Page 8569
1 Friday, 28 August 2009
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 9.02 a.m.
5 [The witness takes the stand]
6 JUDGE PARKER: Good morning. I would remind you, Mr. Coo, that
7 the affirmation you made to tell the truth still applies.
8 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honours.
9 JUDGE PARKER: Yes, Mr. Hannis.
10 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour. I guess the first thing I'd
11 like to do this morning, Your Honour, is tender 02845.01, which is the
12 list of exhibits in Mr. Coo's provenance report.
13 JUDGE PARKER: The list, yes.
14 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.
15 JUDGE PARKER: It will be received.
16 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit P01287.
17 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.
18 WITNESS: PHILIP COO [Resumed]
19 Examination by Mr. Hannis: [Continued]
20 Q. Mr. Coo, there are two other general types of documents or
21 categories of documents that I'd like to address with you while you're
22 here. One involves VJ collegium minutes.
23 MR. HANNIS: And if we could have 00928 on screen to start with.
24 Q. Are you familiar with those meeting minutes from your work at the
25 OTP?
Page 8570
1 A. Yes, I am, Your Honours.
2 Q. And do you know how those were received in the possession of the
3 OTP?
4 A. I'd have to check my -- the spreadsheet I prepared, but I believe
5 we got them in response to an RFA.
6 Q. And did you review those minutes?
7 A. Yes, I did.
8 Q. And during the Milutinovic trial, did you follow when those
9 minutes were discussed with various witnesses, including several of the
10 attendees of those meetings?
11 A. I did.
12 Q. Are you aware that they were admitted into evidence in the
13 Milutinovic trial?
14 A. Yes, I am.
15 Q. Were you aware of any challenge or claim that they were not
16 authentic?
17 A. I don't recall any.
18 Q. Okay. Thank you. I don't know if you can see that on your
19 screen now.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Okay. Is this the same format in which they all appeared to be
22 printed?
23 A. Yes, it is.
24 Q. Okay. Do you need to look at any of the rest of it to
25 familiarise yourself with it?
Page 8571
1 A. No, I don't. I recognise this.
2 Q. Okay.
3 MR. HANNIS: Could we, for a moment, though, look at page 2 in
4 both the B/C/S and the English.
5 Q. And here we have a list of those present at this particular
6 meeting. Was it -- is that standard formatting for these minutes?
7 A. Yes, it is.
8 Q. Okay. Thank you.
9 MR. HANNIS: I don't have any more questions about that.
10 Your Honour, I would like to tender this one 00928, and there are a
11 series of these. It runs through 0941, and these are all meetings I
12 think from December 1998 through -- and up to the beginning of the war.
13 There's only one during the war, I think it's on April 9th, 1999, but
14 they were all received pursuant to the same RFA, they're all in the same
15 format, and they were all testified about by many of the attendees of
16 these meetings during the Milutinovic trial. And we would offer them in
17 their entirety, although there are portions in the meeting clearly where
18 subject matters are being discussed that may not be pertinent to your
19 final findings in this case, but we feel that you need to have the entire
20 meetings to have the context of what's being discussed, to understand the
21 inter-relationships between the speakers and the events about which
22 they're talking about. Certainly at the end of the case when we file our
23 final brief we will be directing your attention to those particular most
24 pertinent points from our point of view, but that's our proposal.
25 JUDGE PARKER: I take it these are not on the list we were using
Page 8572
1 yesterday?
2 MR. HANNIS: No, they were not, Your Honour.
3 JUDGE PARKER: They were not.
4 Is there any objection to these, Mr. Djordjevic?
5 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I was just about
6 to stand up, and I must say that I'm a little bit surprised by this
7 gesture by my colleague, Mr. Hannis, because we were not quite
8 specifically informed what would be in the announcement. So I'm a little
9 bit surprised about this type of use of this document. I didn't have any
10 time to look in detail exactly what it's about. I assume it is something
11 that I've already seen and read, but at this point I really am unable to
12 say anything about it.
13 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, if I may make a suggestion. I would
14 propose to provide a list to the Registry of those exhibits that I intend
15 to offer, these VJ collegium minutes, and certainly allow Mr. Djordjevic
16 time to review if there are any particular ones that he objects to and
17 respond in writing if that's necessary or helpful.
18 JUDGE PARKER: I think that could be the way most usefully for us
19 to take, Mr. Hannis. There will be -- if when he reviews them, if there
20 are concerns of Mr. Djordjevic he's going to put them in writing to the
21 documents that you were dealing with yesterday, and this could be
22 included in that exercise.
23 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] In principle, I am not opposed
24 to that, but I would just like to point out to the Chamber that this
25 should not be something that becomes a practice. Documents that are
Page 8573
1 going to be used should be provided in advance. I'm going to ask for two
2 weeks for the bar table submission, and at the same time, since
3 Mr. Hannis is already talking about this, that after the conclusion of
4 the examination-in-chief of this witness we be provided with a final list
5 so that the Defence can then know precisely what it is dealing with in
6 terms of the documents that were being used. Thank you.
7 JUDGE PARKER: As I understand it, Mr. Djordjevic, you have the
8 list from yesterday that has been the subject of specific evidence in
9 some respects, and there are now tendered this and a number of other
10 minutes of this same body, the collegium of the Chief of the
11 General Staff. So that should be at the moment the totality of the
12 documents. There may be more which Mr. Hannis is going to deal with now,
13 but we'll move on. The motion for them to be received in evidence will
14 be dealt with when we've had any objections in writing that
15 Mr. Djordjevic wishes to put forward.
16 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour. I do want to indicate that
17 although these VJ collegium documents were not on the initial
18 notification concerning Mr. Coo, we did notify the Defence by e-mail
19 Wednesday, near the end of the day, that I would be addressing these with
20 Mr. Coo as well. Thank you.
21 Q. The last general category of documents, Mr. Coo, I wanted to
22 address with you are RFAs, requests for assistance, which we talked about
23 a little bit before. The first one I'd like you to have a look at is
24 02335.
25 I don't know if you will have seen this particular one before or
Page 8574
1 not, but in terms of your general practice, does this look like the --
2 look like -- is it in the format in which you would typically receive a
3 response to an RFA request?
4 A. Yes, it is.
5 Q. And I see that the first paragraph says the Ministry of Foreign
6 Affairs presents its compliments -- I think you told us yesterday that
7 these were generally processed by the MFA, the Ministry of Foreign
8 Affairs?
9 A. That's correct.
10 MR. HANNIS: This one, Your Honours, is brought to your attention
11 because on page 2, if we could turn to that in the B/C/S and English,
12 it's a response to several RFAs. And on page 2 you'll see reference to
13 ICTY request 1098 regarding Mala and Velika Krusa. It has a list of
14 names of several individuals and then describes what information MUP had
15 about these particular persons. And on page 4 of the English, if we
16 could, the other one that we wanted to bring to your attention is the
17 portion that responds to ICTY request, near the bottom of the page, ICTY
18 request 1105 with the names of three individuals in connection with
19 Bela Crkva. I'm sorry, in the B/C/S I think we need to go one page
20 further, and we have to go to the bottom of the English. Thank you.
21 And then if I can explain the process further, if we could have a
22 look at 02855.
23 While that's coming up I'd like to tender 02335.
24 JUDGE PARKER: Is there going to be a series of these or a number
25 that is quite separate?
Page 8575
1 MR. HANNIS: The one that's on the screen and one more
2 following -- the first three of these are related to each other, they're
3 part of a chain, but I don't know if it's -- it may be more useful to
4 have separate numbers.
5 JUDGE PARKER: Well, this will be received.
6 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.
7 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit P01288.
8 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.
9 Q. Mr. Coo, now on the screen is 02855, you recognise this format?
10 MR. HANNIS: I see Mr. Djordjevic on his feet.
11 JUDGE PARKER: Yes, Mr. Djordjevic.
12 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] The Defence can note that the
13 B/C/S does not -- that the B/C/S does not correspond to the English text.
14 What we see on the screen is not what my learned friend is referring to.
15 JUDGE PARKER: That seems to be the correct one now.
16 MR. HANNIS: That's correct.
17 MR. DJORDJEVIC: Thank you.
18 MR. HANNIS:
19 Q. Do you see that, Mr. Coo, this, what's on the screen right now
20 says it's a reminder RFA 1315. You recognise this format?
21 A. Yes, I do.
22 Q. And can you explain what reminder RFAs were about?
23 A. Those are issued when the dead-line for the original RFA has
24 passed without a response being received.
25 Q. Okay. And you see in the text of this one it makes reference to
Page 8576
1 an earlier request on the 15th of September.
2 MR. HANNIS: If we could go to another page in English, I'm not
3 sure which page it is in the sequence. I think it's the one we had up on
4 the screen first in English. Yes. And if we could find the
5 corresponding page in the B/C/S. I apologise that they weren't sequenced
6 correctly, Your Honour.
7 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]
8 JUDGE PARKER: There is a problem in that there are only two
9 B/C/S pages in the e-court system, whereas the document in English has
10 five pages.
11 MR. HANNIS: That is a problem.
12 Could I see the other page of the B/C/S, or is that it on the
13 screen now?
14 Well, Your Honours, I'm afraid I'm going to have to abandon ship
15 on this one for the moment.
16 JUDGE PARKER: Do you want the witness to comment at all on the
17 content of this?
18 MR. HANNIS: Yes, if I may, and then I will attempt to locate the
19 B/C/S translation of this.
20 Q. Mr. Coo, can you describe for us what's on the screen now in
21 terms of the general format?
22 A. It's the general format of our requests for assistance.
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. To the Government of Serbia
25 Q. And you'll see in the fourth paragraph of the text it makes
Page 8577
1 reference to a response T-166-22/2006/9. The persons in Annex A were
2 identified as holding positions within the MUP.
