Page 834
1 Wednesday, 11 February 2009
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 2.16 p.m.
5 [The witness entered court]
6 JUDGE PARKER: Good afternoon. May I remind you of the
7 affirmation you made to tell the truth here. Now, that still applies
8 today as well.
9 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you.
10 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Djordjevic has some more questions to put to
11 you.
12 Mr. Djordjevic.
13 WITNESS: LIZANE MALAJ [Resumed]
14 [Witness answered through interpreter]
15 Cross-examination by Mr. Djordjevic: [Continued]
16 Q. [Interpretation] Good afternoon, Mrs. Malaj. My name is
17 Dragoljub Djordjevic, and I'm counsel for Mr. Vlastimir Djordjevic, the
18 accused in this case, and as Mr. President just indicated, I would like
19 to ask you some questions to clarify some facts that you spoke about
20 yesterday while you were examined by my learned friend
21 Mr. Matthias Neuner.
22 My first question is: Can you tell us where your village is in
23 relation to the Albanian border?
24 A. Our village is in the outskirts of the city of Gjakove. It's
25 5 kilometres from Gjakove.
Page 835
1 Q. As far as I know, Djakovica is in Kosovo and Metohija. I asked
2 you how far your village was from the Albanian border. Your village is
3 Korenica. That's your village, if I'm not mistaken.
4 A. Yes, it is, but the border is far away. You can go to the border
5 through Qafa e Prushit, but we are not close to that area. I don't know
6 how close or far to the border crossing we are.
7 Q. Thank you. My next question is this: Is your village in the
8 border zone, and do you know what the term "border zone" means?
9 A. Yes, I understand what the border term means, but we're not
10 there.
11 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Now I would like to ask the
12 usher to show a map bearing the number P002-295. I would like it to be
13 shown to the witness, P002-295.
14 Could we please zoom in on this. Thank you.
15 Q. Mrs. Malaj, you marked your village with number 1, if I'm not
16 mistaken, and the markings in red ink, those markings are already
17 admitted into evidence. We can see the town of Djakovica, but I can also
18 see the border, the border between Albania
19 and Metohija. So could you show us where the border is by taking the
20 same pen and mark the borderline with Xs, with a number of Xs, so that we
21 can confirm that we both see the border in the same place, if of course
22 you see it at all.
23 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Djordjevic, how is it going to help this
24 Chamber to have a witness such as this lady attempt to draw a borderline
25 when there is, on authoritative maps, a very clear and correct border?
Page 836
1 Do you see my concern? I don't see how we are going to be helped in this
2 case.
3 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Yes, I fully understand your
4 concern and this that issue you've just raised, Your Honour. The reason
5 why I'm asking this is because this will elicit a series of questions on
6 my part. Let me tell you, we're talking about 1999 and 1998 and the
7 statement that this witness made, that the villagers from the village had
8 gone into the mountains, so where the mountains are. so I just want to
9 see whether this witness herself is able to indicate the border which is
10 shown here, and this is not controversial at all. And I understand why
11 you're asking me this, because we all know that this is a proper map. I
12 just want to see whether the witness herself knows that, knows where the
13 border is. Nothing else.
14 So if you'll allow me, if she could merely indicate where she
15 sees the border, and if she cannot or if she is not to do that, I will
16 comply and I will go on with my questions. But you can see that it is
17 rather illogical. We can all see how close the border is. But I just
18 want to check whether she is able to tell where the border is, because
19 she was able to show various locations on the map, to the east, to the
20 south-east, to the west, to the north. So if you allow me, I would like
21 her to show us the border.
22 JUDGE PARKER: I don't see on the map displayed on my screen the
23 part of the map that shows the border, but are you saying that the border
24 is depicted on this map?
25 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Well, Your Honour, I can see the
Page 837
1 villages that are in the territory of the Republic of Albania
2 map, but if anyone should know that, it's the witness. She lived there.
3 But if not, then perhaps we can use some other map. Agreed.
4 JUDGE PARKER: We don't have any Albania on this map.
5 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Very well. Then I will withdraw
6 this question, and I will not insist on this map being shown to the
7 witness.
8 Q. What's the name of the mountains next to your village?
9 A. The mountains close to our village, they are next to our village
10 as a matter of fact. When you leave the house, you have the mountains
11 there.
12 Q. What are the mountains called?
13 A. The mountains of Korenice. There is no other name in the place
14 where we live. That's where our land is, where our mountains are, where
15 our village is.
16 Q. Do those mountains surround the whole village, or where are they?
17 Are they to the north, to the east, to the south, or to the west, or is
18 it that they are all around the village?
19 A. Well, somewhere there is -- you can see the mountain. The rest
20 of it is a low area.
21 Q. Are those mountains to the north, to the east, to the south, or
22 to the west? Can you give us the point of compass?
23 A. To the south.
24 Q. Will you agree with me that beyond those mountains there is the
25 Republic of Albania
Page 838
1 A. No. There are a lot of villages you have to go through before
2 you reach where you are saying. We are not on the border zone, no.
3 Q. Thank you. The next line of questioning will have to do with the
4 Micunovic family. Yesterday you said that Dragan Micunovic was the only
5 Serb in your village, and in your statement of the 6th of September,
6 2001, at page 2, para 2, you say that in your village there was the
7 Micunovic family and there were 15 family members.
8 Now I want to ask you whether you still maintain that the only
9 Serb in the village was Dragan Micunovic, or was that a linguistic error,
10 or was this a family with 15 members?
11 A. He was the only one in our village, but I mean the whole family.
12 He had three brothers, and their family lived there.
13 Q. Now, you mentioned his three brothers, and you said that they
14 lived there too. Am I understanding you correctly? Or was he the only
15 one?
16 A. This was the only household.
17 Q. How many members were there in the household, approximately? You
18 don't have to give us the exact figure.
19 A. At that time there were 15 of them, as far as I know.
20 Q. Can you tell us, as regards Dragan Micunovic, you told us
21 yesterday that he was an officer in the Yugoslav Army, yet in your
22 statement when you mention him for the first time, you say that
23 Dragan Micunovic was, in fact, a major in the Yugoslav Army. The term
24 that you used yesterday is the broader term. What you said in your
25 initial term; is that correct? Was he a major in the Army of Yugoslavia?
Page 839
1 A. The main thing is that he worked there. Whether he was an
2 officer or a major, that is where he worked, in the army.
3 Q. Why did you, on the 6th of September when you gave your
4 statement, that was in 2001, say that Dragan Micunovic was a major in the
5 Yugoslav Army?
6 A. I did say that, but he used to play all the roles possible.
7 Q. Predrag Micunovic, who is that?
8 A. His brother.
9 Q. Was he also an officer in the Yugoslav Army?
10 A. That's where they worked.
11 Q. Do you know what rank he had?
12 A. Whether he was an officer or not, I don't know, or what rank he
13 had. But I know that he worked in the army.
14 Q. Could you please tell me, as regards Aca Micunovic, whom you
15 mentioned yesterday, you said he was the local village policeman. In
16 your statement of the 31st of August and the 1st of September 2001, you
17 said that Micunovic was a police officer and that he worked in Korenica
18 in that capacity. Can we agree that he was just an ordinary police
19 officer, that he did not have any special rank?
20 A. At that time we used the term "local policeman," and with that
21 term we meant a policeman in the villages.
22 Q. Thank you. Now it's much clearer. You said that you were on
23 good terms with the Micunovic family until the 4th of April, 1999
24 is what you say in your statement of the 6th of September, 2001, at
25 page 2. But you also say something before the sentence. You say that
Page 840
1 the three brothers behaved as if there were 300 Serbs living there. How
2 are we to understand this sentence?
3 A. Yes. Up until that day they behaved very well. We went to
4 social occasions together, weddings and so on. But they behaved very
5 badly when they forced us out, returned us back, and then they did
6 whatever they wanted with us.
7 Q. Are you saying that for all three brothers that I mentioned - Aca
8 Predrag and the eldest brother, the officer Dragan - or just some of
9 them?
10 A. I didn't see Predrag do anything, at least not to my family.
11 Aca Micunovic, after he forced us out of our homes, he told us to go back
12 again. Dragan and Aca gave orders to separate the women from the men, to
13 tell the men that they had to go to the mountains, and then he gave
14 orders to the men to go back to their homes again. Whatever orders he
15 gave, we obeyed them. Whatever he said, we did.
16 Q. Thank you. Now it's much clearer now.
17 Mrs. Malaj, my next question, in fact a whole series of
18 questions, will pertain to the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. Can you
19 tell me what does this name mean to you? When you say Kosovo Liberation
20 Army, the KLA, what do you understand it to mean, you personally?
21 A. The Kosovo Liberation Army, to me it has a good meaning. At that
22 time, however, we were not members, and we did not see it.
23 Q. What kind of an organisation is it?
24 A. I don't know that. I was a housewife with five children. At
25 that time I was trying to get food on the table and feed my children. I
Page 841
1 was not involved in any such organisations.
2 Q. Well, my question is whether you knew what kind of an
3 organisation it was, not whether you took part in it. And I fully
4 understand the role that you played, the role of a mother.
5 A. I don't know. I don't know.
6 Q. Thank you. Mrs. Malaj, please tell us, how far from Korenica are
7 the villages of Nec, Smolnica, Pacaj, and Ramoc?
8 A. Nec and Ramoc are next door to us. Smolice is far away; it's not
9 close to us.
10 Q. What about Pacaj?
11 A. It's on the other side. It's not close, no.
12 Q. Can you tell us how far away from your village are the villages
13 of Pacaj and Smolnica, in kilometres?
14 A. To tell you the truth, I don't know. I've never been to Smolice.
15 Q. Thank you. Yesterday you said that in 1998, together with the
16 other villages, you would leave Korenica because you were afraid because
17 the Serb forces started opening fire at the villages of Nec, Ramoc, and
18 other villages, that were, as you said, close to your village. In your
19 statement of the 31st of August and the 1st of September, 2000, at
20 page 2, paragraph 5 - page 2, that's in B/C/S; it's in --
21 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's note: The counsel is kindly
22 asked to slow down when quoting the reference.
23 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation]
24 Q. You said: "We were afraid because the Serb forces started firing
25 at the KLA positions in the villages of Nec, Smolnica, and other
Page 842
1 villages, in the Caragoj valley. You do not mention the KLA positions in
2 your evidence yesterday. Now you tell us that you don't know what this
3 is all about, so why did you say that yesterday, whereas on an earlier
4 occasion you said something else? Could you please explain this obvious
5 discrepancy between what you said in September 2000 and what you said
6 yesterday in your evidence. This is the statement that you gave and that
7 you signed as your statement, unless now you want to tell us something
8 else.
9 A. Please, could you speak more slowly and explain things better. I
10 don't know which question to answer first.
11 When the forces were there, I told you that they were in May,
12 they shelled from the positions -- or shots were fired from the position
13 of Ramoc and Nec, but I don't know, to be truthful, I don't know because
14 we were not involved in anything of that sort.
15 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction: The shots were fired
16 into Ramoc and Nec.
17 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation]
18 Q. [Previous translation continues] ... getting an explanation, and
19 let me repeat, I will be slower. I don't know how fast the
20 interpretation was. So your statement on the 31st of August and the 1st
21 of September, 2000, in Albanian the reference, and the Croatian, Serbian,
22 Bosnian, and in the English versions, I provided the exact reference as
23 to where those words are in your statement. This is not something that
24 you should be concerned with, but you should be concerned with the
25 essence.
Page 843
1 I wanted to explain the discrepancy between what we heard from
2 you today, yesterday, and what we were able to read in your statement, if
3 it is indeed your statement, and I believe it is. Yesterday it was not
4 controversial. The statement of the 31st of August and the 1st of
5 September, 2000
6 "We were frightened because the Serb forces started firing on
7 the KLA positions in the villages of Nec, Smolnica, and other villages in
8 the Caragoj valley." And now you tell us you don't know about Smolnica,
9 yet you were saying something about it at that time. You said that you
10 didn't know what the KLA was, that for you it was something positive. I
11 understand that you're now saying that you don't know what kind of an
12 organisation it is, but in your statement you say they started opening
13 fire on the KLA positions. How come that now and yesterday you didn't
14 tell us anything about that? You don't even mention that. How is that
15 possible?
16 A. It is true that they fired at those positions; however, where
17 they were positioned, that I don't know, whether it was Nec, Ramoc, or
18 Smolice, we didn't hear them. The forces were moving along the main road
19 Gjakove-Runik. We were at Korenice. They would stop; they would fire at
20 those positions. But as for the exact locations, where they were
21 positioned, that I don't know. To tell you the truth, I really wanted to
22 see the KLA, at least one member, but at that time we were very busy and
23 we didn't dare even go further than our courtyard, to schools or to the
24 church. We left our village. We went to Guska. It was impossible to go
25 beyond our village because of the forces at that time. This was the
Page 844
1 situation.
2 It is true that I've mentioned it in my statement, that they were
3 there in Nec and Smolice, but exactly where, that I don't know.
4 Q. And how come you didn't mention it earlier today or yesterday,
5 instead of mentioning the KLA, you say you don't know what the KLA was
6 all about, that you don't know anything about it?
