1 Wednesday, 15th July 1998
2 (Open session)
3 (The witness entered court)
4 (The accused entered court)
5 --- Upon commencing at 9.31 a.m.
6 THE REGISTRAR: Good morning, Your Honours.
7 Case number IT-97-24-T, the Prosecutor versus
8 Kovacevic.
9 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Keegan.
10 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you, Your Honour. If I
11 could first have this tape and transcript passed out?
12 That would be Prosecution Exhibit 48. 48A would be the
13 tape and 48B would be the transcript.
14 I should state, Your Honour, this tape
15 contains a number of sequences which we will be
16 referring to throughout the testimony today, beginning
17 now. It contains as well the meetings which the
18 witness had in Prijedor with Dr. Kovacevic. The
19 transcripts you're getting are the transcripts of the
20 statements of the accused at various points on the
21 tape.
22 WITNESS: EDWARD VULLIAMY (Resumed)
23 Examined by Mr. Keegan:
24 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, before we start, I would just
25 remind you for the benefit of the translators to please
1 slow down your rate of speech this morning.
2 Yesterday, you described being in the Loznica
3 camp and being able to see across into Bosnia to the
4 town where the people in the camp are come from. If we
5 could roll the tape, please, the first segment?
6 (Videotape played)
7 Do you recognise that building?
8 A. Yes, that was the school in Loznica where the
9 people were being kept.
10 Q. This view here which the cameraman is
11 shooting, what is it that he was shooting at here?
12 A. That's the view from where the school was,
13 over the border into Bosnia, and the hills you could
14 see in the background were in Bosnia and just above the
15 village from whence the people had come.
16 Q. The young man who is in the video now, do you
17 recall who that man was?
18 A. He was one of the people who had been
19 deported from the village of Sepak across the border to
20 Loznica.
21 Q. And Sepak was in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And Loznica is in the territory referred
24 to -- or the territory of the Republic of Serbia?
25 A. Yes.
1 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you. If we could stop the
2 tape now, please?
3 I would note, Your Honour, that that
4 interview -- this young man spoke English. The
5 interview is conducted in English on the tape.
6 Q. Now, after Belgrade, where did you travel to
7 once you got your accreditation and were authorised to
8 leave?
9 A. After three days waiting in Belgrade, we went
10 to Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital near Sarajevo.
11 Q. How did you travel to Pale?
12 A. We were transported there by a helicopter
13 belonging to the JNA, the Yugoslav People's Army, a
14 troop-transporting helicopter.
15 Q. Are you aware of who arranged for that
16 helicopter?
17 A. It's hard to know exactly, but it must have
18 been a combination of Dr. Karadzic who was waiting to
19 greet us at the other end and the JNA who flew the
20 helicopter, I can only presume.
21 Q. Once you arrived in Pale, what was the first
22 event?
23 A. We were first greeted by Dr. Karadzic himself
24 as we made to arrive at his headquarters. He, in fact,
25 came out and greeted us in the street outside, and
1 there was a conversation with him, some of which I
2 believe ITN filmed. When I use the word "we," from now
3 on I mean ITN and myself unless otherwise stated.
4 MR. KEEGAN: Could you run the next segment
5 of the tape, please? Could you fast-forward to the
6 next segment, please? Forward, please. Fast-forward
7 to the segment of the interview. Thank you. You can
8 run the tape at normal speed.
9 (Videotape played)
10 You can also turn up the sound, please?
11 If you could stop the take there, please?
12 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, is this the meeting that you
13 referred to earlier out in the street?
14 A. Yes, it is. He did say a number of things.
15 He, first of all, challenged us to embark upon the same
16 project that we were hoping to embark on now on the
17 other side. As you heard in the video, he wanted us to
18 go to camps in which Serbs were being held as well. He
19 came up with this strange line that he thought he was
20 afraid for our safety and thought the Muslims might try
21 to kill us and blame it on the Serbs and said this was
22 very usual. That seemed a very odd remark, and he did
23 promise that we would go wherever we wanted to.
24 Q. Later in your journey, in fact, during your
25 trip to the camps in the Prijedor area, was there an
1 incident of an attack?
2 A. Yes. Just as we were arriving at Omarska
3 later on the following day, there was an attack on our
4 convoy, or a supposed attack, which the escort told us
5 was an attack by Muslims or, as they put it,
6 "Mujahedin," in the woods, but I have since and at the
7 time suspected that that was a prank and I am now
8 convinced it was a prank.
9 Q. Is that supposed attack shown later on in
10 this videotape, as a matter of fact?
11 A. Yes, I believe it was filmed, yes.
12 Q. Now, after this interview with Radovan
13 Karadzic, what was next on the agenda in Pale?
14 A. We had the meeting with Karadzic and then we
15 had lunch with Professor Nikola Koljevic, his deputy
16 president, and various others who came in and out of
17 our company.
18 Q. After the lunch, did you travel to one of the
19 camps which the Bosnian Serbs wanted you to visit?
20 A. Yes. We went to Kula, which was a prison
21 just outside Sarajevo behind the Serbian lines, and
22 were taken to see the prisoners there. This was a
23 prison that Mr. Karadzic had told us was for people who
24 had murdered Serbs.
25 Q. Did you have the opportunity to speak to some
1 of the people held in that camp?
2 A. Yes, we did.
3 Q. What did they tell you was the reason they
4 were there?
5 A. We were able to speak to them in relative
6 freedom, although always in the presence of a guard.
7 Almost always in the presence of a guard. They left us
8 alone for a short time.
9 They were basically currency in the war, they
10 were waiting to be exchanged, they hoped. They had
11 come from a satellite community outside Sarajevo called
12 Hadzici and had gone first to a sports complex where
13 they said they had been maltreated and beaten but were
14 now in this prison where the conditions were harsh but
15 not that bad. They had beds to sleep on, for
16 instance. And we did talk to them, they were upset,
17 but this was not such - all relatively speaking - such
18 a terrible place.
19 Q. When did you finally begin your journey to
20 the Prijedor Opstina?
21 A. We began the long journey the following
22 morning from accommodation that we took in Pale.
23 Q. What route did you take to get to Prijedor?
24 A. It was a journey, could not be direct, of
25 course, because of the military situation. We went up
1 through eastern Bosnia to a town called Bjeljina and
2 then through a corridor which Dr. Karadzic had told us
3 was relatively safe and through a town called Brcko,
4 and from there across secure Serbian-held territory to,
5 that night, Banja Luka.
6 Q. Can you describe some of what you saw along
7 the way, what struck you during this trip through
8 eastern Bosnia?
9 A. Yes. Along the road --
10 JUDGE MAY: Just one moment, Mr. Vulliamy.
11 MR. OSTOJIC: Excuse me, Your Honour.
12 Yesterday the Court, respectfully, during an objection,
13 made a point of reference as to how remote
14 Mr. Vulliamy's testimony may be. He's speaking of
15 Brcko, which is remote and far away from Prijedor. I
16 know counsel is trying to show the trip he made.
17 However, the charges against Dr. Kovacevic in this case
18 do not involve these other camps and does not, as the
19 Court respectively knows, does not involve the areas
20 which Mr. Vulliamy may have seen after his visit to
21 Prijedor. So I'm asking the Court, respectfully, if
22 you may give us some guidance and perhaps remind
23 counsel for the Prosecution to move to areas that the
24 Court itself stated were more relevant, and that is the
25 Prijedor areas.
1 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Keegan, we haven't done the
2 courtesy of allowing you to reply, but we have
3 considered the matter. I think we know your argument
4 about widespread practice and the like, which you have
5 to prove. Nonetheless, we have come to the conclusion
6 that we are not going to be much assisted by evidence
7 of what was happening elsewhere in the former
8 Yugoslavia at the time, although it is relevant in
9 terms of time.
10 So would you take this part - we will allow
11 you to mention it, of course - but would you take it
12 briefly and come as quickly as possible to Prijedor.
13 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour, that was, in
14 fact -- our intent was to do it briefly but again, we
15 do believe, without specific guidance as to what the
16 limits of widespread and systematic proof are, for
17 example, that absent guidance that what happened in
18 Prijedor is sufficient for widespread and systematic or
19 with respect to the intent for genocide, what may or
20 may not be relevant in establishing when that intent
21 was formed, when it began --
22 JUDGE MAY: But you're going to rely
23 presumably on circumstantial evidence to prove that.
24 MR. KEEGAN: Exactly right, Your Honour,
25 which would include events -- we're going from the top
1 leadership of the Republic of Srpska down to the region
2 into Prijedor. We believe there is a direct link in
3 all of this which, of course, we would make at the end
4 of the case once all the evidence is in, but we are
5 attempting to bring in those issues outside of Prijedor
6 which we believe are relevant in as brief a manner as
7 possible. We are mindful of the Court's --
8 JUDGE MAY: I said at the outset what was
9 relevant were the events in Prijedor and what had a
10 direct bearing on those events.
11 MR. KEEGAN: Correct, Your Honour.
12 JUDGE MAY: And that remains the ruling. So
13 would you abide by that?
14 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour.
15 JUDGE MAY: Would you take this journey then
16 as briefly as possible?
17 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour, I will.
18 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, I believe I had asked you what,
19 during this journey, struck you about the area that you
20 were viewing?
21 A. The appalling destruction in the town of
22 Brcko which we were told was a Serbian town destroyed
23 by the Croats, which I now know not to be true, and a
24 pattern which continued all the way to Prijedor --
25 MR. KEEGAN: Could we run the next -- could
1 we run the next segment of the video, please, that
2 showing the destroyed buildings? It begins at 11.38 on
3 the tape.
4 (Videotape played)
5 You can turn the sound down.
6 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, is this the film that was taken
7 during your journey from Pale through the corridor?
8 A. Yes, it is, and it shows the sort of damage
9 to houses that -- and buildings that you could see
10 along the way.
11 One of the oddities that struck me was the
12 way in which you would sometimes see rows of intact
13 houses, or houses that were untouched, and then
14 suddenly adjacent to them or a little along the road
15 you would see houses that were charred, burned out, or,
16 in some cases, strafed with machine gun fire or damaged
17 in some other way like that. Sometimes you would have
18 great clusters of damaged buildings or rows of charred
19 or burned houses, and then maybe one or even -- one or
20 two untouched houses in among them, and it was quite
21 bizarre. You would see people perhaps gardening or
22 hanging out their washing surrounded by all these
23 destroyed houses. It was a strange sight and
24 continued, well, all the way through into the
25 Prijedor-Banja Luka area.
1 Q. The segment that is being shown now, is that
2 an example of what you were just describing as the
3 camera continues to move?
4 A. Well, here are intact houses, houses under
5 construction. Yes, that's the sort of thing.
6 Sometimes it would be the other way around, you'd see a
7 row of damaged houses and then an intact one next door.
8 MR. KEEGAN: If we could stop the tape there,
9 please?
10 The next segment will begin at about 13.30.
11 Q. Now, Mr. Vulliamy, you indicated that you
12 went, during the trip from Pale, to Banja Luka. How
13 long did you remain in Banja Luka?
14 A. We arrived in Banja Luka fairly late that
15 night because it was a long journey, and we stayed
16 overnight in Banja Luka, and the next morning, early,
17 set off -- we were met by a military official in Banja
18 Luka and made to depart for Prijedor.
19 Q. Do you recall the name of the individual who
20 met you?
21 A. Milutinovic. He was a Major Milutinovic, in
22 some way responsible for liaison on behalf of the
23 Bosnian Serb army in Banja Luka.
24 Q. And he was the escort to Prijedor?
25 A. He accompanied us to Prijedor, yes, from
1 Banja Luka, we set off early that morning.
2 MR. KEEGAN: If you could just pause the tape
3 there, please? Thank you.
4 Q. Now, as you were on your way to Prijedor,
5 what struck you about the nature of that trip?
6 A. As the -- as we --
7 JUDGE MAY: Have you got a new point,
8 Mr. Ostojic?
9 MR. OSTOJIC: I do, Your Honour, and I
10 apologise. If we look on the map, we see Brcko to the
11 right, west here, by this shaded green area -- east,
12 and he travels through and again, Banja Luka, to show
13 homes that were destructed or items and things that may
14 or may not have occurred in Banja Luka, in Brcko, later
15 in Jajce, in Sanski Most, I don't believe respectfully
16 is compelling in any manner, much less relevant, to the
17 charges brought against Dr. Kovacevic here, and I
18 understand the film depicts those items, and my concern
19 is that either I'm misunderstanding the Court's
20 limiting instruction and guidance to us, but I can't
21 find how the homes in Banja Luka are at all relevant to
22 Dr. Kovacevic and what they've alleged occurred in a
23 very small town in a limited area of Prijedor and the
24 camps that we've referenced, namely, Trnopolje, where
25 he visited.
1 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Keegan, are we coming now to
2 Prijedor? We are the same day.
3 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour, we are. We
4 are now -- this segment of the tape and the next
5 description will be the area between Banja Luka and
6 Prijedor as they're driving there, and we are now
7 proceeding into the meeting in Prijedor.
8 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Well, let's get on towards
9 Prijedor.
10 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour.
11 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, the question was: As you were
12 on that drive between Banja Luka and Prijedor, what was
13 it that struck you about what you were seeing along
14 that drive?
15 A. The damaged houses and the proportion of
16 burned, shelled, or blown-out houses became worse. In
17 particular, there was a hamlet, a community on the main
18 road and a village stretching up to the north of the
19 main road to our right, and we were talking about
20 history with Major Milutinovic at that point, he was
21 talking about Mount Kozara and its history and we were
22 asking what the place was, it was a town called Kozarac
23 which is a just few miles or on the outskirts of
24 Prijedor, and the damage visible even from the main
25 road in Kozarac was quite shocking. It was extensive.
1 Q. You indicated in the first part of your answer,
2 on that part of the trip the destruction got worse.
3 What, if any, difference did you notice between the
4 area immediately near Banja Luka as compared to the
5 area as you got closer to Prijedor?
6 A. Well, the destruction was worse. There were
7 some people out and about in the fields and some houses
8 were still intact. I remember asking Major
9 Milutinovic, "Are the intact houses -- do they belong
10 to the Serbs?" And actually he didn't answer, he
11 grunted and went "Hmm." I took that to be an
12 affirmative or, at least, not a denial --
13 Q. In the area of Banja Luka, in fact, in the
14 area immediately adjacent to Banja Luka, was there any
15 destruction of the homes as you were passing?
16 A. Not a great deal, that I recall. Nothing
17 like what we saw when we got to Kozarac anyway.
18 MR. KEEGAN: Can you run that segment of the
19 tape, please? Can we run the tape, please?
20 (Videotape played)
21 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, is this the area in the
22 vicinity of Kozarac and the vicinity of Prijedor that
23 you were referring to?
24 A. That's coming towards it, yes.
25 Q. You mentioned people being out and about in
1 the fields. Did you ask Major Milutinovic about those
2 individuals in the fields?
3 A. Yes. I said, "Who are they?" He said some
4 were --
5 Q. Pause the tape, please.
6 A. -- some were Serbs, some were, he said,
7 Muslims and Croats who have accepted the new order, and
8 we asked where all the other people had gone, and he
9 said that 40.000 refugees had left the area.
10 To be honest with you, I didn't want to get
11 into an argument with him over who they were or why at
12 this point. We had an object in mind, which was to get to
13 Omarska, and I didn't really see any point in crossing
14 him at this point, so we just talked about, well,
15 history, actually.
16 Q. Now, the building that's now being shown on
17 the videotape -- and you can run the videotape,
18 please -- did you become aware of what that building
19 was?
20 A. I became aware later. I now know that that
21 is a place called Keraterm on the edge of Prijedor, but
22 I wasn't --
23 Q. Pause the tape, please.
24 A. -- until later that afternoon.
25 Q. This building that is now on the screen, do
1 you recognise what that building is?
2 A. Yes. That's the station, the police station,
3 at Prijedor. We pulled up just across the road from
4 here outside the civic centre, and obviously our
5 attention was attracted by this line of women who were
6 waiting outside the police station.
7 Q. Did you have an opportunity to speak with
8 some of those women?
9 A. Yes, we did, both now and at another point
10 later.
11 Q. Why did they tell you that they were queued
12 up outside the police station?
13 A. They were desperate for information about
14 their menfolk, in the main, who had been taken from
15 them, sons and husbands, and they wanted to know where
16 they were. We heard the name "Omarska" mentioned by a
17 number of these women. They were also having to, and
18 one in particular whom I interviewed, were having to
19 make a very difficult choice because they were also,
20 while waiting for information, also waiting to talk
21 about leaving Prijedor.
22 The woman I interviewed had -- her home had
23 been attacked by the people who had been shooting into
24 her home, they had taken some of her property, and said
25 they wanted her house and that she could, at a price,
1 leave, and she didn't know whether to leave for her own
2 safety or to stay and wait for news of her husband who
3 had disappeared and who she thought was in Omarska, and
4 her story was typical of others that were being told
5 both to me on another occasion and to the television
6 crew at that time.
7 Q. When you were having your conversation with
8 Mr. Milutinovic about Kozarac, did he describe to you
9 what he believed to be the significant history of
10 Kozarac?
11 A. Yes, he did. He was looking at -- this is
12 back before we arrive in Prijedor now from the car, and
13 he was looking up at Mount Kozara, and he was telling
14 the story of the Jasenovac concentration camp which had
15 been established in the 1940s by the Nazi puppet
16 Croatian regime for a very large number of Serbs, some
17 gypsies, Jews, and Croat dissidents, and he was telling
18 the history of suffering in that camp and said that
19 some of the people who had attacked the Serbs on that
20 occasion had been Croats and Muslims from this area.
21 Q. Now, did you ask the Major about the camps in
22 the Prijedor area that you wanted to see while you were
23 driving?
24 A. Yes. Frequently -- we were talking about
25 Omarska mostly, and he was anxious that we go to
1 another camp called Manjaca, and he said, "I think I
2 can get you into Manjaca. It's an interesting camp,"
3 he said, "It's run by the military, and there are
4 prisoners of war in Manjaca." He said, "I think that's
5 where you're going to be going." And we said, "Well,
6 no, I think we're going to Omarska. That's our plan.
7 That's what Dr. Karadzic said we could do."
8 MR. KEEGAN: The next segment of the tape
9 will be at 18.07.
10 Q. Now, once you arrived at the police station
11 and went inside, how did the next series of events
12 occur?
13 A. Well, we were introduced to the -- by Major
14 Milutinovic at first -- downstairs firstly to the
15 police chief, a man called Simo Drljaca and to other
16 local dignitaries and leaders of what I later know was
17 called the Crisis Staff of Prijedor.
18 Q. Who were you introduced to?
19 A. We were introduced to police chief Drljaca,
20 we were introduced to the mayor, Milomir Stakic, to his
21 deputy, Milan Kovacevic, and to the man Mr. Milutinovic
22 obviously knew very well, Colonel Arsic, Vladimir
23 Arsic, who was obviously the military man for the area.
24 MR. KEEGAN: Could you forward the tape to
25 the beginning of the meeting, please? Right there.
1 Thank you.
2 (Videotape played)
3 Q. Is this the beginning of the meeting as you
4 just described?
5 Could you pause the tape right there,
6 please?
7 Mr. Vulliamy, can you identify the people
8 that we now see on the screen, please, beginning from
9 left to right?
10 A. Yes. On the left is Mr. Stakic, the mayor of
11 Prijedor; next to him, one along, is Mr. Kovacevic,
12 introduced as his deputy; next to him is, in the
13 middle, is Colonel Vladimir Arsic, in charge of the
14 army in the area; next to him, the last man on the
15 right, is Simo Drljaca, introduced as the police chief
16 -- introduced himself as the police chief, actually;
17 and a woman named Mrs. Nada Balaban who seemed to act
18 as interpreter, spokeswoman, and sort of assistant to
19 the men.
20 MR. KEEGAN: If we could run the tape,
21 please?
22 Q. How did the meeting actually begin once you
23 were in the room?
24 A. Well, it was a very long meeting, longer than
25 we had planned. It began with brief opening remarks
1 without questions from us from --
2 MR. KEEGAN: Pause the tape there, please.
3 Sorry.
4 A. Well, from the main players, Mr. Drljaca,
5 Kovacevic, and briefly Stakic made opening remarks.
6 MR. KEEGAN: If you could run the tape with
7 the sound, please?
8 And, Your Honour, this is where you'll also
9 have the transcript to assist you in this initial
10 part.
11 THE INTERPRETER (interpreting audio):
12 "Although we have negative experience with the
13 International Community, I ask, not because of the
14 propaganda, but because of the ..."
15 "There are two things why I disagree with your
16 visit ..."
17 (Videotape played)
18 MR. KEEGAN: Stop the tape, please.
19 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, during this meeting, did you
20 form an opinion as to who was in charge of the meeting,
21 who was running the meeting?
22 A. Well, thus far it seemed that the man doing
23 most of the talking up until this point was, if you
24 like, the chairman of the meeting, or at least he was
25 the one who was making the most pertinent remarks, and
1 I found them interesting remarks because even before we
2 had asked a question, we were talking about
3 concentration camps and now he was defining what we
4 were about to see is not concentration camps but
5 transit camps and talking about British Intelligence's
6 failure to identify the Nazi camps in the '40s, I mean,
7 I thought we were in the domain.
8 Sorry. To answer your question,
9 "Mr. Kovacevic" is the answer.
10 Q. What part of the meeting gave you the
11 impression, beyond the fact that he was giving you
12 introductory remarks, that he was in control of the
13 meeting?
14 A. In control of the talking, certainly yes, I
15 got the impression that he was the man who was opening
16 the proceedings and chairing the meeting, yes.
17 Q. Did he exercise the -- did you note him, for
18 example on the film, exercising control over the
19 conduct of the meeting with the other participants?
20 A. Yes. There's a moment where his boss, mayor
21 Stakic, tries to make a contribution and he shuts him
22 up. Yes, he was delivering this monologue and --
23 Q. How is it that -- you indicated he tried to
24 shut him up. What, in fact, did you see him do and
25 what gave you that impression?
1 A. He waved a hand without looking at him as if
2 to say, "Be quiet, I'm talking."
3 Q. Did Milomir Stakic then, in fact, stop
4 talking?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. After the introductory speeches --
7 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Keegan, I'm going to raise
8 something before we move on.
9 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour.
10 JUDGE MAY: The transcript which we have
11 consists of a translation of what the accused said and
12 then the interpretation as it appeared on the tape at
13 the meeting. There is, in parts, a difference between
14 what it is said here that Mr. Kovacevic said and the
15 way the interpreter interpreted it on the tape.
16 Clearly we need to be sure that what it is alleged that
17 the accused said is agreed as to what he said, and I
18 would be grateful if you could perhaps, rather than
19 stopping things at the moment, whether you could agree
20 that with the Defence. If there is any dispute, let us
21 know.
22 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour. The way --
23 the instructions given to -- this is a final
24 translation from the translation unit here at the
25 Tribunal. The instructions are simply to put down
1 everything that's said on the tape rather than trying
2 to differentiate between people, so they will note any
3 word which they can decipher which is said on the tape,
4 so that is the complete tape.
5 Anything attributed directly to the accused
6 is the official translation from the ICTY translation
7 unit as they interpret what they hear on the tape.
8 They then simply put down whatever it is the
9 interpreter said, what the English reporters are saying
10 as well, so it is a complete transcript.