3 MR. HANNIS: If we could go to the next page.
4 JUDGE PARKER: Yes, Mr. Djordjevic.
5 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I'm afraid that in
6 this way we're going to violate the rights of the accused to defence
7 because this is a document that he cannot understand, perceive, or
8 follow. And because of that I'm concerned that my learned friend,
9 Mr. Hannis, was correct when he said that for now he might need to leave
10 this document aside. Thank you.
11 JUDGE PARKER: What is occurring, Mr. Djordjevic, will not
12 involve any violation of any rights of your client. You know, as well as
13 we, that many times in this trial it has been necessary to deal with a
14 document usually put forward by a member of the Defence team that is in
15 one of the two main languages we are using and not the other. We have
16 dealt with the document and then held it until a translation is
17 available, and then when that has occurred the document has been
18 exhibited. What is happening here is exactly that: A document is being
19 shown to the witness, the witness is commenting on it, the witness's
20 comments are being translated to your client. This document will not be
21 received as an exhibit unless and until there is a proper translation.
22 And I think in that way your client will not be in any way disadvantaged
23 and we can move on, which is the important thing we are trying to do at
24 the moment with a document which is no more than a formal request. Thank
25 you.
Page 8578
1 Please carry on, Mr. Hannis.
2 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.
3 If we could go to the next page in this document.
4 Q. We have Annex A to this request which has a list of names, and it
5 makes reference to a prior request numbered 1098 and 1105 --
6 MR. HANNIS: Which I would indicate to Your Honours were names
7 that we saw in the exhibit prior to this one, which now has Exhibit
8 Number P1288. And you'll see in the body of this request that it is
9 attaching those names and asking for further information from the MUP
10 about these individually identified active and reserve MUP members.
11 So if I could, Your Honour, I would like to have this marked for
12 identification until I can get a translation.
13 JUDGE PARKER: It will be marked.
14 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.
15 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit P01289, marked
16 for identification.
17 MR. HANNIS: Next if we could look at 02850, and if we could go
18 to the -- we see the name Zvezdan Nikolic on the screen. If we could go
19 to the second page of both B/C/S and English.
20 Your Honours, this is -- Mr. Nikolic is one of the individuals
21 named in the MFI
22 and he's one of the individuals named in P1288 from Mala Krusa, listed as
23 being a fireman in the MUP. And we would like to tender this and the
24 remaining documents 02851, 2852, and 02849 as all being part of that same
25 series of requests for information. 2849, 2851, and 2852 relate to other
Page 8579
1 individuals named in the original response to the RFA concerning
2 individuals in Mala Krusa.
3 JUDGE PARKER: They will be received.
4 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, 65 ter 02850 will be
5 Exhibit P01290; 65 ter 02851 will be Exhibit P01291; 65 ter 02852 will be
6 Exhibit P01292; and finally, 65 ter 02849 will be Exhibit P01293.
7 MR. HANNIS: Thank you for that.
8 MR. DJORDJEVIC: Your Honour.
9 JUDGE PARKER: Yes, Mr. Djordjevic.
10 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] These documents are evidently
11 translated into English, B/C/S, but I wanted to ask since these are
12 accessible documents and they are marked for identification, I think
13 these documents would also need to be marked for identification since
14 they accompany original documents, they're accessories. So they would
15 need to be referenced in view of the fact that we don't have the main
16 document.
17 JUDGE PARKER: I'm afraid I haven't followed the point you're
18 making.
19 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] I apologise, Your Honour. I am
20 going to repeat myself. I believe that these documents also need to be
21 marked for identification, since they are accessories to the main
22 documents or an exhibit that has already been MFI'd, because if they get
23 an exhibit number independently now and the previous number that has been
24 marked for identification is never admitted, then these documents are not
25 going to be quite logical -- quite a logical part of the brief, of the
Page 8580
1 case. So I believe that they need to be admitted together with the main
2 document. This is all that I wanted to say.
3 JUDGE PARKER: [Previous translation continues]... I must be
4 slow this morning. It's a possibility that I didn't think was real
5 enough to be a problem. We've got a document that simply needs to be
6 translated; once it's translated, it will be exhibited and I think
7 they're in a sequence number. So we'll leave them as they are.
8 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.
9 Q. Two more, Mr. Coo, and then I think I'll be finished, 02856.
10 Yes, I'm relieved to see this time we seem to have the translation with
11 this document. This is another RFA, Mr. Coo, and similarly you'll see in
12 the fourth paragraph there's a reference to a response indicating the
13 persons named in Annex A had been previously identified as holding
14 positions within the MUP and requesting further information. Again, this
15 seems to be in the similar -- the usual format of an OTP RFA?
16 A. Yes, it is.
17 Q. Okay. And could we look at Annex A, I think it's the third page
18 in the English. And I don't know if there's a translation of this list
19 of names -- yes, we do have that.
20 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, we'd like to tender 02856.
21 JUDGE PARKER: It will be received.
22 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit P01294.
23 MR. HANNIS: And lastly 02857. I see we have English on both my
24 pages on the screen. I hope there's a B/C/S.
25 JUDGE PARKER: We don't seem to be having a lot of luck with your
Page 8581
1 documents, Mr. Hannis.
2 MR. HANNIS: Not any good luck, Your Honour. I think if we could
3 have the English that was previously on the right-hand screen now put up
4 on the left-hand screen it will match the B/C/S that's on the right-hand
5 side now. And that's what I'd like to see.
6 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]
7 MR. HANNIS: Yes.
8 Q. And, Mr. Coo, you -- can you see this response, does it appear to
9 be in the typical format from the Government of Serbia?
10 A. Yes, it does.
11 Q. Thank you.
12 MR. HANNIS: And, Your Honours, these named individuals were
13 persons that we saw in the first exhibit, P1288 -- 1288 connected with
14 Bela -- with Orahovac and Bela Crkva. These individuals were also named
15 by witnesses who testified in this case, by first name, Lulzim Vejsa
16 mentioned these individuals, and I think the witness Sami Parashumti also
17 mentioned these individuals in Exhibits 1290 through 1293. Those
18 individuals identified in the RFA responses were mentioned by the
19 witnesses from Mala Krusa, Lutfi Ramadani and Mehmet Krasniqi and also
20 John Sweeny in terms of relevance. I want to bring that to your
21 attention. And I don't recall, if I haven't tendered this one, I would
22 like to tender it now.
23 JUDGE PARKER: You haven't moved. I notice two things about the
24 B/C/S -- well, one thing about the B/C/S, it does not include the last
25 paragraph of the English, and the second thing is that the English is
Page 8582
1 labelled as an unofficial translation.
2 MR. HANNIS: Well, Your Honour, I would move to submit the B/C/S
3 for an official translation; and you're right, I don't see the additional
4 paragraph.
5 JUDGE PARKER: It's merely a complement, but if we're to look at
6 a translation, or have a translation, it ought to be, A, official; B,
7 correct.
8 I think I'm doing your job, Mr. Djordjevic.
9 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] I would like to thank you for
10 that. First of all, I would like to say that you're absolutely right,
11 that the last passage is missing from the translation; on the other hand,
12 I don't see the purpose of telling the witness which witnesses in these
13 proceedings have mentioned the people mentioned herein. This witness is
14 not speaking about the contents of the document; he's speaking only about
15 the authenticity.
16 JUDGE PARKER: [Previous translation continues]... Judges, to
17 assist us in seeing how these documents are relevant in the case. We
18 will mark for identification at the moment, Mr. Hannis, and I'm afraid
19 you must attend to the problems that we've identified. And could I also
20 draw to your attention that the way these have been provided and loaded
21 into e-court is extremely confusing. And I would suggest that for
22 everybody's ease of reference that they be properly matched in e-court.
23 MR. HANNIS: I take your words to heart, Your Honour, and we will
24 try to do better in the future.
25 Oh, I see the Registrar.
Page 8583
1 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit P01295, marked
2 for identification.
3 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.
4 I should indicate, Your Honour, I think K74 also mentioned these
5 individuals.
6 Let me ask Mr. Coo a question concerning these RFAs because I'm
7 not clear on one thing about the translations.
8 Q. Mr. Coo, when the OTP received responses to RFAs, in what
9 language did we receive it? Did we receive it only in B/C/S, or did
10 Serbia
11 us as well, if you know?
12 A. I don't know who provided the translation, Your Honours.
13 Q. Okay. Thank you.
14 MR. HANNIS: I have no further questions for this witness,
15 Your Honour.
16 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Hannis.
17 Mr. Djordjevic.
18 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] I do have some questions. I
19 would just kindly ask you to bear with me to prepare myself for the
20 cross-examination.
21 Cross-examination by Mr. Djordjevic:
22 Q. [Interpretation] Good morning, Mr. Coo. I name is
23 Dragoljub Djordjevic and I represent the accused in these proceedings. I
24 have some questions for you along the lines which will lead us to
25 establishing the level of authenticity of the documents that Mr. Hannis
Page 8584
1 has been asking you about, and I may go even a step further.
2 Mr. Coo, tell me, when did you finally stop being engaged by the
3 Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY?
4 A. 3rd of March, 2008, was my last day of work at the ICTY,
5 Your Honours.
6 Q. Thank you. Mr. Coo, what I would like to hear about is your
7 formal education. You said that you have a degree in psychology. When
8 did you graduate?
9 A. I graduated in 1987.
10 Q. And then you joined the Canadian Army. What kind of jobs did you
11 perform in the army?
