and

20 forces established by Karadzic, which he later praised as having

21 liberated and created the space, and indicated to you I wanted him to

22 speak next about what that space was and who it was liberated from.

23 The territory claimed by Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb

24 leadership was, in his own words, "huge," encompassing approximately

25 two-thirds of Bosnia's territory. Recall, for instance, that Karadzic

Page 545

1 told Milosevic in that telephone call you heard -- or that I -- that you

2 saw on the screen, that the Bosnian government would not be able to

3 assert control on 65 per cent of its territory.

4 Let me show you excerpts from a speech by Karadzic in

5 November of 1991 to a plenary session of his many officials at which many

6 of his municipal officials were gathered in which he underscored the

7 extent of the territory and its significance to the Bosnian Serbs.

8 "I am asking you to be energetic and strict, to get ready and

9 establish authority in your municipality -- in your territories, in

10 municipalities, regions, local communities, and to prepare yourselves and

11 regionalising the municipalities.

12 "... if you have a look at the map, we have a huge territory in

13 Bosnia and Herzegovina, a huge territory!"

14 You'll see that at the bottom of your screen.

15 And he also told the officials at that gathering:

16 "No Muslim foundation shall ever be laid in Serb areas and Serb

17 villages.

18 "The first foundations that are laid will be blown up and all

19 foundations that are laid will be blown up ... the world will understand

20 when we tell them that we will not allow the demographic picture to

21 change either naturally or artificially, no way, our territories are

22 ours.

23 "You must not sell land to Muslims. You must not! Because this

24 is a fight to the finish, a battle for living space."

25 Karadzic justified the claim that Bosnian Serbs were entitled to

Page 546

1 two-thirds of Bosnia's territory in a number of ways, including the

2 genocide of World War II, land ownership, the places where a majority of

3 Serbs had voted in a plebiscite to remain in Yugoslavia, the autonomous

4 regions. But however numerous and varied the rationales offered, the

5 territory encompassed vast portions of Bosnia, territory on which

6 hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats lived, indeed

7 many municipalities in which they were the majority. As you will

8 observe, from another look at the demographic map, and see the extent of

9 the green areas involved.

10 And the Muslims and Croats who lived on these territories,

11 Your Honours, Karadzic repeatedly made clear were enemies with whom the

12 Serbs could not live. Serbs and Muslims, he said, were like dogs and

13 cats losing their natural characteristics after being in the "same box"

14 and after noting that Serbs had been forcefully held in

15 Bosnia and Herzegovina with what he called their "centuries' old foes."

16 He said:

17 "It all reminds me of the experiment in which a dog and a cat are

18 held in a box together against their will or a bad marriage maintained by

19 all sorts of forceful means. It transpired that a dog and a cat can

20 remain in the box together only under one condition, namely, that they

21 lose their natural characteristics and cease being a dog and a cat. We

22 will remember that we could not be Serbs and live in such a box."

23 Or, he said:

24 "Non-Serbs and Serbs were like incompatible plants that cannot

25 survive side by side.

Page 547

1 "In the plant world," he said, "there are plants which cannot

2 grow side by side. They have to be separated to flourish.

3 "Or they were like oil and water."

4 Muslims were "Turks," historical and implacable enemies, as he

5 said in January 1994:

6 "This is the kind of war where you cannot lose the war now and

7 fight again in ten years. Nobody can stay under Turks' rule, nobody must

8 stay under Turks' rule."

9 Similarly, Croats were "Ustasha," reincarnations of the enemies

10 of World War II.

11 "Muslims," he said, "would demographically overwhelm the Serbs

12 through a birthrate that the Serbs could not match.

13 "We cannot control the Muslims in such a unitary state. We know

14 very well what the fundamentalism is and that we cannot live together.

15 There's no tolerance, they quadruple through the birth-rate, and we Serbs

16 are not up to that."

17 And he said:

18 "Muslims were Islamic fundamentalists intent on establishing an

19 Islamic state."

20 Explaining, for example, that their five-centuries' long

21 experience with Islam meant that Serbs:

22 "... knew how to recognise ancient danger posed by the toxic,

23 all-destructive Islamic octopus."

24 And perhaps the ugliest canard of all, since it projected onto

25 the victims the justification for their destruction, Muslims and Croats

Page 548

1 threatened Bosnian Serbs with genocide, wanted to kill them and eradicate

2 them, this is Dr. Karadzic:

3 "The wars of 1914, 1941, and 1991 were and remain above all wars

4 for the extermination of the Orthodox population."

5 Karadzic's vilification of the Bosnian Muslims and Croats was

6 made to a receptive audience. The level of Serb nationalism and

7 anti-Muslim and Croat sentiment was extreme. You will see and hear many

8 anti-Muslim and anti-Croat sentiments expressed and slurs expressed from

9 the republic level down to the municipal level. And I'll just cite here

10 two examples.

11 This is Radoslav Brdjanin, again the president of the Crisis

12 Staff in the Autonomous Region of Krajina, the man who called Karadzic

13 and got the response "I'm not your nanny." That was an area that

14 encompassed most of North-Western Bosnia. This is Brdjanin talking at a

15 1994 rally with Karadzic, Krajisnik, Plavsic, and other Bosnian Serb

16 leaders present attended by thousands and thousands of people.

17 "Those leftist forces which are offering us co-existence again

18 must know that it is the obligation of Serbs over the next hundred years

19 to wipe their feet from the foul non-Christians who have befouled this

20 soil of ours."

21 And he continued:

22 "And I suggest that we put up a barbed wire and say that never

23 again will our enemies spread throughout Krajina and attack us for the

24 fourth or fifth time in this century."

25 And one more example from the local level - and you'll see many

Page 549

1 such examples - but perhaps this from the Sanski Most SDS publication

2 will suffice:

3 "Do you know what our blood-thirsty enemies have been scheming

4 for us? What they had in mind was to gouge out our eyes and carve us up,

5 hack our bodies to pieces, rape women and girls in front of their

6 dearest, to circumcise, to destroy our religion, to crush us just because

7 we happened to be Serbs. Don't think that anybody's family would have

8 been spared. They had monsters ready and committed to raping Serbian

9 women, and they had developed a system of killing each and every Serb."

10 The bottom line, Your Honours, as Karadzic told the

11 Bosnian Serb Assembly deputies and others in 1992, shortly before the

12 take-overs commenced, was that Serbs couldn't live with Muslims and must

13 separate from them.

14 "Muslims cannot live with others. We must be clear on that.

15 They couldn't live with the Hindu, who are as peaceful as sheep. That's

16 the Indian religion. They are a peaceful people, and yet they couldn't

17 live with them. They couldn't live with the Greeks on Cyprus. They

18 couldn't live in Lebanon with the Arabs of the same blood, same language,

19 but of a different faith. There can be no discussion here. They will

20 overwhelm you with their birth-rate and their tricks. We cannot allow

21 that to happen."

22 And after the Muslims had been forcibly removed, Karadzic

23 continued to emphasise the importance of ethnically pure territory. This

24 is what he told the Assembly at the beginning of 1994 after the

25 possibility of having to give up some of the territory they conquered,

Page 550

1 which by that time was 70 per cent of Bosnia.

2 "We can consider ourselves as winners after occupying this land,

3 since the land is 100 per cent Serbian now. Therefore, even if we come

4 down to 50 per cent, we should be more than happy and satisfied. It is

5 Dusan's empire."

6 In short, Your Honours, even if they retain only 50 per cent of

7 the territory, they should be pleased because that territory is

8 100 per cent Serbian, as it was in Tsar Dusan's time before the Muslims

9 ever arrived. And as he continued to explain, citing well-known examples

10 of ethnically pure territories like Foca and Doboj:

11 "Two years ago we were a group in Bosnia and Herzegovina that had

12 some rights, and now we are the state and what we hold is 100 per cent

13 ours."

14 As a deputy reminded the Bosnian Serb Assembly in 1993 after much

15 of the conquering and cleansing had taken place, they should be happy

16 with what had been accomplished and not overly concerned that Serbs would

17 have to leave areas that peace plans proposed allocating to the

18 Bosnian government.

19 "Gentlemen, there is no Serbian state in Bosnian pot without

20 gradual depopulation and relocating. If we want ethnically pure ...

21 state - and we do, don't we? - if we all know and emphasise that we

22 cannot live with them, then we have to realise that these draft maps are

23 offering exactly that and there has to be relocation."

24 Your Honours, I've discussed the structures and bodies that were

25 ready for forcible separation by the end of March 1992, but let me pause

Page 551

1 a moment before discussing the take-overs to mention negotiations.

2 During the same period as the establishment of those structures

3 and bodies, Karadzic and his compatriots were also negotiating with

4 Bosnian Serb political leaders in an effort to get an agreement on what

5 the Bosnian Serbs wanted or at least something sufficiently close to

6 allow them over time to realise their ultimate goals and unify with the

7 Serbia and the Croatian Serbs.

8 Now, you're likely to hear a great deal from the accused during

9 the course of the trial about negotiations and particularly the Cutileiro

10 negotiations. He already testified in the Krajisnik appeal that the

11 European Community "promised" the Serbs a republic and has suggested as a

12 result that it was the Muslims who were responsible for the crimes that

13 took place because they backed out of the Cutileiro Agreement.

14 Now, that is false and misleading on a number of levels. No

15 promises were made by the European Community, which was acting only as a

16 mediator. The closest the negotiations came to a final agreement was an

17 agreement in principle to negotiate about constituent units based on

18 ethnicity as well as other factors, and even that limited agreement was

19 not signed. Indeed, it was Karadzic who assured the Assembly that

20 nothing had been signed and would not be signed until the Bosnian Serbs

21 got exactly what they wanted.

22 But beyond the twisting of the facts, even if an agreement had

23 been completed, this case is not about whether Karadzic could have been

24 deterred by a settlement before he implemented forcible separation; it's

25 no defence to complain that the victims failed to capitulate before force

Page 552

1 was required to get what he wanted.

2 In any event, Karadzic always led the Serbs on a two-track

3 approach: Negotiations on the one hand; and on the other, the

4 willingness and ability to use force to get what he wanted if

5 negotiations didn't work. And what he couldn't get in negotiations, he

6 turned his military to conquer and they did.

7 This is Mladic in 1995 describing the basic objectives of all the

8 mentioned operations, which was to break and destroy the enemy forces and

9 "thus impose by the force of arms the final settlement of the war on the

10 enemy and place the international community in a position of having to

11 recognise the actual situation in the field and end the war ..."

12 And over the course of the conflict, Karadzic and the

13 Bosnian Serb leadership would emphasise and rely upon -- and rely in

14 negotiations upon the factual situation they had created through

15 cleansing. As Karadzic said:

16 "We have created new realities. Speaking in narrow terms,

17 Zvornik used to be 60:40 to the advantage of the Muslims, but the Serbs

18 from Zenica came, they occupied Kozluk, the Muslims left for Europe and I

19 do not know where else. And then those gentlemen told us," speaking

20 about the negotiators, "who gives you a right to ask for Zvornik?"

21 And then Karadzic continues as if answering the negotiators:

22 "We request Zvornik based on the right which comes out of a new

23 reality. This war had created the new reality."

24 And he would insist it would take a new war, another war, to undo

25 what he had accomplished by force.

Page 553

1 Now, to recap, Your Honours, by late March 1992 the political

2 structures were ready, the police was ready, and the SDS armed units were

3 ready, again backed by the JNA, to liberate the space.

