ICTY Weekly Press Briefing - 14th Dec 2005

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

Date: 14.12.2005

Time: 12:05

Registry and Chambers:

Jim Landale, Spokesman for Registry
and Chambers, made the following statement:

Good afternoon,

The President of the Tribunal, Judge
Fausto Pocar, will be addressing the
Security Council in New York tomorrow.
We will distribute his speech as soon
as we can after he has delivered it.

As you will have noted, this is the
last week of court proceedings before
the winter court recess. Trials are due
to resume again as of 9 January 2006,
although the Tribunal is open and staffed
throughout the recess period.

A court schedule for the proceedings
in January 2006 will be available on
our website in due course.

This is my last press briefing here
at the Tribunal.

I wish you all a very happy holiday
season and all the very best for 2006.

Office of the Prosecutor:

Anton Nikiforov, Special Advisor of
the Prosecutor, made the following statement:

I just want to make one clarification.
We noticed that the UN News Centre made
a little mistake in regard to the recent
decision in the Milosevic case. They
said that the ICTY denied the request
by the accused to sever the Kosovo indictment.
This is obviously not correct – the
request was not submitted by the accused.

The Prosecutor will also address the
Security Council tomorrow and in due
course we will distribute her speech.

Questions:

Asked to comment on reports from Belgrade
that the OTP was unhappy with the latest
dossier sent by the Belgrade authorities
to the Tribunal and whether it was true
that several of the pages pertaining
to General Mladic were in fact blank,
Nikiforov confirmed that the OTP was
still not satisfied with the co-operation
from Belgrade. He added that the question
of the Mladic file had now been going
on for more than two years as referred
to in the application for an order under
Rule 54bis. He reiterated that
the OTP was not happy with the documents
it had received, adding that the new
pages, heralded by Belgrade as being
extraordinary and new, contained no information
on Mladic. They were part of the file
and he stressed that it was normal to
find empty pages in a file. The pages
were numbered and thus part of the file
but they did not provide anything new.
He reiterated that the OTP was still
not satisfied because it still believed
that some things were missing from the
army personnel file such as recommendations
for promotion. He further stated that
Mladic was extraordinarily promoted several
times in Belgrade, so there should be
some assessment. This assessment was
missing.

Asked if he thought the blank pages
were a forgery, Nikiforov stated that
they were not. He stated that the Belgrade
authorities claimed that they had sent
the full, present file. He added that
the OTP believed there must be something
else in the file. This was part of the
OTP’s recent rule 54bis filing
in which it asked the court to order
the documents to be produced. He stated
that the OTP was awaiting a response
and added that it was not known whether
anybody had at some stage removed some
of the pages from the file.

Asked to confirm the speculation from
Belgrade that the part of the Prosecutor’s
speech to the Security Council concerning
Serbia and Montenegro would be negative,
Nikiforov responded that he could not
discuss specifics but that generally,
apart from commenting on the completion
strategy, the Prosecutor would also make
an assessment of the co-operation with
different states and confirmed that there
would be a critical assessment of the
co-operation provided by Serbia and Montenegro.

In response to a question as to whether
the Prosecution was preparing a joinder
motion to link the Gotovina case to the
Cermak and Markac case, Nikiforov answered
that they were. He added that the crime
base was the same in both cases.

In relation to the recent order not
to allow the re-opening of the Prosecutor’s
case in the Milosevic trial to allow
it to introduce new evidence, a journalist
asked whether it would be possible to
hear some of these witnesses during rebuttal.
Nikiforov answered that all options were
being considered, including appealing
the decision and rebuttal. He could not
go into the various options as the Prosecution
team was still looking into them and
it would therefore be premature to go
into the options now. He added that the
Prosecution team was keen for the new
evidence to be heard, not only the Scorpions
video but other documents as well.

Documents: