Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 3924

1 Wednesday, 31 May 2000

2 [Open session]

3 [The witness entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 9.42 a.m.

5 [The accused entered court]

6 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Good

7 morning, ladies and gentlemen; good morning, technical

8 booth; good morning, interpreters; good morning, legal

9 assistants, court reporters; good morning, Mr. Harmon,

10 Mr. Cayley, Mr. McCloskey; good morning, Mr. Petrusic,

11 Mr. Visnjic.

12 Good morning to the expert. Good morning,

13 Dr. Clark, have you had a good rest?

14 THE WITNESS: Yes. Thank you very much.

15 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Very well.

16 We're going to resume our hearing. I should like to

17 remind you, Mr. Clark, that you are continuing to

18 testify under oath, and you're going to continue to

19 answer questions put to you by Mr. Cayley.

20 Mr. Cayley, you have the floor.

21 MR. CAYLEY: Thank you, Mr. President. Good

22 morning, Your Honours; good morning, Defence counsel.

23 WITNESS: JOHN CLARK [Resumed]

24 Examined by Mr. Cayley: [Cont'd]

25 Q. Dr. Clark, just to remind you what I said

Page 3925

1 yesterday, as we speak the same language, if you could

2 try and take a pause between question and answer. I'll

3 do the same, and I'll try to regulate the pace. That

4 will make the interpreters' lives easier.

5 We reached, I think, yesterday, the

6 conclusions that you made in respect of the bodies that

7 were recovered from the Kozluk grave. So now if we

8 could move on to the bodies and body parts that were

9 recovered from Nova Kasaba. Do you have that page of

10 your report in front of you?

11 A. Yes, I do.

12 Q. How many bodies and body parts, Dr. Clark,

13 were found or were recovered and presented to you from

14 that site?

15 A. Fifty-five bodies and two small body parts.

16 Q. Dr. Clark, in life, what kind of people were

17 they?

18 A. These were people, again, with a wide age

19 range. The estimate ranges potentially as young as 13,

20 potentially as old at 85 or even older. Most of them

21 appeared to be over the age of 25. As far as we could

22 tell, all were male.

23 They appear to be a reasonably fit

24 population. One person had an old fracture of his leg,

25 and somebody -- another one an old injury of his right

Page 3926

1 hand, but these were injuries from years past. We

2 didn't have the same disabilities or deformities as we

3 had in the bodies at Kozluk.

4 Q. What was the cause of death in the majority

5 of the cases from this site?

6 A. Again, the majority of people died from

7 gunshot wounds.

8 Q. Was there any other evidence concerning any

9 other weapons that might have been used?

10 A. There was, interestingly. The bulk of the

11 people who had been shot appeared to have been shot by

12 high-velocity rifles, as in Kozluk, but in one person,

13 the hole -- the wound in the bone appeared -- it

14 suggested to us possibly the use of a handgun, and in

15 five cases there was clear evidence of shotgun pellets

16 in the bodies.

17 Q. If you could place Exhibit 246. This was

18 something of particular interest from this site, and if

19 you could describe to the Judges your findings in

20 respect of this particular body.

21 A. There were two men who had recent injuries to

22 them, and I'm meaning injuries possibly in the few days

23 before the death. These were both men with gunshot

24 injuries to the legs, and we could tell that they

25 hadn't occurred right at the time of death because they

Page 3927

1 had been bandaged up.

2 This example here, you're seeing the lower

3 part of the man's body. This is his left leg here, and

4 clearly it has a splint and bandages around it. So

5 this is clearly an injury that he has -- had suffered,

6 gunshot injury, that has had time to have been bandaged

7 up. And there was a second man with a fairly similar

8 injury to his leg.

9 Q. Thank you, Dr. Clark. If you'd place the

10 next exhibit on the ELMO, which I think is a close-up

11 shot of the same.

12 A. Yes. This is just a close-up shot in amongst

13 the bandages, just to show the gunshot wound in his

14 leg. This body was fairly well preserved. There was

15 skin and some soft tissue, so it was still possible to

16 see a hole in the skin.

17 Q. Now, Dr. Clark, if you could place

18 Exhibit 248. I think the next three photographs

19 demonstrate some of the classical injuries that you

20 observed.

21 A. This is a photograph of the back of a skull

22 with two bullet holes in the back of it.

23 Interestingly, these do not have the typical

24 pattern of high-velocity weapons with the shattering,

25 so this may well have been a handgun injury. The other

Page 3928

1 two photographs I have just to show that there were

2 injuries to parts of the body other than the head.

3 This is a rib. You see a very clear bullet hole going

4 through it. And finally, a typical injury from

5 somebody's leg. This is the thigh bone, and the bone

6 here is shattered and in many pieces, and very typical

7 of a bullet coming from this direction, shattering the

8 bone in that way, a very typical high-velocity injury.

9 MR. CAYLEY: Just for purposes of the record,

10 when Dr. Clark was referring to a bullet injury to a

11 rib, that is Prosecutor's Exhibit 249, and the injury

12 to the thigh bone is Prosecutor's Exhibit 250.

13 Q. Dr. Clark, was there any evidence that

14 suggested that these individuals had suffered injury

15 other than gunshot injury before death?

16 A. Again, as in Kozluk, there were fractures of

17 ribs, which could well have been crushing injuries in

18 the grave with bodies being moved about. There were

19 other fractures of the face and some of the other

20 bones, which could well have been from blows from a

21 weapon or kicking. But as I explained yesterday, it's

22 always difficult to prove these, but that possibility

23 certainly does exist.

24 Q. If you could just place page 16, which is, I

25 think, the summary of your findings, onto the ELMO. If

Page 3929

1 you could just slowly read those into the transcript, I

2 would be grateful, and any other comments you have to

3 add on those findings.

4 A. The screen is not on. My screen is not on,

5 so -- it's just easier to read than stretching over.

6 Q. Of course.

7 A. So this is a summary of the findings from the

8 Nova Kasaba site. The site had four graves, individual

9 graves, containing a total of 55 bodies and body

10 parts. Most of them were in just two graves. The

11 victims were all male, and they ranged in age from 13

12 to 85, or potentially from 13 to 85. There were

13 gunshot injuries in 87 per cent of the bodies, with the

14 average number of shots per person being 2.7. The

15 highest proportion of the shots was to the trunk, with

16 the head and legs next. Two people had bandaged

17 wounds, suggestive of gunshot injuries suffered some

18 time before. And there was evidence of shotgun pellets

19 in five bodies, possibly from a gun discharged into the

20 grave after death.

21 Q. Thank you, Dr. Clark. If you could now turn

22 to page 17 of your report, which concerns the bodies

23 recovered from the sites at Konjevic Polje.

24 How many bodies were presented to you and

25 your colleagues for examination from this site?

Page 3930

1 A. This was a much smaller grave site than the

2 other two. This had only 12 bodies.

3 Q. Dr. Clark, what kind of people were these in

4 life?

5 A. These -- the age range appeared to be from

6 about 15 to 65, and out of the whole season, we had one

7 female victim here. All the rest appeared to be male,

8 but there's one very definite female victim.

9 Q. Now, one matter of interest, if you could

10 place the next exhibit onto the ELMO. Could you

11 explain to the Judges, sir, what this represents?

12 A. Better that way. This is a makeshift

13 stretcher, one of a number which were found in the

14 grave, and it's just pieces of wood, branches, with

15 blankets tied between them. This very much suggested

16 that it had been used to carry either wounded people or

17 dead bodies and, presumably, had then been put into the

18 grave, tossed into the grave, afterwards.

19 Q. What was the most significant injury amongst

20 all of the bodies that you observed from this site?

21 A. All of these people had been shot, and the

22 commonest site where they were shot was the trunk.

23 Q. What kind of weapon had been used?

24 A. These all appeared to be a high-velocity

25 rifle weapon.

Page 3931

1 Q. Place Exhibit 252 onto the ELMO.

2 A. This is a very typical gunshot injury to the

3 head just above and behind the right ear. So the front

4 of the skull here, and the ear is round about here.

5 And here is a very typical entrance bullet hole, again

6 with the fracturing going all over the skull.

7 Q. Now, you stated a moment ago in your evidence

8 that there was a case of a female, a female body found

9 in this grave. Can you describe to the Judges your

10 findings in respect of that body?

11 A. This was an interesting case in many ways,

12 and it's a good example of the difficulties we had in

13 establishing cause of death in some people.

14 This was a woman who we estimated was aged

15 anywhere between 16 and 30, and she had been shot twice

16 in the left leg. One of these was through the hip.

