ICTY Weekly Press Briefing - 12th Apr 2006

Please note that this
is not a verbatim transcript of the Press
Briefing. It is merely a summary.

Date:
12.04.2006

Time: 12:00

Registry
and Chambers:

Christian Chartier, Senior Information
Officer, made the following statement:

Good Afternoon.

As part of his visit to the international
judicial insitutions based in The Hague
on the occasion of the 60th anniversary
of the International Court of Justice,
the Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Mr. Kofi Annan will be making a short
visit to the Tribunal this afternoon.
He will have brief meetings with the
Prosecutor and the President of the Tribunal
before saying a few words to staff in
the Tribunal’s lobby. As you may
already know, there will be no media
opportunity of any kind.

On Monday, the Security Council unanimously
adopted Resolution 1668 confirming that
Judge Joaquin Canivell will continue
to serve on the Bench hearing the Krajisnik
case. Judge Canivell was appointed as
an ad litem judge in 2003, and his mandate
was to expire in April 2006; resolution
1668 enables him to see the case through
to its completion, notwithstanding the
fact that the cumulative period of his
service in the Tribunal would then exceed
three years (which is the term of office
for ad litem Judges). The Tribunal is
grateful for this decision.

In terms of the courtroom schedule for
next week, the trial of Momcilo Krajisnik,
a former leader of the Bosnian Serb political
entity, will continue after Easter on
Thursday 20 April.

The trial of Milan Martic, former President
of the war-time Croatian Serb entity,
sits tomorrow at 9:00 in courtroom II.
It is scheduled to resume on Monday,
24 April.

Finally, the Vukovar trial against Mile
Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin,
former Yugoslav Army high-ranking officers,
continues tomorrow at 9:00 in courtroom
I. It will then adjourn to resume on
Wednesday 26 April in courtroom III.

I would like to draw your attention
to a number of the Chambers’ filings
on the list which will handed over to
you at the end of this briefing:

Firstly, on Friday 7 April, the
Appeals Chamber suspended the payment
of fines imposed on Ivica Marijacic and
Markica Rebic as a result of them being
found guilty of contempt of court. This
Judgement was rendered on 10 March and
you may remember that both men were sentenced
to paying a fine of 15,000 euros each.
They have appealed against this Judgement
and also filed motions requesting the
suspension of the payment of the fines
until the Appeals Chamber has disposed
of the appeals. The Appeals Chamber on
Friday decided that "the payment
shall not be due" before its Decision
on the merits of the case.

Also on last Friday, Trial Chamber
I sitting on the Krajisnik case issued
a document setting forth in details the
procedure on calling and examining Chamber
witnesses, hereby saying that it is considering
calling a number of persons to testify
as Chamber witnesses. A final decision
in this regard will be made at the close
of the Defence case.

Lastly, on Tuesday, Trial Chamber
III sitting in the Milutinovic et al.
case issued an Order to Serbia and Montenegro
regarding their practice in implementing
the Tribunal’s decisions on provisional
release. You may remember that a number
of accused on provisional release, namely
Dragoljub Ojdanic, Nebosja Pavkovic and
Nikola Sainovic attended the funeral
of Slobodan Milosevic. The Trial Chamber
considers that "there is no provision
in the Orders for Provisional Release
which authorizes either the Government
of Serbia and Montenegro or the Government
of the Republic of Serbia to permit the
Accused to leave the municipality of
Belgrade." The Chamber therefore
ordered "the Government of Serbia
and Montenegro and the Government of
the Republic of Serbia to file within
14 days submissions indicating (a) whether
it is their practice to exempt an accused
from the explicit conditions of provisional
release (b) if so, the basis of such
a practice and (c) all other information
relevant to this issue."

And finally, I wish you all a pleasant
Easter break.

Office of the Prosecutor:

Anton Nikiforov, Advisor to the Prosecutor
and acting Spokesperson of the Office
of the Prosecutor, made the following
statement:

We are pleased to see UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan visiting the Tribunal today.
Tomorrow, President of the Bosnian Presidency
Sulejman Tihic will visit the Tribunal
to meet with the Prosecutor. This visit
is a courtesy call on the Tribunal.

Deputy Prosecutor David Tolbert attended a conference about regional
cooperation in fighting war crimes in Novi Sad organized by the
OSCE this week.

To clarify the controversial reports
in the Serbian media about the so called
Holmec incident taking place in Slovenia
in 1991 and the question of why the ICTY
did not investigate it.