4 On March 24th, 1992, with Bosnian independence just two weeks

5 away, Karadzic explained to the Assembly that the numbers of police were

6 sufficient and very soon they could form what they wanted.

7 "... all the Serbian municipalities, both the old ones and the

8 newly established ones, would literally assume control of the entire

9 territory of the municipality concerned."

10 He explained that within days:

11 "... there will be a single method used, and you will be able to

12 apply it in the municipalities you represent, including both things that

13 must be done as well as how to do them, how to separate the police force,

14 take the resources that belong to the Serbian people, and take command."

15 And indeed they were ready. The gap in military capacity between

16 the Serbian-aided Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims and

17 Bosnian Croats was reflected in take-over after take-over by Bosnian Serb

18 forces. You'll see repeated references in the evidence to the universal

19 awareness of the huge gap in weaponry and military capacity that existed

20 at the commencement of the take-overs and for a long time thereafter. As

21 one of the deputies said in January 1993 about the Muslims at the

22 beginning of the war:

23 "They weren't trained, they weren't accustomed to war, and they

24 didn't have any weapons ..."

25 Instead, it was the Serbs, he explained, who were the "absolute

Page 554

1 masters in war."

2 And this was echoed by a 1993 analysis of combat-readiness and

3 activities of the Army of Republika Srpska, a strictly confidential and

4 military secret document prepared by the VRS which said:

5 "Since the Muslims did not have enough weapons or support

6 equipment, no significant support of infantry units in action was

7 necessary, especially not by longer-range or higher-calibre ordnance."

8 Your Honours, I referred a moment ago to Karadzic's explanation

9 on the 24th of March, 1992, to those gathered at the

10 Bosnian Serb Assembly that within days they could take command. Let me

11 now turn to the commencement of the take-overs of municipalities by

12 Bosnian Serb forces.

13 Back in January 1992, Karadzic, at that moment furious at

14 Izetbegovic for talking openly of a sovereign and independent Bosnia,

15 told Krajisnik in an intercepted telephone conversation:

16 "Fuck him. We will release our tigers and let them do their

17 job."

18 And at the end of March 1992, with Bosnian independence imminent,

19 it was time. Within the few days Karadzic referred to, the takeovers

20 began. And one municipality after another fell under mono-ethnic control

21 with the same combined forces previously relied upon in Croatia. First

22 in Bijeljina under the supervision of the Serb Crisis Staff. As you can

23 see that:

24 "Start removing the barricades under the supervision of the" --

25 as it refers to there, Your Honours, it refers to the Serbian Volunteer

Page 555

1 Guard, working under the supervision of the Bijeljina Crisis Staff, that

2 volunteer guard is Arkan, a notorious paramilitary leader who assisted in

3 Bijeljina and would then move on to other municipalities. Arkan was in

4 contact with the Bosnian Serb leadership, in particular with

5 Biljana Plavsic, who monitored his advance to Zvornik and invited him to

6 assist in Sarajevo. Elsewhere, Karadzic's forces took over

7 municipalities with the help of the JNA. In Vlasenica, for example:

8 "On 20 April 1992 the forces of the Yugoslav Army and the formed

9 unit coordinated by the SDS Crisis Staff liberated the town of

10 Vlasenica."

11 In Sarajevo, Karadzic and his close associates directly and

12 personally oversaw the seizure of power and forcible ethnic separation.

13 Among others, he worked closely with local SDS and political leaders such

14 as Jovan Tintor who was mentioned previously and Nedeljko Prstojevic. As

15 Prstojevic later told the Assembly:

16 "When Karadzic visited us in Ilidza and encouraged us, the Serbs

17 from Sarajevo retained control over the territory and even extended their

18 territory in some areas, driving the Muslims out of the territories where

19 they had actually been majority."

20 You'll see a number of intercepted telephone calls involving

21 Prstojevic, including an intercept in which he directs that men are to be

22 taken to prison, women sent to the Muslim-held area and:

23 "Tell them those who convert to Orthodox religion on the spot,

24 they can stay, women and children."

25 Now, during this period, during the first six weeks following the

Page 556

1 commencement of take-overs until the establishment of a formal Collective

2 Presidency, Karadzic headed the National Security Council. You saw that

3 in the chart before and that was the body that preceded the Collective

4 Presidency. That was composed of Karadzic's closest associates,

5 including Krajisnik, Koljevic, Plavsic, Stanisic, and minister of defence

6 Bogdan Subotic. As Karadzic said in 1993:

7 "While we still did not have a state, we had a council for

8 national security consisted of our most important people."

9 The National Security Council made decisions on many topics of

10 importance during that time which were subsequently formalised through

11 the de jure stamp of Koljevic and Plavsic's acting presidents at that

12 time or through the government and its ministries. For example, Karadzic

13 signed the decision to raise the Territorial Defence, and it was Karadzic

14 who was designated to coordinate the command of the TO forces as well as

15 political action.

16 As mentioned earlier, Karadzic would later praise the efforts of

17 the armed forces of the SDS and the police in liberating and creating the

18 space in the first five or six weeks after the take-overs began. And

19 indeed, by May 12th, 1992, when the Assembly met for the first time since

20 the take-overs began, many municipalities had indeed been taken over.

21 But on May 12th, 1992, when the Assembly met in Banja Luka, the

22 Bosnian Serb forces would become even stronger. They established their

23 army. In the weeks preceding that Assembly session, Karadzic had

24 arranged with Milosevic and other Yugoslav officials to ensure the

25 establishment of the army through the transformation of the JNA, the

Page 557

1 Yugoslav National Army, which formally withdrew from Bosnia but left

2 behind many tens of thousands of soldiers and officers over whom the

3 Bosnian Serb leadership took control, could take command, and also a

4 wealth of arms. And during the course of the conflict, Milosevic and the

5 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would continue to support the

6 Bosnian Serbs with weaponry, logistical support, and personnel, creating

7 secret personnel centres through which to fund the officers and other

8 personnel with salaries and benefits.

9 Now, for commander of the Main Staff of the new Bosnian Serb

10 army, Karadzic selected Ratko Mladic, who had led cleansing efforts in

11 Croatia. As Karadzic reminisced to the Assembly in 1995:

12 "Gentlemen, we got the officers we asked for. I asked for

13 Mladic. General Ninkovic, then a colonel, and General Perisic had

14 visited me before that and I had noticed Mladic's blunt statements in the

15 newspapers. He was already in Knin then. I took an interest in him, and

16 together with Mr. Krajisnik I went to General Kukanjac's office and

17 listened to him issuing orders and commanding around Kupres and Knin. We

18 spent countless nights in the office of General Kukanjac at that time."

19 But what was it that the army was to do? And it was Karadzic who

20 explained that as well on the 12th of May, announcing and explaining the

21 Strategic Objectives as part of his political and military situation to

22 be adopted by the Assembly, goals which would define the tasks of the VRS

23 during the course of the war. These goals formalised objectives that

24 Karadzic's forces had already been pursuing. And as noted in the

25 combat-readiness report, that 1993 review of events in 1992 and

Page 558

1 early 1993, these goals were put before the VRS as the guide-line upon

2 which they planned the actual operations.

3 "The Strategic Objectives of our war which were promptly defined

4 and set before the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, the

5 commands and units served as a general guide-line upon which we planned

6 the actual operations and concerted battles."

7 As Mladic himself said:

8 "The tasks of the army in this war stem from the known six

9 Strategic Objectives adopted by our Assembly."

10 Now, at that Assembly, the May 12th Assembly, Karadzic explained

11 that the first strategic goal was separation.

12 "The first such goal is separation from the other two national

13 communities - separation of states. Separation from those who are our

14 enemies and have used every opportunity, especially in this century, to

15 attack us and who would continue with such practices if we were to stay

16 together in the same state."

17 And that same state he's talking about, of course, is Bosnia and

18 the enemies he's talking about are the Bosnian Muslims and

19 Bosnian Croats; and the separation to which he refers would be achieved

20 by ethnic cleansing.

21 Now this strategic goal, the first strategic goal, was, as

22 Krajisnik said at that Assembly, the most important goal and he said that

23 the rest were subsets of that goal. In other words, they were directed

24 to where that separation would be focused.

25 The second strategic goal was the creation of a corridor in the

Page 559

1 Posavina area that would link not only the Bosnian Serb claimed territory

2 within that area to each other but also to the Croatian Serbs to the west

3 and Serbia in the east.

4 The third strategic goal was a corridor in the Drina Valley to

5 eliminate the Drina as a border. And it's seen by that circle.

6 The fourth strategic goal was a border on the Una River and on

7 the Neretva River, the Una to the north-west, the Neretva to the

8 south-east.

9 The fifth strategic goal was the division of Sarajevo, one part

10 to the Muslims, one part to the Serbs.

11 And the sixth strategic goal was access to the sea.

12 And by achieving these six strategic goals, Karadzic told the

13 Assembly on the 12th of May the Serbs will:

14 "... finally finish the job of the freedom struggle of the

15 Serbian people ..."

16 And finally shed the:

17 "... Serbian illusion of brotherhood and unity, especially one

18 which transcends the boundaries of religion ..."

19 Now, Mladic, who was named as commander of the Main Staff at that

20 session, was also present and he also spoke about the goals after

21 Karadzic had announced them. And he advised those gathered at the

22 Assembly not to be overambitious.

23 "Please, let us not set before ourselves goals that will bring us

24 down. Let us set before ourselves goals that we can achieve."

25 And that was in part, he said, because the international

Page 560

1 community might not let them keep everything they conquered and also in

2 part because cleansing can be difficult.

3 "People and peoples are not pawns, nor are they keys in one's

4 pocket that can be shifted from here to there. It is something easily

5 said but difficult to achieve."

6 And he reminded the delegates there that the nature of the goals

7 required secrecy.

8 "And, please, let us not only put our minds into what we are

9 doing, but let us also think thoroughly about it, and let us be cautious

10 about when to keep mum. No, the thing that we are doing needs to be

11 guarded as our deepest secret."

12 Now, at that same session on May 12th, 1992, Karadzic was elected

13 to a three-person Presidency that was a perfunctory procedure that

14 required no debate or discussion. He was then selected as president of

15 the Presidency and designated as the member of the Presidency in charge

16 of military affairs. By December of the same year, he became sole

17 president and remained so for the duration of the conflict.

18 In either capacity, indeed in any of his capacities as you saw

19 from the earlier intercepts, whether as president of the Presidency in

20 charge of military affairs or as sole president, he was the de jure and

21 de facto military leader, the supreme commander. As a member of the

22 Main Staff of the recently formed -- the then recently formed

23 Bosnian Serb army explained in September 1992 at the

24 Bosnian Serb Assembly:

25 "... the basic elements are: There is the Supreme Command of the

Page 561

1 army and there is the president of the republic as the supreme commander.

2 In our situation, this will be the President," which was the case at that

3 time. "All the elements of defence and the army are subordinated to this

4 institution. We in the army are following this and are trying to fully

5 observe it. There was no significant act that passed without this in

6 mind ... therefore, this chain of command follows this line: The supreme

7 commander, that is, the president of the republic; the General Staff in

8 the federal army, i.e., the Main Staff in our case."

9 And perhaps it's useful to also hear it from Mladic speaking in

10 1993 and speaking to Karadzic:

11 "No officer conducted a task without your approval in the

12 Army of Republika Srpska. Mr. President, you had a full support of both

13 the army and military intelligence service."

14 And as Mladic also said to Karadzic in 1993, referring both to

15 the strategic objectives and to Karadzic's commanding position:

16 "Mr. President, as far as I remember during the session held on

17 12 May last year, this Assembly has given us a task and you have

18 appointed me as the commander of the main headquarters. It is not

19 correct that I have not obeyed your every order."

20 But again, let's hear it from Karadzic himself, talking about the

21 period after he became the sole president and established a

22 Supreme Command to assist him which consisted of various political and

23 military leaders:

24 "I am in charge, in particular -- I am in charge, in particular,

25 of the army ... I report to you and to the people. Commanders report to

Page 562

1 me, the commander of the Main Staff and commanders of corps and brigades.

2 The approval was given. I established a Supreme Command so that I do not

3 make decisions by myself; I did not establish it to use it as a cover. I

4 am the one who signs, who decides, and I will be responsible for each

5 decision."

6 Now, Karadzic was not a tactical commander and didn't have

7 military experience, and his relationship with Mladic and the VRS had its

8 frictions and tensions including confrontational episodes in 1993 and

9 particularly in 1995 when Karadzic sought to shift Mladic's position in

10 the wake of the loss of the Croatian Krajina in 1995. But throughout,

11 neither Karadzic's ultimate authority nor his joint commitment with

12 Mladic to the fundamental objectives of the criminal enterprises were

13 altered. And Karadzic himself emphasised these frictions did not alter

14 the chain of command and indeed were healthy and expected.

15 "As Commander-in-Chief, I am highly respected by all officers and

16 soldiers ... I like it when they argue with me about solutions because

17 this helps me reach good decisions. And after I have passed a decision,

18 they carry it out in a brilliant way."

19 And with Karadzic in command, the VRS, in combination with the

20 MUP war units, began to disseminate and implement the objectives. The

21 Strategic Objectives were communicated to officers, conscripts, and

22 various municipal leaders. For example, two days after Karadzic

23 announced the Strategic Objectives on the 12th of May, army leaders met

24 with municipality presidents in the ARK region, in North-Western Bosnia.

25 And at that meeting, the participants were informed of the conclusions of

Page 563

1 the 12 May session which was held in Banja Luka:

2 "The strategic goals formulated at the meeting in Banja Luka were

3 presented."

4 And:

5 "The conclusions of the meeting in Banja Luka are to be

6 implemented and will also be forwarded to the commands of units and

7 municipalities."

8 In a similar manner, General Momir Talic, who was then commander

9 of the 1st Krajina Corps, again in the ARK region, issued an

10 implementation order to all brigades and divisions to, among other

11 things:

12 "Explain to conscripts, as they arrive, the goals of our

13 struggle."

14 Now, these goals were described in a document prepared by Talic's

15 assistant commander, a document to be sent to all corps units. It

16 explained that the Serbian people were exposed to genocide and:

17 "Must struggle for complete separation from the Muslim and

18 Croatian peoples and form their own state."

19 Separation from the Bosnian Muslims and Croats, the first and

20 most important strategic goal from which all the other goals sprang and

21 which all the other goals were subsets of.

22 And the VRS began almost immediately to implement the objectives.

23 Now, as mentioned, Your Honours, the second strategic goal, enunciated by

24 Karadzic, was a corridor between Semberija and Krajina, and that's this

25 area you see depicted on this map, the Posavina corridor between the

Page 564

1 western part of Bosnia and the eastern part, between where the Croatian

2 Serbs are in the west and Serbia in the east.

3 Karadzic said about the second strategic goal:

4 "... this is of the utmost strategic importance for the Serbian

5 people because it integrates the Serbian lands, not only of

6 Serbian Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Serbian Bosnia and Herzegovina with

7 Serbia, and the Serbian Krajina with Serbian Bosnia and Herzegovina and

8 Serbia. So that is a very important strategic goal which we have to

9 achieve because there will be no Krajina, Bosnian Krajina,

10 Serbian Krajina or an alliance of Serbian states if we do not secure that

11 corridor."

12 Now, Talic, who was the head of the 1st Krajina Corps which

13 operated in that region and who was also along with Mladic, another

14 veteran of the Croatian cleansing campaign whose collaboration with

15 Karadzic you'll see in intercepts, Talic was called upon -- was tasked

16 with the responsibility of establishing the corridor, the Posavina

17 corridor, along with others, and he was successful in doing so. By the

18 24th of July, 1992, he was able to provide this directive to all tactical

19 groups of the 1st Krajina Corps:

20 "We have liberated the territories we consider our own and

21 created conditions for the political and military leadership of the

22 Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to conduct all activities and

23 negotiations on the future constitutional system of

24 Bosnia and Herzegovina from the position of the stronger side in these

25 parts."

Page 565

1 And he continued:

2 "We have established corridors in Eastern Bosnia and

3 Bosnian Posavina, thus fulfilling the centuries'-old aspirations to

4 connect the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the

5 Serbian Republic of Krajina with the parent country: Serbia."

6 Serbian Republic of Krajina was the Croatian Serb republic.

7 Indeed by the 1st of July, 1992, Mladic was able to send this

8 tribune to the 1st Krajina Corps and others for their successes -- he

9 indicates he would like to pay tribute and express his gratitude and then

10 he continues:

11 "... for successfully organised and implemented operation for

12 breakthrough, expansion and cleansing of corridor in Bosanska Posavina,

13 between Eastern and Western Bosnia, as well as excogitation and organised

14 joined action and coordinate coordination of combat units activities."

15 "The units of this corps in this territory also showed that only

16 unified combat against the enemy of Serbianhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina

17 will bring us to realisation of military and political goals."

18 The fulfilment of Strategic Objective 2 through

19 Operation Corridor as it was called and the concomitant pursuit of

20 Strategic Objective 1 - separation - was achieved in a lightning campaign

21 against an overwhelmed Muslim and Croat population in the targeted areas.

22 Those operations were characterised by initial shelling of villages

23 followed by attacks of infantry, generally with little or insignificant

24 resistance. Control over the area was generally established quickly,

25 followed by the rounding up of the Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats and

Page 566

1 their removal to detention facilities and camps. The villages were laid

2 to waste during the shelling and afterwards.

3 And I'd like to direct your attention to just a few documents

4 which illustrate the nature of this campaign. The first is a weekly

5 update from the Security Services Centre, that is, the regional

6 headquarters of the police in Western Bosnia located in Banja Luka. And

7 it describes what happened following a confrontation at a check-point

8 during which two Serb soldiers in the car were stopped and were killed,

9 but the alleged perpetrators were not immediately handed over to the

10 military command.

11 "The army carried out an artillery attack on the village of

12 Hambarine and mopped up the area."

13 That same report goes on to discuss another alleged provocation

14 in another area, that's Kozarac:

15 "... the army engaged in a mopping-up operation. Several hundred

16 inhabitants of these villages were killed or wounded."

17 Now, two quick points about terminology. The translation

18 "mopping-up" is from the B/C/S word "ciscenje" or a variation of this

19 word. This word can be interpreted to mean, in English, either cleanse

20 or mop-up. A mop-up operation is conventionally an operation or a

21 reference to an effort after a battle to ferret out the last remaining

22 enemy forces, or it can refer to a cleansing operation directed against

23 civilians. And it will be up to the Court to decide on the basis of the

24 evidence in the context of any particular use of that term what it refers

25 to and what kind of actions it involves.

Page 567

1 The passage -- the two passages I just referred the Court to,

2 referring to the "ciscenje" of Hambarine and Kozarac in the Prijedor

3 municipality, refer to two unmistakable and brutal acts of ethnic

4 cleansing against overwhelmed civilian populations as you'll be able to

5 see from the evidence.

6 Another document illustrating the nature of the operations to

7 fulfil Strategic Objective 2 and, of course, Strategic Objective 1, the

8 objective from which it sprang, is this one from General Talic to the

9 Main Staff of the army on the 14th of June, 1992:

10 "The most difficult situation concerns the Muslim and Croat

11 refugees in the area of Autonomous Region Krajina, their security and the

12 provision of food. The attempt to expel them to Central Bosnia failed

13 because of transportation difficulties and their resistance to leaving

14 the places."

15 Or this one, again from Talic to the Main Staff:

16 "In the area of Derventa, there continues to be occasional

17 artillery fire, while because Muslim extremists have failed to hand in

18 their weapons, the Muslim population of the area of Lisnja village has

19 been expelled."

20 Other documents that you'll see, Your Honours, refer to the

21 massive destruction -- literally, the massive destruction of Muslim

22 towns; refer to public statements by SDS leaders advocating expelling all

23 Bosnian Muslims and Croats; refer to Talic's view that municipal and

24 regional leaders should "work harder" at the departure of the Bosnian

25 Muslim and Bosnian Croat population.

Page 568

1 And, of course, you have the benefit of the evidence from

2 eye-witnesses to those campaigns at that time.

3 Let me turn to Strategic Objective 3 and its implementation.

4 Again, this is Strategic Objective 3 and the area encompassed by it. And

5 that's the area in Eastern Bosnia. As Karadzic explained on the

6 12th of May:

7 "The third strategic goal is to establish a corridor in the

8 Drina Valley, that is, elimination of the Drina as a border between two

9 worlds. We are on both sides of the Drina, and our strategic interest

10 and our living space are there."

11 And he continued:

12 "As much as it is strategically useful for us in a positive way,

13 it helps us by damaging the interests of our enemy in establishing a

14 corridor which would connect them to the Muslim international and render

15 this area permanently unstable."

16 That connection to Muslim International he referred to is also

17 sometimes referred to by Karadzic and others as the "green transversal"

18 and what it refers to is the blocking of any access by Muslims from

19 Serbia into Bosnia and what was then the Bosnian Serb territory. And you

20 can see from the green area on the east part of Bosnia - and I'd ask you

21 to -- that circle indicates Strategic Objective 3 -- number 2, rather,

22 I'm referring to Strategic Objective 3, the elimination as the Drina as a

23 border on the east part of Bosnia. And you can see the green

24 representing Muslim municipalities. So the attempt was to make sure that

25 Bosnian Serb living space in that area was secured and that there was no

Page 569

1 possibility of access by Muslims coming from Serbia.

2 Now, as noted in this combat-readiness report, the 1993 VRS

3 strictly confidential analysis of events in 1992, despite the successes

4 of the SDS military units and police in the first five or six weeks of

5 the war, since the take-overs began, they had:

6 "... failed to achieve the main Strategic Objectives of the armed

7 struggle of the Serbian people in former Bosnia and Herzegovina."

8 Including opening up and securing a corridor. That is:

9 "They failed to open up and secure corridors through the

10 Sava River Valley (Posavina) between the Krajina and the FRY or a

11 corridor which would link Herzegovina with the FRY via the Drina River

12 Valley ..."

13 Now, as I will discuss later, the attempt to fully realise

14 Strategic Objective 3 extended on past 1992 and in 1995 with the attack

15 of Srebrenica. But in 1992, with the Bosnian Serbs' overwhelming

16 military superiority, much of the objective was realised after

17 municipality after municipality in Bosnia was cleansed by Karadzic's

18 forces.

19 Now, Strategic Objective 3 and the corridor in Eastern Bosnia

20 began to be implemented quickly. Here's an order by Mladic on the

21 17th of June, 1992, referring to the importance of the operations:

22 "... in order to have full control over the area of Birac and to

23 secure the corridor between Romanija and Semberija and to maintain a link

24 with Serbia."

