Page 19041
1 Monday, 11 November 2013
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 9.33 a.m.
5 JUDGE ORIE: Good morning to everyone in and around this
6 courtroom.
7 Madam Registrar, would you please call the case.
8 THE REGISTRAR: Good morning, Your Honours. This is case
9 IT-09-92-T, the Prosecutor versus Ratko Mladic.
10 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Madam Registrar. And, Mr. Groome, it was
11 announced last week that you would like to make a submission in relation
12 to the way in which the Prosecution intends to present the evidence of
13 Ms. Tabeau. Now, we could do it immediately before she arrives, but
14 another way of dealing with it would be to make that submission now so as
15 to give an opportunity to the Defence to think about it.
16 MR. GROOME: Your Honours, Ms. Marcus was going to do this. I do
17 have her notes, so I can do that now, or we can do it at the beginning of
18 the second session.
19 JUDGE ORIE: Perhaps if these are her submissions, then perhaps
20 it would be better to wait for the first -- until after the first
21 session.
22 MR. GROOME: I'll ask her to be here.
23 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then since there are no other preliminaries,
24 could the witness be escorted into the courtroom. And the next witness
25 to be called, Mr. Groome, is ...
Page 19042
1 MR. GROOME: Is General Richard Dannatt, Your Honour.
2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Meanwhile, I use the time to briefly deal with
3 D330. On the 11th of July the Chamber admitted video Exhibit D330 with
4 instructions to the Defence to upload a corrected English transcript.
5 The Defence indicated through informal correspondence on the
6 3rd of October that it had uploaded the correct English translation of
7 the video. However, the Prosecution responded the same day stating that
8 a line was still missing from the transcript. To the Chamber's
9 knowledge, there was no further reply from the Defence on the matter.
10 The Chamber has reviewed the video and notes that the interpretation of
11 what the accused says in portion of the video appears to correspond with
12 what the Prosecution has stated is missing from the transcript. The
13 Chamber considers that the transcript should reflect what is said in the
14 video and, therefore, instructs the Defence to upload a further corrected
15 transcript no later than the 15th of November.
16 [The witness entered court]
17 JUDGE ORIE: Good morning, Mr. Dannatt, I presume.
18 THE WITNESS: Good morning, sir.
19 JUDGE ORIE: Before you give evidence, the Rules of Procedure and
20 Evidence require that you make a solemn declaration, the text of which is
21 now handed out to you.
22 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
23 JUDGE ORIE: May I invite you to make that solemn declaration.
24 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the
25 whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Page 19043
1 WITNESS: FRANCIS RICHARD DANNATT
2 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you. Please be seated.
3 Mr. Dannatt, if I address you as Mr. Dannatt and not by rank or
4 title that is not to express in any way a lack of appreciation for titles
5 or ranks, but it is the way in which the Chamber usually addresses
6 witnesses who come to tell us the truth.
7 THE WITNESS: That's fine. Thank you, sir.
8 JUDGE ORIE: You'll first be examined by Mr. Groome. You'll find
9 him to your right. Mr. Groome is counsel for the Prosecution.
10 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
11 MR. GROOME: Thank you, Your Honour.
12 Examination by Mr. Groome:
13 Q. General Dannatt, can we begin by having you place your name on
14 the record, your full name?
15 A. My name is Francis Richard Dannatt, and I was a general in the
16 British army until 2009 when I retired.
17 Q. What offices do you presently hold?
18 A. Currently I'm constable of Her Majesty's Tower of London and
19 I sit as a cross bench, that's an independent member of the
20 House of Lords in the British parliament.
21 Q. Now, General Dannatt, paragraph 7 to 22 of your report, which we
22 will have before us in a few moments, sets out in some detail your
23 professional training and experience. In short, you describe your
24 military training and experience during a career between 1971 and 2009, a
25 career that culminated with your appointment as Chief of the
Page 19044
1 General Staff, the professional head of British Armed Forces; is that
2 correct?
3 A. That is correct, except I joined the British army in 1969 and my
4 first two years were as an officer cadet under training and
5 I commissioned as an officer in 1971.
6 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's note: Please slow down while
7 reading.
8 JUDGE ORIE: Could we ask you to slow down because the
9 interpreters have a difficult task in following your speed of speech.
10 THE WITNESS: That's fine, sir.
11 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed.
12 MR. GROOME:
13 Q. General Dannatt, in the fall of 2011, did I ask you whether you
14 were willing to serve as an expert in this trial --
15 A. [Overlapping speakers]
16 Q. Sorry.
17 A. Yes, you did. You asked me and I agreed.
18 Q. And part of -- well, what you were asked to do was to examine a
19 set of documents and answer a series of questions based upon your study
20 of those documents as well as based on your expertise as a military
21 commander; is that correct?
22 A. Yes. That is correct. And I examined those documents and
23 produced a report.
24 MR. GROOME: Your Honours, at this time, could I ask that 65 ter
25 number 28317 be brought to our screens. It is a document dated
Page 19045
1 23 April 2012 and entitled, "Statement of General Dannatt." It was
2 officially filed with the Chamber on the 24th of April, 2012. And,
3 Your Honours, I have a clean, hard copy of this document. Could I ask
4 that the witness have this before him during his testimony?
5 JUDGE ORIE: Any objections by the Defence?
6 MR. IVETIC: None, Your Honour.
7 JUDGE ORIE: Then may the hard copy be given to the witness.
8 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
9 MR. GROOME:
10 Q. General Dannatt, we can now see 65 ter 28317 before us. Is this
11 your report?
12 A. Yes, sir, it is my report.
13 Q. Can I ask that we go to the last page of this document so that we
14 can see the date of this report?
15 A. Yes, I'm looking at that now.
16 Q. And can you confirm that this is indeed your report?
17 A. It is dated the 23rd of April, 2012.
18 MR. GROOME: Your Honours, at this time I would ask for this
19 document to be marked for identification. I will tender it formally at
20 the conclusion of General Dannatt's evidence.
21 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar, the number would be?
22 THE REGISTRAR: Document 28317 receives number P2629,
23 Your Honours.
24 JUDGE ORIE: And is marked for identification.
25 MR. GROOME: Could I ask at this time that 65 ter 28317A be
Page 19046
1 brought to our screens. Your Honours, General Dannatt prepared his
2 report prior to the commencement of the trial, and, thus, the citations
3 in the report refer to 65 ter numbers and ERN numbers. To assist the
4 Chamber in working with the report, we have prepared a chart of the
5 documents referred to in it with citations to the exhibit numbers of
6 documents which have now been admitted. I would ask that this document
7 be marked for identification and I will tender it formally as a
8 demonstrative exhibit when I tender the report itself.
9 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar, the number would be?
10 THE REGISTRAR: Document 28317A receives number P2630,
11 Your Honours.
12 JUDGE ORIE: And is marked for identification.
13 MR. GROOME:
14 Q. General Dannatt, in paragraph 3 of your report, you set out your
15 understanding of your task. In paragraph 4 you state -- and I if I could
16 ask that we return to P2629, this is on the first page in both versions.
17 In paragraph 4 you state:
18 "On occasion, I have requested additional material to satisfy
19 myself on certain points of detail."
20 My question is: Do you consider that you had access to a
21 sufficient body of documentary evidence regarding the Army of the
22 Republika Srpska to make comprehensive and reliable conclusions about the
23 command function of that army?
24 A. Yes, sir, I do, and I asked for additional material and it was
25 provided, and I felt I had sufficient on which to base my conclusions and
Page 19047
1 opinions.
2 Q. Before we look at the analysis and opinions contained in your
3 report, I want to spend some time discussing your qualifications. I will
4 not ask you to repeat the details of the comprehensive biography you have
5 provided in your report, but do want you to address some particular
6 points which may be relevant for the Chamber in its consideration of
7 whether to recognise you as an expert.
8 JUDGE ORIE: Could I again ask that the speakers make a short
9 pause between question and answer and answer and question and that they
10 slow down.
11 MR. GROOME: Yes, Your Honour, that's my fault.
12 Q. General Dannatt, have you been recognised by a Trial Chamber of
13 this Tribunal as an expert in matters related to commanding -- command
14 and control?
15 A. Yes. I took part in a trial in the case against General Krstic a
16 number of years ago, and was recognised as an expert in that case at that
17 time.
18 Q. Have you been recognised by the Judges of the
19 International Court of Justice as an expert on military matters related
20 to the former Yugoslavia?
21 A. Yes, sir, I have, and similar matters were put to me in that
22 previous trial as I believe will be put to me in this trial today.
23 Q. In paragraph 11 --
24 JUDGE ORIE: Could I -- you are talking about a trial where the
25 question dealt with the International Court of Justice. Now, did you
Page 19048
1 refer to the International Court of Justice or did you refer to your
2 previous testimony before this Tribunal?
3 THE WITNESS: Thank you, sir. I misheard the question. As well
4 as giving evidence in this court, in a previous case, I did take part in
5 another case at the International Court of Justice as an expert.
6 I apologise. I misheard the question, but thank you for correcting me.
7 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed, Mr. Groome.
8 MR. GROOME:
9 Q. In paragraph 11, that can be found on page 3 of the report in
10 e-court, you state the following:
11 "I was the lead author of army doctrine publications volume 1,
12 operations, which set out a revised war fighting doctrine for the British
13 army appropriate for the post-Cold War security environment."
14 My question at this point is whether you were assigned the task
15 of writing this manual and other publications you refer to because of
16 your expertise in topics related to military command and control?
17 A. Yes, sir. I was given this task because at the time, I was the
18 colonel responsible for the higher command and staff course at the
19 British army staff college, and rather as the name implies, that course
20 teaches selected senior officers the art of war at the operational and
21 strategic level, and to be able to do that, one has to have extensive
22 knowledge not only of the way the British army operates but comparative
23 knowledge of the way that other armies operate. And at the time,
24 1992/1993, in the immediate post-Cold War years, it's almost obvious that
25 much of our focus on other military systems would have had us focusing on
Page 19049
1 the Soviet model, an alternative model, and I had to become very
2 conversant with that in order to sensibly frame a British army doctrine
3 against the possible doctrines of other armies that we might find
4 ourselves opposing. As we know, the world moved in a different direction
5 but it was important to understand both the way we operated and the way
6 that potential adversaries might operate. And against that background,
7 I wrote the British army war fighting doctrine for the post-Cold War
8 period.
9 Q. For what period of time did this publication remain in effect for
10 the British army?
11 A. It remained in effect until approximately 2005, which is about
12 the length of time that I would expect it to remain in effect. The world
13 doesn't stand still, and therefore any organisation, any military
14 organisation, needs to keep reviewing its doctrine and the way that it
15 conducts its business against the way the world is looking at any given
16 moment. And the world looked one way in the immediate post-Cold War
17 years throughout the 1990s, but after 9/11, the world began to look
18 somewhat differently, and the British army, therefore, felt it was time
19 again to revise its doctrine and a new doctrine was produced in 2005.
20 Q. In paragraph --
21 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. -- it is only now that the B/C/S translation has
22 finished. Could you please keep in mind to adapt your speed of speech.
23 MR. GROOME:
24 Q. In paragraphs 12 and 14 to 15 - and this can be found in e-court
25 pages 3 to 4 of both versions - you describe your deployments to the
Page 19050
1 former Yugoslavia, in particular to Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as
2 Kosovo, work that included, in part, the implementation of the
3 Dayton Peace Accord. During this work, did you ever have occasion to
4 meet with Ratko Mladic himself?
5 A. No, sir. I have never met General Mladic himself.
6 Q. In paragraph 11, you state that you were asked by
7 Major-General Sir Michael Rose, then commander of UNPROFOR, to draft what
8 you describe as a campaign plan for Bosnia, a plan you delivered to
9 General Rose in February 1994. My question to you is: Do you know why
10 you were selected for this task?
11 A. I was selected for that task by General Rose immediately prior to
12 becoming commander of UNPROFOR. General Rose had been the komandant of
13 the army staff college and I was on his staff as the colonel running the
14 higher command and staff course, and writing the war-fighting doctrine
15 which I've just referred to. He got in touch with me and said, You teach
16 campaign planning at the staff college. I believe the operation by
17 UNPROFOR in Bosnia needs greater clarity. I want you to put a team
18 together and write me a campaign plan for Bosnia.
19 So, effectively, he was asking me to do, in practical terms with
20 regard to Bosnia, what I was teaching and studying in theoretical terms
21 at the staff college. It was, as you can imagine, an interesting
22 challenge, and one which I and the team of experts that I put together
23 rose to with enthusiasm, and I then took that plan to Sarajevo and gave
24 it to General Rose.
25 Q. Did your work on drafting this plan require you to become
Page 19051
1 familiar with the armies of the respective sides in the former
2 Yugoslavia?
3 A. Yes, sir, it did. But as you can imagine, the conflict in Bosnia
4 had been running for some time by that moment, in early 1994, and,
5 therefore, at the staff college we had been studying what was going on in
6 Bosnia and in the former Yugoslavia considerably. So although at that
7 stage in January 1994, I had not served in Bosnia, I had a good
8 background knowledge of what was going on, and many of the instructors at
9 the staff college had already served in Bosnia. I therefore built on my
10 background understanding by asking many questions, conducting many
11 interviews, conducting a lot of research, with the team of military
12 experts that I assembled at the staff college in order to be able to
13 produce this campaign plan for General Rose. Self-evidently, that plan
14 had to be well-founded, well-researched, and of practical use, otherwise
15 it would have not served its purpose for General Rose.
16 Q. I'd like to now turn to the report itself. In paragraph 23,
17 which can be found on e-court pages 5 in both versions, you state that
18 there are certain basic principles that apply to all conventional armies,
19 and you set out the first principle in paragraph 24, where the first
20 sentence reads:
21 "The first principle is that a superior commander gives orders to
22 subordinate commanders who obey these orders and implement them."
23 My question to you is whether there are differences in the way
24 this principle is applied in the case of different national armies?
25 A. No, sir. I believe that that principle is a fundamental
Page 19052
1 principle common to all armies, to all military organisations.
2 Commanders give orders to subordinate commanders who obey those orders
3 and carry them out. That is the way a military organisation functions in
4 any army.
5 Q. You set out the second principle in paragraph 25, where you
6 state:
7 "The second principle is that subordinates must report upwards
8 the results of their actions to inform their superior of progress or
9 otherwise in order for the higher command to carry out its own
10 decision-making process."
11 Again, I ask you whether there are differences in the way this
12 principle is applied among national armies?
13 A. The basic principle is common to all armies. The way that it is
14 conducted differs from army to army, somewhat dependent upon the military
15 doctrine that a particular army follows. I'm very happy to elaborate
16 that now, now or later.
17 Q. I'll ask you some more detailed questions about that in a few
18 moments, but before I do, could we return to the first principle,
19 superiors give orders to subordinates. Can I ask you to enumerate the
20 different ways in which a commander can give an order to a subordinate?