At issue is the balance between
the broad ICTY mandate and limited time
resources. International Tribunal was
created to process most serious crimes,
most serious violations of the international
humanitarian law, massive violations
of laws and customs of war, widespread
and systematic attacks or violence against
protected groups. And all this in the
context of the proven protracted armed
conflict. It remains unclear if 9-10
days of tensions, some hostilities rose
to the level of an armed conflict.

In any event, the OTP having had
the mandate to investigate and prosecute
any single case of war crimes, had to
prioritise the cases and to give precedence
to the most serious crimes, cases of
massive violations of the international
humanitarian law. All other cases – which
were as we all know in thousands during
the conflicts in the 90-es – were
supposed to be processed by the national
courts. This is the essence of concurrent
jurisdiction clause from the ICTY Statute.
There are no small or big crimes – crime
is a crime if proven in a court of law.
But the scale of criminality is of importance
for the international court.

Established in 1993 and facing the
raging war in Bosnia and Herzegovina
and complex armed conflict in Croatia,
Office of the Prosecutor logically concentrated
on the massive atrocities in Bosnia in
the first place. Later on the OTP had
to review all available information about
different alleged crimes – there
were virtually thousands reports – and
had to draw the line: to consider how
much could be achieved by temporary international
organ in a reasonable time.

Difference shall be made between
systematic, planned widespread attacks
and individual cases of crimes, individual
incidents. And the main point here is
there was never a monopoly of the ICTY
in regard to prosecution of the war crimes.

International Tribunal is by definition
reserved for the most serious crimes
and for the highest level of responsibility.
Tribunal was never supposed to process
all the cases. And we will not deal with
this particular case of Holmec now, as
it was not investigated by the OTP. However,
if the Prosecutor is requested to provide
assistance in this case she will consider
it positively.

Amount of information about the
Holmec incident put presently in the
public domain mainly in the Serbian media,
together with the level of controversy
about it, requires proper attention by
the national jurisdictions. Co-operation
between them on the war crimes cases
was always encouraged by the ICTY and
the OTP and personally by the Prosecutor.

Questions:

Asked when the internal enquiries
into the deaths of Milan Babic and Slobodan
Milosevic would be available, Chartier
said that that would be soon, stating
that he had no further indication with
regard to the timing.

Asked whether or not the Swedish
Inquiry Commission had presented its
report on the UNDU to the Tribunal, Chartier
said that the Swedish experts conducted
their on-site audit of the Detention
Unit in the course of last week, completed
it by Thursday of last week and have
returned to Sweden. They were now preparing
their audit report to be submitted to
the Tribunal in due course. Chartier
pointed out that the Swedish experts
were requested by the Tribunal to look
into the day-to-day management and running
of the Detention Unit, nothing more,
nothing less.

Asked what was meant by "cultural
revolution" announced by Judge Antonetti
in court proceedings this morning while
referring to the work of the Bonomy Commission,
Chartier said that he had not heard the
comment. The Bonomy Commission was actually
a Working Group established a few months
ago with the aim of looking at ways to
speed up trials.

Chartier said that it was his understanding
that the Bonomy Working Group had completed
its work and that its findings and recommendations
had been disseminated through to the
Judges for consideration. Chartier reiterated
that he was not aware of those findings,
but that he was aware of what the President
of the Tribunal, Judge Fausto Pocar,
told the Diplomatic Seminar held last
Friday, namely that it was expected that
a Plenary Session be held at the end
of the month considering further amendments
to the Rules and Practice Directions
and to adopt any changes necessary to
speed up proceedings, both at the Trial
Chambers and Appeals Chambers stages.

Asked if Resolution 1668 included
comments by the Russian Representative
on the inefficiency of the Tribunal,
Chartier said the resolution did not
include any such comment. It was a short
text exclusively dealing with extending
Judge Canivell’s mandate. He stressed
that the resolution was adopted with
unanimity, including thus the Russian
federation. Chartier added that he was
aware of the comment made by the Russian
Representative, which exclusively related
to the fact that the Security Counsel
had to extend again the mandate of the
Judge as the case could not be completed
before the end of his term.

Chartier said that it was a well-known
fact that the Krajisnik case has taken
longer than expected for a number of
reasons. If the comment by Russia reflects
a degree of impatience, we share it,
said Chartier. He added that it was now
contemplated that the case would be completed
by August/September, so it would actually
be a slight delay of a couple of months.

Documents: