110523IT

Page 14415

1 Examination by Mr. Vanderpuye:

2 Q. And good afternoon to you, Dr. Petrovic. We met a little bit

3 earlier today, and as you know my name is Kweku Vanderpuye. And on

4 behalf of the Prosecution I will put some questions to you with respect

5 to your testimony today.

6 I just wanted to let you know a couple of things. You've been

7 here before, so you understand that it's important to try to be precise

8 in your answers and also to speak a little bit more slowly than you would

9 otherwise to give the interpreters an opportunity to translate accurately

10 everything that you say. And if there's anything that I ask you during

11 the course of your examination that's not clear, please let me know so

12 that I can rephrase it in a way that we can understand each other a

13 little bit better.

14 I told you a little bit earlier when I met you this morning that

15 your testimony would comprise your prior testimony in the Popovic case as

16 well as some questions that I may put to you with leave of the Court. So

17 let me get started with that.

18 Do you recall testifying in the case of Prosecutor v. Popovic on

19 the 4th through the 6th of December, 2007?

20 A. I do remember, yes.

21 Q. And have you had an opportunity to review the entirety of your

22 testimony before coming to court today?

23 A. Yes. In the hotel over the past two days I went through the

24 whole text. I did have the uncorrected version of the text but that

25 doesn't matter.

Page 14416

1 Q. I know that we spoke about a couple of things that you wanted to

2 clarify, which we will get to, but having reviewed your testimony, can

3 you confirm that you stand by it and that it accurately and fairly

4 reflects what you would say if you were to be examined and asked the same

5 questions?

6 A. Yes.

7 MR. VANDERPUYE: Mr. President, I would tender Dr. Petrovic's

8 Popovic testimony. I have it as P1243 under seal and P1244 as well as

9 the associated exhibits that are marked for identification that were used

10 and admitted through the witness and were used with the witness and

11 admitted through other witnesses in the prior proceeding. If you would

12 like me to, I can read them out into the record.

13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: If there are not too many, you should do that,

14 please.

15 MR. VANDERPUYE: Okay, Mr. President. In addition to P1244 and

16 1243, I have P1245 through 1248 -- no, sorry, through 1249. And I have

17 P1251 and 125 -- that's it, I think. Yes, just P1251.

18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I take it you are tendering only one of those

19 admitted into evidence through this witness in the Popovic case, that

20 means P1245?

21 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, that's correct, Mr. President. Actually, I

22 see this P1240 -- bear with me for a moment. I have P1245 through P1248

23 that were admitted.

24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This is different. You are tendering all of

25 them?

Page 14417

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, Mr. President.

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

3 MR. VANDERPUYE: Sorry, perhaps I misspoke.

4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Indeed.

5 Mr. Gajic.

6 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, good afternoon to all.

7 Exhibit marked for identification P1245 has in the meantime become a

8 Defence exhibit, D117. So perhaps this would be something to take into

9 account so that we don't have duplicates of exhibits in the record.

10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you for that.

11 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]

12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I received the information from the Registrar

13 that this is indeed the same document. Would you confirm that,

14 Mr. Vanderpuye.

15 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, Mr. President.

16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much. First the transcript of the

17 Popovic case P1243 under seal and P1244 will be received with these

18 numbers. In addition, D117 - I think we should use this number - and

19 P1246 through P1248 will be received exhibits.

20 Mr. Vanderpuye, you indicated that you will tender three of the

21 six used with this witness in the Popovic case but admitted through

22 another witness. Will you use these documents with this witness in this

23 trial?

24 MR. VANDERPUYE: Mr. President, I think there are two documents.

25 P1249 and P1251. I misspoke when I said 1252. I don't intend to use

Page 14418

1 P1249 with this witness. I understand that it was used with him in the

2 prior testimony, but it's -- I don't feel that's particularly material

3 for the examination that I am going to conduct now. But I think it is

4 important to have it because it is a part of that testimony, part of the

5 totality of his testimony which will assist the Trial Chamber in

6 understanding it.

7 And P1251 -- just bear with me for one moment.

8 [Prosecution counsel confer]

9 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, P1251 is the road book in this case which

10 refers -- well, provides additional information to orient -- which I

11 think will assist, rather, in orienting the Trial Chamber when it comes

12 to evaluating the video footage.

13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It's a long time ago that we had a

14 92 bis witness. I think we all forgot the procedure with these documents

15 not admitted through this witness in the prior case. Perhaps you should

16 reconsider your position on that, but I propose that you just go ahead

17 and start your examination-in-chief.

18 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you very much.

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We will come back to that later.

20 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

21 Q. All right. Dr. Petrovic, I mentioned to you, also when we met a

22 little bit earlier today, that the evidence in this case, as I indicated,

23 would comprise your prior testimony, and I do have a brief summary that

24 I'd like to read to the Trial Chamber which, as I indicated, doesn't

25 contain all of your testimony.

Page 14419

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: So if I may proceed, Mr. President.

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, please go ahead.

3 MR. VANDERPUYE: In July 1995, Zoran Petrovic was a journalist

4 from Belgrade who was present in and around Srebrenica on

5 13 and 14 July, 1995. On 12 July, in an effort to cover the emerging

6 story concerning the Srebrenica events, Mr. Petrovic tried but was unable

7 to enter the Republika Srpska from Ljubovija, Serbia, just across the

8 Drina River from Bratunac. He returned to Belgrade and appealed to

9 deputy commander of the Special Police brigade of the

10 Republika Srpska MUP, Ministry of the Interior, Ljubisa Borovcanin for

11 help, which materialised the following day.

12 Mr. Petrovic had known Borovcanin since the winter of 1994 when

13 he met him as an embedded journalist with the Telegraph Weekly, a

14 Belgrade publication, during the Defence of a radio relay system at

15 Mount Majevica. He again met Borovcanin in the summer of 1995. This was

16 several weeks before the Srebrenica operation, and he documented the

17 activities of Borovcanin's unit and their battle with Muslim forces in

18 Semizovac.

19 Mr. Petrovic successfully entered the Republika Srpska on

20 13 July 1995 at the Ljubovija bridge border crossing, where Borovcanin

21 awaited him. They travelled to Bratunac by car and arrived at the

22 UN compound in Potocari at around 2.30 or 3.00 p.m. Mr. Petrovic

23 recorded video footage of the events occurring in and around the UN

24 compound, and he testified that he was struck by the large number of

25 people who had fled Srebrenica there.

Page 14420

1 He confirmed that he saw piles of items - bags, blankets, and

2 clothing - but denied having seen anyone beaten, maltreated, or abused.

3 He filmed the white house where Muslim prisoners can be seen on the

4 balcony. He asserted that these prisoners were known or suspected

5 criminals but could not identify from where or when he received this

6 information.

7 Mr. Petrovic also filmed the events occurring along the

8 Konjevic Polje-Bratunac road as far as the village of Pervani in the

9 direction of Konjevic Polje. He recorded anti-aircraft fire by Serb

10 forces into the hills where the column of Muslim men from Srebrenica had

11 fled, Muslim prisoners detained at Sandici meadow, men and boys that were

12 captured nearby, and the movement and activities of VRS and MUP units

13 along the Konjevic Polje road.

14 He also shot a sequence of the Kravica warehouse showing a pile

15 of dead Muslim prisoners in the foreground of the building.

16 Mr. Petrovic spent the night of 13 July at Borovcanin's apartment

17 in Bratunac.

18 On 14 July, Mr. Petrovic continued to shoot footage featuring

19 Srebrenica town and comprising various interviews he conducted with Serb

20 returnees to the town. He spent a second night at Borovcanin's apartment

21 as well, and left for Belgrade on the morning of 15 July 1995.

22 Shortly after returning to Belgrade from the footage he shot on

23 the 13th and 14th of July, Mr. Petrovic produced a 28 minute documentary

24 entitled "Operation Srebrenica" for Studio B. The film aired on or about

25 the 17th of July, 1995.

Page 14421

1 On the 28th of February, 2006, Mr. Petrovic met with OTP

2 representatives. He provided them with a copy of the raw footage

3 recorded on the original 8 millimetre tape that he used in July 1995.

4 The OTP copied this tape, which was signed by Mr. Petrovic. In his

5 testimony concerning the Studio B material, Mr. Petrovic testified that

6 certain footage was edited as part of the production of the documentary.

7 He worked with two editors in this process. However, he was not able to

8 fully explain why certain sequences that appear in the Studio B material

9 are not found in the raw footage.

10 For example, while the sequence showing Muslim prisoners on the

11 balcony of the white house in Potocari is seen in the Studio B

12 production, is does not appear in the raw footage. Similarly, the

13 Kravica warehouse footage shot on 13th July, 1995, appears in the

14 Studio B footage but does not appear in the raw material.

15 However, Mr. Petrovic stated that he could not remember -- he

16 could not remember this during the course of his testimony. Further,

17 although shot on 13 July 1995, the Kravica warehouse footage appears in

18 the Studio B production interrupting a sequence recorded on 14 July.

19 Mr. Petrovic stated that this anomaly was due to "technical reasons" or,

20 in essence, an aesthetic effect. Mr. Petrovic testified that his ability

21 to film the material at issue was not restricted and that he never

22 discussed the Kravica warehouse footage with Borovcanin. Borovcanin,

23 however, was with him when he -- when the footage was shot, and according

24 to Petrovic the sequence was "the most powerful images he had ever

25 filmed."

Page 14422

1 Mr. Petrovic further testified that he shot the Kravica footage

2 following an incident involving one of Borovcanin's troops. He testified

3 that he heard that one fighter under the command of Mr. Borovcanin whose

4 nickname was Oficir had been wounded, that he had jumped on somebody who

5 had weapons, and that his arms were hurt in that skirmish, and that he

6 had been urgently transported to the hospital in Bratunac.

7 He described the incident in a subsequent article, writing:

8 "At the moment of his surrender, at the corner of the building, a

9 Muslim soldier suddenly jumped on a Serbian combatant, snatched his

10 rifle, and riddled him with a burst of fire. Oficir, one of Ljubisa's -

11 that's Ljubisa Borovcanin's - Special Forces members jumped on him,

12 knocked him down, he was, himself, lightly wounded in the wrestling.

13 Oficir is one of the hopes of Borovcanin's formations, so the commander

14 goes immediately to the medical centre in Bratunac where Oficir is having

15 his wounds dressed.

16 Mr. Petrovic testified that it was only sometime after his return

17 to Belgrade that rumours surfaced about prisoners that had been held at

18 the stadium in Bratunac and a school where an unknown number of people

19 had been killed.

20 That concludes my summary, Mr. President. And I do have a number

21 of questions for Mr. Petrovic. If I may proceed.

22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Go ahead, please.

23 MR. VANDERPUYE:

24 Q. Now, you may have noticed that I addressed you as Mr. Petrovic

25 during the course of this summary, but I understand that since the last

Page 14423

1 time you testified you have attained a PhD degree; is that correct?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And do you prefer that I address you as Dr. Petrovic in this

4 context?

5 A. It's as you wish, sir. Up to you.

6 Q. Can you tell us what your PhD degree is in?

7 A. I did my master's and my PhD at the same school in Paris, France,

8 that is the so-called Grandes École high school, one of the Parisian

9 universities. It's a higher-education institution for social sciences,

10 and I am -- my diploma is at the Department of History and Civilisations

11 and it's a degree in current affairs, history at present. And I focused

12 on the topic of ex-Yugoslavia. It's an area that I know very well, a

13 field that I know very well. And the title is "The Anatomy of an

14 Auto-destruction: The Rise of Milosevic to Power from 1982 to 1992," so

15 it is the first part of his political career until the war in Yugoslavia,

16 until the civil war, actually. So this is the topic of my thesis.

17 Q. And are you currently still engaged in journalism?

18 A. No. From 2003 I'm not a journalist. I'm a researcher and

19 scientist at the Institute for Political Studies in Belgrade, which is a

20 state institute. But I have kept my journalist credentials because I

21 think bad times for journalism are about to come upon us again, so I

22 would like to perhaps jump in and help if needed.

23 Q. Can you tell us what specifically you do in your current

24 occupation?

25 A. At the institute, I'm in charge of a small centre, the Centre for

Page 14424

1 Geopolitical Studies which is called South-East, under quotation marks,

2 and I cover geopolitical subjects. My latest article which was published

3 is called "The Geopolitics of Energy." The book was published last fall.

4 One of the reasons why I have not appeared earlier in court is

5 that on the 17th we had an important meeting focused on geopolitical

6 studies with French experts from the field in Belgrade and therefore I

7 was ready to come here and testify from the 18th onward.

8 Q. You've mentioned this article on the geopolitics of energy. Can

9 you just give us as briefly as you can what the idea is or what is the

10 thrust of this geopolitical study that you engage in? What does this

11 discipline concern?

12 A. Let me just correct you; it is not an article but rather a book.

13 Over the last years I was mainly focused on three subjects: geopolitics

14 of water, which I published; the geopolitics of food; and the latest was

15 geopolitics of energy. As I live in a small country in which very little

16 attention is paid to such subjects, and they are important for the future

17 of all peoples, both great and small, especially the small ones because

18 what they may have is usually taken from them. I'm doing something that

19 the political class in Serbia should pay its attention to because it's

20 important for the future. Specifically the last book, I got inspiration

21 for writing it from the fact that Serbia, for example, has 60 per cent of

22 all its natural resources in Kosovo, and there is no country that could

23 have sustainable development without this energy. And the United Nations

24 and all its documents say that there is no sustainable development

25 without sovereignty over one's own resources, so I think that the

Page 14425

1 explanation is quite simple.

2 Q. Thank you very much for that. And in your book in particular, do

3 you espouse a particular position concerning -- concerning this issue?