11 In fact, what you have in this packet, Your
12 Honour, are two separate transcripts on the same
13 interview on the same comments because there were, in
14 fact, two camera crews there and so there are two
15 different recordings. They differ only in respect that
16 one camera started rolling, you know, seconds before
17 the other and may have gone a bit longer than the
18 other, but we provided and both segments are on the
19 videotape so you can view it for yourself and hear the
20 words for yourself, so we provided both cameras.
21 But that is the way -- but I will meet with
22 the Defence per your instructions to see if they have
23 any question about the interpretation as provided by
24 the Tribunal.
25 JUDGE MAY: Yes, if the Defence would do
1 that, please?
2 MR. OSTOJIC: We will, Your Honour.
3 JUDGE MAY: Thank you.
4 MR. KEEGAN:
5 Q. Now, Mr. Vulliamy, after the -- is that all,
6 Your Honour? I'm sorry.
7 Mr. Vulliamy, after the introductory remarks,
8 how did the meeting then proceed, the meeting in main?
9 A. Well, it proceeded at length. The first to
10 speak after that was Colonel Arsic who gave quite a
11 long talk or question-answer session. He wanted us to
12 go to Manjaca, a camp nearby, another camp nearby, and
13 he said it would be interesting for us, he said there
14 were prisoners of war there, that he had the authority
15 to take us straight there, and he thought it would be
16 interesting for us, and we said, "No, we want to go to
17 Omarska," and he said he thought Omarska would be
18 boring for us because there were only civilian refugees
19 there and that Manjaca would be much more interesting.
20 But we didn't want to go to Manjaca. And the more he
21 wanted us to go there and not Omarska, of course, the
22 more we realised that Omarska was the place to go, and
23 our instincts were right.
24 Q. Were there other reasons or objective reasons
25 why you did not want to go to Manjaca?
1 A. Well, yes. There were professional reasons,
2 frankly. Manjaca had already been photographed from
3 the outside. The Red Cross, International Red Cross,
4 had been inside Manjaca, deemed it to be a pretty awful
5 place, they were very worried about it, and -- pardon
6 this element but it is of consideration for us --
7 Mr. Gutman of News Day, a rival newspaper, had been to
8 get in there and our feeling was that if he was going
9 to get into Manjaca, we should go for Omarska, and that
10 was just a professional consideration, but by and large
11 we had come to go to Omarska, and that's where we
12 intended to go.
13 Q. After your question-and-answer segment with
14 Colonel Arsic, how did it end, his participation?
15 A. Well, after a while, Colonel Arsic gave up on
16 his Manjaca idea, he shrugged and said, "Well, I can't
17 give you permission to go to Omarska. If you want to
18 go to Omarska" -- and Trnopolje was also being
19 mentioned but Omarska mainly -- he gestured to his
20 right and said, "You need to talk to these men because
21 they're in charge of Omarska and Trnopolje."
22 Q. Who was on his right?
23 A. Mr. Kovacevic and Mr. Stakic. He also said
24 that we would need to speak to Mr. Drljaca, but his
25 gesture was in this direction.
1 Q. How did the meeting then proceed?
2 A. Mr. Stakic spoke next, and he gave us some
3 general history of what had been going on in the area.
4 He said that his authorities had been trying to make
5 peace with the Muslims, but they weren't interested in
6 making peace. He talked about the situation in Kozarac
7 and told us that 3.000 or 3.500, I'm afraid I can't
8 remember, weapons had been found in Kozarac, that his
9 authorities faced -- well, he gave the belief an
10 insurrection in Kozarac, but he said that the local
11 people wanted peace but that Muslim extremists were
12 coming in from the outside and agitating the local
13 Muslims into an insurrection, and he described this
14 situation.
15 Q. Did he specifically address the idea of
16 getting into Omarska? Did you specifically ask him
17 about the camps and who was in the camps?
18 A. Yes, we did, and he -- well, he disliked the
19 word "camp," he said, "These are not camps, they are
20 transit centres." It was a round robin, this
21 conversation, if you understand. We were calling them
22 "camps" - it was a "transit centre" at this point, a
23 "collection centre" another time - but he said that
24 they were civilians and it was not interesting for us
25 to go, and he also said that it wasn't safe for us to
1 go.
2 Q. Who then picked up the discussion after
3 Mr. Stakic?
4 A. Mr. Kovacevic then made his main -- well, we
5 had our main discussion with him, and -- well, this I
6 found very interesting because he told us that he had
7 been born in Jasenovac, the Croatian concentration camp
8 for Serbs, when he was a boy, and I sort of -- I was
9 getting very impatient, but I remember waking up at
10 this point and I was interested because here was
11 clearly an interesting man born in a concentration
12 camp, and here we're in the rather strange situation of
13 asking to see a camp that he has just been introduced
14 to us as running, and I wanted to -- in fact, I even
15 tried to have a sort of private conversation with him
16 at that point, but it wasn't possible. But he talked
17 about that. He said that "There is nothing that you
18 can tell us, the Serbs, about camps because, you
19 know" -- well, he said, "I was born in one." And I
20 thought that was a fair point and I was interested in
21 him.
22 He then went on to talk about, as Mr. Stakic
23 had done, the problems facing his authorities and some
24 of the atrocities which had been committed against the
25 Serbs in the area.
1 Q. Did he describe -- you mentioned
2 atrocities -- some of the atrocities that had been
3 committed against Serbs. Did he mention any specifics?
4 A. He said that 20 Serbs had been shot at a
5 nearby village, Hambarine, or Hambarina or something,
6 and that some of his people had been killed there by
7 Muslims. He said with at one point that Serbian babies
8 had been seen nailed to crosses floating down the Drina
9 river with their eyes gouged out.
10 Q. Had you heard a similar remark during the
11 same trip?
12 A. Yes. Dr. Karadzic had said the same thing
13 about the Drina (sic) river over the other side of
14 Bosnia the previous day, and I had read that as well.
15 It was quite a favourite allegation.
16 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, when you're referring to the
17 comments by the accused, you indicated he said,
18 referred to the Serbian babies, also floating down the
19 Drina, and then now you said Dr. Karadzic mentioned the
20 same thing on the Drina on the other side of Bosnia.
21 You referred to the same river for both.
22 A. Sorry. Dr. Kovacevic was talking about the
23 Una, Dr. Karadzic was talking about the Drina.
24 Q. After this discussion about atrocities, how
25 did the conversation then proceed?
1 A. The same as before. We wanted to go to
2 Omarska. Dr. Kovacevic said that he was worried about
3 our security if we went to Omarska, and at this point I
4 remember thinking: This is getting silly. Every time
5 Manjaca is mentioned, our security -- there was no
6 mention of security, it's fine. If we want to go to
7 Omarska, they can't guarantee our security because of
8 the Muslims.
9 The more this went on, the more we got
10 impatient, frankly, probably quite discourteous, and
11 said, "Look, we're going to Omarska. We're going to
12 stay here until you give us permission to go to
13 Omarska," and it got less polite, if you like.
14 Q. There was a mention on the tape of a video by
15 the accused. Did they, in fact, show you a video?
16 A. Yes. At one point Mr. Stakic got out a video
17 which he showed us to fill us in on the local
18 situation.
19 Q. What are the significant events on that video
20 that you recall?
21 A. If you'll forgive me, I didn't pay much
22 attention to the video. I remember a shot of them
23 finding the Koran in somebody's house that I didn't
24 find very interesting, they found some ammunition in
25 somebody's house, which I suppose was more
1 interesting. I remember it was in a JNA ammunition
2 box, and -- I don't remember much about the video. The
3 idea of the video was that there was an Islamic Jihad
4 going on in Prijedor.
5 Q. After the video, did the discussion then get
6 to history of the area and what they were achieving
7 here?
8 A. Yes. After the video, we had moved seats by
9 this stage, and Mr. Kovacevic got out some maps -- a
10 map and was talking about what the Serbs were trying to
11 achieve, and the map -- I remember the map was from
12 1940 or 41, I had seen it before, and he talked about
13 how the Serbs needed to protect themselves in the
14 territories on which they lived and the tenor slightly
15 changed as he turned round, I remember to us, and said,
16 "You are lucky to be here at a great moment in the
17 history of the Serbs."
18 Q. After the history lesson and the statements
19 by the accused, did you then leave the meeting?
20 A. There was a bit more of "We want to go to
21 Omarska," "It's not safe," and then we were asked to
22 leave the room, indeed leave the building and wait
23 outside in the street.
24 Q. For about how long do you believe you waited
25 outside?
1 A. I think it was about 20 minutes.
2 Q. During that time, did you carry on interviews
3 with the women out in the queue that you referred to
4 earlier?
5 A. Yes, we were waiting just outside and the
6 film crew went and did some interviews. I did one or
7 two more, yes.
8 Q. As you formed your convoy to leave the area,
9 did anyone attempt to join your group at that point?
10 A. Yes. To my professional annoyance, a
11 colleague called Tim Judah of the Times of London and a
12 friend of mine arrived with a French journalist in his
13 car, and we greeted each other, and it was sort of --
14 pardon me for purporting the conversation in a
15 vernacular way. "Well, so what are you doing?" "We're
16 hoping to go to Omarska, actually." "Well, I never.
17 That's what I'm here for. Do you mind if we join
18 you?" Publicly to him, of course, I said, "Sure,
19 great, why not." Privately I was thinking "Damn." So
20 they tried to join the convoy but they weren't allowed
21 to because --
22 Q. Sorry. Who prevented them from joining the
23 convoy?
24 A. The soldiers, the escort.
25 Q. Were they given a reason why they were not
1 allowed to join the convoy?
2 A. Well, they actually did sneak in behind us
3 and then they were thrown off the convoy because the
4 soldiers said, "Are you a member of Dr. Karadzic's
5 party or part of his invitation," or whatever the
6 soldier said, and Judah of The Times said, "No." And
7 the soldier said, "Well then get off the convoy.
8 You're not coming."
9 MR. KEEGAN: The next segment of the tape
10 we're going to use will begin at 27.42.
11 Q. Now, can you describe what this convoy was
12 made up of that you were on, Mr. Vulliamy?
13 A. There was our bus, our military bus. By
14 now -- which we, by the way, had been on all the way
15 since Pale, there was also by now ITN's fixer, we call
16 them, translator, fixer, logistics man from Belgrade
17 had brought down a vehicle of his own, a red bus, as I
18 recall, and there were various other cars belonging to
19 the local authorities.
20 Q. Besides the ITN teams and yourself, what
21 other media accompanied you on this trip?
22 A. There was another, believe it or not, yet
23 another film crew, this was a crew from Pale who had
24 been with us all the way, they were Bosnian Serb
25 television -- if you can believe it, making a film
1 about us making a film about the camps.
2 (Videotape played)
3 MR. KEEGAN: The clip that we want is, I
4 believe, at 27.42, please? If you could just simply
5 fast-forward the tape?
6 Okay. The times apparently are not
7 matching. It's once they're out on the road. Thank
8 you.
9 Q. Is this the camera now showing the convoy
10 leaving Prijedor?
11 A. Yeah. Here we go.
12 Q. And during this segment of the trip, were you
13 taken directly to Omarska?
14 A. No, we weren't. I was rather alarmed when we
15 passed the turn-off to Omarska as we left Prijedor,
16 it's fairly soon after you leave Prijedor, and the turn
17 off to Omarska is signed to the right, and we didn't go
18 down it. I now know Omarska to be about two minutes up
19 that road, but we didn't, we carried on and went round
20 a -- turned off instead down a dusty track and drove
21 along a sort of maze of smaller roads for some time.
22 Q. The segment of the video that is being shown
23 here now, do you recall what is going to occur now on
24 this video, what part of the trip is this?
25 A. Yes, I think what's about to happen now is
1 the supposed attack on our convoy by what we were told
2 were Muslim fighters in the woods.
3 Q. How did the course of this attack proceed?
4 What did the escorts actually do here? What did they
5 tell you?
6 A. Well, it was quite -- a rather unconvincing
7 drama, really. Some soldiers alighted from their
8 vehicles, one I remember went down into a ditch to wait
9 in the bushes, another was running along over the
10 bridge, but all the while -- there was some firing,
11 there was some shooting, and the APC that you can see
12 up front did fire its turret gun towards the woods, so
13 there was shooting, but all the while one of the
14 soldiers who had got out was just sort of standing
15 around in the field.
16 Q. The vehicles stayed right where they were on
17 the road?
18 A. Yes. There was no instruction to take cover
19 or anything.
20 MR. KEEGAN: You can continue to run the
21 tape, please.
22 Q. Are these the scenes that you have just
23 previously described?
24 A. This is part of it. He's actually -- I think
25 he left the convoy at an earlier point and is running
1 back across the bridge.
2 Q. Did you have a conversation with Major
3 Milutinovic while this was going on?
4 A. Yes, well, Major Milutinovic said that it was
5 unsafe, that we were about to be attacked by Mujahedin,
6 and it wasn't safe for us to go on.
7 Q. Did he make any specific references to
8 journalists?
9 A. Yes. Well, later on, during the
10 conversation -- we talked about it amongst ourselves.
11 Some of our party were extremely worried. One said,
12 "Well, you remember what Dr. Karadzic said about
13 Muslims shooting journalists and blaming it on the
14 Serbs --"
15 MR. KEEGAN: Excuse me, could you pause the
16 tape there, please?
17 A. "What about the other way around? What about
18 if the Serbs shoot the journalists and blame it on the
19 Muslims?" I was not feeling very cautious at this
20 point; I was just cross. I said, "This is a prank.
21 Can we continue, please? This is all nonsense." And
22 Major Milutinovic said, "But they shoot journalists
23 around here, you know?" And I -- ill-advisedly, I
24 said, "Well, this is silly. I want to go to Omarska.
25 Can we hurry up, please?"
1 Q. Did you continue on to the camp?
2 A. Yes, the battle evaporated and we carried on.
3 Q. Did you go straight -- from that battle, did
4 you go straight into the camp?
5 A. No, we wound around more of these back roads
6 and we had seen, the previous day, some of the houses
7 in which people were living draped with white flags or
8 sheets or white tea towels hanging from the trees or
9 the window boxes and I asked Major Milutinovic what this
10 meant, and he said that these were Muslims and Croats
11 who accepted the new order.
12 In these back roads around Omarska, in the
13 approach to Omarska, there were large numbers of these
14 houses hanging sheets or pillowcases from their
15 buildings or the trees, and Major Milutinovic told us
16 something different today, he said that these were now
17 people, Muslims and Croats, waiting to leave.
18 MR. KEEGAN: If we could now run the next
19 section of the tape, please, just where you stopped?
20 (Videotape played)
21 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, is this the arrival of the
22 convoy into the camp Omarska?
23 A. Yes. We went through the gates or back
24 gates, I now know them to be of Omarska which was --
25 Q. If you could stop the tape there, please?
1 A. -- an iron ore mine.
2 Q. Could you back it up just a bit so the three
3 men are in the frame, please? Thank you.
4 Now, can you identify those three men,
5 please, from left to right?
6 A. Yes. On the left is Major Milutinovic, our
7 escort from Banja Luka; in the middle is the man who
8 had been at the meeting in the police station, Simo
9 Drljaca; and the man on the right was introduced to us
10 as the commander of the camp or centre, as they were
11 calling it, a Mr. Meakic.
12 MR. KEEGAN: If you could roll the tape,
13 please?
14 Q. After your arrival here at the camp, where
15 was it that you were first taken?
16 A. Well, we came through the gates which
17 identified where we were, Rudnik Omarska, Omarska
18 mine. We then went around the side of this building to
19 a sort of courtyard, a courtyard that's behind the man
20 with the camera there, and from that courtyard we could
21 see a number of buildings, the most prominent of which
22 was a large red, rusty red, what looked like a hangar
23 or a warehouse of some kind.
24 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, at this point were you making
25 any requests to the people who were escorting you in
1 the camp -- to the prisoners?
2 A. Well, we said we wanted to act upon
3 Dr. Karadzic's guarantee, we wanted free access to the
4 camp, and we wanted to be able to interview the
5 prisoners, and we were told initially, "Well, they
6 don't want to talk to you." We were told that by
7 Mrs. Balaban, who I think translating an instruction
8 from somebody else.
9 Q. The scene that is now showing on the video,
10 where is this taking place?
11 A. Well, this is later on. What we saw were a
12 group of about 30 men coming out of this large hangar
13 building being lined up by men with guns, armed guards,
14 and in a fairly pathetic and obviously well-rehearsed
15 drill, jogging across the yard into this building,
16 which was the canteen.
17 Q. Pause the tape right there, please. Now, on
18 the tape earlier, we saw you joining Penny Marshall
19 here at this table during this discussion with this
20 individual. Do you recall what struck you the most
21 about the conversation that you had that was going on
22 with this young man when you asked him questions about
23 the camp?
24 A. Well, yes, we were trying to ask questions
25 about the camps as best we could with these men as they
1 sat down to have their lunch which they were eating
2 like very, very hungry men. We were trying to ask them
3 about conditions, and I remember this man saying
4 something I'll never forget, he said, "I do not want to
5 tell you any lies, but I cannot speak the truth."
6 MR. KEEGAN: Can we run the tape, please,
7 forward?
8 (Videotape played)
9 Q. After your discussions here in the canteen,
10 where thence did you go?
11 A. Well, we stayed there a while, watched them
12 line up, and their condition was such that we were all
13 the more anxious to see wherever they were sleeping and
14 wherever they were quartered, and we asked to go and
15 see the sleeping quarters, and I specifically asked a
16 number of times to go into the hangar, warehouse
17 building from whence they had emerged. The fact that
18 they had been blinking into the sunlight made me think
19 that must be a dark place for a start.
20 However, we were not allowed to go there yet,
21 they said that would be later, and instead we were
22 taken upstairs to an office area, as I recall, directly
23 above the canteen or at least on a storey above the
24 canteen.
25 Q. Of the men that you talked to in the
1 restaurant area, did you ever subsequently meet any of
2 those individuals later during your travels in Bosnia?
3 A. Yes. And that was how I was able to learn --
4 we were able to interview them rather better later than
5 in there.
6 They were very obviously too terrified to
7 talk, the guards were patrolling, and we -- one of
8 them, who I tried to speak to, had a wound to the side
9 of his face -- right side -- and I asked him how he got
10 the wound, and he said, "I fell over." And I said, "Is
11 everything all right?" And he said, "Yes." And I met
12 him, actually, in a trench three years later on a
13 front-line, and it was an extraordinary meeting. He
14 said, "I know you." I said, "I don't think I've met
15 you before." He sort of doubled in weight. And he
16 said, "Do you remember the man with the wound down the
17 side of the face who said he had fallen over?" I
18 said, "Of course. How could I forget him?" He said,
19 "Well, that was me. I didn't fall over, I was
20 struck. That's how I got the wound, but you could not
21 see the guard behind you staring at me." And on that
22 occasion, I realised how difficult it had been for
23 those men in the canteen to speak their mind. Sounds
24 maybe a little silly, but their stares told us some of
25 what we needed to know, the sheer fear in their eyes
1 and their physical gaunt condition.
2 Q. From the canteen, where did you then go?
3 A. As I said, having failed to get where we
4 wanted to go and had asked to go, which was into the
5 hangar, we were taken upstairs to an office
6 administration area.
7 Q. What took place in the -- upstairs in that
8 administration area?
9 A. The second lengthy briefing of the day.
10 Q. Who was this briefing -- who was this brief
11 given by?
12 A. It was given mainly by the man you see here,
13 Simo Drljaca, the chief of police, whom we had already
14 heard at the police station, and his assistant here,
15 Mrs. Balaban.
16 MR. KEEGAN: If we could run the tape,
17 please?
18 (Videotape played)
19 Q. What was the nature of the briefing that you
20 received?
21 A. They were going through what they were
22 calling the procedure and the role of the centre, as
23 they were calling it. They were explaining how the
24 prisoners or inmates, internees, they wanted to call
25 them, were being divided up into categories, screened
1 and investigated, investigation centre was another
2 description of the place, with a view to separating
3 them into three categories. We were first told about
4 Category C. These were men suspected of being
5 fighters, Muslim fighters, but who they decided were
6 not Muslim fighters and they were allowed to go to
7 Trnopolje. Later I asked, "Well, what are Categories
8 A and B?" I wasn't quite clear as to the answer. It
9 seemed to be -- frankly, I got the impression all of
10 this was fairly ad hoc, but it seemed to be Category
11 A were people found guilty of being in the Muslim
12 militia, if there was one, and Category B I think were
13 people who were, but had surrendered their weapons or
14 something. I wasn't -- to be honest with you, I wanted
15 to see this camp and was unimpressed by all these
16 details of Categories A, B, and C. I wrote it all down
17 and all the numbers down faithfully, but I was anxious
18 to get on with what we were doing here, which was not
19 to listen to these two.
20 Q. In addition to the questions regarding the
21 categories of prisoners, did you ask questions
22 regarding whether international organisations, such as
23 the ICRC, had been admitted to the camp?
24 A. Oh, indeed. We all asked, "Have the
25 International Red Cross seen this place? Are they
1 allowed to see this place? Should they see this
2 place?" And Mrs. Balaban, in translating, I think,
3 Mr. Drljaca, said, "Yes, of course they can come. Why
4 not? This is not a camp, it's a centre. They're
5 welcome here." And she said at another point in the
6 same conversation, "There's no need for them to come
7 here because this is not a camp, it's a centre."
8 Q. Had you, by that time, already had
9 discussions with ICRC representatives prior to getting
10 to Prijedor about Omarska and the camps?
11 A. We all had. I had and all of my colleagues
12 had been talking to the ICRC who had been very worried
13 about Omarska for a long time now and had been trying
14 its best to get in without success, and still had not
15 been when we arrived.
16 Q. Now, what occurred as you left the office?
17 A. As we left the office, we said we wanted to
18 talk to the prisoners, and Mr. Drljaca said, "Well,
19 yes, you can. Here's one." This was in the corridor
20 outside the office. "You can talk to this gentleman.
21 He's the head of the local SDA." That's the Muslim
22 political party. And I'm afraid I was rather brusque
23 at this. I said, "Well, no thanks. I don't want to
24 interview anybody that you put forward for an
25 interview, let alone from a political party." We want
1 to -- I mean, we still had it in mind on Dr. Karadzic's
2 authority, we were going to be able to inspect this
3 camp, and I said, "Look, I don't want to interview your
4 nominee, frankly," because I would imagine either he's
5 going to be too terrified to talk, like the men
6 downstairs had clearly been, or he's going to talk a
7 lot of pap. So I said, "Well, thank you, we'll choose
8 our own interviewees, if that's all right, rather than
9 your selections and we'll do that in the sleeping
10 quarters, if we may?" So we went downstairs and
11 prepared ourselves to go into the hut, into the
12 sleeping quarters, to inspect this camp at last.
13 MR. KEEGAN: Could you stop the tape there,
14 please?
15 Q. Now, as you went outside, was your request to
16 go into the sleeping quarters granted?
17 A. No.
18 Q. What were you told about your trip to the
19 camp at that point?
20 A. We were told a number of things. We were
21 told that it wasn't safe for us to go into the sleeping
22 quarters.
23 Pardon me for backtracking, if you'll forgive
24 me. Cut me off if you think it's not important.
25 But up in the office, another of these
1 battles had started outside, and shooting in the
2 woods. I was in a pretty bad mood by then and I hope
3 it isn't reflected now. And I was saying to my
4 colleagues, "Look, just forget the battle. It's a lot
5 of nonsense." But the Bosnian Serb television crew did
6 an interview with Mr. Drljaca, and he said, "Look, the
7 Muslims are shooting in the woods. We're not safe
8 here." By the time we get downstairs again, he says,
9 "It's not safe for you to stay in the camp." We joked
10 with him a bit and said if they're shooting in the
11 woods, surely we're safer in here than we are out
12 there. And he said, "No, you're not."
