110114ED

Page 10190

1 Friday, 14 January 2011

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 [The witness takes the stand]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.19 a.m.

6 JUDGE KWON: Good morning, everyone. I apologise for the delay.

7 Yes, Mr. Karadzic.

8 WITNESS: JEREMY BOWEN [Resumed]

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Excellency.

10 Good morning to everybody. Good morning, Mr. Bowen.

11 THE WITNESS: Good morning.

12 Cross-examination by Mr. Karadzic: [Continued]

13 Q. [Interpretation] Yesterday, we spoke about the incident involving

14 children. Let me just ask you briefly. The bus that we are talking

15 about and that we saw passing through the check-point, was it the same

16 bus which carried the children or was the footage simply taken in order

17 to make an impression, a full impression of the event? We can check that

18 by checking the registration plates. The police records must reflect the

19 registration plates of the bus. Did your cameraman tell you whether that

20 was, indeed, one-and-the-same bus or was it just any random bus whose

21 photo he took just to make an impression?

22 A. You could tell from -- what we call in the TV businesses the

23 rushes, which is the raw tape -- we had the original tape on which the

24 pictures are recorded, and you can tell from that rushes tape if it was

25 all shot at the same time, contemporaneously, from the time code on it,

Page 10191

1 the electronic time code. So I have no doubts about the veracity of the

2 pictures, no.

3 Q. Thank you. Would it be possible to establish what footages were

4 made in your presence, as opposed to those that were made in your

5 absence, that were made by either your cameraman, in your absence, or by

6 some other agency, and what is the proportion between one's and the

7 others'? How many of those footages did you actually witness while they

8 were being made, while they were being recorded?

9 A. Are you talking about the story about the children on the bus and

10 the funeral or in general?

11 Q. In general, yes, in general.

12 A. I would say -- I mean, the way that the television news business

13 works is that we have alliances with other broadcasters and we share

14 material, so it's common to use material from different sources in the

15 course of one report. In Sarajevo, that was also the case, because there

16 was a pool, in other words, an arrangement to share pictures, between the

17 main television news agencies to which we subscribed. And we had that

18 arrangement for safety reasons, the argument being, Why have two

19 cameramen shooting in a dangerous place while you -- putting their lives

20 both at risk when you could have one? However, because it was a small

21 area, during the war in Sarajevo, I would say I was present very often

22 for 100 per cent of the material that was being shot, even if the

23 pictures that we had -- that we were using weren't from our camera, if

24 there was, on occasion, more than one camera there. And on occasions,

25 no, I wasn't present, but we're careful about the provenance of our

Page 10192

1 video, so we would check where it came from.

2 And if, on occasion, for example, like the -- you may recall from

3 one of the exhibits, one of the videos, there were some pictures of Serbs

4 who were shot by snipers coming from the Bosnian Government side. Now,

5 that was -- those were pictures that reached us indirectly. In fact,

6 I think they probably reached London and they were described to us over

7 the phone. So I couldn't have been there when that was shot. But we

8 were given details, and the people in London were satisfied that those

9 pictures of the Serbs being shot were what they said they -- what they

10 purported to be, so we put them into the piece. However, I'd say that

11 the providence of the material is a big issue for the television news

12 business, and we work very hard to make sure that the pictures that we --

13 that we use are honest and decent and truthful.

14 Q. I'm waiting for the interpretation. I apologise.

15 And now this is what I want to know: We have the visual. How

16 does one come up with the textual part of the news if the visual is

17 received from others? How do you form the news, and how reliable the

18 news is, in the criminal sense? Is it reliable, in the criminal and

19 legal sense?

20 A. Well, I hope it's reliable in every sense, and we try very hard

21 for it to be accurate. On occasion, mistakes are made. You know, you're

22 working under heavy pressure of time, heavy dead-lines, and -- but we do

23 try. We try very hard. You know, we're not slap-dash, particularly when

24 it's a very important story, as all the stories in the former Yugoslavia

25 were, because they concerned life and death. So I would say that it is

Page 10193

1 reliable.

2 And you asked how the textual part of the news is put together.

3 Well, I would write it, and I would receive information through various

4 sources, some of which we were discussing yesterday, and put it together

5 in a way that works with the pictures. And the thing about television

6 news is that it's not like writing a newspaper article. You have to

7 write -- you have to use words that complement the vision that you see

8 and the sound that you hear and take it all together. So, for example, a

9 newspaper reporter would describe -- maybe describe everything that

10 happened, but I don't have to use words to describe things if you can see

11 them. So I have to choose words that add something extra, which is

12 lucky. It's important to do that, because we have very -- the numbers of

13 words we write are very, very small. You know, you write -- it's three

14 words a second, and so, say, in a two-minute news report, there isn't

15 many words, whereas a newspaper reporter might write 800. So I might

16 write 250, 300, something like that, no more than that; 350 maybe.

17 Q. Thank you very much for this extensive overview of your job. Now

18 I'm going to try and ask you as many questions as possible that you will

19 be able to answer by just yes or no.

20 I believe that you said that the Serbs did not need to know about

21 the funeral, that there was actually a funeral going on. Does that mean

22 that you do not necessarily think that the Serbs always had an intent or

23 they had an intent to shoot at the people at the funeral, because there

24 were people there whom they did not necessarily have to have a visual

25 contact with?

Page 10194

1 A. I'm sorry, I can't answer that with a single word.

2 No, I think the point I was making was that it wasn't a show put

3 on by the Bosnian Government side, in my opinion, for the television

4 cameras, because the point I made was that shells landed frequently when

5 television cameras weren't there. So my question would be -- sorry, my

6 answer would be why -- my rhetorical question would be: Why put on a

7 show like that and shell the graveyard for the TV cameras at a time when

8 TV cameras weren't there? Because the point I was making was that on

9 their side of the lines, they would know when the funeral was going on or

10 know another event was going on there, so they could -- you know, if they

11 wanted to, they could -- if they were doing something like that, then

12 they would be able to see that we were there. But shelling of that

13 graveyard happened sometimes when TV cameras were there, sometimes when

14 TV cameras weren't there, and quite often when they weren't there. You

15 could see that by the damage to the graves.

16 Q. Very well. But you don't know that, Mr. Bowen. Neither do I.

17 We don't know that. However, let me ask you this: The footage that the

18 Prosecution showed as P01993 [as interpreted] has been shown here and

19 admitted to illustrate a claim, and the claim was that the Serbs would

20 fire a shell and then they would wait for a couple of minutes for people

21 to turn up, and then fire a second shell. Did the children get killed

22 from a shell that hit the bus, or the second shell, or how did they get

23 killed? Which shell killed the children?

24 A. The children on the bus, you're referring to? They were shot.

25 JUDGE KWON: Just a second.

Page 10195

1 Yes, Ms. Edgerton.

2 MS. EDGERTON: Just to get the numbers straight, that was not

3 P1993.

4 JUDGE KWON: The correct number is ...?

5 MS. EDGERTON: I don't know, because I don't know what

6 Dr. Karadzic is referring to. But P1993 is --

7 JUDGE KWON: I think it is -- that P1993 was allegedly part of

8 P2078, we're told. Does it satisfy you, Ms. Edgerton?

9 MS. EDGERTON: I'm actually a little bit -- are we talking about

10 1993 or 1933, Your Honours?

11 JUDGE KWON: Yes, 1933.

12 MS. EDGERTON: All right, I understood. And the transcript reads

13 "1993," and that's why I arose.

14 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

15 Let's proceed. Sorry for the interruption, Mr. --

16 THE WITNESS: Just to make it clear, are we referring to the

17 piece which was about the bus, the attack on the bus, itself? Is that

18 that particular piece of evidence, that particular video?

19 JUDGE KWON: Are we not talking about shelling --

20 THE WITNESS: We're talking about the funeral or the bus? I'm

21 not clear which one we're talking about.

22 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

23 Q. We're talking about the funeral. The material from the funeral

24 was used to prove that the Serbs would fire the first shell first, then

25 wait a couple of minutes, then wait for the rescuers to gather, and then

Page 10196

1 fired a second shell in order to increase the number of casualties. Was

2 that the case in this particular instance?

3 A. I have to say I did not make that point. I didn't make that

4 point in the script and I didn't make that point in court yesterday.

5 That's a point, sir, that I think you're making. I didn't make that

6 point.

7 Q. Thank you. I would like to ask you this: You said that you'd

8 heard rumours that the Muslim side was also in the process of shooting at

9 their own people in order to inspire sympathy among the representatives

10 of the international community and that you heard that from

11 General MacKenzie; right? Could you please -- or, rather, an associate

12 of General MacKenzie. Could you tell us the name of that person,

13 General MacKenzie's associate, who told you that?

14 A. No, I can't tell you that because I'm not going to reveal my

15 source, and, besides, I don't have the name, anyway, at the forefront of

16 my mind, at the tips of my fingers. And I only heard that information, I

17 have to stress, towards the end of that particular trip to Sarajevo,

18 which was my first one to the -- to the war. So, therefore, after the

19 funeral incident and so on. It was just as I -- more or less as I was

20 leaving, this -- one of General MacKenzie's staff spoke to me and said

21 that.

22 Q. Thank you. You write about that in paragraph 39 of your

23 consolidated statement, and you express doubt. You said:

24 "I didn't see any proof to that effect."

25 And that's why you do not believe that story.

Page 10197

1 I would like to show you two documents, very briefly, to show you

2 that those were not just rumours, but very serious doubts harboured by

3 the United Nations representatives.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can the Court please produce D681.

5 Can that be produced in e-court, please, D681.

6 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

7 Q. If you agree that this is a report that was sent to General Rose

8 from the Sarajevo Sector on the 26th and 27th October 1994, I would like

9 to move on to the following page, please.

10 And here there is a description of an incident which happened

11 around Bratstvo and Jedinstvo Bridge, where eight people were injured.

12 Can you please look at the last bullet, where it says:

13 [In English] "and corps operations by Bosnian officials indicate

14 shots came from Bosnian-held territory (see map ..."

15 And so on and so on.

16 [Interpretation] Does this sound convincing, Mr. Bowen, or do you

17 also have doubts about this report?

18 A. Well, I can't possibly have an opinion about this report, because

19 I wasn't there, I didn't report on the story, it's the first time I've

20 seen the document, and, you know, I can read the report as well as you

21 can and what it says, and it clearly seems to be a genuine document, but

22 I wasn't there. I mean, the one point that occurs to me as a journalist,

23 looking at this for the first time, is that if the Bosnian side was up to

24 no good, the Bosnian Government side were up to no good, why were they

25 corroborating these -- these reports that the shots came from their own

Page 10198

1 territory, themselves? You think they might try and deny it, but that's

2 just the first thing that occurs to me. Having said that, I mean, I

3 can't -- I'm not going to attempt to comment further on it, because, as I

4 say, I wasn't there and I have no knowledge of the incident.

5 Q. You were not in many places, and yet you voice your observations

6 and conclusions about them. You just confirmed a little while ago that

7 you received footages of many places that you, yourself, did not go to,

8 and this is not a report of the Bosnian Government or their admission,

9 this is an UNPROFOR conclusion.

10 Can we now please see D680 in e-court.

11 I would like to show you another of those reports, and there are

12 many of them which, in a very responsible and serious manner, deal with

13 the tricks played by the Muslim side during the war.

14 Thank you. Can we please look at the third page.

15 First of all, let's identify the document. This is a report of

16 the United Nations, a technical report about the shelling in

17 Livanjska Street on the 9th September 1994.

18 Can we now move to the third page of the same document. We don't

19 need the Serbian version. Thank you. It can be removed from the screen.

20 Could you please look at the first and the last sentences of the

21 conclusion. You can look at the entire conclusion, but let's not waste

22 time. Could you please read aloud both of the sentences, if you don't

23 mind?

24 A. Which sentences do you want me to read? The last two? Sorry.

25 Q. The first one and the last one, or, yeah, why not the whole

Page 10199

1 conclusion, yes.

2 A. Okay:

3 "Conclusion: It is possible to conclude that the most suspected

4 area --"

5 THE INTERPRETER: Please slow down.

6 THE WITNESS: "It is possible to conclude that the most suspected

7 area are under the control of BiH."

8 JUDGE KWON: I don't see the utility of reading out all the

9 passage. Could you read it and could you --

10 THE WITNESS: I've read it.

11 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Very well.

12 Q. Well, you see, this is another conclusion to the effect that the

13 shell that nobody touched, just for your information, indicates that the

14 shell had come from the Muslim side. There was another shell that had

15 been moved, which made it suspicious or made the Serbs suspicious at

16 having been fired at, but the one that wasn't touched or moved, showed

17 clearly that it had come from the Muslim side. Were you aware of those

18 reports or these kinds of reports?

19 A. No, I wasn't aware of this report. And had I been in Sarajevo at

20 the time, I would have been very interested in it and I would have tried

21 to have done a story about it. No question about that.

22 I have to say in my time there, I never saw anything like this,

23 and it would have been newsworthy, of course. I don't know how many

24 reports there are like this, but I'd be interested in seeing if there's

25 anything like this in relation to any of the incidents that I reported

Page 10200

1 on. But I'm not aware of anything like this, and I think the wider

2 important point about the siege was that there was -- I mean, a war was

3 going on. There was Serb shooting going into the city on a regular

4 basis, which, as I said yesterday, I saw, and I saw the shell cases. But

5 this particular thing, I mean, yeah, at the time it certainly would have

6 made a story for us.

7 Q. Thank you. We'll come to that. We'll see who opened fire and

8 who shelled the city. This is a topic of its own.

9 Do you know that from the first incident, which took place on the

10 27th May in the bread line in Vase Miskina Street, there was a serious

11 suspicion among the UN representatives that the Muslim side was framing

12 those incidents? If you had known that, would your paragraph 39 read

13 differently, perhaps? All that time, the United Nations warned their

14 officers and officials to be careful and to pay attention to the games to

15 setting the scenes, to planting bodies, and this is what you heard as

16 rumours. However, that was part of the official reports. If you'd known

17 all that, would your paragraph 39 have suffered any changes?

18 A. Well, paragraph 39 says I heard it from an aide to UNPROFOR's

19 General MacKenzie, but I never saw proof. And it's true, I never saw

20 proof. So if there had been those kind of documents about the incidents

21 on which I was reporting, I might have thought differently, but I haven't

22 seen documents relating to the incidents on which I was reporting that

23 sounded differently. But, you know, these are hypotheticals, so I can't

24 really give you a particularly good answer on a hypothetical question. I

25 prefer to stick to matters of fact.

Page 10201

1 Q. Well, what about your reports of the incidents which you did not

2 attend, and based on the visual, you came up with the textual part of the

3 information? What about that? What are we supposed to think about those

4 reports?

5 A. It's a different thing, sitting here in a courtroom 18 years on,

6 trying to analyse a report about an incident which I wasn't at, to

7 writing a story about an incident that occurred in the same part of the

8 city where I was. I may not have been there precisely with my own eyes

9 at that particular moment, but I was able quite often to go to the place

10 in the aftermath and talk to people who were there and, therefore, absorb

11 the context in which it happened. I don't think you can compare the two

12 things at all.

13 Q. Thank you. However, you were aware of the war tricks that were

14 played by the Muslim forces, and the goal of those tricks was to provoke

15 an international intervention or to remove the Serbs from the scene; is

16 that right? Were you aware of those political games on the part of the

17 Muslim Army?

18 A. Well, I repeat what I said before, that towards the end of my

19 first stint in Sarajevo this aide to General MacKenzie spoke to me in an

20 undertone, he sort of took me to one side and muttered about it as though

21 he was passing on a very important secret, and of course I was intrigued

22 by what he was saying and I looked for evidence of that. And after

23 incidents, especially controversial incidents, you would often see

24 soldiers doing crater analysis, but I don't remember them very often

25 releasing the results of that. And I tend to think that had they found

Page 10202

1 things which were -- which bore out the kinds of allegations that you are

2 making, then perhaps it would have come out either then or since.

3 Q. Thank you. I'm asking you in broader terms, not only about

4 shooting at their own people, but at the tricks which were aimed at

5 removing the Serbs from the scene.

6 Let's look at another one of your reports. The number is 1D2928.

7 Can this be shown, please.

8 [Video-clip played]

9 "Reporter: The war is coming closer to the UN Protection Force.

10 Four Ukrainian soldiers were wounded when the radar battery they manned

11 was attacked. They came under fire because Bosnian forces had mounted

12 heavy guns 30 yards from their position. If the plan was to use them as

13 a shield, it failed."

14 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

15 Q. Is this one of those tricks that were played, moving one's own

16 vehicles close to UNPROFOR installations and opening fire on the Serb

17 side?

18 A. Well, I think it's very clear from the script what I reported at

19 the time. They came under fire because Bosnian forces had mounted guns

20 30 yards from their position. If the plan was to use them as a shield,

21 it failed. I mean, I reported it at the time. I don't see what the

22 issue is.