12 A. I joined the Canadian Army as an intelligence officer. After the
13 intelligence -- six-month intelligence officers course, I was assigned to
14 national intelligence headquarters where I was a desk officer on the --
15 on a -- where my role was the study of the strategic rocket forces in the
16 former Soviet Union. I then became a watch officer in the watch centre
17 in national defence headquarters which was responsible for 24/7
18 monitoring of events in the world. My next job was to be in charge of an
19 imagery analysis team at the national level, which also incorporated
20 other sources of information. I was then posted to the 1st Canadian
21 Division Headquarters and served there as the head of the intelligence
22 collection and analysis cell within the division's intelligence company.
23 During that posting I was sent to -- on a tour, a seven-month tour, in
24 Bosnia
25 Division Headquarters and became the adjutant to the commanding officer
Page 8585
1 of the intelligence company. Subsequently moved to Calgary
2 regular force and taking up an appointment as a reserve officer with the
3 6th Intelligence Company which is based in western Canada which is a
4 subunit of a reserve brigade, and that's where I completed my military
5 service.
6 Q. You said that in 1996 and 1997 you toured Bosnia and Herzegovina
7 What did you do there, what kind of jobs?
8 A. My official title was G2 operations within the multi-national
9 brigade headquarters, which was centred on a Canadian brigade. We had
10 components from other nationalities in the brigade headquarters. Our
11 area of responsibility covered from Prijedor over to Bihac and down to
12 Drvar, primarily the area of the 5th Corps, the Bosnian Army's 5th Corps.
13 We -- my function was to analyse the information that was being collected
14 on activities in our area of responsibility and to be responsible for the
15 team of intelligence analysts and operators for the production of
16 intelligence reports, including a daily intelligence report, on security
17 issues, political issues, and any issue concerning the mandate of the
18 brigade and of interest of the brigade commander within that area of
19 responsibility. So in essence my responsibility was to ensure that the
20 brigade commander was kept informed of what the former warring factions
21 and other entities were doing within his area of responsibility.
22 Q. Thank you for your answer. What was your rank when you left the
23 Canadian Army?
24 A. Captain.
25 Q. Captain. Tell me, please, did you leave with some work
Page 8586
1 characteristics, with a reference of any kind?
2 A. I'm sorry, I don't understand the question, Your Honours.
3 Q. I can assume, but I believe that a person who leaves the army is
4 given a letter of reference or a "to whom it may concern" letter stating
5 the evaluation of that person's work. I assume the same applies to the
6 Canadian Army. So my question is whether you were given such a letter of
7 reference with the evaluation of your work?
8 A. There was no letter of reference. We had annual assessments, but
9 upon leaving -- although I can recollect receiving certainly not a letter
10 but certification that I'd left with good standing, but it didn't go into
11 any detail.
12 Q. Thank you. Mr. Coo, once you left the Canadian Army, where were
13 you employed?
14 A. My next job after the Canadian Army was the position of an
15 analyst in the Military Analysis Team at the ICTY.
16 Q. Did you land the job immediately, or did you do some other things
17 in the OTP before you became an analyst? Did you work as an
18 investigator, for example?
19 A. No, I had no association with the OTP or the ICTY until I arrived
20 late May 1999 to become an analyst.
21 Q. And after that stint, did you then work as an investigator?
22 A. I've never had the title "investigator." I've perhaps done in
23 the ICTY what an investigator does at times, but that wasn't my primary
24 function. For example, I've taken part in the interviews of witnesses,
25 but my primary function wasn't that of investigator.
Page 8587
1 Q. But the fact that you did that as well, de jure you had another
2 posting. Will you agree with me that that's true?
3 A. I wouldn't describe it as another posting. I had varied
4 responsibilities or varied use was made of my knowledge within the OTP,
5 and that included taking part in the interviews of witnesses, but I was
6 never formally considered or even de jure considered an investigator. I
7 had no -- never made an application to be an investigator or was
8 considered -- called an investigator.
9 Q. Thank you. The interpretation was bad. I didn't say that this
10 was your other posting; I said something completely different. What I
11 said was this: De jure you had your job; however, de facto in part what
12 you did was also the job of an investigator. I never said that that was
13 your other posting. Let's make things clear here.
14 My next question, however, is this: Did you participate in the
15 interviewing of the accused in the related cases, such as the Milosevic
16 case, the Milutinovic case, the Limaj case, and I believe that there is
17 another Kosovo case, did you participate in interviewing the accused or
18 whether you were present when the accused in the -- these cases were
19 being interviewed?
20 A. I only interviewed or was present during the interviews of
21 accused in the Milutinovic case.
22 Q. Mr. Coo, which of the accused did you interview personally?
23 Maybe I can be of assistance. If you can't remember, I can jog your
24 memory by giving you the names of all the accused.
25 A. I -- I took part in the interviews of Generals Pavkovic,
Page 8588
1 Lazarevic, and Lukic. I think those are the only three that I'd -- that
2 I was -- three accused with whom I was involved.
3 Q. Thank you. Did you participate in interviews with the witnesses
4 who appeared in some of the cases?
5 A. Yes, again in -- primarily in the Milosevic and the Milutinovic
6 case. I don't recall ever interviewing any witnesses in the Limaj or
7 Haradinaj case -- in fact, I wasn't involved in the Haradinaj case.
8 Q. Thank you. Do you remember the names of some of the witnesses,
9 some of whom have already testified in this case?
10 A. I do remember some of the names. It would probably be easier for
11 me to confirm if given names, but I certainly remember interviewing VJ
12 Generals Djakovic, Vasiljevic; MUP General Radosavljevic; and there were
13 a number of other witnesses who don't spring to mind at the moment but
14 I'd certainly remember them if prompted.
15 Q. Were you present during the interview of General
16 Aleksandar Vasiljevic, were you there all the time?
17 A. General Vasiljevic was interviewed a number of times, including
18 for the other components of the Milosevic case. I wasn't involved in all
19 of those interviews. I recall being involved in -- certainly in one
20 lengthy interview, possibly a second time, but there were many others
21 that I wasn't involved in.
22 Q. Do you remember having interviewed Zarko Brakovic?
23 A. Yes, I do. He was a PJP commander.
24 Q. Did you participate in the interviews with Richard Ciaglinski,
25 John Drewienkiewicz, with Shaun Byrnes as well?
Page 8589
1 A. Yes, I did, with all three of those.
2 Q. Thank you. Mr. Coo, when did you start working on documents
3 related to this or these cases?
4 A. I began working on the documents as soon as I started my work at
5 the ICTY at the end of May 1999.
6 Q. Am I right in saying that you perceive yourself as an expert for
7 military and security issues and analysis? Do you consider yourself a
8 military and security analyst?
9 A. I consider myself a military analyst. That's the title I had
10 here. The title of "expert" I wouldn't want to bestow on myself; that's
11 for others to decide.
12 Q. You said that at the beginning of your military career you took a
13 short intelligence course. Did you also attend some higher military
14 schools where you would be dealing with military theory, analysis,
15 philosophy, war doctrine, and similar disciplines?
16 A. No, that would be handled at staff college. I didn't attend
17 staff college. I attended an intermediate tactics course which dealt
18 with company-level tactics.
19 Q. How long was the course that you attended?
20 A. The basic intelligence officer's course in the Canadian Army at
21 the time was -- began in January, I believe, and finished in June 1989.
22 The intermediate tactics course was a one-month course. I did do a
23 number of shorter courses during my career, for example, a course in
24 indications and warnings, which is an effort to predict in a systematic
25 way enemy intentions and activities.
Page 8590
1 Q. Before you joined the ICTY, did you author an article, a
2 professional article, dealing with military analytical issues? Did you
3 publish any papers with that topic?
4 A. No, I didn't. All my publications were intelligence reports and
5 classified intelligence reports.
6 Q. Mr. Coo, can you please tell me, if when you arrived at
7 The Hague
8 training that focuses on the maintaining and the preservation of archives
9 and so on, since I understood that you did nothing like that before you
10 came to The Hague
11 A. No, I never attended such a course.
12 Q. Can you please tell me if as part of the tasks for the OTP and
13 for this Tribunal you acquainted yourself in detail with the structure of
14 the Army of Yugoslavia
15 which it archived its documents during the relevant period?
16 A. Yes, that was one of the main functions I had was to understand
17 the structure of the Army of Yugoslavia during the period of interest,
18 and we also sought through various means to understand the documentation
19 that it produced and where that documentation would be kept or archived.
20 Q. And how did you learn about the manner of the archiving of
21 material in the Army of Yugoslavia? My specific question is: Was this
22 through conversations with the pertinent people, or was it by reading
23 laws, books of regulations, or any other sources?
24 A. I don't recall any single document which enlightened us fully
25 about the archiving. It -- we asked witnesses, for example, VJ officers
Page 8591
1 who would be familiar with it. We -- I noted in some documents
2 references to archiving. We finally obtained the rules of office
3 administration and correspondence for the VJ, which made reference to
4 archiving regulations. And there was a general understanding, also
5 assisted by our leadership research team in the Office of the Prosecutor,
6 which was -- did have people familiar with archiving that there were
7 state archives within the former Yugoslavia
8 understanding that militaries do -- are required to archive their
9 documentation.
10 Q. When did you get this military archiving regulations document?
11 A. I don't recall the specific date. It was -- I believe it was
12 during the later stages of the Milosevic trial.
13 Q. Can you please tell me if you acquainted yourself in the same way
14 with the structure of the Ministry of the Interior; and if not, did you
15 inform yourself about the way of maintaining the Ministry of the Interior
16 archives; and if you did, again I would like to ask you what sources did
17 you use for that?