25 Romanija is the area just to the east of Sarajevo, Semberija is

Page 570

1 up north, and the Birac region is in the area of Zvornik, Vlasenica,

2 Bratunac, and Srebrenica.

3 And again, Your Honours, just a couple of documents to illustrate

4 the nature of the campaign to implement Strategic Objective 3. Here's

5 one from the 28th of May, 1992, issued by the commander of the

6 Birac Brigade, as I said, in the area around Zvornik, Bratunac, and

7 Vlasenica in the north part of the Drina River area:

8 "The moving out of the Muslim population must be organised and

9 coordinated with the municipalities through which the moving out is

10 carried out. Only women and children can move out, while men fit for

11 military service are to be placed in camps for exchange."

12 On the -- similarly, on the 7th of June the commander of the

13 Eastern Bosnia Corps issued an order which was sent to all subordinated

14 units concerning coordinated operations in Northern and Eastern Bosnian,

15 between the Eastern Bosnian Corps and the 1st Krajina Corps, and that

16 order contains no fewer than nine references to "ciscenje" or "cistiti,"

17 cleansing or mopping up. It notes -- it prohibits the maltreatment of

18 the civilian population, but anticipates, consistent with that Andric

19 order, that is, the Birac Brigade order you just saw, the arrest of

20 civilians. And again, you will have the benefit of all the evidence to

21 determine the meaning of "ciscenje" in the context of the order to which

22 I just referred as you review the evidence of round-up in towns, towns

23 attacked and burned, up and down the length of the corridor. And you

24 will also consider, Your Honours, the contemporaneous evidence of

25 cleansing known to the Bosnian Serb leadership.

Page 571

1 In late July 1992, for example, Rajko Dukic one of the most

2 powerful political leaders in the Birac region, and Karadzic's close

3 crony - and you can see that in the intercepts Dukic was the president of

4 the SDS Executive Board - noted with satisfaction to Karadzic, Krajisnik,

5 and others at the Assembly session:

6 "... there is Birac which is 100 to 108 kilometres away and has

7 120.000 Muslims that is how many there were, but I hope that has at least

8 been halved ..."

9 And this was the same Assembly session I should quickly add,

10 Your Honours, at which the point was made that Serbs were appointed to be

11 the Muslims' executioners.

12 Now, that desire for the reduction for the Muslim presence in

13 Eastern Bosnia was almost fully realised during 1992 with some

14 exceptions. The Muslim population was reduced to a negligible percentage

15 in Eastern Bosnia. And you saw from the maps how significant that

16 presence was before the cleansing began. And Serb officials took

17 undisguised satisfaction in the ethnic purification of those territories.

18 Let me just point the Court to some examples from Foca. The

19 first are two quotes from Petko Cancar, an important leader from Foca who

20 was close to Karadzic and Krajisnik and occupied a number of important

21 republic-level positions including advisor to the Presidency. And this

22 is Cancar speaking about Foca in 1993:

23 "There is only one people living on the territory of Foca, and

24 there is only one religion practiced there. That people is prepared to

25 fight and to defend and God knows that."

Page 572

1 And as he noted on another occasion, again speaking about Foca:

2 "There currently is not a single Muslim in the biggest

3 municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina ..."

4 Not a single Muslim.

5 This ethnic purification of a previously Muslim majority

6 municipality was praised by the Bosnian Serb leadership. I want to

7 direct your attention to the words of Momcilo Krajisnik addressing a

8 crowd in the renamed Foca, now called Srbinje - the name adopted for a

9 Muslim-free Foca on the anniversary of its "liberation."

10 "Dear people of Srbinje, it is a great pleasure to be among you

11 after two and a half years. Today you are not as you were before. Now I

12 see a true Serbian town and you proudly bear your Serbian name."

13 Your Honours, this satisfaction in ethnically pure territory was

14 balanced against the pressures of the international community. And the

15 resulting interest in retaining some minimal Muslim or Croatian presence

16 for public relations purposes. In August 1992, for example, Karadzic

17 reminded Assembly delegates, the deputies, that some percentage of

18 non-Serbs was politically useful, asserting that the Bosnian government

19 used this as a ploy:

20 "As far as other nations are concerned, we have to have a

21 percentage, a proportion participating in the municipal authorities. We

22 have to be responsible, as we are creating a state ... I can't elaborate

23 on this longer, but I know what I'm saying. Believe me, Alija pays

24 fortune," and it refers to Alija Izetbegovic, "to any Serb willing to

25 stay and work on his territory."

Page 573

1 But whether the targeted percentage of Muslims and Croats who

2 were allowed to remain would be 5 per cent, as publicly advocated by

3 Brdjanin, or the territory was to be completely pure, as Cancar took

4 pleasure in and is advocated by others, the territory had to be

5 sufficiently free of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats to render it

6 permanently and incontestably Serb.

7 As Karadzic would explain in a closed session of the Assembly

8 in 1995:

9 "The Drina should be clean ..."

10 And he candidly acknowledged at that moment how it happened.

11 "To tell the truth, there are towns that we've grabbed for

12 ourselves and there were only 30 per cent of us. I can name as many of

13 those as you want, but we cannot give up the towns where we made up

14 70 per cent. Don't let this get around, but remember how many of us

15 there were in Bratunac, how many in Srebrenica, how many in Visegrad, how

16 many in Rogatica, how many in Vlasenica, in Zvornik, et cetera. Due to

17 strategic importance, they had to become ours. And no one is practically

18 questioning it anymore."

19 And that strategic importance was Strategic Objective -- was

20 reflected in Strategic Objective 3.

21 Now, Your Honours, I'll address the focus and implementation of

22 one more Strategic Objective and that's number 4. Strategic Objective 4,

23 as mentioned, was the establishment of a border on the Una and

24 Neretva Rivers. And you can see that in this slide. Immediately after

25 Karadzic announced the objectives, at that same session, the delegate

Page 574

1 from a municipality located on the Una, a point where that arrow was

2 shown, stood up and - that's the area there - stood up to express

3 satisfaction in what had been accomplished toward the realisation of

4 Strategic Objective 4 by that time. And this was a municipality where

5 Serbs represented 14.500 people and Muslims were 47.000. And he said:

6 "On the right bank of the Una River there are no more Muslims in

7 the Serbian municipality of Bosanska Krupa. All the enclaves that were

8 there," and he named them, "we have evacuated them so that there will be

9 none there for the duration of war operations. Will they have to place

10 to return to? I think it is unlikely after our president told us the

11 happy news that the right bank of the Una is the border."

12 And within two weeks of that "happy news," the War Presidency of

13 that municipality in Bosanska Krupa made this proposal to the army

14 brigade in that area:

15 "To carry out all military preparations concerning the cleansing

16 of the left bank of the Una River, including the right bank of the Una in

17 the action in the area above Bosanska Otoka.

18 "In course of preparations and cleansing of the left bank of the

19 Una, destroy and pull down as many residential and other buildings as

20 possible ..."

21 And the War Presidency also provided the reasons for that

22 proposal. And reason number 1:

23 "The political decision designating that the border of the

24 Serbian municipality, the Autonomous Region of Banja Luka, the Serbian

25 Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Serbian state should be on

Page 575

1 the Una River up to Bosanska Otoka."

2 That is Strategic Objective 4.

3 As the VRS and MUP units implemented those objectives, local

4 municipality leaders, those who were so lavishly praised by Karadzic for

5 their roles in liberating the space, also frequently continued to play

6 their role in the implementation of separation. The removal of non-Serbs

7 from the claimed territory did not result solely from the direct

8 application of military force, but also from the cumulative effects of

9 persecution, pressure, intimidation, and marginalisation of

10 Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats.

11 The voice of the victims that I referred to earlier revealed the

12 increasing hopelessness and terror of the Bosnian Muslims and Croats as

13 they realised that continuing life in the municipalities claimed and

14 taken over by the Bosnian Serb forces was impossible. And in addition to

15 witnesses, you'll see that situation reflected in documents.

16 I'd like you to look for a moment, if you will, at this

17 resolution adopted in Celinac which was the home municipality of

18 Radoslav Brdjanin. It's an extreme version of a process that existed in

19 some measure in all municipalities.

20 Until further notice, the citizens mentioned in Article 1 are:

21 Forbidden to be on the streets from 4.00 in the afternoon until

22 the morning hours.

23 Forbidden to remain on the streets or restaurants or public

24 places.

25 Forbidden to swim in the rivers or to hunt or to fish.

Page 576

1 Forbidden to travel without permission.

2 Forbidden to use an automobile.

3 Forbidden to gather in groups of more than three men ...

4 And so on.

5 Municipal leaders as well as regional leaders also assisted with

6 logistic support to the VRS, that is, the Bosnian Serb army; collaborated

7 with local police officials, many of whom were on Crisis Staffs in any

8 event; collaborated with them in expulsions by train or by bus. And as I

9 will discuss in a moment, worked closely with the MUP and sometimes the

10 VRS on the widespread camp system. And now I'd like to turn to those

11 camps, those camps and detention facilities.

12 Virtually every municipality had at least one significant camp or

13 detention facility and many had several, depending upon the size of the

14 Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat population in that municipality. These

15 facilities were typically run by the police, as in the case of some of

16 the most notorious camps including Omarska and Keraterm in Prijedor, and

17 sometimes guarded on the outside by the VRS. Muslims and Croats were

18 sometimes brought in individually or in small groups and sometimes via

19 wholesale round-ups in villages.

20 Now, there were also camps established by the army. For example,

21 the Manjaca camp in Banja Luka or the Batkovic camp in Bijeljina. These

22 camps were fed very often with influxes of prisoners from the camps in

23 the surrounding municipalities and sometimes quite distant

24 municipalities.

25 They were degrading and typically brutal places situated in such

Page 577

1 locations as old mines, abandoned factories, old concrete buildings, and

2 the like. In the best of circumstances, detainees existed in

3 dehumanising conditions, and I'd like to show you some of those

4 conditions with this video.

5 [Video-clip played]

6 "There is a shed which in better days might have housed animals

7 now home to more than 600 men. Here, the prisoners live, eat, and sleep

8 24 hours a day. Most of these men just arrived three days ago from a

9 camp at Omarska, their faces still haunted by memories they do not dare

10 relate in the presence of their guards. The conditions here they

11 [indiscernible] seem to be much better than the places they came from.

12 "But leadership is under tremendous pressure to allow outsiders

13 access to these camps. The proposed UN resolution would authorise any

14 means necessary to implement that access as well as guarantee the supply

15 of humanitarian aid. The prisoners here maintain they are civilians, not

16 soldiers. Those we saw are crammed into cattle sheds where they spend

17 all day and all night huddled together like animals."

18 MR. TIEGER: And one more, Your Honours.

19 All right, if we can call that up later I'll show that to you.

20 I said "in the best of conditions" because in the worst all too

21 frequently detainees were subjected to beatings, rape, terror, and death.

22 For example, in early June approximately 160 men were killed at the

23 Karakaj technical school in Zvornik. In July, in one night at Keraterm

24 in Prijedor, approximately 150 men were killed. In August, approximately

25 200 men were killed who were being taken from the Trnopolje camp in

Page 578

1 Prijedor, many of them had come from Omarska and Keraterm, taken

2 supposedly to be exchanged. In September, approximately 140 men from the

3 Susica camp in Vlasenica were killed.

4 The Bosnian Serb leadership had been denying the existence of

5 camps since May. But by July, there was increasing media focus on camps

6 and increasing international attention. At the end of July or the

7 beginning of August, reporters confronted Radovan Karadzic with his

8 repeated assurances about the camps and extracted from him a promise that

9 they could visit the Omarska camp and the Trnopolje camp in Prijedor.