23 Q. Thank you. Were you aware of the way various forces were

24 deployed in Sarajevo? Were you aware of the whole picture?

25 A. I certainly wasn't aware of any -- of the whole picture, no. I

Page 10203

1 don't think anybody who was a journalist there was. The way that

2 journalists work, I mean, we're people who essentially were on the

3 outside, we're not insiders. I wasn't privy to the secret deliberations

4 of the Bosnian Government. I wasn't privy to what you guys were doing in

5 Pale. I wasn't privy to the secret discussions inside UNPROFOR. So

6 certainly I didn't know the whole picture, no, of course not.

7 As I said yesterday, as a reporter, all you can do is use your

8 eyes and use your ears. You have to try and talk to people and find out

9 what you can.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I would like to show another report

11 of yours. 1D2931 is the number.

12 And can the previous report be admitted into evidence?

13 JUDGE KWON: Yes.

14 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibit D939, Your Honours.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can the Court please produce

16 1D2931.

17 [Video-clip played]

18 "Reporter: Territorials were moving to the front-line.

19 Civilians whose homes they passed called out, May God protect you.

20 "Jeremy Bowen, BBC News, Sarajevo.

21 "Jeremy Bowen for NBC News, Sarajevo."

22 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

23 Q. Were you at this location or did you receive a report from your

24 cameraman?

25 A. I don't recall, to be honest. It was such a short clip, I'd have

Page 10204

1 to have a look at the whole piece and then maybe it would jog my memory.

2 I mean, that's an eight-second clip from a piece I did 19 years ago. I

3 really can't -- I mean, it's the first time I've seen it since I wrote

4 those words.

5 JUDGE KWON: Can we have the number again? Did you say "1D2931"?

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, Your Excellency, exactly.

7 Thank you.

8 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

9 Q. So you were there, and that could be seen from the entire

10 footage. Now let me --

11 A. Sorry, could I interrupt? I didn't see -- I also wasn't on the

12 video screen fast enough to see the beginning of it. I just looked at

13 the transcript. So was I there, was I in the picture? I don't know.

14 Q. I think that you were in the footage that precedes this

15 particular clip. But, at any rate, it is your report.

16 Let me ask you something now, Mr. Bowen. You, sitting in your

17 hotel -- or if you were sitting in your hotel and if we were firing at

18 these soldiers, how would you report this; that we were firing at the

19 city, itself?

20 JUDGE KWON: I don't think the witness got the message correctly.

21 The transcript I have is a bit different from what is noted in the

22 transcript. Can I read out the transcript from what I have? It says:

23 "Two Bosnian territorials were moving up to the front-line.

24 Civilians, whose homes they passed, were pulling up signs, May God

25 protect you."

Page 10205

1 THE WITNESS: Okay, thank you.

2 JUDGE KWON: What is the question, Mr. Karadzic?

3 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

4 Q. My question is as follows: Had these young men been killed in

5 this street, what would your report have said? Who were the Serbs firing

6 at; civilians?

7 A. Well, I probably wouldn't have said either. I would have -- I

8 would have reported that they were young fighters who were moving up

9 towards the front-line, who came under fire. I mean, I would have tried

10 to report what happened. I would have said that had a shell landed at

11 that particular moment right in the middle of them, and somehow

12 miraculously the cameraman had escaped with the footage, I would have

13 said, A group of fighters were moving up to the front-line when they came

14 under fire and were killed. If they were civilians and if civilians had

15 been killed, I would have said, Civilians who had been urging them on

16 were also killed. I mean, the thing about it is I would try and report

17 what happened. I mean, that's what I would have done. It seems quite

18 straightforward to me. But, again, these are -- these are hypothetical

19 questions about incidents that, in this case, didn't happen.

20 JUDGE MORRISON: Dr. Karadzic, I was going to interrupt before

21 the witness gave the -- arguably, the only answer he could have given to

22 a hypothetical question. It really doesn't assist us. It's much better

23 if you can ask questions related to things which are factually indicated

24 by the evidence, rather than going off on a hypothetical exercise, when

25 the witness is bound to give you simply a hypothetical answer. Maybe an

Page 10206

1 accurate answer and the essence of what he would have done in those

2 circumstances, but how does that help anybody?

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Excellency, I agree. However,

4 that's the impression you have because I haven't finished yet.

5 I would like to draw the witness's attention to paragraph 24, and

6 I would like you all to have a look at paragraph 24.

7 You can see there, in paragraph 24 of his statement, that

8 civilians had been trapped, in a way, or, rather, that a person can lose

9 his or her life anywhere.

10 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

11 Q. Mr. Bowen, it would have been different if you were present and

12 if you saw a man carrying a rifle get shot. And imagine if somebody took

13 away that rifle, and then you come to the conclusion eventually that it

14 was civilians who got killed.

15 So paragraph 24 of your statement implies that it was civilians

16 who were targeted. I'm asking you the following: Are these young men a

17 legitimate target?

18 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, it's not for the witness to answer the

19 question -- to answer such questions.

20 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. Mr. Bowen, did the Muslims have an organised army in Sarajevo

22 while you were there?

23 A. When I first was there in 1992, it was based on their

24 Territorial Defence force, and it was a bit chaotic, I felt. They didn't

25 have proper uniforms. There was some organisation, but it was more of a

Page 10207

1 militia-type organisation, I'd say. By 1993, when General Delic was in

2 charge, I'd say it was well organised, it started -- and then later in

3 the war, it became -- it became better organised. I think as time went

4 by, they -- in a military sense, they got their act together. I think at

5 the beginning, though, in 1992, it was quite chaotic. For example, they

6 relied on some charismatic individuals, some of whom were of dubious

7 background, to organise some of their defence, whereas later on it was --

8 you could see that they were -- they were better armed, they had better

9 uniforms, they had proper boots, and they responded more as a military

10 formation.

11 Q. Thank you. Mr. Bowen, did you know that the Muslim side, already

12 in the spring of 1991, started organising its Patriotic League and that

13 the Green Berets were some kind of an elite unit of that league? Did you

14 know that when the war started, they had 120.000 to 150.000 troops in

15 civilian clothing, but, nevertheless, well organised? Did you know that?

16 A. 150 -- I hadn't heard those figures before, no. I was aware that

17 all sides had been -- had felt that war was coming and had been making

18 some preparations. 1991, I have to say, I wasn't in Bosnia, except for

19 one visit, and that was simply - I think I mentioned it

20 yesterday - en route -- I was in Banja Luka en route to part of Croatia.

21 My contact with former Yugoslavia in 1991 was covering the war in

22 Croatia.

23 JUDGE BAIRD: Excuse me.

24 Did you hear of the Green Beret at all?

25 THE WITNESS: Well, they had this -- the Green Berets, no, I

Page 10208

1 didn't hear about the Green Berets. When I was there in 1992, there was

2 a lot of talk about what they call the TOs or the Territorial Defence,

3 I think, and I took that to be -- I understood that to be some kind of --

4 essentially, a militia force, not as -- not organised in a conventional

5 military sense. I did know somebody who said he was involved in,

6 quote/unquote, "special forces," but -- on the Bosnian Government side,

7 but, you know, he was a young guy who had been in a military academy. So

8 they weren't special forces in the sense that they would be special

9 forces, say, in the US Army or the British Army or in the federal

10 Yugoslav Army. So the Green Berets, no, I don't think I've heard that

11 particular -- name of that unit or that -- it wasn't certainly being

12 bandied around much or at all in my hearing when I was there in 1992.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I?

14 JUDGE BAIRD: [Microphone not activated]

15 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

16 Q. Mr. Bowen, do you agree that at the beginning of August 1992, the

17 entire Territorial Defence of Sarajevo, involving 500 different units, as

18 reported by the president -- reported to the Presidency in mid-June by

19 Sefer Halilovic, was brought together within the 1st Corps of the Army of

20 Bosnia and Herzegovina? Did you know that the 1st Corps was in existence

21 at the time, with about 15 brigades within the city itself?

22 A. I knew that they were trying to organise themselves, because they

23 didn't like -- there had been these guys who, I think, wore kind of black

24 boiler suits, who ran around as part of their Territorial Defence,

25 perhaps part of these 500 different units, and I know that they were

Page 10209

1 trying to get them into proper uniforms and trying to organise themselves

2 at that particular time. I didn't study the order of battle of the Army

3 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I have to admit, but I think the fact that if

4 in -- if they had 500 different units to defend one not very big city,

5 that suggests to me that -- by analysis, that it was a bit chaotic, was

6 probably correct. But, as I say, they were definitely trying to

7 organise, and the point I'm making is that by -- certainly by the

8 following year, because I spent time talking to General Delic at his

9 headquarters, they were definitely well organised by then. So that must

10 have been when the process was beginning.

11 Q. Thank you. Do you accept that the Muslim Army in Sarajevo had

12 three times more personnel than the Sarajevo Romanija Corps? Please, if

13 you could give shorter answers. Do you accept that the Muslim Army in

14 Sarajevo had three times more personnel than the Sarajevo Romanija Corps

15 already in 1992, from the very outset?

16 A. By the Romanija Corps, you're referring to Bosnian Serb units. I

17 have no idea how many personnel there were. I was struck, on my visits

18 to the positions outside Sarajevo, that there weren't that many men that

19 you could see in those four to five positions that you had going along,

20 looking over the city.

21 In terms of my knowledge of the Bosnian Serb units and armed

22 forces, I was -- I was very struck by 1993 -- I was near Han Pijesak, and

23 we bumped into a unit of very well organised Bosnian Serb -- I think they

24 were some kind of mountain troops. They were very well equipped for

25 winter warfare, they were very soldierly, if I might call it, very

Page 10210

1 professional looking, and actually to a different calibre to many of the

2 people I saw around Sarajevo, who seemed to be more like local guys.

3 But, you know, I had the impression that that process of organisation was

4 working on both sides, in terms -- you know, as war goes on, people get

5 more organised and commanders come -- come to the fore. But as for

6 precise numbers and orders of battle of the two opposing forces, I

7 hadn't -- I wasn't privy to any of that kind of detail, I'm afraid.

8 Sorry.

9 Q. Thank you. You saw where Serb shells fell, and then you toured

10 the locations from where Serb shells were being fired. Did you see where

11 Muslim shells were falling, and did you tour the locations where they

12 were being fired from, or, more precisely, do you know what kind of heavy

13 weaponry, tanks, howitzers, mortars, the Muslim Army had within the city

14 of Sarajevo itself?

15 A. I don't know precisely, but they clearly had some. And as time

16 went by, they had more. They managed to obtain things. I didn't -- I

17 did visit -- I'm trying to remember. I visited positions of the Bosnian

18 Army around Sarajevo on the confrontation line. I managed to do that on

19 a number of different occasions. It was -- as the war went on, it became

20 harder to do that because they were reluctant to have people there. But,

21 yes, I did visit them. I mean, I remember once -- in terms of positions,

22 I remember once there was a recoilless rifle being used near the

23 Holiday Inn, and we could hear it operating. There were -- there were

24 exchanges of fire, yes, of course there were. There was a war going on.

25 I mean, I was reporting it as a war. But, as I said, I'm trying -- the

Page 10211

1 way I report was to try to look at their effect on civilians, because

2 civilians in modern warfare suffer disproportionately.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. Now I would like to

4 show a few of your reports.

5 Could we first have 1D2920, because this is what you say in

6 paragraph 24:

7 [In English] "Civilians were not caught in the cross-fire between

8 the two warring armies."

9 [Interpretation] Let us see what your reporting was at the time.

10 [Video-clip played]

11 "Reporter: The UN convoy finally reached Sarajevo during a lull

12 in the fighting. They soon found out why a UN official called this an

13 all-out war. Shells and rockets started landing indiscriminately on

14 people's homes. It wasn't clear who was doing the firing. There was

15 less of it today, but no suggestion of a cease-fire."

16 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

17 Q. It seems that, nevertheless, civilians had been trapped in this

18 cross-fire between the two warring armies, right, and that, indeed, it is

19 an all-out war, as you had heard from a UN official?

20 A. Well, I was quoting a UN official who was referring to that day,

21 and I don't know what day -- I think it was 1992 again. I could have

22 been more precise in my language in that paragraph, not quoting the

23 cross-fire between two warring armies. I should have said something like

24 "most of the time." When I was -- when I said that, what I was thinking

25 of were the bodies I'd seen in the streets, killed by snipers, bodies of

Page 10212

1 children, shells landing -- which I had seen landing myself in the city

2 streets, where there were no military positions around. So one of the

3 things that I used to do with colleagues to try to get some independent

4 idea of the casualty levels was to visit the mortuary, and so we could --

5 you could get an idea from visiting the mortuary, because the bodies were

6 in there, you know, clothed pretty much as they were when they came in,

7 covered with dirt and muck and blood. They hadn't cleaned them up at

8 all, and so if you looked in the mortuary, you could -- you could see

9 whether they were fighters in uniform, with boots, with uniforms, you

10 know, youngish men, or whether they were people who were clearly

11 non-combatants, children, women, old people. And depending on the

12 patterns that were going on, if the Bosnian Army had --

13 Q. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Bowen. Please, let us try to be as

14 brief and as expeditious as possible. This is your sentence:

15 [In English] "Between 1992 and 1995, they were subject to an

16 organised campaign of shelling and sniping by Bosnian Serb forces

17 encircling the city."

18 [Interpretation] Mr. Bowen, you have no basis for claiming that,

19 and that's what I am trying to prove now. It's as if you were writing an

20 indictment, and everything that you've been showing on the BBC says

21 otherwise.

22 Could this be admitted? Actually, can we admit all of it at the

23 end, if that's easier?

24 JUDGE KWON: Before that, could you answer his statement, rather

25 than question, to the effect that the last word in para 24 is baseless?

Page 10213

1 THE WITNESS: No, it is not baseless, Your Honour. I would stand

2 behind it 100 per cent. I think there was an organised campaign of

3 shelling and sniping by Bosnian Serb forces encircling the city. I think

4 it was aimed at putting pressure on the Bosnian Government. I think it

5 was aimed at pressurising international opinion as well. I think it was

6 a way of spreading terror among the population, and terror and cruelty

7 and intimidating them. I think you could see that from the -- the way

8 people died, the patterns of casualties, the fact that people were killed

9 in their own houses. The reports -- I remember a report I did about

10 children who were -- if I could just finish the sentence, sir.

11 JUDGE KWON: Don't interrupt the witness, Mr. Karadzic.

12 THE WITNESS: I mean, I remember, for example, a story I did

13 about a group of children who were killed when they were tobogganing.

14 There was no military position near them. No parent in his right mind

15 would allow their kids to toboggan near a military position during a war.

16 It had been quite a quiet day, and a shell came on top of them and killed

17 them. So that's what I based sentences like that on.

18 JUDGE KWON: I think we haven't dealt with the previous clip,

19 which was rather short, 1D2931, and 1D2920. Do you have any objection to

20 the admission of those two clips?

21 They will be admitted.

22 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibits D940 and D941 respectively,

23 Your Honours.

24 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Mr. Bowen, with all due respect, I will have to ask for

Page 10214

1 additional time if your answers continue to be this extensive.

2 Now I'm going to ask you the following: A shell fell close to

3 some children. Do you have any proof of that being a Serb shell? On the

4 basis of what do you say that or are you relying on your feelings, on

5 your emotions? Do you have any proof that that was a Serb shell?

6 A. Well --

7 Q. Yes or no? There is no reason to go beyond that. Yes or no, do

8 you have any proof?

9 JUDGE MORRISON: Dr. Karadzic, you can't limit the witness like

10 that. If you ask an open question that is perhaps going to lead to a

11 series of explanations, then you have to live with it. If the witness

12 can answer the question expeditiously, he will, but he needs to answer it

13 in the way that actually provides the best evidence he can give.

14 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Judge Morrison.

15 Yes, Mr. Bowen.

16 THE WITNESS: My belief that the Serbs were besieging the city

17 and that their shells killed a lot of the -- killed the people who were

18 killed is based on the fact that I spent months there. At times, you

19 could see the muzzle flashes of weapons as they fired coming into the

20 city, you could see the impacts. I went around the positions and I saw

21 the empty shell cases. I spoke to people on the positions who told me

22 about how they fired on the city. I saw dead bodies with bullets in

23 their heads, and so on, of civilians. And that is what I would base it

24 on.

25 And I think in that particular report about the tobogganing

Page 10215

1 children, I didn't give any -- I mean, I don't have the script in front

2 of me and it was 18 or 19 years ago. I don't -- I don't remember exactly

3 what form of words I used, but I'm sure it was accurate, subject to the

4 information that I had at the time.

5 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

6 Q. I cannot go into that, who you got that information from. That

7 requires an investigation, Mr. Bowen.

8 Tell me, did Muslims fire from the city, sometimes perhaps even

9 more than the Serbs who were firing at the city; yes or no? That's easy

10 enough for you.