18 A. The same approach was taken with the Ministry of the Interior.
19 We were less successful in obtaining documentation which would enlighten
20 us about the archiving procedures and similarly with witnesses, and in
21 the end we never had the same understanding of MUP archiving that we had
22 with the VJ's archiving system. But again, we operated from the -- or I
23 operated from the approach that there were state archives and there's
24 laws, regulations, mandating states to archive official documentation.
25 So we certainly made efforts to seek access to archives and to seek
Page 8592
1 documents that we believed would be in the archives.
2 Q. Do you know what a document register is?
3 A. Yes, I'm familiar with document registers and we also reviewed
4 document registers eventually.
5 Q. I have to go back to a question. When you interviewed
6 General Vasiljevic, did you interview him in the capacity of a witness or
7 suspect at that time?
8 A. My understanding is that General Vasiljevic was a suspect in
9 connection to the Croatian part of the Milosevic indictment. I don't
10 remember for certain whether we interviewed him as a suspect when
11 interviewing him about Kosovo, but I know for certain that he was a
12 suspect in one component of the Milosevic trial.
13 Q. Thank you.
14 Did it ever occur to you that the forensic investigation of the
15 archived material that you received and the documents that you obtained
16 yourselves from non-government organisations, institutions, and
17 individuals for the purposes of checking the -- these documents needed to
18 be carried out?
19 A. I was aware of the potential for documents to be forged or
20 modified in some way. The capacity and the ability to justify a
21 forensic -- a full forensic examination, including handwriting analysis
22 or analysis of the font, for example, for every single document just
23 wasn't there. And I also didn't feel that it was required for most of
24 the documentation that I was reviewing because I -- I found that it --
25 much of it could be corroborated by documentation obtained independently
Page 8593
1 and the content of the documentation was often so innocuous that I
2 couldn't imagine somebody going to the effort of forging or modifying it.
3 And in addition, there were also official stamps and -- for the most part
4 and signature blocks. So I didn't feel very concerned about a
5 requirement to conduct a full forensic analysis of the documents, with a
6 very small number of exceptions which I don't recall ever using in my
7 reports anyway.
8 Q. Were there any documents that were investigated or tested in this
9 particular way?
10 A. I believe that we did request some forensic analysis, handwriting
11 analysis, for example, of some documents used in or which we had
12 connected to the Kosovo cases. I can't recall the specifics. There was
13 one document in the Milosevic case which was a list of Albanians or
14 Siptars to be killed. And certainly in the Milutinovic case and in my
15 reports, that document was not referred to. We were very skeptical of
16 that document.
17 Q. Did you receive any kind of forensic findings? I'm asking you
18 this in reference to perhaps a request for handwriting analysis of a
19 particular document. Did you receive any results of analysis or not?
20 A. I -- I believe the OTP received some reports from the Netherlands
21 Forensics Institute on handwriting analysis, but I don't remember
22 receiving any specifically myself or being involved in the interaction
23 with the Forensics Institute or study of those particular documents.
24 Q. Who else was entrusted with analysing the documents in the OTP?
25 Weren't you the sole person responsible for that? This is what we have
Page 8594
1 been led to believe, at least regarding the analysis of police and army
2 documents. Can you tell us the name if there is such a person?
3 A. A number of people reviewed documents for a variety of purposes,
4 investigators, other analysts, research officers looking at the more
5 political level of documents. For the purposes of writing the reports
6 that I wrote, I was responsible for reviewing those documents for
7 incorporation into my reports. Many of those same documents would have
8 been also reviewed by other people for other purposes.
9 Q. Very well. But you told me that you issued requests for certain
10 analysis to be conducted for specific documents, handwriting analysis; am
11 I correct to understand that that was so?
12 A. No. I don't think I said that, but if I did that's incorrect. I
13 never requested handwriting analysis.
14 Q. Because then that is the right answer then because you said
15 something so we all understood something different from what you have
16 just said.
17 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Can we ask the usher now to put
18 two documents up on the screen, and I would like to first place the
19 Serbian, B/C/S, originals, side by side. This is 65 ter number --
20 THE INTERPRETER: Could the counsel please repeat the number.
21 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] -- I think that is P887. And 65
22 ter document number 01722, D -- this is D204, the first one was 65
23 ter 01460. All right. All right, that is the first document. Can we
24 now look at the second document. [In English] Please. Correct.
25 Q. [Interpretation] When you look at these two documents, even
Page 8595
1 though they're in B/C/S - and you said you dealt with examining the
2 authenticity of the document - are you familiar with the format of this
3 document or not?
4 A. Yes, the formats of both look familiar.
5 Q. Do these documents seem to be original documents, authentic
6 documents, to you?
7 A. At face value they look authentic.
8 Q. Very well.
9 MR. DJORDJEVIC: I would now like to ask to zoom in on
10 document P887 -- actually, to zoom the stamps on both documents, the
11 first one, for example, the command of the 3rd Army. Could we zoom in on
12 that. It's in the top left-hand corner at -- in the heading of the
13 document. Thank you. And can you please zoom in the same place on the
14 document, the text there is typed, but then there is something that is
15 entered by hand. Yes, precisely. That's the part.
16 Q. The first document has number 872-94/2, and bears the date the
17 19th of April, 1999. You can see that, right?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. The second document bears the same number 872-94/1 and bears the
20 date the 20th of April, 1999; you can see that, right?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. These are two separate documents, the documents that we see on
23 the left-hand side was signed by General Ojdanic, and the one on the
24 right-hand side was signed by General Pavkovic. The left document is a
25 telegram or an order signed by General Ojdanic, and the right document is
Page 8596
1 an order signed by General Pavkovic. Would you agree with me that in
2 1999 General Ojdanic was the one who could issue orders to
3 General Pavkovic and that General Pavkovic was subordinated to
4 General Ojdanic?
5 A. Yes, that's correct.
6 Q. It's clear that on the 19th of April General Ojdanic wrote the
7 document, this is 1999, and that on the 20th of April General Pavkovic in
8 relation to this document wrote his document. How do you explain the
9 fact that document that is the earlier document bears the marking /2, the
10 original document, and the later document is marked with the number /1?
11 Does that bring any doubts in your mind in reference to this?
12 A. It does look odd. I think I would have to see the full
13 translations to make a definitive -- offer a definitive opinion on these.
14 Q. Thank you.
15 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] I would now like to ask to have
16 the versions that are translated of these documents placed on the monitor
17 side by side, please.
18 Q. Can you please look at the first sentence in the first paragraph:
19 "Pursuant to the order, strictly confidential ..."
20 A. Yes, I see that.
21 Q. So this refers to the previous document that bears the number /2,
22 and this one bears the marking /1. So may I hear your comment on this
23 now, please.
24 A. I understand the one on the left is the General Staff's order on
25 subordination of the MUP to the VJ issued on the 18th of April, 1999
Page 8597
1 that it has a stamp on the top of the 3rd Army with the reference number
2 872-94/2, dated the 19th of April, 1999. I don't know what that stamp is
3 doing there. It may be the stamp to indicate receipt of the
4 General Staff's order. The document on the right I understand to be the
5 3rd Army's response to the order of the General Staff which is issued on
6 the 20th of April, 1999, and given the strictly confidential number
7 872-94/1. Why there's a discrepancy between the stamp at the top of
8 the -- 3rd Army stamp at the top of the left-hand document and the one on
9 the right, I don't know. 94, by which I mean 94/2, preceding in date
10 94/1. It seems odd. It could be a transcription error, but I have no
11 explanation for what the reason is.
12 Q. There is no typing mistake for the simple reason that you saw the
13 originals and you saw what it says in the originals. Second, I am
14 wondering that you are wondering about this stamp. Don't you know that
15 this is a register number, not a receipt stamp. Do you know what a
16 receipt stamp looks like used by the Army of Yugoslavia, it says
17 "received" at such and such a time. Do you know, did you ever see such a
18 stamp before? Actually, we are on this topic and you are an expert on
19 this. Did you know that this is a register number not a receipt stamp?
20 A. I have seen the receipt stamps on documents.
21 Q. So why are you wondering? You're saying perhaps it was received
22 then, but this is actually the document register number of the basic --
23 the main document. All right, thank you. Well, anyway, something is odd
24 here, something is not clear here, all of this is used in these cases.
25 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Well, I would like to ask the
Page 8598
1 Trial Chamber to permit that these two documents be admitted side by side
2 if possible, to have the two English documents admitted side by side both
3 and then the B/C/S versions of the documents also, if it's possible to do
4 it this way.
5 JUDGE PARKER: Are they not already exhibits? I thought you said
6 that the first of them is Exhibit P887 and the second Exhibit D204.
7 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Yes, yes, and this other one is
8 D204. I just thought for the sake of being practical to place these two
9 exhibits side by side in the electronic evidence data, even though
10 they're already admitted. I don't know if this is necessary or not, but
11 I thought perhaps for the sake of being practical I suggested that. I
12 don't know if so far the practice was like this.
13 JUDGE PARKER: [Previous translation continues]... we don't need
14 to attempt to place them side by side unless at some other stage we're
15 having to compare the two again, and then it's a matter of just doing as
16 has been done here.
17 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you. Then in future I
18 will not be making any suggestions like this then, Your Honour.
19 Q. Mr. Coo, you said that documents were collected in several ways.
20 You referred to that in our report, but let's go by order.
21 THE INTERPRETER: The counsel is asked to read more slowly the
22 title of the report.
23 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] This has already been admitted.
24 This has already been admitted as evidence. And I'm not going to refer
25 to it in particular or ask for the document to be placed on the screen.
Page 8599
1 Q. You said that the first way of gathering the documents was going
2 on a mission to seek the documents. Is it correct that the OTP
3 immediately after the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement and NATO's entry
4 in Kosovo set off to compile documents or collect documents?