7 A. Because I didn't see it.
8 Q. I will not insist on that. I would like to move on and say --
9 can I conclude that you never met or were introduced to a single member
10 of the KLA in 1997 and in 1998?
11 A. Not in 1997, not in 1998, not even in 1999. After the war ended
12 and when NATO entered Kosova, after we returned from Albania, it is only
13 then that I saw them.
14 Q. Do you know a person by the name of Fila Malaj? If you do know
15 that person, can you tell us who that person is and where do you know him
16 from?
17 A. Yes, I know Fila Malaj. She is our first cousin. Our fathers
18 are brothers. We are both married to the same family, in the Malaj
19 family. We live close to each other; our houses are next to each
20 other -- close to each other. We live in the same village. Her husband
21 and her son were killed, and her house was burned down.
22 Q. How far is her house in Korenica from your house?
23 A. You mean Fila's house from my house? It's not that far. There's
24 only one wall between us.
25 Q. Did you socialise, the two of you?
Page 845
1 A. No. What do you mean? In what way, socialising?
2 Q. You were cousins. Your fathers are brothers, as far as I can
3 understand. So I'm thinking that as first cousins and neighbours, you
4 must have socialised. Did you go to church together? Did you drink
5 coffee together? Did you visit each other?
6 A. Yes, yes. That, yes. I thought your question referred to the
7 period when we left our houses, but what you said is true, we did
8 socialise.
9 Q. Thank you. On the 20th of October, 2001, your cousin stated to
10 the OTP that she personally knew that the KLA manned the front lines in
11 Ramoc, Nec, Junik, Lug, Caragoj all the way up to the Kreca river, and
12 that was in the immediate vicinity of your village. Since you are so
13 closely related and since you socialised, which is understandable, I
14 really don't understand how come you don't know anything about the KLA as
15 it was at that time and she knows so much and you're so close.
16 A. At the time we didn't talk about the KLA or things like that. I
17 don't know anything about Ramoc and Nec and that part of the area. I
18 also told you that there were there, the KLA, but personally I didn't see
19 them. We did talk about things, family things, about our children, about
20 a better future for our children, but we didn't talk about the KLA.
21 Q. Thank you. Tell me, please, are you familiar with Shpend Malaj?
22 Does the name ring a bell?
23 A. We don't have a Shpend Malaj.
24 Q. Is he a person from your village?
25 A. There is a Shpend Dushmani, but not Malaj, in our village.
Page 846
1 Q. In the Milutinovic case, page 1362, line 8, to a similar question
2 put to you by a different counsel, you answered yes. You said that you
3 knew who Shpend Malaj was. How come you don't know who that person is
4 today?
5 A. There is no Shpend Malaj in my family. Please, we don't have
6 anyone by the name of Shpend in my family. In the village there is a
7 person by the name of Shpend, but not by the surname Malaj. There is a
8 Shpend Dushmani. I do know this person. We were at school, part of the
9 same generation, but we don't have a Shpend Malaj in the family.
10 Q. Well, who's Shpend Dushmani?
11 A. He also had his father, his uncle, his first cousin, and two
12 brothers killed. He lives in Korenice, in my village. I don't know what
13 else to tell you about him.
14 Q. Thank you. And what about Gani Malaj? Does that name ring a
15 bell?
16 A. No, we don't have a Gani Malaj in the family either. We don't
17 have male members by this name.
18 Q. In order to make things clear, are all the Malajs in Korenica
19 members of one family, or, rather, when you say "we don't have a person
20 by that name in our family," do you only refer to your inner family?
21 A. There are four Malaj households in Korenice, but you will not
22 find a Shpend or Gani Malaj as members of these households. So we are
23 four households, we are related to each other, but we don't have any Gani
24 or Shpend as members of our family.
25 Q. And what about Islam Malaj? Does that name ring a bell?
Page 847
1 A. Please, they do not belong to my family. If you want, I can
2 mention all the names of the members of the Malaj family. You will find
3 many people with the last name Malaj, but these that you mention are not
4 part of my family, nor is Shpend or Gani or Islam.
5 Q. And I'm going to ask you about two more names. Adrian and
6 Valdet Malaj are the names.
7 A. Adrian Malaj at that time was very young. He lived in
8 Switzerland
9 our family. And the other name that you mentioned, that I don't know.
10 Did you say Lundrit or something like that?
11 Q. Valdet.
12 A. No, we don't have a Valdet in our family.
13 Q. You've said about Shpend, Gani, Ismet, and Valdet that you don't
14 know who they are, and you only mentioned Adrian as a person you knew.
15 He resided in Switzerland
16 Adrian
17 the 131st Brigade of the KLA? Do you know anything about that?
18 A. No, please, it cannot be him. He was very young. He left for
19 Switzerland
20 Kosova. And as I said, he was very young. This must be a mistake.
21 Q. I've asked you all this because I have information about some
22 people. And let me ask you if there was anybody from Korenica or its
23 surroundings who went by the name of Adrian
24 and did not belong to your family. Would that ring any bells?
25 A. No. You won't find another one in Korenice.
Page 848
1 Q. Yesterday you said that in the course of 1998 you would go to the
2 mountains with the men but that the men would do it more often on their
3 own. Would the same thing be happening in early March 1999?
4 A. The men would go to the mountains for shelter because in the
5 morning they would undertake actions; they would go to houses. So that's
6 why the men went to the mountains and then would come back in the
7 evenings to their homes.
8 Q. You will agree with me, won't you, that this is contrary to your
9 statement and your testimony provided yesterday. You said that there
10 were no problems with either the military or the police before April
11 1999, that they were a mere presence there, that they did not ill-treat
12 anybody. They were there just to supervise, as it were, and I'm quoting
13 you. Why would men retire to the mountains? I can't understand. If
14 your statement is correct, as I quoted it just now and as you stated
15 yourself, can you then answer, how come that the men went to the
16 mountains?
17 A. The men went to the mountains because they were scared. We were
18 all scared. The infantry forces, for example, in the spring, they were
19 just above my house. So the men would go to the mountains only to
20 protect themselves, for shelter.
21 Q. You said that the -- there was no freedom of movement or, rather,
22 that it was limited. How did they go to the mountains, and having asked
23 you this, I accept that your statement is correct.
24 A. Secretly, by hiding themselves.
25 Q. At night?
Page 849
1 A. In the morning, around 4.00 in the morning, when they would not
2 be seen.
3 Q. And what about the women?
4 A. The women would remain in their homes.
5 Q. Can I then conclude that the men went to the mountains because
6 they were afraid and that the women stayed behind because -- I really
7 don't see why.
8 A. The reason is because they were going after the men.
9 Q. But you said that nobody had been persecuted before April 1999,
10 that they were a mere presence and that they just supervised the
11 situation.
12 A. They didn't persecute because people would not leave their
13 courtyards. They would leave secretly, early in the morning when they
14 could not be seen. However, had they seen anyone moving about, they
15 would probably shoot them.
16 Q. Gjon Prelaj, a 15-year-old boy who allegedly conveyed
17 Dragan Micunovic's orders to the village of Korenica
18 mountains. Am I right in saying that?
19 A. Yes, he is a person who brought their order to us. They issued
20 the order to him.
21 Q. Their order or Dragan Micunovic's order? Whose order?
22 A. Dragan Micunovic.
23 Q. When you say "to us," "they ordered us," who was it who the
24 15-year-old boy conveyed Dragan Micunovic's order to?
25 A. To everyone in the village. So every man in the village left for
Page 850
1 the mountains. There were rumours that trucks and other vehicles would
2 come to take us to other locations. So amongst the group that left for
3 the mountains was my son, Blerim Malaj. My husband took him with him.
4 He didn't know why he was going there. So when he went to the mountains,
5 he asked his father why we are here, and my father said -- and his father
6 said, for them not to be seen. So they went to the mountain on that day
7 and then they came back in the evening, at his orders again.
8 Q. This is your statement in which you say to the investigator of
9 the Tribunal as follows:
10 "The order said that all the men had to go to the mountains to
11 hide. This is what the order said."
12 Are these your words?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Was that an order? Was that, rather, a warning? A military can
15 also order somebody to stay put, not to move, and here you say that the
16 order was for everybody to go to the mountain to hide. My question is
17 this: Was it maybe a warning issued by your neighbour Dragan Micunovic
18 to everybody to hide?
19 A. It was an order.
20 Q. Mrs. Malaj, I beg to differ. If somebody says to somebody else
21 to hide, to save themselves, how can that be an order? But let's leave
22 it at that. Let me move on to something else.
23 When did the men return from the mountains? Or maybe you wanted
24 to say something else, and I'm sorry if I interrupted you. Go ahead.
25 A. The men returned on the same day. I wanted to say the following:
Page 851
1 They separated the men from us for them to go to the mountains and for
2 us, the women and children, to be taken to new locations. This was the
3 order.
4 Q. I'm afraid you're confused about the time, place, and people
5 involved in the events. You said in your statement, and you agreed with
6 that but I'd like to go over that again, you said that Dragan Micunovic,
7 your neighbour, said to a child whose name is Gjon Prelaj, that he
8 ordered all the men to the mountains to hide, and now you are saying that
9 they separated the men from everybody else. Who did that, Gjon Prelaj?
10 I can agree that this did happen at one point, but maybe not on
11 that day. I know that you did say that the men were separated from the
12 women when the convoy was being organised and when you suffered a
13 terrible tragedy. I know all of that, Mrs. Malaj; I'm not denying any of
14 that. However, what you just told us now, I apologise, would you please
15 be so kind and to make an effort to explain things for everybody so as
16 everybody in the courtroom may be clear on what really happened.
17 A. Yes. The day Dragan Micunovic issued his order to the young man,
18 the 15-year-old Gjon, Gjon Prelaj, this day was terrible. The word was
19 that the men would go to the mountains and the women would be taken to
20 other places. This is what I stated in my statement. But they made the
21 men come back on the same day. This was in the evening. I don't know
22 the exact time. We were terrified; we were worried. He, my son, when he
23 came back, he said to me that he was very scared, that he would never
24 leave me. Nobody knew what was going to happen to them in the mountains,
25 but luckily they came back. But, as I said, until the 27th, they didn't
Page 852
1 do anything anymore.
2 Q. The men left and hid in the mountains on that day. And what
3 about the women? What happened to them? Did anybody touch them,
4 ill-treat them, harass them, or humiliate them in any way?
5 A. Nothing happened to us. We were expecting something to happen
6 because the word was that we would be taken to other locations. But
7 nothing happened.
8 Q. Tell me, please, when it comes to the men going to the mountains,
9 I showed you a part of your statement where you stated that you,
10 yourself, also went to the mountains; is that correct? Did you go to the
11 mountains as well? On what occasions? How many times? What were the
12 reasons behind your decisions? And if I misquoted you, please say so.
13 A. I didn't count how many times we went to the mountains. The
14 reason was because they would stop on the road - our village is by the
15 road - and they were shooting from there. So we left the village and
16 went to the mountains to protect our lives and not to suffer any harm.
17 But we were tired of leaving.
18 Q. Thank you. I'm going to ask you some questions about the
19 statement you provided yesterday. You said that in the spring of 1998
20 you'd seen tanks. You also said in your 31st of August statement that
21 there had been five of them. However, you said that it was in 1999,
22 before the 27th of April, when tragedy struck your household.
23 Because of what you said yesterday and because of what you stated
24 in 2000, and that was that you had seen five camouflage tanks, rather
25 large ones, in 1998, and also in your statements provided on the 31st of
Page 853
1 August and the 1st of September, 2000, you also mentioned five tanks but
2 you said that they appeared in 1999. Can you please now explain whether
3 you misspoke, whether your words were incorrectly recorded, if there was
4 a mistake? Can you clarify, and then we will move on.
5 A. No, it's not a mistake. The first time we saw them was in 1998,
6 and there were tanks all the time, even later on. But the first time we
7 saw them was in 1998.
8 Q. Well, now, this is the first time you're saying it. You never
9 said it before, either in your testimony so far or in your statements.
10 If things are as they seem to be, let's go to the year 1998. You said
11 yesterday that you'd seen tanks. How many tanks did you see at the time
12 in 1998? Were there five? You keep on mentioning this number, five, and
13 again you say five in 1999 and that's why you have confused me.
14 A. No, not in 1999. There were countless tanks in 1999, while in
15 1998, when I saw them for the first time, there were five tanks. They
16 were on the road from Gjakove to Junik and the infantry, they were all
17 above my house passing there. And then from 1998 to 1999 until the war
18 was over, there were countless tanks, innumerable tanks. The first ones
19 I saw were five tanks on tracks, and everything is clear in the
20 statement. However, from that day to the end of the war, the tanks we
21 saw were innumerable.
22 Q. Mrs. Malaj, those five tanks, we heard that they were tracked.
23 What colour were they?
24 A. Blue camouflage, green camouflage. So blue camouflage, those
25 colours.
Page 854
1 Q. Are you sure that you saw a blue tank with tracks?
2 A. Yes, yes.
3 Q. Very well. What did you see on those tanks? What kind of
4 equipment did they have mounted? Was anyone walking in front of them or
5 around them or behind them or moving in any other way?