11 A. The Muslims fired from the city. The Muslim side did fire from

12 the city. Of course, a war was going on. In terms of overall

13 fire-power, my feeling always was that the Serbs had greater fire-power,

14 and they were also firing from elevated positions, which gave them a

15 definite military advantage.

16 Q. So you believe that Muslims did not have their own positions on

17 the hills and that they did not have any artillery and mortars on the

18 hills around Sarajevo; right?

19 JUDGE MORRISON: Dr. Karadzic --

20 THE WITNESS: I didn't say that.

21 JUDGE MORRISON: The witness simply didn't say that. You're

22 attributing words and opinions to him that were not indicated. It's not

23 helping anybody.

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

25 Your Excellency, a great deal remains unclear. How is it that

Page 10216

1 Mr. Bowen can say that anything that is firing from the hills at the city

2 is Serb weaponry rather than Muslim weaponry?

3 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

4 Q. Or, Mr. Bowen, when you see casings, can you recognise whether

5 they were fired at legitimate targets or civilian targets?

6 A. Not from the casings, no. But I could see where the targets were

7 by where they landed. You know, the numbers of people -- a tank shell

8 went through the apartment of my translator's family, for example. That

9 wasn't a military position, and it wasn't fired from inside the city. So

10 I could see where these shells were landing and I could see, when I went

11 up there, that they had been fired.

12 Q. Did the Muslims have any tanks in town, and did you report about

13 that?

14 A. I never saw tanks moving. I saw some wrecked tanks. Maybe they

15 had some tanks. I don't know.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

17 Can we now have 1D2923.

18 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

19 Q. While we're waiting for that, Mr. Bowen, your colleague,

20 Martin Bell, established here, and that could be seen from his report as

21 well, that there were days when the Muslims fired a great deal more from

22 the town at the Serbs, as compared to the Serbs firing at the city, so

23 that is what his reports also said.

24 Could we have this video played now.

25 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Ms. Edgerton.

Page 10217

1 MS. EDGERTON: Was there a question about that?

2 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

3 Q. Do you know that --

4 JUDGE KWON: I take it the question would come after we see this

5 video together. Is that the case, Mr. Karadzic?

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That's right, thank you.

7 Can we have the video played.

8 [Video-clip played]

9 "Reporter: The Muslims direct quite a lot of fire at these

10 Serbian positions high above Sarajevo, but they're well neigh

11 impregnable."

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

13 JUDGE KWON: The clip being so short, I'm not sure whether we can

14 follow the context. But --

15 THE WITNESS: I think I can probably explain what I was trying to

16 say.

17 JUDGE KWON: Very well.

18 What is your question, Mr. Karadzic?

19 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

20 Q. So you were aware of that, and you even reported about that, that

21 the Serb positions around Sarajevo were subjected to heavy fire coming

22 from the city itself. Now I'm asking whether you know that

23 Mr. Martin Bell confirmed here and also said, in his own reports at the

24 time, that often more fire came from the city than into the city.

25 A. Taking your points one by one: I didn't see Martin Bell's

Page 10218

1 testimony here, and I haven't read it either, so I don't know what he

2 said to you and to the Court. Of course, there were -- I mean, I don't

3 think at any point today or yesterday or in my reporting I ever denied

4 that the Bosnian -- I'm not trying to suggest that they were people who

5 had no weapons and weren't firing. A war was going on, and they were

6 trying to fire, no doubt, as much as they could. The point I was making

7 in that very short extract that you played was that, yes, they received

8 heavy fire at times, not all the time, because I was standing there and

9 it wasn't happening at that particular moment, but they had

10 impregnable -- well neigh impregnable positions. I mean, they were -- an

11 up-hill assault against them by infantry, I would say, would have been

12 impossible, given that they had no air support and so on. So they

13 were -- what I was trying to say was, yes, they received fire, but they

14 were able to continue with what they were doing and were able to hunker

15 down and resist any of those assaults. A war was going on there. Both

16 sides were firing. Of course that was the case. I don't think I've ever

17 suggested anything to the contrary.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 Can the Court please produce 1D2924. That's another one of your

20 reports.

21 [Video-clip played]

22 "Reporter: Serbian command was attacked at about 4.30 this

23 morning. They fought their way into an area called Skenderija, close to

24 a building which houses the Muslim Presidency. After about an hour of

25 heavy fighting, either they withdrew or they were pushed out. It's

Page 10219

1 impossible to tell which."

2 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

3 Q. Fighting is going on in the very center of Sarajevo here; right?

4 A. Yeah, near to the Presidency, I was saying in that piece. You

5 could also hear -- on the soundtrack, you could hear incoming bullets as

6 well.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

8 And the following report, can we have it? Or maybe this one can

9 be admitted first, so maybe it can be admitted later. Shall we have it

10 admitted now or later, the whole series?

11 JUDGE KWON: We'll deal with one by one.

12 I take it there's no position, Ms. Edgerton. Yes.

13 MS. EDGERTON: Well, Your Honour, they're actually so brief that

14 I'm really at a loss as to any context for this. They're seconds. We

15 don't know when, we don't know where, we don't know place, we don't know

16 surrounding events in any regard. It makes it not only difficult for the

17 witness to give any kind of useful comment for the Chamber, but, I think,

18 difficult for all of us to understand its utility.

19 JUDGE KWON: Yes. While I understand your point, and to a

20 certain degree I agree with you, but given that the witness was able to

21 explain the context, we'll proceed admitting these two clips.

22 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibits D942 and D943, Your Honours,

23 respectively.

24 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

Page 10220

1 Can we please see the following report. The number is 1D2926.

2 We don't have any time for any longer reports. I would love to show

3 them, but unfortunately the time's too short.

4 [Video-clip played]

5 "Reporter: Nobody here expects a short war. They won't starve

6 as long as it's UN brings in food, but the only safe thing they can do is

7 stay in their cellars, thinking about a different life, still hoping

8 they'll be saved by foreign troops.

9 "Heavy exchanges of artillery and tank fire. Mortars and machine

10 guns disturbed them again last night. Everybody here expects the same

11 tonight.

12 "Jeremy Bowen, BBC News, Sarajevo."

13 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. Mr. Bowen, you report about heavy exchanges of artillery and tank

15 fire; right?

16 A. Yes.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

18 Can this document be admitted, please?

19 JUDGE KWON: Did we not see this yesterday?

20 MS. EDGERTON: We saw it in its entirety yesterday. I'm just

21 trying to find the reference in the transcript, Your Honour.

22 JUDGE KWON: Yes. Let's proceed.

23 THE WITNESS: Can I make one point --

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] In that case, it's not necessary,

25 then.

Page 10221

1 THE WITNESS: Can I make one point --

2 JUDGE KWON: Yes, please. Yes, please.

3 THE WITNESS: As a reporter, it's quite hard to make out,

4 sometimes, which fire is coming from where, but you do have some clues.

5 With tank fire, there's a different kind of sound when it arrives and

6 when it goes out. And if the point that you're making is both sides were

7 firing tanks at each other, I heard sounds coming in. I didn't hear that

8 characteristic sound of a tank fire going out, though; certainly not on

9 that piece, as I was listening to that soundtrack there.

10 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

11 Q. Did you say in this report that there was heavy fighting in

12 Sarajevo, including exchanges of artillery and tank fire? Did you say

13 this in your report? I believe I heard your words to that effect in your

14 report.

15 A. Yes, I did, and by that, what I meant was there was generalised

16 exchanges and it was quite difficult to say what was happening at

17 different times. I mean, I was -- I was in my hotel room, listening to

18 it. It was in the middle of the night. It was very loud, I think, on

19 that particular day. But, yes, exchanges of fire, certainly artillery

20 and tank fire. I was just trying to offer a little bit more context

21 about what I heard, that's all.

22 MS. EDGERTON: It was P2074 yesterday, Your Honours.

23 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we have another one before the

25 break, 1D02930. Or perhaps two before the break, because they're both

Page 10222

1 very short.

2 Apologies. 1D02927 is the correct number, 1D2927.

3 [Video-clip played]

4 "Reporter: Last night's fighting was the heaviest for seven

5 weeks. Military objectives are hard to assess here, but it seems that

6 the Muslims, who hold the city center, attacked Serb positions. Croats

7 were then drawn into the fighting, but it's not clear on which side.

8 Tanks, heavy artillery and mortars fired hundreds of rounds during what

9 became an inclusive battle."

10 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

11 Q. It arises from your words that there is equality on both sides,

12 that both sides are equal, and the Muslim side has just launched an

13 offensive?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. Thank you.

16 A. Sorry, if I could just clarify that, looking at the transcript.

17 I don't think I'm suggesting there was equality on both -- if

18 you're trying to imply that there was always equality on both sides, I

19 don't think that was the case. But they certainly could launch

20 offensives. Their problem was sustaining them. They were quite good at

21 launching them for, you know, a night or something like that. The

22 difficulty was holding on to what territory they were able to get and

23 following it up and holding that territory. I had connections with some

24 people who were fighters, who would tell me they'd take their initial

25 objectives, then resupply wouldn't arrive, and then they'd fall back with

Page 10223

1 casualties. I mean, that was a repeated pattern. But certainly they

2 could mount offensives, and in 1995 they were getting more ambitious in

3 trying to do that. 1992, rather less so, because they didn't have the

4 capacity.

5 Q. Thank you. Just one more. 1D2930, as the best illustration of

6 what we are talking and also set the base for a new explanation of the

7 military policy that was pursued in Sarajevo.

8 [Video-clip played]

9 "Reporter: Fighting went on all night in and around Sarajevo.

10 In the last few days, there'd been some of the most bitter battles of the

11 war. During the night, heavy rain fell on the city. Usually, that's

12 about the only thing that stops the killing. It didn't last night. It

13 appears that the Bosnian Government's forces are throwing most of what

14 they have left at the Serbs. By dawn, it was clear they were getting it

15 back with interest. For more than an hour this morning, there were more

16 than 15 powerful explosions every minute."

17 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Do you agree with me, Mr. Bowen, when I say this is another proof

19 that at the time you fully understood that there was a war going on, and

20 that that night the Muslim forces had launched an offensive that night,

21 and that by then it was clear that they were getting it back with

22 interest, as you say?

23 A. Well, I think that's what I said in the piece.

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

25 Can this be admitted, and then we'll continue talking about the

Page 10225

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

2 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

3 Q. Mr. Bowen, you said it yourself, that the main area of interest

4 for you was the suffering of civilians, and I respect that. When you

5 said that, did you mean both Serbian and Muslim civilians, in other

6 words, civilians on both sides of the front-line?

7 A. Yes, of course.

8 Q. Thank you. Do you know that there were between 60.000 and 70.000

9 Serbs living in Sarajevo under the Muslim control?

10 A. I know that there continued to be Serbs there during the war as

11 well. I know that because I was friendly with some.

12 The issue that we had with trying to cover both sides of the war

13 was that access on the Serb side, especially, was very difficult. It was

14 very hard to get permission to go to places we wanted to go. For

15 example, I was only able to visit Grbavica once in the entire war,

16 despite repeated requests at the press office in Pale to do so. Had we

17 been able to operate as freely on your side as on the Bosnian Government

18 side, we would have been able to cover both sides far more effectively.

19 Q. Thank you. I would like to draw your attention to paragraph 27

20 in your statement, where you speak about the same matter, but you make a

21 slight distinction and you say that Serbs had it a bit easier because

22 they had access to decent food and had a way out; right?

23 A. Well, I think that's correct. When I used to go even to

24 Lukavica, and certainly when I went to Pale, we would buy food in Pale to

25 take back into Sarajevo for our own personal consumption. You could get

Page 10226

1 decent food there, you could get good Serbian beer, you could have a good

2 meal at a restaurant. It was -- you know, for us, to be honest, visiting

3 Pale was -- was always a little bit of a holiday, or Jahorina. I used to

4 always enjoy going there. And I saw once -- for example, while I was

5 there in Jahorina, I saw the ski championships going on of the

6 Bosnian Serb military, so the ski lifts were operating for that

7 particular day. You know, so -- and the other point I could take away

8 from my one visit, and I admit it was one visit to Grbavica, was that

9 hardly anybody was living there. The vast majority of people had left.

10 There were one or two old couples who had clearly been reluctant to leave

11 their homes, but there weren't any young people. I didn't see any kids,

12 I didn't -- life wasn't going on there. It was essentially, it seemed to

13 me, a ghost town with some military positions in there and one or two

14 elderly people who had been reluctant to get out. There was a much

15 bigger hinterland on the Bosnian Serb side, where people could go out and

16 continue with lives which were a little bit -- which were more normal

17 than the kinds of lives that people had within the confrontation lines in

18 Sarajevo.

19 Q. Thank you. I was just going to ask you whether you saw or knew

20 about the conditions of Serbs in Ilidza, in Ilijas, in Lukavica, and in

21 Nedzarici, especially those who were circled from three and a half sides,

22 and Grbavica, that you described just a minute ago yourself. Do you

23 agree that people suffered badly there, as well as the 70.000 Serbs did

24 under the Muslim control?

25 A. There was suffering on both sides of the line. I think the

Page 10227

1 lines -- I think the suffering inside the confrontation lines was worse.

2 There's no question that some of the Serbs who were inside Sarajevo had a

3 tough time because of their ethnicity. However, there were others there

4 who I met who said that they believed in a multicultural way of life and

5 were happy to be there and didn't want to get out. Well, didn't want to

6 get out to Srpska, anyway.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we now look at 1D2929, another

8 of your reports which has been admitted, just to jog your memory and then

9 continue along the same line.

10 [Video-clip played]

11 "Reporter: Going down the wrong street at the wrong time of day

12 in Sarajevo can kill you. Last week, a group of men on the Serbian side

13 of the line set out to deliver bread and sardines to the front. It

14 seemed quiet enough, but a sniper saw them and shot one of them through

15 the head. The sniper went on firing. They wanted to drag the body away,

16 but they didn't have a rope, so they used a hose instead.

17 "In only four months, shelling, sniping, and the grim business of

18 dealing with what they do to human beings has become part of the everyday

19 routine here on both sides of the lines. People are forced to exist

20 around it."

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

22 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

23 Q. It seems that at the time, you had a balanced approach to both

24 sides when you reported, and you said that people suffered on both sides.

25 You confirmed that for us just a while ago. And, in any case, I just

Page 10228

1 wanted to jog your memory and I just wanted to confirm that your position

2 was that what was going on in Sarajevo was a war, due to which the

3 civilian population on both sides suffered; right? And I'm talking about

4 the population on both sides of the front-line.

5 A. I don't believe that there was an equality of suffering, no, if

6 that's what you're trying to say. I think that it was worse inside the

7 confrontation lines than on the Bosnian Serb side. You'll recall that in

8 that piece that you just played part of, the bit that came before that,

9 was the man called Kujundzic, burying his entire family, pretty much,

10 including children, and he had been safe because he had left the place

11 where they were sheltering to watch the news and the shell came in

12 while -- sorry, listening to news on the radio. So in that piece -- I

13 mean, that piece actually encapsulates it quite well. He was a man who

14 was shot taking supplies up to the Bosnian Serb soldiers and their

15 positions on one side. On the other side, there was a family sheltering

16 from the shelling, killed in the shelling.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

18 The next document I would like to present to the witness is

19 1D2933.

20 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. This man, Kujundzic, as far as you know, was he a Serb? Is this

22 a Serb family name, a Serb first name?

23 A. You tell me. I don't know what his ethnicity was, but the fact

24 was he was in -- inside the city, and he was line in the Lion's Cemetery,

25 and we came upon him quite by chance. I think I'd been up to the

Page 10229

1 hospital, we were driving past, and I saw a big earth-works going on

2 where a whole lot of people were digging a whole lot of graves. So as a

3 reporter, I was curious. We stopped and got out, and through the

4 translator, I spoke to the guy, and he told me his story, which was in

5 the piece which I think we saw yesterday.

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

7 Can we now look at the video that I have just called.

8 [Video-clip played]

9 "Reporter: On the other side of the city, nearly a thousand

10 people, mainly mothers and children, became refugees this morning.

11 Almost all of them were Serbs. Until the war started, they'd lived

12 happily enough alongside Muslims and Croats."

13 "Horrible, horrible. I have to go. This is my town, I'm born

14 here, and my child born here, and my father living here. I have to leave

15 everything."

16 "Reporter: Misery is about the only thing the ordinary people of

17 the former Yugoslavia still have in common.

18 "Jeremy Bowen, BBC News, Sarajevo."

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

20 Can this be admitted, please?

21 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

22 Q. Mr. Bowen --

23 JUDGE KWON: What was your question about this?

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I was just going to ask Mr. Bowen.

25 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

Page 10230

1 Q. Do you agree that the people who were born in Sarajevo, who lived

2 in Sarajevo, 157.000 Serbs and 23.000 Yugoslavs, of whom 20.000 were

3 probably Serbs, because Muslims and Croats did not declare themselves as

4 Yugoslavs at that time, did they -- they all wanted to stay, and they

5 couldn't, and that's why they were crying. Were they refugees in their

6 own city, as you stated it yourself, and do you -- are you sure that many

7 of them wanted to stay? Do you know that the Serbs were not allowed to

8 leave Sarajevo, as a matter of fact?

9 A. Well, I think the report was quite clear about what was going on

10 on that particular occasion. I was always glad to do stories like that,

11 when they came up, because I think it was clear that Serbs were having a

12 hard time. And as the war went on, they had a harder time within the

13 city itself. I don't think there's any dispute about that. And I -- in

14 none of my reporting did I ever suggest that one side were angels and the

15 other side worked with devils. What I suggested was a war was going on,

16 and the way it worked out was that the civilian population that suffered

17 most, that I came across, were people who were besieged in Sarajevo,

18 compared to the people around Sarajevo. Also, in other besieged places,

19 I saw suffering, too, in the course of the war. But as I've said, a war

20 was going on, it was a very tough situation, and hard things happened on

21 all sides. My feeling was that the preponderance of suffering was

22 inflicted -- in that particular part of the theatre was inflicted on the

23 people within Sarajevo.

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

25 Can we now see 1D291D [as interpreted]. And before we do that,

Page 10231

1 could the previous one be admitted, please?

2 JUDGE KWON: Yes. The 1D2933 will be admitted as Exhibit D946.

3 And I take it the previous one to that, the 1D2929, was the one

4 we saw yesterday, which was admitted as P2077.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] You are right.

6 The following document is 1D2919. Very well, thank you.

7 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

8 Q. In other words, you, yourself, witnessed the suffering of the

9 Serbs in Sarajevo. They lived in cellars, where they sought shelter from

10 the shelling; right?

11 A. I think the thing about shelling in an urban area is shelling

12 doesn't discriminate. It doesn't matter what -- where you came from,

13 where you were a Serb, Croat, Bosnian, British, French. If you're in the

14 wrong place at the wrong time and a shell came in, then you get hurt or

15 killed. So, yes, of course, if you're in an area where they are

16 shelling, of course you take shelter.

17 Q. Thank you. In my question, something was not recorded. The

18 Serbs on the Serb side, in the Serbian part of Sarajevo. Can that be

19 inserted?

20 And now can we please look at --

21 A. Excuse me, sir. I didn't answer that question, though. I didn't

22 hear "Serbian part of." As I said, I only -- it was very hard to visit

23 the Serb side of Sarajevo, and I only went once to Grbavica, so it's very

24 hard for me to make the kind of judgements about that place that I could

25 make about the Bosnian Government-controlled parts of the city, where

Page 10232

1 I -- of which I was very familiar.

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

3 Can we now watch the following video-clip, and you will tell us

4 where you recorded that, on what part -- or, rather, on what side of the

5 front-line.

6 [Video-clip played]

7 "Reporter: Any talk of cease-fires in this war should be treated

8 with great caution. It will take much more than that to coax Sarajevo's

9 civilians out of their cellars. These women are Serbs. They've boon

10 underground for two months. A few streets away, Muslims live in just the

11 same way. The fighting resumed today, killing at least 11 more people.

12 The leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, perhaps on the orders

13 of the beleaguered Belgrade government, said it was time to stop."

14 "Radovan Karadzic: We unilaterally announce a cease-fire from

15 Monday, June the 15th, 1992, at 6.00 p.m. We also request a substantial

16 pause of at least 800 officers of the UN peacekeeping forces to monitor

17 from Serbian positions this cease-fire."

18 "Reporter: Today in Sarajevo, Serbian gunmen were patrolling

19 their territory. For the first time, their leader says they'll let UN

20 monitoring into their positions."

21 "This is policeman Serbia."

22 "Reporter: If they follow his orders, they could make the UN's

23 job easier. If the Muslims and the Croats stop attacking as well, the UN

24 will try to reopen the airport to bring in much-needed relief supplies."

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

Page 10233

1 This was 1D2919.

2 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

3 Q. Mr. Bowen, do you know that this was not the first offer of a

4 unilateral cease-fire, there were offers even before that, but you were

5 not there? On the 22nd of April, there was a well-known Serbian platform

6 on a cease-fire and on the non-recognition of the fait accompli. Do you

7 know that this was not the first time that we offered or tabled a

8 unilateral cease-fire, not the first time or the last time either? There

9 were many attempts on our side to introduce a cease-fire.

10 A. I'm trying to -- I'm just looking back through the script there.

11 I don't think it was the first offer, did I?

12 Also, I'd like to make the point, the 15th of June, I was in

13 London. That piece was put together with agency pictures in London. I

14 wasn't in the Balkans at the -- at that time. I don't think I went to

15 Sarajevo until July, it was not until July, and I flew in on one of the

16 early flights that came in. So I wasn't in the city when that

17 particularly happened, but I would have done that piece based on wire

18 service reports, mainly. So --

19 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Bowen, sorry to interrupt you.

20 THE WITNESS: Sorry.

21 JUDGE KWON: Does the monitor in front of you tell you that it

22 was 12th of June that it was broadcast?

23 THE WITNESS: Well, no, but he says in his statement from the

24 12th of June, were offering it, so --

25 JUDGE KWON: 15th.

Page 10234

1 THE WITNESS: The 15th, was it? Yeah, I mean, what I heard him

2 mentioning the date in that clip, it was June, and I wasn't there in

3 June. That's the point I was making, that's all, because before he

4 played it, Dr. Karadzic said that -- he was asking where I was.

5 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

6 Q. Maybe I can explain. On the 12th of June, we held a press

7 conference, and the offer was for a cease-fire to be introduced on the

8 15th of June. That's when we were supposed to introduce the cease-fire

9 and stop fighting, and that's the difference in dates.

10 Thank you. I'm not going to ask you, then, that on the 8th of

11 June a large Muslim offensive was launched in Sarajevo.

12 And can we now look at 1D2921, which is another of your reports.

13 And before that, can the previous report be admitted into evidence,

14 please?

15 JUDGE KWON: Yes.

16 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibit D947, Your Honours.

17 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation].

18 Q. For your information only, Mr. Bowen, it was not the Government

19 of Serbia who gave me any orders. They were not in a position to give me

20 any orders. There were constant tensions about that. That was our

21 genuine offer.

22 A. Thank you.

23 JUDGE KWON: Is it a question or are you just making a statement,

24 which is unacceptable? Do you like to comment on that, Mr. Bowen?

25 THE WITNESS: I'd like to thank Dr. Karadzic for the information.

Page 10235

1 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

2 [Video-clip played]

3 "Reporter: Today, the UN took a convoy of food to --"

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That was only to satisfy

5 Mr. Bowen's curiosity, so he does not need to wonder, he does not need to

6 go on wondering about things.

7 JUDGE KWON: Let's not waste time. Shall we try again from the

8 beginning.

9 [Video-clip played]

10 "Reporter: ... Grbavica, a suburb of Sarajevo now controlled by

11 Bosnians. But Bosnians who have no sympathy for the UN's even-handed

12 approach who want active military support instead accuse the peacekeepers

13 of smuggling weapons to the Serbs and stop them crossing their lines."

14 "Reception is as important as reality in Sarajevo, and therefore

15 it was important to go through the front door, through the presidential

16 positions into an area within Sarajevo. That failed miserably two

17 times."

18 "Reporter: In the end, the food got in through the back door,

19 via Serbian territory. The civilians liked it but the failure of the

20 convoy's symbolic purpose shows the warring factions and the UN are as

21 far apart as ever. The UN commander says his relations with the Bosnians

22 are at an all-time low."

23 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

24 Q. Mr. Bowen, in this clip you confirmed that the Muslim side did

25 not allow UN to transport food across their territory to the Serbian part

Page 10236

1 of the central part of Sarajevo, Grbavica. Do you know that all the

2 Muslims received, on the other hand, was transported across the Serbian

3 territory, and they, in their turn, would not allow us to receive just

4 one convoy through their territory?

5 A. Yes, that's what I -- I didn't report the other thing on that

6 piece, at least not in that snippet, but I -- that's what I reported,

7 that the Muslim -- their government were making it difficult for the UN

8 to take things through. That was in the piece very clearly, I thought.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

10 Can this be admitted?

11 JUDGE KWON: Yes.

12 THE REGISTRAR: Exhibit D948, Your Honours.

13 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

14 Q. Without wanting to attack you, I just want to be precise. I just

15 want to be very precise when talking about your reports. Do you know

16 that it was -- do you think that it was very important for you to know

17 where the facilities of the BiH Army were in the city of Sarajevo? Was

18 that needed for you to establish whether their targets were legitimate?

19 A. I think the targeting policy of the BiH Army is to do with

20 where -- is to do with what they shoot at, not where they shoot from,

21 necessarily. Driving around Sarajevo at that particular time, I have to

22 say that one would see, actually, very few weapons, very few personal

23 weapons, very few AK-47s. There unquestionably were BiH Army positions,

24 where they had heavier weapons, but they were all pretty well hidden,

25 because I was -- apart from I saw a few heavier mortars and so on at

Page 10237

1 front-line positions, I certainly never saw things, positions -- I'm not

2 saying they weren't there, but I never saw positions in obvious places in

3 populated parts of the city.

4 One thing that struck me -- after Bosnia, I went to the

5 Middle East, and it really struck me strongly, and I put this in a BBC

6 report once, that at the Jerusalem Bus Station, on the Friday night when

7 reserve soldiers were going home, you'd see more automatic weapons than

8 you'd see in people walking down the streets in down-town Sarajevo in the

9 middle of the war.

10 Q. Thank you. I would like to look at your paragraph 33 in your

11 statement, where you say that there were some parts of town which were

12 shelled more often than others:

13 [In English] "but generally the pattern was random."

14 [Interpretation] And then you say another thing which the Defence

15 cannot accept. You say this:

16 [In English] "Bosnian Serb forces knew where things were. They

17 could just lob shells in."

18 [Interpretation] Did you ever hear of mobile mortars on cars, on

19 lorries, that circled Sarajevo and opened fire on the Serb positions

20 there?

21 A. I never heard or saw mobile positions on the backs of lorries,

22 no.

23 Q. Thank you. That's a well-known fact here by now.

24 In paragraph 52, you say:

25 [In English] "The siege of Sarajevo was one of the most

Page 10238

1 straightforward facts of a complicated war. I used to feel that a lot of

2 the diplomacy was based on wishful thinking and fiction. In my view, the

3 Western powers were not well informed about what was happening."

4 [Interpretation] Do you believe that in Sarajevo, there were no

5 secret services, both military and civilian secret services, from all

6 countries, Albania included, and do you really think that the governments

7 didn't know what was going on there?

8 A. I based that on conversations I had with British government

9 ministers. I remember one visited Sarajevo and I was astounded by his

10 ignorance. No doubt intelligence services were operational, but I think

11 one of the lessons I've taken away in my time as a foreign correspondent,

12 especially the last 10 years or so, is that intelligence services are not

13 infallible and often know very little or get it wrong.

14 My strong feeling was -- I mean, you take, for example, the

15 London Conference in 1992. After speaking to some of the people who were

16 involved in setting it up, I knew it was going to fail, because it was

17 based on some wishful thinking and ignorance.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 1D2936, can we see that now, please. It's another one of your

20 reports.

21 [Video-clip played]

22 "Serbs are around various positions in the city. They are

23 containing the area from any military break-out by the Bosnians. I'm

24 just not using the word 'siege.'"

25 "Reporter: He preferred to say 'strategic encirclement.'"

Page 10239

1 "You call it siege of Sarajevo. We are talking that they are in

2 tactical advantageous positions around the city."

3 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

4 Q. Mr. Bowen, now we are coming to the point -- actually, you said

5 this in one of your reports, and now we're going to see which one it was.

6 Actually, we saw it a few moments ago. You said it was hard to assess

7 what military targets were, what military targets were in Sarajevo, and

8 you said that in your report.

9 2927:

10 [In English] "Military objectives are hard to assess here."

11 [Interpretation] Let me ask you this, Mr. Bowen: Do you agree

12 that it was a bit excessive on your part to disagree with the

13 United Nations and their characterisation of the military situation in

14 Sarajevo? They said, and that was the official position, that it was not

15 a siege, but rather a containment, containment of the entire 1st Corps of

16 the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina to prevent a breakthrough; isn't that

17 right?

18 A. No, it was a siege. For political reasons in that particular

19 year, they tried to vary their language. And that poor, hapless Canadian

20 spokesman there, who was a nice man, Barry Frewer, lost his job as a

21 result of trying to come up with a form of words that was plainly

22 nonsensical, which was widely ridiculed, and they dropped that insistence

23 very shortly afterwards, and he was the main victim of it. I base my

24 view that it was a siege not on statements defining it by officials, but

25 by what I saw, myself, about the fact that there were thousands of people

Page 10240

1 there who were stuck, couldn't get out, and who were at the mercy of

2 people who were attacking, and that the war was going on and fighting was

3 going out as well. It was a war going on. A city was encircled and put

4 under siege.

5 Q. And who was it that lived in Serb-controlled territories,

6 Mr. Bowen?

7 A. Throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina or around the city?

8 Q. You may put it that way as well, but now we're talking about

9 Sarajevo. Did Serbs control a single Muslim neighbourhood in Sarajevo or

10 did they only control neighbourhoods that were predominantly Serb

11 populated, suburbs of the city of Sarajevo?

12 A. Well, during the war I think they were predominantly Serb

13 populated, but I spoke to plenty of people who lost their homes in the

14 outlying districts of Sarajevo, who were Muslims, who had moved into the

15 center of the city when life became impossible for them on the -- in the

16 places where they lived; for example, the vast majority of the people who

17 were in the Europa Hotel, who were people who -- Muslims who'd been

18 displaced from Serb-controlled parts of Sarajevo, in the main.

19 Q. Mr. Bowen, it's easy for us to prove, on the basis of the census,

20 that Serb-controlled territories were predominantly Serb, over 80 or

21 90 per cent Serb. Do you have that knowledge or do you have proof to the

22 contrary? In Sarajevo, the Serb forces controlled Serb neighbourhoods.

23 Is that right or is that not right?

24 A. I'll have to take your word for that. I don't have the -- I

25 don't have access to the census to which you refer.

Page 10241

1 Q. Thank you. So at one point in your statement, you say that the

2 Serbs did not want to or could not take new parts of the city. Now, I

3 have to find that, but I will manage to do so.

4 Now we are talking military politics in the zone of Sarajevo.

5 Did the Muslims want to take Serb-held parts of town, and did they try to

6 do that? What was the point of their offensives all over the place?

7 A. Sometimes, it wasn't clear what they were trying to do when they

8 mounted an offensive. I think they were -- from the military point of

9 view, my analysis was that for the Serb side to try to take the city

10 would have been a very ambitious project, would have involved

11 street-fighting, which is a very difficult thing to do, requiring a lot

12 of men, and my assessment at the time, thinking back on it, was that your

13 side was well equipped, in terms of fire-power, in terms of heavy

14 weapons, but you weren't able or didn't feel able to mount the kind of

15 sustained ground assault that would have taken the city. And perhaps the

16 conclusion -- and I wasn't privy to your discussions, but perhaps the

17 conclusion that you took was that it wasn't necessary to do that and you

18 didn't want to do that, but that's -- that's not something which I can

19 comment on because I wasn't -- as I say, I'm not qualified to do so.

20 Q. Thank you. Do you know that once we could no longer take the

21 attacks from Otes, we took Otes? When we decided to take Otes, we did

22 so. Otes is a neighbourhood near Ilidza. We did take what we wanted to

23 take. Our military policy in Sarajevo was the containment of forces and

24 awaiting a political solution. Do you know that we took Otes?

25 A. I do know that you took Otes. I knew some of the people who were

Page 10242

1 involved in the fighting there of the Bosnian Government side. No,

2 I think I was trying to say that in the last answer, that besieging the

3 city was clearly, for you, what you believed to be an appropriate tactic,

4 in my opinion at the time and now.

5 Q. Thank you. Let us now make a distinction between two different

6 things. This is what I'm putting to you: The containment of 70.000 to

7 80.000 Muslim soldiers of the 1st Corps is a legitimate objective of the

8 Serb Army, whereas keeping civilians in the town of Sarajevo was not our

9 policy. We weren't the ones who were keeping civilians in Sarajevo. Do

10 you agree that it was the Muslim government that prevented the free

11 movement of civilians? It wasn't the Serb side that kept asking for

12 people to be allowed to leave. We even organised the organisation of

13 Slovenes, Jews. We were always there at people's service so that they

14 could be evacuated, while the Muslim government was carrying out an

15 internal siege in relation to civilians.