13 At one point, Ian Williams and I -- I said
14 "Let's walk towards the hut and see what happens," and
15 we did, and a couple of guards moved around so as to
16 block us so that seemed perhaps not a good line to
17 cross. I think one of them took his safety catch off.
18 Then we got into an argument with
19 Mrs. Balaban, and she invoked a new argument, which was
20 not our security, it was Dr. Karadzic's, what she
21 called protocol. And we said, "Well, he said we could
22 see the camp." The television reporters, for
23 professional reasons, were doing most of the talking on
24 camera, but we all said, "He said we could see the
25 camp. That's the guarantee." And she said at one
1 point, "Well, our instructions were different. He said
2 something different to us. He said you could see this
3 and this but not that." So the instructions, his
4 guarantee to us, had obviously been different from his
5 instructions to the authorities in Prijedor about what
6 we could or couldn't see.
7 This argument went on in the courtyard
8 adjacent to the canteen opposite this hangar for quite
9 some time.
10 MR. KEEGAN: Could you run the rest of that
11 tape, please? That segment.
12 Q. Is this the segment you were just referring
13 to when you're outside?
14 A. Yes. Here are the two guards who moved
15 around after we had just started to walk over there.
16 On the right is Ian Williams, one of the reporters for
17 ITN, and his interpreter is the man in the jeans, and
18 the sunglasses. That's Mr. Drljaca there.
19 Q. From this point, after the conversation about
20 the protocol for the visit, did you then leave the
21 camp?
22 MR. OSTOJIC: Excuse me. Your Honour, the
23 question presupposes that we heard the question, and I
24 don't have a translation, nor did we hear the audio
25 portion of this, and I think it may be significant
1 since the witness specifically discussed this
2 conversation with a Ms. Balaban and what was said, and
3 now he's saying after this discussion what occurred.
4 So I think it might be at least interesting for all of
5 us to see it, the court as well -- hear it.
6 JUDGE MAY: Well, it may be interesting. Is
7 it relevant? But it may well be, yes. In fact, the
8 witness referred to the conversation about the
9 protocol, and that's, no doubt, why counsel spoke in
10 that way.
11 Mr. Keegan, I'm concerned -- no doubt, in
12 order to speed things up, you're not, in fact, playing
13 the tape with the sound on.
14 MR. KEEGAN: That's correct, Your Honour, but
15 if the court would wish it now, we're certainly happy
16 to play the audio portion of this tape to hear that
17 conversation with respect to the change -- the
18 difference in the instructions from Dr. Karadzic
19 between what the reporters were told and what the
20 people, the camp authorities, the Prijedor authorities,
21 told.
22 JUDGE MAY: That's on the tape.
23 MR. KEEGAN: It is, Your Honour.
24 JUDGE MAY: Well, let's go back and hear
25 that, yes, bearing in mind that we're going to break
1 about 11.00.
2 (Videotape played)
3 THE INTERPRETER: We're going into Trnopolje
4 or into Banja Luka. Let me tell you something --
5 MR. KEEGAN: If they turn up the volume, we
6 can actually hear the tape.
7 THE INTERPRETER (interpreting audio): "I
8 explain that we will go to our staff and we will show
9 this and that and we can't show anything beyond that.
10 They have all the medical facilities and services
11 here. You were able to talk to them openly." (English
12 interview continues)
13 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you. You can stop the
14 tape --
15 THE INTERPRETER (interpreting audio): "We're
16 going into Trnopolje now."
17 JUDGE MAY: Carry on. Play the rest of
18 that.
19 (Videotape played)
20 THE INTERPRETER (interpreting audio): "Let's
21 go to Trnopolje. Let's go." "I don't know what they
22 want here." "They haven't spent more time in any other
23 centre." (English interview continues) "Tell them to
24 leave. They're not safe anymore. If they stay here,
25 they're not safe anymore." "They're shooting around
1 there. There's a war going on here." (English
2 interview continues) "I've told them that this is what
3 the protocol is for the day."
4 MR. KEEGAN: If you could stop the tape,
5 please?
6 Yes, Your Honour, the next section of the
7 testimony relates to moving into Trnopolje. It might
8 be a convenient time to break just a couple of minutes
9 early and pick up when we resume.
10 JUDGE MAY: Very well. We'll adjourn now.
11 Twenty minutes.
12 --- Recess taken at 10.57 a.m.
13 --- On resuming at 11.20 a.m.
14 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Keegan.
15 MR. KEEGAN:
16 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, where was your group taken
17 after you left Omarska?
18 A. We continued in the convoy. The hurry and
19 security risk evaporated to another camp called
20 Trnopolje.
21 MR. KEEGAN: Could we run the video, please,
22 where it had stopped?
23 (Videotape played)
24 Q. How is it, Mr. Vulliamy, that you came to
25 enter the Trnopolje camp from this position that was
1 shown on the video?
2 A. Well, we were driving towards it and Penny
3 Marshal, the television reporter who you can see -- saw
4 earlier in the picture, she was in the bus ahead, and
5 we beheld this extraordinary sight. Her van pulled
6 over, the red van pulled over, she was out within
7 seconds of that. We were behind as they pulled over
8 and I think we were alighting before it even stopped to
9 make for this remarkable sight.
10 Q. If you could pause the video, please? You
11 indicated earlier that the ITN film crew had a vehicle
12 of their own; is that correct?
13 A. Yes. By then the military bus had been
14 joined by one of their fixer's vehicles. It had come
15 down from Belgrade, yes.
16 Q. What vehicle were you riding in?
17 A. I was in the military bus behind with the
18 second ITN crew, that of Ian Williams.
19 Q. As you approached the area that you now know
20 to be Trnopolje camp, what specific -- what were the
21 specific series of events that led the camera crews to
22 film that first area of the camp that we saw?
23 A. Well, we were coming towards the camp, this
24 was one of the first things that you saw on the left,
25 Penny's vehicle stopped, she got out to make towards
1 this group of men, some of them in appalling condition,
2 emaciated behind the barb wire fence, and my bus
3 stopped as well. We said, "Stop, stop," and we got out
4 and followed her.
5 Q. Did the van that Ms. Marshall was riding in,
6 that stopped without any of the escorts or any of the
7 authorities stopping it first?
8 A. Indeed. I think one of the escort vehicles
9 went on ahead and had to come back because I don't
10 think we were meant to stop at that place, we were -- I
11 think the plan was probably to take us past that
12 compound to another bit of the camp, but Penny's van
13 stopped, well, for obvious reasons, upon seeing what we
14 saw on the film just then, on seeing that compound of
15 men.
16 Q. And how were you able to get out of your, the
17 military bus you were riding in, to join immediately
18 behind her?
19 A. Well, our van was pulling up behind Penny's,
20 the door was open anyways, it was a hot day, and we
21 just pulled up behind Penny's van and got out.
22 Q. Did the escorts and other Serbian television
23 crews have to run to catch up to you?
24 A. I can't remember what happened to the Serbian
25 crew at that time, but they were around after a while,
1 yes.
2 Q. Now, if you could -- once you arrived in the
3 camp area, how did the interview process and the tour
4 of the camp, if you will, proceed?
5 A. Well, we began our conversations with the
6 prisoners on the other side of the fence, it was an
7 extraordinary sight, and they were saying some
8 extraordinary things. We interviewed the man you saw
9 shaking hands with Penny, his name was Fikret Alic, and
10 we began our conversations with them. He and another
11 prisoner whose name I think was Icic, referred to a
12 place of which I had not heard, Keraterm, from whence
13 they had come that morning, they said. They told us
14 that there had been -- that the conditions there were
15 very much worse than here --
16 Q. When you say "here," where are you referring
17 to?
18 A. Trnopolje, where we were then. And Mr. Alic
19 and Mr. Icic both talked about massacres of large
20 numbers of men in Keraterm, there was talk of a
21 massacre of 150 men in one night, and -- well, one's
22 head was spinning. We had beheld this remarkable sight
23 of these men and now they were talking about somewhere
24 else. And we conducted those interviews, first of all,
25 by that fence, the barbed wire fence that you saw.
1 Q. Were you then guided around the camp by a
2 guard?
3 A. Yes. Well, I was -- first of all, we went
4 around different parts of the camp. We conducted
5 interviews around another fence, around the side of
6 that compound with some other prisoners. I then
7 managed to slip the guards, which was more easily done
8 in Trnopolje than it was at Omarska, and went into the
9 main compound around the back of the area that you saw
10 in that film, with a man called Ibrahim who was an
11 inmate of the camp, and he showed me round.
12 The conditions were appalling, although
13 nothing as bad as I now know Omarska to have been, but
14 open latrines stinking, it was a school building and
15 you could see into the rooms crammed with people,
16 listened to various testimonies, which I have written
17 up --
18 Q. Did you ask some of the prisoners about that
19 camp and a comparison to Omarska?
20 A. Yes. There was agreement -- some people had
21 come from Omarska and from Keraterm in the compound
22 that we had visited first, and they both said that the
23 conditions in Omarska and in Keraterm were worse and
24 more frightening and more dangerous than this place,
25 Trnopolje.
1 Q. Did they talk, did any of the prisoners
2 reference the treatment of women in Trnopolje?
3 A. Yes. And here I confess a professional
4 failing, because it was made clear to us and to me in
5 the stories that were being told that there was some
6 sort of abuse of women, Ibrahim said "They're very hard
7 on the girls." There was one story about a girl who
8 had a golden locket taken from around her neck and talk
9 about, well, sort of sexual overtures towards her.
10 It wasn't just me, it was the women in the
11 party too. We were slow to pick up that element, I
12 admit. We were trying to make sense of what was going
13 on and what we had seen and did not pick up on that.
14 It's been since, I believe, ascertained that there was
15 sexual abuse of women going on.
16 They were talking -- I mean, people were
17 talking in general terms, "They do whatever they want
18 to do to us," and that sort of thing. In those early
19 days, one was less good at decoding that kind of
20 remark.
21 Q. Did you ask Fikret Alic, Ibrahim, and the
22 other people you met what ethnic group or nationality
23 they were?
24 A. They were almost exclusively Muslim, with a
25 few Croats as well.
1 Q. And all of the authorities who accompanied
2 your party as well as the guards, did you ask questions
3 about what ethnic group they were?
4 A. They were all Serbs, but -- oh, I didn't ask
5 each and every one of them, no. I assumed that for the
6 most part.
7 Q. Did you ask the prisoners in the camp how
8 they had arrived at the camp?
9 A. Yes, indeed, and they had arrived from
10 various places and for various reasons. Some had, as I
11 have said, come directly from Omarska and Trnopolje,
12 others mostly in different bits of the camp, had come
13 voluntarily, indeed, and the reason they gave for that
14 was that their homes were either under shell fire or
15 attack or had been burned, and I think the idea there
16 was a safety in numbers in that place, that they did
17 not have had they stayed at their own homes which were
18 under attack.
19 Others had been marched or transported there,
20 either on buses or, in some cases, on foot.
21 Q. Did you have the chance to tour what was
22 referred to as the medical facilities in the camp?
23 A. Yes, we did. There was a makeshift medical
24 area with a Muslim doctor, himself, I suppose, sort of
25 part inmate, part doctor, with one or two assistants.
1 It was very makeshift. A few bottles of medicine
2 around. The temperature was very, very high, and he
3 was a man clearly stretched to his limits and not
4 really free to talk.
5 MR. KEEGAN: Could we run the video, please?
6 (Videotape played)
7 Q. The film we're now seeing, Mr. Vulliamy, this
8 is again footage shot on that day during your time at
9 the camp at Trnopolje. In your discussions with the
10 doctor in the camp, did you ask about whether there had
11 been beatings or maltreatment?
12 A. Yes, I was actually behind the camera, Penny
13 was doing the interview, again for professional reasons
14 she has to be on the screen, and she was asking about
15 beatings and maltreatment, and the doctor answered, as
16 I recall, more with gestures than with words. He did
17 suggest that he was having to deal with maltreatment,
18 yes.
19 Q. Did he, in fact, provide you with any proof?
20 A. We were given a roll of film, undeveloped,
21 which we then did get developed when we got to -- well,
22 out of Bosnia, and it showed the torsos of men, mainly
23 torsos, at least, and limbs showing very serious
24 bruising indeed.
25 Q. Now, the men that we're seeing here in the
1 pictures as you've been discussing, are these
2 representative of a number of prisoners that you saw
3 there and spoke to that day?
4 A. A number, yes. The prisoners were in varying
5 conditions and varying states of decay. Some looked
6 like this man on the right, others again looked like
7 this man we're watching now, in better condition, but
8 the skeletal figure is certainly representative of a
9 large number, yes.
10 Q. Was there a distinction between the physical
11 condition of the men who had indicated they had come
12 from Omarska or Keraterm and those who had been in
13 Trnopolje with their families?
14 A. There was certainly a difference between
15 those who had come from the other two camps or at least
16 most of them and those who had fled or been frogmarched
17 or come to the camp of their own accord, yes.
18 Q. If you could pause the tape there, please?
19 If you could leave it on the screen?
20 Is that the doctor whom you referred to
21 earlier?
22 A. Yeah, that's him.
23 Q. If we could run the videotape with the sound,
24 please?
25 (Videotape played)
1 MR. KEEGAN: Pause the tape there, please.
2 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, were you able to hear the
3 exchange there in that interview with regard to the
4 question about beatings being conducted?
5 A. Yes. I was just behind at the back.
6 Q. And the reaction of the doctor there to that
7 question?
8 A. Yes. I saw it and I understood it, I think.
9 He was a man trying to do his very, very best, he
10 clearly felt unable to speak or to detail --
11 Q. Why was he unable to speak? Who was with you
12 in that room?
13 A. The guards.
14 MR. KEEGAN: If we could run the remainder of
15 the tape, please? I'm sorry, without the volume.
16 (Videotape played)
17 Q. After this interview with the doctor in the
18 clinic area, how much longer did you remain in the
19 Trnopolje camp?
20 A. It's hard to put an exact time on it. I
21 should say about another 45 minutes or so.
22 Q. And from the camp, where were you taken?
23 A. We left. We went direct from Trnopolje, we
24 concluded our visit. I did an interview with a man
25 from the Yugoslav Red Cross who introduced himself as
1 being from the Yugoslav Red Cross, and then we left.
2 MR. KEEGAN: Could you hold the tape,
3 please?
4 Q. I'm sorry, you were referring to the
5 interview with the man from the Yugoslav Red Cross and
6 then you indicated you left. Where did you go to after
7 that interview?
8 A. Belgrade.
9 Q. And how did you get to Belgrade?
10 A. In the vehicle that belonged to the
11 ITN fixer, Misa.
12 Q. So on that day, you did not return to
13 Prijedor?
14 A. I think we might have gone through Prijedor.
15 I can't remember. We drove back to Belgrade.
16 Q. Did you ever return to Prijedor?
17 A. Yes, I did, several years later in 1996.
18 Q. What did you do upon your return to Prijedor
19 in 1996?
20 A. Well, I was curious to visit Mr. --
21 MR. KEEGAN: Just a moment, Mr. Vulliamy.
22 JUDGE MAY: Yes?
23 MR. OSTOJIC: I'm sorry, Your Honour, I have
24 to respectfully make this objection again. We're now
25 going into 1996, and if we look at the indictment, the
1 charges are clearly for a period from April through
2 approximately August of 1992, and I'm not sure --
3 again, it might be interesting conversational
4 discussions with Mr. Vulliamy, but at this point, I
5 respectfully think that discussing what he saw and what
6 he may have characterised and created some assumptions
7 and summations would not be at all helpful and indeed
8 is not relevant to the charges which are made against
9 Dr. Kovacevic in this proceeding.
10 So, I'd ask that we move on either with the
11 conclusion of his testimony or that we at least have
12 some instruction as to how long his discussion in 1996
13 and other years will take place.
14 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Ostojic, there is a reference
15 in the Tadic transcript to an interview with the
16 accused in 1996. Is that right, Mr. Keegan, is that
17 what you're dealing with?
18 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour. It was simply
19 going to be a question of who did you speak with when
20 you went back and why, and then we will actually deal
21 with the details of the interview near the end of the
22 testimony. This is simply a reference to put it in
23 context that he did return.
24 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Have you any objection to
25 the interview with the accused in 1996 which would at
1 least prima facie seem to be relevant?
2 MR. OSTOJIC: Yes, I agree with that portion,
3 Your Honour. The only slight -- and I didn't realise
4 counsel was going into that, and if we look at the
5 Tadic case, they were allowed enormous latitude to go
6 into other areas throughout Yugoslavia, Mr. Vulliamy
7 and his group, and I was anticipating that's where they
8 were going. I do not have an objection to this
9 preparatory comment, but I do have a comment to make,
10 and that is with respect to the tapes.
11 Our client, during the break, insisted that
12 he did not see what I believe is this subsequent tape
13 in 1996 that they may try to introduce, so in all
14 fairness to him, I am obliged, through my client to at
15 least share that with the Court and to be given an
16 opportunity for him to view that tape. Quite frankly I
17 think what we have done, is yesterday, through the
18 registrar's office and through the warden, if I'm
19 calling him by the right designation, at the prison, we
20 made an attempt at 5.30 or so to make accommodations so
21 our client could view this tape with us and other
22 tapes, and it was formally written by Mr. D'Amato and
23 it was rejected summarily. We didn't get an
24 explanation for that. We didn't know when it would be
25 appropriate, I didn't want to disturb the proceedings
1 this morning with that, but I think since we're going
2 into 1996, it may be timely at this point.
3 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Keegan, what's the position
4 about this tape?
5 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour. None of the
6 tapes are from 1996. All of the interviews which are
7 on tape, videotape, are all 1992. The interview in
8 1996 will simply be described by the witness from his
9 memory. There are no tapes of interviews from 1996
10 that we're certainly aware of and certainly none being
11 introduced into evidence.
12 JUDGE MAY: Well, are you going to ask to
13 deal with anything else in 1996 besides the interview?
14 MR. KEEGAN: Well, to the extent that, as
15 Mr. Vulliamy as already indicated, he didn't get into
16 some areas of eastern Bosnia until after the Dayton
17 Agreement, but the dates he will be referring to
18 occurred in 1992 through 1995. But in other areas of
19 Bosnia. But again, we believe they are directly
20 relevant to the issues and the elements which the
21 Prosecution must address in this case.
22 JUDGE MAY: We will hear what it is that
23 you're going to try and adduce, and we'll make a
24 ruling. As far as 1996 is concerned, it would seem to
25 me that you are limited to the interview with the
1 accused.
2 MR. KEEGAN: There is also an interview with
3 Milomir Stakic at the same time which we also believe
4 is relevant because they speak of events in 1992, so
5 there is more than, in fact, just the interview with
6 the accused.
7 JUDGE MAY: What is it that you're going to
8 ask the witness about 1992 to 1995?
9 MR. KEEGAN: The sequence of events as he --
10 the witness basically indicated on the map, after this
11 trip, he then proceeded to investigate camps where
12 Serbs were victims. From there, he then, in fact,
13 joined a convoy of Bosnian Muslims who were being
14 forcibly expelled from Sanski Most. He, in fact,
15 joined that convoy in Prijedor.
16 JUDGE MAY: When was that?
17 MR. KEEGAN: That was in August 1992, only
18 weeks after the events which we're seeing now on the
19 tape. Those -- that convoy was joined in Prijedor, it
20 was, in fact, under escort by Prijedor police, and it
21 takes him through the Bosnian Serb territory as they're
22 expelled towards Travnik, which he's described.
23 In Travnik he will describe the interviews
24 and experiences he had with refugees, many of whom were
25 from Prijedor. He will then describe some of the other
1 areas he visited in Bosnia in '92-'93, describing
2 similar attacks on civilian populations conducted by
3 forces in a similar nature, a similar type of
4 propaganda. He then is back in Travnik in 1995 and
5 witnessed again refugees from the Prijedor area, the
6 Autonomous Region of Krajina, being expelled over the
7 same route with the same kind of stories in numbers,
8 and we believe all of that is relevant in establishing
9 the kinds of legal requirements for the various charges
10 which we have in this case.
11 JUDGE MAY: I can see how evidence of events
12 beforehand may be relevant; however, how do you say
13 that the events afterwards are relevant?
14 MR. KEEGAN: Because, Your Honour, for
15 example, the same specific types of events, either
16 occurring in Prijedor in the areas around Prijedor, in
17 the Autonomous Region of Krajina, which, as we have
18 indicated already through evidence, we believe is
19 directly linked again, this goal of forming a Serbian
20 Republic which would -- or Serbian area which would be
21 part of the new Yugoslavia or new Greater Serbia, that
22 there was a continuing criminal enterprise, if you
23 will, to forcibly remove, to kill, and to eradicate
24 Muslim and -- Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat
25 populations throughout that area in order to effect
1 that goal of achieving territory. We believe those are
2 directly relevant to the charges here because it shows
3 that continuing course of conduct.
4 In addition, there will be evidence about
5 specific atrocities committed against Prijedor area
6 Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, including massacres
7 which occurred after the International Community was
8 even aware of the camps.
9 JUDGE MAY: What dates are you talking of
10 there, of the atrocities?
11 MR. KEEGAN: I'm sorry, the atrocities?
12 JUDGE MAY: The atrocities, yes.
13 MR. KEEGAN: The specific ones I'm referring
14 to happened in August.
15 JUDGE MAY: 1992.
16 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, in the weeks following
17 these visits to the camps.
18 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Ostojic.
19 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you, Your Honour. I
20 think the point is, if he's trying to establish mens
21 rea, and the intent that he has the burden to do that.
22 He's taking a witness, quite frankly, and he's trying
23 through hindsight have this witness talk about the
24 entire region and to try to implicate our client with
25 respect to what may have occurred in a much broader
1 region. It was never allowed, it was prohibited, I
2 believe, with your words and your question to him:
3 What relevance, if any, do the events post the time
4 period set forth in the indictment, the time period set
5 forth that was asserted against Dr. Kovacevic, what
6 Mr. Vulliamy did afterwards is not relevant at all, it
7 cannot be relevant at all, to establish intent or any
8 other element of this crime.
9 What Mr. Keegan, and I say this respectfully
10 to him, wants to do is to incorporate and expand the
11 civil war that occurred, and he tried doing it,
12 unfortunately, yesterday, and I believe the Court
13 limited him by the discussions on what occurred in
14 Croatia and what occurred in other aspects within
15 former Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. If we
16 look at the map that was produced in evidence and the
17 reference that Mr. Keegan makes to Sanski Most, we must
18 look at that in reference to Prijedor and see the
19 distance of this map, how far away these two are, and I
20 direct the Court's attention to merely find Prijedor
21 and to draw a line directly to the south of that at 90
22 degrees, and you'll find Sanski Most there.
23 Then if you go to the east, again near the
24 letter B in the word Bosnia there, you'll find right
25 below it, I should say, Travnik, which is the other
1 town he's discussing.