5 A. That's correct. The OTP sent teams to Kosovo as soon as the war
6 ended.
7 Q. Was this done according to a specific plan or of -- with the aims
8 of a specific plan or goal in terms of the Federal Republic of
9 Yugoslavia
10 the beginning?
11 A. I'm not clear, Your Honours, on what the -- what it means by "in
12 terms of the Albanians and the KLA," but there was a plan - I wasn't
13 privy to the planning, I just essentially just arrived at the ICTY at the
14 time. But certainly a plan to send teams to Kosovo as soon as the war
15 ended to visit sites where MUP and VJ had headquarters and also the
16 political institutions in Kosovo, the municipal headquarters, for
17 example. So teams were sent to such facilities to look for documents and
18 to seize them before anybody else did.
19 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I think that this
20 would be an appropriate time for our first break.
21 JUDGE PARKER: We will take the first break now and resume at
22 11.00.
23 --- Recess taken at 10.29 a.m.
24 --- On resuming at 11.02 a.m.
25 JUDGE PARKER: Yes, Mr. Djordjevic.
Page 8600
1 MR. DJORDJEVIC: Thank you, Your Honours.
2 Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Coo, when NATO forces and IFOR entered after
3 the Kumanovo Agreement, did anybody deal with the crimes that were
4 committed by Albanians against the non-Albanian population of Kosovo?
5 A. Your Honours, I don't know specifically what NATO and KFOR did in
6 regard to the crimes, such crimes.
7 Q. I'm asking about the OTP, I'm asking about the ICTY. Immediately
8 after NATO came, did the ICTY or anybody in the ICTY deal with the crimes
9 committed by Albanians against the non-Albanian population of Kosovo?
10 That's what I'm asking.
11 A. Sorry, I see. I don't know when the OTP's -- when the OTP began
12 its investigations into the crimes alleged by -- against the Kosovo
13 Albanians. I worked on the -- and supported the team that was tasked
14 solely with the crimes falling under the Milosevic indictment.
15 Q. I can see in the record against the Kosovo Albanians [In
16 English] -- against the Kosovo Albanians.
17 [Interpretation] My question was as follows: Against the
18 non-Albanian population by the Albanians.
19 A. No, I'm not -- Your Honours, I'm aware of any specific
20 investigation conducted at that time in that regard.
21 Q. And subsequently was anything done at any later stage as far as
22 you know?
23 A. The crimes committed by Albanians against the non-Albanian
24 population, my understanding has formed the basis for the Limaj and
25 Haradinaj indictments; and the team that was dealing with those, the
Page 8601
1 investigation team that was dealing with that aspect of Kosovo, I wasn't
2 working with that team. So they may well have investigated other crimes
3 and considered other indictments.
4 Q. Therefore, if I understand you properly, you did not deal with
5 any documentation that was collected with regard to the war crimes
6 committed by Albanians? Am I right in assuming that? As a military
7 analyst and as an expert, you didn't deal with that documentation as an
8 expert of the OTP?
9 A. The -- I wouldn't want to phrase it so -- in such a constrained
10 way or specific way. The documentation that I reviewed for the task that
11 I was assigned meant that I came across a lot of documentation that may
12 have eventually made its way into or could be considered as documentation
13 that was relevant to crimes committed by Albanians against non-Albanians.
14 I can't remember the specifics or specific examples, but I would have in
15 the process of conducting electronic searches of our evidence database,
16 for example, have come across far more than simply VJ orders or
17 activities of the VJ and MUP in Kosovo.
18 Q. That was not my question, sir. Tell me, from the very outset was
19 there a unique pattern governing the collection of documents on Kosovo?
20 Did you have a regulation or an instruction as to how to deal with the
21 collected documents?
22 A. The documents collected in Kosovo had to be processed in
23 accordance with the OTP's procedures on handling of evidence. So
24 maintenance of the chain of custody, consideration of documentation which
25 may have had exculpatory information in it. So certainly if we came
Page 8602
1 across information or any of the teams coming across information that was
2 deemed to be relevant, either inculpatory or exculpatory, it had to be
3 handled in accordance with our OTP provisions on the handling of
4 evidence. So it was registered and entered into our evidence system.
5 The way that documents were collected at that time, immediately after the
6 war, was that the -- there wasn't much time to get to the documents
7 before the potential of them disappearing or being taken by others or
8 destroyed by the weather, because a lot of them were in destroyed
9 buildings, occurred. So there was some urgency and not every document
10 could be reviewed in great detail. So in that respect a lot of
11 documentation that may have had no relevance at all to any cases was
12 collected.
13 Q. You will then agree with me that as a matter of fact there was an
14 agreed process when it comes to the collection of documents, but there
15 was no regulation governing the mission to search for documents? There
16 was nothing formal in that respect?
17 A. There's no standing regulation for -- there was no standing
18 regulation for the collection of documents in -- on these
19 document-collection missions in Kosovo, no. There were -- there were
20 instructions to the team members of the document-collection missions on
21 how to collect and process these documents and where to go, what we were
22 looking for, and how to ensure that the regulations for handling evidence
23 were maintained, such as maintenance of chain of custody.
24 Q. I apologise for the digression that I'm going to make. When you
25 were collecting documents and when you analysed the documents originating
Page 8603
1 from the Army of Yugoslavia, did you collate the numbers that you found
2 in the heading of the documents with the book in which the documents were
3 recorded? Was that an approach that you adopted in cross-checking the
4 documents that you collected?
5 A. That didn't occur until we had access to the archives of the Army
6 of Yugoslavia
7 finally gained access to archives, and at that point we had access to the
8 registers. Before then we didn't have any access to the registers.
9 Q. Once you had access, did you back-checked the documents that you
10 collected previously? Did you collate the numbers you found in the
11 headings of the documents with the books in which the documents were
12 recorded? Did you do that ex post?
13 A. We couldn't do this retroactively in a systematic fashion. We
14 checked some of the more important documents in the registers of the
15 archives by register number, by date, by document title and content. But
16 for the most part those archive missions were to seek documents that we
17 didn't already have, and there was a limited time to conduct those
18 missions. So the approach taken was to review the registers, identify
19 documents that were likely to be of interest based on the dates and the
20 titles, and to request to see those documents in the archive. We would
21 review them in the archive, and if in fact they were of interest we had
22 to come back here and then submit an RFA saying that on the basis of the
23 archive mission we would like to be given these documents. And it would
24 take a few months minimum to be given those documents.
25 Q. You said that there was some documents that you deemed to be very
Page 8604
1 relevant and that you checked them and collated them with the books.
2 After that, did you somehow mark those documents as having been
3 double-checked in that way, or did you not do that at all?
4 A. There was no specific marking of double-checking because we --
5 the protocol agreed to for archive access was that we would be shown the
6 registers in the archive and we could go through the registers. And we
7 would note or list which documents based on the register number we would
8 like, and we also provided some additional detail such as the title and
9 the date. We kept a record of that and we requested it when we came back
10 to the ICTY, and when we received the documentation we did check it
11 against what we had requested to ensure that the response matched the
12 request. In some cases we weren't given all of the documents that we had
13 asked for, but that's the extent to which the double-checking went.
14 Q. You've mentioned your concern with regard to the documentation
15 going missing during the mission. How were the buildings secured if they
16 contained archive material and documentation that was collected during
17 the mission?
18 A. Many of the buildings weren't secured. They -- a number had been
19 destroyed by NATO bombing, a number had already been -- clearly had
20 been -- the documentation had been -- some documentation had been
21 removed, either by the Serb forces leaving Kosovo or by others. But for
22 the most part, we were there so soon after the NATO forces -- KFOR had
23 moved in that it just wasn't possible for all of these buildings to be
24 secured.
25 Q. In other words, you will agree with me that anybody could access
Page 8605
1 those buildings, any third person could access those buildings and could
2 misuse or misappropriate the documentation in question?
3 A. It would depend very much on the building. But yes, there were
4 some buildings which anyone, in theory, could access; some buildings
5 which people certainly couldn't access.
6 Q. You're saying that the mission was carried out in the following
7 way: The documents would be collected and placed in boxes, which would
8 then be sealed. Tell us something more about the boxes and how the boxes
9 were sealed. This is what I'm reading in your report.
10 A. The earliest missions, the documents would be collected with
11 little time to sit in the buildings or elsewhere reviewing them, and they
12 would be put into the -- into boxes with chain of custody forms. The
13 boxes would be taped up, and eventually it was organised that one of the
14 KFOR forces, I believe the Dutch, would fly the boxes under ICTY/OTP
15 escort to maintain chain of custody to The Hague via an airfield in the
16 Netherlands
17 were able to document and log the documents in the field office in
18 Pristina, and there was a bit more order to the processing of those
19 documents. But in the summer of 1999 it was -- the collection of
20 documents had to be done fairly hastily.
21 Q. Was there a person in Pristina who was specifically tasked with
22 handling documents and maintaining the chain of custody and was that
23 person appointed by the OTP of the ICTY?
24 A. I don't believe there was a specific person, certainly not
25 initially. Representatives of the evidence unit were sent to Kosovo to
Page 8606
1 assist with the processing of documents, but it was also incumbent on the
2 analysts and investigators involved in these collection missions to
3 ensure that the chain of custody procedures were maintained.
4 Q. You're saying that it was recorded where documents were taken,
5 when they were taken, how they were taken. Were the documents recorded
6 on site, where it was taken; or whether it was done subsequently, perhaps
7 in the Pristina office or even later here in Holland?