16 A. Well, if they were carrying out an internal siege, I wasn't aware

17 of it.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 Can I have 1D2913 for a moment. It's a UN document. 1D2913 in

20 e-court for a moment.

21 No, it's not a broadcast. It's a document. Oh, perhaps it

22 doesn't have to be broadcast.

23 MS. EDGERTON: Exactly.

24 JUDGE KWON: Thank you. It wasn't yet up-loaded.

25 In the meantime, shall we admit the previous clip, 1D2936? That

Page 10243

1 will be admitted as Exhibit D949.

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I would appreciate that. Thank

3 you.

4 Could this please not be broadcast, except for the participants

5 in the courtroom.

6 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

7 Q. Please cast a glance at this. It is a report dated the 17th of

8 August, 1994, and it involves highest-ranking officials of the UN in

9 Sarajevo. And you see, at the very bottom, that it involves a meeting

10 with this general in Sector Sarajevo.

11 Can we now have a look at the next page. Let's not mention any

12 names. The participants saw the names.

13 Could you please look at number 2 of this report:

14 [In English] "The BiH government seemed to present the

15 international community with propaganda regarding violations committed by

16 the Serb side, omitting to do the same regarding violations committed by

17 them.

18 "For example, the civilian population has major administrative

19 obstacles in leaving Sarajevo, and the police and military officials,

20 being powerful, contribute significantly to this policy."

21 [Interpretation] Do you believe these high-ranking officers of

22 the UN?

23 A. I'm just trying to read through the document. Sorry.

24 Well, I believe that this is a document from high-ranked officers

25 of the UN and officials of the UN, giving their opinions and analysis of

Page 10244

1 the time, yeah. Obviously, that's what the document is.

2 Q. Had you been aware of this document at the time, would you have

3 come to realise that the siege that pertained to civilians was imposed by

4 the Muslim side, and whereas encirclement that had to do with military

5 matters was imposed by the Serb side?

6 A. I think one fed off the other. I mean, my view of that, I know

7 that people couldn't -- I'm trying to -- sorry, I'm hesitating because

8 I'm just trying to get -- it's been a while since I've thought of these

9 things and discussed them. I'm trying to think back to what my

10 understanding was at the time.

11 I mean, yes, if I'd got that document, it would have made a very

12 interesting story, of course.

13 Q. Thank you.

14 A. I think -- I mean, yes -- I mean, I didn't have the document, so

15 I can't really comment on what -- about it at the time, except that I

16 would have been glad to have had it.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

18 Can it be admitted?

19 JUDGE KWON: Yes, under seal.

20 THE REGISTRAR: That will be Exhibit D950, under seal,

21 Your Honours.

22 MR. ROBINSON: Excuse me, Mr. President.

23 Actually, this document I don't believe is subject to any kind of

24 restrictions, and it has been publicly filed as part of our 30th motion

25 for disclosure violations, Annex A to that, so I don't think there's any

Page 10245

1 need to have it under seal.

2 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

3 Can I get confirmation from you, Ms. Edgerton?

4 MS. EDGERTON: In fact, when you saw Mr. Reid roll his chair over

5 to me, he had just received information to that effect, updating the

6 information that I had. So my friend is completely right.

7 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

8 That will be admitted publicly.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

10 Can we now have a look at 1D2922. It's another one of your

11 reports from the time.

12 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

13 Q. You do remember that as regards that report of yours of the 15th

14 of June, I invited the UN to observe Serb artillery positions around

15 Sarajevo; right?

16 A. I didn't know that as a result of that 15th of June offer, you

17 made that offer, no.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 Can we have a look at it now.

20 [Video-clip played]

21 "Reporter: This Serbian battery is one of the sprinkling of

22 positions at which the UN is able to station monitors full time."

23 "Everybody can hide something, but I think on the positions, the

24 co-operations with the local commanders is very good, so I think we are

25 in control of everything on the positions. This does not mean that we

Page 10246

1 control every weapon around Sarajevo."

2 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

3 Q. This officer of the UN is praising co-operation with local

4 commanders. We made them an offer to the effect of observing each and

5 every one of their position. However, they didn't have enough personnel.

6 Are you aware of that, they simply did not have enough personnel to

7 observe all of these positions, so we had to group our weapons within

8 certain groups, nine, eleven --

9 A. That quite wasn't quite what he was saying in the piece. And my

10 impression of the activities of the UN Military Observers, the UNMOs at

11 the time, was that they had a certain number of positions and they could

12 vouch for what was happening within their -- within their line of sight,

13 essentially. And they had some fairly primitive equipment to monitor

14 things going up as well. But what they would always say, and I had many

15 conversations with them, was that the places where they weren't, they

16 couldn't vouch for what was happening because they weren't there.

17 Q. Mr. Bowen, this is sometime in the summer of 1992. Do you know

18 that after that, in order to enable them to observe our artillery,

19 although they did not have enough personnel, we grouped our weaponry at

20 nine positions, at the most, so that they could observe all of our

21 weapons? These were these so-called weapon collections under UN

22 supervision.

23 A. I wasn't aware at the time of that, no. I wasn't aware of it

24 until now, that you had formal groups of positions. That's certainly

25 something that didn't come out into the journalistic community in the

Page 10247

1 summer of 1992.

2 Q. Thank you. I accept that criticism of our PR capability. It is

3 correct that we did not manage to present our case properly. However, no

4 matter what kind of military knowledge or education you have, do you

5 agree, Mr. Bowen, that this kind of grouping of weaponry jeopardises our

6 military position and that it would have been better if they had more

7 personnel so that they could monitor each and every one of our positions,

8 rather than having us group our weapons at nine positions only?

9 A. Well, I can't really answer that question because I don't know

10 whether you had any other weapons that weren't in those groups that were

11 being observed. I think that the point that the UNMOs made was they knew

12 what was going on where they were, but they didn't know what was going on

13 in other places.

14 Q. Thank you. Do you accept that it only depended on them, whether

15 they would observe a particular position or not; it was their lack of

16 manpower rather than anything we did to stop them from doing so?

17 A. I have no idea about what kind of manpower they had there.

18 Certainly, UNMOs working around Sector Sarajevo who I spoke to were

19 generally quite pleased with co-operation that they had, but they had --

20 as I say, they constantly said their problem was they couldn't be in all

21 places at all times, so they could only look at a certain snap-shot of

22 the war and not the whole picture.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

24 Can this document be admitted?

25 MS. EDGERTON: Just before that happens, Your Honour, maybe it's

Page 10248

1 helpful if I note that this is another very brief excerpt of the same

2 film that D942 is drawn from, and maybe, administratively, they could be

3 somehow linked. Not the same film; "same report" is what I meant to say,

4 the same broadcast.

5 JUDGE KWON: 2923 -- 24 -- D2 -- 942 was something that was very

6 short.

7 MS. EDGERTON: This clip, which I think is D2922, is drawn from

8 the same broadcast that is -- what i D2923, which has now been marked as

9 D942.

10 JUDGE KWON: So with that explanation, we can admit separately

11 this 2922; is that your suggestion? Thank you.

12 So this will be admitted as Exhibit D951.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

14 We'll go back to Sarajevo, at least as far as certain aspects are

15 concerned.

16 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

17 Q. Since we're dealing with that part of Gorazde, let me say this:

18 At paragraph 55, you say that you arrived at Gorazde and the streets were

19 empty, and so on and so forth. Do you remember that? Could you have a

20 look at that paragraph of your statement? It's number 55.

21 A. Yes, I remember all of that.

22 Q. Thank you. Further on, you say in paragraph 60 that you did not

23 stay there for a long time, that you did not see much of the city, but

24 that you did see a lot of artillery damage. Are you suggesting, by way

25 of these paragraphs, that it was the Serbs who were attacking Gorazde,

Page 10249

1 that was an unprotected city, an unarmed city, that they were attacking

2 unarmed civilians, or are you saying that the Muslim Army is stationed in

3 Gorazde and that they were the first to start every bit of fighting in

4 and around Gorazde?

5 A. What I'm saying was that there was a war going on there, that

6 there was fighting happening; of course there was. I think I made that

7 clear in the report that was shown to the Court yesterday. And that

8 there were many civilians who were there also and who were, as a result

9 of the war, besieged in the town.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

11 Can we now see 1D2925. Actually, I don't know whether we saw

12 that yesterday. We have to decide now.

13 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. Do you know, Mr. Bowen, how many Serbs lived in Gorazde in the

15 beginning of 1992 and what happened to them?

16 A. No, I don't.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Let's have a look at this report

18 now.

19 [Video-clip played]

20 "Reporter: The UN convoy was only 10 kilometres from Gorazde

21 when it was ambushed. Muslim guerrillas are harassing Serbian regulars

22 in this part of Eastern Bosnia, but it isn't clear who carried out the

23 attack. An armoured personnel carrier and a UN lorry ran over

24 land-mines. Small-arms fired which followed forced the expedition to

25 turn back."

Page 10250

1 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

2 Q. So this confirms what you had said a moment ago. At the time,

3 you were aware of the fact that Muslim guerrillas, as you call them,

4 constantly attacked Serb regulars around Gorazde; right?

5 A. Yeah, I -- it's not quite clear from that short snippet where

6 that incident took place. I think that was the previous attempt to get

7 into Gorazde before the one -- the successful attempt that I was on.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

9 Can we now have a look at this. Let us see what the views of

10 top-ranking UN officials are with regard to Gorazde.

11 Could we show Mr. Bowen D686 so that he sees what

12 General Sir Michael Rose says about this.

13 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. While we're waiting for it, Mr. Bowen: Why did you not show us

15 all this extensive damage that you saw before getting to Gorazde?

16 A. I think I said that I saw damage inside Gorazde, not getting into

17 Gorazde. The route that we took was -- coming up to the town was in a --

18 was a rural area, so there weren't things too damaged. Inside the town,

19 there was quite a bit of damage, and we showed some of it. Our time was

20 very limited there, and we spent a lot of time -- well, a lot of the

21 limited time that we had trying to get a range of pictures to try, as

22 best we could, to illustrate the situation inside Gorazde.

23 Q. Thank you. I have to tell you that yesterday you just showed a

24 smashed window, and your cameraman was filming the street from there.

25 Let's now see what General Rose says.

Page 10251

1 How could you distinguish between Serb houses that had been

2 destroyed or torched and Muslim houses?

3 A. Well, I think you can distinguish between houses that have been

4 shelled and houses that have been smashed up by individuals. And I

5 certainly couldn't distinguish -- I had no idea who owned individual

6 houses.

7 [Video-clip played]

8 "Reporter: ... flew by helicopter into Gorazde following the

9 fighting, Rose was asked about US satellite reports that nearly every

10 house in Gorazde was damaged."

11 "Yes, practically every house in Gorazde has been damaged, but

12 most of the damage to Gorazde was done in the fighting that had taken

13 place some two years before, when the Bosnian Government forces drove the

14 Serbs from this town, and there were 12 and a half thousand Serbs at that

15 time living here, and they were all driven off. The way to distinguish a

16 house that has been damaged by fighting where a shell has hit it, and a

17 house that has been damaged by ethnic cleansing, is if its got no roof,

18 no doors, no window frames, nothing in the house at all, and there are

19 burn marks up it and bullets spread around the walls, that is a house

20 that's damaged by ethnically cleansing. The house that has been damaged

21 by shelling has a shell hole in it and there are still people trying to

22 live in that building with their furniture in it because they've got

23 nowhere else to go. That is damage you can't see from satellite. And,

24 of course, at that time the international image of what had happened in

25 Gorazde was very different from the reality. What was dangerous was that

Page 10252

1 policy that was going to be put together on both sides of the Atlantic

2 about what we should do in Gorazde, but these policies were being put

3 together on totally flawed information."

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I apologise, I'm waiting for the

5 interpretation to finish.

6 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

7 Q. Would it have been useful for you if you'd been aware of this

8 report? I believe that the report did air on BBC. I don't know who made

9 it. It may have been Mr. Bell. Were you aware of the testimony of the

10 12.500 Serbs in Gorazde, about their suffering at the very outset of the

11 war?

12 A. Well, I think I said yesterday that there was ethnic cleansing

13 carried out by all sides in the wars of the former Yugoslavia.

14 As for respective -- different amounts of damage, I think I said

15 in my last answer, to my previous answer, that you can distinguish

16 between houses that have been smashed up by individuals and houses that

17 have been shelled.

18 Q. Mr. Bowen, the Defence does not recognise an even-handed approach

19 to the civilians on both sides, and we are going to show you something

20 about what you call ethnic cleansing. What I would like to hear is

21 whether it would have been useful. Would it have had an impact on your

22 conclusions if you'd known what you know now?

23 And another question: Do you know where the Serbs that had fled

24 Gorazde ended up? Do you accept the fact that they were not far away,

25 they were just on the other side of the confrontation line, in the very

Page 10253

1 neighbourhood?

2 A. I don't know where they had gone to, but I'll certainly take your

3 word for it that they were close by, yes.

4 Q. And if we go back to your propensity to use the term "siege," how

5 would you reconcile that if you know that the Serbs from Gorazde fled

6 only across the confrontation line? Is that also a siege or is it a

7 defence of the Serbian villages around Gorazde?

8 A. Well, I used the word "siege" in relation to Gorazde because at

9 the time that I went there in August of 1992, that was the word that was

10 being used by the UNPROFOR and UNHCR people who were on the convoy, and

11 they certainly -- I was reporting what they were doing, and they

12 certainly regarded what they were doing was breaking a siege of Gorazde

13 that had lasted since the start of the war. So that word was being used

14 by the people putting together the convoy, and the intention -- their

15 intention was to get in -- into that siege.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

17 Can this clip, this video-clip, be admitted? 1D2925 is the

18 number, Muslim attacks on the Serbian Army around Gorazde.

19 JUDGE KWON: Yes.

20 THE REGISTRAR: Exhibit D952, Your Honours.

21 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

22 Q. Do you know that Gorazde had not had the borders of the protected

23 area determined, that there was no agreement to that effect, as there was

24 for Srebrenica and Zepa?

25 A. I can't recall whether or not a distinction was made in relation

Page 10254

1 to safe areas, if that's what you're referring to.

2 Q. According to the international agreements and the Law of War,

3 when a safe area is established, the warring parties have to agree to its

4 borders and the applicable regime. The Muslim side was never in favour

5 of doing that for Gorazde. They did it for Srebrenica and Zepa, but they

6 never honoured that agreement, but, rather, launched attacks from the

7 safe areas.

8 Can we now see D950, page 2. It must not be broadcast, I

9 understand.

10 JUDGE KWON: It was confirmed that it was a public document,

11 wasn't it? We admitted it --

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, yes, thank you. I am overly

13 cautious, even more than I need to be, it seems.

14 D950, page 2, bullet point 4.

15 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

16 Q. You reported about ethnic cleansing in Rogatica; right?

17 A. Yeah, I did, I believe, yes.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 Can we now look at bullet point 4 in that document.

20 JUDGE KWON: We need to switch to e-court from Sanction. Yes.

21 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

22 Q. Could you please pay attention to bullet point 4. The general in

23 question believes that that was part of the agreement between the two

24 parties. Do you respect the opinions of the highly-positioned officials

25 of the United Nations?

Page 10255

1 A. I respect his opinion, but the information that I had at the

2 time, based on -- at the time, based on speaking to Muslims who were

3 former residents of Rogatica, who got to Sarajevo, that they had an

4 extremely hard time. There was talk of killing, there was talk of

5 forcible evacuation, and there were also talks of -- talk of rapes. I

6 spoke to young women who said they'd been raped at that time.

7 Q. Thank you. And you believe them; right?

8 A. I reported their allegations, certainly. I wasn't an

9 eye-witness. They seemed like convincing witnesses to me, certainly in

10 terms of long conversations I had with them, and the -- I think it would

11 have been very hard for them to -- unless they were very, very

12 accomplished actors, to act in the way that they did. And since they

13 were 16-, 17-year-olds, I don't think they would have been capable of

14 sustaining that level of deception. That was my opinion at the time, so

15 we ran with the piece, I think.

16 Q. Thank you. Do you remember allegations about 80.000 raped Muslim

17 women, a crime which was ascribed to the Serbian state politics, and then

18 it all boiled down to only 18 rape cases, which would have occurred over

19 four years even in peacetime? Do you agree that the numbers, the

20 figures, start at 80.000, and then at the end the number was reduced to a

21 very small number, less than a thousand?

22 MS. EDGERTON: Your Honours.

23 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Ms. Edgerton.