2 Again, I must stress, it might be interesting
3 for conversation pieces and it might be interesting for
4 other persons in another courtroom, but certainly as it
5 relates to Dr. Kovacevic, this testimony is not either
6 relevant and, quite frankly, it's immaterial, and all
7 he's trying to do is sweep with a rather broad brush,
8 that we think is inadmissible and should not be
9 discussed here. He has witnesses. The charges are
10 specific against Dr. Kovacevic, and he should present
11 witnesses who can assert those charges specifically
12 against him. As he brought Mr. Vulliamy to discuss and
13 show various portions of the tape -- and we'll have an
14 opportunity to cross him on that -- but everything
15 subsequent to that and the fact that Mr. Vulliamy may
16 or may not have joined the convoy south of Prijedor is
17 totally irrelevant in this case. So I ask that an
18 instruction or at least some clarification to our
19 request be made. Thank you.
20 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Keegan, we have to attempt to
21 limit the evidence to what we think is relevant and
22 helpful, and what we are going to have to do is give a
23 rough and ready ruling. It can only be that.
24 We do have in mind the burden which you bear
25 to show a pattern and a systematic practice and also
1 that you have a burden to show, in relation to
2 genocide, a specific intent. Because you have those
3 burdens, we are going to widen the admissibility of
4 evidence in a way that we otherwise would not, and we
5 are not going to restrict it purely to events in
6 Prijedor.
7 But doing the best we can, bearing in mind
8 your burden but also the rules of evidence and the
9 objections which are made, we've come to the conclusion
10 that we shall restrict the evidence to 1992 and events
11 in Bosnia. About those events you may adduce
12 evidence. But beyond that, we think it is going beyond
13 the limits necessary for a case of this kind, and it is
14 our duty to make sure that the case does remain within
15 limits. With that ruling in mind, perhaps you would
16 adduce the evidence?
17 MR. KEEGAN: Your Honour, just so I may be
18 clear. Did you indicate that the limitation is in
19 Bosnia in 1992 or events in 1992 and events in Bosnia?
20 JUDGE MAY: No, 1992 and Bosnia.
21 MR. KEEGAN: Your Honour, with due respect,
22 there is one other aspect which I believe Judge Cassese
23 may be familiar with, and that would be the issue of
24 international armed conflict. Certainly one of the
25 issues there, for example, to prove that, is
1 involvement of forces from another State after the
2 supposed withdrawal of the JNA in May of 1992. Now, to
3 the extent that we may have direct evidence of their
4 involvement in '92 or '93 or '94, it seems to us that
5 is directly relevant to our proving the issue of
6 international armed conflict in Bosnia even in 1992,
7 because the evidence would be to show a continuous
8 involvement post-May 1992.
9 JUDGE MAY: But is this evidence you wish to
10 adduce from this witness?
11 MR. KEEGAN: There is -- yes, Your Honour,
12 there is, in fact, evidence.
13 JUDGE MAY: What does that relate to?
14 MR. KEEGAN: During his investigations in
15 eastern Bosnia in '95 and '96, he interviewed ECMM
16 personnel. They spoke of events they witnessed to
17 include evidence of crossings of the Drina where
18 pontoon bridges were brought in at night, troops would
19 cross over, and then of course the pontoon bridges were
20 removed, so during the day during the "flyovers" no
21 violations of the then prohibitions on Serbia would be
22 witnessed.
23 JUDGE MAY: But the Drina is where in
24 relation to where we're dealing with.
25 MR. KEEGAN: The Drina forms part of the
1 border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, the
2 Republic of Serbia. If you look at the area on the
3 right which would be the eastern border of
4 Bosnia-Herzegovina along the towns of Zvornik and
5 Visegrad, et cetera, you will see the Drina river
6 indicated.
7 JUDGE MAY: No, we are against you,
8 Mr. Keegan, on that latter point. We think it is too
9 remote for our purposes.
10 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour.
11 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, where we left off was, then you
12 drove directly from Prijedor to Belgrade. When you
13 arrived in Belgrade, what did you then proceed to do?
14 A. We got to Belgrade late that night, August
15 the 5th, and the next day was a combination of writing
16 the story, a fairly explosive response both in Belgrade
17 and internationally. I did some ridiculous number of
18 radio and television interviews, writing the story and
19 tea with Professor Koljevic, the Vice-President of
20 Bosnian Serbs.
21 Q. What was the reaction to the publication of
22 your stories and the ITN stories from Professor
23 Koljevic?
24 A. Well, the story was published on the 7th of
25 August, the next day. Professor Koljevic invited me
1 for tea. We were not particularly popular in Belgrade
2 but he invited me for tea at the Hyatt Hotel, and I was
3 happy to accept, and he, in a way that was
4 half amicable mocked us, he said, "So you found them,
5 you'll do well out of this young man. Took it a long
6 time, didn't it? All that happening --" I remember him
7 saying, "so near Venice," and he joked at our expense,
8 the media's expense, with reason.
9 All you cared about was poor multi-cultural
10 Sarajevo with its university. None of you had your
11 holidays in Trnopolje, no winter Olympics at Omarska."
12 It was a mockery that they had been managing to do this
13 for so long without anybody knowing, [and he had a
14 point.]
15 Q. After the publication of the stories, did the
16 ITN crew and others return to Trnopolje?
17 A. Yes. I think they all --
18 MR. KEEGAN: Just a moment, please.
19 MR. D'AMATO: Objection. At the end of his
20 testimony, he said, "And they had a point," and that's
21 not in the transcript and I'd like to call your
22 attention to that. It's an important concession.
23 THE WITNESS: "And he had a point," I think I
24 said.
25 JUDGE MAY: Yes, the transcript should show
1 the witness finished by saying "And he had a point."
2 THE WITNESS: "And he had a point," yes.
3 MR. KEEGAN:
4 Q. And what was the point that he had there,
5 Mr. Vulliamy?
6 A. The point was that we, and by "we" I suppose
7 I mean the media, had concentrated very much on the
8 siege of Sarajevo, for reasons that I think are
9 justifiable, and as I understood his point, it was that
10 these camps, that which we had discovered the previous
11 day, had been, as it were, by the media, allowed to
12 operate for a long time, as he put it, "so near
13 Venice," without endeavours or without interruption,
14 and I think he was having a go at our obsession with
15 Sarajevo. He was crowing slightly, I think, that "we
16 were able to do that all near Venice and you never got
17 there until now." That was, I think, the point that I
18 would concede to him.
19 Q. Now, did the ITN crew and others then return
20 to Trnopolje and the Prijedor area?
21 A. Yes, they did. Penny Marshall and one crew
22 certainly, I don't recall whether Ian and the second
23 crew went back, but there was a terrific descent of
24 mass media from all over the world onto that area and
25 they joined it, yes.
1 MR. KEEGAN: Could we run the video, please,
2 with the sound?
3 (Videotape played)
4 THE INTERPRETER: "It helped us a lot because
5 the situation improved immensely right away. They took
6 down the wire, they started bringing food around ..."
7 (interview continues in English)
8 MR. KEEGAN: Stop it there.
9 Q. While the ITN crew went back to Trnopolje,
10 Mr. Vulliamy, where did you then go to?
11 A. Well, I was torn as to what to do because I
12 had offers to go back and to, as it were, continue with
13 all this, but I made a different decision. Professor
14 Koljevic and others had told me they had a list of
15 camps over on the other side where Serbs were being
16 held, and I thought that, having set the agenda with
17 regard to Omarska and Trnopolje, I'd let the circus
18 descend on -- do all that, and I wanted -- I thought it
19 was a point they had, they had a list of alleged camps,
20 and I thought, well, the right thing to do was to go
21 over onto the other side -- to take that point from
22 Belgrade seriously and to go over to the other side to
23 start from square one over there and to try and
24 endeavour to make inspections of the camps in which
25 Serbs were being held prisoner.
1 Q. Did you, in fact, report on such camp?
2 A. Yes, I did. One of the worst was said to be
3 near the Croatian Herzegovinan town of Capljina, and I
4 managed, with a colleague from the Associated Press, to
5 negotiate a way in there using the access to Omarska
6 and Trnopolje as a yardstick and a challenge to the
7 Croatians running that camp. It was being run by a
8 militia called the HOS. We eventually got into this
9 camp at a place called Dretlej, and it was in a very
10 unpleasant place. There were women, there was a shed
11 full of women in that camp, in the baking heat packed
12 into a shed, and that was the most important thing
13 there. The commander of the camp, a Major Hrskic, made
14 a veiled threat [on my life] if I published that fact,
15 which I did, and indeed The Guardian gave it prominent
16 coverage.
17 Q. After your reporting on the camps where there
18 were Serbian civilians being detained, what was the
19 next story that you covered in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
20 A. Well, back from -- after the Croatian camp
21 for Serbs at Capljina, I went back to Zagreb for what I
22 hoped would be a bit of a rest, get cleaned up a bit,
23 but that was not going to happen because the night I
24 arrived in Zagreb, the frontier between
25 Bosnia-Herzegovina, just north of Prijedor, and
1 Karlovac on the Croatian side, this border across which
2 the great influx of deportees which I mentioned
3 yesterday had moved was closed by two -- on two counts.
4 MR. KEEGAN: Just a moment, please.
5 MR. D'AMATO: Excuse me. Again, the
6 translator [sic] seemed to have left out a veiled
7 threat "on my life," he said, but the "on my life" is
8 missing from the transcript.
9 JUDGE MAY: We will get that put right. If
10 there are matters which you notice, Mr. D'Amato, as we
11 are going along, by all means raise them.
12 MR. D'AMATO: I only do the most important
13 ones, Your Honour.
14 JUDGE MAY: Yes, of course. But, at the same
15 time, there is a facility at the end of the day for
16 transcripts to be corrected, and you should be aware of
17 that.
18 MR. D'AMATO: Yes, sir.
19 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Keegan.
20 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you, Your Honour. Part of
21 the problem may be my asking the next question too
22 quickly and they can't keep up, so I will endeavour to
23 put some space between my questions and the answers.
24 Q. Now, Mr. Vulliamy, you were mentioning the
25 border between Bosnia and Croatia being closed. What
1 were the circumstances of that closure?
2 A. The circumstances were that for some months
3 now, as I said, very large numbers of people had been
4 coming from the Prijedor and Banja Luka areas across
5 that frontier into the, as it were, the crook in the
6 horseshoe shape of Croatia, and the frontier was shut
7 for two reasons and by two sets of people: Firstly,
8 the UNHCR, United Nations High Commission for Refugees,
9 said that "We will no longer cooperate" with what had
10 by then become known as "ethnic cleansing," "That by
11 letting all these people through in flight, we're
12 simply helping the authorities, the Serbian
13 authorities, in achieving their goals, and so we're
14 going to seal the frontier. No more allowed through."
15 The second reason for the closure was the
16 Croatian government in Zagreb who said simply, "We have
17 got too many people now. We can't feed and accommodate
18 any more."
19 Q. So what did you decide to do?
20 A. Well, I had a conversation that night in
21 Zagreb with a colleague from Reuters and a colleague
22 from the Associated Press, the colleague from Reuters
23 being a Yugoslav and we, as we put it, "Well, that's
24 the front door shut," but we were unconvinced that the
25 ethnic cleansing was going to stop because of that and,
1 as one of us put it, "We wonder where the back door
2 is," and it dawned on us - a rather unwelcome
3 realisation - that the only way to find that out was to
4 go to Prijedor and to get "ethnicly cleansed"
5 ourselves, to become part of whatever these forcible
6 deportations were and to join one and to find out what
7 happened.
8 Q. Did you, in fact, do just that?
9 A. Yes. Next morning, we got up and drove
10 through the Krajina area into Bosnia-Herzegovina and to
11 Prijedor and stopped at the police station for papers
12 to be there, and just outside Prijedor, almost
13 immediately, at a small hamlet, I think it's called
14 Lamovita, stumbled upon a great convoy parked up on the
15 side of the road marshaled by uniformed police with
16 automatic weapons, and the convoy was itself an
17 extraordinary sight of buses, trucks, and private cars,
18 brimmed full with people and belongings that they had
19 obviously mustered aboard these vehicles, and we
20 slipped into the convoy.
21 Q. Now, you indicated that you had gone to the
22 Prijedor police station to get authorisation papers.
23 While you were at the police station, did you have some
24 interaction with a group of Serbian forces?
25 A. Yes, a rather curious group of Serbian
1 forces. I had never seen before the groups of
2 paramilitaries or irregulars known as "Chetniks" who
3 wear long beards and are known for their scraggy hair
4 and long beards, and this is actually the civic centre
5 bit that we had been in before, and there were some
6 people there having a sort of picnic lunch and hunkered
7 down, and we did, for a short while which we were
8 allowed to, which was not long, have a conversation
9 with them, yes, or, rather, my Yugoslav colleague did
10 and translated what they were saying.
11 Q. Did he indicate that he had asked where they
12 were from?
13 A. They were from Serbia and the ones we spoke
14 to were from a town called Nis in the south of Serbia.
15 Q. What is the approximate date of this
16 interview, what is the date you're in Prijedor now?
17 A. I think it's August the 17th, 1992. If not,
18 it's a day either side of that. I'm pretty sure it's
19 the 17th.
20 Q. Where were you when you were speaking?
21 A. We were just inside the entrance to the civic
22 centre building in a room slightly to the right in
23 Prijedor.
24 Q. You indicated that you spoke to them for a
25 period of time that you were "allowed." Who was it
1 that interfered and would not allow you to continue
2 interviews with these men?
3 A. The police officers on the door of the civic
4 building.
5 Q. Were you, during that day, able to see what
6 kind of transport those paramilitary forces were using?
7 A. Yeah, they were on military buses.
8 Q. What type of military buses?
9 A. Fairly sort of ramshackle coaches but painted
10 in camouflage, in camouflage green.
11 Q. Were you able to tell, from the nature of
12 your interaction with them, whether they were there
13 with the approval of the local authorities?
14 A. Well, we ascertained they were there with
15 approval -- with the approval of the local authorities
16 because they were having sandwiches and lunch in the
17 local authority building, but -- and -- but -- yes, I
18 mean, that was the assumption.
19 Q. Did those men indicate where they had come
20 from and where they were going to?
21 A. They were going back to Serbia and they had
22 been in a place called Kljuc, which is to the south of
23 Prijedor.
24 Q. If you could please just slow down in your
25 speech?
1 A. Apologies to the translators.
2 Q. Based on your involvement in that area at the
3 time, were you able to determine whether there was
4 fighting going on in the area of Kljuc at that time?
5 A. There was violence going on in the area of
6 Kljuc. I was in no position to know whether or not
7 they were meeting any resistance or whether they were
8 just bullying.
9 Q. Now, referring to the convoy at Lamovita
10 which you joined, were you able to determine where that
11 convoy had come from?
12 A. Yes, further along the way. They were, for
13 the most part, from the town of Sanski Most which is --
14 your friend has said was to the south of Prijedor, and
15 they were on their way to -- they didn't know where,
16 nor did we. That was why we joined them, to find out.
17 Q. Were you able to establish approximately how
18 many people were in that convoy?
19 A. A mixture of our calculations and what they
20 were saying, I think about 1600 in some 55 cars and a
21 dozen or so buses and a dozen or so trucks.
22 Q. Were you able to determine the ethnic group
23 or nationality of the people involved in that convoy?
24 A. Overwhelmingly Muslim, with a few Croatians.
25 Q. Who, if anyone, was escorting that convoy?
1 A. We spoke to one or two of the police officers
2 later on. They were, for the most part, uniformed
3 police and some were in a thing called the MUP from the
4 Prijedor area and were armed.
5 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
6 MR. OSTOJIC: Once again, I apologise, Your
7 Honour, but if you look at the map, Sanski Most is to
8 the south directly, and he said these people came from
9 there, and it is an interesting story, and I'm sure
10 Mr. Vulliamy has reported it and talked about it, but
11 for this proceeding, I believe we're concerned with
12 Prijedor, and with Prijedor and what occurred there and
13 what he saw there. Now he's talking about three or so
14 weeks or two and a half weeks after his visit to
15 Trnopolje and the other centres, and now we're talking
16 about what he specifically said, "refugees," and I'm
17 trying to give a little latitude, but I just must
18 insist that there may have been, as he said yesterday,
19 different years, different times civil wars erupting at
20 different places, and this might be an example where
21 there was another war that cannot and never will -- I
22 think counsel for the Prosecution can stipulate -- had
23 nothing to do with Dr. Kovacevic because he wasn't in
24 the area, he was in Prijedor, and I'd like for us to at
25 least try, respectfully, to stay with your instruction
1 earlier. Thank you.
2 JUDGE MAY: Well, the ruling which we made
3 was that we would admit evidence relating to Bosnia and
4 in 1992, and Sanski Most, it seems to me, is within
5 that ruling. You can, of course, cross-examine about
6 it.
7 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you.
8 JUDGE MAY: Just help me with this,
9 Mr. Keegan. Where is the village or the hamlet in
10 which this convoy was joined? I have Sanski Most.
11 We're dealing with an area near Prijedor, I think.
12 MR. KEEGAN: Your Honour, if you use, I
13 believe it's Exhibit 35 --
14 JUDGE MAY: I have it, yes.
15 MR. KEEGAN: If you look west of Prijedor,
16 you should find the village of Lamovita.
17 JUDGE MAY: In fact, Judge Mumba points out
18 that on Exhibit 47, Lamovita does appear.
19 MR. KEEGAN: Okay, Your Honour.
20 JUDGE MAY: It's somewhere in the
21 Omarska-Trnopolje area, if that's right.
22 Yes. Can we go on?
23 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you, Your Honour.
24 Q. I believe my last question referred to who
25 was escorting the convoy. Did you, in discussions
1 with -- did the individuals on the convoy indicate to
2 you how this convoy had been organised or initiated?
3 A. Yes. They, for the most part, had to leave
4 their homes that morning, the morning having been
5 preceded by various attacks on their homes, grenades
6 through the windows, shooting into the houses, and they
7 had been told that the Muslims from that particular
8 part of Sanski Most had been told to rendezvous at a
9 car park, either with their own transport or with
10 buses, and that they were to leave that morning. This,
11 as far as I could gather, these instructions were put
12 out over the radio.
13 Q. Did they indicate they had been told where
14 they were supposed to be going on this convoy?
15 A. Well, it was a mixture of some who thought
16 that -- or who had been told that, papers had been
17 secured for them to go to Germany, Austria, or Hungary,
18 and others, like us, who had absolutely no idea at all
19 where we were going.
20 MR. KEEGAN: Now, if Prosecution Exhibit 47
21 could be given to the witness, please, and placed on
22 the ELMO?
23 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, if you would take a moment,
24 familiarise yourself again with the map? What I'm
25 going to ask you to do is generally trace the route
1 that the convoy actually took on that day?
2 If the overhead could be turned on, please,
3 and put on the monitors? There we are.
4 Yes, if you're prepared, could you please
5 indicate where you started and then generally the
6 route?
7 A. Yes.
8 COURT REPORTER: Sorry, I can't hear.
9 MR. KEEGAN:
10 Q. You're going to need to speak into the
11 microphone?
12 A. My apologies. Yes, Lamovita is indeed
13 marked, and that's where we picked it up. There was a
14 wait, I think it was a shift change or something, and
15 we lurched off down this road towards Banja Luka with a
16 curious response from the bystanders, either hostile or
17 nonchalant, and then set off down -- well, the tarmac
18 road becomes a less-well-mettled road here and you
19 climb into hilly ground towards this town here, Skender
20 Vakuf. There were only brief stops on the way to
21 Skender Vakuf.
22 Q. You described a mixed reaction as you went
23 through the Banja Luka area, hostility or nonchalance.
24 What do you mean by "a hostile response"?
25 A. The odd curse thrown at the convoy, people
1 shouting this word, the translation for which I believe
2 we're still waiting, "balija," and others would shout,
3 "Go to Alija," meaning Mr. Izetbegovic, the President
4 of Bosnia. But for the most part, I have to say the
5 overwhelming majority of people were looking at this as
6 though we were just going out for a stroll, and we
7 discussed this, and my own personal conclusion was they
8 had seen it so many times before that it was an
9 unsurprising sight to them. This was not the reception
10 in Skender Vakuf, however.
11 Q. Please describe what occurred in Skender
12 Vakuf.
13 A. Skender Vakuf was a much more militarised
14 town - as you can see, it was closer to the front-line -
15 and there the atmosphere was much more menacing. The
16 convoy was -- there were military and semi-military
17 people lounging around, and they were stopping the
18 convoy at various points and harassing its members,
19 kicking the cars and so on, denting the cars, spitting
20 and things, cursing. And, well, they stopped my car,
21 and that was an alarming moment, I must say.
22 Q. What happened on that occasion?
23 A. Well, I was worried that if I spoke in a
24 foreign language, I would blow our cover and that would
25 either get us thrown off the convoy or something
1 worse. So I feigned deaf and dumb. I started doing a
2 nonsensical deaf and dumb language, which, thankfully,
3 he didn't understand, and my colleague, who is a
4 Yugoslav, said, "Oh, he can't understand a word you're
5 saying. He's deaf and dumb." And we cobbled together
6 some story about coming from Australia, "We're caught
7 up in this, it's all a terrible mistake," and with that
8 this chap, who was pretty drunk, and his friend, they
9 gave me a Chinese burn on my arm. For some reason, he
10 pulled off the windscreen wiper and gave the car and
11 partly myself, as I shut the door, a kick, demanded
12 cigarettes, and sent us on our way.
13 Q. Now, after Skender Vakuf, what was your next
14 stop?
15 A. After Skender Vakuf, we -- the tarmac ends
16 after Skender Vakuf and it becomes a mountain track and
17 became more frightening because we could see far more
18 troops around; we were getting near to the front-line;
19 the insults were getting more common, trucks of
20 soldiers hurling abuse at us; and we kept pulling over
21 at what looked like industrial or factory farm
22 installations and we thought maybe we were all going to
23 a camp.
24 One of our number during one of the breaks
25 said, "I hope this isn't going to be some kind of
1 massacre." My friend said, "I think the unspeakable
2 has just been spoken." But it wasn't. We carried on.
3 And we got to a place called Vitovlje, which was the
4 last village on the Serbian side of the line.
5 MR. KEEGAN: If that would be -- sorry,
6 Mr. Vulliamy.
7 If that would be a convenient moment, Your
8 Honour?
9 JUDGE MAY: Two o'clock.
10 --- Luncheon recess taken at 12.30 p.m.
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1 --- On resuming at 2.05 p.m.
2 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you, Your Honour. Your
3 Honour, just before I begin with this witness because
4 it will impact somewhat on his testimony and just to
5 clarify, the ruling with respect to -- that you made
6 this morning, does the limitation of; in Bosnia in 1992
7 also apply to the issue of international armed
8 conflict?
9 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
10 MR. KEEGAN: Yes. Thank you, Your Honour.
11 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, when we left off before the
12 lunch break we were discussing the convoy of which you
13 were a part and you had described how you were arriving
14 at a village named Vitovlje. Could you please describe
15 what occurred as you arrived in that village?
16 A. Yes. Vitovlje was a mountain village. As
17 the convoy began to enter it, inhabitants of the
18 village, among them women and children, some of them
19 running across the fields to do so, lined the road and,
20 if I could demonstrate, were slicing their fingers
21 across their throats (indicated) at us and shouting
22 something in Serbo Croat which my colleague from
23 Reuters who is a Serb said meant "Slaughter them,
24 slaughter them," using a word which apparently is used
25 to describe animals in an abattoir rather than murder
1 of human beings. It wasn't a comfortable place to
2 drive through, but we did, and came out the other side
3 climbing a hill, and as we did so, the rear of the
4 convoy was stopped and the whole convoy then stopped.