21 A. A commander can give an order to a subordinate in a variety of
22 ways. He can issue a written directive, which is a general statement of
23 future intentions. He can issue an operational order, which is a
24 detailed statement of what is to be done. He can give orders in person,
25 speaking person to person. He can give orders on the radio. He can give
Page 19053
1 such orders in an abbreviated fashion using modern technology such as
2 e-mails and texts. The underlying principle is that the subordinate must
3 understand what the superior wants him to do, and there are a variety of
4 ways in which that intimation of what the superior requires can be
5 conveyed. There is no right way or wrong way to give an order. There
6 are a variety of means. The important thing is that the meaning is
7 understood and that the action will then be carried out.
8 Q. Does the fact that an order was given orally and not put in
9 writing diminish the subordinate's obligation to comply with that order?
10 A. Not at all. Provided the intention has been clearly conveyed,
11 any form of conveying the intention is equally legitimate. An oral order
12 is perfectly acceptable.
13 Q. Is it possible for an order to be given neither in written form
14 or orally but simply through the use of a gesture?
15 A. I think I would stand by my earlier answer, that provided the
16 intention of the superior is accurately conveyed to the subordinate, it
17 doesn't matter the means by which that intention is conveyed. If --
18 well, I use, I suppose, the historic example of gladiators fighting in
19 the coliseum in Rome. When the culminating point of the engagement is
20 reached, people looked to the emperor for either a thumbs up or a thumbs
21 down, and we all know the implication of that. So I think a gesture is a
22 perfectly acceptable way of conveying an intention but not the usual way.
23 Q. In your report at paragraphs 27 and 28 - this can be found at
24 e-court page 7 in the original and 6 in the translation - you set out two
25 general paradigms or concepts of military command, Auftragstaktik, or
Page 19054
1 manoeuvrist approach to operations, and Befehlstaktik, an approach that
2 relies on a centralised command. Can I ask you in a few sentences to
3 describe for the Chamber the essential difference between the manoeuvrist
4 approach and the centralised command approach?
5 A. Yes, I will. And I will try to be brief. These are both German
6 terms. Auftragstaktik is a military doctrine best used by professional
7 armies when the standard of training is high and the military education
8 content, particularly of officers, is high, and it's a form of command
9 and control which is intended to optimise the initiative of junior
10 commanders. Very briefly, a superior commander would state his general
11 intention, he would delegate tasks to individuals, and then expect them
12 to use their initiative within the wider framework of his general
13 intention to achieve the mission and to achieve the objective. And in
14 this way, it means that the well-trained brains of junior commanders can
15 be harnessed to better effect and to carry out the operation well.
16 The third element of that system is that even though the superior
17 commander will have delegated tasks, he has an absolute obligation to
18 supervise the execution of those tasks, and he will do it either closely
19 or less closely depending on his confidence in the subordinate to whom
20 he's given the task. This is how a professional army that's well-trained
21 operates. It characterises western armies, such as the British army,
22 United States army, and is in very general terms the way that NATO armies
23 try to operate.
24 The other system known as Befehlstaktik, another German word, is
25 a doctrine that is more centralised. It's characteristic of an army that
Page 19055
1 is large, probably made up of conscripts, and where the level of training
2 is lower. Under that system, there is not the flexibility and delegation
3 that you find in Auftragstaktik, following armies that I've just
4 described, by which I mean that a superior commander will give detailed
5 instructions to his subordinates who will carry out those instructions,
6 and when they are complete, the subordinate would expect to be given
7 further instructions. So the key point that I'm trying to make is that
8 under the centralised Befehlstaktik doctrine, there is much less scope
9 for the use of initiative by junior commanders than there is in the other
10 system that I have described.
11 And as a final comment referring back to one of my other answers,
12 under both systems, it is imperative that subordinates report upwards the
13 results of their activities. Under the centralised Befehlstaktik
14 doctrine, this would be done regularly and without fail and in some
15 detail. Under Auftragstaktik, it is considered acceptable to only report
16 when you have something of importance to say, and without putting it too
17 simply, no news is good news, and the superior commander assumes that all
18 is going according to plan.
19 Q. Just give the interpreters a moment now and then I'll ask my next
20 question.
21 On this issue of reporting, under Befehlstaktik or centralised
22 command approach, what would typically happen if a report did not arrive
23 when it was expected?
24 A. If a report didn't arrive at the prescribed time, one would
25 expect an operations staff officer from the superior headquarters to most
Page 19056
1 probably get on the radio, or these days send an e-mail to the
2 subordinate headquarters and say, Where is your report? What is the
3 situation? What is going on? Why are you not keeping us in the picture?
4 It would be chased up.
5 Q. I'd like to now --
6 JUDGE ORIE: You really have to slow down.
7 MR. GROOME: Sorry.
8 JUDGE ORIE: It goes too fast for the interpreters.
9 Please proceed.
10 MR. GROOME:
11 Q. I would now like to turn your attention to the VRS itself and
12 your conclusions about its command and control systems.
13 What type of command system was used by the VRS? Which of these
14 models?
15 A. The VRS has the characteristic hallmarks of a centrally
16 controlled army, following what I have described as the Befehlstaktik
17 doctrine, and if I could explain why I think that is so: History will
18 show that the VRS was formed from the army of the former Yugoslavia, and
19 although Yugoslavia was not -- well, Yugoslavia was a looser member of
20 the Warsaw Pact, and under Soviet influence. Nevertheless, the military
21 system that the Yugoslav National Army followed was one very much
22 influenced by the Soviet model, and that was a model based on centralised
23 control characterised by Befehlstaktik which I've talked about.
24 Q. During the course of your work, did you come to a view regarding
25 how the first principle of militaries, superiors giving orders to
Page 19057
1 subordinates, how this functioned in the Army of Republika Srpska?
2 A. Yes. All my investigations show me that the
3 Army of Republika Srpska operated in the way that I would expect any army
4 to do, and that directives, operation orders, and sometimes verbal
5 orders, were passed to subordinates to carry out missions and tasks in
6 the classic fashion.
7 Q. General, in paragraph 32, that can be found at 9 in the original,
8 8 in the translation, you describe an event when you were commander of
9 the 4th Armoured Brigade on mission in Bosnia to implement the
10 Dayton Peace Accord, and your efforts to meet with General Talic. What
11 did that interaction or event demonstrate to you about the command
12 structure of the VRS?
13 A. Without going into detail of the situation at the time, whereas I
14 had had routine meetings and discussions with the commanders of the
15 Muslim and Croat forces, I had not had the opportunity to meet commander
16 of the Bosnian Serb forces. And under Dayton, we were required to move
17 into Republika Srpska and operate within the territorial area of
18 Republika Srpska. I was concerned that although agreement had been
19 reached at the strategic level at Dayton, that maybe the soldiers on the
20 ground would not understand that NATO troops would be coming into
21 Republika Srpska and that fighting would occur. And I decided that the
22 way to ensure this didn't happen was that I would go to Banja Luka and
23 see General Talic and confirm for myself with him that he understood his
24 obligations under Dayton to allow my troops to cross into
25 Republika Srpska and operate to implement the Dayton agreement.
Page 19058
1 I let it be known through liaison officers that I was coming, and
2 duly travelled to Banja Luka, but I was not able to meet General Talic
3 because he had not received authority from General Mladic to see me. And
4 I passed the message that I wanted to pass through liaison officers from
5 General Talic's staff. What this told me was that General Talic had no
6 delegated authority to make a decision on his own account to see me but
7 that he would only do so if General Mladic, as the army commander, gave
8 that authority. And that reinforced to me as an example the centralised
9 command and control nature of the Army of Republika Srpska.
10 Q. In the penultimate sentence of paragraph 30, you state:
11 "The culture of regularly reporting upward never changed, and
12 indeed regulations required the upward passage of information."
13 Can I ask you what did you base this conclusion about the
14 reporting function of the VRS on, if you could summarise the basis for
15 that view?
16 A. In a number of documents that I saw, it was stated very clearly
17 that there were reporting obligations placed on subordinate headquarters
18 to send reports at certain time each day to their superior headquarters
19 so that the superior headquarters was well-informed. I also looked at
20 several documents at various stages during the conflict which were
21 examples of those reports being sent from a brigade headquarters to its
22 superior headquarters, and from a corps headquarters to the Main Staff
23 headquarters.
24 And even when the fighting became difficult and the war reached a
25 climax in 1995, that system of upwards reporting remained in place as
Page 19059
1 I would expect it to have done, and indeed my investigation showed that
2 this indeed was the case, and that the command and control mechanism
3 stayed in place and functioned effectively.
4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: May I ask -- at this point in time I have one
5 question: You told us about your wish to meet General Talic and you told
6 us that he didn't get the permission by General Mladic. How do you know
7 that? From whom did you receive this information?
8 THE WITNESS: The liaison officer who I spoke with was
9 apologetic, and he told me that General Talic -- it was nothing personal,
10 but that he had not received authority to see me, and therefore would
11 I please convey my message through the liaison officer. There was a
12 colonel and a captain. I'm afraid -- Captain Popovic was the name of the
13 captain, and I have a picture of the colonel in my mind but I can't now
14 remember his name.
15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.
16 MR. GROOME: Can I ask that P353 be brought to our screens and
17 I'm interested in an entry that spans e-court pages 246 to 272 in the
18 original and 244 to 270 in the translation. So if we could please go to
19 244 now.
20 Q. General, while that's being brought to our screens, last evening
21 did I ask you to take a look at an entry from General Mladic's notebook?
22 A. Yes, you did.
23 Q. We are still trying to bring up the English translation. Do you
24 recall an entry in which Mladic records information he receives at a
25 meeting that he has with municipal leaders?
Page 19060
1 A. Yes, I do. I saw that last night. I currently am not looking at
2 the English translation. Ah, I think I am now.
3 MR. GROOME: This is page 244. Could I ask that we go to 246.
4 I may have reversed the English and translation. It's 246 in the English
5 and 244 in the B/C/S, and the B/C/S is the transcription, not the
6 original image. There we go for the English.
7 Q. Is this the entry that you looked at?
8 A. Yes, sir, it is.
9 Q. Now, this notebook entry is in evidence and the Chamber will be
10 able to study it. Can I ask you to summarise how this meeting, this
11 meeting with local government officials, fits into the reporting
12 requirement or the gathering of information by a commander in order to
13 make command decisions?
14 A. My answer to the question really has to be placed in the context
15 of the kind of conflict which characterises the war in Bosnia, 1992 to
16 1995. Whereas in straightforward military operations, when one army is
17 fighting another, in which case you would gather intelligence about the
18 enemy, frame your plans and conduct operations, in this set of
19 circumstances, it was very much as we describe as war amongst the people,
20 the civilian population, the local communities, very much part and parcel
21 of the background and the circumstances of the war.
22 So it's absolutely inevitable and quite proper that military
23 commanders at all levels have regular dialogue and regular meetings with
24 civilian authorities, whether it's town mayors, local government
25 ministers, local community leaders, and it's important that those
Page 19061
1 civilian leaders understand what the military is doing and the military
2 listens to what the civilian community wants to tell them. So
3 civil-military relations are a very common characteristic of this kind of
4 conflict, which is not pure war fighting in a simple force-on-force
5 nature but it's within what one might call the messy and complex
6 circumstances of what I've described as war amongst the people where the
7 civilian population is absolutely critical as part of the background to
8 what the militaries are doing.
9 Q. I'd like to now turn your attention a different topic. General,
10 you prepared your expert report before this trial began and your analysis
11 was based on documentary evidence and some video materials. Prior to
12 giving evidence today, did I provide you with the testimony of
13 General Manojlo Milovanovic, General Mladic's Chief of Staff, and did
14 I ask you to review that testimony?
15 A. Yes, sir, you did. And I have read that and reviewed that.
16 Q. And did you review it in its entirety, both the direct exam, the
17 cross exam and the questions posed by the Judges?
18 A. I have now done that. Initially, you provided me with some of it
19 and more recently you provided me the whole transcript, which I have
20 read, and it took quite some time to read it.
21 Q. Before I ask you to provide us with any observations you may
22 have, can I ask you to spend a few moments describing for the Chamber the
23 role of a Chief of Staff to a commander?
24 A. The Chief of Staff in any formation is in a unique position, in
25 that not only is he, as the name implies, the Chief of Staff, the head of
Page 19062
1 the staff, the leader of the headquarters, but he also acts as the deputy
2 commander.
3 Now, this isn't the case in every army. In the British army, the
4 Chief of Staff will act as the deputy commander if the commander is away
5 or incapacitated for any reason and he will hold command until a
6 replacement commander is nominated.
7 In the case of the Yugoslav National Army and therefore the
8 Army of Republika Srpska, the Chief of Staff is the deputy commander and
9 has singular authority to act in the command function if the commander is
10 away. And therefore, when the commander is not present, the Chief of
11 Staff in his capacity as deputy commander holds equal authority to the
12 commander himself. So Chief of Staff is a very important position for
13 those two reasons.
14 Q. Having read General Milovanovic's testimony, does it further
15 inform your opinion regarding the Army of Republika Srpska? In other
16 words, does it confirm your conclusions or cause you to amend them?
17 A. From a professional military point of view, I was fascinated to
18 read the entirety of General Milovanovic's testimony and
19 cross-examination because it told me a lot about the origins of the
20 Army of Republika Srpska, much of which I knew from my own research, but
21 it was fascinating to me to read his description of what happened because
22 it tallied with my understanding from my own research as to what
23 happened. And from it, I could see that the Army of Republika Srpska
24 undoubtedly had its origins in the former military district of the
25 Yugoslav National Army, that the doctrine and regulations of the VRS were
Page 19063
1 taken pretty much in entirety from the doctrine and regulations of the
2 Yugoslav National Army which was a professional army of considerable
3 competence, and that there was a functioning system of command and
4 control that I recognised. And although it was a challenge in May, June,
5 early part of 1992, to get the Army of Republika Srpska functioning
6 quickly, given that a civil war was breaking out, this was achieved
7 remarkably quickly because the doctrine and the regulations and many of
8 the personnel were transferred en bloc from one army to the other.
9 Moreover, it was very interesting to sense - I think that's the
10 right word - from General Milovanovic's testimony, the significant
11 presence of General Mladic as the commander of the Main Staff. It's
12 quite clear that General Mladic was and is what I would describe as a big
13 person, had a big personality, and that nothing that was done was not
14 done without his authority. And on those occasions when General Mladic
15 for one reason or another was away, away from the headquarters or out of
16 the country, and General Milovanovic in his capacity as deputy commander
17 took decisions, he was always very quick to ensure that General Mladic
18 was informed of those decisions and his agreement was sought or if his
19 agreement was not forthcoming then amendments were made to the decisions
20 that had been taken.
21 And this, to me, speaks volumes of the personality and character
22 and style of command of General Mladic, and it came out very clearly to
23 me in General Milovanovic's testimony.
24 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, I see that we are at the time for the
25 break. Before I ask the next question, would we break now?