17 This is the left femur [indicates], this is the part

18 that joins onto the pelvis [indicates], and you can see

19 how the bone here is shattered and a bullet has gone

20 through that. So she had been shot once in the left

21 hip and once just below the knee.

22 We could not prove any other injuries to her

23 body, let alone any other gunshot injuries. There was

24 two fractured ribs, but they didn't appear to be

25 typical of gunshot injuries.

Page 3932

1 And while gunshot injuries to the leg would

2 be very disabling, they would not necessarily be

3 immediately fatal, so this was an example of the

4 situation in which we were uncertain as to -- if that

5 was the exact cause of her death. It may have been

6 that she was disabled, certainly, with these injuries,

7 but died in some other way.

8 Q. Is it possible that she was placed alive and

9 injured into the grave and suffocated?

10 A. That's entirely possible, yes.

11 Q. Thank you, Dr. Clark. If you could place

12 page 19 of your report onto the ELMO, which neatly

13 describes your summary findings.

14 MR. CAYLEY: Just for the purposes of the

15 record, the last exhibit that the witness was referring

16 to is Prosecutor's Exhibit 253.

17 A. This was a small site of two graves some

18 distance apart, between them containing 12 bodies. One

19 person from grave 1 was female, the only one from any

20 of the sites, and that's including Kozluk and the other

21 sites we're discussing. There were gunshots in

22 everyone, with three being the average number of shots

23 to them. Most injuries were to the trunk, followed by

24 the legs and the head.

25 MR. CAYLEY:

Page 3933

1 Q. Thank you, Dr. Clark. If you could move to

2 page 20 of your report, which concerns the bodies

3 recovered from the Glogova site. How many bodies and

4 body parts were presented to you and your colleagues

5 from this site?

6 A. We had 90 bodies and an additional 154 body

7 parts. This was felt by the anthropologists to give a

8 minimum number of individuals of 147, although I'm just

9 taking this initially from the report. They may well

10 have a slightly more accurate figure now; I don't

11 know. But it must be around about that, that number.

12 Q. What kinds of people were they in life?

13 A. These were again apparently a relatively

14 healthy population. Nobody had any disabilities or

15 physical deformities. A wide age range again,

16 potentially from 12 to 71, although one grave in

17 particular, GL-05, had a preponderance of young people,

18 with 46 per cent of the bodies there under the age of

19 24. All were male, as far as we could tell.

20 Q. Now, you state in your report, and indeed the

21 Judges have already heard, that these sites or at least

22 some of them had been extensively robbed?

23 A. Yes, that's right.

24 Q. Did that affect your work at all?

25 A. Yes. It meant that bodies had been disturbed

Page 3934

1 and parts had been disrupted, parts missing almost

2 certainly.

3 Q. What was the most preponderant cause of death

4 of the bodies that were examined by you and your

5 colleagues from this site?

6 A. Once again, gunshot injuries was the

7 commonest cause of death.

8 Q. From what type of weapon?

9 A. High-velocity rifles.

10 Q. Where were the majority of these individuals

11 shot, what part of their body?

12 A. Well, it varied. The largest proportion was

13 to the trunk. Over 50 per cent of the victims had

14 gunshot injuries to the trunk. Next commonest was the

15 head, and then the legs and the arms. There was one

16 particular pattern that emerged from the graves, and

17 this again was GL-05. This was the grave with the

18 preponderance of young men in it. There was a very

19 typical pattern of injury in these people of a gunshot

20 injury to the back, to the middle of the spine.

21 Sometimes -- in a lot of cases that have the only

22 injury. In other -- some of the victims there were

23 additional shots perhaps to the head, but this was a

24 very repetitive injury and a constant finding of

25 shattered bones in the middle of the spine.

Page 3935

1 Q. Now, you stated, in respect of GL-05, in your

2 evidence, that this was a younger population. I wonder

3 if you could place Exhibit 254 on the ELMO and explain

4 to the Judges how you concluded this.

5 A. This was very much with the aid of the

6 anthropologists, of course. This is a very good

7 example. This is an upper arm bone. This is the top

8 of the bone which goes into the shoulder. And quite

9 apart from a injury at the lower end, if we ignore

10 that, this is the important part here. It shows that

11 the very top of the bone is not completely joined to

12 the bit just below it. And this is a sign of a young

13 person, probably somebody no older than 17. So the

14 person is still growing. After about this age, these

15 two parts were joined together. So the fact that they

16 are still separate indicates that this is a young

17 person. And this was a common finding in many of these

18 bodies.