5 This is quite a long snake of vehicles.
6 There was a lot of arguing going on. It was
7 at this point, actually, that we were able to count the
8 vehicles. The row was because two young women had been
9 taken from one of the cars, prisoner. Again, one
10 pleads one's inability to fully understand what was
11 going on. I'm now fairly sure why two young women
12 would be taken out of cars and held prisoner, but was
13 not at the time, and eventually we went on --
14 Q. Were those women, to your knowledge, returned
15 to the vehicle or to the convoy before it moved on?
16 A. I really don't know. We found out about this
17 argument as we were pulling off and getting into our
18 cars. To my knowledge, not, but I don't know. I can't
19 definitively answer that.
20 Q. Were any of the vehicles or other property
21 also stolen or taken from the convoy at that point?
22 A. Property of those driving their own cars was
23 being taken on and off at most of the stops of which
24 there were several, and these stops became more
25 frequent towards unwelcomed darkness and by which time,
1 as dusk came, the first shooting was beginning, and
2 during one stop, one of the buses broke down, as night
3 fell, in fact, and dark fell as we were stationary
4 behind it for quite a long time, and during that stop,
5 groups of -- a mixture of irregulars and camouflaged
6 troops, not the police, who watched on, went down the
7 convoy taking property. In the car behind us, they
8 took a lady's wedding ring, I remember, and they were
9 interested why we had petrol in the back of our car.
10 Yes, I got the impression that property was
11 being taken as they proceeded further down the convoy,
12 but I couldn't actually see beyond the car behind us.
13 Q. And throughout this whole time, was the
14 convoy still being accompanied by police that you had
15 picked up in Prijedor and along the way?
16 A. Yes. Shortly after this bus-stopping event,
17 this became quite frightening, actually, because there
18 were bushes on either side of the road and you could
19 hear men moving in the bushes and there were clearly
20 firearms nearby, they were shooting at, in some cases,
21 over the heads, over the convoy, or had been in the
22 fields just before the bushes started, and it was
23 shortly after that and before we got to the end of the,
24 as it were, the vehicle bit of the -- stage of the
25 convoy, that the police, who had joined during what I
1 think was this shift change at Lamovita all turned
2 back, and one of them had clearly, pardon the
3 expression, "clocked us," and who we were and realised
4 that we weren't Muslims from Sanski Most and said,
5 "They're taking cars on ahead. You had better tell
6 them you're journalists." And we were, I suppose,
7 quite pleased -- I was quite relieved to have been
8 discovered by someone who was in at least some form of
9 authority, and as we proceeded to the last Serbian
10 line, by now dark, we did declare ourselves, yes.
11 Q. Where was that final destination for the
12 vehicle point -- travel of the convoy?
13 A. This would be the Serbian front-line manned by
14 what appeared to be irregular or semi-regular soldiers,
15 and this would be a place called Smet.
16 Q. During this convoy, up to the area of Smet,
17 had you found or had you witnessed the same type of
18 array of heavy weaponry behind the irregular forces
19 which you had noted in Croatia at the beginning of the
20 conflict there and elsewhere in Bosnia during your
21 travels?
22 A. Yes. During the period that the convoy was
23 just preceding and after Vitovlje, we were able to get
24 a rare and quite a good view of the guns and some tanks
25 but mostly dug-in guns and mortars arraigned along the
1 high ground, and an impressive quantity of ammunition
2 for those guns, yes.
3 Q. What happened in the village of Smet?
4 A. At Smet -- and it was a long process -- each
5 vehicle -- well, each car was taken from its owner,
6 they were yanked out of the vehicles at gun point, told
7 to take whatever possessions they felt they were able
8 to manage on foot, and the vehicles then turned around
9 and driven away by members of this, as I say,
10 irregular, semi-regular unit or other chaps who were
11 hanging around.
12 So the convoy was being laboriously, it took
13 a long time, sent out on foot into the night.
14 Those on buses were simply told to get off
15 the buses and walk again with whatever possessions they
16 could manage and again at gun point, and similarly
17 those on trucks, riding on the trucks, were told to get
18 off and their trucks taken away.
19 Q. Were any vehicles allowed to proceed across
20 the line from Smet?
21 A. Six. Five belonging to other people -- I
22 don't know why they were allowed through -- and the
23 sixth was ours. We declared ourselves, as advised by
24 the police officer, and got into some banter with the
25 guards. My Yugoslav colleague from Reuters doing most
1 of the talking, we were joking with them about the
2 Belgrade soccer team, in way of ingratiating -- we
3 were quite keen to be their friends at this point, and
4 they allowed our car through.
5 Q. At Smet were people also forced to turn over
6 valuables?
7 A. Yes, one or two instances of property being
8 taken, but then, on the other hand, most of the stuff
9 that people had packed in their cars, I think presuming
10 they were going to be able to take that all the way to
11 wherever they were going, were being driven away in the
12 vehicles as well as valuables, people were losing
13 whatever they had packed to take with them.
14 Q. From Smet, where were the members of the
15 convoy, now mostly on foot, where were they sent?
16 A. Well, out onto the road, and we were, for the
17 first couple of miles, in our car, by this time laden
18 with other people and their belongings with others on
19 foot.
20 I had been covering this war and others for
21 enough time by now to know that Rule No. 1 is that you
22 never cross the front-lines, and our greatest fear was
23 what's called "friendly fire" whereby any sensible
24 soldier on the other side, if he saw this procession
25 coming towards him, would probably open fire. So we
1 elected one of our number to carry a white T-shirt with
2 a torch shining on it as though to signify that we were
3 not hostile to whoever was ahead of us in the darkness,
4 and, well, the procession began, us initially in the
5 car along with the five others that I couldn't see and
6 a large crowd of people.
7 Q. Was there any military activity going on, any
8 firing going on at this time?
9 A. There had been some small arms fire going on,
10 night time was usually fighting time in these places,
11 and the heavy firing began just as we got to a
12 barricade in the road made of rocks that designated
13 the -- not the front-lines but the actual border between
14 the two territories controlled by the two opposing
15 sides.
16 By then, yes, there was a lot of mortar fire
17 going on, and we could see, quite clearly, tracer fire
18 coming over our heads, down into a village below, I
19 think called Cosici, and you could tell where it was
20 going because the tracer bullets are, by definition,
21 lit. Yes, there was quite a lot of fighting starting
22 up.
23 Q. Did you see any indications that people had
24 recently been killed on the ground that you were now
25 walking or covering?
1 A. Yes. Mostly after this border of rocks that
2 I hoped to describe, but first signs of, not actually
3 cadavers of any kind, but sticky blood and signs of
4 blood that had been shed on the road were just before
5 this demarcation boundary. Yes, there had obviously
6 been some people wounded on the way.
7 Q. How did people get across this demarcation
8 line which you've described?
9 A. Well, it was a high barricade of boulders and
10 there were mines -- there was a slope in the road to
11 the left hand, north side, and although there was land
12 around which you could travel in a car to the right,
13 that was layered visibly with mines, so the last of the
14 vehicles were left there, including ours, abandoned,
15 and these 1600 people were clambering over the rocks,
16 and this is something I won't forget. I remember there
17 was a man in a wheelchair and he and his wheelchair had
18 to be separately hoisted over, I remember babies being
19 handed down to their parents along with possessions
20 that they had taken, teddy bears and toys and mementos
21 and so on. These were families, and of course the old
22 people, and of them were a good number, only got over
23 with some difficulty, helped by younger people.
24 Q. As you carried on walking on this road, were
25 there indications that there had been people killed on
1 that part of the ground?
2 A. Yes. We obviously weren't the first to come
3 this way because there was blood and it was semi-fresh,
4 if I can describe it was "sticky underfoot," and there
5 was evidence that there had been bodies on that road,
6 yes. I at one point stepped on the side of the road
7 and there was a human forearm on the side of the road.
8 Q. Approximately how long do you recall having
9 to carry on until you reached the Bosnian government
10 lines?
11 A. A long time. I can't recall exactly how
12 long, but we were marshalled by one of the deportees to
13 walk in single file. It was explained to us that if a
14 mortar were to hit us, this would create less damage.
15 Some women and children simply sat down on the side of
16 the road, unable or unwilling to continue because the
17 fighting was getting heavier ahead of us and down in
18 the valley below, so this held us up, as some of the
19 younger men tried to marshal them to continue. The
20 older people were obviously moving much more slowly
21 than the rest which delayed us further and, with some
22 difficulty, one man was in his slippers, I later found
23 out that he died along the way.
24 So it took a long time to get the procession
25 as far as the first sign of the forces on the other
1 side, the Bosnian army soldiers, who were actually
2 blocking the road. I don't know how long it took, but
3 it must have been two or three miles on, and they said
4 that the fighting in the village below was too heavy
5 that night for us to continue on the road and they were
6 pointing up a track up the side of a mountain, saying
7 we would have to climb that and continue on our --
8 along that route. So people did. They left the road
9 at that point to climb this mountain track as directed,
10 with the fire continuing.
11 Q. After you made your way up the mountain
12 track, how was the group then carried on to its final
13 destination?
14 A. The track continued for some time. Then we
15 reached a cattle trough for water for cattle, which
16 some people felt able to stop and rest, including us,
17 for a while because the fighting -- we were now leaving
18 the fighting down below us, and people started to take
19 water, had a rest, we talked to them about what a long
20 day it had been, some stories about how they had left
21 their homes, and continued into the first habitations
22 which we had seen since Smet or before Smet, actually,
23 and I remember someone saying I don't know where we are
24 but it looks like somewhere, and that is where some
25 Bosnian army and Croatian soldiers said -- well, his
1 words were, welcome to Travnik. We have buses to take
2 you the rest of the way.
3 Q. And after you found those buses, what was the
4 reaction of the people who had been on that forced
5 convoy?
6 A. Sort of bewildered relief, sort of
7 bittersweet, I suppose. I remember the women touching
8 the patch on the side of this man's uniform, which was
9 the Bosnian army insignia, like a sort of talisman. I
10 suppose they had never seen it before. A mixture of
11 relief and bewilderment, I'd say.
12 Q. Can you then describe your impressions as you
13 entered the town of Travnik on the buses?
14 A. I didn't know where on earth I was. I had
15 never heard of Travnik. We arrived and went with our
16 fellow deportees on from our march to their billeting
17 quarters which was a gymnasium school, it was called,
18 and others were taken to other buildings, they were
19 registered, and it became clear as we went into their
20 sleeping accommodation that they were simply joining
21 many thousand other people to whom the same thing had
22 happened from other parts of the Bosnian Krajina
23 region. They found what places they could on the floor
24 to sleep with their belongings in plastic bags, and we
25 chatted to some of them for a while. Then asked to be
1 taken to whoever was in charge around here, which was
2 the Bosnian army headquarters.
3 Q. Among the people that you found in the
4 gymnasium and the school, were there people from the
5 Prijedor area?
6 A. Oh, yes. Most of these people were from the
7 Prijedor region, some from Banja Luka, and the areas to
8 the south of Prijedor.
9 Q. The following day, did you have an
10 opportunity to speak with the people from the convoy
11 about what had occurred to them in Sanski Most?
12 A. Yes. That was the first thing we did, was to
13 get up and go and talk to them again after what had
14 been about two or three hours' sleep, and they -- we
15 spoke to a doctor who talked about people throwing --
16 someone threw a grenade into the front room of his
17 house and some women had been killed while they were
18 having coffee in the front room, and they talked --
19 repeated the story we had already heard about the radio
20 instruction to assemble in the car park for
21 deportation, and a lady who had had a fashion boutique
22 talked about her property being damaged and her
23 threatened. Yes, it was variations on the theme of it
24 being made intolerable and, indeed, very dangerous for
25 them to stay, and others being killed.
1 Q. Did you also have an opportunity to speak to
2 people in the gymnasium who had come from the other
3 areas you've referred to?
4 A. Yes. As I said, the people were from, in the
5 main, our people were from Sanski Most, others were
6 from Prijedor, there were people from Kozarac in
7 particular, and people from the villages around the
8 Prijedor and to the west of Banja Luka.
9 Q. Did those individuals relate similar stories
10 to the ones that you heard from the people from Sanski
11 Most?
12 A. Yes, it was all the same theme: harassment,
13 shooting into their houses, grenades in houses, and
14 others talked about being asked to sign over their
15 houses to the authorities with a promise never to
16 return, others talked about going through something
17 called the office for population exchange, or something
18 in Prijedor, which they had to register with, signing
19 away their properties, to organise their departure.
20 There were variations on a theme, but they all came down
21 to the same basic point: they were to leave and were
22 not to come back.
23 Q. Had they all been transported down that same
24 route which you had travelled and did they relate
25 stories that were similar to the experiences which your
1 convoy had gone through?
2 A. Yes. My main conversations about all that
3 were on a later visit to Travnik the following month,
4 but they had come from -- I mean, if I can -- the
5 series of conversations to answer your question
6 properly, that road, apart from being quite a bond
7 between those who had travelled it, was sort of -- was
8 an important chord in the war because everybody knew
9 it, everybody knew how frightening it was, and indeed a
10 lot of the people whom I met the following month back
11 in Travnik -- this is in September 1992 -- had come
12 along that same road in those same circumstances from
13 the Trnopolje camp that we had visited, and their
14 stories, their accounts illuminated, for me,
15 considerably what the Trnopolje camp was for.
16 We had heard all these different accounts of
17 how people had got to Trnopolje, and now here was a
18 common, as it were, sequal to the chaos we had seen that
19 day in the camp. They had all been herded, for want of
20 a better word, over that same road, through that same
21 gauntlet, into Travnik.
22 Q. How long did you stay in Travnik on that
23 occasion?
24 A. We left the following day after a briefing
25 with -- we went to see the Bosnian army commander and
1 his opposite number at the Croatian HVO, they were in
2 alliance at the time, and we were told that -- we got
3 some figures on the numbers of refugees who had come
4 into Travnik along the road we had travelled, some
5 36.000, I believe, by that date which was by then the
6 18th of August, 1992, and we became aware for the first
7 time on the scale of the problem. I introduced this
8 phase by saying we wanted to know where the back door
9 was. We now knew.
10 Our priority then was not to tarry but to
11 arrange transport as quickly we could and to get to a
12 telephone to report what we had seen, and that involved
13 going down to Croatia.
14 Q. Now, subsequent to your experience on that
15 convoy to Travnik, did the ICRC issue a document which
16 described similar accounts of treatment of non-Serbs in
17 the Banja Luka region?
18 A. Yes. I remember them putting out material on
19 this subject.
20 MR. KEEGAN: This would be Exhibit 49, Your
21 Honour.
22 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, do you recognise that report?
23 A. Yes, I do.
24 Q. Is that the report issued by the ICRC?
25 A. It was a little while after our trip across
1 the mountains. Yes, I remember it.
2 MR. KEEGAN: We tender that exhibit, Your
3 Honour.
4 Q. At the same time, during this same period
5 that we're speaking of, were there statements also
6 being made by Bosnian Serb officials in the Banja Luka
7 region and by the Serb media which reinforced the
8 impression you spoke of, that this was a dangerous and
9 organised activity that would continue?
10 A. Well, I remember my colleague from Reuters,
11 from Belgrade, getting a copy of a magazine called
12 Epoka, which basically said that if you -- it
13 illuminated the whole business of the sheets and white
14 flags a little more because it said in the article that
15 Muslims and non-Serbs were obliged to fly these --
16 something white or a white flag from your building or
17 face the consequences or some such expression, I don't
18 recall the exact wording. It was a report in a Serbian
19 magazine about this discomfort that people were intended to
20 feel if they didn't leave.
21 Q. Were there also statements being made by
22 Serbian authorities from Banja Luka about the transfer
23 of population?
24 A. Well, there was certainly -- there were
25 various decrees being put out locally by villages in
1 the area. There was one village near Prijedor called
2 Celinac where a decree was put out and Muslims were not
3 allowed to congregate in more than groups of three,
4 were not allowed to make phone calls except from the
5 post office, were not allowed to go fishing in the
6 river or swimming, not allowed to collect and not
7 allowed to talk to relatives unless they were from the
8 village, that sort of thing. Yes, there were various
9 official decrees being put out. That was just one I
10 saw in a village actually nearer Prijedor than Banja
11 Luka.
12 Q. Do you recall statements referring to the
13 numbers of Muslims which the Banja Luka authorities
14 hoped to remove from Banja Luka?
15 A. No, I don't recall any specific intentions to
16 sort of -- I don't recall any specific numbers, "We
17 want this number out by how many." My colleague and
18 trainer did write an article in my own newspaper in
19 which he quoted some officials from this office for
20 population removal saying that they wanted to get rid
21 of, I think, 40.000 to Zenica by a certain date. That
22 was reported by a colleague, and I can certainly find
23 the report for you. I did not get directly in Banja
24 Luka anything like that, but those figures were being
25 reported, yes, particularly from this, I think, office
1 for population exchange and a man called Vukic in
2 particular.
3 Q. And later in October of 1992, did the ICRC
4 from the Banja Luka region issue statements about
5 the -- what was being referred to as ethnic cleansing
6 of Muslims and non-Serbs from the Banja Luka area?
7 A. Yes, they did. The ICRC protestations and
8 reports became more frequent and, for them, more
9 vociferous as time went along, and I do remember those
10 reports. The ICRC does not use this kind of language
11 lightly, they're very restrained, and they have to be,
12 so that's why their reports were particularly notable.
13 Q. Do you also recall a report from the special
14 U.N. rapporteur Mr. Mazowiecki?
15 A. I certainly do remember a report from Tadeusz
16 Mazowiecki. I recall a number of reports from him and
17 especially that on Trnopolje. We were in close contact
18 with him and I believe these reports led to his
19 resignation.
20 MR. KEEGAN: If these could be marked as the
21 next three exhibits, I believe it would be 50, 51, and
22 52.
23 JUDGE CASSESE: Mr. Keegan, could you please
24 give us the date of this document, P49, the date and
25 the source, the ICRC document?
1 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour. That was, in
2 fact, issued by ICRC headquarters from Geneva, and I'm
3 sorry, you'll have to -- it's in my notes, but I don't
4 believe I have that with me, the actual date. I will
5 provide that to you later, Your Honour.
6 JUDGE CASSESE: Thank you.
7 MR. KEEGAN:
8 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, if you could briefly review
9 each of those three documents? Are those the
10 statements that we just referred to?
11 A. Yes. With regard the Red Cross one, this is
12 an interview with Beat Schweizer by the Austrian
13 radio. I don't know this particular interview, I
14 didn't hear him being interviewed on Austrian radio,
15 but I spoke to Beat on a number of occasions and he
16 said the same things.
17 Q. His position at that time was?
18 A. He was head of the Red Cross in the area, the
19 International ICRC, International Red Cross.
20 Q. In the Banja Luka region?
21 A. Yes. As regards the AFP report on ethnic
22 cleansing being nearly complete, again, this is a
23 report in the Agence France Presse, I didn't see this
24 particular one, but Sylvana Frote, the UNHCR
25 spokeswoman, was widely reported and I certainly saw
1 other accounts of her statements. The third sheet is
2 Tadeusz Mazowiecki's -- it's a report of his report,
3 again on the AFP. I didn't see this particular report
4 of the report, but I did see his report itself.
5 Q. Does that article accurately summarise his
6 conclusions?
7 A. Yes, yes.
8 MR. OSTOJIC: I was trying to object before.
9 I think it's highly speculative, so I was going to
10 object to the form. I understand we are giving great
11 latitude but ...
12 JUDGE MAY: Yes. This is probably a matter
13 for us to decide.
14 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you.
15 JUDGE MAY: Before we leave these documents,
16 I am told by the Registry they are numbered as
17 follows: The last document which was referred to which
18 has on the left the figure 00543284 is, I think,
19 Exhibit 50. I confirm that that's right with the
20 Registrar.
21 The document headed "Red Cross Director says
22 Muslims must be moved," 00543283 is 51, and I have that
23 confirmed.
24 THE REGISTRAR: If you will allow me just to
25 check with the ...
1 JUDGE MAY: Yes, if you could, please.
2 A. Sorry, Your Honour, they reached me in a
3 different order.
4 JUDGE MAY: I'll ask the Registrar to read
5 out the figures so that we've all got the same.
6 THE REGISTRAR: So the document "Red Cross
7 Director Says Muslims Must Be Moved," is Exhibit 50,
8 the document entitled "Ethnic Cleansing In Banja Luka
9 Nearly Complete," Exhibit 51; and "Mazowiecki: Ethnic
10 Cleansing Intensifying," is Exhibit 52.
11 JUDGE MAY: Thank you.
12 MR. KEEGAN:
13 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, did you return to Travnik some
14 weeks later?
15 A. Yes, I did, about a month later.
16 Q. And what were your main impressions that you
17 recall from that return visit?
18 A. Firstly, that the town, full enough of
19 deportees when I first arrived there that night, was
20 now full to bursting. The numbers being given out by
21 the various authorities of refugees needing settlement
22 had been 36.000 in mid August during that first visit,
23 if "visit" is the right word, and were now something
24 like 75.000 to 80.000, so it had more than doubled.
25 All of them along that road, all of them from that
1 area. So one's first impression is that the place was
2 heaving with people from around Prijedor and Banja
3 Luka.
4 Q. Did you --
5 A. It was also under pretty heavy shelling, I
6 omitted to say. Sorry to butt in.
7 Q. Did you have conversations with some of those
8 people regarding the convoys that had followed the one
9 that you had been on?
10 A. Oh, yes, indeed, with a great many of them,
11 because, as I said before, that road was something of a
12 bond between those who had been on it, and it was, I
13 think, quite surprising to some that a foreigner, an
14 outsider, had been along it, and, yes, we shared
15 stories about the road and the journeys, and indeed
16 where the people had come from, and -- forgive me if I
17 tried to pre-empt this earlier -- but by this time,
18 there were very much larger numbers of people in
19 Travnik who had come along that road from the Trnopolje
20 camp, and I later learned that -- on that visit that
21 one of them had been Mr. Alic who we had met that day
22 in Trnopolje.
23 Q. Was there also a number of reports about any
24 massacres on any of those convoys?
25 A. This was the main -- the main thing, was that
1 four nights after we had travelled, which was the night
2 from the 17th into the 18th of August, on the night of
3 the 21st of August, there had been, so the authorities
4 said and so some of the people who were encamped said,
5 the killing of some 200 men at a ravine near Smet. I
6 remember the ravine, we skirted it although couldn't
7 see into it because it was dark but the road curved
8 round and there was talk in town of this massacre.
9 I endeavoured to find eyewitnesses to the
10 massacre but was unable to do so. The two people who
11 had reported it, or they said had survived it, had gone
12 elsewhere, but there were reports beginning to
13 circulate of this massacre, yes.
14 Q. And where had that particular convoy
15 originated from the reports?
16 A. I understand that the men had come from
17 Trnopolje.
18 Q. Did you have conversations with individuals
19 who had been in camps of some type or another from
20 other areas, areas other than Prijedor or Banja Luka?
21 A. Yes, and there's one in particular which I
22 found alarming. As you can imagine, you know, I was
23 being introduced as the man who had seen Omarska, and
24 one man, by way of informing me, and in a way
25 reprimanding me at the same time, told me about a shed
1 that he had been kept in along with 100 other prisoners
2 from his village which was near a town called Donji
3 Vakuf just over the other side of the front-line, and
4 the gist of his argument was, "Well, you found Omarska
5 and Trnopolje. They were just the famous ones. There
6 were other little camps all over the place," or "camps"
7 may be not the right word, but in his shed where men
8 had been beaten to death and abused. The commander,
9 the man running it, had come up to them that day and
10 said, "Ha, ha, the journalists have found the big camps
11 up near Prijedor but they'll never find you up here."