10 Now, when they got there they were kept from the worst parts of the camp

11 and officials tried to put their best foot forward by presenting

12 detainees with a meal they'd never seen before, but, nevertheless, the

13 resulting images obtained shocked the world.

14 [Video-clip played]

15 MR. TIEGER: Many of those you see, Your Honour, were people who

16 had just come from the Keraterm and Trnopolje camps, those detainees in

17 that -- in the Trnopolje facility in the worst conditions.

18 Now, following the outcry in the wake of such videos, many of

19 these prisoners from Omarska, Keraterm, camps in Sanski Most that were

20 sent to the VRS camp Manjaca in Banja Luka, they had been -- they had

21 been providing prisoners from those municipalities to Banja Luka

22 previously and many of those from Omarska and Keraterm were then sent to

23 Manjaca by the Bosnian Serb leadership.

24 I want to read you a list of the condition of some of the people

25 who were held in Manjaca on August 20th. You'll have a chance to see

Page 579

1 this document. And just a few of the references, I think, make the

2 point. This describes the condition of some of these prisoners: Spinal

3 fracture, heart disease, that's one of the prisoners; disabled, one hand;

4 active pulmonary tuberculosis; diabetes, cannot stand up; operation of

5 large intestine, has no control of bowel movement; another, cannot walk

6 easy; another, does not hear well and without one kidney; another,

7 retarded, repeats himself; another, mentally ill, epilepsy; another,

8 deaf, has no control of bowel movement; and so on.

9 In addition, there were boys under the age of 18 and elderly men.

10 Now, these were the people that Karadzic in interviews repeatedly called

11 prisoners of war. Now, how did such people end up as prisoners and what

12 was supposed to happen to them? And I'd like to turn to that now because

13 the answer in significant part is reflected in the cleansing operations

14 that I told you about before and was also reflected in the document I'm

15 about to show you.

16 "The army Crisis Staffs and War Presidencies have requested that

17 the army round up or capture as many Muslim civilians as possible and

18 they leave such undefined camps to internal affairs organs. The

19 conditions in some of these camps are poor: There is no food,

20 individuals sometimes do not observe international norms, et cetera."

21 This is a report by the -- by the minister of interior addressed

22 personally, directly, to Karadzic on July 17th, 1992. And it's

23 noteworthy that it's not a report of alarm about a massive crime; it's

24 simply a matter-of-fact explanation about some of the competing

25 responsibilities that the MUP are required to engage in that keep them

Page 580

1 from their more conventional tasks.

2 The wholesale round-up and confinement of Muslims, in fact, was

3 no secret nor could it be. As a deputy noted at the Assembly in July:

4 "We have a huge problem with captured people of other

5 nationalities. We have hundreds and thousands of these prisoners."

6 Karadzic was present at that Assembly session, Krajisnik was

7 present at that Assembly session, the Bosnian Serb leadership was there.

8 And the round-up of civilians is also reflected in documents from the

9 camps themselves.

10 Here's a report from Manjaca on the 23rd of July, 1992, noting

11 that they had processed almost a thousand prisoners from Sanski Most that

12 day and there is no evidence that "the great number of them" had anything

13 to do with war operations.

14 "... did not take part in combat activities, were not in

15 possession of weapons, and there are no other evidence based on which

16 they could be kept prisoners."

17 As a Manjaca official wrote on the 22nd of July, 1992:

18 "... this camp can be considered as a detention camp, that is, a

19 camp for segregation of Muslims and Croats which history will not forgive

20 us."

21 Now, these civilians, Your Honours, as observed in a report from

22 the regional head of the police in Banja Luka of Stojan Zupljanin to the

23 minister of interior, Mico Stanisic, were "hostages" or could be treated

24 as such. Zupljanin described three categories of prisoners that he was

25 aware of. One category was members of Bosnian military formations, that

Page 581

1 basically included anybody who was a member of the regular TO; persons

2 who organised preparation for "armed rebellion," and that typically

3 included anybody who was associated with the SDA. And three:

4 "The third category is composed of adult men about whom the

5 service does not have any information of security interest for us so far.

6 Therefore, they can be treated as hostages."

7 The ultimate solution, as Zupljanin went on to suggest in his

8 report, would be to exchange the prisoners, that is, send them to

9 Muslim-held areas in exchange for Serbs held by Muslims. And in that

10 way, the separation process which had begun with the forcible removal of

11 Bosnian Muslims and Croats with their wholesale round-up could be

12 completed as they were transported out of Republika Srpska. And,

13 Your Honours, given the time when we return, I'd like to discuss with you

14 that exchange system.

15 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Tieger.

16 We'll have a break of 25 minutes.

17 --- Recess taken at 5.19 p.m.

18 --- On resuming at 5.49 p.m.

19 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Mr. Tieger.

20 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President.

21 Your Honours, before the recess, we saw the evidence of the

22 awareness of the round-up and detention of Bosnian Muslim and

23 Bosnian Croat civilians, their characterisation of hostages, and I

24 referred to the establishment of the exchange system which completed and

25 perfected the process of removing them from the territories and ethnic

Page 582

1 purification. Before we move into that, I would like to play for the

2 Court the one clip that wasn't depicted before, that again depicts the

3 conditions in which these civilians were held and the impact on them.

4 [Video-clip played]

5 "This bus to release all prisoners into the hands of the

6 Red Cross presents the civilised world with a sharp dilemma. If they're

7 left in the camps, the prisoners face the threat of continuing

8 humiliation, torture, and death. But taking the prisoners away would

9 help the Serbs in their war aim clearing Bosnia of Muslims and Croats.

10 "... exact terms of the offer to release prisoners are unclear.

11 "In one breath today, the Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic offered

12 to close all camps, but in another, he spoke of releasing only prisoners

13 of war too ill to go back into battle.

14 "We don't have people in prisons that have been removed from

15 their own homes, those people have been captured in the battle-field, and

16 they can go home if they are weak and they are not likely to be mobilised

17 from Muslim forces."

18 MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, I want to turn the Court's attention to

19 the system of exchange that was established to send these civilians

20 outside of Republika Srpska after their detentions had resulted in the

21 conditions you saw. As early as April, that is, on April 24th, 1992, the

22 National Security Council - and remember that Karadzic was president of

23 the National Security Council - adopted the decision that the

24 Ministry of Justice:

25 "Shall take-over the exchange of prisoners once the organs of the

Page 583

1 interior have done their work."

2 And if we could have that slide shown.

3 And, Your Honours, from the outset, this system contemplated

4 civilian prisoners. As the president of the government ordered

5 Crisis Staffs on 28 April 1992, a record should be kept and regularly

6 updated with information on the status of health of "both military and

7 civilian prisoners."

8 Now, soon after the National Security Council decision on

9 April 24th, a central commission for the exchange of prisoners was

10 established. That was on the 8th of May, 1992, and that functioned at

11 all levels of the state: Republic, regional, and municipal, with

12 representatives of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of the Interior, and

13 Ministry of Defence at the republic -- on the republic level commission

14 with the Ministry of Justice at the helm. And that exchange commission

15 formed on the 8th of May, 1992 - and it was titled to -- it was directed

16 at prisoners of war and arrested persons - it went into action

17 immediately.

18 You'll hear evidence of the cleansing of many municipalities,

19 including Bratunac. On the 14th of May, 1992, a group of about

20 400 Bosnian Muslim civilians were expelled from Bratunac. The remaining

21 survivors of a group that had once totalled 600. And they were

22 transferred from Bratunac to Bosnian Serb -- Bosnian Muslim territory

23 through Pale. Pale was the tiny town which was the capital of

24 Republika Srpska and also the town where the Bosnian Serb leadership,

25 including Radovan Karadzic, were headquartered. You'll see a list during

Page 584

1 the trial of the -- those particular men signed by the member of the

2 exchange commission from the Ministry of the Interior.

3 Now, the departure of those men from Bratunac through other

4 municipalities into Pale and then on into Muslim-held territory was

5 coordinated among those municipalities by none other than the president

6 of the government and the secretary of the government. And here's an

7 order from the president of the government, dated 15 May, ordering the

8 Crisis Staff of Sokolac to provide trucks for that purpose.

9 "The Sokolac Crisis Staff is obligated to provide three

10 trucks ... that are to be used for the transport of prisoners from Pale

11 to Visoko via Ilijas.

12 "This order is effective immediately."

13 And there's another order from the secretary of the government,

14 also facilitating that process:

15 "Please approve and provide the passage through your territory

16 for the group of prisoners who are presently at Pale," that's after they

17 came from Bratunac to Sokolac, "and travelling to Visoko."

18 And as you can see, Your Honour, at the bottom of the screen

19 here, the awareness of the illegality of what was being done is reflected

20 in the directive:

21 "Please destroy that approval the moment when the prisoners leave

22 Ilijas municipality."

23 And I'd like to show you those men who were transported through

24 Pale, remained in Pale for a period of time, and were sent on in the

25 exchange process to Muslim-held territory.

Page 585

1 [Video-clip played]

2 MR. TIEGER: And as the conquest continued, Your Honours, more

3 and more camps were needed. For example, we previously saw the order of

4 Svetozar Andric from the Birac Brigade, the order to expel the women and

5 children and put the military-aged men in camps, that was the order of

6 May 28th. He expressed concern about the number of prisoners now

7 crowding the camp in Vlasenica. General Mladic issued an order to

8 establish a new camp which was formally established by him in Bijeljina,

9 that's the Batkovic camp, to accommodate the increasing number of

10 prisoners, Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croat civilians who were being

11 rounded up.

12 Radovan Karadzic and all those who surrounded him were aware of

13 this system and the exchange system that took those prisoners who had

14 been rounded up and sent them on to Bosnian Muslim territory. As

15 mentioned, the accused initiated it through the NSC on the

16 24th of April, 1992, and you'll also see evidence of his ongoing

17 awareness that it was functioning. For example, you'll see an intercept

18 with Mandic at the beginning of July, that's the -- he was -- Mandic was

19 the minister of justice at that time. The Ministry of Justice was --

20 headed the exchange commission. Mandic initiated that discussion by

21 informing Karadzic that they were at that moment working on an exchange

22 of 300 Muslims, including women and children who were held in Kula

23 prison, and they were to be sent from RS territory to Muslim territory.

24 And similarly, Mandic had spoken to Krajisnik a week or so earlier,

25 twice, about Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats being held who were to be

Page 586

1 exchanged.

2 Karadzic's awareness of and ultimate power over that entire

3 system is also reflected in an intercepted phone call between Mandic and

4 a former Bosnian MUP colleague who was seeking to get Croats released

5 from Manjaca prison through Mandic. And Mandic assured his former

6 colleague that he would speak with Karadzic at the first opportunity in

7 an effort to do so.

8 In short, Your Honours, Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat

9 civilians were rounded up in great numbers, placed in wretched and

10 inhumane detention facilities and camps all over Republika Srpska. Their

11 release, departure, expulsion was overseen by the exchange commission

12 which was set up with civilians in mind and which functioned to ensure

13 that those people who had been detained, rounded up, were sent to Muslim

14 territory, thus completing the process by a governmental body with a

15 euphemistic title.