24 MS. EDGERTON: That's over the top and inappropriate.

25 JUDGE KWON: Agreed.

Page 10256

1 Move on to your next topic, Mr. Karadzic.

2 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

3 Q. Let's go to ethnic cleansing, then.

4 Yesterday, on page 20, between lines 13 and 16, you stated

5 this -- this is yesterday's transcript:

6 [In English] "What I meant was the expulsion, by force or by acts

7 of terror, effectively parts of a population to render the community in

8 which they had lived a place where there was only one -- one of the

9 communities left. For example, Serbs kicked out Muslims. We saw there

10 was a lot of that. Ethnic cleansing was a practice that all sides in the

11 Bosnian war used, and all sides in the former Yugoslav wars, in fact,

12 used it by -- but it was something that was really prevalent. It was one

13 of the tenets of the war. You know, war is a question of -- I mean, how

14 do you win wars? You win wars by inflicting damage on your enemy, by

15 killing people, by destroying property, and also, in this particular

16 case, by the shifting of population."

17 [Interpretation] Let me not read on. I wouldn't agree -- or,

18 rather, I hope, when you said "by killing people," you meant military

19 personnel and not civilians; right? Can you just say yes or no? Did I

20 understand you properly? You did not mean people, civilians; you meant

21 troops, soldiers; right?

22 A. I meant what I said yesterday, elsewhere in my evidence, which

23 was, sadly, the way that modern wars are fought, the preponderance of

24 war, the overwhelming majority of casualties are civilians.

25 Q. Thank you. Then when you said "property," you probably didn't

Page 10257

1 mean private property. You meant state property or the property of the

2 opposing army; right? Not what actually happened, but what the

3 intentions usually are, in terms of winning a war; right?

4 A. No, I meant all kinds of property. And I'm also aware, insofar

5 as a journalist can be aware, of the various parts of international law

6 that apply to bombardments and the concept of protected persons under

7 that.

8 Q. Thank you. Do you make a distinction between the shifting of a

9 population and ethnic cleansing? In this particular paragraph or in

10 yesterday's transcript, you mentioned the term "by the shift of

11 population." Do you make a distinction between these two terms?

12 A. I think I came up with that form of words because you asked me to

13 try to define it, or I was asked to try to define it.

14 I'll repeat. My belief, based on what I saw and what I read

15 about and research I did, was that all sides used ethnic cleansing, but

16 the way it worked out, the Serb side used it most.

17 Q. We'll come back to that. Do you know that when we signed -- when

18 I say "signed," I mean the warring parties. We signed several

19 agreements, sometimes under the auspices of the UNHCR, at other times

20 under the auspices of Lord Carrington, Ambassador Cutileiro at the

21 London Conference, subscribing to an obligation to provide the transport

22 and escort to the civilian population who wished to be transferred from

23 one area to another? The first such agreement was signed on the 22nd of

24 May, 1992. That was repeated in June in London. In July 1992, that was

25 during Carrington's conference, and then again in August, and it was

Page 10258

1 repeated several times. The obligation of both sides was to allow the

2 shifting of a population and to provide armed escorts in order to prevent

3 people from being killed en route. Did you know about that? Were you

4 aware of that?

5 A. I can't remember in detail the agreements that were signed at

6 those particular conferences. I would have to look them up.

7 Q. Thank you. Do you know, Mr. Bowen, that "Jerusalem Post"

8 published a fact that there were more Serb refugees than Muslim and Croat

9 refugees together? Israel did not have any political interests in the

10 Balkans. "The Jerusalem Post" published that, and that was not taken

11 over by any of the Western media. Were you aware of the fact that this

12 was published, that there were more Serb refugees than Muslim and Croat

13 refugees together?

14 A. No, I wasn't aware of that "Jerusalem Post" report.

15 Q. Do you agree, Mr. Bowen, that in the Yugoslavian wars, the first

16 mass exodus, and in autumn 1991 from Western Slavonia, and the last

17 exodus in 1995 from Krajina involved the Serbs, and that in the meantime,

18 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost all Serbs who could flee did flee the

19 Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina? Were you aware of all of that?

20 A. I'm aware of Western Slavonia. I was involved in the coverage of

21 that part of that war. I'm also aware of what happened in Krajina. I

22 travelled through Krajina in 1994.

23 Q. Thank you. Do you know that two-thirds of Sarajevan Serbs fled

24 Sarajevo, and when the Dayton Accords were signed and when the embargo

25 was lifted, almost all of them who had remained finally fled, and there

Page 10259

1 is no more than 20.000 of them living in Sarajevo of the initial 120.000

2 who -- there's something wrong with the transcript. There are only about

3 20, and there were about 200 of them.

4 A. I'm aware that after the -- I'm aware that -- yeah, I mean, I

5 can't talk to you about the figures because I'm not aware of the figures,

6 but I'm -- I have a fair understanding, I think, of the way that

7 populations moved after the Dayton Accords were signed, and also the way

8 that things are now, more or less, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

9 Q. Do you know that the Serb side always provided buses and armed

10 escorts, and the Muslim side never did that? When the Serbs wanted to

11 flee, they had to rely on Croats, and they could carry nothing but

12 plastic bags in their hands. Do you -- are you aware of the agreements

13 signed on the auspices of the UNHCR and that the Serbs honoured those

14 agreements, that they always provided buses and armed escorts for the

15 Muslim civilians, whereas the Serbs, when they wanted to get out, they

16 had to find their own means, they had to run across Croat territories?

17 A. I think a distinction needs to be made between ethnic cleansing

18 at gunpoint, using fear and terror and killing people and the kind of

19 things that I was reporting on in the early part of the war, and later

20 organised movements of populations under the auspices of the UN. I think

21 it's chalk and cheese, it's oranges and lemons, it's two different things

22 there. I think one was possibly the consequence of the other. But

23 I think in terms of the arrangements that were made as well, I can only

24 comment on particular stories that I reported on.

25 Q. You were in Mostar. You passed through Konjic and Jablanica. Do

Page 10260

1 you know that 6.500 Serbs lived in Konjic, and in Mostar and in the

2 Neretva Valley, 44.000 Serb lived, and do you know what happened to them,

3 what was their lot? Yes or no. Just a simple answer, yes or no.

4 A. I didn't know the numbers. I knew there was Serbs there, and I

5 knew as well that there was ethnic cleansing in those parts of the -- as

6 I said, all sides did it at different times.

7 Q. The Defence puts it to you, Mr. Bowen, that the Serbs honoured

8 the obligation on the temporary shift of the population and that the

9 Serbs were chased from the Federation of Bosnia and -- from the Bosnian

10 Federation, and they were killed there, with some honourable exceptions

11 when Croats helped up. Mr. Bowen, did you find a single Serbian village

12 in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina that remained intact? Could you

13 give us a name of a single Serb village in the Federation of Bosnia and

14 Herzegovina that was not destroyed?

15 A. I wasn't there before the war, so I don't quite know what the

16 status quo before the war was, in terms of who lived where. The kinds of

17 things I was reporting on were the movements that were happening while I

18 was there; for example, those people who were coming into Travnik. I

19 mean, as a reporter, I can only report what I see when I'm there, of

20 course trying to under the wider context. But I think I've already

21 answered your questions on the relative amounts of ethnic cleansing that

22 were taking place.

23 Q. We are trying to establish the numbers. Do you know that there

24 were municipalities in Republika Srpska where no Muslim person was

25 touched? Do you know that there were many villages or small townships,

Page 10261

1 like Janja, where Muslims could live, and many of them remained living

2 there until the end of the war?

3 A. Well, no, I wasn't aware of that. As I say, I reported on those

4 incidents of ethnic cleansing that occurred while I was in the area.

5 Q. Mr. Bowen, in your report, 65 ter 4049E, we hear you say that a

6 refugee told you that they had had to bribe a Serb soldier in

7 Bosanski Petrovac in order to be able to leave. Remind me, what did they

8 pay for? Did they pay the Serb soldier to allow them to stay or to allow

9 them to leave? Maybe we should watch the video-clip again to jog your

10 memory.

11 A. Sure. I mean, let's watch it. I don't think we talked about

12 exactly what the price was.

13 Q. We're not talking about the actual price, but the purpose. What

14 did they pay for? Did they pay to be able to stay in Petrovac or to be

15 able to leave Petrovac?

16 A. I think the meaning of the report was that they were paying to

17 leave that town unmolested and unharmed. Well, unharmed, not unmolested.

18 The refugees in that refugee centre in Travnik came out with overwhelming

19 amounts of testimony to the way that they were treated badly by Serb

20 forces, and as you'll recall, there was talk of it being a reprisal for

21 the deaths of some Serb fighters.

22 JUDGE KWON: Do you like to play that clip?

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, we can play the clip, although

24 the witness has already confirmed that they paid to leave.

25 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

Page 10262

1 Q. How can you reconcile that with the claim that they were chased

2 away at a gunpoint?

3 A. Well, because that's what the vast majority said. I said that

4 this one particular individual then had to pay a bribe presumably to

5 leave without being further harmed. But as you'll recall from that

6 report, sir, there was a lot of testimony about people witnessing the

7 killings of members of their families in front of them. There was a

8 woman, for example, talking about her daughter being shot.

9 Q. Mr. Bowen, do you know that there is no single place in

10 Republika Srpska without Muslims or Croats who remained living there

11 throughout the war? Do you know that there was not a single ethnically

12 uniform place in Republika Srpska, despite the fact that many had left

13 for various reasons? Do you know that there was no single

14 ethnically-uniform area in Republika Srpska that had been populated with

15 a mixed population before the war?

16 A. I can't really comment on those statements that you make about

17 the spread of population. What I knew about Bosnia-Herzegovina was that

18 the populations were, to a greater or lesser extent, relatively mixed

19 before the war and that what we've seen during and since is that now

20 there are blocks of population as a result of ethnic cleansing and

21 subsequent movements of the population after the war, no doubt.

22 Q. Mr. Bowen, as a journalist, did you investigate the difference

23 between Muslims and Croats who remained living in Republika Srpska

24 peacefully throughout the war, they held their jobs, they participated in

25 the police and the army, and those Muslims and Croats who decided to ask

Page 10263

1 the municipalities to allow them to leave or to leave of their own will?

2 Did you investigate that as a journalist? How come that some Croats and

3 Muslims decided to stay, as opposed to the others, who decided to leave?

4 What was the difference between the two groups?

5 A. Maybe there were some Muslims and Croats in the

6 Bosnian Serb Army, but I never met them. What I do remember are things

7 like the long -- the large, expansive, empty villages. Once you went

8 through Brcko and went west through Bosnia-Herzegovina, there was almost

9 nothing. There were fields that were absolutely uncultivated, homes that

10 had been -- the roofs gone, the window frames gone and burnt out,

11 villages abandoned, and an absence of people who had been living there.

12 Q. Was there a single Muslim village that you came across there?

13 Who lived in these villages?

14 A. Well, I don't know who -- no one was living in them as we drove

15 past. I don't recall, in that area, going through a single

16 Muslim-populated village, no.

17 Q. Well, those were Christian villages, sir. There was not a single

18 Muslim village there, but we'll get to that.

19 1D2941, can we have that in e-court now. Let us see what a

20 Croat, a Catholic, a much better Catholic than you are, says about this.

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Sorry, Your Excellency.

22 JUDGE KWON: I note the time. It's time to take a break.

23 And I note that you've had, so far, four hours and 15 minutes,

24 which means you will have 45 minutes to conclude your cross-examination

25 during the next session.

Page 10264

1 I have one thing to deal with briefly in the absence of the

2 witness, so we will allow the witness to be excused.

3 THE WITNESS: Thank you.

4 JUDGE KWON: We'll resume at 12.00.

5 THE WITNESS: Okay.

6 JUDGE KWON: 1.00, I'm sorry.

7 [The witness stands down]

8 JUDGE KWON: Can we go into --

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I just say something in

10 relation to this? Can I ask for another 45 minutes, because we need to

11 deal, in very specific terms, with a great many statements made in such

12 an arbitrary fashion by this witness. We cannot disregard the fact that

13 he made so many cavalier statements, and we need to know what he meant by

14 them. I'm not asking for much. I'm asking for 45 minutes.

15 JUDGE KWON: You could have been more efficient so far, but I

16 will consult my colleagues.

17 How much would you expect for your re-examination, Ms. Edgerton?

18 MS. EDGERTON: Presently, something in the neighbourhood of 10

19 minutes or less.

20 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

21 [Trial Chamber confers]

22 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, you will have another -- an additional

23 half an hour, which means that we cannot go to the next witness today.

24 Given the time, we'll begin the next session in the absence of

25 the witness to deal with a matter. 12.00. I'm sorry, 1.00.

Page 10267

1 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

2 Q. So this is the 4th of October, 1993. Jadranko Prlic, as

3 prime minister of Herceg-Bosna, visited Banja Luka, and this is what he

4 says:

5 "My wish to visit Banja Luka and to convince myself that Croatian

6 people live here was realised today, because political conditions in that

7 regard have been established. Serbs and Croats in these areas did not

8 wage war. The majority of Croats remained in Banja Luka, which is a

9 result of the positive attitude of Republika Srpska. Therefore, the

10 departure of Croats from these areas should be prevented, their moving

11 out of apartments, that should be regulated by law ..."

12 This is what Jadranko Prlic said, and now he is referring to

13 economic co-operation as well because he is prime minister, after all.

14 Do you know that most Croats in Banja Luka stayed on throughout

15 in Banja Luka?

16 A. The reference I made to Croats was simply something about that

17 church that I visited that was shut up and covered in graffiti. My

18 impression in Banja Luka was that the population that suffered there most

19 was the Muslim population because of the -- you could -- it was

20 documented that a substantial number of mosques were demolished.

21 Q. Thank you. Did you know about this visit on the 4th of October,

22 1993? A year and a half after the war started, Jadranko Prlic visited

23 Banja Luka and established economic co-operation. Had you known that at

24 the time and had you known how many Croats had stayed on in Banja Luka,

25 would that have meant something to you? I do, though, accept the

Page 10268

1 criticism voiced that we were not good enough at informing the general

2 public.

3 A. The only time I met Mr. Prlic was in this courtroom, when I

4 testified in his case. I wasn't aware of that visit, no.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

6 Can this be admitted?

7 JUDGE KWON: You know the position of the Chamber. A third

8 person's statement is not admitted unless the maker of the statement

9 confirms the veracity of the statement.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This is a piece of news from the

11 newspapers, from the media in "Srpski Glas" of the 4th. Perhaps I

12 omitted to mention that "Glas Srpski" is a daily newspaper that carried

13 this particular piece of news. So if that changes things --

14 JUDGE KWON: All the more so with the media article. Let's

15 proceed.

16 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

17 Q. Did you know, Mr. Bowen, that some municipalities had asked for

18 many documents from Muslims who wanted to leave the municipality

19 concerned? Banja Luka, as the most liberal, asked for only 15 documents

20 to be compiled, such as certificates, that tax had been paid, and so on.

21 A. I wasn't aware of the exact bureaucratic procedure. I did report

22 in that piece from Travnik that they had been forced to sign over some

23 property. There was a document which one of the refugees was brandishing

24 with an official stamp on it that was in the story.

25 Q. Did that spur this kind of thing? Did people prefer leaving

Page 10269

1 rather than staying? If people are asking you for lots of documents,

2 does it make it easier for you to stay or to leave?

3 A. I can't answer that question. The people I spoke to uniformly

4 said that they were -- had been terrorised and forced from their homes,

5 and they spoke also of people being beaten and shot.

6 Q. Why, then, Mr. Bowen, would they be asked to collect documents,

7 and they would spend a month collecting all of these documents in order

8 to be able to leave? Why would that happen if they were being expelled

9 from their homes? The two are incompatible, Mr. Bowen. I'm not talking

10 about individuals here. I'm talking about the behaviour of state organs.

11 Do you know that state organs made it more difficult for Croats and

12 Muslims to leave or to move out of Republika Srpska?

13 A. I can't confirm or deny that assertion that you've just made. I

14 did note, in my reporting and in my evidence, that I -- that the nature

15 of ethnic cleansing changed as the war went on, from people arriving in

16 the middle of the night with guns, at the beginning, to that more

17 bureaucratic process that we saw, that we reported on in Bijeljina.

18 Q. Do you agree, Mr. Bowen, that we needed some time to establish a

19 state based on the rule of law, and that we did not have one in April,

20 May, June and July, perhaps not even in September 1992? Our state was a

21 Greenfield project, so time was required to establish a state based on

22 the rule of law.

23 A. I can't agree or disagree with that, Dr. Karadzic. I'm not able

24 to comment on the condition of the administration that you had at that

25 particular time. I think that's a question for you, quite frankly.

Page 10270

1 Q. Thank you. Do you know that none of these certificates that were

2 required by municipalities -- actually, these requests to have property

3 signed away, do you know that I annulled that already in August 1992?

4 None of this was actually carried through.

5 A. I think that piece was July or August 1992 in Travnik. I wasn't

6 aware of that edict that you issued. No, I'm sorry, I beg your pardon.

7 For the record, it was September or October that piece was broadcast,

8 that Travnik piece, of 1992. It wasn't the summer; it was early autumn.

9 Q. But these refugees spoke about what had happened before August;

10 isn't that right?

11 A. No, they were speaking about what had happened in the last couple

12 of days.