6 A. Well, please, they were on the main road from Gjakove to Junik.
7 I couldn't see what they had on. We have a two-storey house, and we
8 could see them from our house. Well, of course they had their own guns,
9 the usual guns. Why were they tanks -- those tanks there? There's this
10 mounted gun on the tank that you can turn around. I don't know the name
11 of the gun.
12 Q. It's all fine and well, Mrs. Malaj, but let me remind you again
13 of your statement you gave in September 2001 when you told an
14 investigator of the OTP something completely different. You said:
15 "On the same day on the main road I saw five large camouflage
16 tanks and two police officers on each."
17 How come those two police officers have gone missing now from
18 your evidence today? You said quite specifically that there were no
19 persons on the tanks. That's what you said today. And on the 6th of
20 September, 2001 -- well, it's not funny. You say: "We saw two police
21 officers on each tank." Now I'm asking you, how come that the police
22 officers have now gone missing?
23 A. Which officers are you talking about? Of course somebody was
24 driving the tanks. And I mentioned before that there is a gun that's
25 mounted on the tank and it came around, and how can it come around with
Page 855
1 somebody moving it around? Of course the policemen were there. I don't
2 know whether they were officers or not. They were policemen.
3 Q. Thank you, Mrs. Malaj. This is quite sufficient.
4 I have to go back to those blue tanks. What did those tanks look
5 like, those blue tanks? Please describe them. Were they the same as
6 what you described to us a little while ago, only blue?
7 A. Yes, blue camouflage. There were some one-coloured machines as
8 well.
9 Q. Blue camouflage? What's this blue camouflage colour? Can you
10 describe that to us?
11 A. Well, could you say darker blue and lighter blue, mixed. We call
12 it "teget."
13 Q. Mrs. Malaj, you mentioned a Pinzgauer vehicle. Could you please
14 tell us, what is it? What kind of a vehicle is it?
15 A. It's got a tarpaulin on top; it's covered - that's how I know
16 them - or "kampanjolas."
17 Q. Thank you. We will now move on to the events of the 4th of
18 April, 1999. At what time did Milutin Prascevic come to your village on
19 the 4th of April, he himself?
20 A. It was in the afternoon, but I don't know the exact time.
21 Q. Was it closer to noon
22 A. Towards the evening.
23 Q. Thank you. Could you please tell us, how many police officers
24 came with him? You said that they came in cars, in vehicles, but how
25 many vehicles and how many men?
Page 856
1 A. Milutin Prascevic came in one car. He stopped close to
2 Engjull Berisha's house, close to the transformer. He went to the Dedaj
3 family and gave the order for the whole village to leave. Then he came
4 to my house together with another policeman, both of them armed, and he
5 ordered us to leave the house, leave the cars behind and take the
6 tractor. The whole village did whatever he said, whatever his orders
7 said.
8 Q. You told us this yesterday. That's what you told us yesterday,
9 and that's why I interrupted you, lest we should waste time. And I can
10 see now that the time for our break is drawing to a close. I would like
11 to complete this line of questioning before the break.
12 Mrs. Malaj, so let me ask you things that are not clear to the
13 Defence and that are important for the Defence, because we believe that
14 it is crucial for the trial, things that you did not say or things that
15 are, in the Defence's view, contrary to the facts. But I don't want to
16 argue anymore.
17 Mrs. Malaj, do you understand Serbian? Do you speak Serbian?
18 A. Just a little bit.
19 Q. How much? Well, your children went to school and they were
20 marked 1 to 5, so how would you mark your Serbian? How much do you
21 understand it? It would be -- would it be 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5? I'm sure
22 it's not 5. But how well do you speak Serbian? Be frank.
23 A. When I went to school I received the marks 3 or 4 in Serbian, but
24 from that time on I haven't practiced it much. I just know enough to get
25 by.
Page 857
1 Q. Well, now it's much clearer. So you did understand Serbian. The
2 reason why I ask this question has to do with Mr. Prascevic because he
3 addressed you. You asked him something. In what language did you ask
4 him? What did you ask him? You asked him what his name was. In what
5 language did you ask him that? What did you say, "Ko si ti," who are
6 you?
7 A. I spoke Albanian to him. I asked him, Who are you, and he said,
8 I am Milutin Prascevic. And he said, Madam, you can leave your home.
9 Take the whole family with you. Leave the cars behind. I spoke to him
10 in Albanian.
11 Q. Thank you. Can we agree that Mr. Prascevic understood very well
12 what you asked him, since he gave you this answer?
13 A. Yes, yes, he spoke very good Albanian. He spoke very good
14 Albanian.
15 Q. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. The order to leave your
16 homes, was it given in Albanian by him? Was it an order? How did he
17 tell you that?
18 A. In Albanian, both at our home -- when we were at our home, but
19 also to the whole village.
20 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I think it is time
21 for our break. I have maybe 10 or 15 minutes to complete this line of
22 questioning, but I don't want to use up all the time. I know that there
23 are some technical issues here.
24 JUDGE PARKER: Very well. We'll have a break now and resume at
25 4.00.
Page 858
1 --- Recess taken at 3.29 p.m.
2 --- On resuming at 4.04 p.m.
3 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Djordjevic.
4 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.
5 Q. Milutin Prascevic spoke to you in the English -- rather, in the
6 Albanian language. Who was present there at the time when you asked him
7 who he was and when he told you what he told you? So who was there with
8 you, next to you?
9 A. My family, the whole family.
10 Q. Were you standing next to your husband, in fact, when you asked
11 him this?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Did your husband speak to him at all, in addition to what you
14 told him?
15 A. Yes. Both of us spoke.
16 Q. Can you tell us, what did your husband talk about with Prascevic
17 at that time?
18 A. Nothing, just we were ordered to leave the house, and we did. He
19 said, You have to get out. My husband said, Okay, and I said the same,
20 and that's happened.
21 Q. Thank you. My next question is this: Had you seen
22 Milutin Prascevic at all before that occasion? Did he look familiar to
23 you? And if you knew him, where did you know him from?
24 A. No, I didn't know him from before. I knew him only on that
25 occasion, got to know him on that occasion, because he introduced
Page 859
1 himself.
2 Q. Do you know today where he was from, where he lived, where he
3 served?
4 A. I know that at that time he lived in Gjakove, he served in
5 Gjakove, but I don't know where he was from.
6 Q. Thank you. My next question is this: You were told to leave
7 that evening, your family and the whole village. Where were you told to
8 go?
9 A. I was told in my courtyard, in my house. That's where he came to
10 tell us.
11 Q. You did not understand my question. You were told to go where,
12 to leave your houses and to go where?
13 A. To Albania
14 Q. In your statement of the 6th of September, 2001, in the third
15 sentence at page 1 you say: So two years after the event, this is what
16 you're saying, first you say, "They ordered us to go to Meja" and then
17 two years later you say they ordered us to go to Albania, and today you
18 again say to Albania
19 reason? Why did you say first that you were to go to Meja, and you
20 reached Meja, and you will agree with me that it is very close to your
21 village, 2 to 3
22 Djakovica, and now you say that you were told to go to Albania. Could
23 you just very briefly tell us what this is all about? Nothing more.
24 A. Yes. We were ordered to go to Albania, but before you go to
25 Meja, because the road Korenice-Gjakove goes through Orize, Suhadoll,
Page 860
1 Meja, Brakoc, and then Gjakove, the town. That day we were not able to
2 go to Orize. We were told to go back. We were told to go back home by
3 Aca Micunovic together with another policeman. They came by car, and
4 they told us to go back home, and because he told us so, we turned back
5 and went home.
6 Q. Do you know what was the reason for all that, why you were told
7 to go back home? Because you will agree with me that place is 2 or
8 3 kilometres away from your village, that location that you reached and
9 you were then told to go back.
10 A. The place we reached is only 1 kilometre from Korenice. That's
11 the name of the village Suhadoll. Of course they were playing games with
12 us. That's why they did that.
13 Q. Apart from the local police personnel, you say that Prascevic was
14 an employee in Djakovica, which is 5 kilometres away from you village.
15 Now you mentioned Aca. I suppose that it would be Aca Micunovic. Was
16 there anyone else there, other policemen that you didn't know?
17 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Neuner.
18 MR. NEUNER: I'm sorry to interrupt my learned colleague. I'm
19 just rising because I needed some time to check the reference given by my
20 colleague in his earlier question, and I just wanted to bring this on the
21 record. As far as I understood the question, it related to the fact
22 whether the witness had said in her earlier statement that Mr. Prascevic
23 said that she was to go to Meja, and I've just checked the statement and
24 I don't find -- the statement of 6 September 2001, and I don't find any
25 reference to Meja in it. I just wanted to bring this on the record.
Page 861
1 According to the statement, it says that police officers came to
2 the village. The order was to go straight to Albania. So insofar -- I
3 believe the witness was consistent. I just wanted to put this on the
4 record as wrongly quoted. I don't find any reference to -- that the
5 witness had stated that she was told to go to Meja. Thank you.
6 JUDGE PARKER: Do you have the exhibit reference to the
7 statement, please, Mr. Neuner?
8 MR. NEUNER: As far as I know, the statement was not tendered by
9 my learned colleague this afternoon --
10 JUDGE PARKER: No, it was not.
11 MR. NEUNER: I certainly haven't tendered it either because I had
12 full examination-in-chief, Your Honours. It's not in evidence, as far as
13 I know.
14 JUDGE PARKER: You heard what Mr. Neuner has to say,
15 Mr. Djordjevic. Is there some other reference that you were referring to
16 in the statement?
17 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I fully take into
18 account this intervention by my colleague, Mr. Neuner, but not -- in
19 order not to waste time, I will now continue examining the witness and I
20 will go back to this issue later to provide an answer to the -- my
21 colleague. I will ask my case manager to check -- to see whether I had,
22 indeed, made a mistake. But with your leave I will now continue
23 questioning the witness. I will change the line of questioning, and I
24 will answer -- provide an answer later.
25 JUDGE PARKER: We would certainly look forward to hearing your
Page 862
1 answer, Mr. Djordjevic. Thank you.
2 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour. I will
3 now continue cross-examining the witness, and I will go back to this
4 issue once I have checked everything.
5 Q. Mrs. Malaj, do you know, are you aware of the fact that
6 Mr. Prascevic, the man that we have been talking about, was killed in
7 Meja on the 21st of April, 1999, in the afternoon, and that two Serb
8 policemen were also killed - Boban Lazarevic and Lugdrag Lazarevic. And
9 an Albanian Naser Arifaj was also killed and another Serb Miladin Docic
10 [phoen]. Do you have any knowledge of that incident?
11 A. I know that they were killed but no more than that. I heard, as
12 everybody hears of something, but I don't know anything else about them.
13 Q. Thank you. Since you don't know anything about that, I will not
14 be asking you any other questions about the circumstances of this
15 incident.
16 To complete this set of questions, I have several things to ask
17 you about, things that have to do with 1999 when you were telling us
18 about the tanks. In your statement you spoke about five tanks in 1999;
19 today you corrected yourself, saying there was a mass of tanks, that you
20 didn't know how many there were. Now I have to ask you: Why didn't you
21 say so before? Why did you wait until today to say it?
22 A. The point was when we saw them for the first time, when we talked
23 about it. After that date we saw them almost every day. It was
24 something that happened every day.
25 Q. This is the time when NATO air-strikes were already well
Page 863
1 underway, April 1999. Could you tell me, did you hear the aeroplanes
2 flying over Djakovica and in the area around you, NATO aircraft?
3 A. Yes, I did.
4 Q. And since you were able to see so many tanks, did you see the
5 NATO aircraft bomb those tanks? Did you or did you not?
6 A. No, I didn't see the NATO aircraft bombing them. We could hear
7 the noise but we didn't see them, the actual bombing, at least I didn't.
8 Q. So we will agree that you did not see NATO aircraft destroy a
9 single tank or some kind of an armoured fighting vehicle, and you told us
10 that there were so many of them.
11 A. In my village, when we saw the tanks every morning going on,
12 moving on the Gjakove-Junik road, on that morning they didn't bomb. In
13 the mornings the Serb forces usually undertook offensives on the
14 villages, as was the case with our village on the 27th of April. During
15 our stay in Korenice, NATO did not bomb anything. Nothing happened from
16 them.
17 Q. Mrs. Malaj, now we come to the 27th of April, 1999, and this
18 terrible event, terrible for you and your family, when you lost your son
19 and husband, your next of kin, and I'm really sorry for it, but I have to
20 ask you this: Can you tell me who were the soldiers who entered your
21 yard that morning? What were they dressed like? What were they
22 shouting? How did they speak? And how did they get there? You told us
23 what weapons they had so I'm not asking you that.
24 A. My yard was encircled by them, by 35 of them, with tanks,
25 Pinzgauers. They approached my house by firing gun-shots, speaking in
Page 864
1 Serbian. My yard was full of them. Around the house there were 35 of
2 them. My house was tightly surrounded by them. My son Blerim Malaj, who
3 at the time was 15 and a half years old, on that morning happened to be
4 in the toilet outside the house. He was the first one to be stopped by
5 them.