8 A. I can only speak for the document missions I was on, one of which
9 I recall in sifting through documents in a large metal container in the
10 former barracks of the 549 Brigade near Prizren. We would select the
11 documents that we considered relevant and collect those together on site,
12 transport them to the office in Pristina, under observation at all times;
13 and the logging of those documents and the packaging of those documents
14 would take place in our field office in Pristina. Eventually the
15 documents collected in the summer 1999 document missions, which we
16 informally called the 85 box collection in the OTP, was - as I noted
17 earlier - flown here by the Royal Netherlands Air Force, under escort of
18 the OTP.
19 I also should add that I -- eventually, as we got more
20 cooperation from Serbia
21 in Kosovo became redundant. Some were certainly used as evidence and
22 some were certainly mentioned in my reports, but many were superseded by
23 documents that we got through RFAs and archive missions.
24 Q. The end did not sound very clear to me. Are you saying that some
25 of the documents that were found in Kosovo existed in an identical form
Page 8607
1 in the former -- Serbia
2 found a document in Kosovo and then you come across an identical one in
3 the process of providing legal assistance to the ICTY by the states?
4 A. There were a small number that I'm aware of which fall into that
5 category. I can't think of specifics. So, for example, if a brigade
6 generated a report and sent that report to a higher unit, the version of
7 the report that made it to the higher unit we found in the archive and
8 found the original version of the report in Kosovo, because obviously for
9 many reports there's multiple addressees getting copies. For the most
10 part, however, the documents that we acquired through archive and --
11 archive missions in Serbia
12 those documents were new documents. The documents we tended to find in
13 Kosovo were 1998 or before, and because of that we determined that the
14 Serb forces had taken -- had certainly done as much of a review as
15 possible and tried to destroy documentation that they weren't taking and
16 taken the most current documentation with them when they withdrew.
17 Q. You said that there were some documents of that sort and you also
18 said that some documents were destroyed. Are you speaking from
19 experience? Are you personally aware of some documents having been
20 destroyed? Did that happen sporadically? Do you know anything about
21 that? Could you tell us more?
22 A. The condition of some documents that we found in some of the
23 buildings suggested that they -- an effort had been made to destroy them.
24 We had been told in response to some RFAs that some documents had been
25 destroyed. Documents of interest such as the Pristina Corps war diary,
Page 8608
1 the VJ was never able to provide an account of its -- of its fate
2 essentially. So it was never found in an archive, it was never found in
3 Kosovo, and nobody in the Pristina Corps could give us a clear answer
4 about what happened to such an important document. So whether destroyed
5 or lost, it certainly does -- did appear to me that there are examples of
6 that happening.
7 Q. In your report you state that there were other persons and
8 non-governmental organisations that were allowed to take away documents.
9 What did you mean when you stated that? Which persons did you refer to?
10 Which persons and NGOs were able to take documents away from Kosovo after
11 the entry of NATO and KFOR? I'm sure that you were not speaking about
12 the Serb forces.
13 A. I don't know of any individuals by name or title and I don't know
14 the specifics of organisations -- I also can't say that they were allowed
15 to take documents. But I'm aware of, for example, some witnesses giving
16 documents to investigators that they had found in Kosovo in a variety of
17 buildings. And I'm aware of KFOR seizing or collecting some of the
18 documents that they would come across in some of the buildings and KFOR
19 gave us access to the documents that they had seized.
20 Q. You very briefly touched upon this in the Milutinovic et al.
21 case, but can you please tell me, what do you know about the presentation
22 of documents by the then-Prime Minister Djindjic regarding
23 General Pavkovic to the Prosecutor at the time, Madam Carla del Ponte?
24 A. Yes, I mistakenly called him president, but
25 Prime Minister Djindjic. The Prosecutor went on a trip to Belgrade
Page 8609
1 July 2002, I think it was, and was given a number of VJ documents and
2 some Joint Command ones, including minutes of the Joint Command from
3 1998, in a package, two plastic bags if I recall correctly. And the note
4 taken by her political advisor who was with her receiving these documents
5 which we have in our system records -- I believe, I would have to see it
6 to confirm, but I believe the note states that the documents were put
7 together by General Pavkovic, who was Chief of the General Staff at that
8 time. Many of these documents I had noted were similar to the documents
9 that appeared in that book produced by Vojska which we had bought at the
10 VJ bookshop.
11 Q. The documents that were presented by Prime Minister Djindjic and
12 General Pavkovic in two bags, was it submitted accompanied by a list and
13 was a receipt given for its receipt by Madam del Ponte, or was it just
14 simply handed over without any kind of receipt being signed?
15 A. There was a list of the contents of the two plastic bags.
16 Whether or not there was a receipt, I'm not aware. I don't know.
17 Q. The list was drafted later in the OTP of The Hague Tribunal, not
18 at the time when the documents were received; am I correct?
19 A. Again, I would have to see this -- the contents of this package,
20 but I believe that the -- there was a list which was compiled by, I
21 presume, the VJ, not by us certainly. We did create a log ourselves
22 later on, but I believe that there was a list with the documents.
23 Q. Do you think this, or do you know it?
24 A. I wouldn't like to say with a hundred per cent certainty, but I'm
25 quite sure that there was a list provided to us with the documents.
Page 8610
1 Q. Can you please tell me, did you work with these documents once
2 they came to The Hague
3 else process them in the beginning?
4 A. I did work with those documents once they were processed. We did
5 create a log and we submitted them into evidence with the assignment of
6 ERNs.
7 Q. Can you please tell me whether the authenticity of the documents
8 was checked at any point in time and was there any doubt about the
9 veracity of the documents that you received at the time from the person
10 who was the Chief of the General Staff?
11 A. It was obviously a concern to be handed a collection of documents
12 by General Pavkovic without us specifically asking. So that was
13 certainly in the back of our minds. When reviewing the documents I was
14 aware of the need to look out for any signs of tampering or any signs of
15 forgery. There was nothing specific that suggested to me that any
16 particular document had been forged or tampered with. The only thing
17 that was I thought unusual and commented on in my report was the sheer
18 number of orders relating to adherence to the Geneva Conventions and the
19 Laws of War and disciplinary issues. I found it unusual that the VJ
20 would have to issue so many orders in that regard during a relatively
21 short period of time. But we subsequently got some of these same
22 documents through an archive mission in 2006 and the contents were
23 checked against documents received in other ways, and there wasn't, from
24 my recollection, any particular document where we -- where it was
25 questionable -- where the contents were questionable, in question.
Page 8611
1 Q. Can you please tell me, did you receive the document registers
2 along with that documentation, log-books?
3 A. We didn't receive the registers. I would have to see again the
4 collection to see whether or not the lists that I believe came with the
5 package, the bags of documents, was a copy of a register. But
6 specifically, no, we didn't receive the registers. We had requested
7 registers and [Realtime transcript read in error "had"] access to
8 registers in RFAs during the Milosevic trial. And I -- I note in the
9 transcript it says "had access." We requested access. We didn't have
10 access during the Milosevic trial.
11 Q. Yes, that was meant to be my next question actually. Can you
12 please tell me who was the political advisor of Carla del Ponte when
13 Prime Minister Djindjic and General Pavkovic submitted the documents in
14 two plastic bags to Carla del Ponte? What was his name? Of the
15 gentleman?
16 A. I can't remember who it was in 2002. The name Jean Jacques rings
17 a bell, but I can't be sure that it was him in 2002.
18 Q. Thank you.
19 A. It may have been Anton Nikiforov who was another -- working in a
20 political advisor capacity.
21 Q. Thank you. Except for what seemed strange to you, such a large
22 number of orders about the respect of the Geneva Conventions and
23 humanitarian law and the laws and customs of war, did you undertake any
24 actions regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in order to
25 double-check the things that seemed odd to you or not?
Page 8612
1 A. No, I don't believe these -- this collection of documents was
2 submitted to what could be called forensic analysis. The efforts to
3 assess the veracity and the authenticity consisted of my efforts to
4 compare them with other sources and compare them with what witnesses had
5 told us, to seek to get the original copies or to seek -- we continued to
6 seek archive access for a number of years, and to assess the contents --
7 it was an assessment of the contents.
8 Q. What do you believe that your expertise is based on when we're
9 talking about the analysis of such documentation? Is it the experience
10 that you gradually acquired working on documents, or is it something
11 else?
12 A. I believe that my ability to analyse documents about --
13 military-related documents or documents about armed organisations was
14 developed from -- during my time as an intelligence officer in the army,
15 where I was working in a division and brigade headquarters. And in those
16 headquarters I understood how divisions and brigades work, how the staffs
17 operate, the commanders function, what types of reports are generated by
18 lower units, such as daily combat reports. I understood how militaries
19 function. And then at the ICTY as I studied the documentation on the VJ,
20 with my background in military, I came to understand through the
21 documentation how the VJ and also the MUP operated, how it was -- how
22 both of them were structured, what reports they would generate, and the
23 regulations within which and the laws within which they were bound to
24 operate.
25 Q. These experiences were acquired in the Canadian Army; is that
Page 8613
1 correct?
2 A. The basic experience in understanding how military functions
3 certainly began in the Canadian Army; but as I mentioned, as I studied
4 the documentation of the Army of Yugoslavia and the MUP of Serbia I could
5 draw on that background to interpret those documents. And as an
6 intelligence officer in the military I also understood our own military
7 function from working in it. But our task was also -- it was - the Cold
8 War still existed - was to study and work on eastern European and former
9 Soviet Union militaries.
10 Q. Thank you. Responding to questions from my learned colleague
11 Mr. Hannis yesterday you talked about a commission of the Army of
12 Yugoslavia
13 Tribunal. Do you know who formed the commission?
14 A. I --
15 Q. Who was at the head of the Army of Yugoslavia at that time?
16 A. I'm not certain, but I believe General Pavkovic formed the
17 commission.