4 A. Of course. When you present a lot of data from across the

5 planet, then you reach some conclusions. It is my own conclusion that

6 the planet is entering upon new, dangerous times of raiding natural

7 resources. We already know that energy crises is looming. There would

8 be energy wars. And this is what I talked most about, that there would

9 be energy wars for resources. I think we all know this, and I think I

10 explain this well to the public at large and the political class, that

11 everyone everywhere should consider this. I published the book a bit

12 earlier before the events about Libya in Africa began, because there you

13 have the West and the Chinese and the Russians. Everyone is there

14 because of the resources.

15 Q. I was more focusing on the particular topic of the book, which I

16 think you've indicated here reflects the natural resources as distributed

17 between Kosovo and Serbia. Did you take any particular position with

18 respect to your exploration of that issue?

19 A. Of course, sir. One can learn from the examples set by others.

20 I inquired with the experts from the mining faculty in Belgrade that, for

21 example, the coal reserves in Kosovo are 20 billion tonnes. For a small

22 country which has 7 and a half or 8 million people, 8 million together

23 with the Kosovo Albanians, this represents great future. Even though

24 coal is still a dirty technology, everyone still wants it, the Chinese

25 and the Americans. And the American experts have already managed to make

Page 14426

1 this technology purer. It is not as dirty as it used to be.

2 They also managed to develop techniques by which Co2 can be

3 stocked at great depths under the sea or under rocks and so on. Coal is

4 still very in throughout the planet, and when such a small country can be

5 left without such a resource, then the future is not so bright. And this

6 is what I focused on.

7 Q. All right. You mentioned during our conversation this morning

8 that you wanted to explain, I think, or expand upon something that's in

9 the transcript.

10 MR. VANDERPUYE: And I think if we can get that up in e-court, it

11 may be helpful. It's P1244. And we should go to page 18880, please.

12 All right. We need to go to 18880.

13 THE REGISTRAR: It takes a little bit more time because we don't

14 have e-court page.

15 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We've

16 got it.

17 Q. In this part of the transcript of your prior testimony, you refer

18 to an individual here who is denoted as a Colonel Brunel. And in

19 particular it indicates that this is an individual who worked for the

20 French intelligence services. Could you, if you would, explain to the

21 Trial Chamber what about this particular answer that you gave that you

22 found inaccurate or less than perfect?

23 A. Yes. It is the evidence from almost the end of my previous

24 testimony. We had completed almost everything. But it's not "Brunel"

25 but "Bunel," B-u-n-e-l. He is a colonel, a man charged with military

Page 14427

1 intelligence in French army, who was in Bosnia in the mid-1990s. The

2 public at large knows him perhaps because in 1999 he provided Serbs with

3 some documents, the deployment of targets for the bombing in the war that

4 was to break out later on. He was imprisoned after that but obviously

5 all experts believed that the French wanted to make a gesture of

6 traditional friendship between Serbia and France, though these were

7 obviously targets that Serbs were already aware of.

8 He left service, and after the war in Yugoslavia he was a

9 consultant for many governments throughout the world, consultant about

10 military issues. Perhaps he still has a commentary on

11 Radio France International, which is a state-run radio station where he

12 gives his comments. He was obviously not punished, because if he had

13 done something against his country, he wouldn't be allowed to express his

14 comments on a state-run radio station.

15 I tried to find this in my USB, the interview I did with him, and

16 I promised you that I will send it to you as soon as I come back. It's a

17 text in French which was published in March 2005. It was an interview

18 with him. I did two interviews with him, one in 2003 in Paris and the

19 other one on the Internet when I sent him questions by e-mail and he sent

20 me his answers. This second interview was published in a magazine called

21 "Europa" or "Europe" in Belgrade in an issue for March 2006.

22 I could not tell all the details at the time because the trial

23 was already finished, as you can see from the transcript, but he is a man

24 who would be a very credible, top quality witness. And he told me at the

25 time that he happened to be, in early spring 1996, that is to say,

Page 14428

1 several months after the incident in Srebrenica, in Tuzla. There were

2 some British intelligence men as well. I don't remember other nations,

3 but perhaps Germans were there as well. Probably many from the NATO

4 pact. But he mentioned the French and he mentioned the British.

5 At the time, not just 100, but several hundred combatants showed

6 up. He didn't tell me the exact number, but we suppose that when

7 somebody says several hundred then that's between 2- and 900. So if we

8 take the average, then it's around 500 men.

9 Q. All right. Now, let's refer to in particular in line 19 of this

10 page 18880 of your previous testimony where you refer to a group -- well,

11 it's transcribed as "a group of a hundred or so combatants," right, this

12 is what you're correcting? This interview that you conducted with

13 Colonel Bunel, you said that it was published -- you conducted two

14 interviews and they were both published; is that right?

15 You have to answer --

16 A. Yes, that's right. One was published in 2003 in the

17 Belgrade daily "Politika Express," which no longer exists, and the other

18 one I mentioned from which I mentioned the details was published in 2006

19 in the "Europa" magazine in Belgrade.

20 Q. Aside from the irregularities in the transcript that you've

21 identified, is there anything in this transcript that's not accurate with

22 respect to this issue?

23 A. Well, I think we should not waste time. I told you at the

24 beginning that I have an uncorrected version, and I made corrections with

25 Mr. McCloskey at some earlier point. I think there's no need to go back

Page 14429

1 to these corrections. Everything is fine as far as I'm concerned, but I

2 just wish to add something to the story, because last time I couldn't say

3 everything because it was the end and it wasn't an appropriate moment. I

4 didn't know everything about the procedures, so I told the story at a

5 wrong point in time. So I would just add something if I may.

6 Q. Okay. That's fine.

7 A. So the Americans themselves questioned these Muslim fighters

8 which as Colonel Bunel said had arrived from the area around Srebrenica

9 where there had been fighting several months earlier, which quite

10 confused me, that these men who were fatigued with many wounded should

11 spend so much time in the area where there was fierce fighting a few

12 months earlier. That was quite strange. However, the Americans said

13 that they had come from that area, and no one except the Americans was

14 allowed to question them.

15 And then after the period of questioning, the Americans moved

16 them to an unidentified location. Independently from that, sometime

17 later through some contacts with the Serbs living in the United States,

18 the Serbian diaspora, I tried to mix and match the data, and then it

19 turned out that many of these fighters turned up in the city of Richmond.

20 I tried to find somebody at the time who would finance a journey of a

21 journalist and a cameraman, but I did not find anyone who would fund me.

22 I wanted to spend some time and wait and try to identify these men at

23 some point. Probably many of them figure today on the lists of missing

24 persons. However, to try and find them after such a long time has passed

25 since then, only the American army could do something like that, and it's

Page 14430

1 a not a propitious time for that. However, I think that this is an

2 important detail, as the source are not Serbs but rather a Frenchman who

3 was a military intelligence officer.

4 Q. All right. Thank you for that explanation. What I want to move

5 on to is the video footage that you shot while you were in or around

6 Srebrenica, Bratunac, and so on, on the 13th and 14th of July, 1995.

7 First of all, have you had a chance to review that video footage

8 since the last time you testified?

9 A. No. For everyone, not even the people who had a chance to see

10 it, this is rather traumatic, so I tried not to view it. But I have been

11 invited to a panel discussion in Belgrade where these and other issues

12 from the war will be discussed and with a variety of participants, and

13 once again I will be forced not to say no to the public and I will have

14 to discuss this again.

15 Q. I can take it, though, that you are quite familiar with the

16 footage; is that right?

17 A. Yes, sir.

18 Q. What I'd like to do is to show you some of this footage and see

19 if you can, in fact, confirm that it's drawn from the video footage that

20 you shot during July 1995.

21 MR. VANDERPUYE: We'll have to take a look at P991. Great. We

22 are at 2 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds. If we can just play that through

23 2 hours, 23, 12 seconds.

24 [Video-clip played]

25 MR. VANDERPUYE:

Page 14431

1 Q. First, can you confirm that this is, in fact, the video footage

2 that you shot on 13 July 1995 in Potocari?

3 A. Yes, it's a part of what I shot at the time.

4 Q. And we can see that during this footage that we've just seen

5 somebody asks you who you're shooting for and you say the police; you saw

6 that?

7 A. Yes, yes. It was an answer to one of these soldiers, because

8 usually when you're somewhere at the front you have problems with

9 filming. And they probably saw me close to Borovcanin, and in order to

10 finish with the subject so that he would not ruin what I was shooting,

11 then I said it, but it was half joking, tongue-in-cheek.

12 Q. And do you recall who was the person who asked you this question?

13 Was that a soldier, was that a passerby, or was that one of the refugees?

14 A. No, no, no, the refugees didn't ask anything. It was one of the

15 shoulders, the locals. If you rewind it, though it's not necessary, you

16 will see that he has no insignia. And while I was filming -- and while

17 he's asking, I'm still filming; I'm not looking at him. This is the

18 first time -- or not the first time, but I saw him the first time when I

19 watched the materials, because I did not know anyone from this area

20 except Borovcanin.

21 Q. All right. And here we can see a number of buses and lorries,

22 and you can recall what was going on at that time. If you can just

23 briefly tell the Trial Chamber what you observed.

24 A. Do you mean the general atmosphere, what can be seen from the

25 footage? Well, as I said last time, one is shocked by the sheer numbers

Page 14432

1 of people. And by analysing the footage here, you can see that these

2 people are very poor. They are mainly peasants. They are village

3 people. And what I filmed here shows that they were very poor, and the

4 temperature was also very high, in summer. There was excitement because

5 of the war situation. On the other hand, I was surprised that there were

6 no many lorries and buses that were waiting at the ready.

7 And just to reminds you for comparisons' sake, less than a month

8 later Serbs were moving towards Bosnia, Serbs from Croatia. There were

9 no buses, no lorries, people who had their own personal cars or tractors

10 and that was all. It was a huge difference in the treatment of these

11 people. After all, considering the circumstances, so maybe within

12 48 hours they were all transported in the direction of Tuzla. But from a

13 human point of view, if you had been there or anyone else, it was not a

14 pleasant scene. It is quite shocking, the huge number of people in this

15 small area.

16 But I arrived there at the moment when they were already slowly

17 boarding the buses and lorries, and the crowd was diminishing.

18 Q. All right. Let me take you to another section.

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We should put on the record that you stopped at

20 2:25:12.2 [sic].

21 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you very much, Mr. President.

22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Judge Mindua has question.

23 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Just a question. It's a very

24 short question with respect to what the witness said, and I wanted to

25 intervene right away and put the question now.

Page 14433

1 So, Witness, on transcript page 19, you said that you were struck

2 by the difference in treatment which was given to Muslims leaving

3 Potocari by the number of buses and trucks and this with respect to the

4 treatment for Serbs who were leaving Croatia. What did you mean by that,

5 please? Treatment by whom? Who was treated -- who was treating them

6 differently? Are you trying to say that some people were put at their

7 disposal various transportation means and the other group did not get any

8 transportation means? Is that what you want to say?

9 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] If we compare the two situations,

10 in Bosnia the evacuation speed, so the speed with which the evacuation

11 was carried out, was much faster, it was much more humane. There were no

12 aircraft, no tanks to attack these people. Whereas in Croatia, people

13 were attacked by aircraft, by tanks, by various forces. We actually

14 don't even know who -- which forces are those even today. So the

15 treatment by the Serbian forces was much more humane with respect to the

16 other situation. This is why I mentioned it.

17 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Very well. Thank you very much.

18 So are you trying to say that, in fact, the Serbs here in Potocari

19 treated the Muslims who were being evacuated better than Croats treated

20 the Serbs who were leaving from Croatia?

21 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes. Much, much better.

22 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Thank you very much, Witness.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I have to put on the record that the video was

24 not stopped at 2:25, but 2:23:12.2.

25 Mr. Vanderpuye, please carry on.

Page 14434

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I was too eager to

2 agree with you last time, and I see that it is now correct.

3 Q. Dr. Petrovic, you indicated that you were shocked by what you saw

4 there. And in the footage we can see a number of men on one side and

5 then a number of women on the other side near these buses and trucks, and

6 while you were there did you see these families, these men and women,

7 being split up or separated from one another?

8 A. I really didn't. The speed was great. When you're filming, you

9 had to concentrate. And I have to tell you, first of all, that I'm not a

10 cameraman. I was forced because of the circumstances to film, myself,

11 because a cameraman from Studio B, from the TV station in Belgrade, could

12 not come with me. So I'm a lousy cameraman, but it turned out that the

13 footage is extremely important.

14 If we look at the still which we can see on the screen now, there

15 are more people on the left side than on the right side with the

16 soldiers. Several metres away are the drivers of these buses and

17 lorries, but even now I can try but I did not see the people were

18 separated except for one famous footage with the white house, as it is

19 called, which I shot once when I was filming the possessions of these

20 poor people. So I didn't even know that I would film the white house; I

21 just passed by it. That was the only group that I could see in any place

22 that was separated, and this footage created many problems because

23 everyone accused me that I had destroyed many important parts, but it

24 turned out that this most important footage from Kravica and the other

25 one with the white house do exist in the original.

Page 14435

1 Q. Well, you do recall, in the footage that you shot, shooting

2 sequences on buses; right?

3 A. Yes, and the lorries. We can see here one lorry between two

4 buses, here, in the still photo.

5 Q. In the buses that you were able to shoot video footage of, did

6 you see any men being loaded onto those buses?

7 A. No. I even have some footage that should follow this, where I'm

8 entering a bus and there are women in there and some very old women.

9 There was one who even remembered King Aleksandar of Yugoslavia. But I

10 did not see men entering buses separately from women. But of course you

11 must bear in mind that I could not see everything. I could not have been

12 at five locations at the same time. But in any case, I didn't see

13 anything like that.