6 The second -- secondly, policemen, soldiers dressed in blue
7 camouflage uniforms, they were all there. It was a terrifying
8 experience. When I saw my son lying on the ground, a policeman or a
9 soldier - you are here to verify that because we thought that only the
10 army had long-barrel weapons, not the police - I started to scream when I
11 saw my son lying on the ground. The police or the soldier forced my son
12 to turn his head on the other side so that he could not see me.
13 We had three cars in the yard. One belonged to us, to my
14 husband, and two, to my brothers --
15 Q. I will have to ask you -- well, we heard this evidence from you
16 already. We heard about this terrible event yesterday. That's why I
17 interrupted you. It is very difficult for me to ask you about the events
18 of this date, but I have to do it as a professional.
19 Now, regarding the army that entered, the troops that entered
20 your yard, you told us there were 35 of them. It's a very exact figure.
21 Did you count them? Is this how you know that there were 35 of them?
22 This is very important for us. We need you to tell us that.
23 A. There were 35, maybe more. It couldn't have been less than that.
24 But I did say 35.
25 Q. Very well. I'm just asking you this because that's a large
Page 865
1 number of people, and it would take you a long time to count them and you
2 need to be very perceptive.
3 Now, my next question is: Were they all dressed in the same way;
4 and if so, could you please describe it in as much detail as you can, as
5 far as you can remember.
6 A. To my recollection, some wore masks; some had red ribbons around
7 their arms; some were dressed in blue uniforms. They were in my yard,
8 inside my yard, four or five of them, with red ribbons, with painted
9 faces, and they were holding their automatic rifles on the heads of my
10 son, my husband, my brother, three of them. And they, my husband, my son
11 and my brother, were shot in their heads as they were positioned. If the
12 Judges would allow me, I would like to show you their pictures.
13 JUDGE PARKER: Are these pictures that were taken at the time,
14 Mrs. Malaj?
15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The photographs that we received
16 later, I have them with me. My husband, my son, my nephew, my brother, I
17 have the pictures of all of them.
18 JUDGE PARKER: Perhaps what we'll do is let Mr. Djordjevic finish
19 his questions and then Mr. Neuner may want to follow that up. He will be
20 asking you some further questions later. So we'll wait for a moment,
21 ma'am.
22 Carry on, please, Mr. Djordjevic.
23 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Judge.
24 In the meantime, as regards the objection of my colleague
25 Mr. Neuner, we've discussed it, and Mr. Neuner is completely right as
Page 866
1 regards the reference. The Defence was mistaken in its reference.
2 So regarding what the witness said about heading to Meja, what my
3 colleague said, it is completely correct, but there was some permutation
4 of data in the course of our work on this case. We're talking about the
5 statement of the 31st of August and the 1st of September, 2000. This is
6 when it was stated that the police cursed her and insulted her and that
7 then they took their tractors and headed towards Meja. That's at page 3,
8 paragraph 1, first sentence. Of course this is the place where they
9 stopped later. It's practically the same place. And since the witness
10 did not mention, to the best of the Defence's knowledge, that they were
11 ordered to go to Albania
12 question. And I have to apologise once again to you and to everyone in
13 the courtroom for this inversion that we made. So --
14 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Djordjevic. I hope the witness
15 will appreciate that you have apologised that what she actually did say
16 in her original statement was that she was ordered to go to Albania
17 which is what she has told us here again today.
18 Could we mention, Mr. Djordjevic, that it is a matter of concern
19 that if you're putting to a witness that something materially different
20 was said in a previous statement, there needs to be great care about
21 that; that strictly the proper way to be to show the witness the previous
22 statement, have them look at it and see what they said, and then comment
23 on any difference.
24 Now, we've been allowing you to short-cut that procedure a little
25 by just saying what you understand the witness to have said before, and
Page 867
1 that can be very unfair to the witness if you haven't accurately
2 identified what was previously said.
3 We will keep this matter under observation, and in the meantime I
4 ask you to be particularly careful when putting to a witness that there's
5 been a change in what they have said from statement to when they gave
6 evidence. Thank you.
7 Now you're moving on with your questioning of the witness, I
8 believe.
9 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, it is because I
10 want to be very careful that I have to say that when it comes to the
11 witness's statement that I've just referred to - and the date is 31st
12 August and 1st September 2000 - which was provided to the investigators
13 Paolo Pastore Stocchi and the interpreter was Valentina Kumnova, on
14 page 2 out of the total of 6, and at the beginning of page 3, second
15 paragraph, there's no reference to Albania. The only reference is made
16 to the village of Meja
17 the witness with that, calling upon an erroneous statement of the 6th of
18 September, 2001. And this statement is of 31st August and 1st September
19 2000. And we're going to propose for these statements provided by the
20 witness should be admitted into evidence by the Chamber. I'm talking
21 about the 31st August statement and 1st of September statement 2000, and
22 also the statement given on the 6th of September 2001.
23 And now let me just look at the 65 ter list to be able to give
24 you the numbers of these documents. The first witness's statement, given
25 the 6th of September, 2001, is number from e-court, the English version,
Page 868
1 D001-3935; and B/C/S is D001-3941; and the Albanian version is D001-3947,
2 for the minutes of the 6th of September.
3 And the second document is marked as D001-3917 in English; B/C/S
4 is D001-3923; and the Albanian version is D001-3929, or 3954, rather.
5 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction: The second document
6 is D001-3917.
7 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Neuner.
8 MR. NEUNER: We would have no objection having both statements
9 tendered into evidence, Your Honours, so you can see yourself.
10 JUDGE PARKER: Could we indicate both to Mr. Neuner and to
11 Mr. Djordjevic that in accordance with decisions of the Appeals Chamber,
12 the normal procedure in this is not to receive into evidence earlier
13 statements; to simply rely on what is put to the witness in
14 cross-examination from a previous statement as accurately reflecting the
15 relevant part of that statement, and we then have the witness's comment
16 on that.
17 However, in this particular case, as there was a confusion as to
18 what was said earlier, it may be safer for us to receive the two
19 statements. We'll do that on this occasion, but I would like both
20 counsel to be aware that that will not be the usual course followed.
21 We will receive the two statements.
22 THE REGISTRAR: The first one, Your Honours, dated the 6th of
23 September, 2001, will be assigned P -- D00025, and the other one dated in
24 August would be assigned D00026, Your Honours.
25 JUDGE PARKER: I think it's the 31st of August and the 1st of
Page 869
1 September.
2 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] The 1st of September. Both
3 dates.
4 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you very much.
5 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Before I proceed with my
6 cross-examination, I would like to apologise to the Chamber for the
7 confusion that I've created quite inadvertently. In future I'm going to
8 pay attention to avoid any such misunderstandings.
9 Q. With regard to the convoy which was moving towards Albania
10 right in saying, based on your statement, that on the 27th of April you
11 were joined by people from the village of Guska
12 Djakovica?
13 A. Yes. People from Guska village were also in Korenice.
14 Q. Very well. In regard to what you have told us today and bearing
15 in mind the statement that will be admitted into evidence, on page 2,
16 paragraph 5, the last sentence reads:
17 "There were 17 people together with me, and there was also an
18 entire village population of Guska."
19 Let's clarify one thing: Were there only 17 people with you, or
20 was everybody from Guska already in Korenica?
21 A. Seventeen people from my family, my brothers with their families,
22 staying with me, while people from Guska, the entire village of Guska
23 was in Korenice, but they were in different houses. In my house we were
24 17.
25 Q. Thank you, Mrs. Malaj. While the convoy was moving towards
Page 870
1 Albania
2 you hear NATO aircraft flying and was there shelling at the time? I know
3 that a convoy did not come under the NATO shelling, but did you hear that
4 there was shelling around the convoy anywhere?
5 A. Our convoy was not shelled or hurt by NATO on that day. We were
6 escorted by the police and the army but not by NATO.
7 Q. You did not hear me. Did you hear NATO aircraft flying over
8 Djakovica and Prizren on that day when you were moving in the convoy?
9 I'm not asking you whether the convoy came under shells. I'm asking you
10 whether you heard anything of the sort as the convoy was moving towards
11 the Albanian border?
12 A. On that day I didn't.
13 Q. Thank you, Mrs. Malaj. Do you know that on the day when you were
14 moving towards the Albanian border there were extensive military
15 activities and fighting in and around Djakovica between the Serbian
16 security forces and the KLA? Are you aware of that? Do you have any
17 information to that effect?
18 A. I didn't hear that there was activities involving the KLA and the
19 Serb forces, but I did hear of the activities directed against the
20 civilians from the Serb forces. They exclusively dealt with civilians.
21 Q. Now that you've mentioned that, could you please tell me whether
22 on that day you were ill-treated in any way? Was anything taken or
23 seized from you? Were you harassed as you were moving towards the
24 Albanian border?
25 A. No, not on the way to Albania
Page 871
1 me while I was at home. They killed my dearest.
2 Q. I will agree with you that that is true. Do you know
3 Merita Dedaj? Does the name ring a bell?
4 A. Yes, I do.
5 Q. Was she in the convoy with you?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Did she also go to Albania
8 A. I don't know. Up to Bistrazhin we were together. The convoy was
9 huge and we were not close to each other. I know she was in the convoy,
10 but I don't know where she went to and where she stayed.
11 Q. Mrs. Malaj, do you know that after a conversation with the
12 priest, members of the Yugoslav Army said to those who were on tractors
13 or on other vehicles to proceed towards Albania, and to those who were on
14 foot, that they should return to their homes, to their villages. Are you
15 aware of that?
16 A. I was on foot the whole time. I don't know what they told to
17 people on the tractors. I wasn't there. But the priest, we called for
18 him. He did his best to negotiate that we go to Osek Pasa or --
19 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreter didn't catch the second name.
20 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] But the forces didn't let us go.
21 They said, You either go to Albania
22 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation]
23 Q. Didn't you say that you left your house on a tractor?
24 A. No. That day we couldn't take the tractor, neither the tractor
25 nor the cars. I wanted to tell you before, but you interrupted me. We
Page 872
1 didn't have any cars or tractors. They wanted the cars for themselves
2 and they didn't -- did not allow us to take the tractors. They even
3 didn't allow us to get any food or drink.
4 Q. I apologise. I asked you because I understood yesterday, you
5 said it clear and loud that you were not allowed to take the car, but you
6 were allowed to take the tractor. However, now you've corrected me, and
7 I appreciated that.
8 When with you return to Korenica?
9 A. On the 3rd of July, 1999.
10 Q. Your statement provided on the 6th of September, and this time
11 I'm going to double-check to be sure, tell me, please, not only in this
12 statement but in the previous ones provided in the year 2000, you were
13 not consistent about some things. You said that some houses in the
14 village were damaged after you were expelled to Albania and yours was
15 torched. Did I understand you correctly?
16 MR. NEUNER: Just out of caution, before the witness answers,
17 could we please have the references. It's some kind of suggestion you're
18 making here to the witness, and we don't have a page number --
19 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Of course. Of course, I'll
20 oblige immediately. Page 5, or rather the last page in all the versions
21 - the English, the B/C/S, and the Albanian - it's the last paragraph, or
22 the second on the page.
23 "I returned to Kosova on the 3rd of July, 1999. Some houses in
24 the village were damaged after our departure and expulsion to Albania
25 When I returned I found my house had been burned down, and there was
Page 873
1 nothing there for us," and this is what I mentioned in my question, and
2 this is the record of the statement given on the 31st of August -- I
3 apologise, the 6th of September, 2001, and signed in September 2001.
4 This is what I'm reading on the record, but the record was made on the
5 6th of September. It says that some houses were damaged and hers had
6 been torched.
7 This is actually the end of my cross-examination of this witness
8 today.
9 Q. I would like to ask you this: You said that some houses had been
10 damaged, and as far as I can understand, there were 70 families in the
11 village, but I did not understand how many houses there were in the
12 village. The fact that there were 70 families does not have to mean that
13 there were as many houses.
14 A. The whole village -- I'm going to speak about my house first. So
15 my house, the whole neighbourhood, the whole village, was burned down.
16 Maybe only ten houses escaped the damage or were not burned, ten houses
17 in all. All the other houses were burned down, starting from my house,
18 including my house, and all the other houses. And when we were leaving,
19 I could see the smoke coming out of them. I told you yesterday, when we
20 were leaving, about 15 houses were burning at the same time.
21 Q. Thank you, Mrs. Malaj. You actually repeated something that you
22 already said yesterday, and that's why I wish to ask you this: In the
23 statement that I showed you today, why did you say that some houses were
24 damaged when you returned? When you say "some," one might conclude that
25 it was 10 to 20 percent and the rest were okay. And today you're saying
Page 874
1 that the whole village had been burned down? Can you please explain the
2 difference in the statement that you provided back then and what you are
3 saying now?
4 A. The whole village was burned down. Only ten houses escaped at
5 the time. All of them were burned. Even the houses that were only
6 damaged, they were uninhabitable.
7 Q. You said that yesterday, you said it just a minute ago, and you
8 have just repeated it. I still haven't got a clear answer to my
9 question. When you were providing your statement, why did you say that
10 some houses were damaged, and now for the third time you're repeating
11 that the whole village had been torched? I see a difference here, and
12 I'm asking for an explanation, if you can provide one. If not, I'm not
13 going to insist.