Page 19064
1 JUDGE ORIE: We will take the break now. Mr. Dannatt, we will
2 take a break for you at least a little bit longer than usual. We usually
3 have breaks of 20 minutes but since we have to hear some submissions
4 immediately after the break, it may be a little bit over half an hour
5 that you're excused. You may follow the usher.
6 THE WITNESS: Thank you, sir.
7 [The witness stands down]
8 JUDGE ORIE: Before we take the break, may I remind you,
9 Mr. Mladic, that when you consult with counsel that you should speak at
10 low volume, which is best achieved if you take out your ear-phones.
11 We take a break and we resume at ten minutes to 11.00.
12 --- Recess taken at 10.30 a.m.
13 --- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.
14 JUDGE ORIE: Ms. Marcus, welcome in court, the Prosecution had
15 announced that it would like to make submissions on the presentation of
16 the evidence in relation to Ms. Tabeau. You have an opportunity to
17 address the Chamber.
18 MS. MARCUS: Thank you very much, Your Honour. Good morning.
19 With your leave, Your Honours, I would like to distribute copies
20 of the exhibit list for Dr. Tabeau. I've given the Registrar a few
21 copies for the Chamber. I think it would facilitate an understanding of
22 my submission. You have it, Your Honours?
23 JUDGE ORIE: We have received it, yes, I [overlapping speakers]
24 MS. MARCUS: Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you, Your Honour.
25 So due to the number of documents and the varied subject matter which the
Page 19065
1 Prosecution will be covering through Dr. Tabeau, I thought it best to set
2 out briefly for the Chamber how I plan to present her evidence.
3 I believe this will save significant time with the witness and
4 assist the Chamber in hearing her evidence.
5 At the top, we see two segments of prior testimony and below that
6 two expert reports as associated exhibits to tender through Dr. Tabeau
7 via 92 ter. You can see the testimony excerpts as 30447 and 30446, and
8 below that, the two reports as associated exhibits, 29146 and 11102.
9 In preparation for her testimony today, in addition -- sorry, the
10 testimony which will take place tomorrow, sorry, Your Honours, Dr. Tabeau
11 has prepared three items which are essential additions to her evidence.
12 I would plan to ask her to attest to those just following the 92 ter
13 process. You can see those items on the exhibit list farther down, just
14 below the updated CV. Those are 30454, 30455 and 30465, two rows below
15 that.
16 Finally, Your Honours, Dr. Tabeau has prepared a set of slides to
17 facilitate the presentation of her evidence. That slide presentation is
18 listed on the exhibit list as 30464. These slides are explanatory in
19 nature. They are intended to simplify the somewhat complex aspects of
20 her evidence. They are demonstrative and not evidentiary, but I do plan
21 to tender them to facilitate an understanding of her testimony later on.
22 I propose, Your Honours, for the sake of efficiency to tender all
23 of Dr. Tabeau's materials listed on this exhibit list at the very
24 conclusion of her testimony. This will expedite the proceedings in terms
25 of her testimony and it will also take account of the following witness,
Page 19066
1 RM407, who has some very serious time constraints, as Your Honours are
2 aware. So if we don't manage to proceed with the full tendering, that
3 could possibly be put off, if necessary, if Your Honours so decide.
4 To facilitate this process, I request Your Honours to grant leave
5 to assign MFI exhibit numbers to the materials on this list in advance.
6 I'm in the Chamber's hands as to whether you would prefer to have those
7 assigned now or at the conclusion of her 92 ter attestation process.
8 One more point, Your Honour, Your Honours. On the
9 7th of November, at transcript 18875, the Chamber requested that any
10 issues relating to access to Dr. Tabeau's source materials should be
11 brought to the Chamber's attention. On -- at 11.30 on that same day,
12 7th of November, the Prosecution sent an informal communication to the
13 Chamber informing Your Honours of information in this regard, which
14 I would now put on the record.
15 The Defence sent the Prosecution an e-mail with several inquiries
16 on the 28th of October, including a request for access to the integrated
17 database contained within the demographics unit of the OTP. The
18 Prosecution responded to the Defence request on the same day. In that
19 response, we informed the Defence that the demographics unit closed in
20 September of 2011 but was reactivated for the purposes of the preparation
21 of the expert evidence of Dr. Tabeau in this case. The Prosecution
22 offered the Defence access to all databases in the demographics unit and
23 asked the Defence for additional information to enable us to fulfil their
24 request, such as when they would need this access, how many people would
25 require access, and so forth. No additional requests on this particular
Page 19067
1 issue were raised by the Defence in any additional correspondence. The
2 Prosecution and Dr. Tabeau remain prepared to provide full access to any
3 and all sources relied upon by Dr. Tabeau in preparation of her expert
4 reports.
5 I just note for Your Honours' information that the logistics and
6 technical details related to granting this access, in particular to the
7 integrated database, could take several days, and that contractual
8 arrangements will also need to be made because, as I mentioned, the
9 demographic unit's staff are no longer here, they need to be brought,
10 et cetera. Therefore, for example, if the Defence were to ask for such
11 access today, we could not provide it immediately today. However, the
12 moment we receive this request, we will do our utmost to grant access as
13 soon as feasible. That concludes my submission, Your Honours, and
14 I thank you for the opportunity to present it.
15 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Ms. Marcus. Any response immediately by
16 the Defence, or would you rather consider it?
17 MR. IVETIC: Your Honours, we have no objection to the Chamber
18 issuing marked for identification numbers for the exhibits that are being
19 offered on this list. We maintain our objection, of course, to the
20 reports as to the Rule 94 notice of objection that we filed, so that,
21 I think, addresses the first point.
22 With respect to the second point, the access to the database, we
23 do not intend to seek that access before the testimony of the witness.
24 Our own Defence expert has had some medical procedures that she is
25 recovering from and so that would be co-ordinated with the Prosecution
Page 19068
1 following the testimony of the Witness Tabeau.
2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Do you mean that you would not yet
3 cross-examine Ms. Tabeau on the matter or --
4 MR. IVETIC: No, Your Honours, the testimony of Ms. Tabeau will
5 proceed.
6 JUDGE ORIE: No, I see that, but you said it would be
7 co-ordinated with the Prosecution following the testimony of the
8 Witness Tabeau. That means after the -- not just examination-in-chief
9 but after her testimony as a whole?
10 MR. IVETIC: Correct.
11 JUDGE ORIE: So as to allow the Defence to prepare for any
12 evidence to be presented in the Defence case, if it comes to that.
13 MR. IVETIC: That is correct, Your Honour.
14 JUDGE ORIE: That's understood. Then, Ms. Marcus, I would
15 suggest that you provide the 65 ter numbers to Madam Registrar and that
16 she will provisionally assign or reserve numbers for them so that they
17 are available when Ms. Tabeau will start her testimony.
18 MS. MARCUS: Yes, Your Honour. Would you like me to do that in
19 court or via correspondence?
20 JUDGE ORIE: Correspondence I think would be okay --
21 MS. MARCUS: Thank you, Your Honour.
22 JUDGE ORIE: -- as long as it's copied to the Chamber staff and
23 the Defence, then it's no problem.
24 MS. MARCUS: Thank you, Your Honour.
25 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Ms. Marcus, for these submissions. Thank
Page 19069
1 you, Mr. Ivetic, for having given already a brief response.
2 Could the witness be escorted into the courtroom.
3 Ms. Marcus, you are excused.
4 Mr. Groome, as far as time is concerned, are we on track?
5 I think you asked for one hour and a half.
6 MR. GROOME: I'm on track, Your Honour.
7 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Which, in fact, will mean that you do not need
8 the whole of the session we are -- we will be in from now.
9 [The witness takes the stand]
10 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Dannatt, Mr. Groome will now continue his
11 examination.
12 THE WITNESS: Thank you, sir.
13 MR. GROOME:
14 Q. General Dannatt, I want to draw your attention and seek your
15 comment on a few specifics elements of General Milovanovic's testimony.
16 At transcript 16932, he said:
17 "The command function has to be and it was in our military
18 centralised. It was continuous and every activity had to finish with an
19 analysis exercise. In the meantime, between the analysis and the
20 previously issued order, there is the supervision or control of how the
21 order is implemented."
22 Can I ask you to comment on that testimony and help us understand
23 it within the conceptual framework that you set out earlier today?
24 A. Yes. This is a clear description of how a military organisation,
25 an army, based on a centralised command philosophy would function, and
Page 19070
1 that's what General Milovanovic is saying is that a task is decided,
2 orders are given, activity starts, activity is monitored - that's
3 supervision - and then an analysis is conducted of what has happened and
4 what has not happened for the better understanding of the success or
5 otherwise of the operation so that another time it might go better.
6 So what he is describing is the complete process from decision to
7 execution and then to feedback of -- at the end of an operation.
8 Q. In paragraph 56 of your report, that can be found at 19 in the
9 English and 16 in the B/C/S translation, you opine that:
10 "The VRS communication system appears to be diverse and robust."
11 Did you find any support for this opinion in your review of
12 General Milovanovic's testimony?
13 A. General Milovanovic, as the Chief of Staff, concentrates very
14 largely on the process of reporting and information flow, and talks about
15 the issue of directives, he talks about the issuing of orders, the use of
16 secure telephone, of radio, and he makes it quite clear that a very
17 important part of effective functioning of the command of the army is the
18 flow of information upwards from subordinate headquarters and subordinate
19 formations for the better understanding and subsequent decision-making
20 process of the superior headquarters. And as with other well-organised
21 armies, there is always a redundancy in communication methods to ensure
22 that if one method of communication is jammed or, say, radios are not
23 functioning well, that information can still get through by another
24 means, and that is a normal procedure, to make sure that a superior and
25 subordinate headquarters can stay in touch with one another.
Page 19071
1 Q. I'd like to now turn your attention to General Mladic personally
2 as the commander of the General Staff -- of the Main Staff, I apologise.
3 In paragraph 39 of your report, you make the following statement:
4 "In practice, even if not according to VRS regulations,
5 General Mladic exhibited all the characteristics of a hands-on army
6 commander."
7 Can I ask you to expound on that? In particular, what were those
8 characteristics?
9 A. Well, it's clear to me from things I have read, television
10 reports and video clips that I have seen, that General Mladic was a very
11 effective commander, and that he kept close control on -- on what
12 happened. I suppose the most obvious example, and it's a well publicised
13 example, is to look at his activities in Srebrenica in July 1995.
14 Srebrenica was in the area of operations of the Drina Corps but
15 it was the focus of activity at that time, so it could be called as the
16 army's main effort at that time, and therefore it was not unreasonable
17 that General Mladic, as the army commander effectively, went forward into
18 the Drina Corps area to see what was going on.
19 And it's quite obvious from the material that I reviewed that he
20 exercised a large measure of personal control as to what was going on.
21 There are three meetings, for example, in the Fortuna hotel which he
22 chaired those meetings. There is video coverage of him moving through
23 the town, giving direction.
24 So what this says to me is that this is very much a hands-on army
25 commander. He was known, and I've mentioned it before this morning, to
Page 19072
1 be a big character who people certainly respected and I suspect feared a
2 certain amount as well. And therefore, what he said and what he ordered,
3 people were likely to do. And I think in that way I'm trying to sum up
4 what I mean when I describe him as a hands-on commander. He was not
5 remote in some distant headquarters but he liked to be forward,
6 exercising personal control. And that is a perfectly reasonable way of
7 military activity.
8 JUDGE ORIE: May I take it that you misspoke when you were
9 talking about the "Fortuna hotel" and that you intended to refer to the
10 "Fontana Hotel"?
11 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, you're absolutely right. My apologies,
12 thank you.
13 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed.
14 MR. GROOME:
15 Q. General Milovanovic testified that Mladic located himself in the
16 Sarajevo area at the beginning of the war. Would this be consistent with
17 what you have now described as a hands-on approach?
18 A. It would be consistent with the commander going to what I've --
19 I would describe as the point of main effort, by which I mean where the
20 most significant activities are going on. That is where a commander
21 would want to place himself so that he has a good feel and a good
22 understanding of the situation in the most critical area at the time.
23 And not surprisingly, Sarajevo being the capital of Bosnia, very much the
24 centre of activity certainly in the early years, it doesn't surprise me
25 at all that that's where he chose to locate himself so that he knew what
Page 19073
1 was going on and could influence what was going on.
2 Q. At paragraph 62 of your report, you discuss the concept of
3 Fingerspitzengefuhl or finger-tip control. Could I ask you to describe
4 what relationship, if any, there is between the concepts of hands-on
5 control and the concept of Fingerspitzengefuhl?
6 A. Yes. I apologise for introducing yet another German term. But
7 in military theory, the Germans did largely shape the lexicon.
8 Fingerspitzengefuhl is a term understood to mean how a commander develops
9 an instinctive sense of how things are and how things should be and how
10 he thinks he wants things to develop. You can do that not necessarily
11 being present on the ground. You can do it by gathering information,
12 analysing and understanding and giving orders and direction. But often
13 part of that sensing what is really significant takes you to the point of
14 main effort, to the place that is the focus of activity at the time. So
15 there is an overlap between Fingerspitzengefuhl, this sense of knowing
16 what was going on, being able to direct sensitively what was going on,
17 with actually being present, and the notion of being a hands-on commander
18 is a sub-function, if you like, of the Fingerspitzengefuhl that I've been
19 describing.
20 Q. In paragraph 60 of your report, which can be found at e-court
21 page 20 in the original and 17 in the translation, you make the following
22 statement:
23 "However, whether physically present or not, a commander remains
24 responsible for the actions of the troops under his command or in some
25 circumstances within his delegated TAOR. Indeed, radio telephone
Page 19074
1 intercepts discussed elsewhere in this statement demonstrate clearly that
2 Mladic received reports and gave orders whether or not he was physically
3 present at the scene of action."
4 Can I ask you to elaborate on that and explain how you came to
5 that conclusion?
6 A. The point that I'm trying to make is that a commander is
7 responsible for a plan that he develops in fulfilment of a particular
8 mission, and in some circumstances, and this is why I use the term
9 "TAOR," tactical area of responsibility, in some forms of conflict, and
10 I think the Bosnian war is one of those forms of conflict, whereby the
11 territory under dispute is divided into tactical areas of responsibility.
12 Everything that goes on within an area of responsibility is exactly that,
13 it is -- it remains the responsibility of the commander. So whether he
14 or she is physically present actually is not the relevant issue. Tasks
15 can be delegated but responsibility can never be delegated. If you've
16 made yourself responsible for an operation and for a plan, it is your
17 responsibility, even though you've delegated the execution of it. And
18 within a conflict which has territorial subdivisions, then what goes on
19 in your tactical area of responsibility remains your responsibility, and
20 that is the point that I'm trying to make here.
21 Q. In paragraph 80, you discuss the operational challenges of
22 transporting all of the people in Potocari out of that location. You
23 say:
24 "At the outset, however, the military must bear in mind that once
25 it sets out to move a large body of civilians from one place to another,
Page 19075
1 then under international law the military takes on certain
2 responsibilities and has certain legal obligations."