19 MR. CAYLEY: Just so the record is clear,

20 Dr. Clark was referring to the extreme left-hand side

21 of the photograph and the bone represented on that

22 Exhibit, on Prosecutor's Exhibit 254.

23 Q. You said also in your evidence, Dr. Clark,

24 that a very common injury that you found was a gunshot

25 injury from the back to the spine. I think there are a

Page 3936

1 number of photographs that demonstrate this.

2 A. Yes. The easiest way to show this is

3 probably that way.

4 This is the -- I wonder if the camera would

5 come out, if it panned out a bit.

6 Essentially, what we're showing here is the

7 spine coming down here, and this is the other part

8 here. And in the middle of it here are at least two

9 bones of the spine in small pieces, completely

10 shattered. And the ribs on either side, they're also

11 partly broken as well. So this area here. Imagine

12 this is the spine going down here, and it is shattered

13 in the middle of it.

14 I have -- this is typical of another case,

15 one of the bones in the spine, and this is part of the

16 damage here. The spine is a very sturdy bone so it

17 takes a lot of energy to fracture these bones, but this

18 is part of the disruption here.

19 Q. Dr. Clark, are these photographs and your

20 findings consistent with individuals being shot at from

21 behind at fairly close range?

22 A. Yes, they would be.

23 Q. Now, I think finally in this grave, the

24 bodies that were recovered that you and your colleagues

25 examined, you found evidence of other forms of injury

Page 3937

1 than gunshot injury, and I think there are two

2 photographs that represent this quite well. That's

3 Prosecutor's Exhibit 257 and 258, and if you could

4 place 257 onto the ELMO.

5 A. Yes. Perhaps just before we do that, just to

6 say that there were a number of fractures of the skull

7 and some of the long bones, that's the legs and the arm

8 bones, which suggested perhaps kicking, stamping, or

9 blows from a heavy weapon.

10 In addition to that, there were two cases

11 with very interesting injuries. These were injuries in

12 the skull. You can see the face here, and you have

13 this almost rectangular defect or hole in the side of

14 the skull which is not typical of gunshot injury and is

15 much more suggestive of something with that relative

16 shape penetrating into the skull.

17 An even better example, perhaps, is this case

18 here, which shows a clear defect in the top of the

19 skull. He had another one at the back on the -- I

20 think it was the left side of the skull. So there were

21 two like that. And that suggested very much to me that

22 some pointed object like a very firm blade, perhaps, or

23 an end of a crowbar or something of that shape had been

24 pushed into the skull.

25 In these two -- well, this individual

Page 3938

1 particularly, there were no other injuries to account

2 for his death, no gunshot injuries anywhere, and one

3 has to suggest that this was probably the cause of

4 death, whatever caused these injuries.

5 MR. CAYLEY: And for the sake of the record,

6 Dr. Clark referred, first of all, to Exhibit 258 and

7 then to Exhibit 257.

8 Q. Dr. Clark, if you could just place your

9 summary findings on the bodies and body parts recovered

10 and presented to you from Glogova, and again add any

11 comments that might assist the Judges.

12 A. There was just one other injury type that we

13 haven't really mentioned, and that is that a number of

14 these bodies had clearly been burned. There was

15 burning injury on both the clothing and on the bones

16 themselves. Almost certainly this occurred after

17 death, but it was a clear indication.

18 It was also very -- concentrated very much in

19 GL-05. This is the same grave site as the young men --

20 as the young man who had been shot in the spine. These

21 were the ones showing the burning injuries.

22 This is the summary of the finding from the

23 Glogova site. It was a large complex site comprising a

24 number of separate graves, five of which were exhumed

25 this season, that's 1999. There were a total of 90

Page 3939

1 bodies and 154 body parts. All the victims were male

2 and many of them were young, especially from the GL-05

3 grave. Most had been shot either once or twice, most

4 often in the trunk, and next most commonly in the

5 head.

6 In GL-05, a distinct pattern of shots to the

7 middle of the back shattering the spine with or without

8 shots elsewhere was found. In one person, this person

9 did not die from a gunshot injury but probably from

10 some pointed object penetrating the skull. And there

11 was evidence of presumed post-mortem burning of many of

12 the bodies in GL-05 and a few in GL-02, mostly the

13 clothing but several cases involving the bones

14 themselves.