14 JUDGE PARKER: The witness seems to be saying that the whole
15 village -- excuse me a minute, please, that the whole village was burned
16 except perhaps for some ten houses. I think the whole, less ten, is the
17 way she's putting it, rather than the whole.
18 Perhaps the witness might like to clarify that.
19 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] This is exactly how I understood
20 it, Your Honour, twice today and once yesterday; however, I face the
21 witness with her own statement in which she stated on the last page, on
22 the fifth page of the record, that some houses were damaged. She never
23 mentioned that the whole village had been torched. And my logical
24 question arising from this is how come she did not mention back then,
25 when she was providing her statement, that --
Page 875
1 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Your Honour.
2 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] -- the whole village had been
3 torched.
4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] [Previous translation continues]
5 ... damaged when it is burned down and the house is uninhabitable.
6 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I don't have any
7 more questions for this witness. I see that the witness has had a very
8 hard time being reminded of the tragedy she went through. I am not going
9 to insist on this last answer, although I did not get a clear answer from
10 Mrs. Malaj. I would like to apologise to Mrs. Malaj for any
11 embarrassment that I might have caused her with my questions. Thank you.
12 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Djordjevic.
13 Mr. Neuner.
14 MR. NEUNER: I would just ask, because the -- there was some
15 overlap between the translations, that the witness may repeat her last
16 answer. Because I checked the transcript, and I see only five, six words
17 here.
18 Re-examination by Mr. Neuner:
19 Q. Could you just repeat what you said a moment ago, because the
20 translators couldn't catch it, please.
21 A. Yes. Isn't -- well, you were speaking here about damaged houses.
22 These are houses that were uninhabitable. All of them were damaged and
23 burned. Only ten houses were not. Most of them were uninhabitable,
24 damaged, burned down. Myself, as a person, I went to my home, and I
25 couldn't live in my home. I went to Kosova but not to my home because I
Page 876
1 couldn't live there.
2 Q. Could I just ask you, for the ten houses who were not burned
3 down, how were they damaged?
4 A. Doors were broken down, windows were broken, furniture had been
5 trashed, walls had been damaged. Everything inside was damaged, and the
6 houses were looted, television sets and other things. But I didn't
7 mention these things in the statement, but these things had happened. We
8 could see that when we returned.
9 Q. Could I ask you, just relating to the tractor, you mentioned that
10 on the 27th of April you -- 1999, you left also your tractor behind.
11 When you returned, where was your tractor?
12 A. We didn't find it there. It had been taken. The cars were
13 burnt --
14 Q. I'm just asking for the tractor.
15 A. Well, it was not there in our courtyard.
16 Q. Did you manage to recover the tractor since?
17 A. No. To this day we haven't been able to recover it.
18 MR. NEUNER: The Prosecution has no further questions, Your
19 Honours.
20 JUDGE PARKER: You'll be very pleased to know, I'm sure, that
21 that completes the questioning for you. The Chamber would like to thank
22 you very much for coming to The Hague
23 been able to give. We appreciate that it is a very big strain for you to
24 have to go over these events, and we will look with care at the evidence
25 that you've been able to give to help us. So we would thank you very
Page 877
1 much, and the court officer will now assist you and show you out of the
2 courtroom. Thank you.
3 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you.
4 [The witness withdrew]
5 [Trial Chamber confers]
6 JUDGE PARKER: Ms. Kravetz.
7 MS. KRAVETZ: Good afternoon, Your Honours. The next Prosecution
8 witness is Mr. John Sweeney.
9 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you.
10 MS. KRAVETZ: Mr. Sweeney will be testifying about the
11 allegations in paragraph 75(C) and paragraph 77 of the indictment.
12 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you. We will have Mr. Sweeney brought into
13 court. Thank you.
14 [The witness entered court]
15 JUDGE PARKER: Good afternoon, sir.
16 THE WITNESS: Good afternoon.
17 JUDGE PARKER: Will you please read the affirmation which is on
18 the card now being passed to you, Mr. Sweeney.
19 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the
20 whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
21 WITNESS: JOHN PAUL SWEENEY
22 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you very much. You could sit down now.
23 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
24 JUDGE PARKER: Ms. Kravetz has some questions for you, to your
25 right.
Page 878
1 MS. KRAVETZ: Thank you, Your Honour.
2 Examination by Ms. Kravetz:
3 Q. Good morning, sir. Could you please state your name for the
4 record.
5 A. John Sweeney.
6 Q. Before I start with my questions, since we're both going to be
7 speaking the same language today in court, I just want to ask you to
8 pause between question and answer so the interpreters in the courtroom
9 can do their job properly.
10 Sir, where and where were you born? When and where?
11 A. I was born in Jersey
12 Q. And I understand that you're a journalist by profession; is that
13 correct?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. For how long have you been working as a journalist?
16 A. Oh, crikey. Since 1977 off and on. It was before I went to
17 university I had my first job, The Economist, and full time since 1981,
18 which is whatever that is, 20 years, 30 years.
19 Q. Where are you currently employed?
20 A. The BBC
21 TV programme on British television.
22 Q. And since when have you been working for the BBC?
23 A. Since 2001.
24 Q. In your capacity as a journalist, have you ever covered events in
25 the former Yugoslavia
Page 879
1 A. Yes. I started reporting from Belgrade, Vinkovci, Osijek
2 Dubrovnik
3 in Sarajevo
4 then I went back to Kosovo in 1999.
5 Q. And can you tell us what your work in Kosovo was about?
6 A. Essentially I -- I had, if you like, two jobs. My first job was
7 that I was a reporter for The Observer newspaper, and I had to write a
8 report pretty much every week of what was going on. At the same time I
9 got a commission from channel 4's Dispatches programme to do a story
10 about a massacre. Essentially what happened was that if you remember the
11 time scale of this, the --
12 Q. When -- could you tell us when this happened, when this --
13 A. Yeah. There was the Serb -- the Serb army attack, led by
14 President Milosevic, took place in the spring of 1999. Albanian refugees
15 in the hundreds of thousands fled to Albania
16 couldn't get into Kosovo because the Serb authorities prevented us from
17 doing our job and some people just couldn't get visas. Because of my
18 previous reporting, I was pretty sure I wouldn't get a certain visa or
19 any real meaningful freedom to report. So you were stuck on the other
20 side, on the Albanian side. And it was there that I saw, when I was
21 working for The Observer, I saw a group of exhausted men. We were quite
22 close to the Albanian Kosovo border, on the Albanian side, obviously, and
23 I talked to these men, and they had said they had been -- they had
24 escaped from a massacre of their friends and relatives, in Little Krusha,
25 Mala Krusa, in Albanian, Krusha e Vogel, and that event stuck in my mind.
Page 880
1 It is always better, in my experience, when you've got a huge thing
2 happening to concentrate on one particular story, rather than getting
3 lost in the mass of it.
4 So I went back to Tirana, and channel 4 Dispatches said, Right
5 now, let's do this story, it sounds good. And then we toured Albania
6 trying to find surviving witnesses to this massacre at Mala Krusa.
7 Q. Do you recall approximately when it was that you came across this
8 group of refugees who told you about --
9 A. It was -- I believe it's April 1999. It was immediately before
10 their Easter holidays. Sorry, it could well have been March. I believe
11 our programme appeared in May. So those dates, I'm sure there is
12 paperwork where you can -- you can see this. But it's hard for me to
13 remember -- I don't want to say something precisely and then be wrong.
14 But I believe it was March, April when I met these chaps, and then we
15 went looking in April and the programme appeared in May.
16 Q. Could you explain a bit more of how you went about trying to find
17 witnesses or survivors of this massacre?
18 A. The story was that there was a man with burnt hands and he had
19 hidden underneath the dead bodies. The whole of Albania was cram-packed,
20 jam-packed with Kosovo refugees, some 800.000, I believe, had fled, some
21 huge numbers of people, and they were staying in schools, in sports halls
22 with relatives all over the place. And there was no rhyme nor reason, no
23 logic, no central pooling of information. So what we had to do was track
24 them down. And I went around saying, Is anyone here from Mala Krusa or
25 Krusha e Vogel? And finally we started to track down witnesses, and we
Page 881
1 found the man with the burnt hands, and we found the women --
2 Q. Can I stop you there just so we can play a clip from your
3 documentary you produced at the time.
4 MS. KRAVETZ: This is 65 ter 0114, and we're going to see it --
5 JUDGE PARKER: I'm finding it very difficult to catch what you're
6 saying, Ms. Kravetz. I'm sorry, could you just keep your voice a little
7 a little up.
8 MS. KRAVETZ: I'm sorry. Yes. I think I'm a bit far from the
9 microphone today.
10 We're going to play a short clip. This is 65 ter 0114.
11 [Video-clip played]
12 "THE PRESENTER: But there are so many claims of massacre.
13 What's needed is hard evidence. We set out to uncover what really
14 happened in just one small place. We set out to find someone who didn't
15 just hear of the killing but saw it with their own eyes. We set out to
16 name the killers. Albania
17 with an avalanche of humanity, finding anyone from Little Krusha, just a
18 thousand souls in the chaos of half a million of refugees is not going to
19 be easy.
20 "We are looking for people from Krusha e Vogel. We are looking
21 for people from Krusha e Vogel.
22 "To help me I called up an old friend, the writer Agim Neza, who
23 knows his way around."
24 MS. KRAVETZ:
25 Q. Sir, do you recall when these images that we just saw were
Page 882
1 filmed?
2 A. They would have been filmed in April.
3 Q. And where were you when we saw you there?
4 A. I think that was some kind of reception centre for refugees.
5 From memory, I think that could well be Tirana. I'm not sure. Because
6 as -- we went looking around the whole of Albania. We were based in
7 Tirana, so it was the obvious place to start. I think we ended up in
8 Elbasan. But there were -- there was an awful lot of refugees, and we
9 did an awful lot of digging before we found people, because it was like
10 looking for a needle in a haystack.
11 Q. Was the situation in other refugee camps you visited similar to
12 the conditions we saw here in this clip?
13 A. Yes. I mean, that was -- essentially things were desperate to
14 begin with because there were so many people and the weather was worse.
15 So when they originally came over the mountain side, the -- eastern
16 Albania
17 very backwards. There's no facilities. So people's lives are desperate.
18 As they got down towards Tirana, things were better. So with those
19 conditions actually are some of the better conditions of some of the
20 refugee camps. As time -- you know, as the weeks went by, things got
21 better, but life was grim.
22 Q. And you told us you were able to find some eye-witnesses to the
23 massacre. Could you tell us what -- what they told you had happened in
24 Mala Krusa?
25 A. I need to be very precise about what we saw and what we filmed.
Page 883
1 There was a large number of women and children who witnessed the
2 selection, which is men -- you know, men to one side, men and boys to one
3 side; women and the younger children and the younger boys to the other.
4 So they, in a sense, did not witness the massacre itself. What they saw
5 was the selection, and they said, they identified some of their Serb
6 neighbours. Even though they had balaclavas on, they could tell who they
7 were because they lived with them for so many years.
8 Also, we were looking for a group of -- a tiny group of men, who
9 I understand were six, who had actually been in the hay barn, the Batusha
10 hay barn, had been machine-gunned but had managed to survive by hiding --
11 by falling first and avoiding the bullets and being protected by the dead
12 on top of them. And what happened with the hay barn is that after the
13 machine-gunning, I was told, that the barn was set on fire, and one of
14 these man had burned hands. I believe his name is Mehmet Krasniqi, or
15 Batusha. We found him, and he was the first guy. And then we found two
16 or three other of the survivors, and we put those in our film.
17 MS. KRAVETZ: I would like to play a second clip from this same
18 exhibit, if we could proceed with that.
19 [Video-clip played]
20 "THE PRESENTER: At last we were about to meet a witness of the
21 ethnic cleansing at Mala Krusa. This is all that is left of the Batusha
22 family; grandmother Batusha, the wives of her missing sons, and their
23 youngest children."
24 MS. KRAVETZ:
25 Q. Could you comment on the images we just saw? Who were these
Page 884
1 women and children who were on this video?
2 A. The old lady is Granny Batusha, and she lost a number of her
3 sons. One of them was working on a building site in Germany, and he
4 survived. But many of her men in the family, either husbands and the
5 older sons of the women in the picture, they'd all been killed in the
6 massacre. I believe I'm right in thinking that she lost eight men or
7 boys. So you see the women, and there are no men.
8 Q. And how were you able to locate these members of the Batusha
9 family?
10 A. We kept on asking, and eventually we found somebody who knew
11 where they were, and I think they were staying with relatives in Elbasan.
12 So having found the house, we went to the house, and we knew we were --
13 we found a family who had been directly affected by the massacre. So
14 essentially the -- the story which I'd started with, these were people
15 who knew what had happened because they had witnessed -- the women and
16 children, they hadn't seen the massacre. They'd seen the selection and
17 then heard the machine-gun fire, so they were good witnesses.
18 Q. Did these women tell you anything about who was responsible for
19 the killing of the men in the Batusha family?