16 The widespread use of this sytem is reflected in two documents

17 I'll show you. The first is from 1994 reflecting, among other things,

18 that the exchange system and detention of civilians that fuelled it

19 continued long after 1992. It's an order from the Main Staff of the

20 Bosnian Serb army, and it discourages any obstacles that might delay

21 exchange because:

22 "It should be kept in mind that in the exchanges we receive

23 captured Serbian soldiers of the RS," captured soldiers of the

24 Republika Srpska, "while we mostly give them civilians."

25 And the second document is yet another reflecting the functioning

Page 587

1 and awareness of the exchange level -- exchange system at the municipal

2 level. It's an excerpt from a contemporaneous diary from the president

3 of the Crisis Staff in Sanski Most and it reveals, one, that on Tuesday

4 at 6.00 to 7.00 the operation begins; the fighting will not stop until

5 they surrender; no prisoners, if armed. And finally, captured civilians

6 to be used for exchanges.

7 This process, Your Honours, complemented the other mechanisms

8 ranging from discrimination, persecution, constant fear of attack, to the

9 large-scale killings that forced or induced flights of non-Serbs and

10 would ensure their separation from Serbs on the territories Karadzic

11 claimed.

12 Now, I spoke earlier of the lightning conquest that Karadzic's

13 forces, his very mightily armed forces achieved in 1992. Indeed, by late

14 July 1992 he was already telling the Assembly that the Bosnian Serbs were

15 in a position to consider giving back some of the territory they

16 conquered in exchange for concessions during negotiations. And indeed,

17 with certain exceptions which I'll be discussing in the context of the

18 Srebrenica portion of the case, Karadzic's forces would not take

19 significantly greater territory than they conquered during the spring and

20 summer months of 1992. As Karadzic once said, noting that there were

21 relatively few operations that expanded their territory beyond what they

22 conquered in 1992 after:

23 "... packing Muslims in small areas, thus achieving their

24 concentration, we couldn't do much more."

25 Now, in light of those accomplishments in pursuit of the ultimate

Page 588

1 goal of a unified Serbian state, Karadzic's political allies from Serbia

2 advised him to pursue the goal of ethnic purification in a less

3 observable manner. The discovery of the camps, their exposure through

4 the international media to the world in late July and early August had

5 generated widespread awareness and condemnation of the cleansings. And

6 at a meeting in January of 1993 of the council for coordinating positions

7 of state policy, that's a meeting between Bosnian Serb leaders and

8 leaders of Yugoslavia, leaders of Serbia, involving Karadzic, Milosevic,

9 Krajisnik, Koljevic, other officials, other Yugoslav officials. The

10 Serbian foreign minister noted the importance of making the territory,

11 that is, of making RS ethnically homogenous, but, he noted, not by means

12 of ethnic cleansing, which he considered "palms off."

13 Instead, the Bosnian Serbs should use a more subtle process of

14 eliminating the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations.

15 "What is important is that ... everybody understands that life in

16 that future Bosnia is impossible ..."

17 And he went on to say:

18 "If, on the contrary, freedom of movement would bring freedom of

19 settlement and the mixing of the composition of the population to our

20 disadvantage, then this, what has been gained, would gradually erode, and

21 we would basically lose everything in the future."

22 Therefore, he urged Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb leadership to:

23 "... encourage the migration of our people in the direction of

24 our provinces and others toward theirs."

25 Karadzic then ensured Milosevic and the other Serbian leaders

Page 589

1 gathered that much progress had already been made toward the goal of

2 national homogeneity. Citing in particular the example of Zvornik:

3 "There was 50:50 of us in Zvornik. The number of inhabitants in

4 Zvornik is now the same, approximately 50.000, and they are all Serbs."

5 And Karadzic would ensure, as they had discussed, that what they

6 had gained would not be eroded. In early 1994, when an international

7 proposal was under consideration, the president of the

8 Deputies' Club - remember, the Deputies' Club was a club of parliament

9 members, the SDS parliament members from the original Bosnian parliament,

10 they continued to exist as a Deputies' Club and would meet just before

11 Assembly sessions so this was still an important post - this was his

12 comment at the Assembly:

13 "What I would really like to see here is a firm attitude that the

14 Muslims and the Croats would not be allowed to return to the areas under

15 our rule. So we should take a firm position and ban any of their returns

16 to the territories we have gained through these international

17 combinations. I do not care if the Muslims will live at all, where they

18 will live, whether they will have a country or not. I am not interested

19 in that. The only thing I am interested in is my people and the

20 territory where my people live. Therefore, any thought about having 500

21 or more Muslims within our future country is out of the question."

22 And in response, Karadzic explained how he would handle that.

23 Because international law prohibits a bar on return, he would say that in

24 principle all refugees can return but he would add that it had to be a

25 two-way process. And the reason, if it was reciprocal, he explained,

Page 590

1 that meant that Muslims couldn't return, for example, to Prijedor until

2 the Serbs in Zvornik returned to Zenica. But as he continued to explain,

3 the Serbs in Zenica -- Serbs in Zvornik would not leave Zvornik and

4 therefore no obligation would arise. And as he summed it up:

5 "We can act the Serbian Cyrillic way and tell it all to their

6 face, or we can be a bit cunning. We have to be a bit cunning."

7 As he emphasised at the same session:

8 "If they can live in Grbavica, if they can live in Doboj, they

9 can live anywhere, and we have to prevent it."

10 Now, despite the vast territory that had been conquered and

11 cleansed by late 1992, there was still pockets of Muslims remaining in

12 Eastern Bosnia, including Srebrenica. And I'll return to that subject

13 and the effort to drive those last remaining pockets of Muslims from

14 Eastern Bosnia later. But first, Your Honours, I'd like to turn the

15 Court's attention to the shelling and sniping campaign in Sarajevo.

16 Sarajevo was kept under siege for 44 months, exposed to a

17 relentless military campaign of shelling and sniping by a superior

18 military force from the heights of the city's surrounding hills, a

19 campaign directed at Sarajevo's civilian population from the heights of

20 the city's hills. Sarajevo's civilians, month after month, year after

21 year, lived in fear that the next mortar, the next bomb, the next

22 sniper's bullet would strike them or their loved ones. The accused,

23 Radovan Karadzic, controlled these besieging forces, and he modulated the

24 sniping and shelling to terrorise the city and its people.

25 Now, Sarajevo was initially besieged by the combined forces

Page 591

1 talked about earlier, that is, the police and the Serbian armed units,

2 and then from May 1992 with the establishment of the Bosnian Serb army by

3 the -- by a corps of the Bosnian Serb army, the Sarajevo Romanija Corps,

4 known as the SRK. During this time, during this 44 months, the accused

5 was a de jure and de facto commander of the Bosnian Serb forces.

6 If I may, let me say a few words about Sarajevo itself. Before

7 the war, Sarajevo had a population of approximately half a million

8 inhabitants, a rich cosmopolitan mixture of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims as

9 well as people who chose to identify themselves simply as Yugoslavs. Its

10 metropolitan area was largely residentially integrated in high-rise and

11 low-rise, densely populated apartment communities, and its people shared

12 a genuine sense of community which transcended ethnic lines and which was

13 reflected in their everyday lives. Citizens of different ethnicities

14 intermingled freely. They intermarried at an unusually high rate. They

15 visited on each other's holidays, regarded each other as simply

16 neighbours. In short, Sarajevo was the embodiment of a multi-ethnic

17 Bosnia and the embodiment of its ethnic diversity.

18 Now, it's also helpful to understand the topography of Sarajevo

19 in understanding the shelling and sniping campaign. Sarajevo essentially

20 lies in a valley running east and west, and on either side of that valley

21 are steep mountain slopes - I hope you can make them out in this

22 photograph - meaning that the high ground lies both to the north and

23 south point of the city. The most densely populated parts of Sarajevo

24 city actually straddle the river that runs through it, the narrow

25 Miljacka River, and that runs along an east-west valley - if you can see

Page 592

1 it here. And that's the approximate axis of the river. The residential

2 and commercial old town lies in the east part of the city, that is to the

3 right of the photograph in that valley or just above the valley, and that

4 makes up the dense city centre and spreads up the hill-sides. And to the

5 west of the city, as you move from right to left on the photograph on the

6 more open ground were the new municipalities with commercial development

7 and residential accommodation.

8 Now, the advantage of seizing the heights around the city may

9 seem obvious, but it can also be seen visually from the perspective of

10 the hills themselves. We'll take a look at this now.

11 [Video-clip played]

12 MR. TIEGER: And in the context of the shelling and sniping

13 campaign, Your Honours, the advantage of these heights and the general

14 topography of Sarajevo will become abundantly clear.

15 Now, as described earlier, the -- Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb

16 leadership wanted to physically divide Sarajevo, that's the fifth of the

17 six Strategic Objectives. And indeed in explaining his plans for

18 Sarajevo, Karadzic sometimes referred to other famously divided cities

19 such as Beirut or Berlin. He also saw a related objective. Sarajevo

20 represented a soft spot through which to exert leverage in negotiations.

21 The blockade of Sarajevo and the complete inability of the Bosnian

22 government to control the conditions in which the civilian population

23 lived was a strong bargaining chip in Karadzic's negotiations with the

24 Bosnian government and with the international community.

25 As Karadzic told the Bosnian Serb Assembly on the 12th of May:

Page 593

1 "Sarajevo is strategically in fifth place, but the battle in

2 Sarajevo and for Sarajevo is of decisive importance because it does not

3 allow the establishment of even the illusion of a state. Alija," again

4 referring to Alija Izetbegovic, "does not have a state while we have a

5 part of Sarajevo."

6 And as he said in December of 1993:

7 "Izetbegovic is talking because he cannot get out of Sarajevo

8 without our permission."

9 And as a result, forces under Karadzic's command encircled

10 Sarajevo, creating a siege of the city which would last 44 months. By

11 the 12th of May, indeed, Karadzic confirmed to the deputies at the

12 Assembly that Sarajevo was now encircled and the city had been isolated

13 for weeks. Now, recall that General Mladic was also at that session as

14 the newly appointed commander of the Bosnian Serb army, and he laid out

15 the crux of the Bosnian Serb plans for Sarajevo for the next three and a

16 half years.

17 "If we want to make the Muslims surrender, 300 guns must be

18 densely planted around Sarajevo, of calibre ranging from hand-held

19 rocket-launchers of 40 to 64 millimetres to Orkan," that's a

20 multi-rocket-launcher, "and P-65 rockets."

21 Now, Your Honours, I earlier mentioned a meeting that took place

22 two days after the May 12th session in the ARK region between members of

23 the army and municipality presidents to discuss and disseminate the

24 Strategic Objectives. General Galic, then Colonel Galic, was at that

25 meeting and indeed he proposed the agenda and the objectives were

Page 594

1 presented in order. Here is what was said about the fifth

2 Strategic Objective:

3 "It was said that Sarajevo must be either divided or razed to the

4 ground."

5 Galic, as I'll describe in a moment, was the commander of the

6 SRK, the forces besieging, shelling, and sniping Sarajevo from

7 September 1992 until August 1994. Now, at that 16th Assembly in

8 May of 1992, General Mladic also went on to explain that:

9 "We have to put a ring around the dragon's head of Sarajevo this

10 very moment and only those whom we let out should be allowed out."