14 Q. All right.

15 MR. VANDERPUYE: Maybe we can scroll a little bit forward in the

16 video footage. I'm not sure how far ahead it is, but I don't think it's

17 far from here. There we are. All right. We are at 2:24:04.0. And

18 maybe we can just play that right from here.

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We don't see anything on the screen at the

20 moment. Now it's working.

21 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

22 [Video-clip played]

23 MR. VANDERPUYE: We've stopped at 2 hours, 25 minutes,

24 40.1 seconds.

25 Q. And is this the sequence in particular you were referring to with

Page 14436

1 the elderly woman?

2 A. Yes, yes.

3 Q. Now, are you the one who is speaking in this video footage who is

4 asking questions about where they're going and so forth?

5 A. Yes, that was me. There is only one or two sentences spoken by a

6 different voice which belonged to a soldier who was behind me and who was

7 telling them that everything will be all right. I don't know him. I

8 just know he was a soldier. And you've seen the old woman. She's a bit

9 old. And he [as interpreted] mixed up King Aleksandar who died in 1934,

10 and she said may God give him and Milosevic health, which she probably

11 said because of fear, because Milosevic wasn't really popular. But as

12 you could see, the scope of ages, between 5 months and 90 years. And I

13 left everything. Whatever I recorded, I left all the footage.

14 And here you can see up there this old man in a cart in the

15 middle of it, and there's a Dutch soldier who is driving him.

16 Q. And, once again, you didn't actually see any of these men on the

17 buses or trucks that you went into while you were there on the

18 13th of July, 1995, did you?

19 A. Yes, on the 13th of July, 1995, it was 2.00 in the afternoon,

20 maybe half past 2.00, that was the first bus I entered by chance. I

21 didn't even see who was in there. Had there been a bus with only men in

22 there, I would have recorded that just as I recorded the white house. If

23 there was anything of interest, I recorded it.

24 Q. Now, there's two questions that I wanted to ask you about this,

25 that particular sequence. The first is, you asked one of the women there

Page 14437

1 about the five-month-old child, whether it was a - I think it was a baby

2 boy, can't really tell - but you asked whether the child was a war child,

3 and I want to know why you asked that question.

4 A. Yes, that was also topic of the discussion the last time. It's a

5 sensitive issue that could be understood in different ways. My reaction

6 was simple. I know of other war situations throughout the world, and

7 what I noticed was the fact that a town that was surrounded, that was

8 covered in media, in detail, there were many stories saying that people

9 are hungry there and then suddenly we could see babies, brand new babies

10 there.

11 Now, it's through my attention, I don't want to go into

12 geopolitics now, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, if you remember, Gaddafi was

13 telling the whole world that the Muslims will win if they have many

14 children --

15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: At this point in time I would like to interrupt

16 you. We are dealing with 1995. But I noted that you didn't answer one

17 question of Mr. Vanderpuye. He asked you: Did you see any of these men

18 on the buses or trucks that you went into? That means Mr. Vanderpuye

19 wanted to know if you saw any men in one of these buses you entered.

20 Your answer was: "Had there been a bus with only men in there, I would

21 have recorded that ..." But that was not the answer Mr. Vanderpuye was

22 looking for.

23 Did you see men in this bus you entered? And that's one

24 question. And the other is, How many buses did you enter?

25 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] What I said was that I had entered

Page 14438

1 into only one bus, this bus that we've seen where women and children were

2 and the very old woman, and that was the only bus I entered. Had I

3 entered into any other buses, I would have recorded what was in there,

4 men as well, but this was the only bus that I entered. I was interested

5 in this column of people passing. And I entered that one bus just by

6 chance. Nobody told me which bus to enter.

7 One has to react quickly in order to get good footage so that you

8 can later make a good documentary. I did not see anything else that

9 would have drawn my attention, so to speak, and made me enter a second,

10 third, or fourth bus.

11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I take it that you entered one bus, and we saw

12 that part of the video. Did you see any men in this bus?

13 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, I don't remember having seen

14 any. I had my camera on my shoulder and shot the whole bus with it, and

15 one could not see a grown man there. There were some boys, but, no, I

16 did not see a grown man, not a single one, there. They were mostly

17 outside where I also took some footage here. You can see it on the

18 screen.

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.

20 Mr. Vanderpuye, please carry on.

21 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

22 Q. The second question I was going to ask you about, and I'll get

23 back to the first one in a minute, but the second question was: At one

24 point during this sequence, either you or the person that is with you

25 says that this is the last group. Do you recall seeing that?

Page 14439

1 A. I only remember -- I only remember it after hearing him say that

2 and seeing the translation. I arrived in the afternoon. I assume by the

3 number of buses and trucks that this was a process that was going on for

4 two days already. You know, 28.000 people, it takes a while to put them

5 on the buses. And that's the number of people who, according to

6 different data, left for Tuzla, so I guess that this is what he was

7 talking about. This is also the reason why I tried to film this quickly,

8 because everything was happening at a high pace.

9 MR. VANDERPUYE: I'd like to show you 65 ter -- it's P1247.

10 Q. First of all, do you recognise what we have on the screen here?

11 A. Yes, these are segments of a text of mine.

12 Q. Okay. And in fact, it indicates 21st July, 1995. Is that the

13 publication date, to your recollection?

14 A. I think it was published under the

15 1st [as interpreted] of July, 1995. It was a magazine published by the

16 publishing house "Politika," so the date is 21st of July, 1995.

17 Q. All right. We have the date recorded in the transcript as the

18 1st of July, but it is the 21st; is that right?

19 A. Yes. At the bottom of the page you can see 21st of July, 1995,

20 yes.

21 Q. All right. And what I'd like to do is: First of all, you can

22 see right at the beginning of the article they talk about "28.000 Muslims

23 of all ages have gathered here in the Dutch base of Potocari," and that

24 refers to the events that you were filming; right?

25 A. Yes, sir.

Page 14440

1 Q. And that's what this article is about, isn't it?

2 A. Yes, that's correct.

3 Q. All right. And on page 5 of the English, page 3 of the B/C/S,

4 you can see a reference there to there have been -- that there were

5 approximately 10.000 children among the refugees. Do you see that?

6 A. Can that be enlarged, please.

7 Q. It should be in the middle paragraph, middle column, I'm sorry,

8 in the first paragraph of that column.

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. Now, that paragraph reads:

11 "Demographers will surely find interesting the fact that there

12 were approximately 10.000 children among the refugees." You mean the

13 refugees in Potocari; is that right?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. And then it reads that "and out of that figure around 8.000 are

16 under 3 years old." And then it says, "the war children," that is a

17 quote, "as they say, this is what they really do."

18 And then it says there, it looks like "hkojas." Can you tell us

19 what that is?

20 A. Hkoja is a religious title that Muslims have in our parts in

21 former Yugoslavia. This is a teacher of religion.

22 Q. Okay. And so it says:

23 "Their hkojas ... The motherfuckers ... They are completely

24 surrounded, no food at all, they keep complaining, but they go on

25 procreating ... Is that normal? Would you believe that? Now you tell

Page 14441

1 me, what kind of religion is that, Islam. They made one more corps of

2 soldiers right there in the middle of Srebrenica, who will be after us in

3 15 to 20 years. Just let them stay as far away from us as possible, my

4 friend, the motherfuckers."

5 That's something that you published where you've quoted someone

6 else; is that right?

7 A. That's correct.

8 Q. Now, a moment ago when I asked you why you asked this young woman

9 about her four- or five-month old child, whether it was a -- whether the

10 child was a war baby, you started to give an answer and you talked about

11 Muammar Gaddafi saying that the Muslims would win if they have many

12 children. And is that essentially the thrust of what we see in this

13 particular article about Potocari, or this particular paragraph, I should

14 say?

15 A. You see, my task as a journalist who had to do two jobs at

16 once -- in United States you wouldn't see journalists doing that, or here

17 in Holland they wouldn't find themselves in such a situation. I was on

18 my own. I was at the same time creating the text for the newspaper,

19 which is something completely different than a TV footage documentary. I

20 was criticised about this text before, but I believe this is a very good

21 document. I used the method of complete documentarism [as interpreted].

22 There is nothing in the quotations that I added. And the purpose of that

23 is to get the dynamics after the event. TV is, in that respect, much

24 simpler to achieve the fullness and the speed that you get on TV. I

25 tried to fill in the text with things I saw or heard there, so this is a

Page 14442

1 quotation I found interesting.

2 You must understand this report of mine includes, for instance,

3 wolves from Srebrenica that were, I guess, photographed during the war,

4 during the period when Muslims were encircled. And you can see some

5 images that I also saw in Balbec [phoen], in Ljuban [phoen], in -- near

6 east, messages of the aggressive Islam. That was a situation where you

7 have two religions in a very small area, something historians are

8 familiar with. I made sure - and I don't curse like this - this is a

9 document. When you're watching war footage, or maybe this film

10 "Searching For Private Ryan," they're cursing all the time; that's war.

11 But here, to be honest, I believe this is one of my better texts. I

12 managed to achieve complete documentary feeling. There is no views of

13 mine, and it's not something that would be similar to my comments of

14 recently that I made about Gaddafi. I thought, and I still think, that I

15 managed to give a completely documentary depiction of the situation.

16 Q. Let me ask you this: Who were you quoting?

17 A. It was one of the people I ran into there in the period of two

18 days. I cannot give you any names. I remember only the name of

19 Ljubisa Borovcanin, but it wasn't him, he was doing something else. At

20 the time, they were organising the evacuation of the people. So it's one

21 the fighters. It was a view that many held. And on the other side, the

22 Muslim side, if you go and ask them, they would give you an equivalent

23 story. This is why this is credible. A Muslim reading this or a Serb

24 reading this would say, yes, this is exactly how it was. The war, the

25 accumulated hatred, the war as the supreme perversion creates such

Page 14443

1 situations. But these situations were happening one after another, and I

2 just had time to record it. I was just -- later on, I just retyped

3 everything into this text from my notebook, and I was writing it as I was

4 filming the events. And you can imagine what -- how hard it was having

5 to do two things at the same time.

6 Q. So this was a generally widely-held view among fighters. And

7 when you say fighters, you mean Serb forces, VRS, MUP forces; is that

8 what you mean?

9 A. I was referring to all fighters that fought in the war. Croats,

10 Serbs, and Muslims.

11 Q. Well, what you've --

12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.

14 Greetings to everyone. I hope that this trial will conclude and not

15 according to my will but God's will. And I would like to say hello to

16 Mr. Petrovic. I would also like to add that it was one man who stated

17 something like that and that's what he confirmed. And then he's asked

18 whether all men were saying that, and then in his following answer he

19 said that all sides that were part of the war used the same terminology,

20 words of hatred. So let us not misquote the witness. Thank you.

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Can you give me a reference where Mr. Vanderpuye

22 said that? I don't see it.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, on page 30, line 1

24 and onward, Mr. Petrovic was saying that he was trying to record, by

25 using the images and the tones and the text, that he wanted to record the

Page 14444

1 accumulated hatred that appeared on all sides. And he said that he only

2 retyped the text from his notebooks. And then on page 30, line 14,

3 Mr. Vanderpuye asked him, Is this something that all soldiers were saying

4 there? And Mr. Petrovic said that all soldiers in the war were using

5 such terms, Muslims, Croats, Serbs.

6 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] May I add another comment?

7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: No. Sorry, no. I'm discussing with Mr. Tolimir.

8 Mr. Vanderpuye is recorded to having said:

9 "When you say fighters, you mean Serb forces, VRS, MUP forces; is

10 that what you mean?"

11 Mr. Vanderpuye was just putting a question to clarify the answer.

12 Mr. Vanderpuye, please carry on.

13 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

14 Q. Dr. Petrovic, I'm referring specifically to this article and

15 specifically to this paragraph in the article which you say you were, to

16 paraphrase it, proud of. And when I talk about this paragraph in

17 particular, you said that you were quoting from a fighter. And that

18 fighter would not have been a Muslim fighter; right? Or a Croat fighter,

19 for that matter.

20 A. Yes, of course. This was a Serb fighter. But just to clarify, I

21 said that I was proud of my entire report because it has all the elements

22 of a typical documentary report. This you cannot achieve if you give

23 interpretations of people's words. What you have to do is just quote

24 them, and that's why I'm proud of the work I've done here. And the type

25 of reporting.

Page 14445

1 Q. All right. Let me take you to --

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Before you move to another part of this article,

3 Judge Mindua has a question for the witness.

4 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Yes, indeed. I'm terribly sorry,

5 Mr. Vanderpuye, for interrupting once again.

6 Witness, this article that you wrote, and you say that it's one

7 of the best articles that you have ever written, in the first paragraph

8 that we have here on the screen you talk about mothers that are

9 completely sieged, that are -- it's a city that is besieged, these

10 mothers do not have any food but they continue to complain, and at the

11 same time they go on procreating and they're making babies. So in this

12 article one is asking is it normal. We understand that it is not you who

13 say this but you are just basically quoting somebody else. But at the

14 same time we have seen, a bit earlier, when you talked to the ladies who

15 were in that bus, you asked one of these women if her baby is a war baby,

16 a war child. I would like to know if there's a link between what you

17 said there and if you linked that to this article.

18 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] When I said that, I did not think

19 of now when we are very comfortably sitting in our chairs and we're

20 pondering upon these questions. So the answer that this woman gave me in

21 that bus, she said, yes, of course, yes. Of course it is. She answered,

22 to my question, yes, of course it is, meaning it is a war child.

23 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] But I would like to know, Why did

24 you put that question to that woman? Is it to congratulate her because

25 she did something good or was it because you were completely astounded by

Page 14446

1 her stupidity? Is that what you wanted to know?