13 Q. Thank you. But you did not know that I had annulled that by this

14 decision with the force of law; right?

15 A. I didn't know about your -- no, that piece of -- that order that

16 you sent out, no, I didn't know that. But it sounds as though neither

17 did the people in Prijedor or in Bosanski Petrovac.

18 Q. Well, they didn't know during the first two months because

19 communications were down, but they did find out, and all of it was

20 annulled. Do you accept that, that it was annulled and that it was not

21 carried through anywhere?

22 A. I can't accept that, because the first I've heard of your

23 annulment of that is in this courtroom.

24 Q. When speaking about Gorazde - let us go back to that

25 briefly - you confirmed that Serbs were furious because the Muslims had

Page 10271

1 used the convoy as a human shield and attacked Serb positions, killing

2 eight soldiers; right?

3 A. Yes, that was their belief. We were taken to see the bodies of

4 the soldiers who were recently killed. You could tell from the condition

5 of the corpses.

6 Q. Thank you. Do you know of our official position, that after

7 every convoy, Muslim attacks against us were intensified, and that all of

8 that made us suspect that convoys were delivering ammunition and weaponry

9 to the Muslims?

10 A. I did not know of that official position, no.

11 Q. Thank you. Let us now link this up with Cerska. Do you know

12 that we sent a message to Cerska, and all these other villages there,

13 that they should not fight because their villages would probably belong

14 to the Muslim constituent unit?

15 A. I wasn't aware of that message.

16 Q. Do you know that for an entire year, from the spring of 1992

17 until the spring of 1993, they shot our troops in the back, they ambushed

18 civilians, they killed civilians on buses, they would kill an entire

19 busload of people or a car full of people? Do you know that they

20 harassed us all the time and that we sustained heavy losses?

21 A. I knew that there was fighting around the fringes of the enclave,

22 but I didn't have the details of what was happening, in terms of -- with

23 that kind of precision that you have just alleged, no.

24 Q. Thank you. I am dealing with what you had said; namely, that a

25 convoy to Cerska had been agreed upon, but was then stopped in Zvornik,

Page 10272

1 and that afterwards you were informed that Serbs had taken Cerska. Do

2 you know that Muslims, just like in Gorazde, abused the arrival of the

3 convoy near Cerska, and that that is why you had been stopped?

4 A. No one mentioned that to me at the time. No, I didn't know that.

5 We were still some way from Cerska, and we -- while we were stopped

6 there, we had -- the convoy people, I should say, had quite a lot of

7 messages from the Serb side saying that, Yes, shortly it will all happen,

8 you will go forward. There was sort of reassurance that was being put

9 around, which is why they waited there, I think, some period of several

10 days, because they were hoping that the problems could be sorted out.

11 But no one spoke to me of the sort of events that you describe.

12 Q. Thank you. Do you know that a large-scale media campaign was

13 launched to the effect that we had carried out a terrible massacre of

14 civilians in Cerska, and that that went on until General Morillon entered

15 Cerska with media crews? Do you remember that campaign regarding Cerska

16 that is identical to the media campaign involving Srebrenica in 1995?

17 All the media were saying that we had massacred the population of Cerska?

18 A. I don't remember those allegations about Cerska. I do remember

19 the Srebrenica events, however.

20 Q. We'll get to Srebrenica. Thank you. Do you accept that in that

21 zone, after Cerska and Kamenica were liberated, over 50 mass graves were

22 found, containing 5 to 50 corpses of Serbs, and that General Morillon

23 attended the burials?

24 A. We were taken to the unearthing of what a Serb officer said was a

25 mass grave of Serbs who were massacred. That was his allegation. I

Page 10273

1 wasn't able to -- I think, from memory, I'm pretty sure they were

2 uniformed corpses that were being disinterred. The UN and the military

3 people who were with us - we were with the French Foreign

4 Legion - suggested there was also a possibility that they may have been

5 killed in the general fighting that was going on there, but I have no

6 idea about the circumstances -- the precise circumstances of their

7 deaths, no. But I saw one mass grave, I think, with around eight, ten

8 bodies, perhaps.

9 Q. Thank you. Do you know how many Serb prisoners, that had been

10 taken by the Muslims over that year in Cerska, were returned to us?

11 A. No, I do not.

12 Q. Would it help you if I said not a single one? They had all been

13 killed, massacred. If they had -- even if they were wearing uniforms,

14 they should not have been killed or massacred; right?

15 A. No, prisoners shouldn't be killed or massacred. But I have no

16 idea what happened to prisoners in Cerska, because I wasn't there.

17 Q. Well, you were not in very many places, Mr. Bowen, and you are

18 testifying as if you had been there. Cerska, Bratunac, and in other

19 areas, do you agree that over 3.200 civilians were killed, or, rather,

20 Serbs, most of them civilians? We have the names and surnames, and we're

21 going to provide the Trial Chamber with these names and surnames.

22 However, do you accept that, that before 1995, over 3.200 Serbs had been

23 killed there?

24 A. I can't accept that. I'm not familiar with the figures.

25 Q. Well, Mr. Bowen, accuracy and impartiality is the bible of the

Page 10274

1 BBC, which merits our respect, doesn't it?

2 JUDGE KWON: The witness has said he doesn't know the figure.

3 There's no point of continuing that line of questions. Please move on.

4 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

5 Q. Let us now have a look at Srebrenica.

6 In paragraph 68, you said that you were in Sarajevo when

7 Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian-Serbian advance in 1995. You monitored

8 Pale TV, and so on and so forth. That's was say. And then you say:

9 [In English] "a few days later, the ICRC evacuated the women and

10 children. I did daily report about what was going on, as far as it was

11 possible to tell from Sarajevo at that time. The very first thing I

12 noticed about the picture from Srebrenica was that there were no men to

13 be seen. I guessed that they had been taken off to be detained and

14 perhaps killed. In my report for the BBC, I mentioned that there were no

15 men in the pictures."

16 [Interpretation] First of all, do you accept that, that civilians

17 from Srebrenica were evacuated to Potocari by the UN, that they were not

18 expelled by the Serbs?

19 A. Well, I say in the statement ICRC, maybe it was the UN, were --

20 yeah, I think they were there, and they were operating for some of the

21 women and children. We also -- which I didn't say in the statement, but

22 was in the report that was put in yesterday as evidence. We filmed quite

23 large numbers of civilians, women and children in the main, walking in

24 into Tuzla, who had crossed on foot, in no kind of organised way, from

25 Srebrenica.

Page 10275

1 Q. You claim that the refugees walked from Srebrenica to Tuzla, that

2 they fled on foot; right?

3 A. Well, that's what they were telling us.

4 Q. I'm putting it to you that from their houses to Potocari, the

5 refugees went on their own initiative, and then from Potocari to Kladanj,

6 by various means of transport, and that some other people walked from

7 Srebrenica to Tuzla. How come it never occurred to you that there may

8 have been something else going on involving Muslims? Why it never

9 occurred to you that they decided to attempt an armed breakthrough

10 towards Tuzla? Do you know that there was a column of 15.000 men trying

11 to breakthrough to Tuzla?

12 A. I've heard different kinds of stories about that particular time,

13 and I'm not qualified to judge what's true and what isn't, in terms of

14 those precise circumstances of people who were trying to get out of

15 Srebrenica at the time.

16 Q. Well, Mr. Bowen, one would expect that from you. You offer a lot

17 of statements that the Defence cannot accept, that the Defence

18 challenges, but those are notorious facts. 15.000 men actually attempted

19 a breakthrough with arms, and they were on foot.

20 JUDGE KWON: You are, Mr. Karadzic, very argumentative with this

21 witness. Just ask questions. The witness already said he doesn't know

22 that story.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

24 In my opinion, he should know, as an investigating journalist who

25 reported from the area. That is my chief objection.

Page 10276

1 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

2 Q. Mr. Bowen, you said on page 65 yesterday - it is in yesterday's

3 transcript and you quoted from one of your reports - that I was talking

4 about the superiority of the Serbian people on Pale Television. Do you

5 know that I also consider Muslims ethnic Serbs and that under no

6 condition would I ever think, let alone say, that one people is superior

7 to the other? Can you confirm what is it that I actually said? Did I

8 use the term "a superior people" or "a superior military force"?

9 A. I was given the translation at the time. As I've said, I can't

10 speak Serbian. I do remember you telling me in interviews, I think,

11 during the war period that your belief was that Muslims started out as

12 Serbs and converted.

13 Q. Well, when they converted, they did not change their ethnic

14 background. However, in the original language, I said "the superiority

15 of the Serbian arms." Can you accept that there is a difference between

16 the superiority of a people and the superiority of one's arms, and can

17 you accept it when I say that I would never issue such a racist statement

18 ever?

19 A. Well, if it was mistranslated, it was mistranslated.

20 Unfortunately, I had to rely on the services of someone who was

21 translating the language for me.

22 Q. Thank you. I can only regret that you didn't double-check, like

23 you didn't double-check many other things, Mr. Bowen.

24 A. If I can answer that. I do double-check a lot of things, and I

25 often go very assiduously through translations with translators. But, I

Page 10277

1 mean, I think the Serbian is on the tape, so no doubt those in the court

2 who speak the language will be able to examine it.

3 Q. Thank you. In paragraph 69, you say:

4 [In English] "It was known that the enclave of Eastern BiH were

5 organised and had weapons and they were fighting. Otherwise, they would

6 have been wrapped up by the Bosnian Serbs. It seemed credible and

7 obvious to me that BiH government forces would fight. They were

8 surrounded and had every reason to suppose they were fighting for their

9 lives."

10 [Interpretation] Mr. Bowen, you were the only well-informed

11 person who could have claimed that. Do you know that those enclaves were

12 supposed to be demilitarised and that the Secretary-General of the UN

13 stated they were not demilitarised, but they were, rather, strongholds of

14 the Muslim Army?

15 A. Well, they clearly weren't demilitarised.

16 Q. Do you know that when one zone is proclaimed a safe area, with

17 the consent of the warring parties, then that area cannot be armed, and

18 also that no attacks are supposed to be launched from inside of those

19 areas, nor can the other side attack anybody inside those areas?

20 A. Well, I know that the safe area policy had rules, but the facts

21 were that attacks were going back and forth and that there was fighting

22 going on. That was well documented.

23 Q. Do you know of a single Serb attack that was not a

24 counter-offensive, any Serb movement that did not constitute a

25 counter-offensive?

Page 10278

1 A. I think on all sides of every part of the Balkan wars that I

2 covered, from Croatia in 1991 to Kosovo in 1999, nobody said they shot

3 first. Everybody said they were fighting back. That's a refrain I heard

4 many, many times.

5 Q. Mr. Bowen, it is well known what Naser Oric's unit did to the

6 neighbouring Serb villages. Let's go back to the issue of siege.

7 Is it a siege if the Serbs around Srebrenica protected their own

8 villages, if those villages suffered attacks day and night, the attacks

9 coming from the so-called protected areas?

10 A. I mean, the military tactic used, as I understood it, by the Serb

11 forces around Srebrenica was effectively to besiege the enclave. The

12 enclave established a perimeter which they defended, and as I understand

13 it, it was -- I've actually never been to Srebrenica, but it was an

14 extended rural area with a number of settlements, and that things went

15 back and forth. The exact day to day of the -- of the fighting there, I

16 don't have a record of.

17 Q. If I put it to you that they extended those safe areas by means

18 of arms, illegally and in contravention of the agreement, that they

19 killed the Serbs, that they virtually connected Srebrenica and Zepa by

20 constantly exposing the Serb villages to attacks, does this sound

21 plausible to you?

22 A. Well, it's one view of what was going on there. I've heard other

23 views of what was going on there. And it's one view, also, of what was

24 going on there at a particular time. Military fortunes rose and fell,

25 I think, in the course of the war in that particular part of Bosnia.

Page 10279

1 Q. Thank you. In paragraph 69, you say:

2 [In English] "It was clear, though, that their isolation and

3 limitations on resupply meant that their combat effectiveness was going

4 to be limited."

5 Mr. Bowen, precisely because of that, we inspected the convoys.

6 That is why we imposed restrictions, because they resupplied themselves

7 with ammunition across our territory. It was our right, according to

8 international laws, to control and to prescribe conditions under which

9 they would be resupplied and receive aid. The restrictions were imposed

10 on limiting their combat capabilities, and I believe that that was our

11 legitimate right, to do that.

12 A. I'm not clear what your question is, sir.

13 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Ms. Edgerton. I think the witness has answered

14 in any event.

15 I think you are approaching the time to conclude your

16 cross-examination. No, he has time, but given the quality of questions.

17 Please proceed, Mr. Karadzic.

18 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 Q. Mr. Bowen, you were familiar with the situation in Sarajevo, to a

20 certain extent. You were not familiar with every position. Were you

21 familiar with the so-called generals of the Muslim Army, Caco, Juka,

22 Celo, who commanded brigades in that town of Sarajevo?

23 A. I was aware of their names, and they were figures at the time of,

24 for some people, great notoriety. For other people, they were figures

25 who were much to be admired. They were certainly controversial figures,

Page 10280

1 those three that you mentioned, so I was aware of those names, yes.

2 Q. Thank you. Do you know that they were removed at the moment when

3 they turned their arms against their own police, they killed or murdered

4 the son of the police minister, and threatened to take over the command

5 of the 1st Corps?

6 A. I was best aware of Caco and his operations, because I knew

7 someone who was in one of his units. And, no, I was aware that he was a

8 very controversial figure and that, in the end, the government forces

9 turned against him and there was -- and they removed him.

10 Q. Do you know why they turned against him? Do you know that Caco

11 and his unit killed a huge number of Serbs in Sarajevo?

12 A. I was aware of some of their activities. It was quite hard to

13 report on them, because they were very hostile to journalists. The one

14 time I managed to get into his part of town that he controlled, I

15 certainly saw them taking parties of people they regarded as slackers,

16 who weren't taking part in the war effort, I saw them being pushed up to

17 the front-line at gunpoint, presume -- carrying shovels, so presumably to

18 dig trenches. And he was someone who started off with a good reputation,

19 as a kind of Robin Hood, because he broke open food warehouses and gave

20 food to some of the population, and then later on he had -- among quite

21 large numbers of people in Sarajevo, he had a bad reputation because of

22 the undisciplined and violent behaviour of some of his own men.

23 Q. Thank you. You certainly do not dispute the fact that he was the

24 one who killed the son of the minister of the police, and that it was

25 only then when the government finally turned against him? Before that,

Page 10281

1 he didn't have any problems. While he was killing all the Serbs, nothing

2 happened to him.

3 A. I can't quite remember who it was that -- I do remember that he

4 killed someone that was prominent. I don't remember who, exactly, or

5 that his people did. I'm not -- the facts of that -- particular precise

6 facts of that case, I'm not -- it's probably better if I don't try and

7 speculate about them. But I do know that they did turn against him and

8 that his power then ended.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

10 Can we now see 1D2917. This is a part of your book. Can it be

11 displayed in e-court, 1D2917. Can we see page 141 in the book, not in

12 e-court. 141 in the book.

13 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. Do you agree that he was executed --

15 A. Is it on there?

16 Q. No, no.

17 A. Okay.

18 Q. It is a part of your statement. I am looking for your book,

19 which is 1D2917 --

20 JUDGE KWON: Which is D936.

21 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

22 Q. Do you agree and do you remember that he was executed only in the

23 autumn of 1993, in October or November 1993; right?

24 A. I can't remember the date of his execution. I'm not sure if I

25 knew it, actually.

Page 10282

1 MS. EDGERTON: Your Honours.

2 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Ms. Edgerton.

3 MS. EDGERTON: I've been listening to this for a long time, and

4 I'm more convinced now than ever that this is -- this line of questioning

5 and this evidence is tu quoque, and I would be objecting.

6 JUDGE KWON: Do you like to respond, Mr. Karadzic?

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I do -- I intend to show what the

8 attitude of the Serb side was towards Sarajevo, as opposed to the

9 attitude of the Muslim side towards Sarajevo. This man was a general,

10 Juka Prazina was a general, Caco was a general, and they were notorious

11 criminals who killed the Serbs first. And then when there were no longer

12 any Serbs to kill, they turned against Muslims.

13 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. Could you please look at the paragraph which starts with the

15 words: "The Bosnian government ...," which is the third paragraph.

16 JUDGE KWON: Wait, Mr. Karadzic, please.

17 [Trial Chamber confers]

18 JUDGE MORRISON: Mr. Bowen, perhaps you can assist.

19 This line of cross-examination dealing with these individuals, is

20 this something of which you have an intimate knowledge or are you simply

21 relying upon, as it were, the general information which you had at the

22 time that would have been available to anybody making a reasoned inquiry?

23 THE WITNESS: I had a little bit of information which is in the

24 book from one of the people who fought with Caco, which I put down. I

25 never met the guy, himself.

