Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 2803

1 Thursday, 7 March 2002

2 [Open session]

3 --- Upon commencing at 9.07 a.m.

4 [The accused entered court]

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning, Mr. Brdjanin. Can you hear me in a

6 language that you can understand?

7 THE ACCUSED BRDJANIN: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your Honour.

8 I can hear you, and I understand you.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you.

10 General Talic, good morning to you. Can you hear me in a language

11 that you can understand?

12 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your Honour. I

13 can hear you in a language that I understand.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you.

15 So good morning to you all. Appearances for the Prosecution.

16 MS. KORNER: Joanna Korner for the Prosecution, together with

17 Denise Gustin, case manager.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning.

19 Appearances for Mr. Brdjanin.

20 MR. ACKERMAN: John Ackerman for Mr. Brdjanin, Your Honour, and

21 Tania Radosavljevic, my legal assistant, is with me. And good morning to

22 you.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning.

24 MR. PITRON: [Interpretation] Good morning, Mr. President.

25 Maitre Pitron with Mrs. Fauveau and Mr. Masson representing General Talic.

Page 2804

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning to you, too.

2 May I have the case called now, please.

3 THE REGISTRAR: Good morning, Your Honours. This is case number

4 IT-99-36-T, the Prosecutor versus Radoslav Brdjanin and Momir Talic.

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Ms. Korner.

6 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, before I ask Your Honour to go into

7 closed session for the next witness, may I raise the question of the

8 timetable for Friday.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. I am sorry I did not get back to you, but

10 after -- I sorted it out almost immediately. But then it just -- I forgot

11 all about it, and then remembered it about 6.00. But then I anticipated

12 that no news usually would be good news. So no, no, we are not having a

13 sitting on Friday afternoon. We are having the sitting tomorrow morning,

14 as previously scheduled.

15 MS. KORNER: Thank you, very much.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: No, I discussed it with Judge Hunt, because we were

17 sort of trying to accommodate each other, because he needs to sit with the

18 other two Judges too, and we had a little bit of a problem. So we sorted

19 it out. When I told him that you need to be in London, he said, "Ms.

20 Korner comes first."

21 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I'm tempted to say if I believe that,

22 I'd believe anything.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Ms. Korner.

24 Maitre Pitron, how is Maitre de Roux?

25 MR. PITRON: [Interpretation] Mr. President, thank you for this

Page 2805

1 question. Mr. De Roux is very well. At the moment -- he's very well,

2 thank you.

3 JUDGE AGIUS: Good. Give him our regards, and we wish him a quick

4 recovery, and see him back here as quickly as possible. As early as

5 possible.

6 MR. PITRON: [Interpretation] I will do that, Mr. President. Thank

7 you.

8 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

9 MR. ACKERMAN: I did it again, Your Honour. I think you're just

10 going to have to shoot me.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Don't forget that we are going to be in closed

12 session, Mr. Ackerman, today.

13 It's not the first time that I have confiscated a mobile phone,

14 Mr. Ackerman. The first time I did was quite a few years ago.

15 Which reminds me. Mr. Ackerman, my attention has been drawn to

16 the fact that the documents that you requested to have admitted as

17 exhibits yesterday have, according to the registry, never been forwarded

18 to the registry. Oh, they have? I see. They have never been tendered,

19 actually.

20 MR. ACKERMAN: I thought that's what I did yesterday when I

21 offered them.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: Anyway, does that constitute a problem to you,

23 Ms. Korner? Not really, I would imagine. But it's just a formality.

24 MS. KORNER: Yes. Your Honour, I'm just asking to be reminded

25 what the documents were. That was all.

Page 2806

1 JUDGE AGIUS: 40 -- 30 --

2 MR. ACKERMAN: 46, 47, 48, 49.

3 MS. KORNER: Yes. Sorry. What was the content? That was all I

4 was asking.

5 MR. ACKERMAN: Oh, I have no idea at this point.

6 MS. KORNER: I don't know if we've seen them, Your Honour.

7 MR. ACKERMAN: You've definitely seen them. They were given to

8 everybody, way back at the beginning.

9 MS. KORNER: According to Ms. Gustin, who keeps track of this, we

10 never saw BT47 and BT48. So it may be that copies --

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Anyway, would you deal with it during the break,

12 Mr. Ackerman?

13 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, we will.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: The next thing I had my attention drawn to this

15 morning was the witness who we will be having before us today is BT7. And

16 the registry is telling me that, previously, they have followed a

17 different system.