2 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, well, actually now that I hear

3 your question, thinking about it now it's completely different, but when

4 I was there in that bus, I saw the scene through the visor of my camera,

5 so I saw what you see as well. I just started a conversation basically

6 in the bus, but it was a very difficult situation. The situation was

7 tense. It was hard to be there. And I'm absolutely certain that in my

8 shoes you would have also been surprised and astounded, because it's not

9 a place for children, that bus. And the war, was is not a place for

10 children. And all of sudden you're in this bus and you see a whole bunch

11 of children. I did not really think when I put that question to that

12 woman. I would like to tell you, it's not like now when we're talking

13 about it sitting here. I only thought about it later. I also thought

14 about it later, about it precisely. I thought about your question.

15 JUDGE MINDUA: But, in fact, you were surprised, if I understand

16 correctly, to see that there were births in that community during that

17 war?

18 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, absolutely, because the

19 situation was really extreme. I was surprised to see so many births.

20 You know, you're besieged for almost 3 years, 2 and a half years --

21 3 years, well, from 1192 to 1995 basically.

22 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] So I would just like to put one

23 last question in order to not take too much time from the Prosecutor. So

24 I would like to know the following: So this surprise of yours in the

25 end, was it because you wanted to congratulate this woman or were you

Page 14447

1 kind of blaming her for what -- for having a child? What is your feeling

2 basically? Are you congratulating her or are you actually blaming her

3 for having a child during the war?

4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Well, you know, all children are

5 beautiful, and this child is extraordinarily beautiful. I have to say I

6 really didn't think of that. But before I came into the courtroom, just

7 before I came into the building, I obtained some information via the

8 telephone, and the daughter of one of my close friends has just given

9 birth to a down syndrome child, and I was really totally flabbergasted by

10 this news. So, you know, this is how we -- one should consider children.

11 We should not really make or do any harm to any child, whatever the

12 circumstances.

13 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Thank you very much.

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye, I think we need our break.

15 Before we break, I would like to remind the Prosecution on the procedure

16 with exhibits. On the 22nd of April in this trial, we gave you some

17 guidance, and I would like to quote two sentences. I quote:

18 "Before seeking admission of an exhibit not admitted through the

19 witness during his prior testimony, the parties should consider their

20 relevance to the instant case and whether they are an inseparable and

21 indispensable part of the prior testimony, without which the prior

22 testimony will lose probative value or will become incomprehensible."

23 Just to remind you, if you are tendering certain documents not

24 admitted through this witness in the previous case, you should put it to

25 the witness and give us some showing.

Page 14448

1 We must have our first break now, and we will resume 20 minutes

2 past 4.00.

3 --- Recess taken at 3.50 p.m.

4 --- On resuming at 4.24 p.m.

5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, Mr. Vanderpuye, please continue.

6 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

7 Q. All right. Dr. Petrovic, I have up in e-court some footage from

8 material that you shot on 14 July 1995. I'd like to play this through to

9 counter number 2 hours, 54 minutes, 22 seconds. Actually, before we play

10 it, can you see this on the screen in front of you? Can you see the

11 footage on the screen in front you?

12 A. Yes, sir.

13 Q. Okay. And can you tell, from the frame that's on the screen, now

14 where this is? If you can't, just let me know. We'll play it and maybe

15 that will help to orient you.

16 A. I think this is the Bratunac-Srebrenica road. It's a few

17 kilometres' distance. You can see refugees here. Actually, I would say

18 that these were Serbs returning to Srebrenica who were just beginning to

19 return to their homes.

20 MR. VANDERPUYE: Okay. Let's play it forward from here, please.

21 [Video-clip played]

22 Q. I just stopped the film now at 2:55:13.1. Do you recognise what

23 we've seen so far?

24 A. Yes, sir.

25 Q. Tell us what we've seen. Which direction are you heading and who

Page 14449

1 are the people that we see on these horses?

2 A. Yes, you can see that we are filming in one direction. We just

3 passed the DutchBat, which was between Bratunac and Srebrenica itself.

4 And then the footage stops here at the entrance close to Srebrenica. You

5 can see the top part of a building; you could see people returning, these

6 are Serbs; and parts of Serbian units on horses. These were people who

7 were up in positions above Srebrenica. It's a mountainous area. That's

8 what we saw in this footage.

9 This is the 14th in the morning. I don't know what time it was.

10 Perhaps on some of the raw footage you can see what time it was. I kept

11 during the counter on and off because I wasn't really skilled in that.

12 In front of us we could see the police inspection that was in Srebrenica.

13 They were actually setting up the police authority in the town itself,

14 and that was the reason why we set off behind them. And it was a way for

15 me to actually enter Srebrenica, because it was still not possible to

16 enter just like that.

17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: All right. Judge Nyambe has a question.

18 JUDGE NYAMBE: Just now, page 35, lines 23 to 25, in answer to

19 Mr. Vanderpuye's question, you've said:

20 "You can see refugees here. Actually, I would say that these

21 were Serbs returning to Srebrenica who were just beginning to return to

22 their homes."

23 My question is: Where were they returning from and in what

24 circumstances did they leave their homes? Thank you.

25 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] In 1992 when the conflict between

Page 14450

1 Serbs and Muslims around Srebrenica began, it began with a deputy, a

2 Serb, being killed at the entrance to Srebrenica. Then the -- there was

3 a conflict between the populations and then the Serbs left. I think

4 before the war the Muslims were in a majority, but just like many

5 communities in Bosnia, this was a multi-ethnic community. Serbs went to

6 different places in Bosnia, some went to Serbia. They withdrew. So on

7 that day, on the road, these could only have been people who were

8 returning to their homes.

9 In a report later, I interviewed some of those people in those

10 abandoned apartments. I filmed some Muslim abandoned apartments as well.

11 It was a mixed community. And since the Muslims had come down in an

12 organised manner to the DutchBat, this could not have been Muslims at

13 this point in the day. This could only have been Serbs who were coming

14 back.

15 JUDGE NYAMBE: Thank you.

16 THE WITNESS: You're welcome.

17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.

18 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to

19 state for the record that the footage that we have now up on the screen

20 can be found in the raw footage provided by the witness which is P1349.

21 The start point -- I should, rather, say that the point in the bend of

22 the road where we see the people on horses on this exhibit is at

23 2:54:46.50 and the corresponding start time in the raw footage video is

24 00:25.40. And I think I wanted to play further from this point onwards

25 02 hours, 55 minutes, 13.1 seconds.

Page 14451

1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye, you just said it is P1349. This

2 is not listed in your list of documents. I just want to make sure that

3 this is the correct number.

4 MR. VANDERPUYE: I have it listed, Mr. President, as an exhibit,

5 an associated exhibit with this witness's testimony, but I understand it

6 is already in evidence anyway, and I'm only stating it for the record.

7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, I found it. Thank you very much.

8 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I think we can, with

9 the Court's leave, continue playing the video.

10 [Video-clip played]

11 MR. VANDERPUYE: We've stopped now at 2 hours, 55 minutes, 57.1

12 seconds.

13 Q. Now, I'm not going to repeat the conversation that we could see

14 in the subtitling of this section, but I wanted to clarify a couple of

15 things with you, Dr. Petrovic. You were in the car at this point with

16 Ljubisa Borovcanin; right?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. And in this conversation where you refer to prefabricated mosques

19 or prefabricated mosque being set up on Igman Mountain, who is making

20 that statement; is that you or is that Mr. Borovcanin?

21 A. On Igman? I don't remember the word Igman being mentioned.

22 Igman is quite a distance from there. It was probably some other word.

23 Igman is close to Sarajevo.

24 Q. Okay.

25 A. It's a mountain.

Page 14452

1 Q. All right. Well, we see that in the subtitling, so it's a

2 question of whether or not you heard it, I suppose. Are you saying that

3 you didn't hear it, or you didn't see it in the subtitle, the reference

4 to Igman Mountain?

5 A. I didn't hear it just now. Perhaps if you replayed it. I'm not

6 sure. I mean, I'm not sure that it's possible that it was Igman that was

7 referred to. It could be an error. There's no context for it.

8 Q. All right. Well, maybe we can back up a little bit.

9 MR. VANDERPUYE: We'll have to go to 2:55:50.94. So maybe 51.

10 2:55:51.

11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It this can't be correct because we saw another

12 segment. Yes, now you got it.

13 MR. VANDERPUYE: All right, we can try it from here. I think

14 that's close.

15 [Video-clip played]

16 MR. VANDERPUYE: Not close enough. We have to go back a little

17 bit. Apologies.

18 Okay. I think we can start here. First you can see here a

19 reference to a prefabricated mosque. We're at 2:55 -- 2 hours,

20 55 minutes, 18.9 seconds. Let's try it again.

21 [Video-clip played]

22 MR. VANDERPUYE:

23 Q. Can you tell who's talking in that sequence? We've stopped now

24 at 2 hours, 55 minutes, 32.4 seconds.

25 A. I think that there were three of us in the car and that

Page 14453

1 Borovcanin was there, the driver, and myself. I saw the translation here

2 "Igman." I didn't hear the word Igman, though. I don't know what the

3 context is. Igman is absolutely not in the context, that I guarantee

4 that there is no place for the word Igman here.

5 Q. All right.

6 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye, I heard just at the beginning of

7 that part --

8 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, Mr. President.

9 JUDGE FLUEGGE: -- the first word we heard was Igman. Could you

10 replay it again, please, but go a little bit back so that we can hear the

11 whole sentence.

12 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you,

13 Mr. President. We are at 2 hours, 55 minutes, 10.4 seconds.

14 [Video-clip played]

15 MR. VANDERPUYE:

16 Q. I see that you've -- I think you've heard --

17 A. Yes, I heard it now. It's either Borovcanin or his driver. I

18 can't tell the voices apart. They say that's how they made prefabricated

19 mosque on Igman like that. And he saw it somewhere else at the front, so

20 that would be the most probable explanation for this.

21 Q. All right.

22 MR. VANDERPUYE: Let's go on, then.

23 [Video-clip played]

24 MR. VANDERPUYE:

25 Q. Here you can see a reference first to a mosque, and then it says

Page 14454

1 "in two more days and this," and then it says "demolished." Can you

2 explain what that's about? Is that a reference to the mosque or is that

3 a reference to something else?

4 A. Well, I cannot interpret for you from this what exactly it's

5 about. And in any event I would like to draw the attention of the

6 Trial Chamber to a very important detail. This is raw footage, and

7 actually there's much more of it there, this footage being shown to the

8 Tribunal, than is featured in what I actually broadcast. And this is not

9 something that happens in the footage by Christiane Amanpour or something

10 else. Had there been anything important in this raw footage, it would

11 have appeared in the final version.

12 There's nothing much relevant here, generally, that has to do

13 with the Srebrenica story, so we're just chatting along these

14 3 or 4 kilometres while we're riding to Srebrenica. There's absolutely

15 nothing relevant, that I consider to be relevant, for the Srebrenica

16 story. From a television point of view, this footage is not very good.

17 There's nothing of documentary value here. When you're recording during

18 war time at the front, sometimes if you are riding with somebody you

19 would like to provoke them so you take part in a friendly conversation

20 with them in order to achieve a certain objective. You could do a few

21 things with that. But here, there is a dialogue, there are a lot of

22 F words. In my opinion, it does not have any importance in relation to

23 the footage that I recorded later probably, from the professional point

24 of view.

25 In any case, I'm the only one during the past 20 years who

Page 14455

1 provided their own raw footage, even to my own detriment. This kind of

2 raw footage is something that you will not really get from any journalist

3 who makes such footage. I am probably the only one who actually did hand

4 over this kind of raw footage.

5 Q. All right. Well, I --

6 A. And I have no secrets.

7 Q. I appreciate your answer. But, of course, you can understand and

8 appreciate that seeing as you're here in court and this is footage that's

9 before the Court, that even if it may not have documentary value as a

10 television piece, it may have a forensic value for the purposes of this

11 trial. And so the question I asked you was, the reference here in this

12 text to destroying or demolishing, I should say, something, is that a

13 reference to the mosque that was immediately -- that was discussed

14 immediately prior to this -- prior to this remark? Or is it a reference

15 to something else? And since you were there, I figure you might be in a

16 position to know.

17 A. Yes. As far as I can recall, this part of the footage is not in

18 Srebrenica yet. I don't remember seeing any mosques. There were no

19 mosques. The mosque was in the centre of Srebrenica. We were between

20 Bratunac and the entrance to Srebrenica in this part of the footage, so I

21 don't remember what "demolished in two days" in this translation would

22 mean. At that point in time, I think I could not have been able to - and

23 I'm reconstructing it now post festum - I was not able to see the mosque.

24 There is no mosque between Bratunac and the entrance to Srebrenica, as

25 far as I can remember. Perhaps there is one now.

Page 14456

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: All right. Let's continue playing from 2 hours,

2 55 minutes, 36.9 seconds.

3 [Video-clip played]

4 MR. VANDERPUYE:

5 Q. Here you see a reference in the text to "some Arabic thing is

6 already starting here, do you get it." And the answer is "yes, yes ."

7 What's that about? What Arabic thing are they talking about or

8 are you collectively talking about in that vehicle?

9 By the way, we stopped at 2 hours, 55 minutes, 45.5 seconds.

10 A. Most probably from this perspective, from 2011, I perhaps saw

11 some detail on the walls of the houses. It was above the door. I think

12 I saw that several times, and in the report there is such a recording.

13 It's what I mentioned earlier. In Balbec, for kilometres of walls of the

14 town there were combat Islamistic messages on the walls. It was held by

15 the Shiites, by the way. But anyway, these were Islam-themed messages,

16 so perhaps it's something that we saw as we were driving past, a word in

17 Arabic. So I think that this was in that context. It wasn't specified,

18 but you have to take what I'm saying perhaps in a relative way. But I

19 think this is the closest explanation to -- for that.