Page 10283

1 It also says "Celo." There was more than one Celo. The one I

2 met was someone who, in the first part of the war, was seen locally as a

3 military hero, and then as I say in the book, a year or so later, by that

4 stage, he had moved into a wider range of activities and then he was

5 behaving like a gangster. But that's about what I know. I certainly

6 didn't have intimate dealings with him, and in no sense would I -- I'm

7 basing what I know is down there.

8 JUDGE MORRISON: Dr. Karadzic, if that's the case, then really

9 you may find it's much more useful, bearing in mind the limited time that

10 you have, to move on from this particular topic, because there's an

11 obvious way that you can get any of evidence related to these matters

12 before the Court, other than through a witness who's indicated the

13 limitations of his information.

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

15 I will abandon the topic, although the witness did write about it

16 in this book. And in this paragraph, you can see a reference to this

17 being a private army, and so on and so forth.

18 In the same document, can we look at page 151. I'm moving on to

19 an entirely different topic.

20 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. Mr. Bowen, you told us, and I know that for a fact, that the BBC

22 bible pinpoints at accuracy and impartiality; right?

23 A. Accuracy and impartiality are very important, yes.

24 Q. Can you look at the first paragraph on page 151. You will see

25 that you stated your political views, and you sided against the Serbs

Page 10284

1 here; right?

2 A. No. What it says is:

3 "We should have been harder on the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs,

4 who were treated by Western governments and their ..."

5 Well, you can read it:

6 "... as legitimate people with whom business could be done."

7 I think what I'm saying there is my reporting was impartial, but

8 it might have been a bit more accurate had we been a little harder on

9 those activities that were taking place that we saw. In the quest --

10 what I think I was trying to say was in the quest for impartiality, we

11 moved possibly a little bit away from accuracy by not stating

12 definitively enough the kind of things that were being done in the name

13 of the -- in this case, the Serb people. There's a balance to be drawn.

14 In impartial reporting, there's a balance to be drawn between stating

15 things that are true and stating the wider context, and it's always a

16 fine judgement to make.

17 Q. Well, Mr. Bowen, I'm questioning your -- the appropriateness of

18 your testimony against me. You say here the indictments, in themselves,

19 are proof that they are responsible. In other words, you see indictments

20 as convictions. I'm trying to see whether your political engagement and

21 your political position against the Serbs and against the Croats, as was

22 seen in Judge Antonetti's trial, and Judge Antonetti had serious

23 objections against your views, would that disqualify you as a witness?

24 Is it a fact that you stated here that an indictment is a good-enough

25 proof of somebody's responsibility?

Page 10285

1 A. I'd agree that that sentence isn't well written. I should have

2 put "allegedly" in there. It's clear that an indictment is not a

3 conviction. I think perhaps I was trying to refer to the respective

4 volumes of indictments that were -- that had -- at the time of writing,

5 had been handed down. But I agree that I could have drafted that

6 sentence more precisely.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can this page or, rather, this

8 paragraph be admitted?

9 JUDGE KWON: Yes, that will be add to the existing Exhibit D936.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

11 The following page, please:

12 [In English] "Most Serbs were descent, hospitable people, and I

13 often felt sorry for them. They were led into a catastrophe by

14 Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, and the rest, who ..."

15 [Interpretation] Next page, please. 154, at the very top:

16 [In English] "... Radovan Karadzic, and the rest, who manipulated

17 their historic insecurity and used nationalism ruthlessly and cynically

18 to secure their own power."

19 [Interpretation] You think and you say in your book that I did

20 all that in order to secure my power. Do you know that in 1990, I did

21 not put up my candidacy anywhere, that I did not want to be in power?

22 A. I don't know what you were doing in 1990, but I know that in the

23 time that I was reporting on what was going on, you were the leader. And

24 it was clear that nationalism, in the whole of the former Yugoslavia, was

25 being used and abused, and I think it's -- I would -- I said that earlier

Page 10286

1 sentence was not well written. I think that sentence is absolutely true.

2 I think that historic insecurities were manipulated and nationalism was

3 used ruthlessly as a vehicle to gain and to keep power.

4 Q. Mr. Bowen, do you know that Muslims had planned and informed,

5 accordingly, their Western allies, particularly Croats and, through them,

6 also Americans, that they had planned to throw out all Serbs from Bosnia

7 and Herzegovina?

8 A. Well, I just said that I think all sides used nationalism. A

9 major cause of the wars of Yugoslavia was that heady and dangerous

10 atmosphere of nationalism and the abuse of those concepts and people's

11 fears by all leaders. Izetbegovic and Tudjman were also, I would say,

12 responsible and guilty for that kind of behaviour.

13 Q. I heard that you would say that in the second edition of your

14 book, because the first edition doesn't contain that. The only ones that

15 you accuse here are the Serbs.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can this page be added -- or,

17 rather, the two pages that we've just seen, can they be added? And then

18 can we also look at page 169.

19 JUDGE KWON: Yes, that will be done.

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] 169, please.

21 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

22 Q. Can we look at your political views, which cast doubt on your

23 appropriateness as a witness?

24 Look here. You did not trust even your own government, in other

25 words? You doubt the motives of the British government:

Page 10287

1 [In English] "I thought there was one easy way to end the misery

2 and suffering in Sarajevo, and that was to break the siege by attacking

3 the Bosnian Serbs on their hills. But the government of John Major was

4 urging caution, not action."

5 [Interpretation] And a bit further down:

6 [In English] "Douglas Hurd, the former secretary, dismissed

7 journalists like me as the 'something must be done' club."

8 [Interpretation] Now, you think that the Serb villages around

9 Sarajevo and the Serb suburbs should have been bombed and handed over to

10 the Muslims, while expelling the Serbs. Your government was cautious,

11 and you were objecting to that. What do you say to that?

12 A. I think you're misinterpreting my words and you're taking them

13 out of context. I didn't say that. The point I'm making there is that,

14 yeah, of course I have beliefs of my own, but I'm saying I didn't put

15 them in my reporting. And that, I hope, is clear from the videos that

16 have been submitted. In the end, I'm right in saying that that was

17 effectively what happened in 1995. They decided to go ahead, and there

18 were air-strikes, and the stalemate ended.

19 I did have suspicions about the political motives of the

20 British Government at the time, yes, and as a journalist, I have to tell

21 you I'm paid to have suspicions about people's motives. That's what we

22 do. So just because people say that it's true doesn't mean that it is.

23 In that particular case, if you read all the paragraphs around it

24 and the pages around it, what I'm specifically referring to was medical

25 evacuation. I felt that the British Government seized on some highly

Page 10288

1 publicised cases in 1993, particularly the case of Irma Hadzimuratovic,

2 but others as well, and expedited the evacuations, and I thought quite a

3 cynical way, because at the time there was a lot of pressure in the

4 newspapers for action, and the newspapers I had -- not the BBC -- for

5 action to end the suffering of people in Sarajevo, and I think that the

6 British Government found that was a way of giving an impression of moving

7 without doing a great deal.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can this page be admitted, or,

9 rather, can be added to the same number, 169?

10 JUDGE KWON: Yes.

11 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

12 Q. So you would have resolved that faster. Would it have been

13 simpler to alleviate the suffering of Sarajevo by handing it over to the

14 UN, as the Serbs had proposed, themselves, or was it better to bomb the

15 Serbs and let the 1st Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina

16 prevail? Do you know that that is what our offer had been, to hand over

17 Sarajevo to the UN?

18 A. I wasn't aware of that offer. In 1995, there were air-strikes

19 against Serb positions, and that was followed by the political process

20 that led to the Dayton Agreements. I think what I'm saying here is they

21 could have done that a year or two earlier, had they so wished, and that

22 would have saved quite a few lives. I'm certainly not suggesting, in

23 that paragraph or at any time, that what they should have done, as

24 I think you suggested a little while ago, was to used military force to

25 hand the place over to the Muslim government. That was not my

Page 10289

1 suggestion.

2 Q. Thank you. Do you agree, Mr. Bowen, that these stances are

3 preeminently political and that this is political activism? It's not

4 exactly neutral. On the contrary, it is decidedly anti-Serb.

5 A. That book was written 10 years after the events which we're

6 describing. What I'm saying, in a few lines there, is that I didn't

7 report my own beliefs, I didn't report my own beliefs. I reported what

8 was happening as a journalist. But, you know, I'm a thinking person, so

9 clearly I have a mind of my own about things, but I'm not a political

10 activity. And I think to suggest that those few lines are political

11 activism is, frankly, a gross exaggeration.

12 Q. Thank you. I thought that I did not have to resort to this, but

13 now let us actually see what your position is, as a whole, with regard to

14 the parties.

15 Can I have --

16 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreter did not catch the number.

17 JUDGE KWON: Could you give the number again, Mr. Karadzic.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] 1D2915.

19 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

20 Q. Do you recognise the text? You must have read it in April 2009.

21 It has to do with your violation of instructions on accuracy in your

22 reporting from Israel.

23 A. Explaining the context of this, I'm afraid, is not an easy thing

24 to do and it might take a while, but I'm very glad to. And now that

25 you've raised this, I think I should.

Page 10290

1 In my position -- my current position which I've had since 2005

2 as the BBC's Middle East editor, I'm suggest to a large number of

3 criticisms, complaints, formal and informal, by people who are party to

4 their conflict going on in the Middle East and who are supporters of the

5 different sides there. There's a constant process of complaining going

6 on, and the BBC has quite a complex complaints procedure which I won't

7 bore you with the details of. But suffice it to say, the highest level

8 of it is the BBC Trust. In the course of one of their adjudications, on

9 which they cleared me of a large number of things, they found me as it

10 says there. They ruled on complaints that -- on two small points. Now,

11 that was a very controversial ruling. I'm not going to repeat

12 conversations I had with members of the trust afterwards, but I will say

13 things that the BBC management, itself, said to me.

14 My immediate bosses in the BBC expressed full confidence in my

15 reporting. There was no official censure from them. There's no censure

16 at all. What I had, in fact, was, in private, continuous expressions of

17 support for my reporting. And the point also has to be made that these

18 complaints were made by professional lobbyists, in one case a paid

19 lobbyist from a particularly aggressive right-wing organisation in the

20 United States, not a BBC license pair, and they persuaded, essentially, a

21 lay panel to rule on some issues in the Middle East. And there were

22 elements of the ruling which were nonsensical.

23 One thing which I need to mention -- I'm aware of the pressure of

24 time here, so I'll try and keep it brief. They said, for example, that

25 that -- one of the statements I made was inaccurate because I didn't

Page 10291

1 give -- I didn't -- I didn't name my source. Had I named my source, the

2 statement would have become accurate. That's clearly a nonsense.

3 It was a flawed ruling by the BBC Trust. I have reason to

4 believe that members of that -- that there is some regret about that.

5 There was a widespread opposition to it, and I think that -- I certainly

6 don't accept -- I have to accept their ruling. I don't believe that it's

7 true. So the context of that, certainly there were these findings

8 against me, but the -- I think the key point is that I'm still employed

9 as the BBC Middle East editor, I still report the way that I've always

10 reported, and that I've been given, privately and publicly, the full

11 confidence of my employers.

12 So that, I hope, gives some context to that particular ruling by

13 the BBC Trust.

14 Q. How often does that happen? How often does the BBC make this

15 kind of ruling, censuring its editor, in a way? When did that last

16 happen?

17 MS. EDGERTON: The witness said he did not -- he was not censured

18 in any way whatsoever, in fact. That's a misstatement of what Mr. Bowen

19 has just said.

20 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. Were you reprimanded? Were you censured in any way?

22 A. No.

23 Q. Did the trust state something?

24 A. Well, the trust stated what you've got there in that report of

25 it, though I suggest that you would be better served if you looked at

Page 10292

1 their full report, because it goes at great length -- at great length, it

2 describes how it rejects many of the complaints against me. But that

3 particular -- there are two small points that they found on, and

4 that's -- that was the end of it. There was pointedly -- pointedly, from

5 the management of the BBC News, there was no censuring of me, there was

6 no disciplinary action. There were expressions of support, which some of

7 the -- they were more pointed, I have to say, in private than in public

8 because of the relative positions of the BBC and the BBC Trust and the

9 way that it works. The BBC Trust is the regulator of the BBC, but it is

10 also, in a sense, of the BBC, so its discussions in public are difficult.

11 But I certainly have no reason to doubt that I have the full confidence

12 of the BBC management, that by -- 26 years with the BBC count as a great

13 deal of experience, and I have, therefore, their full confidence as the

14 BBC Middle East editor. And if I didn't have that confidence, I wouldn't

15 be doing the job.

16 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Bowen.

17 Mr. Karadzic, you'll have three minutes.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can this be admitted?

19 JUDGE KWON: Yes.

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we have a look at another

21 document. That is --

22 JUDGE KWON: This will be Exhibit D -- what number?

23 THE REGISTRAR: Exhibit D953, Your Honours.

24 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

25 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

Page 10293

1 Q. Mr. Bowen, while we're waiting for this, I'm a bit worried.

2 You do not accept the views of high-ranking, highly-educated UN

3 officers. You criticise your own government because of its attitude

4 towards the Serbs. And now you don't seem to like the BBC Trust either.

5 Is this heading not sufficient: "Jeremy Bowen breached the

6 guide-lines --"

7 JUDGE KWON: Move on. Mr. Karadzic, move on to your next topic.

8 Where is the next document? The last, I take it.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] 1D2932, can we have that displayed

10 now.

11 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

12 Q. You are talking about the nature of the civil war in Bosnia and

13 Herzegovina here. I cannot really find my way here.

14 A. I'm looking at the document about the Middle East complaints.

15 Q. The video. We no longer have enough time to deal with this.

16 However, the first one, the BBC Trust -- or, rather, the finding was that

17 you had breached instructions.

18 Now let us view the video.

19 MS. EDGERTON: That was not the finding. The witness has just

20 explained that, Your Honours. It's another misstatement of his evidence.

21 JUDGE KWON: True.

22 JUDGE MORRISON: In fact, in the document, it will say that the

23 Har Homa -- that Mr. Bowen's Har Homa report was cleared by the trust

24 over issues of impartiality.

25 JUDGE KWON: Yes. Let's play the video.

Page 10294

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] We then --

2 JUDGE KWON: Just a second.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we then have the previous

4 one -- or, actually, after the video, we are going to show that front

5 page, where it says that he did, indeed, violate it. It's a different

6 matter, whether they're going to punish him or not. However, the ruling

7 of the trust has to do with two issues, two minor issues, as Bowen says.

8 But, nevertheless, that is what the ruling states, that it is a violation

9 of the impartiality principle. But let's have the video first.

10 [Video-clip played]

11 "Reporter: When I first came to cover the war in what we now

12 call the former Yugoslavia, about a year ago, when it was all starting,

13 people used to talk about the atrocities perpetrated against their

14 grandparents in the Second World War or even further back during the time

15 of the Ottoman Empire, for instance. The difference now is that people

16 talk about the atrocity perpetrated last week. The sad thing is that a

17 new generation of people have learned how to hate and they've learned how

18 to kill, sometimes killing the people they used to play with as children.

19 As a journalist, the longer you spend here, the more pessimistic you get.

20 I think all of us covering the war in Sarajevo believe that it's all

21 going to get much worse and there's nothing the world can do about it."

22 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation]

23 Q. So, Mr. Bowen, this clip shows that you are fully aware of the

24 profound historical and social conditionality of that war. And in the

25 book you accuse me and Milosevic, saying that it is a result of what we

Page 10295

1 wanted. Do you stand by what you said in this video-clip?

2 A. Well, yes, I do stand by what I said in that video-clip from

3 1992. But what I'd also say was in the book, I was referring to the

4 manipulation of their historical insecurities of the Serb people.

5 History plays a big part in people's view of the world very often, even

6 if they don't quite realise that, and the point I was making was that the

7 media and nationalistically-minded leaders manipulated the histories.

8 Q. And did Milosevic and Karadzic carry out manipulations from 1941

9 until 1945, when 700.000 Serbs were killed, 100.000 Jews, and so on?

10 Were we the ones who were doing the manipulating then or is what you say

11 in this video-clip true?

12 A. Well --

13 JUDGE KWON: No, you don't have to answer that question.

14 JUDGE MORRISON: Isn't the point, Dr. Karadzic, that that's

15 exactly what Mr. Bowen is saying, is that history is replete with

16 examples, and he's simply giving his view? Whether or not it's an

17 accurate view is a matter for decision, but the view is that we are

18 governed as we are, are we not, by history and our view of history?

19 Isn't that something which is just simply part of the human condition?

20 JUDGE KWON: And, Mr. Karadzic, as for the BBC Trust's ruling,

21 I think we have heard enough. Unless you have a final question, I will

22 give the floor to Ms. Edgerton.

23 MR. KARADZIC: [Interpretation] Just my last question.

24 Q. Could we please have a look at the second paragraph here:

25 [In English] "The second complaint --"