3 My question to you is the following: Under what circumstances
4 would it be appropriate for a military force to physically move such a
5 large group of people?
6 A. The legitimate use of military force is against other military
7 forces. Earlier today I've talked about the expression "war among the
8 people," and the responsible military commander has to think about the
9 safety of civilians and non-combatants within his tactical area of
10 responsibility or within the geographic area of an operation that he's
11 going to carry out. And therefore, it may be the responsible thing to do
12 to offer to the civilian non-combatants in an area the opportunity to
13 leave that area for their own safety. And indeed, that offer might have
14 to include the provision of transport to remove them. I use the word
15 "offer" because I think that is the appropriate way to go about it.
16 Compelling people to leave their home is probably verging on the
17 internationally legally unacceptable. And certainly compelling people to
18 move or compelling people to move would be the wrong thing to do. The
19 correct action to take would be to so shape your military operations that
20 you avoid a centre of population, if that population has chosen to stay
21 put.
22 But in this case, it looks as if there were a large body of
23 people that, for one reason or another, were to be moved. Whether it was
24 voluntary or involuntary, the fact of the matter is they were going to be
25 moved, and that elements of the VRS took responsibility for moving that
Page 19076
1 large number of people from one place to another.
2 MR. GROOME: Could I ask that P363 be brought to our screens.
3 This is a portion of the military notebook of General Mladic. Could
4 I ask that we go to e-court page 4 in both copies.
5 Q. General Dannatt, I want to show you an entry from
6 General Mladic's military notebook, and this entry records a meeting in
7 Dobanovci, the outskirts of Belgrade on the 15th of July, 1995.
8 Attending that meeting were Milosevic, Stoltenberg, Akashi, Bildt and
9 Generals de la Presle and Smith. Now, we can see at the bottom of this
10 page that Mladic records a separate meeting between himself, de la Presle
11 and General Smith. Do you know General Smith, General Rupert Smith?
12 A. Yes, I know General Smith well.
13 MR. GROOME: Could I ask that we go to the next page in both
14 versions.
15 Q. We can see that General Mladic -- just be a moment now to call up
16 the next page. We can see here that General Mladic records a statement
17 by General Smith. I want to draw your attention to the paragraph that
18 begins with the number 4. Mladic writes down what Smith is saying. He
19 records:
20 "Treatment of the population in Srebrenica and Zepa. There are
21 rumours about atrocities, massacres and rape."
22 My first question to you is: Based on your training and
23 extensive experience as a commander, what would be the likely purpose of
24 one commander telling another commander about information regarding
25 crimes being committed by that second commander's troops?
Page 19077
1 A. Well, if one commander tells another commander that he has got
2 information or he has heard rumours of improper or illegal activity being
3 conducted by the other commander's troops, as would appear to be the case
4 here in the conversation between General Smith and General Mladic, then
5 the responsible action of the other party, the one against whom
6 allegations were being made, would be to initiate some kind of
7 investigation. Of course, I do not know whether this did indeed occur,
8 but certainly if I had been a party to that conversation, and someone had
9 made an allegation, I would feel honour-bound and obliged to investigate.
10 And to give a more up-to-date example, when I was head of the
11 British army, from time to time allegations were made of improper actions
12 by British soldiers either in Iraq or Afghanistan, and one understands
13 the absolute importance of investigating openly and transparently these
14 rumours, these claims, to either be able to dismiss them authoritatively
15 or if there is substance to them, then to have a more detailed
16 investigation, and if necessary bring about perpetrators of improper or
17 illegal acts to the judicial system and if necessary bring them before a
18 court. And this, sadly, in the odd occasion, in the experience of the
19 British army is something that we've had to do but it's the right thing
20 to do.
21 MR. GROOME: Can I now ask that we see another notebook entry
22 from later in July. It is P345. And the entry I'm interested in begins
23 in e-court page 229.
24 Q. General, while that's being brought to our screens, we now know
25 that General Mladic, upon receiving this information from General Smith,
Page 19078
1 did not return to Srebrenica but, instead, attended wedding of a friend
2 the next day. In your view, was that appropriate for a commander of
3 forces that has received information of such possible atrocities? Ignore
4 the --
5 A. It hasn't come up on the screen, but it doesn't matter. I think
6 it's surprising that if allegations of that substance have been made,
7 that a commander should choose to go to a wedding, a social occasion,
8 rather than vigorously follow up and start to investigate the
9 circumstances. I can't get inside the head of General Mladic over that
10 day or two, but it does seem quite surprising to me that if he took
11 General Smith's allegations seriously, that he wasn't that concerned that
12 he would wanted to have followed up as thoroughly as possible and not
13 wanted to have seen to have trivialised the allegations by himself going
14 to a social event, going to a wedding. I find it surprising that he put
15 himself in what I would regard as an inappropriate situation and open
16 himself up to criticism.
17 JUDGE MOLOTO: If I may intervene, Mr. Groome. Mr. Dannatt, is
18 it not permissible or possible that a commander in that situation could
19 give orders to his next in chief, his right-hand man, to undertake the
20 investigations or any other one that he thought appropriate could do the
21 job?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, that's entirely possible, and may well be
23 what happened. I think the point that I'm trying to make is that if
24 these allegations were as serious and significant as they were, I just
25 ask the question as to whether the most senior commander, the person most
Page 19079
1 responsible, was perhaps being wise to be seen at a social event at a
2 time of great sensitivity and great difficulty. His presence at the
3 wedding didn't stop an investigation, but the question I ask, and
4 I haven't got the answer, is whether it was the right place for him to
5 be, given serious events that had been alleged.
6 JUDGE MOLOTO: Thank you very much, Mr. Groome.
7 JUDGE ORIE: I have also a question. Do you consider this to be
8 within your expertise because what is wise or not, where to show up, if
9 you have -- let's just for argument's sake assume that orders were given
10 for an investigation or were not given, but, apart from that, is the fact
11 whether it's wise, isn't that more a policy matter rather than that it
12 has got anything to do with command and control of an army?
13 THE WITNESS: An aspect of command and control, sir, is
14 judgement, and the wise use of judgement. I think it's perfectly proper,
15 as a military expert, to just ask the question: Was General Mladic on
16 that day in question correct in making the decision to go to a wedding
17 when serious allegations had been made against his army. It's merely a
18 matter of judgement.
19 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Mladic, you remain seated. Mr. Mladic, you
20 remain seated.
21 Apparently counsel would like to consult.
22 [Defence counsel and Accused confer]
23 JUDGE ORIE: Please, volume. Inaudible. I think the usher has
24 misunderstood me. "Inaudible" is an instruction for Mr. Mladic that he
25 speak --
Page 19080
1 Mr. --
2 MR. GROOME:
3 Q. General Dannatt, Judges Moloto and Orie have both raised with you
4 the possibility of Mladic, upon receiving this information from
5 General Smith, of giving orders to undertake an investigation of such a
6 matter. In your review of the materials that you were given to study,
7 did you see any evidence or anything that indicated to you that upon
8 receipt of this information, General Mladic gave an order in response to
9 it or to initiate an investigation?
10 A. I -- I don't believe that I have seen anything. But, again,
11 I only know what I know and there may be documents that I'm not aware of
12 or other material that I'm not aware of which would have indicated that
13 he had initiated an investigation, but I've not seen anything to that
14 effect.
15 Q. Now if I can draw your attention to the screen before you, where
16 we now have P345 on our screens - it's e-court page 229 - we can see in
17 this entry from General Mladic's notebook that he records a meeting on
18 the morning of 24 July 1995, a time when information about what happened
19 in Srebrenica is now publicly known. He's meeting with
20 President Milosevic and General Perisic, the Chief of Staff of the
21 Yugoslav army. He records Milosevic saying, "Srebrenica and Zepa have
22 damaged us greatly."
23 If the president of a neighbouring and supportive country, in the
24 presence of the commander of its army, tells the VRS commander that what
25 happened in Srebrenica and Zepa has caused great damage, would such
Page 19081
1 information be a basis for that commander to initiate an investigation
2 into what exactly happened and who was responsible?
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Groome, I'm not sure if you have the right
4 page in B/C/S on the screen. Could you please check that?
5 MR. GROOME: Not speaking B/C/S, I'll see what I can do,
6 Your Honour. But perhaps Mr. Ivetic can assist us. I think it might
7 help if we have the transcription of the notebook instead of the digital
8 version.
9 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Because you are referring to the entry at
10 0930 hours. This could be the lower part of it but it's nearly
11 illegible.
12 MR. GROOME: I'll be guided by --
13 JUDGE ORIE: I think apart from legibility, it looks as if we
14 have the right page on our screen, Mr. Ivetic. Would you confirm that,
15 the first bullet point starting with what seems to be "SM"? I think we
16 have the right one in B/C/S at this moment, unless it's challenged.
17 MR. IVETIC: I'm told it appears to be the right page, although
18 very illegible on our monitors.
19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.
20 MR. IVETIC: If I may consult with my client, Your Honour.
21 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, at least if Mr. Mladic speaks with a volume so
22 soft that no one can hear him.
23 [Defence counsel and Accused confer]
24 MR. IVETIC: Your Honours, my client was just indicating that he
25 has difficulty reading on his monitor and would ask for a hard copy of
Page 19082
1 this page, if the Prosecution has it available.
2 JUDGE ORIE: Is it in order to follow the questions or in order
3 to verify whether it really says what it says? Because, as you know,
4 there is a transcripted version in B/C/S as well, if we would have that
5 on our screen. But I don't know whether --
6 MR. IVETIC: He needs to be able to do both, but primarily to
7 follow the questioning.
8 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, perhaps -- it's an extremely brief
9 entry, perhaps if I simply read it and then we will do our best to try to
10 find a copy that Mr. Mladic can read later on. It says:
11 "Meeting with President Milosevic and General Perisic. SM,
12 Srebrenica and Zepa have damaged us very greatly. You must have a
13 political dimension in the post of the commander of the army. I wanted
14 to prove to everyone that you are a serious man."
15 That's the end of the entry.
16 JUDGE ORIE: You have not read everything, Mr. Groome. The first
17 bullet point starts with an asterisk and then SM, then we have a second
18 bullet point without at least explicitly a speaker identified and then we
19 have a third bullet point. So you read it but without the layout as we
20 find it, at least in the English translation. Please proceed.
21 MR. GROOME:
22 Q. General Dannatt, if I can --
23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Perhaps we should add that this is an entry
24 Belgrade 24th of July, 1995, 930 hours, as indicated in the translation.
25 MR. GROOME:
Page 19083
1 Q. General, if I can return to my question: If a commander receives
2 this information, would this be a sufficient basis to initiate an
3 investigation into what exactly happened in Srebrenica and Zepa and who,
4 if anyone, might be responsible within the Army of the Republika Srpska?
5 A. In my view, this is a pretty serious comment made by
6 Mr. Milosevic. I'm assuming that the three bullet points are comments
7 that Mr. Milosevic, President Milosevic, made. And if they were being
8 made to me and if I was General Mladic as a party to that meeting,
9 I would actually feel rather embarrassed. The allegation that Srebrenica
10 and Zepa -- and one has to assume that we are not talking about the
11 military attack to capture those towns but whatever may have happened
12 subsequently, I'd be embarrassed that actually that was damaging.
13 I would be embarrassed that I was being told as an army commander that
14 I must be sensitive to politics and to the political dimension of my role
15 as an army commander. And I would be embarrassed that the president of
16 another country is saying, Look, I really want to help and to get
17 everyone to understand that you actually are a serious man. My take-away
18 from all that is that if I hadn't initiated an investigation to find out
19 what had happened and who was responsible, I would be -- my embarrassment
20 would have turned into anger and I would have gone straight away to get
21 to the bottom of this because being told off, if you like, by the
22 president of another country is embarrassing. I keep using the word
23 embarrassing. And embarrassment turns to anger pretty quickly and
24 I would have done something about it. What was done, I'm not entirely
25 sure. That's my -- that's my interpretation of that.
Page 19084
1 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, before I move to the next document,
2 Ms. Stewart has printed a hard copy of this entry, if I could have the
3 assistance of the usher to provide that to the Defence who can in turn
4 provide it to Mr. Mladic if he needs to read it.
5 Could I ask that 65 ter 02261 be brought to our screens. That
6 may take a moment.
7 Q. But this is a document, it's an evaluation of
8 Major-General Radislav Krstic for a period which includes July 1995.
9 This appraisal was done on the 6th of November, 1995, well after what
10 happened at Srebrenica was public knowledge. Before I take you to a
11 passage in the document, can I ask you whether you are familiar with the
12 use of staff appraisals in the military and, if so, what function do they
13 fulfil?
14 A. I'm very familiar with the process of staff appraisals. In the
15 British army it is usual for everyone at whatever rank to receive an
16 annual report on their activities and conduct, and the -- there are two
17 principle purposes of the annual appraisal: One is to help an individual
18 improve their capability, to improve their performance; and secondly,
19 it's to evaluate their suitability for promotion to a higher rank or to
20 another appointment, perhaps a more demanding appointment. So I am very
21 familiar with the process. And when I first saw this document, I was
22 very interested, being very familiar with British army processes and
23 procedures, to see how the Army of the Republika Srpska conducted such
24 appraisals, and I've read the words that General Mladic wrote about
25 General Krstic.
Page 19085
1 MR. GROOME: Could I ask that we go to the second page and if we
2 focus on a section entitled, "Description and conclusion." And if we
3 read it we can see that Mladic writes positive and detailed comments
4 about Krstic's service throughout the war, including during the time of
5 Srebrenica. On this last page of his appraisal, he assesses Krstic's
6 performance as, "Excellent." In fact, the last phrase of the appraisal
7 states:
8 "General Krstic is one of the most successful and most promising
9 generals of the Serbian people."
10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Can we go to the next page in English.
11 MR. GROOME: I apologise.
12 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, although you -- yes.
13 MR. GROOME: "... most promising generals of the Serbian people."
14 Q. In your experience as a commander, if we accept that Mladic was
15 sincere in his praise of General Krstic, does this indicate anything
16 about Mladic's intention regarding what happened in Srebrenica?
17 A. I do find this -
18 MR. IVETIC: I'm going to object to the question. It calls for
19 speculation and goes beyond the expertise of the witness.
20 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Groome.
21 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, General Dannatt has explained the use
22 of such appraisals in the military system. I'm simply asking him now
23 what would this indicate about General Krstic's conduct in Srebrenica
24 given the comments that we find here.
25 MR. IVETIC: That's not the question that was asked.
Page 19086
1 JUDGE ORIE: Do you have any objection to the question as it's
2 now rephrased, Mr. Ivetic?
3 MR. IVETIC: If that's the question that's being asked, I would
4 ask -- yeah, then I don't have an objection.
5 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Dannatt, could I ask your assistance and perhaps
6 read again the second question, the question as rephrased by Mr. Groome,
7 and answer that question?
8 THE WITNESS: I'm just reading that now, sir, and I'll endeavour
9 to do that.
10 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Mladic, it's now the third time today that I
11 have to ask you to keep your voice at a low volume. I'm not intending to
12 repeat that again and again. Please proceed.