20 There was nothing else. There were no fighters, but there was

21 depiction. There were no fighters from that part of the world, but

22 that -- there was that kind of representation of the fighting and there

23 was that kind of culture present.

24 MR. VANDERPUYE: All right. Let's continue playing from 2 hours,

25 55 minutes, 45.5 seconds.

Page 14457

1 [Video-clip played]

2 MR. VANDERPUYE:

3 Q. Here you can see a number of references. One is "as if all this

4 wasn't part of Europe." What's that about in the context of the Arabic

5 thing that was already started that was referred to immediately

6 previously?

7 A. Most probably it's an additional comment to another civilisation

8 being present in that war. From the beginning of the war we had seen

9 thousands of these Afghan alumni who were fighting in that war on the

10 side of the army of Alija Izetbegovic, and so this is probably something

11 that one of these fighters depicted. I don't believe that anybody from

12 the local population would do that. So it's just a private reaction

13 based on what I knew from other wars, from different situations,

14 regarding the presence of Islamist forces.

15 For example, in 1993, on the 29th of August, I have a photograph

16 in a book of a person who is roasted on a spit from the village of

17 Podravanje, from that same Srebrenica area, this was done from the

18 Mujahedin who had come from the outside. The bulk of them had come from

19 Arabic countries, some from Afghanistan, but mostly they were people who

20 had experience of waging war in Afghanistan and they had brought in this

21 medieval custom. Can you imagine seeing a man roasted on a spit which I

22 had shown on this photograph? So perhaps this was some kind of private

23 reaction. And you can see that this was not footage that was in the

24 final report. I eliminated that as something silly. I mean, can you

25 imagine putting something like this in a report?

Page 14458

1 Q. And the reference to the statement that "they've probably brought

2 to us some kind of a plague," is that part of the same diatribe you were

3 discussing that was going on in the car?

4 A. Well, to clarify, as a scientist, I draw a sharp distinction

5 between Islam and Islamism. This absolutely refers to Islamism, which is

6 the bin Laden option, in any case. He was in Sarajevo, his units were

7 there, he had visited Alija Izetbegovic's office. This is documented.

8 And he was helping in the army of Alija Izetbegovic based on this

9 Islamist concept of destroying everything that is Christian, Jewish.

10 I have a book - I know what I'm talking about - the name of my

11 book is "Al-Qaeda, The Green Common Term Against the Judeo-Christian

12 Civilisation" [phoen]. So they were in that area. And you have to

13 understand that perhaps I had rushed out with this sentence amongst

14 soldiers, but I know very well what I'm talking about. We're talking

15 about Islamism, which, in any case, if you're asking me, if I may put it

16 this way: French television filmed them at a check-point near Igman

17 where the Mujahedin are drinking coffee in the morning with French and

18 Dutch soldiers, for example, they were helping them, therefore, at that

19 time, that Christian Europe. And I am a part of that Christian Europe,

20 after all. But I have friends, Arabs, Muslims, from the whole world. I

21 always had them and always will have such friends, so let's make that

22 quite clear. I don't want anything being ascribed to me that is not

23 there. So I am talking about the Islamist option, about bin Laden, who

24 was a hero of the Arab-Muslim world. He is their Che Guevara.

25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Petrovic, please help me to understand the

Page 14459

1 beginning of your answer. You said something about the bin Laden option.

2 Then you added: "He was in Sarajevo, his units were there. He had

3 visited Alija Izetbegovic's office." To whom are you referring in that

4 sentence?

5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I refer to Osama bin Laden, who was

6 recently liquidated, leader of the Islamist option of Islam whom

7 Renata Vlotau [phoen], your countrywoman who was a reporter from

8 Stern [phoen], from the war in Yugoslavia, saw on two consecutive days

9 visiting Alija Izetbegovic. And his unit of most seasoned fighters,

10 which is called El Mujahid, was in Bosnia throughout the war, and

11 probably some of its members were the ones who roasted men on the spit in

12 the area around Srebrenica. Just so that this is known because this is

13 never mentioned.

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I would like to stop you here. That was not my

15 question. I just wanted to know if you are really referring to the

16 person Osama bin Laden. Thank you very much.

17 Mr. Vanderpuye, please carry on.

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

19 Q. You mentioned a number of times, Dr. Petrovic, that this

20 particular segment is not in the Studio B footage. That's the production

21 piece that -- that you produced in -- when you went back to Belgrade in

22 mid-July 1995.

23 I'd like to show you a segment --

24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: One moment, please. First a question by

25 Judge Nyambe.

Page 14460

1 JUDGE NYAMBE: Actually, this question is for Mr. Vanderpuye.

2 And I'm seeking a clarification between the footage of Studio B and the

3 raw footage; what is the relationship between the two? Thank you.

4 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you very much, Your Honour. I'll put that

5 to the witness. I think the witness can probably tell us what that is.

6 Q. If you've understood Her Honour's question, can you tell us what

7 the difference is between the Studio B footage and the raw footage that

8 you provided to the representatives of the Office of the Prosecutor in

9 2006?

10 A. We are talking generally about the raw footage or materials which

11 are very poor professional quality, as I already said here four years

12 ago. Most of my footage could not be accepted, professionally speaking,

13 at professional TV stations because they are not in accordance with the

14 standards applied today in the world. But as I was one of the few people

15 who were present there at the time, that was the reason why some of the

16 segments which were poor in quality were broadcast because of their

17 documentary value. And the raw materials, as Mr. Vanderpuye might help

18 me, is one and a half hours long, or perhaps even more, but more than one

19 hour, and the show was 28 minutes and 30 seconds or so. So here I made a

20 professional mistake, because I'm not a cameraman. I have to keep

21 repeating this. I am what is called a special reporter. So I did not do

22 this part of the work well, in terms of the quality of the footage,

23 because BBC or any other TV station in the world would not allow this to

24 be broadcast, but they would some segments if they didn't have anything

25 else. This is what happened with us from Studio B. So it was at least

Page 14461

1 1:3 what was discarded and what was broadcast. I think one-third was

2 broadcast or even less than that, but that's more or less the ratio.

3 JUDGE NYAMBE: So in other words, this Studio B footage is an

4 edited version of the raw footage; is that correct?

5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] That's correct, Judge. We simply

6 entered the editing room and then we watched together to see what

7 satisfied the professional criteria, and we saw very often that the

8 footage is very poor, because the pixels are smaller than they should be.

9 But we took out what could be used and what was important for depicting

10 the general atmosphere of this historic event as it turned out to be

11 later on.

12 JUDGE NYAMBE: Thank you.

13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.

14 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

15 Q. I was just about to play the Studio B segment of roughly this

16 footage. I think it is actually the same start point. As you recall in

17 the footage we played earlier - and that should be at counter 2 hours,

18 55 minutes, 7.4 seconds - you will see this gentleman in a -- on a horse

19 who the occupants of the car talk to or he salutes the occupants of the

20 car. You'll find this same footage just now in the Studio B footage that

21 I'm just going to play you.

22 MR. VANDERPUYE: If we can go first to 2 hours, 55 minutes, 57.69

23 seconds, we should see it here. That's just the heading so we know where

24 we are. Okay. And following this we'll go so 2 hours, 56 minutes,

25 7.05 seconds. And I think we can play it forward from here. You'll

Page 14462

1 recognise this footage as we saw previously in the raw material. We can

2 play it from here.

3 Q. Do you recognise this, Dr. Petrovic?

4 A. Yes, sir.

5 Q. All right. We are at 2 hours, 56 minutes, 7.6 seconds. This is

6 the trial video, and we have now the Studio B segment.

7 [Video-clip played]

8 MR. VANDERPUYE: We can stop it now.

9 Q. Now, you may have noticed, Dr. Petrovic, on this particular

10 footage it is interrupted by what we see and what this Trial Chamber has

11 learned is the footage from the Kravica warehouse on the 13th of July.

12 Now, I know that you've been asked about this before, but other than what

13 you've already said about this edit in the Studio B footage, do you have

14 any explanation for why it is, first of all, that this 13 July footage

15 appears in the middle of a 14 July sequence on the Studio B footage?

16 A. Perhaps it sounds unbelievable, but the explanation is very

17 simple. Let me first explain something else. As you can see, there is

18 very little of what was the conversation in the car, where the camera is

19 lowered because it's sitting in my lap, with the four-letter words being

20 said. This is the footage shot as we were driving along, so that one

21 could see that it was filmed on the move. And as many parts could not be

22 selected as part of the reportage, I simply cannot remember so many years

23 later, but one of the two editors who were working in turn probably

24 contributed to including this part which was filmed also from the car.

25 And when the show was broadcast, I was not aware what would happen with

Page 14463

1 this, that these were the dead and so on. Or perhaps I was aware. But

2 the only professional reason why we included it there is because it's

3 shot on the move. It's not still, but it was shot from the car. That

4 was the only reason.

5 We had a problem. 28 and a half minutes is a lot of time, and

6 there should be a lot of footage that needs to satisfy the standards.

7 And I haven't satisfied them because I'm a poor cameraman. Perhaps I was

8 shooting something two or three times in my life. But I had a problem

9 because everything had to be done quickly, it needed to be edited in two

10 or three days, and we didn't have enough footage. Especially when the

11 story begins, you cannot just stop footage. If you have a footage which

12 is filmed on the move, then you have to have certain length covering the

13 period that I spent on the road between Bratunac and Srebrenica.

14 And, yes, this is footage from quite a different location. It's

15 from the location on the road Bratunac-Tuzla, in the direction of

16 Kravica, that is to say. But the only reason was technical. And I was

17 not the only one who had an impact on this but also the technician, that

18 is to say, the editor, who was working on this because of the shortage of

19 footage that was good enough.

20 MR. VANDERPUYE: Okay. Just for the Court, for the record, this

21 Studio B footage is P1250. It's V0003826. The footage sequence that

22 we're talking about, where we began here in the trial video, is found in

23 P1250 at 0 hours, 17 minutes, and 5 seconds. Okay.

24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I would like to put a question to the witness.

25 We heard voices of the people in the car. Who were in the car

Page 14464

1 talking, did you recognise the voices? I refer you to the last part of

2 the footage we saw.

3 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, if you mean the part when the

4 soldier on horseback comes along and asks us how we are, yes, but there

5 are three persons in the car from Bratunac to Srebrenica. I am one,

6 Commander Borovcanin is the other person, and there's the driver as well.

7 So it can only be the voices of the three of us.

8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And who was talking?

9 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I do recognise my own voice, but in

10 certain moments I'm not sure if it's Borovcanin who is the other person

11 speaking or the driver as well. I think at some moments it was also the

12 driver. I cannot remember the voices because I heard them last time in

13 1995 during a short period. So I think you can understand that when it

14 comes to the tone of voice, particularly of this third person, if I were

15 to meet this person here, now, I wouldn't know that it was the same

16 person, if I were to judge just by the voice. But there were three of us

17 in the car.

18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Are you saying that you don't recognise your own

19 voice?

20 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, I mostly do recognise it when

21 it's louder. I mostly recognise. And as for the swear words, it was me

22 who spoke some of them.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

24 Mr. Vanderpuye.

25 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. Just for the record,

Page 14465

1 we have a transcript of this video segment. It's our position that we

2 have two voices on this transcript, notwithstanding what the witness

3 says, that's just our position. What I'd like to show the witness is you

4 indicated -- if we can just back up for a moment to 2 hours, 56 minutes,

5 7.05 seconds and see the beginning of this footage of the warehouse.

6 [Video-clip played]

7 MR. VANDERPUYE:

8 Q. Here we have this footage that you've described that you shot as

9 you drove past the warehouse; is that right?

10 A. [No verbal response]

11 Q. You have to answer for the record, I'm sorry.

12 A. Yes. And it was on the 13th of July in the afternoon in Kravica.

13 Q. And this was after you returned from further down the road in the

14 Konjevic Polje direction towards Bratunac; is that right?

15 A. That's right. Because the car was going along the side where I

16 was sitting on the right-hand side, and the right-hand side can, as far

17 as it seems to me from this perspective, can only be the one leading

18 towards Bratunac. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's how it seems to me.

19 After all, this is two or three seconds, maybe not even as much, this

20 particular footage. Because I was filming that, don't forget that, while

21 the Muslims were shooting at the car, and everywhere around, not just at

22 us.

23 Q. All right. And you can hear some shooting right at the beginning

24 of this clip; isn't that right? You hear some loud shooting or explosion

25 or some noise to that effect; is that fair?

Page 14466

1 A. That's right, because close to this place and close to the road

2 is a stream almost without water and the Muslim forces were on the other

3 side. I have explained that but I can repeat it again what was the

4 situation in which I was filming this. There were Muslims who were

5 surrendering themselves, there were Muslims who were shooting at the

6 Serb, there were Muslims who were shooting at the Muslims who were

7 surrendering themselves. So you can imagine the situation in which I

8 shot this, and thanks to that, you have this now.

9 MR. VANDERPUYE: All right. Let's took a look at another

10 section. Here we have this same footage slowed down. And it's at

11 2 hours, 56 minutes, 23.06 seconds. Hopefully I've got it right. Okay.

12 We're at 2 hours, 56 minutes, 23 seconds, and we can play it from here.

13 It should be a slowed-down version of the footage we've just seen.

14 [Video-clip played]

15 MR. VANDERPUYE:

16 Q. In this footage you can see at least three soldiers, one at the

17 beginning of the clip, another one we see walking by, and this one, the

18 last one in this clip, standing in front of a bus with his thumbs up in

19 the air. Is it your position that at the time that you're shooting this

20 footage that the shooting that we can hear is coming from the Muslim side

21 in your direction?