20 A. Yes. They identified them. Remember, this is a village half
21 Serb, half Albanian, which had been very peaceful, and so that the
22 problems which had visited both communities before in 1998 hadn't
23 happened in that part of Kosovo and in particular in that village. So
24 they were still friends and -- they thought they were friends, and they
25 knew the villagers very, very well. They lived with them all their
Page 885
1 lives. So even if you stick a balaclava on, you can still tell somebody
2 from the way they walk and so forth. In particular, they singled out a
3 number of people, one of whom was Dimitri. He's an old silver-haired
4 man. And Sava Nikolic, Sveta Tasic, those were two other names that I
5 recall.
6 We didn't have faces; we didn't have photographs of them. It was
7 difficult to work out, and obviously in television you want to find
8 faces. You want to show faces of these people. So what I was determined
9 to do when NATO was actually going into Kosovo was to go to Mala Krusa
10 and find out more and find out for myself, and that's what we did.
11 Q. When you were filming this documentary that we just saw, were you
12 able to enter Kosovo?
13 A. No, it was impossible. It was impossible to do it safely. Some
14 people had -- I know there were some western journalists who were in
15 Belgrade
16 of the Milosevic regime and that of my newspaper would have made it
17 difficult for me to enter Serbia
18 into Kosovo. For me it was impossible.
19 Q. When was this broadcast aired or this documentary aired?
20 A. I believe it was aired in May. I'm sorry to be fuzzy. I can't
21 remember the precise date, but I think it was roundabout May the 20th.
22 The Milosevic indictment was announced a couple of days after our
23 programme.
24 Q. And what was the name of this documentary we just saw clips of?
25 A. I'm -- the second one is called "Prime suspects." I think this
Page 886
1 one is called "Witness to Murder." I'm not sure.
2 Q. Okay, that's fine. How did you proceed to interview the
3 different persons that you met in Albania
4 first documentary?
5 A. We had a translator, obviously. I don't speak Albanian. And we
6 would sit down and talk to people. The women, we interviewed all at the
7 same time. As time progressed, it struck me that as well as doing a
8 piece of journalism here, there was something more, actually that we
9 were -- in a place that we were ahead of the war crimes investigation,
10 because I knew there was going to be a war crimes investigation, and it
11 struck me that it was important, as much as we could, to interview key
12 witnesses separately and away from other people, as much as we could,
13 because we wanted to get their evidence on its own and to be, if you
14 like, as correct and forensic and evidential as possible. So when we did
15 track down the people who had actually been in the hay barn and survived,
16 the plan was to try and interview them on their own or in very small
17 numbers.
18 Q. And did the accounts of the different persons you interviewed in
19 relation to this incident corroborate each other, or were there
20 disparities between the different accounts?
21 A. There's always a small number of little conflicts, but
22 essentially the story as told was corroborated by each other. And the
23 story was, and I think the numbers -- my numbers are right, but I believe
24 there was 109 men and boys were selected, taken to the hay barn. Then,
25 they told me, the survivors told me, the machine-gunner came, and he was
Page 887
1 late and he -- all of the men were facing with their backs to the
2 machine-gun, with their hands over their heads like that. They actually
3 showed that. The machine-gun blasted away. The survivors fell down very
4 quickly and then other men fell on their -- fell on top of them. And
5 many of the men were not immediately dead, and they could hear the
6 groans. Then the barn was set on fire and most of the Serb killers had
7 run away. And then the last few survivors ran out of the barn and ran
8 away and they managed to escape.
9 So that is the kind of fundamental story which everybody who --
10 all of the survivors told, and it was corroborated in some way by the
11 women and children who had seen the selection.
12 Q. And did these different persons that you interviewed give you any
13 indication as to when this massacre had taken place?
14 A. Yes. Again the dates -- I haven't got my original notebooks with
15 me. The precise date is on the -- the precise date is I think in the
16 film, but I don't want to -- I can't remember it off the top of my head
17 right now, and I'm frightened of saying something which might be wrong.
18 So I'll -- can I get back to you? Can I --
19 Q. That's fine.
20 MS. KRAVETZ: Your Honours, I seek to tender this documentary,
21 this exhibit, at this time. It's P -- it's 00114. That's the 65 ter
22 number.
23 JUDGE PARKER: It will be received.
24 THE REGISTRAR: That will be P00297, Your Honours.
25 MS. KRAVETZ: Your Honours, I'm going to move on to a different
Page 888
1 topic, so I wonder if we could take the break early, just because I want
2 to show some other clips, and they will be interrupted if we begin with
3 them now.
4 JUDGE PARKER: Very well. We'll have the second break now and
5 resume at five minutes to 6.00.
6 MS. KRAVETZ: Thank you.
7 --- Recess taken at 5.23 p.m.
8 --- On resuming at 5.58 p.m.
9 JUDGE PARKER: Ms. Kravetz.
10 MS. KRAVETZ: Thank you, Your Honour.
11 Q. Sir --
12 MS. KRAVETZ: I'm sorry, I was having some problems with my
13 headphones. That's why I was speaking so softly before, but now that's
14 been solved, thanks to my case manager.
15 Q. Sir, before the break you were telling us that while you were
16 investigating this first documentary, you were determined to go to Kosovo
17 and find out for yourself what had happened at Mala Krusa. Did you
18 eventually make it in Kosovo?
19 A. Yes. With the -- when the British Army went into Kosovo, I went
20 with them. I rode on the front of a tank. We arrived in Pristina, and I
21 did my stuff for The Observer. And then after a few days in Pristina, I
22 met up with a cameraman James Miller, and we went down -- I believe we
23 went to Prizren first, established a base, and then went the next day to
24 Mala Krusa.
25 Remember what's happened here is that we've actually -- we
Page 889
1 arrived in Mala Krusa before everybody else did, because most of the
2 Albanians were still -- the Kosovars were still back in Albania because
3 they hadn't been given the all-clear to come back to their homes. So we
4 arrived, and we were ahead of the majority of the survivors, and we saw a
5 scene of destruction.
6 Q. Sir, do you recall approximately when it was that you entered
7 Kosovo?
8 A. I'm thinking the 14th of June. Is that -- that was the very
9 first day when NATO went in. I went in with NATO, so I believe that's
10 the 14th of June. Is that right?
11 Q. That is -- well --
12 A. Yes. Yes. And so anyway, it's mid-June, but it's the first day,
13 and we went in to Kosovo.
14 Now, lots of Kosovo was intact, i.e., you drive past and you
15 wouldn't be able to see that there had been some kind of war taking
16 place, and certainly that's true of the hinterland towards Pristina.
17 When you went toward Prizren, Mala Krusa, places like that, there was a
18 complete difference, from the Albanian homes - and we heard from people
19 that they were Albanian homes - but you could see they'd lost their
20 roofs, they'd been burnt down, they'd been wrecked and destroyed. And
21 the Serb homes were at that point intact and the Serbs who had been
22 living in them were -- if they were in a large village of community where
23 they felt safe, they stayed. But most of the rest had fled. So when we
24 arrived in Mala Krusa, the village was empty. All the Albanian homes
25 were gutted, without roofs, burnt, and the Serb homes were empty but
Page 890
1 intact.
2 Q. Now, you told us that you had prepared a second documentary which
3 was called "Prime Suspects."
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. What does this documentary deal with?
6 A. This documentary dealt with the -- the story -- it took the story
7 further on. Essentially we -- for the first time we were able to see for
8 ourselves what had happened in Mala Krusa. We were able to see the site
9 of the Batusha hay barn where the machine-gunning had taking place. We
10 were able to see the homes and get the geography, and I was able to go
11 into the Serb homes -- remember, as a journalist, I was looking for
12 photographs. I wanted to put a face to these names. And for that reason
13 I was looking for things like passports, and what I found was army
14 passbooks. But essentially we did a much more detailed film, and we were
15 able to put faces and names to the people who did the killing.
16 MS. KRAVETZ: I would like to play a second -- a third clip, and
17 this is a clip from Exhibit 6 -- 00115, if we could view that briefly.
18 [Video-clip played]
19 "THE PRESENTER: It's mid-June. The war is over. Hours after
20 NATO rolls into Kosovo, I'm close on their heels. The Serb forces are
21 retreating, but liberation comes too late for 10.000 murdered Albanians.
22 "Krusha e Vogel? Krusha e Vogel?
23 "Our murder inquiry starts at the scene of the crime. This is
24 Little Krusha, a ruin of a village in a ruin of a country. You can't get
25 to the bottom of 10.000 murders. You can try with a hundred.
Page 891
1 Little Krusha is empty, abandoned, yet full of ghosts. This is the
2 aftermath of ethnic cleansing."
3 MS. KRAVETZ:
4 Q. Mr. Sweeney, are these images we saw just now part of the second
5 documentary that you filmed regarding the massacre in Mala Krusa?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Now, we saw a series of destroyed houses on the screen. How many
8 of the houses in Mala Krusa looked like the ones we just saw there?
9 A. It's hard to -- I don't want to put a precise number on it, but I
10 would say dozens, so in the region of something like at least 20 or 30
11 houses of the sort were gutted, were wrecks.
12 Q. And you told us that you saw destruction of Albanian homes but
13 that Serb homes had been left intact. How were you able to tell which
14 ones were the Serb homes?
15 A. Well, because of the nature of what happened, the Albanians had
16 run away to Albania
17 then they'd been burnt, as I understand it. So they weren't around to
18 defend their homes so that the -- one became very used at that precise
19 time in thinking that if it -- if a house had no roof, it had been -- it
20 was Albanian, and if a house was intact, it was Serb.
21 Now, what happened later was that as it -- as the Albanians came
22 home into Mala Krusa, they realised that the Serbs weren't going to come
23 back because of the massacre, and then they decided to burn the Serb
24 homes, and we also put that in our film. But when I first arrived, all
25 the Albanian homes, it seemed to us, were wrecked and not the Serbs.
Page 892
1 There had been -- some of them had been kind of looted. I went
2 into -- I went to some of the Serb houses and people had -- the Albanians
3 had come in and sort of rummaged around, possibly looking for money.
4 They'd certainly sort of put clothes and stuff, so that they looked
5 messy, but essentially the buildings were intact, hadn't been set on
6 fire.
7 Q. And you gave us a date earlier of mid -- sometime in mid-June.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. That would be the time when -- was that the time when these
10 images we saw were filmed?
11 A. Yes. I think we're talking about -- if NATO went in on the 14th
12 of June, if I'm right - it's either the 12th or the 14th, I can't be
13 quite sure - then the week -- basically as quickly as possible, so within
14 a -- I think on the Sunday, that would be the 15th, I went to Prizren
15 and, therefore, we started filming the 16th.
16 Remember, this is a film where we -- when you make a film you
17 shoot images all the time and then you edit them, so not every image will
18 have been taken in a kind of linear sequence. Having said that, when we
19 interviewed people, we were pretty -- we make a lot of effort to be
20 correct about that. So we wouldn't jump-cut an interview or get it
21 completely, the timing, wrong.
22 The film is essentially linear in that this happened and then
23 this happened and then this happened. So first arrival, mid-June.
24 Albanian homes in Mala Krusa destroyed by fire, and the Serb houses were
25 empty. The Serbs had left, but their buildings were intact.
Page 893
1 Q. You told us earlier that you were able to find the barn where you
2 had heard this massacre had taken place. How were you able to find the
3 Batusha barn?
4 A. It fooled us as first. We didn't see it. There was no barn.
5 There were two holes in the ground. There was a field and two holes in
6 the ground. Later, a few days later, it rained heavily and the water
7 appeared and that's where I believe there's some still photographs of it.
8 But essentially we didn't know what we were looking at. We were looking
9 for a hay barn because the women and children had described the hay barn,
10 but we didn't know that it had been dynamited. But we kind of deduced
11 that when somebody said, No, no, no, it's here, it's here, it's here.
12 And then looking at the image of the hay barn, it seems to me
13 that at some point the Serb soldiers dynamited the hay barn, and you got
14 a kind of blast effect. there's a building against which it was leaning
15 and there are two holes in the walls of that building, and that's -- I've
16 been to lots of war zones, so this is an educated guess, but they put
17 some dynamite in, and the force of the explosion blew those holes in the
18 brick-work of the adjoining building.
19 There was -- if you see, there was a boot. Somebody left a boot.
20 I believe there was a couple of bones. Now, they could be animal bones
21 or human bones, I don't know, but it looked suspicious. And that was it.
22 There was no -- there were no dead bodies; they'd all gone. So it was a,
23 you know -- we -- I don't know what I was expecting, but what we found
24 was, it seems to -- it seemed to us at the time, a deliberate attempt to
25 destroy the evidence of mass killing.
Page 894
1 By the way, in the clip I'd spoke of 10.000 deaths. Now, the
2 film, I believe, went out in September. Again, I'm guessing; I can't be
3 sure of that. And at the time 10.000 deaths was the best journalistic
4 estimate, and obviously the war crimes tribunal, other people hadn't done
5 their work. I understand the number is around 5.000, between 3.000 and
6 5.000. That's a more correct number. So obviously the 10.000 number
7 that I cited in the film then, may well be wrong. Obviously that was
8 the -- it was the best journalistic estimate we could do at the time.
