Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 8499

1 Wednesday, 17 July 2002

2 [Open session]

3 --- Upon commencing at 9.04 a.m.

4 [The accused entered court]

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Could you call the case, please.

6 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you.

8 THE REGISTRAR: This is the case number, IT-99-36-T, the

9 Prosecutor versus Radoslav Brdjanin and Momir Talic.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Mr. Brdjanin, good morning to you. Can you

11 hear me in a language that you can understand?

12 THE ACCUSED BRDJANIN: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your

13 Honours. I can hear you and understand you.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. Mr. Brdjanin, you may sit down.

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

16 that you can understand?

17 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your Honours. I

18 can hear you in a language I understand.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you.

20 Appearances for the Prosecution.

21 MR. CAYLEY: May it please Your Honours. My name is Andrew

22 Cayley. I appear on behalf of Prosecution with my learned friend.

23 Ms. Joanna Korner and our case manager today is Denise Gustin and assisted

24 by Hasan Younis.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning to you. Thank you.

Page 8500

1 Appearances for Radoslav Brdjanin.

2 MR. ACKERMAN: Good morning, Your Honours. I'm John Ackerman.

3 I'm with co-counsel Milan Trbojevic and assistant Marela Jevtovic.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning to you.

5 Appearances for General Talic.

6 MR. ZECEVIC: Good morning, Your Honours. I'm Slobodan Zecevic

7 and Natasha Ivanovic-Fauveau for General Talic.

8 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning to you.

9 I suppose Ms. Korner has something to tell Mr. Ackerman and

10 Mr. Zecevic. More boxes coming?

11 MS. KORNER: No. Actually, I must disabuse the Court of any idea

12 of boxes on this matter. I've spoken to both sets of Defence counsel

13 before court. Your Honour, can I say one more time for the for the

14 record, what happened when this matter was first raised by Mr. Ackerman

15 in -- towards the end of his cross-examination of Judge Draganovic, and I

16 said I would make inquiries. And Your Honour, I emphasise the word

17 "inquiries" because there's no investigations we can do into this matter

18 at all. I sent out an e-mail requesting that anybody who knew anything

19 about this should let me know, as a result of which I received information

20 that boxes of material had arrived from Sarajevo in connection with this

21 matter.

22 What had happened, however, was that boxes had arrived but wholly

23 unconnected with that allegation that has been made against the ex-head of

24 AID, they were in connection with an ongoing investigation that's been

25 carried on by another team in this building. Unfortunately, that's how

Page 8501

1 the matter first arose. Your Honours and I think my learned friends were

2 informed that there were four boxes of materials.

3 Some material was supplied to us about those charges, but a small

4 package. It's all untranslated, but the -- the lawyers that have charge

5 of it have had somebody read through it and they've identified within that

6 small package the material which relates to apparent allegations - and I

7 emphasise that's all they are - of forgery of identification papers in a

8 matter wholly unconnected with investigation of war crimes, which is what

9 this agency deals with the Office of the Prosecutor about.

10 Your Honour, I have -- I have considerable doubts as to any

11 relevance that it has, therefore, to this case or these documents, but

12 nonetheless effectively adopting the broadest possible approach to Rule

13 68, what could be material that is likely to undermine the evidence called

14 by the Prosecution, we have supplied to the Defence this morning that part

15 of the documentation we received which relates to that aspect of the

16 charges. The major charges, as we understand it, relate to, as

17 Mr. Ackerman put it, allegations in respect of, if I can put it that way,

18 political -- I'm not sure what the right word is, but certainly to get rid

19 of a political hindrance. And Your Honour, that, in our view, simply

20 cannot have any relevance to anything before Your Honours and this court.

21 It's quite late on as well, well after the period.

22 So Your Honours, we have -- and I say it's all in the

23 untranslated, in the Bosnian/Croat/Serb language.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: But that's not an obstacle.