22 A. Absolutely. As for the slow-motion footage, I never had a chance

23 to see it in Studio B. It was the first time that Mr. McCloskey's office

24 told me that you had technical abilities to do that. There were three

25 trucks and one bus with doors open back and front. You can count them.

Page 14467

1 There were -- you can count these soldiers and --

2 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction: Soldiers rather than

3 trucks.

4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] -- three soldiers. I know that

5 they were shooting at us all the time along this stretch. I later on

6 when I returned to Belgrade was that I became scared. This is how I

7 always reacted during the war operations. I did not think about that at

8 the time, but when I think about it now I can tell you that I would never

9 film such scenes as these again.

10 MR. VANDERPUYE:

11 Q. The reason why I asked the question is that none of these three

12 soldiers we can see in the footage appear to be taking cover or trying to

13 get out of the way or ducking behind objects or anything to avoid getting

14 shot if they're being shot at from the Muslim side. Can you explain how

15 you reached the conclusion that you were being shot at from the Muslim

16 side, where you can see the behaviour of these soldiers is someone

17 incongruous with that proposition?

18 A. Yes, I was not asked this question during my previous testimony,

19 but if you have a look at the hangar which was discussed in detail here

20 at court, they were covered, and so was our car at the moment, just that

21 one piece of ground, because beyond that, beyond the hangar, was the

22 stream and the area where the shooting was taking place, so here they are

23 covered by the building, which explains why no one is holding a rifle in

24 a combat position. They are completely covered by the building.

25 Q. All right.

Page 14468

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: If we could just back up a couple of frames.

2 Q. All right. Now we have -- I'm sorry, we're at 2 hours,

3 56 minutes, 33.4 seconds. Now we have the footage of the warehouse, and

4 you see the bodies that are in front of it. You've testified to that

5 before, haven't you?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And you indicated, when I spoke to you had this morning, that you

8 had received certain information with respect to the doors that we can

9 see here in this footage; right?

10 A. Yes. Mr. McCloskey is here as well. I think that at the

11 Popovic et al. trial there was a big change towards the end because it

12 was established that the hangar had its door closed, and this can be seen

13 thanks to my footage. I just ask how is it possible if that happened

14 that many witnesses who testified in this case, dozens and dozens of

15 them, said that it was open and they saw up to 1500 dead. That was the

16 highest number. 500 or 1000 or 1500, and this was judged to be 15 to 20

17 dead men shot during the few seconds as the car was passing by, and it's

18 strange that no one was taken to account for such lies, because here you

19 can see in this footage that the door was closed, and there is no footage

20 anywhere else as far as I know showing the door open which, in my view,

21 is a very significant detail in this case, speaking as a layman, because

22 I'm not a professional in this field.

23 Q. All right. Is this something that you're testifying to from

24 memory of having recalled seeing it, or is this based on some information

25 you learned since you last testified, that is, the conclusion concerning

Page 14469

1 the doors that we see here in the clip?

2 A. Yes, during my testimony, this was not mentioned at all. It was

3 later on that I learned, because I wanted to learn what happened with

4 Mr. Borovcanin and so on. So in the meantime, during these years,

5 somebody told me that. I cannot tell you who, but obviously I never paid

6 any attention to this detail, for example, because this is just

7 two second, and it can be seen quite clearly here that the door is

8 closed.

9 Q. And you indicated that the people that we see piled up in front

10 of this warehouse were judged to be, I think you said 15 to 20 people.

11 And when you say "were judged to be 15 to 20 people," to whom are you

12 referring? Are you referring to your own estimate or is that the

13 estimate of some person or authority other than you?

14 A. This is an absolutely amateur estimate, but when we look at the

15 space how wide the door is and the area to left, I haven't heard any

16 expert opinion on that subject. I would like to hear it, but I have not.

17 This is my own estimate. Considering the area which was filmed and how

18 many people there are, this is how I reached the number of 15 to 20.

19 It's like, though this is a very unpleasant scene, of course, and

20 I don't like to see it frequently, but it's like on stadiums throughout

21 the world people count how many football fans can be in one square metre,

22 so this is similar to that. It's a sort of physical measurement and an

23 estimate.

24 Q. Okay.

25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I would like to see the slow motion part again.

Page 14470

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, Mr. President. I think we started out at

2 2 minutes -- 2:56:23. Thank you.

3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And I would like to ask the witness to focus on

4 the whole part, the slow motion, and then I would like to ask you after

5 that about your estimation how many bodies were there that we see.

6 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.

7 [Video-clip played]

8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much. We stop at

9 2:56:44.7 seconds. Now you have seen the whole sequence. Explain your

10 estimation again, please.

11 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, Mr. President. If possible, I

12 would like to hear from everyone present what their estimate is, but once

13 again, I think that it could not be more than 20 people.

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Sir, you are the witness.

15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Just please have in mind that these

16 are 2 or at most 3 seconds which I did not expect to film. First of all,

17 I was in a car which was occasionally being shot at from that site, from

18 beyond the hangar. So it's not the same as when I was filming it. We

19 are relaxed now. But at the time, I could not think about everything.

20 You know, when someone's shooting at you, I don't know if anyone ever

21 shot at you, but it's quite a fearful feeling that you have. So this is

22 my estimate post festum when I'm watching the footage now.

23 I did not hold it to be very important because I filmed many

24 other things as well, but really, frankly speaking, I would say that it

25 is about 20 people. Because I remember that earlier on at the beginning

Page 14471

1 the American state secretary had some footage from the satellite when

2 people were boarded on buses. There was something like that at the

3 beginning. And then estimates were made how many people could have been

4 on -- in this field which I also filmed, and the estimate was that it

5 would be enough to fill one bus. I'm not an expert for such issues.

6 It's just the visual feeling that I have, so please take it as a

7 post festum estimate, because at the moment I did not register it at all.

8 I didn't know for a long time that there were three soldiers depicted in

9 the footage because it all passes along very quickly.

10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Do you recall how many doors this building,

11 Kravica warehouse, had at that time?

12 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Mr. President, at the moment I was

13 not aware of the totality of the footage, what we can see now and what we

14 saw at this other trial four years ago. I really cannot tell you. But

15 if one could ask --

16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I would like to stop you. I'm asking about your

17 recollection. How many doors did this building have at that time? I'm

18 not talking about the footage.

19 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I absolutely cannot remember.

20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

21 Mr. Vanderpuye.

22 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not sure,

23 actually, that we have all -- this is all of the footage. Maybe we can

24 just play it out just to be sure, but I think it's pretty close if it's

25 not.

Page 14472

1 [Video-clip played]

2 MR. VANDERPUYE: Okay. We stopped now at 2 hours, 56 minutes,

3 52.4 seconds.

4 Q. Dr. Petrovic, when you shot this video footage, did you at any

5 point stop the car that you were in?

6 A. My answer will be brief. I really do not remember stopping or

7 else I would have taken some footage had we stopped, because at the time

8 the fighting was still going on, this is not -- the 11th of July was not

9 the last day of the fighting. There was fighting also on the 13th. I

10 could hear shots throughout the day -- throughout the afternoon, rather,

11 not throughout the day. Once I left the compound and headed down the

12 road, there was shooting all the time.

13 Q. You indicated in your prior testimony that Mr. Borovcanin with

14 whom you were at the time took one of his men or went with one of his men

15 to the hospital or the Bratunac Health Centre. Do you remember that?

16 You have to answer, if you have the translation.

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. And where did that occur? Was that in the vicinity of the

19 warehouse?

20 A. No, it was a different location. I cannot tell you at this point

21 whether that was towards Bratunac, towards the centre of Bratunac, or

22 maybe earlier when the footage of Muslims surrendering were made. We

23 appeared almost immediately after the events and we heard that

24 Borovcanin's officer had been wounded. And then we immediately headed

25 on, and during that stretch we filmed the Kravica warehouse. As far as I

Page 14473

1 can remember, it was immediately after the event.

2 Q. Are you suggesting that the footage was shot on the way to the

3 Bratunac Health Centre?

4 A. To the best of my recollection, yes.

5 Q. And you indicated that you didn't go with Mr. Borovcanin to the

6 health centre; right?

7 A. No, let me be precise. I was with him in the car on the way to

8 the health centre, but I did not enter the health centre. I remained

9 outside of the building, and they brought him in for treatment. I

10 certainly didn't think -- see any of the premises of the health centre

11 inside. There was no reason for me to enter the building. I was waiting

12 outside, I think, next to the car.

13 Q. And the person who was injured, Oficir, did he get in the car

14 with you and Mr. Borovcanin?

15 A. No, no, no. We are arriving and then I think the meadow was in

16 Sandici where the Muslim soldiers who had surrendered were located and

17 that's where it happened. Before I started shooting them as they were

18 surrendering, I mean, filming them as they were surrendering, and then

19 Borovcanin immediately decided what to do. Immediately after I finished

20 my filming, and that was only a few minutes after that, he decided to

21 take the guy to the health centre. I think he had a Motorola, the

22 walkie-talkie, and someone must have informed him about it. But we

23 passed there immediately after the shooting itself. I wasn't an

24 eye-witness, but Borovcanin also wasn't an eye-witness to the shooting.

25 Q. You received some information concerning the injury that was

Page 14474

1 suffered by one of Borovcanin's men; right? That's what you wrote about

2 in your article and I think you testified about it also in 2007.

3 A. Yes, yes.

4 Q. And the information that you received about the injury to

5 Borovcanin's men was before you proceeded to the health centre; right?

6 A. Yes, most probably it was within a few minutes. I heard it and

7 then along the way maybe I wrote it down. You will understand that I

8 don't remember details. But it was there at that location that we

9 received the information. I heard them talking between themselves about

10 it and I wrote that down because it was an interesting documentary-type

11 detail in a war-time situation.

12 Q. All right. What did you hear them talking about, just the injury

13 to Oficir? The fact that some Muslim was trying to get out from the

14 building, as you've testified to before, is that what you're referring

15 to?

16 A. As far as I remember, and I must say that I haven't checked my

17 text, the one you're referring to, in a long time, but there was no one

18 entering any buildings. These are rather big buildings. This was all

19 happening next to the buildings. We're all excited. The soldiers were

20 also in a heightened state after the event because this Muslim fighter

21 bravely jumped, took the gun, and started shooting. I only heard about

22 that, but I did hear about it at the place where the event took place.

23 One of the soldiers that were there said that such a thing happened.

24 Q. Okay. I want to show you some other footage, very briefly.

25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye, you should be aware of the time.

Page 14475

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: I am. Thank you, Mr. President, I appreciate

2 that.

3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Continue.

4 MR. VANDERPUYE: I'd like to show you P1346, please.

5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We don't see the video.

6 MR. VANDERPUYE: Yes, Mr. President, we are just finding the

7 exact point in the counter. And we found it.

8 Thanks, Ms. Stewart.

9 It's 16 minutes, 43.7 seconds. I think we can play it forward

10 from here.

11 [Video-clip played]

12 MR. VANDERPUYE:

13 Q. You see this -- do you recognise the road that you are on at this

14 point?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. And you're in the car?

17 A. Yes, sir. That's right.

18 Q. Which direction are you going?

19 A. Since the mountains are on the right-hand side, we are heading

20 towards Drina, towards Serbia, and on the left-hand side is the road

21 Bratunac-Tuzla, from Bratunac to Tuzla, as far as I remember.

22 Q. All right. So you're heading in the direction of Bratunac; is

23 that right?

24 A. Opposite.

25 Q. All right.

Page 14476

1 MR. VANDERPUYE: Let's keep playing this.

2 Q. Who is in the car with you, by the way? Borovcanin is in the car

3 with you?

4 A. Yes, yes. Last time I could not remember whether he was there.

5 I mean, his driver, whether he was there on the first day. But since I'm

6 sitting in the front and we can see the walkie-talkie, the Motorola, I'd

7 said that Borovcanin is driving. Now, whether his driver was in the car

8 or not, I'm not sure. I cannot remember. It wasn't important for me. I

9 was making a report. I wasn't interested in who was with Borovcanin.

10 Q. All right.

11 MR. VANDERPUYE: Let's play this.

12 Q. Right before you we play it, you hear he says "Oficir, Bor"?

13 A. That was a code-name. Oficir is officer and Bor is pine. This

14 shows that he's not addressing an officer but they are using the

15 code-name when they are talking over the communication set. Maybe --

16 General Tolimir is an officer, maybe he can explain these things better.

17 Q. All right.

18 A. And he then says "stop the traffic after you." And that's what I

19 was saying earlier, that the convoys had to stop occasionally because of

20 the fighting on some stretches of the road, the same road where we were.

21 That's what you can see in the following sentence, "stop the traffic

22 behind you."

23 Q. Well, you can see here we have a reference "LJB," that would be

24 Ljubisa Borovcanin, who's speaking, who says "Oficir, Bor"; right?

25 A. Yes.

Page 14477

1 Q. In fact, Oficir is a person and Bor is the speaker, as in

2 Borovcanin; right?

3 A. Possible. I didn't think about it that way, but it's possible.

4 This is a military issue. I wasn't really paying that much attention to

5 their conversation. I was more following what's recorded, the images.

6 Q. I understand that. You wrote in your article, though, that

7 Oficir was one of the -- I've forgotten the term you used, but it was a

8 flattering comment in relation to his position in Borovcanin's unit, that

9 Borovcanin was his commander; right?

10 A. Yes, I would say that it's a nickname. Officers, soldiers often

11 have nicknames. You can verify that elsewhere, but I think it was a

12 nickname. I don't think he was actually an officer either of the army or

13 the police. It was most probably his nickname. But I cannot say that

14 with any degree of certainty. You would need an expert for that.

15 Q. Yes, it might be a translation issue, but I would just point you

16 to your article. I think it was P1427 - there's the dyslexia - 1247.