18 Madam registrar, could you explain what you meant by what you told

19 me this morning.

20 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour. Normally, the registry

21 designates a letter of the alphabet, beginning with "A." We go through

22 the complete alphabet, and then we begin with AB, AC, AD. It -- we find

23 that it's easier for us to keep track, but not only that, when the

24 judgement is being written, it's a little bit easier for the people to be

25 able to follow the letters and the names correspondingly.

Page 2807

1 MS. KORNER: Well, Your Honours, there's going -- I'm sorry.

2 There's going to be a difficulty. The reason it's BT7 is because we

3 numbered in our motions for protective measures and the like, and that's

4 how they've been referred to.

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Exactly.

6 MS. KORNER: I personally was unaware that there was this strict

7 rule that you had to go A, B, C. And the reason, from previous

8 experience, I said let's have BTs-1 through to whatever, is that you end

9 up exactly as the registrar says, with double A's or double B's, and it

10 gets, in my experience, even more confusing. I'm afraid the difficulty is

11 though that if we now change the numbering, the motions aren't going to

12 make any sense. And I'm not sure what the real difficulty is.

13 [Trial Chamber confers]

14 JUDGE AGIUS: I think we can -- I think for the reasons stated by

15 you, Ms. Korner, we can retain the present identification and then we'll

16 see later on if it creates problems. We'll see how to go around it and

17 find a solution.

18 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, what we will certainly do is at the end

19 of the Prosecution's case, we will provide Your Honours with a full list

20 of the pseudonym witnesses and what the pseudonyms were. As I said, it's

21 BT7 because they were numbered for the protective measure motions.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. That's -- that's correct.

23 I think -- is there anything else? Oh, there is something else I

24 wanted to raise myself.

25 Mr. Ackerman, could I possibly ask you to be kind enough during

Page 2808

1 the weekend to prepare a very short motion asking for -- formally asking,

2 requesting, what you asked for yesterday, that is, for the documents which

3 are in possession of Witness Dzonlic, sort of identifying exactly which

4 documents you need, so that we can then work on it immediately. In other

5 words, we have started working on it already, but we have come to the

6 conclusion that it is better to have a proper motion from you, rather than

7 the way you addressed it yesterday. So that we will give the -- even the

8 Prosecution an opportunity to respond to it if you want to, either --

9 either orally or in writing.

10 MR. ACKERMAN: I'll get it to you as quick as I can, maybe even

11 tomorrow, Your Honour.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Something very short, very concise, Mr. Ackerman.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: Ms. Korner.

15 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I think we expressed our position

16 yesterday. But I'll double-check that tomorrow.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you. I am doing this, I don't know, because

18 something told me take an extra precaution in case the witness himself

19 decides to make representations. So that way we will all be properly

20 hedged in. Okay?

21 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I don't think there's a problem. The

22 problem arose from our side rather than his. He was willing to hand over

23 his files.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Thank you, Ms. Korner.

25 So we can bring the witness in. Where is the usher? Yes.

Page 2809

1 [Trial Chamber and legal officer confer]

2 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. We will go -- we will go into closed session.

3 And I appeal to you to be careful in not addressing the witness by his

4 name.

5 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, like Your Honour, this is my first

6 experience for closed session, so it's going to -- it's likely to lead to

7 some trouble on my part.

8 Your Honour, I understand the system is that he's shown the piece

9 of paper which I've handed to the registrar, just asked to identify him,

10 and it's shown to the Defence. And Your Honours, of course.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. I have taken the trouble to ask for a video

12 recording of some closed sessions before to see how it goes. I mean,

13 otherwise, you just address the witness as Mr. Witness and -- or

14 "Witness."

15 MS. KORNER: I'm hoping to get away with calling him "sir."

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Or "sir" or whatever. But previously, he's always

17 been addressed as "witness," "witness," "witness."

18 MS. KORNER: I agree, Your Honour. I've seen it myself. But I

19 just think it sounds so odd.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: It depends. Because if he's familiar with the

21 English, he might aspire for the knighthood.

22 MR. ACKERMAN: Make certain, Your Honour that, when he is handed

23 the piece of paper to read his name, that he's carefully instructed to

24 read it silently, because on occasion they have read it out loud.

25 [Closed session]

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5 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

6 at 1.46 p.m., to be reconvened on Friday,

7 the 8th day of March, 2002, at 9.00 a.m.

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