12 This man managed to get to Travnik with five
13 others on a prisoner exchange, but his testimony, which
14 I believed, led me into a fairly despairing thought,
15 really, that these little places could be all over and
16 that we really were not going to be able to find them.
17 Q. From Travnik, where was the next area which,
18 in 1992, which you then travelled to?
19 A. Towards the end of September, I went into
20 what is called the Bihac pocket, which is the area to
21 the extreme northwest of the country just west of
22 Prijedor.
23 Q. At that time, how was that pocket being held?
24 A. Well, with some difficulty. Although the
25 maps that we've been looking at don't indicate it, the
1 Bihac pocket was completely surrounded, sealed off. To
2 the east and south by the Bosnian Krajina, what we're
3 calling the Prijedor-Sanski Most area, and to the north
4 and west by the Croatian Krajina area, which, although
5 it's in Croatia, was under Serbian control. So Bihac
6 was completely surrounded and defending itself with
7 some difficulty.
8 It was strategically very important to both
9 sides, specifically to the Serbs, because it was like,
10 as one man put it to me, "a bone in the throat." In
11 the area that linked the Bosnian Krajina and Banja Luka
12 with the Croatian Serbs in the Croatian Krajina, it was
13 an awkward aberration for them.
14 Q. Where did you go first in that area?
15 A. I went to a place called Bosanska Krupa on
16 the river Una.
17 Q. Upon your arrival at Bosanska Krupa, what did
18 you find?
19 A. Bosanska Krupa is separated from the
20 Serbian-controlled area just to the west of Prijedor
21 and Sanski Most by the width of a river, and it was one
22 of the most terrifying places I have been during the
23 entire war, frankly. You had to get to it by parking
24 your car quite a way back and walking down a steep
25 track to get into the town, what was left of the town.
1 There I found a population of either, in the main,
2 elderly people who were unable to get up the track fast
3 enough without being shot at, because you were shot at
4 as you went up the track or down it, or people who just
5 wanted to stay -- there were always those people in
6 every place. Or a small number of police defending the
7 town or, for the most part, refugees from the area over
8 the other side of the river towards Sanski Most and
9 Prijedor.
10 Q. How would you describe the area of Bosanska
11 Krupa at that time?
12 A. I described it before. I will do so again.
13 It was like a shooting gallery because the snipers were
14 just over the other side of the river, and to move
15 around the town, you had to run between the houses,
16 rather like prey. You would crouch behind a house, run
17 to the next house; as you did so, the gunners would
18 shoot, "Crack, crack," you'd get to the safety,
19 hopefully, of the next house, and continue thus along
20 the river. This is how people had to live if they were
21 to get fruit then on the trees in order to live.
22 Neither the U.N. nor the Red Cross or any other agency
23 had, at the time I arrived in Bosanska Krupa, been
24 there.
25 Q. How many forces -- you mentioned some
1 police. How many forces were present in that town?
2 A. It's hard to say. I'd estimate minimum of
3 20, maximum of 50, taking casualties. We asked how
4 many people, you know -- how many people get killed
5 running between the houses like this? And they said,
6 "Oh, 56 in the last two weeks." And a lot of those I
7 think had been so-called defending forces. But it was
8 a pretty token defence.
9 Q. How were those police armed?
10 A. Rifles, one or two machine guns, not much.
11 Q. What was the ethnic background of all of the
12 people whom you met in that village?
13 A. I think they were all Muslim in this case.
14 If there were any Croats, I don't recall meeting them.
15 I think they were all Muslims.
16 Q. Did you, on some occasion, have the
17 opportunity to discover what forces were aligned on the
18 other side of the river?
19 A. Well, yes. Obviously there were large
20 numbers of snipers with rifles and machine guns because
21 they were shooting at us all day. It was towards
22 nightfall that they started shelling Bosanska Krupa
23 with mortars and artillery fire, and that's when we
24 stopped running about between houses and joined the
25 population of the town in the places where they had
1 become accustomed to live, which was their cellars, or
2 if they had no cellar, other people's cellars.
3 Q. And the forces on the other side of the
4 river, did you later determine who they were aligned
5 with or what army, what forces, they belonged to?
6 A. It was the Bosnian Serb army.
7 Q. How long did you spend in that town?
8 A. Two days with a night in between.
9 Q. And how did you get out of the town?
10 A. Well, back into the chicken run -- pardon
11 me -- and running between the houses, the bullets
12 coming pretty close to us, and running up the track at
13 the back of the town up back onto the road towards
14 Cazin and to the car, being shot at.
15 Q. From Bosanska Krupa, did you move into the
16 town of Bihac itself?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Can you describe the situation that met you
19 there?
20 A. It was similar to Travnik for the same
21 reason. According to -- there were some UNMO, military
22 observers, United Nations military observers in Bihac,
23 and they told us that the population of the pocket was
24 300.000 of whom some 36.000 were refugees from the
25 Prijedor area, and the -- well, it was the same
1 conditions, public spaces were packed with these people
2 bedded down on the floor of schools. Some had -- some
3 refugees had taken accommodation, most memorably for
4 me, in a series of tunnels and underground
5 accommodations that were built by the Germans during
6 the Second World War beneath a school. The school had
7 been gutted, it was too exposed for them to stay in any
8 longer, so they had found these tunnels beneath it. We
9 went down into the tunnels to spend quite a bit of time
10 down there with the people.
11 Most of them were elderly. There was one old
12 lady aged 84, I took her name and interviewed her -- I
13 can't recall her name at the moment. I can get it for
14 you if you like. She was scared out of her wits
15 preparing, I think, to spend the rest of her life down
16 there. She made some remark about how it was never as
17 bad as this even in the Second World War. There was a
18 young girl down there called Bahra, I can't remember
19 her second name, Klagic, I think, who rather touchingly
20 went away to make herself up before being interviewed,
21 despite the circumstances. She told a story of how she
22 had been burned out of her house in a town just north
23 of Prijedor called Bosanski Novi and described a very
24 frightening 90-kilometre round robin hike sometimes
25 with fellow deportees. She said she saw them killing
1 people by the road.
2 Eventually she said she and her friend had
3 been taken in by some Serbs to make coffee for them for
4 a while before being allowed to cross the river Una
5 into Bosanska Krupa and then to Bihac. I wrote down
6 and have written that she made coffee for the Serbs. I
7 know now what that meant.
8 Q. The town itself, was it under attack during
9 the time you were there?
10 A. Yes, under fairly heavy attack.
11 Q. Was the town being shelled during that time?
12 A. Yes, it was, especially towards nightfall,
13 and the United Nations military observers were pointing
14 out that it was being shelled not only from the Bosnian
15 Serb side but also fairly intensively from the Bosnian
16 Croat side as well -- sorry, from the -- forgive me,
17 the Croatian Serbian side, that is to say, the Croatian
18 Krajina, from the west as well as from the east and
19 south, that is to say.
20 Q. Did you personally have an opportunity to
21 observe the formations of the Croatian Serb military
22 forces on the other side of the confrontation line?
23 A. Yes. The United Nations military observer
24 who was from the Royal Air Force of my country,
25 actually, a man called Millington, he was very, very
1 angry indeed about this, angry at his own employer as
2 well, and he advised us to go to a Bosnian army
3 encampment on a high plain above Cazin where there's a
4 turkey farm and from which he said you could see quite
5 clearly from whence the fire was coming into Bihac from
6 the Croatian Serbian side, in addition to from the
7 Bosnian Serbian side.
8 Q. Could you, in fact, see those positions?
9 A. Yes, you could see the guns firing.
10 Q. What, if anything, did you note was happening
11 at that turkey farm with regard to the Bosnian military
12 forces at that point?
13 A. The Bosnian so-called army at that point was
14 quartered on this turkey farm and I didn't spend a
15 great deal of time there, but the -- the single memory
16 I have of the place was that bullets were being issued
17 and signed for singly, one round at a time, which gave
18 some kind of indication of the weaponry that they had
19 at their disposal. The men went to the front-line from
20 the farm and from the centre of town on the bus, on
21 civilian buses, and they were unarmed when they went up
22 there and I remember we said to them, "Well, where are
23 your weapons?" They said, "Oh, they're on the
24 front-line already. The shift that comes off gives us
25 the guns and we take over from them that way." So
1 there were more men than weapons.
2 Q. Do you recall any particular attacks during
3 the time that you were in Bihac?
4 A. Two. One -- if there was any debate from
5 whence the firing was coming, we were driving back into
6 the town on the western side and were shot at from
7 Croatia, in effect, but the most memorable attacks were
8 around and on the hospital.
9 Q. And what occurred at the hospital?
10 A. The hospital was working as best it could to
11 treat people. Like many hospitals that I visited in
12 Bosnia, it was -- they were having to work often
13 without anaesthetic, and there was one -- a shell was
14 levelled at the hospital on one occasion while I was
15 there, but the occasion I'll -- I remember most vividly
16 was the admission into the hospital of a seven year old
17 girl who had been hit in the head by a sniper's bullet,
18 and I was told this was while she was running across
19 her back garden with her mother, their house having
20 been hit by a mortar, and this girl was bandaged up and
21 they asked us to come over and have a look, and she was
22 almost unconscious, her eyes were shut, and I just put
23 my hand under her shoulder, I was -- I wasn't thinking
24 professionally at the time, and there was this
25 horrible shudder and that was, it turned out, the
1 moment of her death. That's the most memorable attack
2 on Bihac.
3 Q. During -- at the same time as the attacks on
4 Bihac were being conducted both from within Bosnia and
5 from Croatia by the Croatian Serbian forces, did you
6 become aware that there were also attacks in the south
7 of Bosnia by Yugoslav Army forces?
8 A. Sorry, in the --
9 Q. I'm sorry. Did you become aware that at the
10 same time that -- during the same period that you were
11 in Bihac, there were attacks by the Yugoslav Army in
12 the south of Bosnia?
13 A. Yes, down in southeast -- Montenegrin -- the
14 Montenegrin divisions where colleagues had been
15 reporting that.
16 Q. If you could briefly review that exhibit,
17 Mr. Vulliamy?
18 I believe we ...
19 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you, Your Honour. With
20 respect to this exhibit, we have an objection. Clearly
21 in accordance with the Court's ruling confining at
22 least some of the different conflicts, different
23 flare-ups and wars that occurred in Bosnia, this
24 particular one, Prevlaka, or Dubrovnik area, and if you
25 look on your respective maps, I think Exhibit 43, the
1 map, you will see that Dubrovnik is clearly designated
2 in the Croatian side all the way in the centre of your
3 map, significantly -- right by the sea there, if not
4 extensively-- and Prevlaka is in that area, removed
5 from the Prijedor area which we're concerned with here,
6 but definitely it's outside the scope of your
7 instruction as well, so we object on those grounds.
8 MR. KEEGAN: Your Honour, if I might? The
9 report which of course is an article by the Belgrade
10 press agency TANJUG, which was the state news agency in
11 the former Yugoslavia, is reporting the statement by
12 the president of the Serb Autonomous Region of
13 Herzegovina, which, as you heard in earlier testimony,
14 is within Bosnia and Herzegovina, was one of the
15 Serb Autonomous Regions declared by the Bosnian
16 Serbs. They are discussing here members of the
17 Yugoslav Army Podgorica corps, which is the capital of
18 Montenegro, being deployed east of Dubrovnik -- it's
19 actually in Bosnia-Herzegovina territory, and the town
20 specifically mentioned is Trebinje, which you will note
21 on that map is, in fact, in Bosnia-Herzegovina. So
22 this is within 1992, it is within Bosnia and
23 Herzegovina, and it does relate to international armed
24 conflict.
25 JUDGE MAY: Yes, we'll admit this.
1 MR. KEEGAN:
2 Q. Now, Mr. Vulliamy, from Bihac, where was the
3 next area in 1992 that you went to cover?
4 A. Well, for a number of weeks, I was
5 preoccupied with the emergent conflict between the
6 Muslims and the Bosnian Croats, and then, fairly
7 suddenly, our attention was drawn back to Travnik by
8 the fall of the town of Jajce.
9 Q. And where, in relation to Travnik, is the
10 town of Jajce?
11 A. Jajce is to the northwest of Travnik and was
12 under heavy siege. It's a mixed Muslim and Croat
13 town -- was -- and was under Serb siege.
14 We had tried to -- or I with colleagues had
15 tried to get to Jajce a number of times through a very
16 narrow sort of umbilical corridor which serviced the
17 town. By night ammunition and supplies and food would
18 be taken up. We tried to go up that corridor a number
19 of times but were prevented from doing so by very heavy
20 fire across it. So I never actually got to Jajce, but
21 it fell during the very last days of October and the
22 first days in November.
23 Q. At some point was the evacuation of Jajce
24 ordered?
25 A. Yes, I think at a certain point the Croatian
1 HVO army first realised that the town was under such
2 heavy fire it was now indefensible and pulled off the
3 lines, the Bosnian army followed, and they ordered the
4 people to leave, such was the intensity of the
5 bombardment.
6 Q. And did you witness, in fact, the evacuation
7 of Jajce within that corridor?
8 A. Yes. Late one evening, we went up as far as
9 a village called Turbe on the frontlines, and the first
10 few people started straggling in from Jajce with
11 stories of their town ablaze. It was the next day,
12 Saturday, I think November the 1st, something like
13 that, it was the Saturday that we went out to a
14 midpoint called Karaule, between Turbe and Jajce, and
15 beheld this scene of some 40.000, according to the
16 UNHCR, people coming down the lanes with carts, horses,
17 sheep, farm animals, a defeated army, beating this
18 pathetic retreat. They were under fire as they did so,
19 and I know that because in a fairly quiet moment
20 between Karaule and Turbe, there was a sudden shot and
21 a man wounded in the arm while he was riding on the
22 back of a horse-drawn cart.
23 Q. The people that you witnessed being evacuated
24 from Jajce, what type of people were coming down that
25 road? Were they all military forces or related to the
1 military?
2 A. Oh, no. The military were a small minority.
3 They were as anxious to hitch a ride on the carts, the
4 horse-drawn carts, as anybody else, but for the most
5 part, this was -- these were rural people, civilians,
6 families, children, old people, anybody. It was the
7 population of the town.
8 Q. Did you speak to the people that were in this
9 column or convoy coming down this road?
10 A. We spoke to them mostly -- yes, a few on the
11 convoy, but mostly when they encamped in the streets of
12 Travnik and any open space they could find. I remember
13 thinking and writing at the time this looked like
14 something out of Tolstoy, these broilers, horses, sheep
15 wandering everywhere, people were bringing their farms
16 literally with them. This was an incredible sight,
17 Travnik, as I've said, already very full, and we talked
18 to them, yes, about the intensifying bombardment of
19 their town and the way in which they had, towards the
20 end, been mostly living in cellars and had to come out
21 to get food when the two defending armies had boarded
22 up the corridor for them to collect and going down into
23 the cellars to eat it again, they talked about attacks
24 on their fleeing convoy, and we spent the rest of the
25 day having conversations along those lines.
1 Q. Did you determine the ethnic groups of the
2 people to whom you spoke?
3 A. Yes. And they were divided about 50-50
4 Muslims and Croats.
5 Q. You indicated that they described to you the
6 intensifying shelling of the town. Did they describe
7 to you how the siege of the town had been conducted?
8 A. Yes. Well, it was mostly artillery and
9 mortar fire, and the -- it was the military people
10 rather than the civilians who told us that they had
11 heard word that the time had really come for them to
12 surrender because reinforcements had been brought, they
13 had been told, from Belgrade, JNA reinforcements, to
14 finish off the job. The Serbs were anxious, I think,
15 to -- Jajce was something of a promontory jutting into
16 their territory, and they were anxious to clear it out
17 of the way and clean up their frontline so as to better
18 lay siege to Travnik.
19 Q. Did they -- you referred to statements that
20 the -- people as they were evacuating the town had been
21 shelled.
22 A. Yes. There was quite a lot of discussion
23 about how, as the convoys were being formed, one man
24 talked about having to scramble up a mud bank because
25 it was a wet weekend and that they were open-fired upon
1 when they tried to scramble up this mud bank to form
2 the convoy to get out of town.
3 Q. In the very few days after these events which
4 you just described, did the ICRC issue a press release
5 on the situation in Jajce?
6 A. Yes, I believe they did. I think -- I
7 remember reporting it at the time.
8 MR. KEEGAN: May I have that marked as the
9 next exhibit, Exhibit 55, Your Honour.
10 THE REGISTRAR: 54, that will be.
11 MR. KEEGAN: Excuse me, I'm sorry, 54.
12 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, do you recognise --
13 A. Yes, I do.
14 Q. -- that press release?
15 A. Sorry to interrupt. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
16 Q. Is that the press release issued by the ICRC?
17 A. Yeah.
18 Q. And it's dated ... The date of the press
19 release?
20 A. The 4th of November.
21 Q. Now, the final area in Bosnia with respect to
22 events in 1992 I'd like to cover with you deals with
23 the area -- the areas of Sarajevo and Visegrad. Can
24 you please describe your experiences in Sarajevo in
25 1992?
1 A. Yes. Like everybody covering this war, I was
2 in and out of Sarajevo, although mostly after the dates
3 that we're going to talk about.
4 But during 1992, I was able to visit both
5 sides of the siege. I was able to -- I got quite a
6 tour of the Serb siege lines on the day that we were
7 in Pale, while we were waiting to go down to Kula. We
8 were taken on a tour by two soldiers, and so we were
9 able to tour with them and look down on the town from
10 the hills from which the siege was being laid.
11 Q. From the viewpoint of those gun positions,
12 could you see the various sections of the city below?
13 A. Very easily. Sarajevo is in a bowl,
14 surrounded by mountains, high ground and, yes, it's
15 laid out like a map, a city plan beneath you. You can
16 see it very easily.
17 Q. Could you pick out particular landmarks
18 within the city from those positions?
19 A. Oh, indeed. You can see the various
20 churches, the Holiday Inn, the library, which by then
21 had been destroyed, and various landmarks, well-known,
22 yes. With binoculars, of course, even better.
23 Q. Could you see clearly apartment buildings and
24 homes?
25 A. Yes, absolutely. With binoculars you could
1 almost see cars and people, if they were powerful
2 enough.
3 Q. Did you, while you were up at those Serbian
4 gun positions, have conversations with the people who
5 were escorting you?
6 A. Yes, we did. There was a gesture of bravado
7 by one of the soldiers, he made to spray the whole city
8 with his -- he didn't actually shoot, he just pretended
9 to spray the whole city with his gun and said the only
10 good Muslim is a dead Muslim and various jokes about
11 how many wives they have.
12 Q. Now, when did you actually begin to study the
13 area of Visegrad and report on what occurred there in
14 1992?
15 A. After the war, it was the only time I was
16 able to get into Visegrad to research what had happened
17 in that area. It was a roundabout route, some men had
18 been taken from Srebrenica to Dublin and I was invited
19 to talk to them. One clearly seemed much to young to
20 be in the army. I said; "What were you doing in 1992?
21 How old were you?" He said he was 13. I asked him
22 what did he do then as he was then in the pocket of
23 Zepa. He said my job was to get the bodies out of the
24 river. And I said which bodies? He said the bodies
25 that were being thrown off the bridge in Visegrad. And
1 I was amazed at what he was telling me and how many
2 bodies were involved and the condition they were in.
3 Some of them, he said, decapitated and many of them
4 children, and because the bridge in Visegrad is so
5 famous, I made it my business to try and investigate
6 what had been going on there in what would have been
7 the spring to summer months of 1992.
8 MR. KEEGAN: Just a moment.
9 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Your usual objections?
10 MR. OSTOJIC: Actually, I'm a little more
11 disturbed, Your Honour, and quite frankly I want the
12 Court to direct its attention, if you have the Tadic
13 Exhibit 1423 and that page, specifically Mr. Vulliamy
14 states it was in the Visegrad area and he describes the
15 same scenes here he's telling us or sharing with us
16 here, but those were made -- I know he's trying to
17 reference what occurred several years ago, but he was
18 there during this visit and during this conversation in
19 1996, and he plainly states that in Tadic, and just so
20 that we're clear, and I'm only asking this Court to
21 perhaps adopt this, that if he's discussing something
22 that he saw, that he's more explicit with the dates
23 that he claims he's discussing it, because clearly in
24 Tadic, there's a grave inconsistency, and --
25 JUDGE MAY: You can cross-examine about that
1 in due course, Mr. Ostojic.
2 Mr. Keegan, I think what we should be clear,
3 is the witness describing something he saw himself or
4 merely something that he had reported to him rather
5 later, which seems to be the understanding which I have
6 of it.
7 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour. The testimony
8 describes events which occurred in '92. The witness,
9 in his testimony, is talking about reports given to him
10 in '96, and then he'll talk about travelling to
11 Visegrad and speaking with Bosnian Serbs on the other
12 side about 1992.
13 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We shan't admit this
14 evidence. We're really getting too far away from the
15 subject matter, and it being a report by somebody about
16 events which happened in Visegrad, we're not inclined
17 to admit it.
18 MR. KEEGAN: If I might, Your Honour? I
19 would at least respectfully request a proffer on where
20 the evidence will go because I believe that, in fact,
21 if the witness confirmed with Bosnian Serbs that
22 hundreds of bodies were -- of Muslims were killed and
23 thrown into the river during the same period in 1992 as
24 we're talking about in Prijedor to the point where it
25 was plugging up the culverts of the hydro electric dam,
1 then that does describe events that would be in
2 consideration on the question of the widespread nature
3 of the attack and the purpose of the attacks going on.
4 JUDGE MAY: Yes. The evidence we've been
5 hearing from the witness has been about events in 1992
6 in Bosnia which he witnessed or was very close to or
7 were reported to him at the same time. Now what you're
8 trying to admit is the evidence of somebody who was 13
9 at the time -- that may not matter much -- but a report
10 given four years later referring to events in 1992 in
11 Visegrad, the other side of Bosnia.
12 Now, we have said throughout that we will
13 admit hearsay and we have done, and we allow great
14 latitude in the evidence which is admitted, but we are
15 ruling that this particular piece of evidence is too
16 remote and too much hearsay and too far from Prijedor
17 to be admitted.
18 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour. Your Honour,
19 I note that it's just about 3.30. The remainder of the
20 testimony then would be the interviews in 1996 with the
21 accused and with Milomir Stakic. It might be better to
22 begin that after the break.
23 JUDGE MAY: That would be appropriate. How long
24 do you think you will be?
25 MR. KEEGAN: Thirty minutes maybe, Your
1 Honour.
2 --- Recess taken at 3.30 p.m.
3 --- On resuming at 3.50 p.m.
4 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you, Your Honour.
5 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, in 1996, did you return to
6 Prijedor to conduct some interviews?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. During the time you were there, did you
9 interview both Milomir Stakic and the accused?
10 A. Yes, I did.
11 Q. Where is it that you found Milomir Stakic?
12 A. I met him -- we met him, I was travelling
13 with a colleague, at the health centre in Prijedor, of
14 which I believe he was the director, a day care health
15 centre.
16 Q. Was there anyone else present with him in the
17 office for the interview?
18 A. Yes. With Dr. Stakic there was a man called
19 Mr. Kondic who was variously introduced with a number
20 of titles and with me was a colleague from the New York
21 Times.
22 Q. Now, during the course of this interview, did
23 you ask him generally about what had happened in
24 Prijedor?
25 A. Yes, and he had argued that the Serbs were
1 defending themselves, but that most of the
2 conversation, what I wanted to talk to him, out of
3 curiosity, really, was about Omarska.