17 And in particular you say, at page 5 of the article -- and we don't need

18 to -- I'll just read it. We don't need to put it up because we've seen

19 it already, but you say, in recounting the story --

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. -- about how Oficir was injured. You say that he is one of

22 Ljubisa's Special Forces members; right? And you say Oficir is one of

23 the hopes of Borovcanin's formations, so the commander goes immediately

24 to the medical centre in Bratunac where Oficir, in quotes, Oficir - not

25 officer - is having his wounds dressed; right? In this footage you

Page 14478

1 see --

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: You should wait for the answer. We would like to

3 hear your answer.

4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] As far as I remember, as I can see

5 here in the text, Oficir is with -- is in quotation marks and it is,

6 according to me, clear that this is not his function but his nickname.

7 It's been a while and I haven't had an opportunity to read this --

8 re-read this text. Based on the text I can say that this Oficir was a

9 nickname. I never met the man, but I did hear comments by other soldiers

10 there who said that he was an experienced fighter, a good fighter, and I

11 put that into my text. All countries in the world when they are writing

12 reports about their troops, they always try and say the nice things about

13 them.

14 MR. VANDERPUYE:

15 Q. So here you see Ljubisa Borovcanin giving Oficir an order which

16 is to stop the traffic behind you. You can see that on the screen in the

17 text and we can play it through so you can hear it. We are at

18 17 minutes, 10 seconds -- 10.5 seconds. Maybe we should play this

19 through a little bit.

20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We don't have it on the screen because now we see

21 the article.

22 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President.

23 [Prosecution counsel confer]

24 [Video-clip played]

25 MR. VANDERPUYE:

Page 14479

1 Q. Can you tell us where we are now on the video? We're at

2 17 minutes, 34.9 seconds.

3 A. We are on the same road. I am not sure because while we were

4 editing I was trying to remain in chronological order, but now we see the

5 left side of the road when compared to the footage from a moment ago. So

6 this is the segment of the road where some of the Muslims are

7 surrendering to the Serb army and others are still fighting, and there

8 are a third group of Muslims that are shooting on those Muslims who are

9 surrendering.

10 And there's another clip where we can see people coming down the

11 hill. This is all very surreal, and I did my best with the camera I had.

12 If I had a professional cameraman, this would have been of much better

13 use for you as well, but this camera could not record, film, everything,

14 especially things that were far away. But, yes, this is the road.

15 Q. All right. Dr. Petrovic, there is evidence in this case that

16 Oficir, whose name is Rade Cuderic, was a member of Mr. Borovcanin's

17 unit; that he was directed to stop the traffic behind him, which was in

18 fact just in front of the Kravica warehouse; and that after this

19 direction, that the executions that occurred at that warehouse began.

20 Can you tell this Trial Chamber if that comports with your recollection

21 of what transpired on that day, that afternoon?

22 A. I hear for the first time in my life this name Cuderic; I think

23 that's the name you mentioned. While I was there on the spot, I did not

24 know any of these things. And you are also assuming that a mere

25 journalist would know what officers are discussing between themselves

Page 14480

1 during military operations. I was certain on previous occasions when I

2 was listening to this footage that this is what they were talking -- what

3 was being talked about. I believe that it was because of the stretches

4 of the road were under fire that they were stopping the traffic with

5 buses and trucks where the women and children were so that they wouldn't

6 be in danger.

7 This is the first time I've heard of this name, Cuderic. I would

8 have put his name in the text if I'd known it, if I'd heard it, but I

9 hadn't, especially since I was toad that he was wounded in the health

10 centre -- I mean, he was wounded and then taken to the health centre.

11 That's all I can say.

12 Q. How long after this order that you see Borovcanin give to stop

13 the traffic, approximately, in your best estimation, was it before you

14 were at the Kravica warehouse and shot the footage that we see there?

15 About how long?

16 A. Yes, it's impossible to answer this question that you've put to

17 me. You've seen in the footage that some soldiers were shooting against

18 the hills from where the Muslims are opening fire. So between the

19 conversation over the Motorola and that event, I was focused on filming.

20 I was not embedded like the Americans embed their journalists; I didn't

21 have a flak jacket or anything. I was focussed on my own journalistic

22 madness, and I cannot tell you from this distance how much time has

23 elapsed. I would like to be able to help you, maybe earlier, yes, but

24 unfortunately ... fire -- there was fire coming from everywhere around

25 us. I don't know whether you've been in a war, did you ever witness

Page 14481

1 firing against you, but this question that you're putting to me 16 years

2 after events, it's impossible. I'm sorry if I've disappointed you with

3 giving the answer that I'm giving, but I promised I would speak the

4 truth.

5 Q. That's all we can ask for, Dr. Petrovic. I see that I'm just

6 about out of time. But I want to ask you one last question, and that's

7 again drawn from your article on the 21st of July, 1995. It's P1247. I

8 have it as page 5, so I assume it's page 3 in the B/C/S. And you

9 describe the circumstances under which, as you've said today, you

10 returned in the direction of Bratunac past the Kravica warehouse as

11 concerns Oficir. And the last thing you say in the fourth paragraph on

12 the page in the English is:

13 "The one who killed the policeman died on the spot."

14 This is a policeman that was killed at the warehouse; right?

15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We don't have it on the screen yet.

16 MR. VANDERPUYE: Apologies, Mr. President.

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] It wasn't next to the hangar. It

18 was at the location where the Muslims were surrendering. It's a

19 different location. It's along the same road, but it's quite a way away

20 from it. I think it's called Sandici. I didn't know the name of the

21 place for quite a while, but these are two different proper names,

22 Kravica and Sandici. The Oficir in quotation marks, that happened in

23 Sandici. That's something I was not eye-witness to but I was told about

24 by the soldiers who were quite excited about it, and I also said that the

25 police forces are carrying out the tasks in the Israeli manner, namely

Page 14482

1 merely as little casualties as possible. These were all trained

2 policemen who were policemen even before the war. Serious people, maybe

3 one of the best units that the Serbs had during the war. They were

4 better soldiers than many other soldiers available to any of the warring

5 parties at the time. At least that was my impression.

6 Q. You say at page 3 of this same article, and it's the last

7 paragraph of the English page. The B/C/S we can find with the heading

8 "A Chance for Krstic."

9 MR. VANDERPUYE: I believe we have it at page 2 in the B/C/S.

10 Q. And there you can see, you say:

11 "On the 5th day of the Serbian offensive, the able-bodied men

12 from Srebrenica attempted to break through across Konjevic Polje and

13 towards Tuzla."

14 If you look at the next couple of sentences past that, you will

15 say:

16 "They were soon in disarray and the last battles with Serbs, on

17 the night of 12 July, they had suffered over 500 deaths," and you say

18 "they also had the misfortune to run into the MUP Special Forces."

19 By that I take it you mean the Special Brigade, the MUP.

20 MR. VANDERPUYE: We have to go to the next page in the B/C/S,

21 please.

22 Q. "Borovcanin's unit." And you say:

23 "In addition to Mladic, as on so many previous occasions," you

24 then say "I personally had the chance to see for myself once again that

25 whoever runs into a member of the Special Forces is dead?"

Page 14483

1 And that's what you saw; right?

2 A. That's what I heard on this location where this person nicknamed

3 Oficir was wounded, and I also saw from a distance some of the fighting

4 along the route. I filmed the anti-armour gun, I saw Muslims coming down

5 from somewhere high up, and one could also hear constant fighting. I may

6 have gone too far with this sentence, but in essence it is correct. The

7 unit never committed any war crimes, at least nobody knows of any. They

8 were disciplined throughout. Many of the units that participated in the

9 civil war in former Yugoslavia had terrible discipline, but this unit was

10 different and that was the reason why I accepted to be Mr. Borovcanin's

11 witness, but I did not see, personally, what is mentioned in this

12 sentence, namely that whoever runs into a member of the Special Forces is

13 dead. I didn't see that for myself. I may have pushed it a bit too

14 hard, but in essence, the comment is correct and it's a consequence of my

15 experience after having heard about this soldier being wounded.

16 Q. All right. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic, I'm out of time.

17 MR. VANDERPUYE: Apologies for exceeding my time, Mr. President.

18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Does this conclude your examination-in-chief?

19 MR. VANDERPUYE: I left that part out. Yes, it does,

20 Mr. President. Thank you.

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.

22 We must have our second break now, and we will resume at 6.25.

23 --- Recess taken at 5.53 p.m.

24 --- On resuming at 6.25 p.m.

25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, now you may commence your

Page 14484

1 cross-examination. You have the floor.

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. Once

3 again I would like to greet all those present, and I would like this day

4 in the courtroom to end as God wills and not as I will. I would like to

5 greet Dr. Petrovic and wish him a pleasant stay in our environment.

6 In order for both of us to have an easier time of it, I'm going

7 to begin from the end of this examination-in-chief. And then I would

8 just like to ask you: When I put my question, you wait, you watch the

9 letters, the cursor on the screen, when that stops, then you may begin to

10 answer my questions, and I'm going to try to do the same thing.

11 Cross-examination by Mr. Tolimir:

12 Q. On page 68 of today's transcript, you were asked about the

13 sentence that you quoted and that you heard, about who gets in the way of

14 the specials does not live. I'm asking you this: Are you thinking about

15 the enemy in battle, if they happen to come across Special Forces, or did

16 you mean something else? It's important to clarify this for the

17 transcript. I apologise to you, and I thank you for your answer.

18 A. General, sir, thank you as well. And, of course, the sentence

19 perhaps did come out a bit clumsily, but what I meant was their combat

20 glory, according to all international rules of law, they respect the law

21 but are merciless in battle. So I just wrote what was already known

22 about them before and what I saw in some other place, not in Srebrenica

23 but near Semizovac and up at Majevica.

24 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. On page 67, line 24 on, you were asked

25 about the article that was published. This is page 2 in the B/C/S. This

Page 14485

1 was something that the Prosecutor quoted from, and he quoted roughly as

2 follows:

3 How 500 Muslims were killed who had tried to break through from

4 Srebrenica and how 500 of them were killed, they had the misfortune to

5 run into the MUP Special Forces. This is what was heard from Borovcanin.

6 I'm paraphrasing. I didn't take it down word by word. You

7 probably remember that question.

8 So my question is this: Did you hear this in Sandici before you

9 went to Kravica to film what you filmed almost accidently, you yourself

10 didn't know what you filmed until later? Thank you.

11 A. General, thank you for this question. I think a clarification is

12 called for. Perhaps I made a mistake in the date, but this is subsequent

13 information, so I'm not able to give you precise information. At that

14 time, only one other journalist in the world in 1991 wrote about that. I

15 don't know his name. I think he's Swedish. He wrote one text about it.

16 I talked about it earlier, in earlier years, in Serbia, in

17 different occasions, because this is an event that neither the Serbs nor

18 the international community nor the Muslims ever mentioned. This

19 happened - I'm just not sure about the date; I think it was the 13th or

20 the 13th and the 14th of July - the Muslims, those forces that were

21 fighting against the Serbs, at one point were concentrated and they

22 attempted a break-through like this in the form of an arrow. They were

23 concentrated along the Tuzla axis because, as far as I can remember,

24 Muslim territory was not that far away, and it was important for them to

25 reach that territory. So they had formed a wedge and had set off on

Page 14486

1 their break-through. I heard this from different people, so in that

2 sense there is a reconstruction of the events that there was an enormous

3 danger of them through this wedge movement of moving and then turning

4 right towards Tuzla. No, no, not Tuzla. This other town on the Drina,

5 towards Zvornik.

6 And just like during the whole war, the Serbs, and you probably

7 know this better than I do - not probably, definitely - the Serbs

8 suffered from certain failure. They had fewer men. And there was a

9 danger of the town falling into the hands of Muslims and that would have

10 been a world attraction. This is not something that Ljubisa Borovcanin

11 told me. I know this for a fact. But I know that I heard this from

12 different people. I asked that and it was confirmed and I was told this

13 by the Swedish man who confirmed this event.

14 So probably had this Special Brigade of the MUP of

15 Republika Srpska not been there, the Muslims would have perhaps even

16 reached Zvornik. This is why I took this as an example of a disciplined

17 unit, and they say that several hundred up to about 500 casualties were

18 suffered. This doesn't imply 500 dead, that perhaps would have been too

19 much, but it means dead and killed and wounded. But this was taken to be

20 as a large success of the Serbs and a failure by the Muslims because it's

21 well known that a person who is fighting for their life in war time has

22 an upsurge of strength, and they had gone into this with this extra

23 strength, into this break-through. So a part of the UNPROFOR forces, a

24 part of the international forces, Serb forces, and Muslim forces have not

25 spoken to this about this day. If they made an effort, probably they

Page 14487

1 would have found out more about this, because they told the Swedish

2 journalist about this and all that they had lived through once they had

3 reached Tuzla.

4 Q. Dr. Petrovic, thank you very much.

5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: First, indeed, please wait that the translation

6 has finished. And I would like to ask the witness, Mr. Petrovic, please

7 slow down while you are answering questions. You are talking very fast

8 and it's very difficult for the interpreters and the court recorder to

9 catch everything. Slow down a bit.

10 THE WITNESS: Excuse me, My Honour.

11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, please carry on.

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

13 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

14 Q. Dr. Petrovic, well, all right, since both of us were fast and we

15 created problems for the interpreters because of the transcript, can you

16 please tell us clearly whether you at this point in this article of yours

17 post festum are writing about the casualties that occurred in combat in

18 the Muslim column that was moving from Srebrenica to Tuzla? So we're

19 talking about events that happened in battle and about events that you

20 heard from this journalist and from others who spoke about that? Thank

21 you.

22 A. Yes, I think that I did mention that event. I was inspired by

23 that event because it had drawn a lot of attention because it was

24 something that was tacitly treated by all sides.