9 Q. When you said the film went out in September, you're referring to
10 the second --
11 A. The second film. It went -- obviously, we -- it could have even
12 been October. I'm not sure. It's ten years ago, so I can't remember
13 precisely. But essentially what happened was from mid-June, I stayed
14 there for a month. And my friend and colleague, the cameraman,
15 Jonas Miller, he, I believe, stayed on longer or came back for a second
16 visit while I was on holiday with my kids. So there is -- there are some
17 scenes which are at the end of the film where I wasn't physically
18 present, but he shot them. In particular, this is the burning of the
19 Serb houses by the Albanians. It's in the film. I wasn't physically
20 there, but you can see it.
21 Q. And this burning of Serb houses by the Albanians happened
22 approximately when?
23 A. I'm talking roughly, but it's something like four weeks after
24 June the 14th, so sometime in July, late July when I was -- when I was on
25 holiday.
Page 895
1 Q. Okay, very well.
2 MS. KRAVETZ: I would like to play a further clip from this same
3 documentary, if we could proceed with that.
4 [Video-clip played]
5 "THE PRESENTER: The trail of evidence begins with the hay barn.
6 But where is it? The village is full of gutted hay barns. One of the
7 first refugees to return is someone who had actually survived the
8 machine-gunning. Everything he owned is ashes, and that is not the worst
9 of it. Xhemajl Shehu [phoen] lost 40 members of his family. He knows
10 exactly where the hay barn is. The last time Xhemajl had taken this path
11 he had been forced at gunpoint along with 111 men of his village. The
12 hay barn isn't here anymore. Instead, just a crater. No bullets, no
13 blood, no bodies. The Serbs had blown it up.
14 "I still find it hard to believe that I'm alive. I wished
15 they'd killed me rather than my sons. Here I lost two of my sons, three
16 brothers, and five nephews. Altogether 40 of my family were killed. Now
17 I have to look after what's left of my family.
18 "This man, Rasim Batusha is the owner of a hay barn. He is
19 alive because he was away working on a building site in Germany. Now
20 everything is gone. Twenty-two of Rasim's relatives were murdered here,
21 among them his three brothers and his eldest son."
22 MS. KRAVETZ:
23 Q. Sir, in those images we saw one of the survivors of the massacre.
24 How were you able to locate this person?
25 A. Essentially we would spend the whole day, every day, in
Page 896
1 Mala Krusa for about a month, and so we would meet -- we'd meet people,
2 and I'm sure we met Mr. Shehu in the village. Obviously, we were -- we
3 wanted to hear his story and we filmed him. We filmed an interview with
4 him, and then we would sort of see him around. But we were -- we
5 wanted -- obviously, as a journalist, a simple focal point, we wanted to
6 talk to survivors of the massacre.
7 Mr. Shehu was a good witness. He's not a particularly vivid man.
8 I don't mean that to be a criticism of him. It's just that he's
9 perhaps -- well, he'd been through a terrible thing. So we -- having
10 interviewed him, we were still on the lookout for more witnesses who
11 could describe the sequence of events leading up to the massacre and what
12 happened afterwards as well.
13 Q. We just saw images of the crater on the ground.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. You mentioned that some days later it had rained.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. So was the crater later filled with water?
18 A. Yes. There were two holes -- essentially there were two holes in
19 the ground, maybe two sticks of dynamite, I don't know, but -- and they
20 later filled -- it rained heavily one day, and it filled with water. So
21 the pictures you've shown me earlier are of -- there is water in the
22 holes. So when we first arrived there was no water, so those photographs
23 were taken after we'd been there.
24 Q. What was the next step in your investigation?
25 A. Well, we continued to -- what we wanted to do was put names to
Page 897
1 faces, so we'd heard in Albania
2 about Dimitri Nikolic was that Granny Batusha recognised him, and she
3 actually -- because after the selection, he had appeared, again I believe
4 wearing a balaclava, but obvious to someone who had known him all his
5 life. And she said, Dimitri, as if -- well, she was expressing her
6 outrage and her shock and disgust that, this man who'd been a neighbour
7 all his life, had taken part in the killing of her family.
8 And so we were looking for him and physical images of him so we
9 could put them on the tele, obviously, and in the newspaper. And
10 Sveta Tasic, Sava Nikolic, and so we had two or three names, and as time
11 wore on, we built a bigger and bigger picture.
12 We also came across two pieces of evidence which were a -- what
13 appeared to us to be a rota, like a guard rota. I'm mentioning that they
14 had the Serb men put themselves into some kind of -- in English we'd call
15 it a home guard arrangement, and we found one piece of paper and were
16 given a notebook by an Albanian lady who knew we were looking for this
17 stuff, which was -- set out this rota. So there were two separate pieces
18 of information.
19 I picked up the first one -- I picked up the piece of paper
20 myself, and we got the notebook from one of the Albanian women who had
21 been away, who had come back, who had been away from Albania and come
22 back, and she found it.
23 And also, we went into -- I went into the empty Serb houses
24 before they were torched by the Albanians later and looked for -- I was
25 looking for photographs and films and home movies or whatever, so we
Page 898
1 could see these people, and that's how I came across the army passbook.
2 MS. KRAVETZ: Could we see another clip from this same
3 documentary, if we could play that now.
4 [Video-clip played]
5 "THE PRESENTER: I've got to be careful. The Serbs have left
6 booby-traps all along the place. Mines are still claiming lives here.
7 Our first break, photographs from the Nikolic family album. There appear
8 to be as many Nikolics in Little Krusha as there are Sweeneys in Donegal.
9 "Our second break, a handful of Serb home videos. With a bit of
10 luck, our suspects might have starring roles.
11 "Our third break, Nikolic Sava. Sava Nikolic. The Serbs were
12 outnumbered 10:1 in Kosovo. They were the ones with the fire power.
13 Nearly every Serb, man, and boy in the village was armed and mobilised in
14 the local militia. The Serb militia were careless. They left this
15 behind. It looks like a scruffy exercise book, but it's material
16 evidence. In it are a series of names of soldiers who were on guard in
17 Little Krusha after the massacre. Amongst the names are two that are
18 becoming all too familiar: Sveta Tasic and Sava Nikolic.
19 "And there's another find. The duty rota, another item of
20 material evidence. It's astonishing they've left this behind. This list
21 identifies 24 names, making up three militia platoons in Little Krusha.
22 Some we know have formed. The document places all 24 men on militia duty
23 in the village. All of these men know something about the clean-up
24 operation. Some of them know something about the murders. All are
25 suspects now."
Page 899
1 MS. KRAVETZ:
2 Q. Sir, I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice. In the clip we saw you
3 entering a house. Whose house was that that we saw you entering?
4 A. I believe the first house -- basically that's a compilation of
5 shots. I believe the first house is Dimitri Nikolic's house, and the
6 second one is Sava Nikolic's house. It's a long time ago so I'm -- that
7 is my memory. It may be wrong.
8 Q. And who informed you that these were the houses of these two men?
9 A. The Albanian people like Mr. Shehu who said that, That's where
10 Dimitri lives and that's where Sava Nikolic lives. It was a kind of --
11 it wasn't a very difficult exercise because one knew what the Serb houses
12 were, partly because some of them had Cyrillic, Serbia united will never
13 be defeated, the four Ss and some of them -- and all of them were intact,
14 they hadn't been burned down.
15 So essentially I think what I did was I went to all of the houses
16 in the centre of the village which were intact. There was a risk to
17 this, and in some ways I was bloody lucky, there was in the village -- we
18 did find that there was a stream, and we went and looked at it. And
19 there was a trip wire for a booby-trap connected to a grenade, which had
20 I tripped it would have blown off, and I might not be here. So we didn't
21 know for a fact whether they had booby-trapped their own homes. Our
22 hunch was that they left in such a hurry once NATO had come in, that they
23 left very, very quickly, and that's what happened. But it was a slightly
24 nervous operation going into these houses because you didn't know whether
25 we'd come across a booby-trap.
Page 900
1 Q. Now, we saw you holding a notebook in one of those images. Is
2 that the notebook you were referring to earlier?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. That was provided by a local Albanian woman?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And we also saw you with a separate sheet of paper?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. That was something you discovered yourself?
9 A. Yes. It was in a house -- it was in a Serb house lying around.
10 I didn't -- I can remember picking it up. I can't remember which house.
11 MS. KRAVETZ: Could we have Exhibit 02328 up on the screen. Oh,
12 we can't? Is there a problem? I can show it to the witness if there's a
13 technical problem. I can --
14 JUDGE PARKER: The issue is whether you're going to exhibit the
15 film clip.
16 MS. KRAVETZ: I am, but I'm going to continue -- we're going to
17 view it later, but I can show the two exhibits later, to the witness.
18 It's no problem. We can continue with the video-clip for now.
19 Q. Sir, what did you do with the photographs that you found in this
20 house?
21 A. We took them back to London
22 embarrassment of riches because we had loads of home videos of the Serbs
23 of Mala Krusa, plus the passports, plus the photos or whatever, so we --
24 we selected -- having heard from the Albanians who their -- who were the
25 people they knew, they recognised, the women and the -- the surviving
Page 901
1 women and children recognised from the selection, and so we put those in
2 the programme, and then we gave all of the material to the -- to you, to
3 the war crimes tribunal.
4 Q. You referred to the surviving women and children recognising the
5 persons from the selection.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. When did this happen, that you showed these photographs to the
8 surviving women and children?
9 A. We -- we did it several times, but again it was -- it was all in
10 this matter of time period. Essentially what happened, and you can see
11 from the film, there is a moment when the Batusha family come back
12 from -- from Albania
13 time. they never saw the massacre. They only saw the selection and then
14 heard the machine-gun. So they fear their men are dead and that their
15 men and sons and boys are dead, but they don't know it as a fact.
16 So it was a horrendous scene to witness, and you can see it in
17 the film, the women are screaming. But this is the first time that they
18 realise that their men are dead. They also, when they left, their homes
19 were still upright. Some were being burnt, but they hadn't seen the
20 level of destruction. So they come home and they realise their homes are
21 burnt to cinders, and their men are still missing, and the hay barn is a
22 hole in the ground. So there's this sort of ghastly timing when all of
23 the -- ghastly time when the women of the Batusha family realise what's
24 happened.
25 After that we went on the -- sorry, various things are happening
Page 902
1 all at the same time. We went on our photograph -- I went to get hold of
2 the photographs and the passbooks and all of that stuff when the village
3 was still empty, before they'd come back. Once they'd settled down and
4 recovered their equilibriums, we went to not just one but a number of the
5 Albanians and said, Who's that? Who's that? And who's that? And
6 various of the Albanians recognised their neighbours, and said, Right,
7 that's Dimitri Nikolic. That's Nikolic. That's Sveta Tasic.
8 So again we were conscious of the war crimes tribunal, and at the
9 back of my mind, I wanted more than one, if you like, one source of
10 information. The more sources of information we could have, the better,
11 the stronger the identification. So we checked it out with a number of
12 people.
13 In Albanian society, men -- the women are used to not -- it's the
14 men who take the kind of public roles or whatever, so we ended up showing
15 the photographs, I think, to Mr. Shehu and one of the other survivors as
16 well. That's the clip that we use in the film, but we did more of it.
17 Q. And what did these different people tell you about the
18 photographs? Were they actually able to identify --
19 A. Yes, they were -- they'd known these people all their lives.
20 They lived with them. They helped start their cars in the cold, et
21 cetera, et cetera, so they knew them very, very well. And they were
22 immediately able to identify them very, very confidently as the people
23 that they had seen take part in the selection -- these are the women now,
24 take part in the selection which led to the massacre.
25 Q. Do you recall who were the persons that they identified as being
Page 903
1 responsible for --
2 A. There were three --
3 THE COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but the question is
4 not done yet before the witness is answering. It's making it very, very
5 complicated to write this.
6 JUDGE PARKER: The process, I'm afraid, is that there is a
7 consequential translation into a number of languages, and if we don't get
8 recorded on here the full question before you commence the answer, we
9 lose either part of the first question or part of your answer. So if
10 it's possible, both Ms. Kravetz and for you as well, Mr. Sweeney, to try
11 and watch the screen --
12 THE WITNESS: It's been switched off, in my defence. Which
13 button is it? It's that one there. Sorry. I do apologise.
14 JUDGE PARKER: That's not directly your fault, Mr. Sweeney. The
15 problem's identified. We will now try and pace the question, pause, the
16 answer, so that we don't get ahead of those trying to record and
17 translate. Thank you.
18 MS. KRAVETZ:
19 Q. If you can just complete your answer.
20 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.
21 MS. KRAVETZ:
22 Q. If you could just complete the answer you were given. I was
23 asking whether the persons you had shown -- who the persons you had shown
24 the photograph to had identified as being responsible for this massacre.
25 A. The people they identified -- in a sense, the film is -- the film
Page 904
1 is a better memory than mine, but the three names that stick out:
2 Dimitri Nikolic, because he was the head of the -- of the Nikolic clan.
3 He was the old man. Sava
4 led the massacre. They were just the best known people the villagers,
5 the women in particular, recognised in -- taking part in the selection.
6 By the way, there's something that happened just in terms of
7 understanding. When this -- the massacre was a consequence or followed
8 the NATO air-strike, the NATO air campaign, which started in the spring.