11 And he went on to explain further:

12 "We are not going to say that we are going to destroy the

13 power-supply pylons or turn off the water-supply, no, because that would

14 get America out of its seat. But gentlemen, please, fine, well one day

15 there is no water at all in Sarajevo. What is it? We do not know.

16 Damage? We should fix it, no, we will fix it slowly. And the same with

17 the electrical supply."

18 Having successfully put a ring of heavy artillery around

19 Sarajevo, Karadzic and his forces used this control to terrorise

20 civilians. The shelling employed was time and again not aimed at

21 military targets but was simply scattered around the city or aimed at

22 civilian areas. You'll see, for example, an intercept in which Mladic

23 orders his forces to fire on Bascarsija, an old Muslim residential area

24 in the old town.

25 "Mladic: How soon can you fire?"

Page 595

1 His interlocutor subordinate:

2 "Well, I could fire in five to ten minutes, no sooner than that.

3 "Mladic: Tell me, can you also shell Bascarsija?"

4 His subordinate:

5 "Yes, I can.

6 "Mladic: I beg your pardon?

7 "I can, I can.

8 "Mladic: Fire a salvo at Bascarsija as well."

9 And his subordinate:

10 "Yes, sir."

11 The chief of the United Nations military observers, a man who

12 previously fought in Vietnam and who served as an observer in Lebanon and

13 in Israel has testified that from mid-May 1992 onwards artillery was very

14 heavy and directed virtually at the whole city. It was widespread.

15 Despite his experiences in Israel and Lebanon, he had never seen such

16 weight of fire used and particularly not against civilian targets. In

17 many cases there seemed to be no military value in the targets that were

18 selected at that time. And his evidence, Your Honours, will be confirmed

19 by other military observers, by war correspondents, and by other

20 witnesses.

21 The terrorisation of the civilian population is perhaps best

22 exemplified by the SRK use of modified air-bombs, which was added to its

23 arsenal in April of 1995. A modified air bomb is a weapon of enormous

24 destructive power. It's a weapon originally designed to be dropped from

25 an aircraft. The Bosnian Serbs modified it by fitting the bombs with

Page 596

1 rocket motors and that was an order so that it could be launched from the

2 ground. And the result of that modification was a grossly inaccurate

3 weapon. A modified air bomb has an range of 1 to 2 kilometres, that is

4 600 metres on either side. The use of such a weapon in a densely

5 populated civilian area violates not only the principle of distinction

6 that underpins international humanitarian law, but every basic tenet of

7 humanitarian law. And the campaign of terror against civilians also

8 employed a more precise manner of terror, and that was sniping.

9 Now, the term "sniping" during the course of this trial refers

10 not only to its more technical application, that is, a person with a

11 rifle with an optical sight, but also to a person directly targeting

12 people at a distance from a concealed area or a partially concealed

13 position by using a small-calibre weapon such as a rifle or a

14 machine-gun.

15 SRK snipers were positioned in various places, including the

16 high-rise buildings in Grbavica, the peak of Sharp Stone Ridge, and in

17 the school of theology in Nedzarici. And in Grbavica, for example, SRK

18 forces could snipe into the very heart of the city which is just adjacent

19 to that from a height and more importantly could target pedestrians,

20 buses, and other vehicles traversing the city on that east-west axis.

21 Whole areas of town became high danger zones which civilians avoided to

22 the extent possible because of the great risk of being struck by a sniper

23 bullet. In fact, the main avenue running parallel to the river from the

24 old town, from the western part of town, became known as Sniper Alley.

25 One international military witness, a senior military official, a

Page 597

1 general, recalls that in the area of Sniper Alley there were no military

2 positions, just civilians walking along the street, Sniper Alley.

3 Another senior military man observed that when civilians used covered

4 routes in order to avoid snipers, those cover routes would be shelled

5 signaling that whatever civilians did, whatever they tried to do to

6 escape, they would be targets.

7 The combined effect of the indiscriminate random shelling and the

8 sniping of civilians was terror, the ever-present fear of being the next

9 one hit or killed. Between April 1992 and November 1995, a citizen of

10 Sarajevo really couldn't be sure whether his or her last step would not

11 be their last. Daily life in this effective death lottery was

12 unpredictable. A civilian on a tram was just as much at risk of death or

13 injury as was a civilian from being killed or maimed by an air bomb in

14 another part of town. Small stretches of peace were suddenly interrupted

15 by another round of shelling - you'll see some of that in the videos we

16 will show you - and other times, the bombardment never seemed to end.

17 For 44 months, the civilian population lived under a pervasive sense of

18 terror; exactly what was intended.

19 Now, during the course of that 44 months, the SRK and other

20 Bosnian Serb forces did launch military attacks against legitimate

21 military objectives and did repel attacks of the Bosnian government

22 forces. These attacks and counter-attacks do not form part of the case

23 against the accused. The case against the accused is about his use of

24 deliberate infliction of terror against the civilian population through

25 endlessly repeated breaches of the cardinal principle of humanitarian

Page 598

1 law: The principle of distinction.

2 This is no technical principle. It embodies the most fundamental

3 aspect of international humanitarian law, that every commander has a duty

4 to make a distinction between military targets and civilians or civilian

5 objects. This principle was violated and crimes committed endless times

6 during the 44-month siege. The principle was violated when Karadzic's

7 forces targeted a civilian object or civilian or when they fired

8 indiscriminately into an area where civilians or civilian objects were or

9 when they fired at a target with disproportional force, that is, force

10 that is disproportionate to the anticipated military advantage.

11 Now, the evidence will show that Karadzic's forces were

12 entrenched and their weapons were dug-in and this means that the SRK knew

13 the accuracy and range of each weapon. They weren't moving around and

14 recalculating that. As witnesses will describe, an artillery operator

15 very quickly learns the range of his weapon once secured in the same

16 place. Even mortars had their base plates dug in.

17 Now, the accused may suggest that his forces repeatedly were

18 inaccurate in their efforts to hit military targets day after day, month

19 after month, year after year. Such a defence not only fails on the

20 facts, but it is particularly incredible when it comes to using modified

21 air-bombs or anti-personnel weapons such as cluster bombs. Deploying a

22 modified air bomb at a military target is the proverbial "shot in the

23 dark." You don't know where it will land or who it will kill, and it's

24 not only senseless but patently illegal. The evidence show that using

25 modified air-bombs in urban Sarajevo reveals in its starkest form the

Page 599

1 illegal intent against the civilian population of Sarajevo.

2 When one totals the conduct of Karadzic's forces, the random

3 shelling of civilian areas, the sniping of civilians, the targeting of

4 civilian objects while leading military targets alone, the use of

5 modified air-bombs, what is revealed is his primary purpose, for that

6 extended campaign was not the destruction, suppression, or neutralisation

7 of military targets. It was the terrorisation of an entire civilian

8 population.

9 I want to pause for a moment and talk about the extent of the

10 success of that objective in the daily life of Sarajevans because that

11 bears some focus at this moment. Because his campaign succeeded in its

12 objective, terror was the only constant in the otherwise uncertain daily

13 life of these besieged Sarajevans. As a senior doctor from a hospital

14 said, summing up the daily fear of trying to survive Sarajevan life:

15 "Every day on your way to work you ran the risk of being killed

16 or injured. Every day's work meant exposing yourself to the risk of

17 being added to the long list of the killed and the wounded."

18 Simple daily acts like crossing the street terrified people.

19 [Video-clip played]

20 MR. TIEGER: Indeed, as the sniping became more lethal, novel

21 anti-sniping measures were employed by the United Nations to assist the

22 civilians.

23 I'm sorry, I need to tell the booth it's a video.

24 Next please.

25 [Video-clip played]

Page 600

1 MR. TIEGER: Civilians huddled in the -- on the other side of an

2 APC trying to avoid the sniping.

3 In the context of the siege, Your Honours, sometimes months

4 without water, gas, and electricity, residents were compelled to leave

5 their shelter - that was shelter from the sniping and shelling they

6 sought to avoid - and nevertheless venture outside to find water or

7 forage for firewood to keep warm. They were forced into exposing

8 themselves to sniping and shelling.

9 Video, please.

10 [Video-clip played]

11 "Serbian snipers are perhaps 100, 150 yards away in the Kosovo

12 district where people live, right against the front line. There's no

13 safe place and lying low in such shelters as there are isn't an option

14 either, for the water's cut off and the only supply is in a basement of a

15 block of flats; the cellar itself is a kind of a refuge. But every time

16 they make the journey, which for most of them has to be every day, the

17 water carriers coming and going are in the line of fire.

18 "This day, the snipers have claimed one casualty already.

19 "Before the war, this used to be a country [indiscernible] the

20 victims this time a man shot in the leg just turning the last corner when

21 the sniper got him. It happens at this place every day and usually more

22 than once. Nothing special, but an everyday hazard for people who've

23 been under fire since April."

24 MR. TIEGER: Despite their efforts to take precautions, despite

25 their efforts to avoid the shelling and sniping, many civilians were

Page 601

1 nevertheless wounded or killed carrying out their everyday activities.

2 Mothers walking their children were shot. On the 18th of November, 1994,

3 a boy named Nermin Divovic, 7 years old, was walking beside his mother on

4 a street in the centre of Sarajevo, just another daily activity in most

5 days. His 8-year-old sister was walking ahead. As they crossed the

6 street, a Bosnian Serb sniper shot at them. The bullet passed through

7 his mother's stomach and killed Nermin instantly. And you'll see him

8 sprawling on the zebra crossing in this video.

9 [Video-clip played]

10 MR. TIEGER: School children playing with each other were shot.

11 People riding on trams were shot. Children playing in the snow were

12 shot. People collecting water were shot. Even when attending the

13 funeral of loved ones who had been killed, the civilians of Sarajevo were

14 targets and were shot.

15 Next video, please.

16 [Video-clip played]

17 "When they were arrived, they were told that Vedrana had already

18 been buried half an hour early because the graveyard was being shelled by

19 the Serbs. That was bad enough but it got much worse. More shells

20 started falling. One landed as the boys and girls from Vedrana's

21 children's home arrived with their flowers. As quickly as they could,

22 they dropped them on the graves of Vedrana; and the baby boy, the sniper

23 also murdered. It was time to go. As the family was leaving, the

24 gunners found their range."

25 MR. TIEGER: This terror attack, Your Honours, virtually killed a

Page 602

1 living city. A UN civil affairs officer will explain to you that he

2 arrived in mid-1993, arrived to find eerily empty streets, burned out

3 cars littering the city, trams stopped in their tracks, anti-sniping

4 barricades lining the avenues. Only brief glimpses could be caught of

5 the city's citizens as they scurried around, in and out of safety,

6 looking for some food or water.

7 [Video-clip played]

8 MR. TIEGER: Two years after his arrival in Sarajevo, a UN civil

9 affairs officer wrote this report of July 8th, 1995:

10 "Despite the reduction in military activity around the city, the

11 harassment of the civilian population continues almost unabated. Sniping

12 and mortaring are still at a reasonably high level. This seems to have

13 no particular military value but contributes to a general atmosphere of

14 terror in the city. Almost no civilians now use the city's main

15 east-west thoroughfare, Sniper Alley, so much that the snipers who used

16 to work that area now seem to have relocated."

17 Your Honours, the evidence will show that Radovan Karadzic

18 commanded and directed the establishment and maintenance of the Siege of

19 Sarajevo, and he commanded and directed the forces that perpetrated the

20 campaign of shelling and sniping in the context of that siege and that he

21 deliberate inflicted and modulated terror among the civilian population

22 for his own political ends.