25 Q. Thank you. Dr. Petrovic, are you aware that witnesses here,

Page 14488

1 Muslims, testified how on the road that the column was moving along they

2 saw over 300 dead who had been killed in clashes, in fighting, because of

3 the minefields that they had encountered? Did you hear information to

4 this effect from others? Thank you.

5 A. Unfortunately, I missed that detail. I don't remember reading

6 about that detail or hearing about it in the context of these trials.

7 Unfortunately, this sentence was not mentioned when I testified before

8 the Tribunal in a case here four years ago. I'm sorry, but I don't

9 remember.

10 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. You were asked a number of times here

11 during the cross -- the examination-in-chief about events that occurred

12 16 years ago. Of course, the events that I'm asking you about also

13 occurred 16 years ago and it's difficult to give precise answers to all

14 the questions that are being put to you. So please, you were asked here

15 how you got information that the doors on the hangar in Kravica were

16 closed. Since there were several questions during the

17 examination-in-chief, this was on page 67, line 21, where you were asked

18 to describe this, are you able to say now how you got this information,

19 and did you see this later in the film? Or how did you see that the

20 doors were closed? Are you able to tell us what your recollection of

21 that is? Thank you.

22 A. General, my information comes from stories that were told to me

23 indirectly by other people in Belgrade after the events occurred. I

24 recall being told that Mr. McCloskey's team had to do a part of the job

25 over from the beginning and that this was a detail that the Defence of

Page 14489

1 Ljubisa Borovcanin pulled out at the last minute in the trial. I didn't

2 really deal with the particulars of all of that. I think that is

3 actually the body of the information.

4 No one from The Hague told me this. This is something that I

5 heard in Belgrade.

6 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. A little bit earlier I had stressed

7 that even the Muslims say that there were 300.000 dead?

8 A. 300. 300.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] On the road from Srebrenica. So

10 can we now look at D151 page 2 so that we can see that I'm not just

11 talking off the top of my head but that I have testimony about that. Can

12 I ask e-court please to show D151 page 2.

13 THE REGISTRAR: I apologise, this document is under seal.

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: That was not recorded. It is under seal and in

15 that case it shouldn't be broadcast.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you to the Registry.

17 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Dr. Petrovic, I'm kindly asking you to read this to yourself.

19 Please do not read anything from this statement aloud.

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we look at page 2 paragraph 3.

21 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

22 Q. We are showing the first page so that we can see that this is a

23 statement by a witness. Can we look at paragraph 3, which states:

24 "As we made our way through in the direction in which the first

25 group had gone, we came across warnings or, rather, signs saying 'mined.'

Page 14490

1 I assume that our people who had passed earlier through these areas left

2 these signs. From there we headed towards Pobudska Kamenica, where we

3 met up with a part of the first group, but the Chetniks surrounded us

4 there and opened fire on us, killing over 300 people and wounding a large

5 number."

6 I did not ask you this earlier when we were on this topic, but is

7 this what you meant, losses in combat, when you were talking about the

8 500 casualties that we referred to earlier?

9 A. General, sir, most probably yes, it does coincide with the story

10 that I reconstructed from that time-period. I don't believe that there

11 were any other significant events. In my opinion, perhaps the military

12 historians would need to explain why this was just passed over without

13 being talked about, because it's a quite powerful clash of the two sides,

14 and this is what this is about.

15 Q. Thank you. Today or tomorrow we are going to show you the

16 chronology of the events from that break-through. I'm just giving you

17 this information because at this place that we are talking about, many

18 witnesses say that there was a much higher number of casualties. This

19 information comes from witness testimony. My question about this now

20 is -- actually, when you look at the document on the chronology, then we

21 can talk about how many dead there were in the corridor, and you will be

22 able to see what the Muslims themselves say about the casualties they

23 inflicted on the Serbs and how successful they were in the break-through

24 that you were talking about.

25 But my question now is this: Did you hear that at the time

Page 14491

1 Muslim artillery fired at Zvornik, which is what you mentioned earlier?

2 Thank you.

3 A. General, sir, the information I have is that they were perhaps

4 the closest to the Zvornik-Kula spot. I don't know which weapons they

5 were firing from; I'm not able to say that here. But they were already

6 close to the Zvornik-Kula area. And for those present, that is outside

7 of Zvornik in the direction of Sarajevo. It's an ancient fortress, the

8 remains of an old fortress, and that spot was very important to all

9 parties in the war. I don't know if they fired at the town itself, but I

10 know that they were very close to breaking through and to turning to the

11 right towards Zvornik.

12 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. As a journalist, did you hear at the

13 time that that Muslim column was moving from Srebrenica towards Nezuk and

14 Tuzla via the positions of the Zvornik Brigade, the so-called Baljkovica

15 area that is on that route? Did you hear anything about that? Thank

16 you.

17 A. General, sir, I don't remember the Baljkovica toponym, but in any

18 case you could see in my footage a degree of that area. It's a

19 mountainous area, it's summer, the area is forested, it's a very

20 unfavourable terrain for battling, and it's logical that they took those

21 hills to move towards the Tuzla area. But I did not encounter Baljkovica

22 as a toponym at the time.

23 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. Please, we'll move on to what you

24 filmed or what you saw. As I indicated earlier on page 67, 21, you

25 talked about footage which registered in front of the door of the hangar

Page 14492

1 in Kravica a certain number of bodies, and you estimated that the number

2 was roughly around 20 bodies. You were asked several questions in

3 relation to that.

4 Can you please tell us whether these were all the bodies which

5 you filmed at the location in Kravica or is there another footage? Thank

6 you.

7 A. General, all bodies which I personally saw were filmed. But let

8 me repeat once again, my footage hardly lasts 3 seconds. It's maximum

9 3 seconds while passing by Kravica. I shot maybe another 3 or 4 dead

10 people in Srebrenica itself on the 14th of July, the following day, as

11 compared to Kravica, and that was in the centre of the town of

12 Srebrenica, and these were dead Muslims.

13 Q. Thank you. This is what I had in mind, Dr. Petrovic. So what is

14 registered in the footage and then only later you said, during the

15 examination-in-chief, that you discerned what was included in the

16 footage. I have not emphasised that in my question. Can you please tell

17 me whether I'm right or not?

18 A. Yes, yes, you are.

19 Q. Thank you. On page 67, you talked about the place called Sandici

20 where you also saw one dead person in Sandici. And you talked about the

21 incident that you heard about later on, you and Mr. Beara [sic] as well.

22 Mr. Borovcanin - I'm sorry - it was a slip of the tongue. Please excuse

23 me.

24 Please tell us, later on, on page 67, you said -- actually, you

25 said on page 57/1 that according to your estimate in the Sandici meadow

Page 14493

1 there was a total of as many people as could fit into one single bus.

2 Can you please clarify this a little bit for us so that we would have a

3 clearer picture of that? Thank you. Because you were asked by cross

4 questions about one and the same subject.

5 A. General, sir, it's the same as with the dead in front of the

6 hangar in Kravica; it's just my personal estimate. Once again, I say

7 that -- perhaps it's not appropriate, but just like during football

8 matches, you keep estimating, also during rallies or demonstrations, how

9 many people are on Trg Republike, the republic square in Belgrade, and

10 the police always say there are much fewer and the protestors say that

11 there are much more and then that's repeated in all countries.

12 So I made the estimate on the basis of my own footage to the

13 effect that the number of people was such that they could all fit into

14 one bus, so perhaps around 100 people or less. Today I think that would

15 be around 100 people. But I saw it in a moment. I was not continually

16 in that place or in any other place. I was in passing everywhere.

17 Sometimes I would spend a little time somewhere, but it was combat zone,

18 as you know.

19 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. Did you see that at this location in

20 Sandici Mr. Borovcanin stopped the buses with civilians who were

21 transported from Srebrenica to Tuzla in order to board on them those who

22 were underaged and who were not yet old enough for combat? Thank you.

23 A. General, sir, this scene is something that is etched on my

24 memory, because the following year in 1996, or perhaps even in 1995

25 already, I saw one of these boys who were one of the people featured in a

Page 14494

1 British-produced TV show in which he told an unbelievable story to which

2 I was one of the witnesses at that very time. Namely, I saw with my own

3 eyes that the then Colonel Borovcanin, today he's a general, stopped the

4 buses and the lorries - I don't remember anymore, perhaps it was a mix of

5 the two - in order to select at least ten or so boys who were younger

6 than 18, and were obviously not fighters at all, that was on the meadow

7 in Sandici, and he ordered that they be included in the convoy going for

8 Tuzla, and he left for Tuzla with the other children. And I will keep

9 claiming this as long as I live.

10 In his testimony in the BBC TV show, he said the unbelievable

11 thing that he hid behind some water there. Now, if someone was to go

12 there, there's no water and there is no spring. There's no water

13 fountain or anything. Then he said that it was a miracle that he somehow

14 managed to reach Tuzla. It was obviously a spin doctor's job, one of the

15 experts for manipulation, because I saw Mr. Borovcanin - and this is

16 why -- this is one of the details why I testified - I think he is a

17 highly moral man and that he did not allow, once we got there, when he

18 saw these children that they should be kept together with the soldiers,

19 and they all left. This is what I claim. And no one is brought to

20 account for these false testimonies today.

21 Q. Thank you.

22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could we please see P1251 in

23 e-court. Page 56. Thank you.

24 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Please tell us whether you perhaps recognise anyone from these

Page 14495

1 stills, anyone who was transferred to this bus to go with other women and

2 children from Srebrenica who were being sent to Tuzla? Thank you.

3 A. Yes, General, it is the boy in the lower line in the middle.

4 These are stills from my own report. I do not recognise the others. The

5 man in still A was also selected for a British documentary. I was told

6 that this man had gone missing or had perhaps been killed. These were

7 stories that I heard, but I don't know much about this.

8 But as for the boy, this is the boy who was with other children

9 of the approximate age, boarded onto the bus or lorry going for Tuzla.

10 So he went to Tuzla from that location. This is what I absolutely

11 assert.

12 Q. [Microphone not activated]

13 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

14 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

15 Q. Please tell us with which letter is the still marked, the boy

16 whom you see. You said this is the boy, but you didn't say which image

17 it is.

18 A. I said this is image E. And F is a shot from the back.

19 Q. [Microphone not activated]

20 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

21 THE ACCUSED: [Microphone not activated]

22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Your microphone is off, Mr. Tolimir.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.

24 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Dr. Petrovic, is there perhaps any video footage of the incident

Page 14496

1 in which Borovcanin boarded ten Muslim boys onto the bus and sent them on

2 to Tuzla? Thank you.

3 A. Unfortunately, General, I did not record that, and I'm sorry

4 about it, but this is what I was talking about also earlier in court. If

5 I was there with a crew, then the cameraman would have shot that, because

6 the efforts would have been equally distributed. I wouldn't be in charge

7 both of the text and the camera and everything else. Somehow I missed

8 that, and I'm very sorry because then you would see the end. As it is,

9 you are left with my absolute assertion that all the boys from that

10 location on that afternoon, the 13th of July, 1995, boarded lorries and

11 buses which were already transporting people whom I partly filmed at the

12 beginning of my report at the DutchBat compound in Bratunac.

13 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. You said here that you saw a report in

14 which he gave an account that was somewhat different to the actual

15 events. Do you know, if you followed this trial, that there were

16 witnesses here from this location who also said that they were the only

17 ones who boarded a bus, only two of them, and who never said that there

18 were ten of them? They said that there were only two of them? Thank

19 you.

20 A. General, I don't know who these witnesses are. I have not heard

21 this. But I was there. Among the exhausted Muslim fighters were boys

22 aged between 14, 15, or 17 at the most, and I remember that there were

23 around ten of them. Once again, I can tell you that I'm very sorry that

24 I did not film this. I was not thinking that we would be discussing this

25 one day, and this is a great minus of my report, so what remains is just

Page 14497

1 my oral testimony.

2 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic. Several times during the

3 examination-in-chief you were asked about what you were saying during the

4 filming. In part of one of your answers to the Prosecutor, you said that

5 sometimes a cameraman says something just to fit into the conversation or

6 to elicit a comment from the others. Did you have a feeling that I had

7 while I was listening to it, that you are now being charged of something

8 that you said in this footage and on the other hand you provided the

9 basic documents which are important for the Prosecutor's Office? So are

10 you being charged with having said something that is criminal in nature?

11 A. Yes. Perhaps your remark is partly inappropriate, but I had a

12 very decent and fruitful meeting with Mr. Vanderpuye. I have known

13 Mr. McCloskey for quite a long time, and I don't think that they aimed at

14 accusing me of saying something criminal. But in the text from the raw

15 footage, I was really the one who spoke most dirtily, so perhaps it could

16 be wrongly interpreted that I was against all Muslims, but I think I have

17 clarified this, and I think that the Prosecutor quite understood what I

18 wanted to say by these comments. Those, still, from this perspective, at

19 certain moments it may look really sharp. But the situation in which

20 this was spoken was the war, and this was not included in the final

21 version of my report.

22 I was for a long time accused in Belgrade and Serbia of having

23 erased certain sections, and I could have erased this as well. But I was

24 honest in depicting the entire atmosphere which includes this detail, and

25 I think that the Court values this.

Page 14498

1 Q. Thank you, Dr. Petrovic.

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We are running out of time. It's 7.00 we have to

3 adjourn for the day, and you may continue your cross-examination

4 tomorrow.

5 Sir, we have to break now for today. You should be reminded it's

6 not allowed to have any contact to any party about the content of your

7 testimony.

8 We adjourn and resume tomorrow at 2.15 in Courtroom III.

9 [The witness stands down]

10 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 7.01 p.m.,

11 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 24th day

12 of May, 2011, at 2.15 p.m.