9 Then the Serbs came, and they arrived, and the villagers -- the Albanian
10 villagers told me that they came from buses. So the men, the Serb --
11 Serb soldiers came in buses, some of them with Nis plates, so they knew
12 the buses were Nis
13 All of the Albanians ran up into the hills and -- behind the
14 village and stayed there overnight and were kind of persuaded to come
15 back to the village the next day. Everything would be okay. They came
16 back. Then later that day, as I understand it, was the selection and the
17 machine-gunning.
18 So there had been quite a time-frame for the Albanians to
19 recognise their Serb neighbours, and what -- those three men, they placed
20 them there. Now, I don't know who was in charge of the massacre, and I
21 doubt whether Serb farmers who are part-time soldiers would be in charge
22 of it. It's just that the Albanians said, Right, I know him and him and
23 him. So that's the -- that's the strength of the identification.
24 Q. Thank you.
25 MS. KRAVETZ: If we could play a further clip from the
Page 905
1 documentary.
2 THE WITNESS: This one? Okay.
3 [Video-clip played]
4 "THE PRESENTER: I'd taken a pile of photographs from the Serb
5 houses. I began with a list of four suspects. Now I've got 24. But are
6 any of these mugshots of the men I'm looking for? The next step is to
7 get Mehmet and Xhemajl together to identify the line-up.
8 "Dimitri Nikolic, Momcilo Nikolic, Zvesdan Nikolic, Sveta Tasic,
9 Sava
10 "He was the first to shoot at us. As our families were heading
11 for the mountains, Sava
12 "Now we can put faces to names. Sava Nikolic. His comrade in
13 arms, Sveta Tasic. Their friend and neighbour Momcilo Nikolic, and his
14 uncle Dimitri Nikolic. Now we know what the men on our wanted list look
15 like, we can start to track them down. But what exactly is the evidence
16 against them?"
17 MS. KRAVETZ:
18 Q. Sir, we had seen you earlier with a notebook and a piece of paper
19 you had found with what looked like a roster. Were the names of these
20 four individuals that appeared here on our screen on those documents?
21 A. I believe so. Without having the documents in front of me, I
22 can't check that authoritatively. I've hit the right button. So I
23 believe so, yes.
24 Q. For how long did you remain in Kosovo after filming these images?
25 A. Well, we were essentially there for -- I was there for a month
Page 906
1 and my -- which actually, in terms of television time, is a long time.
2 Normally you can make a film, with a budget you've only got so much, and
3 I was here to do a film for, say, two weeks or whatever. But what
4 happened was that we -- so after a month, I left. And I believe that
5 James stayed on or James came out while I was on holiday to film the
6 funerals of the dead men.
7 There had been a change. The UCK, the KLA, had not been around
8 when we first arrived in Kosovo. At the funeral, the KLA presence was
9 very strong. There was an armed guard. And I remember James complaining
10 to me about these so-and-sos from the KLA, because they were getting in
11 all his shots, and they were giving a sense of -- of this being a kind of
12 military event, and also that they were very much in charge. That had
13 not been the case when we first arrived.
14 Then what happened is that we had an undercover Serb reporter
15 working with us who identified where the Nikolics were in Serbia
16 tracked them down and tried to film them. We were hoping to catch
17 Dimitri Nikolic on film, and we -- well, I don't think we got him. We
18 were pretty clear that it was there, but at that time in 1999 it was a
19 very, very difficult -- ask for this undercover reporter to effectively
20 risk her life or potentially risk her life in actually naming these
21 people that were suspicious. But that was the end part of the programme.
22 I, myself, didn't return to Kosovo. Having spent a month there,
23 we had, in fact, too much information about this appalling event.
24 Q. And how were you able to identify where the Nikolics were? Who
25 provided that information?
Page 907
1 A. I'm not entirely -- well, I don't know the process exactly, but
2 essentially we had -- there was -- that's a question better for our Serb
3 undercover reporter who were the -- there was -- you could find out, I
4 think, once you were in Serbia
5 out where families were, or roughly where communities had gone to. So it
6 wasn't an impossible job for her because she was Serb and based in
7 Belgrade
8 know.
9 Q. And do you recall approximately when it was that she tried to
10 track these persons down and --
11 A. Well, it's obviously -- you see, I can't -- from this distance,
12 from ten years on, it's difficult for me to remember precisely. But
13 essentially it's after we finished in Kosovo, we brought the material
14 back to London
15 happened in late July, August, 1999.
16 Q. Now, you had told us earlier that in your view the site where the
17 Batusha barn had been had been blown up. Are you aware of whether there
18 were any attempts made to try to recover the remains of those that had
19 been killed there?
20 A. No. I mean -- well, there may well have been -- the problem is
21 this is a -- all one can do is deduce from the evidence on the ground, so
22 what we're looking at is two holes on the ground, but I was looking for
23 bodies. We thought that there were -- we looked all around, and then
24 obviously the river Drina
25 from the village itself. So one thing you could do is you could -- if
Page 908
1 you burned the bodies in the hay barn, set fire to it, you then -- with a
2 tractor, you can dump them in a river. It's a big strong river, lots of
3 snow melt, so it was one place we looked. And we did find the lorry, and
4 I swam in the river, and I thought I saw blood on the side of a lorry. I
5 may have been mistaken. What we didn't find was dead bodies. We looked,
6 but we didn't find any human remains.
7 Hold on a second. We found a few human remains. By this time
8 the war crimes tribunal had arrived, forensic people working for the
9 Tribunal, and I think they found -- they may have found evidence. We
10 never found a big gravesite.
11 Q. You say that forensic people who were working for the Tribunal
12 arrived. Do you recall approximately when that was?
13 A. It was around about -- it was towards the end of our stay there,
14 bearing in mind -- so we'd been there from mid-June, and I think I -- for
15 The Observer, I'd had to leave Mala Krusa a couple of times, but I came
16 back to continue filming and looking for evidence. And I believe that
17 they would have arrived in July, early July. That's my guess.
18 Q. And was your film crew still filming there at the time?
19 A. Yes, yes. So we filmed -- we filmed them. Their first base was
20 in -- remember, there was a -- there was also a smaller massacre of
21 around, I believe, 20 people, or 12, I can't remember in this distance,
22 in Greater Krusha, which was further up the road, and I believe they went
23 there first, and then they came to Mala Krusa. There was a parallel BBC
24 team filming in Greater Krusha, and I believe that the BBC filmed the war
25 crimes people, and we didn't. I think that's my memory.
Page 909
1 MS. KRAVETZ: Can we play a final clip from this same
2 documentary.
3 [Video-clip played]
4 "THE PRESENTER: Two months after the end of the war, forensic
5 experts from Scotland Yard arrive in Little Krusa. They're working for
6 the war crimes tribunal in The Hague
7 10.000 murders to solve in Kosovo. Their task is to find out who was
8 killed and how. There's precious little for them to do at the hay barn,
9 so they're probing what's left of this second murder site in the village.
10 There's not much to go on. A button, a belt, a smear of blood, a
11 backbone."
12 MS. KRAVETZ:
13 Q. Now, sir, you referred earlier to a smaller massacre site being
14 filmed. Do these images correspond to --
15 A. No. Sorry, I've just put the LiveNote up. There are three
16 separate events. In Greater Krusha, I have forgotten what it is in
17 Serbian, not Krusa Mala but something else. In Greater Krusha there was
18 a small massacre -- there a massacre, I believe, involving around 20
19 dead. In Mala Krusa there was the hay barn, in which 103 people were
20 killed and six survived, as I understand it. And then down the road,
21 also in Mala Krusa, but on the other -- sorry, on the other side of the
22 road but still in Mala Krusa, I believe seven people were killed in that
23 house we've just seen. So that's -- the smaller massacre I was just
24 referring to a second ago was in relation to Greater Krusha, not this
25 scene. I believe about seven people were killed there. But yes, I've
Page 910
1 forgotten, we filmed the war crimes forensic people at that place.
2 Q. I'm being reminded that we need to pause between question and
3 answer. The reporter is having problems recording what is being said
4 because you're starting your answers too quickly and not allowing her to
5 finish typing my questions. So I would just ask you to keep an eye on
6 the screen, and when the cursor stops, you can start with your answer,
7 just to allow her to do her job properly.
8 A. I'm sorry.
9 Q. It's okay.
10 So, sir, do you know whether any remains were found at the site
11 of the barn itself by the forensic team that was there conducting its
12 exhumations?
13 A. I don't know the answer to that.
14 Q. Okay. Very well. Sir, I would --
15 MS. KRAVETZ: Your Honours, I would like to tender this exhibit
16 at this stage. This is Exhibit 65 ter number 00115.
17 JUDGE PARKER: This will be received.
18 THE REGISTRAR: That will be P00298, Your Honours.
19 MS. KRAVETZ: Could we please have Exhibit 02328 up on the
20 screen.
21 Q. Do you have the document before you, sir?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Do you recognise that document?
24 A. I believe it's one of the documents that I -- that I picked up.
25 I'm not sure whether it's from the notebook or whether it's the piece of
Page 911
1 paper.
2 MS. KRAVETZ: Could we see the next page.
3 THE WITNESS: Yes. Again, I'm not sure whether it's the notebook
4 or the piece of paper. In fact, you probably know better than I do. But
5 that is the -- there are the names, obviously, in the -- you can clearly
6 recognise in the middle, you've got Tasic Sveta, Nikolic Sava,
7 Nikolic Ranko, and they seem to be on the night shift. The date is
8 between the 16th and 17th of April, 1999. My understanding is -- I can't
9 quite remember, but I believe the massacre took place in late March, so
10 this is after the massacre.
11 MS. KRAVETZ: I would like to tender this document into evidence
12 at this stage.
13 JUDGE PARKER: It will be received.
14 THE REGISTRAR: That will be P00299, Your Honours.
15 MS. KRAVETZ: Could we now -- could we now please have 65 ter
16 02327 up on the screen.
17 Q. Do you recognise this document, sir?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Could you please comment on the document.
20 A. Well, again, it's my guess, you've got three groups here. These
21 are -- if this is some kind of home guard militia, they're -- they're in
22 what looks to be like three guard duties. So one takes a day shift, one
23 takes a night shift. This whole time the Serbs are under the NATO
24 air-strike campaign, and they're afraid that at some point NATO and the
25 KLA will enter Kosovo, as, indeed, they did. And therefore this is the
Page 912
1 local organisation -- I'm guessing this. I don't know this for a fact.
2 But this is the local organisation of the Mala Krusa Serbian militia, and
3 obviously the names -- you've got the Nikolic family and the Stankovics
4 and the Petkovics. These are all names that the villagers recognised.
5 Again, group II -- to be precise, I don't know who commanded the
6 massacre. It's just that this is what the Albanians told me these are
7 the people they recognised: Sava Nikolic -- again, when Mr. Shehu,
8 Xhemajl Shehu, he is the old man who lost 40 members of his family, he
9 said it was Sava Nikolic who shot at them as they were going up the hill,
10 and that happened on the first day. So remember, there were two days.
11 There's the NATO strike. Then the Albanian villagers leave the village
12 for the hills. They're going away from the river, away from Albania
13 into Kosovo. They're heading roughly, as I understand it, east into the
14 hills. And at that point according to Mr. Shehu, Sava Nikolic shot at
15 them. That's why his name -- they identify him from his house.
16 The others, Dimitri Nikolic, Granny Batusha saw. So to an extent
17 I was being led by the Albanians into concentrating on these people
18 simply because they recognised them.
19 Q. Now, is this document and the other document we just looked at
20 the ones we saw earlier in your clip, the clip from the documentary?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. So would this have been documents that you found or persons found
23 and gave to you during your investigation --
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. [Previous translation continues] ... of Mala Krusa?
Page 913
1 A. I think my memory is correct in saying that I found the piece of
2 paper and somebody else handed me the notebook, or the other way around.
3 I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure I found the piece of paper, and an
4 Albanian lady found the notebook.
5 Q. And where did you find this piece of paper?
6 A. In the Serb houses.
7 Q. Thank you.
8 MS. KRAVETZ: Your Honour, I seek to tender this exhibit. It's
9 0232 --
10 JUDGE PARKER: It will be received.
11 THE REGISTRAR: That will be P00300, Your Honours.
12 MS. KRAVETZ: Your Honours, I have no further questions for this
13 witness at this stage.
14 JUDGE PARKER: Looking at the time, I think it would be not
15 useful to commence cross-examination, Mr. Djordjevic. So what we will do
16 is adjourn now. We have only five minutes to go. We will adjourn now to
17 resume tomorrow and hopefully to complete the evidence of Mr. Sweeney in
18 the course of that tomorrow.
19 Could I remind counsel that we are sitting tomorrow afternoon.
20 Due to changes with some other trials, we have now been moved to the
21 afternoon, so we will resume at 2.15.
22 Mr. Sweeney, if you would be able to return then to, I hope,
23 complete your evidence, we'd be grateful. Thank you.
24 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
25 JUDGE PARKER: We now adjourn.
Page 914
1 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 6.55 p.m.
2 to be reconvened on Thursday, the 12th day of
3 February, 2009, at 2.15 p.m.
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