13 THE WITNESS: Endeavouring to answer the question as phrased, my
14 understanding, General Mladic, as the army commander, is writing a report
15 on one of his corps commanders, General Krstic in this case, and in
16 grading him excellent is approving of his conduct as a successful
17 general.
18 The problem that I have, and it's not for me to try and answer
19 the question, is we know as a matter of fact that around 8.000 men and
20 boys met an untimely death at Srebrenica and someone was responsible for
21 that. General Krstic was the commander of the Drina Corps and these
22 untimely deaths took place within the Drina Corps area of operations. We
23 have to assume that this was not an activity that was ordered by
24 General Mladic or ordered by General Krstic, so one has to assume that
25 some illegal activity took place on a very large scale.
Page 19087
1 Well, if that was the case, I can't really see how
2 General Krstic's performance could be considered to be excellent in the
3 way that General Mladic describes. His performance early in the war
4 might have been, but this big question mark over how 8.000 men and boys
5 came to meet an untimely death in the Drina Corps area stands as a very
6 big question mark. So I'm surprised, as a professional officer, that the
7 grading of excellent can be given when such a large question mark is out
8 there.
9 MR. GROOME:
10 Q. General Dannatt, my final question to you is the following: The
11 question of whether General Mladic has committed any crimes is for the
12 Chamber. That is beyond your remit. What is properly within your remit
13 is whether you have an opinion as to whether General Mladic, from a
14 purely military perspective, is responsible for the conduct of his
15 subordinates and their actions related to the city of Sarajevo, to areas
16 in Bosnia under the control of the VRS, and in what happened related to
17 Srebrenica. Do you have an opinion as to that, from a purely military
18 perspective?
19 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic.
20 MR. IVETIC: Object. It infringes upon the purview of the
21 Chamber and is overly broad.
22 [Trial Chamber confers]
23 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Groome, the Chamber understands the questions
24 have been asked and have been answered because the witness told us that
25 responsibility cannot be delegated, and therefore that includes in the
Page 19088
1 understanding of the Chamber, unless the witness would say that's not
2 true, that you have a military responsibility for what is done by your
3 subordinates because you can't delegate your responsibility. And this is
4 of course a rather abstract statement, but the Chamber considers the
5 question to have been asked and to be answered. Unless we have
6 misunderstood your answer, Mr. Dannatt.
7 THE WITNESS: No, sir, you've understood my previous answers
8 correctly. Tasks can be delegated. Responsibility cannot be delegated.
9 But where one has concerns about things that people under your command
10 have done in carrying out tasks that have been delegated to them,
11 remembering that you are personally responsible, then to investigate and
12 to, if necessary, bring to court, is an important part of your discharge.
13 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. As a matter of fact, you are extending the
14 question a bit and saying what does that entail to be responsible, but
15 you have answered that question now to some extent as well.
16 Mr. Groome.
17 MR. GROOME: If I can just follow up Your Honour's comments.
18 Q. Judge Orie takes your previous answer to be a response to this
19 last question but said that it was a rather --
20 JUDGE ORIE: The Chamber does.
21 MR. GROOME: I'm sorry, the Chamber.
22 Q. But that it was a rather abstract statement. Can I ask you to
23 apply that abstract -- the concept to your study of documents and other
24 evidence related to General Mladic?
25 A. Well, I think we have to come back to the documents that we were
Page 19089
1 discussing a few minutes ago when it would seem that on one occasion
2 General Smith made reference to rumours of rape, massacre and killings,
3 and President Milosevic made reference to such things being damaging, and
4 applying that to my earlier answer, that you can't delegate
5 responsibility, so if you are concerned about things that have happened
6 effectively in your name, then the only responsible thing that you can do
7 is to begin to investigate to find out where the truth lies and if other
8 people have done wrong things, then they, rather than you, need to be
9 brought to account, because if you don't do that, you are making yourself
10 liable to be negligent in not fulfilling your responsibilities to ensure
11 good order and military discipline. So negligence and not doing the
12 right thing is an important part of all this.
13 MR. GROOME: I have no further questions, Your Honour.
14 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Mr. Groome.
15 It's time for a break. Mr. Dannatt, we now take a break of
16 20 minutes. Would you please follow the usher.
17 [The witness stands down]
18 JUDGE ORIE: We will resume at 20 minutes past mid-day.
19 --- Recess taken at 12.00 p.m.
20 --- On resuming at 12.21 p.m.
21 JUDGE ORIE: Could the witness be escorted into the courtroom.
22 Mr. Groome.
23 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, I neglected to tender 65 ter 2261, that
24 is the evaluation of General Krstic. I would do that now.
25 MR. IVETIC: No objection.
Page 19090
1 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar.
2 THE REGISTRAR: Document 2261 receives number P2631,
3 Your Honours.
4 JUDGE ORIE: And is admitted into evidence.
5 I'll start with a matter but if Mr. Dannatt comes in I might stop
6 it. I would like to deal with the subpoena for witness RM225, which was
7 issued on the 22nd of April of this year. To put matters short, I don't
8 think that witness will further be called to testify and I'll deal with
9 it later, but perhaps you'll think about what the consequences should be,
10 Mr. Groome.
11 [The witness takes the stand]
12 Mr. Dannatt, you'll now be cross-examined by Mr. Ivetic.
13 Mr. Ivetic is a member of the Defence team of Mr. Mladic. Mr. Ivetic,
14 please proceed.
15 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.
16 Cross-examination by Mr. Ivetic:
17 Q. Good day, general.
18 A. Good afternoon.
19 Q. First of all, sir, I would like to ask if you consider yourself
20 to be an expert on the topics of the JNA, the Yugoslav All People's
21 Defence doctrine and the Territorial Defence or TO system which was in
22 place in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia prior to 1992?
23 A. I have made some study of those things, and I believe I'm fairly
24 conversant with them, in the wider context of my other military studies
25 and my 40 years as an officer in the British army.
Page 19091
1 Q. Thank you, sir. Now, based upon all that do you consider
2 yourself an expert or not?
3 A. Yes, I do.
4 Q. Do you consider your expertise on these topics to cover the
5 entire history and origin of the JNA, the All People's Defence doctrine,
6 and the Territorial Defence system from their inception to their
7 conclusion?
8 A. I have made considerable study into those things. How do you
9 define expert? Do I -- are you asking me if I know absolutely
10 everything? I think I would find it difficult to say yes. If you are
11 asking me whether I have a sufficient knowledge to be able to offer
12 comment within the wider context of the matters in hand, then my answer
13 is yes.
14 Q. Using your own definition of expert, do you consider yourself to
15 be an expert on the topic of the VRS, the Army of Republika Srpska?
16 A. I would make the same answer to you. I have made considerable
17 study of the VRS within the wider context of the matters in hand, and
18 I think I am able to offer an opinion.
19 Q. Do you consider your expertise as to the VRS to cover and include
20 the entirety of the time period of 1992 through 1995?
21 A. Without wishing to be boring and repetitious, I could not claim
22 to know everything that had occurred between 1992 and 1995, but I have
23 looked at a number of issues, I have been present in Bosnia at various
24 times between 1992 and 1995, and I think I have sufficient understanding
25 to offer the Court some opinion, and that is why I'm here.
Page 19092
1 Q. Did you ever have occasion to meet with and participate in
2 exchanges with JNA officers or former JNA officers in any of the years
3 prior to 1992?
4 A. Prior to 1992, no.
5 Q. Apart from the expert reports that you have authored for the
6 Office of the Prosecutor of the Tribunal in the Krstic case and in this
7 case, have you authored any articles or other publications on the command
8 and control doctrines of the JNA, the VRS or the
9 Yugoslav All People's Defence doctrine?
10 A. No, I've not.
11 Q. And you have published a book, I believe, which you mention at
12 paragraph 22 of your expert statement in this case. Would you agree with
13 me that this book is more of an autobiography rather than being an
14 authoritative text on the command doctrine of either the JNA or the VRS
15 or the Yugoslav All People's Defence?
16 A. I believe on the cover of the book, it says, "the autobiography"
17 which I think answers the question.
18 Q. Well, sir, in your statement, with respect to this book that
19 you're now saying is just an autobiography, you also say it is in part a
20 study of leadership. That is what I'm asking you. Is it an
21 autobiography or is it also to be considered an authoritative study on
22 leadership including command and control concepts?
23 A. It certainly has a lot of coverage on leadership and aspects of
24 command and control. I don't think because it's described as an
25 autobiography it disqualifies itself from being a discussion of
Page 19093
1 leadership. And throughout the 12 chapters of the book, there are
2 significant passages relating to my experience on leadership and right
3 throughout the book, either implicitly or specifically, is reference to
4 command and control and my own experience of it. I don't see any
5 inconsistency there at all.
6 MR. IVETIC: Now, if we could briefly take a look at P2629 marked
7 for identification.
8 Q. This would be your expert statement. And if we could turn to
9 page 3 in both versions, and I'd like to focus on paragraph 11 of the
10 same, and here you talk about the time you spent as an instructor and you
11 mention that part and parcel of the syllabus of the course was the
12 comparative study of other armies' command and control procedures. Did
13 any of those comparative studies which you taught involve the armed
14 forces of the SFRY?
15 A. To the extent that the armed forces of the SFRY have their
16 doctrinal antecedents in the wider doctrinal basis of the Soviet Union
17 and Warsaw Pact armies, then the answer is -- is yes. And furthermore,
18 we made extensive study of the Warsaw Pact in the round, of which one
19 includes the JNA at the time, and therefore by wider implication, my
20 answer is yes.
21 Q. What years was the JNA a member of the Warsaw Pact, general?
22 A. I think the point that I'm trying to make is the wider doctrinal
23 understanding of the JNA is influenced by the Soviet style of command and
24 the -- many members of the JNA attended staff courses and courses of
25 instruction in Russia, and therefore the general doctrinal understanding
Page 19094
1 flows from that significant influence of the Russian army and the
2 Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact down into the JNA.
3 Q. As an expert are you unable to answer my question as to what
4 years the Yugoslavs were part of the Warsaw Pact, sir?
5 A. I can't answer that question.
6 Q. Now, in your statement, you also mention that you authored the
7 revised British war fighting doctrine known as the manoeuvrist approach
8 to operations. This is, I believe, in paragraph 22 of your statement,
9 which is on page 5 in the English, page 5 in the Serbian. Would you
10 agree with me that this doctrine which you and your team authored is
11 inapplicable and irrelevant to the study of the VRS and our work here
12 today?
13 A. I don't think I would argue that it was directly applicable. I
14 believe that mention of it is made in my statement as an indication that
15 I have a considerable understanding of the importance of doctrine and the
16 importance of an army having a doctrine which conditions the way that it
17 thinks appropriate to a given set of circumstances. And the task that
18 I was given was writing a military doctrine appropriate for the British
19 army in the post-Cold War years. That is the claim that I'm making and
20 I think that claim is substantiated.
21 Q. I don't take dispute with that, sir.
22 A. Thank you.
23 Q. If we can turn to the first page of your statement, P2629 marked
24 for identification, and if we could focus on paragraph 4 of the same.
25 Here, sir, you say that you have had certain documentary materials made
Page 19095
1 available to you by the Office of the Prosecution and that you have
2 reviewed the same and can comment on the same. My first question in this
3 regard is to inquire if you maintained a log of all such documentation
4 provided to you by the Prosecution for this review?
5 A. I didn't maintain a log as such, but there is another document
6 which we have referred to which lists for the helping of the Court the
7 documents that I've looked at and have ascribed to them a number relevant
8 to this case so that they can be identified. And I don't have it in
9 front of me at the present moment, but it runs to about three or four
10 pages of documents, and they are all listed as to what their content is
11 and there is a number pertinent to this case that is attributed to each
12 of those documents. So that constitutes the list of documents that I've
13 looked at.
14 Q. I believe the list you're referring to is entitled, "Index to
15 material cited in expert report of General Dannatt, 23 April 2012," and
16 the copy I have only identifies documents that you have actually cited
17 within your statement. Is that the same list that you are talking about,
18 sir?
19 A. Could I see that document on the screen in front of me, please?
20 JUDGE ORIE: Is it uploaded already, Mr. Groome?
21 MR. GROOME: Yes, Your Honour. It's marked for identification as
22 P2630.
23 MR. IVETIC:
24 Q. Is this, sir, the chart that you have been talking about?
25 A. Yes, it is. Thank you.
Page 19096
1 Q. And does this identify each and every single document that you
2 reviewed that was provided to you by the Office of the Prosecutor for the
3 performance of your expertise?
4 A. My recollection, and I put this report together some 18 months
5 ago, when I thought I was first going to be giving evidence in this
6 trial, is that this list is documents that I certainly looked at, and
7 I refer to in my report. Whether each and every one is referred to in my
8 report, I'm afraid I couldn't confirm without actually going back through
9 it again myself at this stage, but the intention of producing this list
10 was so that there could be numbers pertinent to this case for the better
11 information and assistance of the Court.
12 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Dannatt, I think that there is some
13 misunderstanding to the extent that what Mr. Ivetic apparently wants to
14 know is whether apart from the documents you refer to explicitly in your
15 report, whether there are other documents which you have reviewed but
16 which you did not explicitly refer to in your report. Now, this list
17 seems to be the index to the material which was cited. Mr. Ivetic would
18 like to know whether there are materials you have not cited so that he
19 has a complete overview of the material which you reviewed and which may
20 be at the basis of your report.
21 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honour. I understood that to be
22 his question as well, and there was other material, but he had asked me
23 earlier whether I had a log of it and I don't have a log of it, so if the
24 next question is what else have you looked at, I can't answer that
25 question as I do not recall.
Page 19097
1 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic, that would have been your next question,
2 I take it?
3 MR. IVETIC: Well --
4 JUDGE ORIE: Perhaps not.
5 MR. IVETIC: Perhaps not, yes.
6 Q. Now, sir, this corpus of documentation which was provided for
7 you, was that something that the Office of the Prosecutor had preselected
8 for you, or did you have a hand in telling them what kind of materials to
9 provide?
10 A. Well, as was made clear earlier this morning, I have taken part
11 in a previous trial within the ICTY and also another case involving
12 Bosnia and Serbia and, therefore, in the course of those two trials,
13 those two cases, and this, I've looked at quite a wide amount of
14 material. With regard to this case in particular, there were some
15 documents that the Office of the Prosecutor drew to my attention, but
16 this list that's in front of you does not represent a reading list, if
17 you like, that the Office of the Prosecutor gave to me. Many of these
18 documents I'd seen some 12, 13, 14 years ago when I was preparing for the
19 Krstic trial.
20 Q. If we could just briefly go back to the preparations that you
21 undertook in the Krstic case to prepare an expert report. At that -- at
22 that time, was documentation preselected for you by the
23 Office of the Prosecutor and given to you to review for purposes of doing
24 your expertise?
25 A. I had some extensive preparation for that trial, for that case,
Page 19098
1 including several lengthy meetings with representatives of the
2 Office of the Prosecutor, with investigators, and indeed I spent some
3 time on the ground in Bosnia looking at these matters. So it was a
4 fairly wide-ranging preparation that I made before that trial, to have a
5 good understanding of the background, the ground on which the events took
6 place, and indeed subsequently, I was back in Bosnia a year or so after
7 I'd given evidence and returned to that ground on several occasions. So
8 my understanding of the issues, my understanding of the background, is
9 rather broader than just looking at a number of documents.
10 Q. I understand that, sir. We are taking one by one. I'd like to
11 stay with the documents and I'd like to get an answer to my original
12 question. Were you given a corpus of documents by the
13 Office of the Prosecutor that had been preselect for you for you to do
14 your expertise in the Krstic case?
15 A. Yes, there were some documents that I was given to look at. That
16 was not the totality of my research and the totality of my preparation
17 for the case. I think it would have been surprising were that not to be
18 the case, actually.
19 Q. Now, if we could return to your statement, P2629 marked for
20 identification, and while we wait for that, sir, did you write this
21 statement on your own or were there others that assisted you in its
22 preparation?
23 A. The statement in this case draws fairly extensively on the
24 statement that I had made and prepared for the Krstic case, which
25 I drafted -- just checking my own recollection to make sure I'm factually
Page 19099
1 accurate because this was back in 1999. I recall drafting myself. In
2 this particular case, I was assisted by someone with a legal background
3 who assisted me draw up this particular statement, but like everything
4 that goes under your signature or above your signature, every word in it
5 I'm content with and every word I own. So whether it was part drafted by
6 me and part assisted by another, I would regard as immaterial. I signed
7 that statement and I own the words.
8 Q. With respect to the individual with the legal background who may
9 have assisted you in drafting parts of it, could you tell us under whose
10 employ was that individual at the time that he assisted you?
11 A. The person concerned, so we are not beating about the bush, is my
12 daughter-in-law, Lucinda Dannatt. She is a human rights lawyer in her
13 own standing and has worked on a number of cases in a number of courts.
14 At the time she was not working, being the mother of three small
15 children, and to answer technically your question, who paid her, I think
16 I did, out of the small amount of money that the court made available to
17 me for my time in preparation for the case. So I can't remember the vast
18 sums involved, which were not vast, but I paid her for her time myself.
19 Because, frankly, I'll be absolutely honest, the Krstic case was hugely
20 time consuming. The time I was serving in the army and I regarded it as
21 part of my duty -- I still regard it as part of my duty, but having
22 retired from the army and doing many other things the amount of time
23 I needed to prepare properly for this case was more than I could actually
24 make available myself, and therefore I invited my daughter-in-law, who
25 has, as I say, some experience of working in these sorts of cases, to
Page 19100
1 assist me, and I'm very grateful for her support.
2 Q. If we could just finish up with this topic I'd like to call up
3 1D1448 in e-court and while we wait for that, sir, I can let you know
4 that this ought to be a copy of some extracts from your book, if I've
5 gotten the number right. I apparently have. If we can turn to page 11
6 of the version in e-court. It should correlate to pages 218 and 219 of
7 the underlying book. At the top of the left-hand column, you have, I
8 believe, here a reference to -- I'll just read it. It says:
9 "As it turned out, later on my eldest son Tom's wife, Lucinda,
10 was to work as an international criminal lawyer for the
11 International Criminal Court in The Hague, and then in Sarajevo, work
12 I followed with great interest and approval."
13 Sir, could you clarify for us whether, in fact, your
14 daughter-in-law, who is referenced here and who assisted you with the
15 report, worked for the International Criminal Court or for this Tribunal?
16 A. Now you're asking a very narrow question. It's a very good
17 question. And if I'm pursuing truth, I've got to say I'm not sure. I
18 know she lived and worked in Sarajevo for quite a while and has done work
19 here in The Hague. If my description in that paragraph is loose, then
20 loose it is, but I think -- I would like to think that you and the
21 Chamber would understand that I'm trying to explain probably to a lay
22 audience that this is her line of work and that was some of her
23 experiences. If it's a narrow point you want to make, you've probably
24 made it.
25 Q. To me, it's more important just to know what branch she worked
Page 19101
1 for. Was it the Prosecution, the Defence or some other entity, if you
2 know? If you don't know --
3 A. To be honest, I'd be speculating. I can't remember. She's moved
4 on to a number of other cases of fairly exotic nature most recently on
5 the Defence side. In fact, the one she is currently involved with is a
6 fairly high profile international case, and, again, she is on the Defence
7 side. So she is not a prosecutor per se, she will follow the work, as
8 lawyers often do.
9 Q. Thank you, sir. Now, I'd like to return to your witness
10 statement, P2629 marked for identification, and I'd like to return to the
11 first page where we were before this little digression.
12 At paragraph 4, you identify that the principal documents on
13 which you have focused appear to be reports authored by another proposed
14 expert of the Prosecution, Richard Butler. Is that an accurate reading
15 of this paragraph?
16 A. Yes, certainly Richard Butler's work, I studied extensively and
17 I found it very informative, and accepted his status as someone who
18 understood much of the circumstances of the matters in hand.
19 Q. Do you recall what Mr. Butler'S rank and position in the US armed
20 forces was?
21 A. Short answer, no.
22 Q. Can you tell us what was it that led you to identify Mr. Butler's
23 work as being authoritative on the topics that are identified? Was his
24 work known to you prior to being contacted to be an expert for the Krstic
25 case?
Page 19102
1 A. No, I first came across Mr. Butler in preparation for the Krstic
2 case and read the material that he had provided. And I'm just going back
3 into my own recollection and I believe I met him and talked with him in
4 the preparation of the Krstic case, but I could be mistaken there. But
5 my recollection is that I have met him and was impressed by him and
6 certainly informed and interested by his opinions and the written
7 material that he'd produced.
8 Q. In relation to his report, sir, are those written materials which
9 would have been preselected and provided for you by the
10 Office of the Prosecutor or did you come across them by some other means?
11 A. No. I came across them because having been invited -- I think
12 the background, as I recall it, was that the Chamber, I think the senior
13 prosecutor - I'm just grasping for what would be the right answer here -
14 approached the British army in 1999 to ask for a senior general to act as
15 an expert witness for the enlightenment of the Court on matters relating
16 to command and control - and you see them listed in paragraph 3 - and the
17 Chief of the General Staff of the day, knowing of my own background,
18 asked whether I was prepared to be that expert witness. At which I said
19 yes. And at that point, came to The Hague. I met senior Prosecutor,
20 I met the Prosecution team, and our conversations went on from there.
21 So I don't claim to have had any great prior knowledge of
22 General Krstic and the Krstic case before being invited to help the Court
23 in its understanding of military command and control and took a detailed
24 interest in the Krstic case. So perhaps not surprisingly, much of the
25 material initially that was made available to me was made available to me
Page 19103
1 by the Office of the Prosecutor because they, for the enlightenment of
2 the Court, are the ones who had engaged me to get involved, to study, to
3 write a report, which I've already said was very time consuming, spend
4 time on the ground in Bosnia looking at the issues around Srebrenica, and
5 then coming to The Hague to give my evidence. So I didn't do this
6 because I thought it was a good idea, I did it because my commanding
7 general invited me to do it at the invitation of the
8 Office of the Prosecutor.
9 Q. Did you perform any research into the professional background and
10 prior publications of Mr. Butler to assure yourself of the experience,
11 expertise and reliability of Mr. Butler's work on the topics of these
12 reports?
13 A. I think I took Mr. Butler's work and credentials at face value,
14 and certainly having read his reports, this seemed to be a reasonable
15 supposition to make, that he was someone of integrity and someone of
16 ability and that, therefore, the product of his research and his writings
17 was something one could place a sufficient degree of credibility on to
18 make use of.
19 Q. Did you only review Mr. Butler's various reports or were you
20 given access to Mr. Butler's testimony in other cases before the
21 Tribunal?
22 A. May I just clarify your question? Is that a question relating to
23 my preparation for the Krstic case?
24 Q. In total, the Krstic case and this case. If there is
25 differences, if you could please identify wherein lies the difference.
Page 19104
1 A. The answer to both questions in that case or both parts of the
2 question is that I have not looked at Mr. Butler's testimony in other
3 cases beyond the Krstic case and the extent to which there was material
4 relating to this case.
5 Q. Can I then understand your testimony to mean that you have
6 reviewed the transcript or the recording of Mr. Butler's testimony in
7 this case, the Mladic case?
8 A. Again, let me just clarify the question. Are you asking if I
9 have read Mr. Butler's -- the transcript of Mr. Butler's testimony in
10 this case?
11 Q. Correct.
12 A. The answer is no, I have not. And to be honest, I haven't got
13 time to do that. I am quite a busy person and I've prepared myself in
14 the best way that I can to give my evidence. And, actually, I don't
15 think I really would want to have spent time reading many other people's
16 points of view. General Milovanovic is a very interesting separate case
17 in point because of his unique position as the deputy to General Mladic,
18 and I've been fascinated, as I said earlier, to have read his transcript
19 and I'm very grateful to the Office of the Prosecutor for having made it
20 available to me.
21 Q. Well, sir, the reason I ask is because Mr. Butler has testified
22 in this case and that in order to understand his reports and understand
23 corrections that he has made to his reports, one would have needed to
24 review prior transcripts of his testimony. Were you aware of that, sir?
25 A. No.
Page 19105
1 Q. If we can -- first of all, at the time when you were first
2 approached to prepare an expertise for the Krstic case, did you or anyone
3 on your behalf undertake to perform a review or survey of all the
4 literature that was out there on these topics?
5 A. If you're suggesting a comprehensive survey of the material that
6 was out there, no. I think I've already said, and I'm perfectly content
7 to say, that my start point was my initial visit here to meet the staff
8 of the Office of the Prosecutor who made certain material available to
9 me, which gave me a way into the case. And from that, I was able to
10 expand my own inquiries, and, indeed, as I've said, had extensive
11 discussions with investigators and also spend time on the ground in
12 relation to the Srebrenica aspects of the Krstic case. So my way in was
13 undoubtedly through material provided to me by the Office of the
14 Prosecutor and I have no difficulty personally with that.
15 Q. If we can turn to the very last page in both versions of your
16 statement, paragraph 110 relates to an opinion or I should say an
17 assessment about the quality of Mr. Butler's various reports, and I want
18 to ask you why is this in here? Was this something that either the
19 Office of the Prosecutor or Mr. Butler asked you to include as part of
20 your expertise in this case?
21 A. Can I just clarify that you're talking about paragraph 110 and
22 not paragraph 109?
23 Q. I believe, sir, that 109 and 110 refer to the exact same reports.
24 Please correct me if I'm wrong.
25 A. Yes, I think, well, you're right. It's just that 109 is rather
Page 19106
1 more definitive in that actually it references Richard Butler's work.
2 Now, I'm going to be honest, absolutely, with you. I can't remember.
3 I produced this report 18 months ago, and, inevitably, there were some
4 iterations of that report. And truthful answer to your question is
5 whether this was something I wanted to put in or whether in discussion it
6 therefore seemed sensible to put in, but the fact of the matter is
7 paragraphs 109 and 110 are above my signature, and they are my words and
8 my opinion and they stand.
9 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Butler, the question remains -- yes,
10 Mr. Dannatt, sorry, the question remains. Whether you take
11 responsibility for what is said there doesn't answer the question who
12 took the initiative to adopt those two paragraphs or at least paragraph
13 110 in the report. I mean, these are two entirely different questions.
14 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, for the avoidance of any doubt at all,
15 all the words in the 110 paragraphs of my statement are words that I own
16 and I take responsibility for. They are my words.
17 JUDGE ORIE: But it still doesn't answer the question about even
18 if you accept full responsibility for the text, that doesn't answer the
19 question who thought about adopting this text and make it part of the
20 report.
21 THE WITNESS: Well, sir, I just stand by what I said a little
22 while ago. I put this together 18 months ago and I genuinely can't
23 remember, and I think that's the honest and fair answer to your
24 question --
25 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.
Page 19107
1 THE WITNESS: -- and the answer would be guessing and I might be
2 wrong.
3 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed, Mr. Ivetic.
4 MR. IVETIC: Thank you.
5 Q. Would you characterise the type of study that you did of the VRS
6 as including an extensive study of the JNA?
7 A. Well, again, we are into semantics now and what is extensive and
8 what is not extensive. But what I found absolutely fascinating was --
9 this is the relevant bit, as far as I'm concerned, is to look into the
10 origins of the Army of Republika Srpska which clearly came from a
11 military district of the JNA, and that is -- I think we would all agree
12 that that is the factual course of what happened, and it answers the
13 question which otherwise was very much in my mind, sort of 13, 14 years
14 ago, when I first started looking at these things. How could an army
15 that was created in the middle of an emergency in 1992 take on command
16 and control, take on regulations, take on substance so that it could
17 function as an operating army, just conjured up out of nothing. And when
18 my research showed me quite clearly that the answer to the question is
19 the VRS took on the regulations, form and substance of a part of the JNA,
20 that answered the question. Otherwise, creating an army out of nothing
21 in a hurry in the middle of a civil war would have been an impossibility.
22 Q. I would like to take a look at 1D1450 with you. While we wait
23 for it on the screen I can introduce it to you as the testimony that you
24 gave before the International Court of Justice on 20 March 2006.
25 If we could turn to page 3 of the same in e-court, and that will
Page 19108
1 correlate to page 11 of the underlying compte rendu of the ICJ, and I
2 would like to draw your attention to the last question and the first part
3 of your answer.
4 And it reads as follows:
5 "Ms. Korner: Thank you very much, General Dannatt. I'm now
6 going to move straight away to one of the aspects that we would like you
7 to assist the Court with, and that is the theory of command doctrines and
8 decision-making. Could you assist the Court with the main theory or
9 theorys of those doctrines?
10 "General Dannatt: Put succinctly, armies conduct their business
11 in one of two ways. Both are characterised by a somewhat complicated
12 German word. One is known as the Befehlstaktik approach to command and
13 control, and the other is the Auftragstaktik method of command and
14 control."
15 And I'd like to stop right there and ask you in relation to this
16 part of the answer so far, do you stand by the same as being truthful and
17 accurate in its content such that you would repeat the same today?
18 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic, I think the witness has explained to us
19 that is -- was his answer today to many questions as well.
20 THE WITNESS: And I think all I would say additionally, if I may,
21 and I'll read it again, is that the transcript is not entirely accurate
22 because it refers to commander control as opposed to command and control.
23 So this sentence is a little bit corrupted, but I would agree with the
24 Judge's comment. I have talked about Befehlstaktik and Auftragstaktik
25 today. I cannot think of any reason why I should take a different view
Page 19109
1 two hours later.
2 MR. IVETIC:
3 Q. Well, here is my question, sir, and it's very clear in the ICJ
4 testimony, you state that there are only two ways that an army conducts
5 its business. Is it your testimony that apart from these two
6 German-sounding tactics, that there are -- that there is not a spectrum
7 between the two of various command and control doctrines as understood by
8 persons in your field?