4 Q. What did he say about Omarska?
5 A. Well, initially he said that there was no one
6 collected into Omarska, that -- we asked him about the
7 television pictures, and he said that they were
8 pictures of Serbian prisoners in Muslim gaols and that
9 the story was fabricated. He said, "If you're a
10 journalist, you have to be on the spot to know what's
11 going on," and I remember biting my tongue at that
12 point because I had not declared myself as having been
13 there personally. But he said that Omarska -- "No one
14 was collected into that place," he said. And
15 Mr. Kondic interrupted and said, "Omarska was a mine,
16 nothing else," is as accurate as I recall.
17 Q. Did they later change their version of what
18 had occurred in Omarska?
19 A. Yes. Almost immediately there was this
20 curious negation of what he had just said. Dr. Stakic
21 said that, "In Omarska, there were only those Muslims
22 who were under interrogation for," and I paraphrase
23 here but I can produce the exact words, if asked, "They
24 were under interrogation for possession of arms or
25 military activity, and that once a proper prisoner of
1 war camp had been established, only those arrested with
2 illegal weapons were kept in that place."
3 Q. Did you ask him whether there had been any
4 killing at Omarska?
5 A. I don't recall asking Mr. Stakic that. I
6 might have done. But we moved on from Omarska to the
7 general theme of camps and the Serbian experience of
8 camps.
9 Q. Did he make any reference to Jasenovac during
10 your interview?
11 A. Yes. All conversations about Omarska refer
12 back to Jasenovac, and he said that it was wrong to
13 make any comparison between the two, that Omarska was
14 not a concentration camp, he said, and he said that the
15 Serbs fight when their freedom is threatened, and
16 Mr. Kondic added at this point, "Unfortunately, we, the
17 Serbs, have learned to defend our freedom in
18 concentration camps," which was a reference to
19 Jasenovac. So there was this invocation of the camp
20 experience throughout the conversation.
21 Q. Did they make reference to the conditions
22 that the prisoners had in Omarska in the context of
23 this conversation regarding Jasenovac?
24 A. Yes. Mr. Stakic said, "You can't compare
25 them." He said that in Omarska, the prisoners, they
1 had food. He said the prisoners in Omarska had
2 doctors; they didn't work. And then he said -- and I
3 remember this well -- he said Omarska was not a hotel,
4 and he smiled a rather unpleasant smile and said, "But
5 it was not a concentration camp."
6 Q. Did he make a reference to when or if the
7 Serbs will go to extremes?
8 A. Well, he said, "The Serbs will go to extremes
9 when their freedom or if their freedom is threatened."
10 Q. Was there a discussion about the relationship
11 of the Serbian people in Yugoslavia during this
12 conflict?
13 A. Yes. Like Mr. Kovacevic back in Prijedor
14 four years before, he said that the Serbs -- and he
15 specified the Serbs in this area -- are arriving at a
16 great moment in their history, and he said that,
17 quote: "When the Serbs have been at war for four
18 years, there are no Krajina Serbs, Bosnian Serbs, or
19 Serbian Serbs, there are just Serbs."
20 Q. Now, why is it that you chose to reinterview
21 the accused, Dr. Kovacevic?
22 A. Well, I was curious to know what kind of
23 people had been introduced to me as being responsible
24 for Omarska, I was curious to know what kind of
25 people -- on whose authority we had gone to the camps.
1 I then thought, and was corrected, actually, because he
2 said, in 1992, that he had been born in Jasenovac. I
3 found this an intriguing situation. Omarska and its
4 inmates had, in a way, followed me throughout the war,
5 I kept bumping into them in various places within the
6 war and beyond it --
7 Q. The question was why, of the other people in
8 the Prijedor area that you met, why did you
9 specifically choose to interview, re-interview,
10 Kovacevic? What was it about him or your experiences
11 with him that led you to re-interview him?
12 A. Well, it was a result of the meeting in the
13 civic centre in Prijedor. We had gone through this
14 recap only briefly, we had gone through this -- Colonel
15 Arsic had wanted us to go to Manjaca. We said no. He
16 said, "Oh, well, if you want to go to Omarska, talk to
17 these people," and he gestured, Mr. Kovacevic and next
18 to him Mr. Stakic. Mr. Drljaca I also tried to
19 interview on that trip but he was not available. I
20 wanted to see them all, but Kovacevic in particular
21 because he had opened the meeting, he had chaired the
22 meeting, he had been the man who, when the television
23 journalists went back to Omarska after I had left
24 Serbia, had been put up to defend the place on
25 television, he was well-known; and indeed, at the end
1 of Mr. Stakic's presentation, when he was saying, "Go
2 to Manjaca" and we said "No," he shrugged and said,
3 "Well, if you want to go to Omarska, talk to this
4 man."
5 Q. Who was he referring to when he said that?
6 A. Kovacevic, who was sitting next to him. And
7 so I wanted to see him.
8 Q. Now, during your earlier evidence regarding
9 the meeting in 1992, you referred to a map which the
10 accused got out and discussed. Do you recall that?
11 A. Yes, the map was by the video.
12 Q. Can you please describe what that map was and
13 what was the general statement made by the accused with
14 respect to that map?
15 A. To the best of my recollection, the map was
16 published or -- I mean the original dated from the
17 early 1940s, 1941, and was a map of Serbia as envisaged
18 at that time wherever the Serbs lived -- I don't recall
19 whether it said Greater Serbia or not, but that's the
20 term used to describe the area covered. It comprised
21 most of -- a lot of Croatia; as I recall, all, if not
22 most, of Bosnia-Herzegovina and what is now Serbia and
23 Montenegro; and we were shown this map.
24 Q. How did the accused refer to the map at that
25 time? What was the point of him showing it to the
1 group of reporters?
2 A. Well, I think it is, "This is where the Serbs
3 are. This is Serbia. This is the idea."
4 Q. Did he relate it to why the conflict was
5 being conducted at that time?
6 A. Not specifically, but I understood it to mean
7 "This is what we're fighting for."
8 Q. In this interview in 1996, did you discuss
9 with him or did you raise the issue of the causes of
10 the conflict?
11 A. Oh, yes. It was a long conversation, and he
12 was very candid and interesting on the subject. He
13 said he thought it was a civil war, basically a
14 religious war, but he said there were economic factors
15 - which was interesting to hear him say that because
16 it was an interesting dimension - but he was most
17 interesting on the sort of psychiatric dimension, and
18 he said at one point, "It's all very well if your view
19 is from New York, but here on the ground, when
20 everything is burning and breaking apart in people's
21 heads, this was something for the psychiatrists." And
22 he was very lucid on that.
23 Q. Did he describe what the point of the
24 conflict was from his perspective, what his point in
25 the conflict was?
1 A. Yes, very, very candidly. He said that "I
2 wanted to make this Serb land." One of us asked him,
3 "What do you mean? Without Muslims?" And he said,
4 "Without Muslims, yes. We cannot live together."
5 Q. Did you ask him questions relating
6 specifically to Omarska?
7 A. Absolutely.
8 Q. What was his comment about the purpose of
9 Omarska?
10 A. He said that Omarska was intended as a
11 collection centre but, he said, "It turned into
12 something else because of this loss of control." I
13 think we asked him something like, "What loss of
14 control?" And he said, "I cannot explain this loss of
15 control," and I think I've already said it's "when
16 everything's breaking apart in people's heads." He
17 said, "I would call it collective madness."
18 Q. Did you ask him about how many people had
19 been killed in Omarska?
20 A. Yes. This was during a section of the
21 conversation again about Jasenovac, which we discussed
22 at length because of him having said earlier he had
23 been born there. He said that in Omarska, only 100
24 people -- well, at first he said, "Whether it was ten
25 or 100, it doesn't matter." And then we said, "Were
1 only 100 people killed in Omarska?" And he said, "I
2 said 'killed,' not died.'" And we said, "How many
3 died?" And he said, "I don't know. You'll have to ask
4 the doctors." And then said, "Oh, I don't know how
5 many people were killed in Omarska," and I quote, "It's
6 like a hurricane around" -- sorry. He said something
7 about, and I quote, "The hurricane blowing to and fro
8 around here."
9 Q. You mentioned Jasenovac. Was there, in fact,
10 conversations comparing Omarska and Jasenovac?
11 A. Yes, at length. He recalled his childhood in
12 Jasenovac. He hadn't actually been born there, he
13 said, in the event, he had gone there with his aunt and
14 gave a very credible and vivid description of his
15 mother being led away and he went to Jasenovac where
16 his aunt saved him. The comparison or contrast, to be
17 fair, he made was that he said that in Omarska, maybe
18 people were killed if somebody got drunk and got mad,
19 but -- and at this point he said, "But if it was ten or
20 a hundred, it doesn't matter." "But Josenovac was a
21 killing factory," he said, "Omarska was not a killing
22 factory."
23 Q. Did you ask him what the link was between
24 what had occurred between the Ustasha and the Serbs in
25 Jasenovac and the Serbs and the Muslims in Omarska?
1 A. Yes, and on this again he was very lucid. He
2 said that there was a direct connection between
3 Jasenovac and Omarska, but, he said, it is a thin one.
4 He said the fact that there were Muslim soldiers in the
5 Greater Croatia during the war had had an effect on
6 what happened to the Muslims in this area. He said --
7 he had a rather -- we said to him back, "But hold on.
8 Jasenovac was run by Croats. What has that got to do
9 with the Muslims?" And Mr. Kovacevic came up with
10 quite a bon mots. He said, "If you're bitten by a
11 snake, you can still be afraid of lizards, but a snake
12 is still a snake and a lizard is still a lizard," to
13 which my colleague from The New York Times said, "Oh,
14 you mean the Muslims are the lizards, but you're still
15 scared of them?" And he said "Yes."
16 Q. Did you ask him questions about the
17 responsibility for what had occurred, who had the
18 responsibility for what had occurred?
19 A. Well, in the historic sense, he went back to
20 the war. He said that "There were Muslims in the
21 Ustasha, and if they committed war crimes against us,
22 then now it is the same the other way around." And he
23 had the insight to say that "Who knows? In 50 years'
24 time, it could happen the other way around again."
25 And then I remember we asked him, "This
1 collective madness, Doctor, were you part of it?" And
2 he said, "If I was to be acquitted of being a part of
3 this collective madness, that would not be right, but I
4 would want to ask myself what my part in it was." And
5 then he said, "If Dusko Tadic killed people and I did
6 not, then that is not the same thing." And he added,
7 "If things go well in this hospital, if everything is
8 fine in this hospital, then I am to be commended, but
9 if things go wrong in this hospital, then I'm guilty."
10 He went on to talk about why he left
11 political life and was clearly -- he was most
12 articulate on that. He said he had left politics
13 because he saw too many "evil things." Then I think we
14 said, "Well, what things?" He said, "That is my
15 personal secret. If you have to do things by killing
16 people, that is my personal secret." I think it was my
17 colleague from The New York Times who said, "Do you
18 ever have nightmares about your personal secrets,
19 sir?" And he said, quote: "My hair is white. I do
20 not sleep too well."
21 Q. Did you ask him about comparisons between the
22 situation in the Balkans and talking about the
23 perspective of people in Europe?
24 A. Yes, he made some joke about the Una being a
25 border. He said "This isn't Europe, this is the
1 Balkans." At one point he said, "We don't have
2 evolution here, we have revolution," and became chatty
3 about it. He said, "I want to get out." He said, "I'm
4 like an animal in a cage. I want to go to Paris or
5 Berlin to work and practice my profession."
6 Q. Did you bring the interview down onto a more
7 personal level? Did you discuss his personal
8 experiences or that of his family with the Muslims who
9 formerly lived in the area?
10 A. Yes, quite apart from Jasenovac. And, yes,
11 he talked about his father and how he had been a farmer
12 and had dealt with the Muslims and had sold cattle to
13 the Muslims, and how he had always -- his father always
14 called them Turks, and then conceded, he said, "Well,
15 actually, they aren't really Turks at all. They come
16 from here."
17 MR. KEEGAN: We have no further questions,
18 Your Honour.
19 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Mr. Ostojic?
20 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you, Your Honour. May it
21 please the Court.
22 Cross-examined by Mr. Ostojic:
23 Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Vulliamy.
24 A. Good afternoon.
25 Q. Is it Valumay (phonetic) or Vulliamy?
1 A. It's whatever you like, sir. It's Vulliamy.
2 Q. Vulliamy? Thank you. Mr. Vulliamy, you
3 spoke a little bit about the notes that you kept and
4 records. To whom, if anyone, did you give those notes
5 regarding the various interviews and regarding the
6 various times that you spent in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
7 A. To whom did I give them?
8 Q. If anyone.
9 A. Well, when I was called to appear here, I
10 gave them to the court -- well, I was asked for them,
11 but I didn't -- I haven't handed them around to anybody
12 else, no.
13 Q. I can appreciate that. When was the first
14 time that you handed your personal notes that were
15 taken involving the Yugoslavia - Bosnia and Herzegovina
16 civil war?
17 A. I would have to consult and come back if you
18 want an exact date, but it would be when I was first
19 called to testify in 1996 for the Prosecution of Dusko
20 Tadic in this court. It would have been sometime
21 during the spring, I imagine, of that year, if not
22 slightly prior.
23 Q. Is that '96?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. That's what I thought. Now, did you give
1 them the originals or copies of those notes?
2 A. Of my shorthand?
3 Q. Yes.
4 A. Yes, the books, yeah.
5 Q. Did you recreate from your shorthand notes a
6 typewritten form of those notes?
7 A. In some cases, yes.
8 Q. Now -- and I asked a compound question and
9 you answered it properly, and it was my mistake. I
10 asked if you gave them the original or a copy, and I
11 think you answered in the affirmative, and again, it's
12 my mistake.
13 Did you give the Prosecutors your original
14 notes involving what you had seen and experienced in
15 Bosnia-Herzegovina during the civil war in 1992 through
16 whatever period it was?
17 A. Yeah.
18 Q. Now, you're a journalist by profession;
19 correct?
20 A. Indeed.
21 Q. From where did you obtain your journalism
22 degree?
23 A. In England, we don't really have journalism
24 degrees like you do in America. You have what's called
25 an indenture and you go on a training; and in my case,
1 this was a company owned by the Mirror Group who had a
2 series of "stable newspapers," as they're called, in
3 the West of England, in Devonshire.
4 Q. The name of the group was Mirror Group?
5 A. Mirror Group.
6 Q. When did you obtain that -- or the completion
7 of that study or course?
8 A. 1978.
9 Q. And I apologise for going in your history a
10 little bit --
11 A. Not at all.
12 Q. -- because I actually didn't get all the
13 notes --
14 A. Don't worry.
15 Q. -- and I apologise to the Court as well. You
16 mentioned the study of philosophy. Do you recall that
17 early on in your testimony? What year did you obtain
18 your philosophical degree -- or philosophy degree?
19 A. I got my degree from Oxford in 1976.
20 Q. Now, you also mentioned political science.
21 What year did you obtain or confer that degree?
22 A. They're coupled together. It's a degree at
23 Oxford called PPE, which stands for Politics,
24 Philosophy, and Economics.
25 Q. And then you mentioned Florence, that you
1 studied in Italy. Did you obtain a degree from a
2 university in Florence?
3 A. It's a diploma from Florence which I started
4 in '73 but I didn't go back to collect it until '76.
5 Q. What degree was that?
6 A. It's not a degree, it's called a diploma in
7 Renaissance Studies. It would be wrong to call it a
8 degree.
9 Q. Thank you. I apologise. What diploma was
10 that?
11 A. It's called Renaissance Studies. It's a
12 fairly minor thing.
13 Q. During your studies of political science at
14 Oxford, did you study at all Eastern Europe?
15 A. Yes. The Soviet Union in great detail, yes.
16 Q. Did you study at all Yugoslavia or what has
17 now been referred to as the former Yugoslavia?
18 A. Yes, it was part of the Eastern Bloc bit of
19 the course. "The Political Institutions of the USSR,"
20 it was called, but we had to learn all about
21 non-alignment and Tito and the Warsaw Pact and so on,
22 yeah.
23 Q. How many courses would that have been that
24 you studied, just out of curiosity, about Eastern
25 Europe and particularly Yugoslavia? That's what
1 interests us, I believe.
2 A. "The Political Institutions of the USSR,"
3 which was the title of the course into which Yugoslavia
4 came, would have been one part of eight papers, one of
5 eight papers that you took over a period of two years.
6 Q. Now, you shared with us some of your
7 professional --
8 A. Three years, sorry. You had a thing called
9 prelims for the first year and then you did that.
10 Q. You shared with us a little bit about your
11 professional experience, and I want to just expand upon
12 that a little bit. Other than a journalist, do you
13 have any other professional experience?
14 A. No, not really. I left university, Oxford
15 University, in the summer of '76; I went to Italy, to
16 Florence, until the spring of '77; I came back and I
17 started with the Mirror Group in the summer of 1977. I
18 went to Granada Television in 1978, and since then --
19 unless you count television as a different profession,
20 it's all I've done.
21 Q. I can take just from your testimony that you
22 haven't been educated at all -- and I say that
23 respectfully just because you haven't mentioned it --
24 in any medical disciplines at all?
25 A. Medical disciplines, no.
1 Q. Can I take, from your professional background
2 and history, that you've never been an elected official
3 of any either municipality or any community or anything
4 like that?
5 A. Certainly not.
6 Q. How about an appointed position? Have you
7 ever been in an appointed position?
8 A. Clearly none important. I was the Secretary
9 of the Hartford College Oxford Arts Society. I think
10 that's the only office I've ever held or ever want to.
11 Q. Is that a political --
12 A. About as apolitical as you can get.
13 Q. That's what I thought. I'm just concerned
14 with appointments in a political nature, if any?
15 A. Absolutely none whatsoever.
16 Q. And with respect again to your background
17 both professional and personal, any military
18 experience?
19 A. No. I have military in the family, but not
20 me.
21 Q. So you had never served either voluntarily or
22 involuntarily in any military unit at all?
23 A. No. I have a general and a colonel in the
24 extended family, but I have no military experience,
25 although I have had experience of wars.
1 Q. Now, the experience on wars is actually a
2 topic that I want to discuss with you. I know, just
3 from your discussions here today, you talked about the
4 civil war in Yugoslavia and Bosnia, and you talked
5 about Northern Ireland, I think, a little bit, here and
6 in the Tadic trial.
7 Did you cover the war at all in South Africa?
8 A. No, I didn't.
9 Q. Did you cover the war at all in the Middle
10 East?
11 A. Yes, I did.
12 Q. What period of time did you?
13 A. 1993, I was in Israel, the West Bank, and
14 very briefly in southern Lebanon.
15 Q. In 1993, when you were in Israel, for what
16 period of time were you there?
17 A. Sorry. This is -- 1983. Forgive me. 1983,
18 I'm sorry.
19 Q. I thought you said '93 --
20 A. The year after the Lebanon war, right? Sorry
21 about that. 1983.
22 It was for about a month or so, month or two.
23 Q. How about any civil wars or the break-up of
24 the old Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union?
25 A. I was in Romania in the Christmas period of
1 1989.
2 Q. Was there during Caucescu --
3 A. That was the downfall of Caucescu and the, as
4 was thought at the time, revolution against the
5 Communists.
6 MR. OSTOJIC: May we have a moment, Your
7 Honour? Excuse me.
8 Just so the court knows, I've been instructed
9 to slow down the speech, and I apologise to the
10 interpreters.
11 Q. Sir, in 1983, did you, during the Israeli and
12 south Lebanon and your experiences in 1983, did you
13 report on any detention centres or camps occurring at
14 that time at all?
15 A. No, not at such.
16 Q. Any time in your experience, other than the
17 experience that you've had currently through 1992,
18 currently, have you reported on such detention centres
19 or camps?
20 A. Yes, in Northern Ireland, in Ulster, but I
21 would -- this is a court of law, not a seminar -- I
22 would not wish to call the internment arrangements and
23 prisons in Northern Ireland and Ulster in those terms.
24 But, yes, I worked in Northern Ireland a great deal,
25 but I don't think I want to call those "camps."
1 Q. Have you ever -- that's why I phrased them
2 "detention."
3 A. Yes, the Mayes Prison is a detention centre
4 of sorts, but I'm not going to call it a camp.
5 Q. I'm not asking you to. I was just curious to
6 know how you reported those events, if at all --
7 A. At length in Northern Ireland, yes. I
8 mentioned earlier that I had won a prize called The
9 Royal Television Society Award. That was for a film
10 exposing Jerry Adams, his pretense that he had never
11 been a member of the IRA, which we proved he had been.
12 Q. Now, Mr. Vulliamy, you gave us some testimony
13 earlier today and a little bit yesterday. Have we
14 exhausted your recollection of all the events that you
15 have for the period concerning Prijedor?
16 A. I don't know that you've exhausted all of my
17 recollections, but I'm mindful of the court's request
18 that I be as relevant and brief as possible. I'd say
19 we've covered the main ground, yes.
20 Q. And with respect to the conversations that
21 you had with Dr. Kovacevic both in 1992 and in 1996,
22 have you told us everything about those conversations?
23 A. The conversation in 1996 was a long one, and
24 I'm sure there was more, but I think -- I've faithfully
25 reported the gist of both conversations, yes.
1 Q. Now, during the time period that the '96
2 conversation took place, were you taping the
3 conversation at all, videotaping?
4 A. No. I'm not a cameraman. The ITN pick and
5 chose as they picked and chose in 1992; and in 1996, I
6 was taking shorthand notes.
7 Q. Did you have a videotape cassette player
8 during the interview in 1996 between you and
9 Mr. Kovacevic?
10 A. No, I don't carry a video camera.
11 Q. So it's your copious notes and your
12 recollection that is assisting you relying here today
13 about the conversation that you had with Dr. Kovacevic
14 on or about the 1996 period; correct?
15 A. Absolutely, and a colleague who was with me.
16 Q. And what was his name from New York --
17 A. His name is Roger Cohen.
18 Q. Can you spell the last name just so we have
19 it correctly?
20 A. C-O-H-E-N.
21 Q. And I asked you about those copious notes and
22 the records that you kept, handwritten copies,
23 et cetera. Would those notes regarding the 1996
24 conversation you had with Dr. Kovacevic, were those
25 also turned over to the Prosecution?
1 A. Yes, they were.
2 Q. At the same time you turned over all the
3 other notes; correct?
4 A. I think maybe slightly after.
5 Q. Was it --
6 A. I'm not sure about that. I don't remember
7 which books I gave them when. I mean, I gave them what
8 they asked for, and I'm not sure of the exact order,
9 but I think I gave them the notes that they said they
10 would need to have for the Tadic trial before those
11 pertaining to the latter period.
12 Q. Was it before or after the Tadic trial that
13 you turned over these books or notebooks? How would
14 you like to refer to it so we make sure we're on the
15 same line? Were they books or notebooks with your
16 notes on them?
17 A. Notebooks.
18 Q. With respect to these notebooks, did you turn
19 them over to the Prosecution after the Tadic trial or
20 before the Tadic trial?
21 A. After the Tadic trial.
22 Q. To the best of your recollection --
23 A. Sorry. After my appearance in the Tadic
24 trial.
25 Q. That's fair, and I note that distinction.
1 A. Yes, definitely.
2 Q. So sometime in -- what? -- mid 1996 or ...
3 A. No, after that. This would have been last
4 year, 1997, Kovacevic, after the Tadic trial, yeah.