25 MS. KORNER: No. It's been disclosed this morning. The

Page 8502

1 only reason I'm explaining that is that's why we haven't supplied it to

2 Your Honours.

3 JUDGE AGIUS: We can't read it anyway.

4 MS. KORNER: Nor can we, so we're as much in the dark at the

5 moment as anyone else.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

7 MS. KORNER: So Your Honour, I hope that at least for the moment

8 satisfies the Defence and Your Honours and we can put out of our minds

9 forever four boxes of material relating to these charges.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: Mr. Ackerman.

11 MR. ACKERMAN: As a result of discussions with Ms. Korner and

12 Mr. Cayley, I amount now satisfied, Your Honour, that the boxes contain

13 matter that's wholly irrelevant to the issue that we're dealing with here,

14 so I have no more concern about the boxes. I will tell you that this is

15 an ongoing matter, that it -- that it's at the pre-indictment stage that

16 the -- the facts of the matter are being very closely held and guarded

17 apparently. There's very little information that one can get about it.

18 We are continuing our efforts to learn more about the charges and will

19 continue those and we'll certainly bring to the attention of the Court

20 what we learn in that process.

21 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you, Mr. Ackerman.

22 Mr. Zecevic.

23 MR. ZECEVIC: Good morning, Your Honours. We are joining in

24 the -- completely going along with Mr. -- what Mr. John Ackerman has

25 said.

Page 8503

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. I thank you. So with that, I think we can

2 pull the curtains down, admit the witness, and go ahead.

3 We'll go into closed session now, please.

4 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, can I just say, Your Honour, I will be

5 here until the break, but I have to take a witness this afternoon in the

6 Stakic case, so that's why I won't be here for the rest of the morning.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you.

8 [Closed session]

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10 [Open session]

11 MR. ACKERMAN: And I'll use the witness's number.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, exactly. Thank you.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: It's 7.232.

14 We were provided with his -- the English version of his statement

15 this morning, and I just don't -- I don't want that witness to be brought

16 here without my having said what I want to say about that. I think - and

17 I was looking at it this morning, but I don't want to -- I'm quite certain

18 this was the case, that Judge Hunt ruled in the pre-trial parts of this

19 case that the Prosecution had to provide us witness statements, both

20 English and B/C/S, 30 days -- at least 30 days in advance of calling the

21 witness to give us an opportunity to conduct proper investigations and

22 that sort of thing. This one we just got today, bearing in mind that

23 there is a holiday period coming up where we won't be conducting

24 investigations, I would presume, I would suggest that this witness

25 couldn't be called until 45 days after we get his B/C/S statement.

Page 8575

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Mr. Cayley, will you look into that, please.

2 MR. CAYLEY: Yes. Could I just tell the Court something that

3 Mr. Ackerman would want to Court to know. This is a statement that we

4 actually took virtually at his request. This is the document that was

5 referred to in the evidence of BT11, I think it was, a document

6 purportedly signed by Mr. Brdjanin that had the effect of dismissing this

7 individual from his employment. And you will remember that Mr. Ackerman

8 at the time wanted a copy of that document that the witness was referring

9 to, that the witness didn't have. So we went to the witness, got the

10 document, and took a statement from him. So just to make it clear why

11 this is a late disclosure, this is not a statement that we've had in our

12 possession since last year. It's a statement that we've only just taken.

13 Be that as it may -- be that as it may, I think we can probably

14 accommodate Mr. Ackerman's concerns in respect to the 45 days. And I'll

15 discuss it with Ms. Korner and get back to you tomorrow.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. I'll look into the matter myself together

17 with the other two Judges in the meantime. I would appreciate if this

18 could be sorted out and solved for the Chamber by your good selves. And

19 I'm sure you will report on it tomorrow -- tomorrow morning first thing.

20 Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

21 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I was fully aware of what Mr. Cayley

22 just told you, and I hope that the Chamber didn't hear me suggesting there

23 was some kind of a sneak attack going on here that was unfair or

24 anything. There's not.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. So that's it. We'll reconvene tomorrow

Page 8576

1 morning at 9.00.

2 Just for the record, may I remind you that we are not sitting on

3 Friday. You know that. Yes. Thank you.

4 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

5 at 1.47 p.m., to be reconvened on Thursday,

6 the 18th day of July, 2002, at 9.00 a.m.

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