23 Now, by the time the VRS was formed on the 12th of May and then

24 the SRK shortly thereafter on the 22nd of May, 1992, and the VRS subsumed

25 the territorial units, the SDS armed formations that had conducted the

Page 603

1 separation effort up to that point, the -- Karadzic had already been in

2 command of those units for -- around Sarajevo for about a month and a

3 half. Indeed, by the 25th of April, less than three weeks into the

4 conflict, he was able to take journalists above Sarajevo and declare that

5 he could take the city whenever he liked.

6 Next video, please.

7 [Video-clip played]

8 "If we didn't have hope for political solutions, we would already

9 free Sarajevo. We would have taken it because we can take it.

10 "To make his point, and he did it vividly, Mr. Karadzic took us

11 on a tour of the Serbs' front-line positions overlooking Sarajevo. He

12 used an old Serbian greeting, 'may God help you.

13 "The purpose of this high-visibility exercise was to show that

14 the Serbs were observing the cease-fire here and, he said, intended to go

15 on doing so.

16 "We don't shoot. We -- we try to -- just to keep peace and not

17 to -- to control the surroundings of Sarajevo.

18 "You could take the city tomorrow, couldn't you?

19 "Any time.

20 "This is the strength of the Serbs' position, that Sarajevo lies

21 at their feet. They say they're willing to negotiate about anything.

22 But if the Muslims want war, they can have war, and the city is

23 indefensible.

24 "Martin Bell, BBC News, above Sarajevo."

25 MR. TIEGER: Now, as I mentioned, the establishment of the VRS

Page 604

1 and the SRK in particular effectively brought all the besieging forces

2 under a unified and formal chain of command with Karadzic at the top as

3 supreme commander. And this diagram depicts the chain of command of the

4 VRS with respect to the SRK. At the top, the president and supreme

5 commander, president of the Presidency, at the beginning, and later the

6 president, Radovan Karadzic; down to the Main Staff, the commander of

7 which was Ratko Mladic; down to the Sarajevo Romanija Corps and its three

8 commanders during that period; and then down through the brigades.

9 Now, that command structure from 1992 to 1995 was both formal and

10 effective. The SRK was well trained, had a very good communications

11 system, and very good command and control as you'll hear from the

12 evidence. And the campaign of sniping and shelling was executed by the

13 SRK as a whole, centrally coordinated by the corps commander under the

14 command of the Main Staff.

15 Karadzic would exercise control over the shelling forces time and

16 again as you'll see in the context of agreements which could be

17 implemented on the ground, agreements when it suited political purposes,

18 for example, when a cease-fire and total exclusion zone was agreed upon

19 in February of 1994, the cease-fire was immediately implemented and the

20 Serb forces surrounding Sarajevo held their fire, tight command and

21 control system. And Karadzic and the leaders of the VRS could also

22 direct shelling and sniping at will. In March 1994, the VRS demanded

23 that the trams in Sarajevo stop running or they would be targeted by SRK

24 forces. And when the trams kept running, SRK snipers carried out this

25 threat, killing and wounding civilian passengers on multiple occasions.

Page 605

1 Now, SRK and Main Staff commanders were constantly informed by

2 UNPROFOR representatives, among others, that their subordinates were

3 shelling and sniping civilians. That shelling and sniping continued for

4 44 months and subordinates were not punished.

5 Orders and reports explicitly demonstrate not only the manner in

6 which the shelling and sniping of the SRK forces was controlled and

7 coordinated but also the manner in which information was channelled up

8 and down the chain of command. Now, the vast majority of orders were

9 issued and delivered orally, as you'll see from the evidence. And the

10 design, consistency, and pattern of the shelling and sniping confirms

11 their existence. But some VRS and SRK orders and reports were recorded,

12 and they confirm the effective command and control and coordination of

13 the shelling and sniping and the effective chain of communication and the

14 effective control within the SRK. For example, on the use of modified

15 air-bombs on the 13th of June, 1994, the Main Staff sent a letter to the

16 SRK command responding to an Ilijas command - and Ilijas is one of the

17 Sarajevo municipalities - a command request about the use of air-bombs.

18 And the Main Staff said:

19 "VRS Main Staff decides on the use of aerial bombs and possibly a

20 corps if the VRS Main Staff approves so and not a brigade according to

21 its own plan."

22 On the 6th of April, 1995, then SRK Corps Commander

23 Dragomir Milosevic issued the following order:

24 "The Ilidza Brigade will immediately prepare a launcher with an

25 aerial bomb and transport the bomb for launching. The most profitable

Page 606

1 target must be selected in Hrasnica and Sokolovici colony where the

2 greatest casualties and material damage would be inflicted."

3 The following day, a report was sent to the Main Staff.

4 "In Ilidza Brigade, one 120-millimetre mine was fired and one

5 250 kilogramme aerial bomb was launched at the centre of Hrasnica."

6 This bomb destroyed civilian houses, killed one civilian, and

7 wounded three others. Ziba Custovic , a housewife, was drinking her

8 morning coffee when the bomb killed her.

9 Next video, please.

10 [Video-clip played]

11 "The cease-fire appears to be crumbling rapidly. Today there

12 were offensives on at least two fronts in Bosnia and south of Sarajevo.

13 The suburb of Hrasnica came under Serbian attack for the third successive

14 day. A rocket levelled five houses, killed one person, and injured

15 several more."

16 MR. TIEGER: Your Honours, another example of the centralised

17 military control of the campaign can be found in a 15 August 1994 SRK

18 intelligence officer memo on the anti-sniping agreement. This document

19 noted:

20 "Sniping is to be stopped only by orders and the inner

21 organisation and accordingly by taking of adequate measures."

22 And it specifically notes the final decision on any measures

23 related to sniping would be taken by the corps commander. And before I

24 move on, just to note that the -- a warning issued by Dragomir Milosevic,

25 then the commander of the SRK, on 19 July 1995 confirms the knowledge of

Page 607

1 the corps command that the SRK was firing at civilians. This is a

2 comment on the problems in ammunition production and the lax behaviour of

3 spending ammunition as if it was held in abundance, trying to out-fire

4 the enemy, and on that subject Milosevic said:

5 "That is why we very often fire at inhabited settlements and

6 specific buildings when there are no combat actions whatsoever, spending

7 vast quantities of ammunition without paying attention to the fact that

8 we'll not have anything to stop the enemy when it comes to mounting a

9 decisive defence."

10 No combat actions whatsoever firing at the inhabited settlements

11 -- I'm sorry, and the last sentence was my recap of the warning.

12 The evidence, Your Honours, will show a concerted and coordinated

13 campaign which was implemented by the SRK under the military command of

14 the VRS for the purpose of terrorising civilian population of Sarajevo.

15 Karadzic commanded the VRS, this disciplined military organisation, and

16 in addition to that, commanded other forces around Sarajevo such as the

17 MUP. And he was not just the de jure supreme commander but the de facto

18 commander. And in those dual roles with that absolute authority, he

19 effectively planned, directed, controlled, and oversaw his military

20 subordinates and was in charge of the campaign of sniping and shelling

21 that terrorised Sarajevo civilians.

22 Now, as mentioned, as supreme commander, Karadzic was ultimately

23 responsible for setting the SRK strategy and for directing their overall

24 military objectives concerning Sarajevo. And a reflection of that, the

25 issuance of directives. Between 1992 and 1995, directives that were

Page 608

1 reviewed or signed by Karadzic were issued outlining how the VRS was to

2 implement the Strategic Objectives. Each of these directives contained

3 instructions for the military activities of SRK and reflected his command

4 and control of the VRS and the SRK. Directive 3, for example, was issued

5 in August of 1992. A section of that is devoted to the operational

6 objectives of the SRK and includes the instruction:

7 "Keep Sarajevo firmly under blockade and prevent its breaking."

8 Directive 6, issued and signed by Karadzic as supreme commander,

9 that was in November of 1993, similarly contains instructions for the SRK

10 including the instruction to:

11 "... use the main body of forces to prevent the deblockade of

12 Sarajevo."

13 Now, in addition to his control of the SRK forces, Karadzic also

14 controlled the other forces operating around Sarajevo. And you'll see an

15 order from Karadzic on 14th of November, 1993, which includes

16 instructions for the RS MUP forces, other VRS forces other than the SRK

17 operating around Sarajevo, the air force and anti-aircraft defence

18 forces, including rocket and helicopter units.

19 Now, beyond his position at the apex of this command and control

20 structure, his control of the shelling and sniping is reflected in the

21 agreements that he entered into involving cease-fires in Sarajevo.

22 Throughout the 44-month siege and throughout the 44-month terror

23 campaign, he controlled the level of terror when it politically suited

24 him. He could heighten or lower it to negotiate a deal on his terms.

25 One such example is July 1993. The political situation at that

Page 609

1 time is reflected in the weekly UNPROFOR report. That report records

2 that Bosnians -- Muslim -- the Bosnian president, president of the

3 Bosnian government, Alija Izetbegovic, appeared at that point to be

4 coming around to the idea of partitioning Bosnia and Herzegovina, a

5 policy long pursued by Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb leadership.

6 Karadzic had, that same week, made clear to UNPROFOR that his first

7 priority was to get the Bosnian government in Sarajevo to come to the

8 negotiating table, start discussing the partition of Bosnia. And the

9 report also notes:

10 "Negotiations could only proceed if there is an effective

11 cease-fire in place."

12 And you'll see all that in the July 1993 report which we'll

13 submit to you in evidence.

14 In light of those circumstances, how did Karadzic proceed? He

15 ordered the SRK to cease-fire as reflected in the following two orders:

16 First, dated July 15th, 1993, from Dragomir Milosevic:

17 "Pursuant to an order of president of RS, Dr. Radovan Karadzic,

18 based on the current political situation ... all units are forbidden to

19 fire on Sarajevo proper unless defending VRS positions. The unnecessary

20 and uncontrolled firing on Sarajevo is causing great harm to

21 Republika Srpska. Be in full control and render impossible the

22 unnecessary firing on Sarajevo ..."

23 And it also orders that now water and gas are to be provided to

24 the population as well as electricity.

25 And similarly, an order on 16th of July, 1993, from the acting

Page 610

1 command of the Sarajevo Romanija Corps:

2 "We received from the command of the Main Staff of VRS a warning

3 not to act over proper Sarajevo. Act only the case of necessary

4 self-defence and endangering military defence lines. The warning is

5 issued with regard to the agreement between President Karadzic, UNPROFOR,

6 and our enemies."

7 Your Honour, I'll want to turn next to Karadzic's awareness that

8 his forces were targeting civilians, but I am aware that, Mr. President,

9 you asked for some time before we adjourned today.

10 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

11 Before I raise this planning purpose, can I know how much longer

12 you need on Monday?

13 MR. TIEGER: It won't be the full session -- it won't be the full

14 day, Your Honour. If you give me a moment, I can calculate it. But it

15 will certainly be before the last session, but, as I say, I'm having a

16 bit of difficulty at the moment calculating precisely when we would

17 conclude. But I imagine the Court would have at least the last session

18 of the day.

19 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

20 As I mentioned earlier, should the accused maintain his absence

21 from the proceedings on Monday, there will be a hearing on

22 Tuesday, 3rd of November, in the afternoon, at which time the Chamber

23 will hear oral submissions from the Prosecution and the accused on the

24 manner in which we might proceed thereafter. The Chamber will then

25 decide the matter.