5 Q. I'm going to have to ask you this, it may
6 seem boring to you --
7 A. Quite all right.
8 Q. -- trying to determine a little more about
9 these notes, for obvious reasons perhaps. How long
10 were these notes? How many pages were included in
11 them, in this notebook?
12 A. To the best of my recollection, the notes on
13 the interview with Mr. Kovacevic, '96, about -- these
14 are full A4 and slightly bigger notebooks, I mean,
15 they're not pocket notebooks like this, and that -- I'd
16 say five or six pages of shorthand.
17 Q. Just so that I have a complete
18 understanding. I'm holding a notebook. Would you
19 classify this as a notebook?
20 A. Yes, a hardcover notebook. Thicker than that
21 and bigger than that.
22 Q. So when you say "bigger," it was longer and
23 wider?
24 A. A tiny bit longer, half an inch wider.
25 Q. The five or six pages that you referenced,
1 was that exclusively the notes that you kept with your
2 meeting between you and Dr. Kovacevic?
3 A. Yes. My notes of that conversation are about
4 five or six -- I mean, maximum eight, minimum five A4,
5 slightly larger than A4 pages of fairly close-knit
6 notes.
7 Q. Because I note the Prosecution asked you
8 questions about Mr. Stakic, and I was curious to know
9 if, within that notebook, you also had notes relating
10 to your conversations with him and the other
11 individuals --
12 A. Yes, it's in the same book. It was the same
13 day.
14 Q. I recognise that it was the same day. How
15 many handwritten pages do you have in these notes,
16 including Dr. Kovacevic's notes that you took
17 contemporaneous with the meeting as well as any notes
18 you may have had from other meetings during that
19 period?
20 A. How many notes in the notebook altogether?
21 Q. How many pages? Sorry.
22 A. How many pages of notes in the notebook
23 altogether? Oh, a hundred, I should think.
24 Q. And were all 100 pages used to keep these
25 contemporaneous notes and records of your discussions
1 between certain individuals?
2 A. Yes. I like to keep big books which can
3 often last me a month or so.
4 JUDGE MAY: If this notebook is available, we
5 should have it, shouldn't we, before the witness
6 leaves?
7 Are you going to finish this afternoon,
8 Mr. Ostojic?
9 MR. OSTOJIC: I agree with the former part.
10 I think they should produce it, in the spirit of
11 cooperation. I didn't get the last part, Your Honour.
12 JUDGE MAY: Are you going to finish this
13 afternoon?
14 MR. OSTOJIC: No, Your Honour.
15 Unfortunately, I am not.
16 JUDGE MAY: Well, Mr. Keegan, have you got
17 the notebook?
18 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour, they were
19 provided to us, and we have kept the notebooks for
20 safekeeping, as Mr. Vulliamy, in fact, and part at his
21 request, because he moved around, we retrieved them
22 from Italy, in fact, where they were in storage, and he
23 left them with us because he moved around so much.
24 JUDGE MAY: Where are they now?
25 MR. KEEGAN: They are upstairs locked away,
1 Your Honour. We have never used them. And the
2 typewritten portions referred to by the Defence were
3 the draft articles for the interviews which were
4 published in the newspaper, and they were provided to
5 the Defence because they formed part of the supporting
6 material of the original indictment in this case.
7 So the typed part he referred to were, in
8 fact, the draft stories he submitted to his own
9 newspaper. Those form part of the supporting
10 material. The Defence has been in possession of those
11 since the time the accused was arrested and the
12 materials were turned over.
13 But as to the notebooks, we have never used
14 them. They are his personal notes in shorthand, and
15 they were only kept here so that, when he arrived, in
16 preparation for testimony, he would have his notes
17 available.
18 MR. OSTOJIC: If I may briefly respond?
19 Although we are interested in the notes that he took
20 during his preparation period for the trial of Tadic
21 and this one, I think Mr. Vulliamy testified that he
22 kept contemporaneous notes during his interview, and I
23 believe, based on my discussions with Mr. D'Amato and
24 Mr. Vucicevic, those notes were never produced to us,
25 those notes were never interpreted for us in any
1 language, they were not given to our client so that he
2 could review them, and I say this respectfully to
3 Mr. Vulliamy, in order to verify the testimony being
4 given and what's considered within his notes.
5 JUDGE MAY: Well, the notes would be the best
6 evidence of what was said at the time since they were
7 made contemporaneously.
8 MR. KEEGAN: Of course, Your Honour. As the
9 Trial Chamber directs, we would provide them, but we
10 were acting on the prior decisions of Trial Chambers of
11 this Tribunal that those kind of things do not
12 constitute statements of witnesses and that's why they
13 were not disclosed.
14 JUDGE MAY: Clearly, they don't constitute
15 statements, but they are contemporaneous notes, and I
16 should have thought that from that point of view, if
17 the witness -- if there is an application to
18 cross-examine the witness on the notes, then that was
19 something which we might well allow.
20 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour, certainly, and
21 as the application is now being made, we would
22 certainly turn them over.
23 MR. D'AMATO: We would like to apply to do
24 that, and I think the best thing would be to recall the
25 witness because it obviously can't be done between
1 today and tomorrow, so would it be possible to have the
2 Prosecution recall the witness at the point at which we
3 are given some way of translating the shorthand and
4 going over the notes?
5 JUDGE MAY: I'm not sure that's very fair on
6 the witness. If we can avoid recalling him, we
7 should. It may be that overnight, the notes can be
8 produced, the witness can have them --
9 MR. D'AMATO: They're in shorthand, I think.
10 Right?
11 JUDGE MAY: No doubt the witness can read
12 shorthand, his shorthand.
13 THE WITNESS: Yeah. I mean, they're in a
14 mixture of a thing called T-line, an abbreviated
15 ordinary longhand. I mean, if anyone reads T-line --
16 MR. D'AMATO: It's perhaps possible that the
17 witness might be able to read them into a video
18 cassette or something like that at his own leisure and
19 pace overnight, and then we would have them in the
20 morning?
21 JUDGE MAY: Well, whatever is a convenient
22 way of dealing with it, or to read them in court, but
23 that may take rather a long time.
24 MR. KEEGAN: That would, we believe, Your
25 Honour, perhaps be the most efficient and effective way
1 for the Court to get the benefit as well. If the
2 Defence has a particular question, based on the
3 questions, for example, that I asked today, and the
4 witness would have the notes, could read the full
5 passage of that particular area, if that's what they're
6 interested in. That seems to me to be the most
7 effective way to deal with it so everyone gets the
8 benefit of the full notes and we maintain some schedule
9 of the trial.
10 But we will produce the notes as soon as
11 court is over today, Your Honour, if that's requested.
12 JUDGE MAY: Very well.
13 MR. D'AMATO: We will need some preparation
14 time after we receive whatever form the notes are given
15 to us.
16 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Keegan, you can show the
17 Defence the notes and perhaps give them photocopies?
18 MR. KEEGAN: Yes, Your Honour.
19 JUDGE MAY: It may be you'll have to ask the
20 witness what the relevant pages are in the notes.
21 THE WITNESS: I'd be delighted to help to
22 find them, yeah. I can find them very easily, very
23 quickly.
24 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Thank you very much. We'll
25 try, if we can, to deal with the matter tomorrow.
1 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you, Your Honour. I
2 apologise for having to re-address this issue again,
3 just so that I'm clear, it's not just his notes that
4 were produced last year after the Tadic trial, I think
5 -- and I'm just saying it because I was unclear during
6 our caucus here -- it was the notes that he produced
7 prior to the Tadic trial that he also tendered to the
8 Prosecution -- I don't know how many pages those notes
9 are. We only know, and my questioning was only limited
10 to, the notes involving his '96 visit and conversations
11 with Dr. Kovacevic.
12 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
13 MR. OSTOJIC: But I'd like both just so that
14 our request isn't mistaken to be a narrow one.
15 JUDGE MAY: The relevant notes, surely, are
16 those which were taken contemporaneously. If other
17 notes were made, for instance, if a witness makes a
18 note at some stage in order to assist him to give
19 evidence, which sometimes witnesses do but way after
20 the event, then that's of no significance.
21 What is of significance is any note which is
22 made contemporaneously, and it's those notes which I
23 had in mind, of the 1966 (sic) conversation.
24 MR. OSTOJIC: '96 and '92.
25 JUDGE MAY: If any. I think it's the '96
1 conversation that notes were taken.
2 MR. OSTOJIC: If I may inquire on this
3 because it is a little confusing and I just want to
4 clarify it --
5 JUDGE MAY: Clarify it with the witness,
6 please.
7 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you. Thank you. May I
8 proceed?
9 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, again, not to belabour the
10 point, the notes of 1996, the conversation that you had
11 with individuals at the Prijedor --
12 A. The pages of shorthand of that conversation,
13 I can find them easily.
14 Q. -- and of the other individuals that you had
15 that you contemporaneously took and reduced to
16 shorthand or writing, that was approximately 100 pages,
17 that whole period of 1996 and the conversations that
18 you had; correct?
19 A. A hundred pages is the whole notebook. I
20 mean, that goes on to deal with a whole lot of other
21 subjects and other places too. That's -- I mean, I
22 don't change notebooks every time I change place or
23 anything. I mean, the -- if I can help. The pages --
24 it's a thick book, and the pages with the interview
25 with Dr. Kovacevic are six of some, I think it's
1 100-page or so book which is full of a lot of other
2 stuff too, and -- but I can easily find the six pages
3 which have Dr. Kovacevic, you know, written down on
4 them. Likewise, the, I think, two or three pages that
5 have Mr. Stakic and, yeah, I can tear them out or
6 photocopy them or whatever.
7 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Ostojic, what we're going to
8 order is this: That the contemporaneous notes of the
9 1996 interview are produced, not the book, because the
10 book is the witness's property and nobody else's, and
11 it seems to me the rest of it is irrelevant. But,
12 Mr. Vulliamy, if you would please identify the six
13 pages or whatever, the six pages plus --
14 THE WITNESS: I can identify it already.
15 It's clearly done.
16 JUDGE MAY: Once that is identified, it can
17 be photocopied, and a photocopy will be given to the
18 Defence. Tomorrow the book itself can be in court but,
19 as I say, any examination of it is going to be limited
20 to those relevant pages.
21 So that I'm clear, having said that about the
22 1996 notes, have you any relevant contemporaneous notes
23 of the 1992 conversation?
24 THE WITNESS: Of the meeting in Prijedor?
25 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
1 THE WITNESS: I've got some pretty scanty
2 ones, yes. I'll have a look.
3 JUDGE MAY: Thank you. Yes. We'll consider
4 those in the morning.
5 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you. May I proceed?
6 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
7 MR. OSTOJIC: Thank you.
8 Q. Mr. Vulliamy, we're done with the notes, and
9 thank you. I think your one mic doesn't have a red
10 circle around it, so perhaps if you'd depress the
11 button -- it's okay?
12 A. Is that better?
13 Q. Thank you. Sir, your duties as a journalist,
14 can you generally describe them to us?
15 A. Chronologically?
16 Q. No, just generally, actually, not your
17 professional experience as a journalist, but I'd like
18 to know, not being a journalist myself, what your
19 duties and obligations are when you do reports or when
20 you report the news, if you will?
21 A. Yes. You are assigned as your editors --
22 your editors assign you to work or as you recommend to
23 your editors and then they agree in terms of place,
24 theme, and your duties are to impart, when it was
25 working for the television, it was research and set up
1 and make films and to film whatever was going on, and
2 for the print, to make the, now famous, as many -- as
3 detailed and accurate notes as you can and to write it
4 down and dispatch it, and then there are things called
5 news stories, there are things called features, and
6 there are interviews, profiles, book reviews, and they
7 all require their own different styles, but the
8 principles remain the same. If you're asking me about
9 facts, the answer is you stick with them.
10 Q. Would you agree with me that you stick with
11 the facts because, at the end of the day, the facts are
12 one of the most important things during your process of
13 being a journalist?
14 A. Absolutely.
15 Q. You mentioned these separate categories of
16 the types of journalists there are, the feature
17 journalists. There's also an investigative journalist;
18 correct?
19 A. Yes. Most journalists do investigations at
20 some point or other in their career, yeah.
21 Q. And there's journalists who conduct
22 documentary-type interviews; correct?
23 A. In television?
24 Q. Yes.
25 A. Yeah.
1 Q. How about in print?
2 A. You don't -- well, documentary interviews in
3 print? No, that's a term we wouldn't use.
4 Q. What type of journalist were you, if you
5 could categorise it for us, in 1992?
6 A. Well, I was an all around reporter. I was
7 responsible -- I was assigned to go to Italy, to be
8 based there in 1990, and my brief -- my geographical
9 brief was Italy and south-east Europe, and that included
10 Yugoslavia. I think at the outset the idea was I would
11 spend some time in Yugoslavia, I ended up spending a
12 lot of time in Yugoslavia. I don't quite understand
13 your question what kind of a reporter was I? I was a
14 foreign correspondent.
15 Q. I think you've answered that. I wanted to
16 know what particular title that you had, and that would
17 have been foreign correspondent; correct?
18 A. Yeah.
19 Q. Now, you mentioned 1990. Prior to 1990,
20 where were you stationed? You said 1990, if I can use
21 the word "stationed" in Italy, but where were you prior
22 to 1990?
23 A. I was in London before then. I was the
24 editor of the weekend section of The Guardian, until
25 the end of '89.
1 Q. How long were you the editor of the weekend
2 section of The Guardian?
3 A. Only a short time editing -- it wasn't the
4 best thing for me at that time -- until the spring of
5 1989, I was a general reporter on the news desk at The
6 Guardian, based in London.
7 Q. Forgive me. I'm not as familiar with The
8 Guardian as you are or perhaps I should be. What is
9 the weekend section of The Guardian?
10 A. It's a magazine section that comes out in the
11 weekend paper, Saturday edition.
12 Q. Staying with this theme just for a few
13 minutes because I'd like to -- is it fair to say that a
14 reporter or a foreign correspondent such as yourself is
15 required and under an obligation ethically, morally,
16 and in every way possible, is under the obligation to
17 report the news; correct?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Do you have an obligation at all to make the
20 news?
21 A. No, you don't have an obligation to make the
22 news.
23 Q. And isn't it fair that a journalist, a
24 foreign correspondent, is not supposed to make the news
25 but merely just report the news?
1 A. Now and then unavoidably you do make the
2 news. This is particularly true of some of the more
3 celebrated television reporters. You do make the
4 news. Sometimes other radio stations or newspapers
5 will want to interview you because of the sort of
6 things that you do, but it's not an obligation, no,
7 certainly not.
8 Q. The translating -- if I may just explain,
9 we're waiting for the completion of the translation.
10 Is it fair to say, sir, that the worst thing
11 a foreign correspondent can do is distort the news?
12 A. Indeed. That would be very serious.
13 Q. Is there anything worse than that?
14 A. Well, you could get killed in Bosnia, I
15 suppose, but that would be an unfortunate thing, yes.
16 Q. I couldn't agree with you more. And, quite
17 frankly, I was -- my question was, and I apologise for
18 not narrowing it, it was limited in your professional
19 duties. There are other risks and things that are
20 worse than that, but I'm saying professionally as a
21 journalist, there is nothing worse than a foreign
22 correspondent or a journalist of any kind to distort
23 that which he has seen and that which he has heard;
24 correct?
25 A. That would be a fairly serious matter, yes.
1 Q. You mentioned during your testimony, I
2 believe yesterday, during the latter part of the hour,
3 Serbs and then you started to describe that there were
4 different types of Serbs and then I think you shared
5 with us those concepts. Now, when you say "different
6 kind of Serbs," historically, and having taken those
7 classes, do you break them down into any time period or
8 do you just collectively include all Serbs from 10
9 centuries ago or longer?
10 A. No, I've learned much more about Serbian
11 people from my own personal experience than I have from
12 books, and the point I was trying to make was that, too
13 often, when people talk about "the Serbs" or "the
14 Serbian view" of something or what "the Serbs" did,
15 what they mean, and it's a forgivable shorthand, I
16 think, they mean those Serbs who accepted this
17 call-to-arms and to accept an ideology which I have
18 described as nationalist. What I wanted to do with
19 that remark was to make it clear that there are very
20 large numbers of Serbs -- people of Serb
21 origin, who find the nationalistic ideology associated
22 with their people or which some of their leaders claim
23 to adopt, or do adopt, as obnoxious, and there are very
24 large numbers of Serbs who indeed fought against that
25 in this war, so that's the point that I was trying to
1 make, and I was wanting to, as it were, infuse my
2 testimony with that rider so if I say , "the Serbs were
3 shelling Bihac," what I don't mean is that all Serbs --
4 well, obviously some of them were shelling Bihac --
5 that all Serbs approved of the shelling of Bihac when
6 it was quite obvious to me that very large numbers of
7 them thought that was an appalling thing to do.
8 Q. Just going back, and I have one question on
9 this. When you do an investigative report, isn't it
10 fair that you would take as much information prior to
11 completing your report, try to summarise it, have an
12 understanding of a region or an area, distil that
13 information, and then report that which you've actually
14 seen and experienced?
15 A. Yes, you have to equip yourself, you know, as
16 best you can. If you're sent to Belgrade at the end of
17 July to report on camps on the 5th of August and you
18 are to file -- I mean, there is such a thing as a
19 deadline, and that story had to be filed, written on
20 the 6th. So, yes, but the answer is: Yes, you equip
21 yourself and you should be knowledgeable, absolutely.
22 I mean, I could be sent to Lagos tomorrow. There's not
23 much I can tell you about Lagos now, but obviously I
24 would endeavour to inform myself about Lagos as much as
25 I possibly could.
1 Q. Sir, I merely asked you a general question
2 and I'm not sure if your reference was to the August
3 5th and August 6th deadline that involved some of the
4 articles and the picture that was ultimately shown
5 regarding the Prijedor area. Is that what you were
6 referring to when you said August 5th and 6th? Were
7 you under a deadline at that time?
8 A. No, I was giving you an example of how -- you
9 know, you can't sit around -- if you've got a story,
10 you can't sort of sit around reading library books for
11 a few days before writing it because your editor will
12 not allow you to do that.
13 Q. What was your deadline, if any, for the story
14 on the Prijedor investigation that you did in 1992?
15 Was it August 5th and August 6th?
16 A. Well, we found the camps on August the 5th.
17 I -- this was a news story. I wrote it on the 6th and
18 it was published on the 7th, as -- that's -- yeah,
19 that's the kind of -- that's what would be expected of
20 me. You're asking me about my professional modus
21 operandi and certainly to write that story would -- I
22 mean, that was part of my professional obligation,
23 certainly.
24 Q. I didn't mean to inquire on your modus
25 operandi, I just merely wanted to inquire, since you
1 raised it in the issue when we talked about these
2 deadlines, whether it included the August 5th and 6th,
3 because I was confused as to what year you were talking
4 about. Whatever the motives may be, I'm sure we'll
5 discuss it. I'm sure Mr. Keegan may or may not ask you
6 about that.
7 Isn't it part of your investigative work
8 to when -- preparing a story, when attempting to convey
9 it to, let's say, the world or a nation or a country,
10 that you should do an exhaustive investigative work?
11 A. I don't understand the question.
12 Q. I want to know if you -- with respect to any
13 investigative work that you did, including 1992 and
14 Prijedor, during your visits there, and you've
15 testified on that, I understand, but including any
16 other ones, how exhaustive is your investigation before
17 you actually arrive at the scene and begin to write
18 about the various entities that are involved in the
19 civil war?
20 A. I thought I had answered that question. As
21 exhaustive as possible given the constraints of the
22 need to write the news and report it and the
23 requirements of my superiors at any newspaper.
24 Q. Specifically with respect to your reporting
25 in Prijedor in 1992, prior to your assignment in
1 Prijedor -- strike that. How long prior to your actual
2 visit to Prijedor did you know you were going to visit
3 Prijedor?
4 A. I was sent -- I was -- the -- Dr. Karadzic's
5 challenge was made the day before my departure.
6 Q. And that would have been what, sir? August
7 2nd?
8 A. No, no. Towards the end of July, something
9 like the 28th or the 29th.
10 Q. Did you know or have any background about the
11 history of the various groups in Prijedor prior to this
12 assignment on or about July 28th, 1992?
13 A. Yes. I had been following the war in the
14 papers closely.
15 Q. And that was during your assignment in
16 Croatia and the war in Croatia; correct?
17 A. Well, you asked me about Prijedor. Yes, I
18 had covered the war in Croatia, as I said, first-hand,
19 on the ground from both sides, and although I was not
20 in Bosnia when the war began there, I was following it
21 closely in the newspapers and on the television.
22 Q. In 1990, were you following the war closely,
23 the civil war in Bosnia and the war that was erupting
24 in those regions?
25 A. To the best of my knowledge, there was no
1 actual war in 1990, but, of course, I was following the
2 increasing tension rather than the war. There was no
3 war until summer '91.
4 Q. That's an excellent distinction. I was
5 referring to the war in Croatia.
6 A. That began in June 1991.
7 Q. I agree. You started following the news in
8 Prijedor. How much actual work did you do to have an
9 understanding of what the different political groups
10 were that were involved in that area?
11 A. Well, I, as I said, I had followed the war
12 closely in the papers, so I knew what Dr. Karadzic's
13 SDS was, and I knew what the SDA was, and knew what the
14 HDZ was and I knew who the players were, yes.
15 Q. Did you consult with anyone in reaching your
16 conclusions who the SDS were, the SDA, and the HDZ?
17 A. Consult with who exactly?
18 Q. With anyone. I'm asking whether or not you
19 did.
20 A. The war was certainly talked about, both
21 among friends and among colleagues. If that's what you
22 mean by "consultation," then, yes.
23 Q. What I really mean by "consultation," and at
24 all times if you don't understand, just allow me to
25 probably -- or attempt to explain the question, I'll do
1 that for you. I meant did you have anyone who would
2 guide you to have a more complete understanding of what
3 the different political parties were that were involved
4 in the Prijedor area? Did you rely on any one or two
5 or ten individuals for that?
6 A. I would have -- yes, I talked to colleagues a
7 great deal who had been in the area longer than me,
8 many for some years, and once we got to Belgrade, we
9 were waiting around for a number of days, impatiently,
10 and were given any number of briefings as to the
11 situation. There was a woman from something called the
12 Serb Jewish friendship society called Klara Mandic
13 who gave us very full briefings of what, in her view,
14 was happening in Bosnia, and I think she was a
15 political figure of some kind.
16 Q. The time period I'm referencing is prior to
17 that July 28th visit in Belgrade and ultimately in
18 Prijedor, prior to that, I believe your testimony is
19 that you did consult with colleagues regarding at least
20 attempting to define exactly who the different parties
21 were and the elected offices of those parties. What
22 I'd like, Mr. Vulliamy, is the number of colleagues
23 that you discussed this with and if you can recall
24 their names?
25 JUDGE MAY: Well, I think the witness has
1 really dealt with all this. If you'd like to move on?
2 MR. OSTOJIC: May I have a moment?
3 JUDGE MAY: Well, you can have till tomorrow
4 morning. We're adjourned. We will adjourn now, half
5 past nine tomorrow morning. Mr. Vulliamy, will you be
6 back then, please?
7 THE WITNESS: I will, sir.
8 --- Whereupon proceedings adjourned at
9 4.59 p.m., to be reconvened on
10 Thursday, the 16th day of July,
11 1998, at 9.30 a.m.
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