18 Q. Can you recall any of the members of the commission who were also
19 witnesses in the Milutinovic case?
20 A. I can't again remember for certain any names. I believe
21 General Djakovic was on the commission.
22 Q. That is correct, thank you. I'm just briefly going to deal with
23 the confiscations or seizure missions of documents, and we're talking
24 about the IFOR and the SFOR missions in Bosnia. You referred to the
25 doctrine of the Army of Yugoslavia and similar documents in those seizure
Page 8614
1 missions. I don't know when this took place and was it really necessary
2 in view of the accessibility of those documents on the part of Serbia
3 What did you mean when you talked about that particular aspect of
4 document collection?
5 A. In Bosnia-Herzegovina the international force there, initially
6 IFOR and then SFOR, conducted seizure missions. And I'm not familiar
7 because I didn't work on those cases, I'm not familiar with the details
8 of these seizure missions. Some of them were done on behalf of the OTP,
9 some of them for IFOR and SFOR's own purposes, but in the process -- and
10 some of these seizure missions had members of the OTP on them. In the
11 process a large number of documents were collected and I believe have
12 been used in other cases for the 1992 to 1995 conflict. For Kosovo there
13 really wasn't much of relevance in those collections, with the exception
14 of some doctrinal manuals from the JNA. We sought to verify whether or
15 not these had been superseded by VJ manuals, and at the time we were
16 having -- we weren't getting any cooperation from the Federal Republic
17 Yugoslavia
18 asking for doctrinal manuals through RFAs to the Federal Republic
19 Yugoslavia
20 these manuals were still applicable, they hadn't been updated and
21 replaced with VJ manuals. We had one manual on command and control that
22 was a VJ manual from 1996, I believe, and that was a manual which --
23 which was used at their General Staff college.
24 The other assessment was that even if these manuals had been
25 updated, what they were saying were very basic principles of command and
Page 8615
1 control that it was assessed would be very unlikely to change, such as
2 the responsibility of a commander and having a single chain of command.
3 It just wouldn't be very plausible for such basics of military command to
4 change from the JNA to the VJ.
5 Q. We're now moving to the assistance requests sent to the Federal
6 Republic of Yugoslavia
7 cooperation between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and The Hague
8 Prosecutor's office begin? Because you said earlier that at that time
9 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not cooperating with the OTP, with
10 The Hague
11 A. I'm not sure if it could be called cooperation, and I'm not
12 really placed to conclude or assess that, but during the Milosevic case
13 there was a 54 bis proceeding which was quite lengthy, the outcome of
14 which was the issuance of some Court orders to Serbia and Montenegro
15 or perhaps it was still the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to comply with
16 some the -- some aspects of the RFAs from the OTP. And there was some
17 compliance with those at that point, but it wasn't until 2006 when we
18 gained access to the archives that I would consider cooperation to be
19 anything approaching full cooperation.
20 Q. Do you know when the law on the cooperation with The Hague
21 Tribunal was adopted in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia?
22 A. No, I don't, Your Honours.
23 Q. Do you know when the body called the Council for Cooperation with
24 The Hague Tribunal was established?
25 A. I don't. I believe it was sometime during the Milosevic trial,
Page 8616
1 if not before.
2 Q. Very well. Now we're going to go back to a very important
3 subject, the archives of the army and the MUP. You talked about that --
4 well, now we're talking about 2006 and the mission when you -- when a
5 part of the team arrived in May and the other part arrived in August, as
6 you said, and you reviewed documents, and that you received replies
7 pursuant to your RFAs in September and some in November. However, what
8 I'm interested in is -- well, were you there in May 2006, in that team?
9 First tell me that.
10 A. Yes, I was.
11 Q. All right. Now that is quite clear. Can you please tell me --
12 for example, you said that the MUP furnished this documentation in
13 September and the Army of Yugoslavia in November of the same year. After
14 that you said that the way the Army of Yugoslavia archived its document
15 was quite proper and well done, compared to the MUP way of archiving.
16 What exactly did you mean when you said that?
17 A. The Army of Yugoslavia had an archive which was of the size that
18 I would expect for such an organisation. It was -- it had to be
19 relocated because the original location had been bombed by NATO, so it
20 was in the basement of a school or academy in Belgrade at the time we
21 went -- the first time we went. They had proper archive registers, and
22 when those registers were reviewed by us within the archive or the
23 temporary archive we would ask for -- to see a particular document and
24 very quickly they could bring us the document. There was a very
25 systematic way of documenting their information. They had millions of
Page 8617
1 pages of archive materials. They had professional archivists, at least
2 the people we met, that's what I was led to believe was their function
3 and background. In the MUP, in contrast, we were taken to a room or two
4 rooms next to each other in the headquarters in Belgrade, and we were
5 shown what they called the dossier KiM or the dossier Kosovo and
6 Metohija. And it was explained to us that this was a compilation put
7 together on General Lukic's instruction of all the materials that they
8 considered relevant to Kosovo. So in that respect I wouldn't consider
9 that an archive. And we never did see anything in the MUP that I would
10 have considered an archive in the terms that I understand an archive, a
11 very systematic -- systematically ordered and formal system for keeping
12 documents that have been archived in accordance with archiving
13 regulations. What we saw was a collection that had been put together for
14 a specific purpose.
15 Q. Do you know when General Lukic ordered the forming of the KiM
16 dossier? Was that in 2001?
17 A. I don't remember when exactly.
18 Q. Do you remember what function General Lukic held at that time?
19 A. I believe that when we -- General Lukic was the head of the
20 public security department of the MUP at the time.
21 Q. Very well. And what about General Djordjevic at the time, at the
22 time when General Lukic was the chief of the service, do you know what
23 his position was at that time before the indictment was ever issued? Did
24 you ever dwell upon that?
25 A. I can't remember the precise date when General Djordjevic left
Page 8618
1 his position as head of the public security service of the MUP.
2 Q. And do you remember the conditions under which he left? Were you
3 ever interested in that as you were working on this case, as I see you
4 were?
5 A. I'm not aware of the details of the conditions. I was primarily
6 concerned with 1999 and 1998. I know that -- or I believe that he fled
7 around about the time that allegations of the hiding of bodies and the
8 refrigerator truck were surfacing.
9 Q. Do you only think that, or do you know this?
10 A. That's the -- my best recollection. So I'm not absolutely
11 certain.
12 Q. Very well. Do you know what function was held by
13 General Djordjevic before he left MUP? Do you know the exact title of
14 that function or position? What was his position in the Ministry of the
15 Interior?
16 A. The last position that I'm certain of him holding, whether or not
17 it was the last position in the MUP, was the head of the RJB, which is
18 the public security department of the MUP.
19 Q. And with respect to the minister of the interior, what was his
20 position or role vis-a-vis the minister of the interior? Do you know
21 that? Was he his assistant or his deputy, to be more precise? Do you
22 know that?
23 A. I'd have to review the Law on Internal Affairs, but -- and again
24 I've seen it sometimes translated as assistant and sometimes deputy, but
25 I believe it's assistant to the minister, and there were a number of
Page 8619
1 other assistants to the minister.
2 Q. How come that in some reports he's referred to as
3 deputy minister, which he never was? I agree with you on that.
4 A. I don't know. It could be that it's a translation issue. I know
5 that there were two components to the MUP: The public security
6 department and the state security department, the RDB. And the two heads
7 reported to the minister. And under each of the respective heads there
8 were a number of assistant ministers.
9 Q. Thank you.
10 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, the accused would
11 like to consult with me, so I will ask your leave to allow me to do so.
12 JUDGE PARKER: Certainly, certainly.
13 [Defence counsel and accused confer]
14 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.
15 Q. In any case, Mr. Coo, I understand that you cannot be very
16 precise in remembering the organisation without reviewing your notes. So
17 when it comes to the structure of the MUP, I believe that we have not
18 obtained the most precise answers from you. I will not dwell upon the
19 issue, though the only thing I'm interested in now is the basis of your
20 faith in public sources. I'm referring to the press, the internet, web
21 presentations by the ministry, the army, and the police. And I'm also
22 referring to the dailies, magazines, different comments and different
23 interviews, different other sources, although you never knew whether any
24 authorisation was obtained for publication from the person with whom the
25 interview was allegedly conducted. What is the probative value that you
Page 8620
1 assign to such sources? How do you see such sources? How do you
2 interpret them?
3 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Hannis.
4 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I have an objection to the portion of
5 the question about asking this witness what probative value he assigns to
6 certain items. I think that's an ultimate question for Your Honours and
7 not for this witness.
8 JUDGE PARKER: I'm afraid I don't agree with you, Mr. Hannis. I
9 think the question is proper. What was being asked is what probative
10 value did this witness attach, and I think that's a proper approach.
11 Carry on, please, Mr. Djordjevic.
12 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Let us hear the witness's
13 answer.
14 Q. Do you want me to repeat my question, or can you answer it
15 without me repeating it?
16 A. No, that's fine, I understood the question.
17 The probative value would depend on -- and the value generally
18 that I gave to an open or a public source would depend on the source, and
19 I'd have to see each one. But in general terms I wouldn't accept such a
20 source in isolation. It was always integrated in the analysis with
21 corroborative sources, generally official documents. If the source was
22 official, such as the Vojska magazine produced for the VJ, by the VJ, I
23 would attach more value to that -- certainly that it had been at least
24 authorised by the VJ and the contents screened by the VJ. If it was a
25 newspaper, I might attach less -- or be less certain of the contents or
Page 8621
1 statements but certainly attempt and would feel more reassured about what
2 was being said if the contents were corroborated by other independently
3 acquired, especially official, information. So in general terms I think
4 open sources or public sources could have some probative value.