9 A. Of course the answer is yes. When you're trying to -- as in this
10 case I am, and in the previous case I was, trying to illuminate issues
11 for the benefit of the Court, it's helpful, if you like, to describe a
12 course of action and another course of action. And I think most
13 commentators would realise that nothing in life comfortably fits into a
14 template and that there will always be shades of grey or toning, tuning,
15 between one side of an argument or the other side of an argument, one
16 side of a doctrine or the other side of a doctrine. But I think it's
17 perfectly reasonable for the illumination of a discussion to try and
18 explain in theory one approach and to explain in theory another approach.
19 And this is why I think military matters can often be complicated. And
20 it's a debate that's run for a long time. Is command an art or is
21 command a science? Actually, we would say it's an art and not a science.
22 The use of military force may well rely heavily on technology and
23 science but command is an intuitive thing, it's a thing in which
24 judgement is terribly important, and we often refer to operational art as
25 a descriptor of what a general does and in the planning of a campaign.
Page 19110
1 So Befehlstaktik and Auftragstaktik describe, if you like, two
2 sides of an argument. This is not a scientific issue. It's an artistic
3 issue. And what I do and what you do and what General Mladic might do on
4 a different day will be very different, but it will be informed by the
5 overarching doctrine within which one has been brought up, and that's the
6 point that I'm trying to make. Because just the last thing, and I've
7 read elsewhere in some of the transcripts and some of the material,
8 discussion about what is doctrine and what is a directive. Really
9 important point to understand is that a doctrine, the doctrine of an
10 army, is the way an army thinks. And the way an army thinks will heavily
11 influence its education of its officers and its training of its officers
12 and soldiers. Doctrine is about thought. A directive is, as the word
13 rather implies, it is a document that directs activity. So doctrine is a
14 thought. Directives are of activity.
15 Q. Okay. If we can turn to the next page of the testimony from the
16 ICJ, I would like to discuss with you in greater detail the testimony
17 that starts at approximately the middle of the page. And the question
18 there is as follows:
19 "Ms. Korner: We are going to look at a little detail about how
20 the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army, worked and its subsequent entities.
21 But you do respect the JNA followed the Befehlstaktik method. How are
22 you able to say that, first of all?
23 "General Dannatt: I can say that with a fair degree of
24 confidence, from the result of my extensive studies, and also by way of
25 personal example. I mentioned earlier that I was one of the commanders
Page 19111
1 in Bosnia in 1995. At the particular time when we were planning the
2 transfer from UNPROFOR to UNFOR I needed, amongst other people, to talk
3 to General Tadic, who was then commanding one of the Krajina Corps in
4 Banja Luka. I was not in the course of my normal duties able to get --
5 go to Banja Luka but I passed a message to him that I wished to meet him
6 and indeed got to Banja Luka where I was told that he was not able to
7 meet me as he had not received authority from General Mladic, his
8 superior. It was quite surprising that he was not prepared to meet,
9 because what I had to say to him would have been quite helpful in terms
10 of the conduct of future operations. But as he had not received that
11 clearance, he did not have the authority to meet me on his own authority
12 and I use that as an example of a centralised type of command."
13 Now, sir, the question I have for you is: The question very
14 specifically directed you to focus, first and foremost, on the JNA, the
15 Yugoslav People's Army, and your answer talks about an incident in 1995.
16 Am I correct that by 1995, the JNA was no longer in existence?
17 A. I find this a very interesting line of questioning which I think
18 you're now picking out Ms. Korner for her line of questioning. I can't
19 recall the detail of our conversation at that stage when she said, But
20 you do respect the JNA following the Befehlstaktik model, and then I gave
21 that example. I would probably previously have made the point that the
22 VRS came out of the JNA and that, therefore, the same operational
23 doctrine, Befehlstaktik model, is the one that characterised both. So I
24 don't think it's unreasonable that I use an example of what happened in
25 1995. If you want to discuss that particular example, I'm very happy to
Page 19112
1 do that, but I think I've failed to follow the point that you're trying
2 to make with regard to Ms. Korner's question.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Just for the clarity of the record, in the
4 document we see in front of us, there is a reference to again
5 General Tadic. You explained earlier this morning, Mr. Dannatt, that you
6 wanted to meet with Mr. Talic; is that correct?
7 THE WITNESS: Oh, yes, sir. I mean this comment is shot through
8 with mistakes. UNPROFOR to IFOR, for example, not General Tadic but
9 General Talic and he was commanding 1st Krajina Corps in Banja Luka.
10 This is full of mistakes but I don't take responsibility for that.
11 I didn't write this.
12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Of course not. Thank you.
13 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honours.
14 Q. Thank you, sir.
15 A. Not at all.
16 Q. Now the point of my question is: As an expert preparing this
17 very serious expertise, do you consider it to be an appropriate
18 methodology to draw conclusions from one isolated experience, such as
19 this incident with General Talic that indeed is recited in somewhat the
20 same detail in paragraph 32 of your statement?
21 A. I think it would be an appalling way to reach a judgement.
22 I completely agree with you. And of course that is not what I'm trying
23 to do. But life can be quite boring at times, and to put an illustration
24 in makes it a little more interesting and a little bit illuminating. As
25 you know full well, I suspect, that the examples of centralised command
Page 19113
1 and control which we've seen in the VRS and formerly in the JNA are
2 frequent in the other documentation that we've listed and that we've
3 looked at. And, of course, if you've got time, I'm very happy to talk
4 further about that. This is an example which I thought added a little
5 colour to the factual and theoretical material otherwise we were dealing
6 with.
7 Q. Did you consider that maybe General Talic didn't want to meet
8 with you for some personal reasons of his own and just used the excuse
9 that he had not been authorised? Is that not a plausible explanation of
10 this as well?
11 A. It's perfectly possible. But as I said earlier on today, the two
12 liaison officers - and I've said earlier Captain Popovic was one and the
13 colonel was another - were I felt a little embarrassed when they said
14 that General Talic was unable to meet me because he had not had approval
15 to do that and he could only have got approval from one person, and that
16 was from General Mladic.
17 I actually can't think of any reason otherwise why he wouldn't
18 have wanted to meet me because I'd made it quite clear that I was trying
19 to get to Banja Luka at some difficulty to myself to try and give him
20 some information which probably would have been helpful in the wider --
21 in the wider delivery and implementation of the Dayton agreement. And
22 I can't think of any reason why he wouldn't otherwise have wanted to meet
23 me. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Generals meet each other
24 fairly regularly and I'd asked to see him, and had I thought he wouldn't
25 have seen me, I wouldn't have set out on what was actually quite an
Page 19114
1 awkward journey to Banja Luka to try and meet him.
2 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic, I'm looking at the clock.
3 MR. IVETIC: Yes, Your Honour, we can take a break.
4 JUDGE ORIE: Time for a break. Yes. Mr. Dannatt, perhaps good
5 for you to know that advocacy is often described as an art, but
6 Mr. Ivetic now knows that command is described as an art as well.
7 Perhaps something to think over for the next 20 minutes. We take a
8 break. You may follow the usher.
9 [The witness stands down]
10 JUDGE ORIE: If you want to further consult, you can do it during
11 the break, Mr. Mladic. We take a break and we resume at 20 minutes to
12 2.00.
13 --- Recess taken at 1.20 p.m.
14 --- On resuming at 1.42 p.m.
15 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Before we continue, Mr. Mladic, I asked you to
16 several times this morning not to speak aloud. When we left the
17 courtroom it was even louder than before. Please take care that -- don't
18 bring us in a position that we have to take measures. So if you would
19 please do that, then we can -- you can attend the proceedings.
20 Then the other matter I'll finish now, Mr. Groome, the Chamber
21 takes the opportunity to state on the record, I introduced it before,
22 that the Prosecution will not adduce the evidence of Witness RM225 and
23 for that reason, the Chamber withdraws the subpoena and relevant parts of
24 the corresponding request to the state where the witness resides and
25 instructs the Registry to inform the proposed witness and the appropriate
Page 19115
1 state authorities of this oral decision, and notify the Chamber when it
2 has done so.
3 MR. GROOME: The Prosecution has no objection to that course of
4 action, Your Honour.
5 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Well, I've taken this action by now so
6 therefore -- and this concludes, of course, then the decision of the
7 Chamber on this matter. Could the witness be escorted.
8 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, while the witness is coming in, can
9 I just bring to the attention of the Chamber two possible scheduling
10 problems ahead of us. One is that this Thursday the arrangements have
11 been made for a Polish interpreters, since the witness will be testifying
12 in Polish. So it does require some -- if it goes beyond that we -- there
13 will be a bit of a problem. And then earlier today Mr. Lukic informed us
14 that he was revising his estimate for the examination of Mr. Brown up to
15 eight hours, which, again, looking at next week, makes it a very full
16 week and I would want to inform the Chamber that Mr. Treanor would be
17 unavailable to carry over to the week after that. So perhaps everyone
18 could think about that. We could take five minutes to discuss scheduling
19 before the week is out.
20 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Before the end of this week, you would say,
21 yes.
22 [The witness takes the stand]
23 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic, you may continue your cross-examination.
24 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.
25 Q. General, I propose to return to your written statement, P2629
Page 19116
1 marked for identification, page 4 in the English and page 3 in the
2 Serbian, and paragraph 12 of the same, but at least the last sentence of
3 paragraph 12, which is indeed on page 4 of the English. Here, you cite
4 to meetings that you had with the senior commanders of all three warring
5 factions. Did you ever have occasion to meet with any members of the
6 Main Staff of the VRS?
7 A. Yes. I'm just trying to remember, General Gvero came to
8 Mrkonjic Grad. If I did my research I could give you the exact date. It
9 was the date that we were required under the terms of the Dayton
10 agreement to return Mrkonjic Grad and an area of country around there
11 from Croat control back to Serb control. General Gvero came on that
12 occasion.
13 Most of my other dealings were not with Main Staff officers but
14 with General Talic and others in Banja Luka. And then subsequently,
15 General Simic, I got to know well, but that was later when I was back as
16 the NATO deputy commander in 1999 -- wrong, 2000/2001.
17 Q. Now, just to stay with the meeting that you would have had with
18 General Gvero, would that have been approximately at D- plus 90 of the --
19 A. Yes, I guess that probably was. I'm just trying to remember now
20 the sequence of events, but that seems about right. There was a 45-day
21 period during which the Croat forces had to leave. I think they left at
22 D-plus 45 and at D-plus 90 VRS forces were allowed to return and I'm
23 pretty certain that was on the day that the VRS forces came back.
24 I could be wrong but I think that's about right.
25 Q. And, sir, we have been using "D-plus" as a shortcut. Could we
Page 19117
1 fill everyone else in on what that means?
2 A. Yes, I'm sorry. D was the day that the Dayton peace agreement
3 became operative which I think was the 20th of December, 1995, or might
4 have been the 21st, and therefore all the steps of implementation were
5 related to that date and were known as D-plus something or rather.
6 Q. Thank you, sir. Now with respect to the meetings that you did
7 have with General Gvero at that time and the meetings that you would have
8 had later with General Simic, I think you mentioned, did any of those
9 meetings serve as a basis for any of the opinions that are contained in
10 your statement?
11 A. Well, yes. I think all those sort of meetings add to your
12 general sum of knowledge. Perhaps I could also say, and I will try and
13 be brief, I mentioned earlier that I had been the colonel running the
14 high commander staff course at the British army staff college, and
15 amongst other things was therefore responsible for campaign planning and
16 the teaching of campaign planning. I was particularly interested during
17 the course of 1995 to see how the course of the war on the ground in
18 Bosnia changed. From 1992 to early 1995, by and large, territory held by
19 one side or another didn't really change hands. But in spring and early
20 summer 1995, a major operation in the south and west of Bosnia swept the
21 Croat and Muslim forces up through into the Krajina and then sort of
22 hooked across, began to threaten Banja Luka. And it was interesting to
23 me to see how fairly complex campaign had been put together. To be short
24 about it, I then decided while I was in country, between October 1995 and
25 April 1996, as a kind of side line to other things that I was doing, to
Page 19118
1 conduct a bit of a study into how this campaign came about and came to be
2 constructed, and I set out with one of my staff officers to interview all
3 the commanders on the three sides, to ask them what had happened in the
4 year before. And I discussed it with General Dudakovic,
5 General Glasnovic of the Croatian side, and, again, General Talic was
6 reluctant to talk to me, but the two liaison officers that I met again
7 came to my headquarters in Sipovo and one evening they became very frank
8 about the way that they had conducted their part of the operation. And
9 as a result of that, I was able to put together the three accounts and
10 come up with what was to me a fairly interesting explanation as to how
11 these military operations had been developed.
12 And if I appear to be digressing, I apologise, but it's
13 indicative of a growing picture of understanding of how the war was
14 conducted, how the various armies conducted themselves, remembering that
15 the three competent armies were all commanded by professional officers
16 who pretty much without exception had had their origins in the JNA. And
17 one of the things that I recall most clearly was a commanders' conference
18 which we had in late December, I think it was, in 1995, which was the
19 first time we had brought senior commanders of the three armies together.
20 And after their initial suspicion of each other, they greeted each other
21 like the old comrades that they were, because in the main they had been
22 at the staff college together, and it was very interesting to see that
23 reunion across the divide. Again, I apologise if I appear to digress,
24 but I do so to show that one had quite an interest and developed that
25 interest professionally into how the three armies had had their origins
Page 19119
1 and drew my own conclusions about that. I'm sorry if I've digressed too
2 far, indulging myself, and I apologise.
3 Q. I'd like to take you --
4 JUDGE ORIE: If you do not mind it's not digression but rather
5 speed of speech which is of concern to me at this moment --
6 THE WITNESS: Sorry.
7 JUDGE ORIE: But perhaps the --
8 THE WITNESS: It's my enthusiasm.
9 JUDGE ORIE: The two go hand in hand.
10 THE WITNESS: My enthusiasm overtaking. I apologise.
11 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed.
12 MR. IVETIC:
13 Q. I want to take a look at something else that you've highlighted
14 in paragraph 6 of your statement that you have reviewed and that those
15 are memoirs.
16 MR. IVETIC: I'd like to call up 1D1450 in e-court. And once
17 that comes up, I would be asking for page 7 of the same to be displayed.
18 And that should correlate to page 15 of the ICJ document.
19 Q. If we could focus just above the middle of the page, I think
20 you'll see there that Ms. Korner has asked you about the number of
21 memoirs that you have read, and your answer is as follows:
22 "General Dannatt: Indeed it is so. People such as
23 General Sir Michael Rose, General Sir Rupert Smith,
24 Mr. Richard Holbrooke, all have committed their near contemporaneous
25 records into book form. I certainly have all those books and others.
Page 19120
1 One finds that the colour in those books amplifies the facts that I have
2 picked up from the trial documents that I've studied."
3 Does this testimony from the ICJ case accurately identify the
4 memoirs that you reference in paragraph 6 of your statement in this case?
5 A. Yes, and time has moved on and I've read other accounts. I think
6 we all, who have had some involvement in the events in the Balkans in the
7 1990s, have continued to take quite a professional interest, and
8 therefore a number of books and memoirs that I read. And, yes, I sweep
9 all that comment into paragraph 6 when I say I have read a large number
10 of memoirs written about the period.
11 Q. Is it your position that these memoirs are corroborative or
12 supportive of your conclusions as to the JNA, the VRS, as contained in
13 your statement?
14 A. I think they are corroborative. I think as I said in the ICJ
15 transcript, what is the expression that I use here? One finds that the
16 colour in those books amplifies the facts that I picked up from the trial
17 documents that I've studied. I think everything -- everything sits in a
18 context and documents are quite dry, documents are quite narrow, but when
19 you've got a broad understanding of the context and the background into
20 which they sit, then they make rather more sense. I think that is the
21 point that I'm trying to make, and I think it's a -- it's a fair point.
22 Q. Could you remind us if the late Mr. Holbrooke, if he held any
23 military rank or had any military experience?
24 A. I can't remember. I suspect someone of his generation probably
25 had some -- I will slow down -- probably had some military experience
Page 19121
1 going back to the Vietnam era, but I don't recall. But I don't think you
2 would disagree with me that he had a very interesting insight on
3 developments, the conclusion of the war in Bosnia and was a significant
4 factor in driving towards what became the Dayton peace agreement. So
5 I think his opinions and his views are of relevance and certainly of
6 interest.
7 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Dannatt, may I invite you to stick to the
8 question? I mean, the question was not whether it would be interesting
9 to read Mr. Holbrooke's book. The question simply was whether he held
10 any military rank or had any military experience. The first four words
11 would have done. You can't remember.
12 THE WITNESS: Fine.
13 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed, Mr. Ivetic.
14 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.
15 Q. Did you have occasion to review the books or memoirs of any
16 former JNA officers for purposes of the study of the command doctrine and
17 structure of the JNA or the VRS or the All People's Defence that you
18 undertook for this case?
19 A. In the interests of brevity, no.
20 Q. Do you have any knowledge of any books written by
21 General Branko Mamula, Dr. Momcilo Lazovic or
22 Dr. Milenko Stezevic [phoen] on the topic?
23 A. Well, pursuant to my last answer, the answer again is no.
24 Q. Okay. In terms of the documentation that was made available to
25 you by the Prosecution for review and upon which you have relied for your
Page 19122
1 opinions, did those documents include the strategy of All
2 People's Defence and Self-Protection of the SFRY which is 65 ter number
3 17295 in this case?
4 A. I'm -- I don't know whether something is going to come up on the
5 screen but I'm certainly conversant with that, and in the break I was
6 reflecting on -- I will be brief -- on part of our last conversation.
7 When we talked about military doctrine, and I talked about doctrine being
8 a way an army thinks, I think the concept of All People's Defence, total
9 National Defence, is what I would describe as a strategy rather than a
10 doctrine. It was what was formulated in the early 1940s and was the
11 strategy that drove the JNA through to its dissolution in the early
12 1990s. There we are. It's on the screen in front of me. It calls
13 itself a strategy which is why I make the distinction between a strategy
14 and a doctrine. The language is quite loose at times when people
15 describe military matters.
16 Q. Okay.
17 MR. IVETIC: If we can call up 65 ter number 17293, and that
18 would be the 1983 JNA textbook on command and control.
19 Q. And I'm going to ask you again: Would this have been something
20 that you had access to and reviewed for purposes of your expertise in
21 this case?
22 A. May I wait till it comes on the screen?
23 Q. If we can go maybe to the second page in English, we will see the
24 substantive text. Do you recall dealing with this book, sir?
25 A. I don't think I recall seeing this book, no.
Page 19123
1 MR. IVETIC: If we could look at 65 ter number 25695.
2 Q. While we wait for it I can introduce it as the 1985 rules of
3 service of the armed services. And again I'll ask you was this a
4 publication that you recall having had been made available to you and
5 upon which you relied for your work in this case?
6 A. I'll be absolutely honest, I can't remember, but I looked at a
7 number of documents going back into -- well, during the course of
8 existence of the JNA because of their relevance to working out the
9 origins of the Bosnian Serb Army. So whether I did or whether I didn't,
10 I can't remember, and it may be that you're going to offer me two or
11 three other documents. I can't recall. But I formed a good
12 understanding of the origin of the VRS as being based in the JNA and its
13 various regulations and documentary origins.
14 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Groome, you're on your feet.
15 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, perhaps I can assist Mr. Ivetic. He's
16 inquiring about documents that General Dannatt had access to but did not
17 cite in the report. If I can draw his attention to an e-mail sent by the
18 Prosecution on the 5th of July, 2012, we provided a list of all of those
19 documents.
20 MR. IVETIC: That will short circuit at least a few questions --
21 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
22 MR. IVETIC: -- and we can move on, and I thank Mr. Groome for
23 that information.
24 Q. Now, did have you occasion to perform any research or review into
25 the military education regime that was in existence in the SFRY prior to
Page 19124
1 1992 for its military officers?
2 A. I didn't make a particular study into that. No, I did not make a
3 particular study into that.
4 Q. You mentioned in the direct examination that officers were sent
5 for training to the Soviet Union. Did you happen to know as part of your
6 expertise and as part of your research that, in fact, Yugoslav officers
7 were also sent for training to the United States of America; for
8 instance, General Kadijevic, who was the Yugoslav minister of defence in
9 1991 and 1992, completed courses at the US army command and General Staff
10 college while a colonel?
11 A. That doesn't surprise me, and it relates to an earlier part of
12 this morning's conversation, whereas we all know that the former
13 Yugoslavia had a rather -- no, not rather, had a unique position in that
14 it was not totally in the Warsaw Pact and of the Soviet bloc but its
15 origins were of Soviet-type thinking, but it had developed itself into
16 probably the most open of the communist countries. And we all found it
17 very interesting as a result of that.
18 JUDGE ORIE: You say you're not surprised that Mr. Kadijevic may
19 have been trained in the US but you apparently do not know it.
20 THE WITNESS: No, sir, I don't know that for sure. But it
21 doesn't -- as I said, it does not surprise me.
22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Now could you tell us if you say officers were
23 sent for training to the Soviet Union, was that in larger numbers or was
24 that one or two or three, or were they sent by the hundreds or?
25 Mr. Groome.
Page 19125
1 MR. GROOME: Your Honour, could I please have a reference to
2 where that was said this morning? I'm having trouble finding that.
3 MR. IVETIC: I believe he mentioned sending to Moscow rather than
4 the Soviet Union. I can --
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: No, he said to Russia.
6 MR. IVETIC: To Russia, okay.
7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Perhaps that helps to find the respective
8 portion.
9 MR. IVETIC: I suspected -- I thank Your Honour for having the
10 attention to detail that I sometimes lack.
11 THE WITNESS: To answer your specific question, sir, I don't know
12 the numbers. But I'm aware that a number of people did go and study in
13 Russian academies.
14 JUDGE ORIE: I'm asking it because the question more or less
15 suggests they were not only sent to Russia but also to the US, or at
16 least they were trained there. And, therefore, my question, Mr. Ivetic,
17 as you may understand is what was the proportion? Was it a regular thing
18 to send them either west or east? That's something that came to my mind,
19 and if either of the parties would have any information about it, then of
20 course it would assist me and perhaps my colleagues.
21 THE WITNESS: If I'm allowed to offer a view, the preponderance
22 of people going to foreign academies would have gone east rather than
23 west. Because the command and control style of the JNA and the VRS was
24 based on the centralised command and control which is the one that
25 characterised Warsaw Pact and eastern armies. If a large number had gone
Page 19126
1 to the United States military academy, one would have seen the JNA over
2 time or the VRS moving towards espousing the western approach of
3 Auftragstaktik, the indirect approach which I've discussed earlier. But
4 the overriding doctrine, military thought, is the one of centralised
5 command and control which is characterised by eastern armies and the
6 former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact.
7 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic, please proceed.
8 MR. IVETIC: Thank you.
9 Q. If I could move to another topic also returning to your statement
10 P2629 marked for identification, page 2 in English and page 1 through 2
11 in the Serbian, paragraph 5. And while we wait for that, sir, I can
12 introduce it by saying this is in relation to the site visits that you
13 undertook of locations in Bosnia where you were accompanied by
14 Investigator Ruez and Prosecutor Cayley of the Prosecution. And I'd like
15 to ask you when visiting these sites, did either Ruez or Cayley provide
16 details to you about what they believed had happened at these locations?
17 A. Short answer to that is yes.
18 Q. Okay. Did you rely upon Cayley and Ruez's representations as
19 being authoritative as to what had happened at these locations?
20 A. In the main, I would say yes as well, but having gone to those
21 locations, one used one's own judgement based on one's own observations
22 of the buildings, of the burial sites, of the reburial sites, and I think
23 it was perfectly reasonable to reach conclusions about what may or may
24 not have happened there. But, yes, in the main, the information given to
25 me, particularly by Jean-Rene Ruez, the French investigator, who had
Page 19127
1 spent a lot of time and had gone into some great detail very much formed
2 my opinions, I think not surprisingly.
3 Q. Did you consider whether the information given to you by
4 Mr. Jean-Rene Ruez was biased or unbiased before allowing it to very much
5 form your opinions?
6 A. I don't think I would regard it as biased. The facts, as they
7 seemed to reveal themselves, rather pointed to a certain set of
8 conclusions. After all, we had upwards of 8.000 Muslim men and boys who
9 had been killed, who had been buried, in many cases exhumed and reburied,
10 in an area that was controlled by the Bosnian Serb population. So
11 I think I was probably invited and capable of drawing my own deductions
12 as to who may or may not have been responsible in general terms. Who was
13 specifically responsible is, of course, not for me to say.
14 Q. Okay.
15 MR. IVETIC: If we could turn to 1D1448 in e-court.
16 Q. And this will again be excerpts from your autobiography that
17 we've previously dealt with. While we wait for that, sir, perhaps I can
18 ask you some general questions. First of all, is this book -- does this
19 book contain only your own words or was it ghost written or assisted to
20 you, written by someone else either in whole or in part?
21 A. Contrary to popular expectation and common practice, I wrote that
22 book completely. Thank you.
23 Q. Thank you, sir. Now, if we can turn to page 16 in the part in
24 e-court, that will correlate to pages 258 through 259 in the -- at least
25 the Corgi paperback edition of your book. And I'd like to go through
Page 19128
1 with you what begins on the last paragraph of the left column and
2 finishes up on the right column. And it touches upon a topic that you've
3 already touched upon, how it was that you came to be retained as an
4 expert, and then it gives some further details I would like to ask you
5 questions about. So please follow along with me:
6 "General Sir Richard Wheeler, Chief of the General Staff, rang me
7 to ask whether I would be prepared to go to the International
8 Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague to give evidence
9 as an expert witness in a trial relating to the Srebrenica massacre in
10 1995. I said that of course I would do this and soon found myself making
11 a series of visits to both Bosnia and the Netherlands to prepare my
12 evidence. The accused was General Radovan Krstic, who in July 1995 had
13 been commanding the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army. It was alleged
14 that his troops had carried out the massacre of nearly 8.000 Muslim men
15 and boys around Srebrenica in the middle of July 1995. It was quite
16 clear from the material I reviewed that the intent behind the massacre
17 had come from the top and that Krstic's direct orders had been received
18 from General Ratko Mladic himself. The issue before the Court was the
19 extent of Krstic's personal involvement. To prepare for the case, I not
20 only had extensive discussions with the Prosecution team in The Hague but
21 visited most of the execution and burial sites with the remarkable French
22 gendarmerie officer, Jean-Rene Ruez. He had spent years investigating
23 the massacre and was very close to all the issues."
24 First of all, sir, does this accurately reflect how it came to
25 pass that you were contacted to be an expert witness for the Krstic case?
Page 19129
1 A. Yes, that's pretty much what I said earlier on today.
2 Q. Yes. And one part you did not mention earlier today was that the
3 reviewed material that convinced you that the intent behind the massacre
4 was direct orders from General Mladic, was this a predetermination that
5 you had arrived at before being retained as an expert for purposes of the
6 trial in the Mladic case?
7 A. I'm just reflecting on the question. And I would just look again
8 at the words that I've got there.
9 That was my personal opinion, and I think the transcript of my
10 evidence in the Krstic case does not include me voicing my own opinion,
11 but I'm entitled to reach an opinion, even if I choose not to express it.
12 I expressed it in a book, but then a book is a book, it is not a
13 submission to a Court and it's not delivered on oath.
14 Q. Could you please identify for us what were these direct orders
15 that you say Krstic received from Mladic for a massacre? Are they
16 written down somewhere?
17 A. No. I don't think they are written down. And I think I'm
18 giving -- I think I'm now discussing my own opinion, an opinion expressed
19 in a book and not an opinion expressed in court, and I think I'm entitled
20 to my own view. You or General Mladic can take a contrary view to my
21 opinion.
22 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Dannatt, may I -- you are engaging in a debate
23 rather than that you're answering questions. If it is your view that
24 your personal opinions, even if expressed publicly, are irrelevant for
25 cross-examination, then I'm afraid that you're wrong. Mr. Ivetic is
Page 19130
1 fully entitled to enquire into personal opinions, which could or could
2 not have had an influence on your work. That's for Mr. Ivetic to decide
3 whether he wants to explore that, yes or no, and you're invited to answer
4 the questions as they are put to you rather than to enter into a debate.
5 THE WITNESS: Okay, sir.
6 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Ivetic, I didn't want to stop you exactly at
7 2.15 because I thought it was an important matter for you. That's the
8 reason why we adjourn a couple of minutes later.
9 Mr. Dannatt, may I invite you to stay with us for another half a
10 minute? Mr. Ivetic, may I assume that in view of the fact that you've
11 spent close to one and a half hour that you'll need the other, what was
12 it?
13 MR. IVETIC: Four hours total so that would be another two and a
14 half hours.
15 JUDGE ORIE: Two and a half hours. Yes. So that we will
16 conclude well in time tomorrow so as to give Mr. Groome an opportunity
17 for re-examination, if need be.
18 MR. IVETIC: Yes, that's my intention.
19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then, Mr. Dannatt, I would like to instruct
20 you that you should not speak or communicate in whatever way with
21 whomever about your testimony, whether that is testimony you've given
22 today or whether that is testimony still to be given tomorrow. And we
23 would like to see you back tomorrow morning at 9.30 in this same
24 courtroom. You may follow the usher.
25 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
Page 19131
1 [The witness stands down]
2 JUDGE ORIE: We adjourn for the day, and we will resume tomorrow,
3 Tuesday, the 12th of November, at 9.30 in the morning, in this same
4 Courtroom III.
5 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 2.20 p.m.,
6 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 12th day of
7 November, 2013, at 9.30 a.m.
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