5 Q. I will bring my today's examination to an end with the following
6 question: Do you know that the central archive building of the Ministry
7 of the Interior was also bombed in a NATO campaign which started on the
8 24th of March, 1999. Are you aware of that?
9 A. I'm aware that the MUP headquarters in Belgrade was bombed, but
10 we always maintained that when we were told in response to RFAs that
11 documents had been destroyed in that bombing, the documentation that we
12 were seeking would not have been archived by that time. It would still
13 be with the units that were producing the documents. So in that regard
14 we didn't accept the reasoning given that because the archives or the MUP
15 headquarters had been destroyed that the documents of interest to us had
16 been destroyed.
17 Q. Did you personally inspect those buildings? Not only the central
18 MUP building in Kneza Milosa Street, but also those buildings which were
19 bombed outside the capital in other towns and places? Do you have any
20 personal knowledge of the destruction? Did you visit those buildings or
21 not? Can you tell us something about that.
22 A. I visited some of the MUP or SUP headquarters in Kosovo, not
23 outside Kosovo. We knew that the SUPs and other units had moved out of
24 these buildings when NATO bombing began under -- with the knowledge that
25 they would be primary targets for NATO. But we were never told that the
Page 8622
1 MUP had kept archived documents in other places in Serbia. We were
2 essentially told that the -- all of the available documents that we were
3 seeking were in the dossier KiM or in some of the offices of different
4 units, such as the border police in parts of Belgrade, which -- and we
5 did visit those offices on subsequent missions and came across only a
6 handful of documents.
7 Q. Thank you. I have no more questions for you. I believe that we
8 have received enough answers, including the answer about the
9 documentation, whether it was destroyed in the NATO campaign or not. It
10 seems that your knowledge is not reliable, that it is more --
11 MR. HANNIS: Objection, Your Honour to that commentary --
12 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Djordjevic, you know better than that. What
13 your views are about the reliability is not the sort of thing you can
14 make an observation about. In due course you will be able to put
15 submissions to us on the evidence.
16 Mr. Hannis, do you re-examine?
17 MR. HANNIS: Yes, I have a few questions, Your Honour.
18 I'd like to start with P887 and D204. These are the documents
19 that Mr. Djordjevic had a question about at page -- starting at page 26
20 today. And I guess for -- if it's possible, if we could have both
21 English versions up for Mr. Coo side by side.
22 Re-examination by Mr. Hannis:
23 Q. Mr. Coo, I think you'll remember this discussion. One is the
24 order from General Ojdanic, and it's on the left side of the screen; and
25 on the right is the related order from General Pavkovic. I will -- and
Page 8623
1 the document on the right, which is sign -- has a signature and a stamp
2 from General Pavkovic, you'll see above the signature block the initials
3 MDj and BV. Do you see that?
4 THE INTERPRETER: Mr. Hannis is kindly asked to speak into the
5 microphone. Thank you.
6 THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.
7 MR. HANNIS: Sorry.
8 Q. And General Djakovic testified here and indicated to us that the
9 MDj were his initials as the author of that document. Were you familiar
10 with that manner of notations in VJ documents?
11 A. Yes, I am. I believe that the first initial was the authorising
12 officer and the second would be the drafter.
13 Q. Now, Mr. Djordjevic asked you a question about the registry
14 numbers at the top of each of these. General Pavkovic's on the right is
15 872-94/1 and the one on the left is 872-94/2. What do you know about the
16 numbering system within the 3rd Army and Pristina Corps in 1999? What do
17 you understand about how documents were assigned numbers like this?
18 A. My understanding was that the 872, the first three digits, would
19 be related to the -- it was either the unit or the subject. So, for
20 example, operations -- operational related information might have a
21 particular three-digit number. The second part of the number after the
22 dash I believe was -- although I'm not fully familiar with the system,
23 General Vasiljevic explained part of it at one point. But I believe it's
24 a sequential numbering system.
25 Q. And the stroke 1, stroke 2, does that indicate anything about
Page 8624
1 those two documents and the relationship with each other?
2 A. I can't say for sure, but I believe they're different copies --
3 they reflect the different copies of these documents.
4 Q. Did you learn anything in the course of your work about how these
5 numbers were assigned within the Pristina Corps or the 3rd Army? Who
6 gave the document a number and when was the number attached to the
7 document?
8 A. Again, it was my understanding that the numbers would be assigned
9 by a clerk essentially, who would be responsible for the dissemination of
10 the document, not the drafting.
11 Q. And do you know at what point in time that clerk would put the
12 number on the document?
13 A. I don't know for sure whether it was before or after the document
14 had been signed. I believe it was after when it was being registered by
15 the clerk in the unit's register.
16 Q. And apart from these two documents, do you have any other
17 evidence to support that General Ojdanic indeed did issue such an order
18 on or about the 18th of April?
19 A. Yes, I did. There was the -- the order from the -- not the order
20 but a report from the 2nd Army at the same time making reference to the
21 same General Staff order about subordination of the MUP to the VJ. There
22 was -- there were some other orders, one in fact in 25th of May, I
23 believe, from the 3rd Army discussing the issue of subordination.
24 Q. Okay. Thank you.
25 And with regard to General Pavkovic's order, in essence relaying
Page 8625
1 the order on down to subordinates, did you have other documentation from
2 other sources suggesting that that indeed had occurred on or about that
3 day?
4 A. I don't recall for certain. I think some of the brigades
5 reflected the -- the Pristina Corps reflected this in its own order and
6 some of the Pristina Corps brigades followed up, so the chain of command
7 issued a sequence of orders regarding the subordination of the MUP.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. There was more general discussion about the whole issue of the
10 subordination of the MUP within -- within the VJ's documentation, and it
11 was also certainly mentioned by witnesses.
12 Q. All right. Now let me turn to another subject at page 39 today,
13 line 16. Mr. Djordjevic was asking you about missing documents, and you
14 specifically mentioned the Pristina Corps war diary. What can you tell
15 us about that? Where -- where from your knowledge of how archiving was
16 done in the VJ after the war would you have expected to find the
17 Pristina Corps war diary?
18 A. By the time we got to the archives in 2006, that war diary should
19 have been in the archives of the VJ in Belgrade. And under the archiving
20 regulations, because it was produced during a state of war, should have
21 been kept permanently.
22 Q. And when it was not there, did you make inquiries and what were
23 you told?
24 A. We did make inquiries, and they simply didn't know. They said
25 the war diary, there's no record of that war diary having been submitted
Page 8626
1 to the archives. General Lazarevic was asked during his interview and
2 also failed to account for the location of the war diary.
3 Q. Do you recall what he specifically said about it?
4 A. I can't recall the specifics.
5 Q. Okay. And lastly, the question concerning your view on the
6 probative value of some of the documents from public or non-official
7 sources. The documents that were on your provenance list that were part
8 of the supporting materials in the reports that you wrote concerning the
9 Kosovo conflict, some of those include internet sources or newspaper or
10 magazine articles. Did you ever rely for any of the points written in
11 your report solely on an unofficial public source?
12 A. No, I didn't.
13 Q. Thank you.
14 MR. HANNIS: I have no other questions, Your Honour. I do have
15 one administrative matter, if I may, though. With regard to
16 Exhibit P1289, which was marked for identification, that was one of the
17 documents related to the RFAs, the translation has been located. It's
18 been disclosed to the Defence. I believe the Registry officer has it
19 now, and we would ask if it can be attached and admitted. Thank you.
20 JUDGE PARKER: Yes, that has been marked for identification,
21 pending translation. The translation now provided may be attached and it
22 will become an exhibit of the same number. Thank you, Mr. Hannis.
23 Mr. Coo, you'll be pleased to know that that completes the
24 questions for you. The Chamber would thank you for your attendance and
25 your assistance. You may of course now resume your normal activities and
Page 8627
1 a Court Officer will show you out when we rise, which will be in a
2 moment.
3 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honours.
4 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Djordjevic, does the question of the written
5 submission you want to make about the various documents, what time do you
6 feel you would need for that?
7 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Two to three weeks would be
8 enough for us to submit our written submission with regard to the list
9 that I have before me. So the break should suffice for us to do so in
10 order to explain things, as we already announced during the proceedings.
11 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you.
12 MR. DJORDJEVIC: [Interpretation] Secondly, I would kindly ask my
13 learned friend, Mr. Hannis, to submit an updated list because some of the
14 evidence was withdrawn from the list after our objections. For example,
15 the Law on the Ministry of the Interior, which is no longer valid. This
16 would allow us to be more precise with regard to the admitted evidence.
17 There were some additional documents outside of the notice that we
18 previously had, so this is my other request with regard to the
19 administrative matters in these proceedings. Thank you very much.
20 JUDGE PARKER: Mr. Hannis.
21 MR. HANNIS: We'll certainly do that, Your Honour. I think there
22 were only two we dropped from the original list, but I also have the list
23 of the VJ collegiums and we'll provide that to the Registry officer and
24 Mr. Djordjevic.
25 JUDGE PARKER: How long will that take you, do you think?
Page 8628
1 MR. HANNIS: I think we could have it to him by Monday, if not
2 the end of today.
3 JUDGE PARKER: Thank you. If you can do that.
4 Mr. Djordjevic, I think we should allow you the time after you
5 get that list, so we will ask that you provide your written submissions
6 within two weeks of next Monday, so you have two weeks after next -- from
7 next Monday to provide the submissions. Thank you very much.
8 We will now adjourn and we resume on Monday.
9 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 12.28 p.m.
10 to be reconvened on Monday, the 31st day of
11 August, 2009, at 2.15 p.m.
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