15 Q. Finally, Dr. Clark, it has been raised by the

16 Defence with a number of other witnesses as to whether

17 or not these individuals were the victims of combat or

18 some other cause such as summary execution, and bearing

19 in mind the limitations that you've already stated

20 about pathology evidence in this kind of case, could

21 you indicate to the Judges those factors which in your

22 viewpoint against these individuals having suffered

23 these injuries as a result of combat?

24 A. There was certainly nothing to suggest that

25 these were combat casualties. It is not something that

Page 3940

1 I could refute entirely, but one -- in accepting that,

2 one would have to bear in mind various observations

3 about these bodies.

4 As has been said repeatedly already, there's

5 the question of the blindfolds and ligatures on these

6 bodies, which would be hardly findings in combat

7 casualties. Just to repeat, in one of the graves,

8 41 per cent had their hands tied behind their back;

9 13 per cent had blindfolds around their heads, and this

10 was also the grave; and at least 5 per cent of these

11 people had significant physical disabilities.

12 I think other observations we could make is

13 that all the injuries on the bodies were bullet

14 injuries, and there was no evidence of injuries from

15 any other type of weapon like shrapnel or any other

16 military weapon.

17 Now, from the literature, it is observed

18 frequently that the commonest type of injury in battle

19 casualties are shrapnel injuries and bombs and other

20 projectiles and bullets are only the second most

21 common. This has been shown repeatedly from various

22 studies. So just to repeat, all these injuries were

23 bullet injuries.

24 Also, the average number of times that these

25 people had been shot was only 2.4, between two and

Page 3941

1 three times. Now, that, I would suggest, is a fairly

2 low average number of injuries for battle casualties,

3 and studies have shown -- a recent study in the Gulf

4 War, in fact, showed that the average number of

5 injuries was nine to any one individual person.

6 Also, in about half the victims, we could say

7 that -- we could determine the direction of the shot,

8 of the direction of fire, and of these, half the cases,

9 77 per cent had been shot in the back of the body or

10 the side of the body and only 23 per cent had shots to

11 the front of the body. Again, I would have thought

12 these strong facts against these being battle

13 casualties.

14 Further, in at least -- in no less than ten

15 per cent of cases, the only injury in the body was a

16 single gunshot wound to the head, and usually to the

17 back of the head.

18 I think the final observation to make is that

19 in all studies of recent conflicts, it's very obvious

20 that far more people are wounded in combat situations

21 than are killed, and on average, at least -- there are

22 at least twice as many people wounded rather than

23 killed. And to my knowledge, there's no suggestion of

24 large numbers of wounded casualties from this area.

25 Given the number of bodies that we found in the

Page 3942

1 grave -- well, in the graves, that's almost 500 over

2 this season, we would be expecting reports of a

3 thousand more casualties, which to my knowledge is not

4 the case.

5 So all these factors, I think, go very much

6 against this being -- these being people who were

7 killed in combat.

8 Q. Dr. Clark, one clarification. There's

9 actually a mistake in the transcript. Am I right in

10 saying that in those cases where you could determine

11 the direction of fire, that 77 per cent had been shot

12 in the back or the side of the body?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. And 23 per cent had been shot to the front of

15 the body?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. Thank you. Sir, do you have anything further

18 to add?

19 A. No.

20 MR. CAYLEY: Thank you, Dr. Clark.

21 Mr. President, I can now offer the witness

22 for cross-examination.

23 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

24 very much, Mr. Cayley.

25 Dr. Clark, you are now going to be answering

Page 3943

1 questions put to you by Mr. Visnjic, I think it is.

2 Mr. Visnjic, your witness.

3 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Thank you,

4 Mr. President.

5 Cross-examined by Mr. Visnjic:

6 Q. Good morning, Dr. Clark.

7 Dr. Clark, during your examination-in-chief,

8 you explained to us the process of post-mortem

9 procedure. Could you tell us the dynamics of that

10 procedure; that is to say, how much work your team did

11 in the course of a day, for example? How many

12 post-mortem findings did your team have in the course

13 of a day, for example?

14 A. The average number -- we had at any one time

15 three pathologists in the mortuary. The average number

16 of cases for each pathologist per day was between three

17 and four. So we were seeing perhaps 10 to 12 cases

18 each day.

19 Q. During your testimony yesterday, you said

20 that you took parts of the body for DNA analysis?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Which parts did you usually select for this

23 DNA analysis?

24 A. We usually used, where available, the middle

25 part of the right thigh bone and, if available, a tooth

Page 3944

1 from each individual. These were carefully taken under

2 as clean circumstances as we could.

3 Q. In explaining bone injuries, you said that

4 there were consultations between pathologists and

5 anthropologists.

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. Which opinion was the dominant one, which one

8 prevailed?

9 A. The pathologist. It was his responsibility

10 for the final report, and it was his opinion which

11 prevailed. I have to say there was never usually much

12 conflict between the opinions.

13 Q. Was any member of your team in charge of the

14 further identification of the bodies?

15 A. Only in the sense that we -- our

16 scenes-of-crime officers, they looked in detail at any

17 documents or any other artefacts taken from the body,

18 which may have assisted further with identification.

19 But we, as pathologists, did no more specific than what

20 has already been mentioned.

21 Q. Bearing in mind the overall conditions under

22 which you worked and the level of preservation of the

23 bodies that you did the post-mortems on, were you able

24 to analyse the positions, possible positions, between

25 the victims and their attackers?

Page 3945

1 A. No, other than determining the direction of

2 the wounds in the body, which we've already discussed.

3 That was not possible in every case, obviously, but in

4 a substantial number of cases we could tell these

5 people had been shot from behind, or the front, or the

6 side. We could not tell distance, for instance, how

7 far away the person was when they were shot, but we

8 could tell the direction.

9 Q. In this connection, I think that my learned

10 colleague Mr. Cayley asked you something. He asked you

11 about a conclusion that with individuals in the grave,

12 there were 0,5 -- I don't remember the percentage.

13 About 70 per cent were hit from the back, and I think

14 that the question was whether that was at a close

15 distance or not. Were you able to determine distance

16 in cases of that kind?

17 A. No.

18 Q. In your findings in the report, you say that

19 one of the elements to ascertain the type of injury,

20 that you use logic, common sense. On page 3 of your

21 report, I believe, in paragraph 5, you go on to give us

22 some exceptions. It is the last paragraph with respect

23 to the identification of injuries and wounds, the

24 recognition of the injuries. Can you tell us some of

25 those exceptions?

Page 3946

1 A. Yes. I've covered that in the paragraph 3 on

2 the next page. This was where we found intact bullets

3 in a body, completely undamaged bullets in a body.

4 Now, normally with high-velocity rifle

5 ammunition, it will pass right through the body if it

6 doesn't strike bone. It will just go straight through

7 the soft tissue and out through the other side. So if

8 we found an intact bullet in the body, that indicated

9 that it had obviously entered the body and greatly

10 reduced speed. And possibly the most likely cause of

11 that would be that it had already passed through

12 someone else before striking that person.

13 Q. And in connection with that, could you tell

14 us perhaps -- give us your opinion as to how many

15 individuals could have been hit after being placed in

16 the grave?

17 A. Based on that observation, I would have

18 thought no more than a dozen, because it doesn't need

19 to have been necessarily somebody else that the bullet

20 had gone through to lose its energy. It could have

21 been some other object. But whatever, it had clearly,

22 by the time it entered the victim's body, had lost a

23 lot of energy and didn't have enough energy to get out

24 the other side, if you like.

25 Q. Can one of the conclusions be, for example,

Page 3947

1 that the body was at a greater distance from the bullet

2 and that that might be the reason for losing the high

3 velocity? When I say "at a distance", I'm thinking

4 about, say, several hundred metres.

5 A. It would have to be a long distance, because

6 these bullets have high velocity over a long distance.

7 I don't know the exact figures, but I would have

8 thought certainly more than 300 metres.

9 Q. Thank you. On page 5 of your report -- that

10 is to say, my question is the following: In principle,

11 should you state the causes of death in cases where

12 many parts of the body are missing? What is your

13 opinion on that?

14 A. If there is a part on the body -- even though

15 large parts are missing, if there's an obviously fatal

16 injury in that body, I think it would be quite

17 justified in saying that was the cause of death. For

18 instance, if all we had was the upper half of a body

19 with the skull and the trunk, but both legs were

20 missing, if there's a gunshot wound in the skull,

21 that's necessarily and inevitably fatal. So it doesn't

22 matter that the rest of the body is missing. That is

23 the fatal injury.

24 The reverse does not apply, however. If all

25 we found was a gunshot injury to the leg and the skull

Page 3948

1 was missing, we would not accept that as the cause of

2 death. But bullet wounds to certain parts of the body,

3 I think one can assume that that's going to be a fatal

4 injury.

5 Q. In the part of your report which speaks about

6 post-mortems in Kozluk, you state that the degree of

7 preservation of the body in the grave -- that is to

8 say, that the preservation of the bodies was different,

9 the degree of that and the degree of decomposition, and

10 you mention several reasons for that. Could one of the

11 reasons be the fact that some bodies were exposed for

12 longer periods of time to the elements, in comparison

13 to the other bodies?

14 A. That's possible, yes.

15 Q. Could one of the reasons be the fact that

16 some bodies were buried straight away on the spot,

17 whereas others could have been brought from elsewhere

18 and buried?

19 A. That's a possibility, if we're speaking about

20 a substantial time period, a time period such that the

21 bodies could -- the decomposition process could develop

22 quickly.

23 Q. In the section on Kozluk in your report, and

24 with the other graves as well, you make a table giving

25 the numbers of shots per body, per person.

Page 3949

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. Bearing in mind the state of the bodies

3 during the post-mortems, the number of shots that you

4 mention, is that the least number of possible shots per

5 person?

6 A. Yes. This is the shots that we were very

7 sure that this was a gunshot injury. There were other

8 injuries on these bodies which could have been gunshot

9 injuries, but we were not 100 per cent convinced they

10 were, so we didn't count these. So, yes, these are

11 minimum numbers.

12 Q. Is it also possible that the projectile

13 passed through the soft tissues without injuring the

14 bone and that is why you did not record that particular

15 injury, because the soft tissues had disintegrated,

16 become decomposed?

17 A. Yes, that's entirely possible.

18 Q. Bearing in mind your experience, how often is

19 the likelihood of this happening?

20 A. Well, there are bones in most parts of the

21 body. The one part of the body which injuries could be

22 reflected without leaving any bony injury would be the

23 abdomen. So we may well have missed some abdominal

24 injuries.

25 Q. This possibility exists if the body is not

Page 3950

1 complete, does it not?

2 A. Yes. Yes.

3 Q. In your report, you also state that in

4 certain cases, some pathologists considered the cause

5 of death to be undetermined, whereas others, for the

6 same description, thought that the description was

7 sufficient to determine the cause of death. I suppose

8 that that is due to different standards applied.

9 A. Yes, that's correct.

10 Q. Could you elaborate on that, please.

11 A. This was mostly for people who had been shot

12 perhaps in the legs. Some people felt that a gunshot

13 injury to, say the thigh, would necessarily have caused

14 damage to blood vessels and could well have been

15 fatal. Others were a little more cautious and said,

16 "Well, that's not" -- they weren't entirely happy with

17 that, and we just had to go along with that.

18 I think the numbers we're speaking about here

19 are fairly small in that respect, but I think everyone

20 accepted that a gunshot injury to the head, any sign of

21 a gunshot injury to the chest or the trunk or the

22 pelvis was certainly a potentially fatal injury, and it

23 was only with the limb injuries when we had some debate

24 about that.

25 Q. When determining the cause of death, on

Page 3951

1 page 10 you explained -- this is about Kozluk -- that

2 in 55 cases, it was not possible to establish the cause

3 of death, 55 per cent of the cases, and -- no, 55

4 cases. Sorry.

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. The problem was in the translation.

7 Fifty-five cases.

8 And you also included the possibility of

9 other causes as well.

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. Is it possible, on the basis of traces on the

12 sublingual bone, to establish knife injuries in the

13 area of the neck?

14 A. I'm not familiar with the term "sublingual

15 bone," but I presume you're meaning the bones of the

16 throat, the thyroid cartridge and the hyoid bone

17 probably. Yes, I understand your question.

18 Yes. These are bones which don't -- because

19 these are very fragile bones, these are bones that

20 don't preserve well, and in the majority of people they

21 were no longer present. It is possible, if people had

22 had their throats cut, that you could injure these

23 bones but certainly by no means invariably. So I

24 wouldn't count it as -- the absence or presence of

25 injuries to the bones I wouldn't count as a great

Page 3952

1 indicator of such injuries.

2 Q. My next question is: In view of the global

3 impression that you have about the graves, would you

4 allow for the possibility that some bodies were brought

5 from the outside, from different locations, and buried

6 in individual graves subsequently? In individual

7 cases, could that be a possibility or do you exclude

8 that possibility?

9 A. I don't exclude that, no.

10 Q. Thank you. In your report, you said that you

11 conducted post-mortems on 292 bodies. On the other

12 hand, Professor Wright, in his report on exhumations in

13 Kozluk in 1999, on page 12, says that 291 bodies were

14 exhumed. Is there an explanation for the difference?

15 A. There could be. One possibility is that we,

16 in the mortuary -- because we had 292 bodies and we

17 also had a large number of body parts. Now, sometimes,

18 and this was particularly in some of the later graves,

19 what the anthropologists liked to call a body part, we

20 felt more comfortable, having seen the body laid out

21 and cleaned up, to call it a body because it had all

22 the significant parts present, and I imagine that's

23 what the discrepancy is there. I think you will

24 certainly find that in the Glogova site where we

25 changed from bodies to body parts quite a lot, but that

Page 3953

1 was because, in the mortuary, we felt we had all the

2 evidence there, and it was a judgement whether to call

3 this a full body in the sense that all the major parts

4 were there as opposed to a body part.

5 Q. I should now like to go on to the part of

6 your report dealing with the grave at Nova Kasaba. On

7 page 14 of your report, the section dealing with the

8 distribution of shots and injury patterns, we find that

9 there were 33 shots to the head of the victim. You

10 also state, on the same page, in the section dealing

11 with the direction of shots and distance fired, that it

12 was not possible to determine the direction.

13 In view of the fact that these were injuries

14 to the head, is it possible that if they were inflicted

15 at close range, these injuries, that there would be

16 traces on the bones of explosions, gunpowder

17 explosions?

18 A. There may have been minute traces. Most of

19 the evidence on establishing distance of fire requires

20 the skin and soft tissues, because that is where the

21 gunpowder and other deposits and the burning are

22 deposited. There may well be minute traces which get

23 into the bone themselves, but we certainly did not look

24 for them. I think it would be extraordinarily

25 difficult to do that and there was no clear evidence of

Page 3954

1 that.

2 I feel the absence does not exclude the

3 possibility of close firing. As I say, the bulk of the

4 evidence for that, close firing, is on the skin.

5 Q. In this particular case, that is, the Nova

6 Kasaba grave, are there any traces confirming

7 close-range fire, any evidence of that?

8 A. There's no positive evidence of it and

9 there's no negative evidence. In other words, we

10 cannot tell definitely one way or the other but it's

11 not excluded.

12 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President,

13 in view of the time, I don't know whether it would be

14 convenient to have a break now. Should I continue with

15 my cross?

16 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] How much

17 time do you need more or less?

18 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Not more than

19 ten minutes, Mr. President.

20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] I think

21 then it is better to have a break now. So we're going

22 to have a 20-minute break.

23 --- Recess taken at 10.42 a.m.

24 --- On resuming at 11.05 a.m.

25 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] We are

Page 3955

1 resuming the hearing.

2 Mr. Visnjic, you may continue.

3 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Thank you,

4 Mr. President.

5 Q. Dr. Clark, in the response you gave regarding

6 the coordination of views among the individual

7 pathologists regarding the cause of death, you said

8 that some discussion occurred defining injuries to the

9 thigh area. Did I understand you correctly?

10 A. Yes. Not just the thigh -- I just used that

11 as an example -- but we discussed the findings between

12 us as would happen in any professional situation.

13 Q. If a person was injured in the thigh with a

14 bullet from a firearm with large destructive power and

15 from a relatively close range of a few metres perhaps,

16 and the nervous sciatic was damaged in the process, in

17 your opinion would that person's life be in danger?

18 Would it be fatal, in other words?

19 A. It would not be necessarily immediately

20 fatal. In fact, it wouldn't be immediately fatal. The

21 person would be disabled. They certainly wouldn't be

22 able to walk. They would start losing blood. But it

23 is a treatable condition if emergency first aid is

24 given to try and bandage these wounds. If the person

25 was left with a large gaping injury to the thigh and

Page 3956

1 given no medical assistance, then eventually, I think,

2 they probably would have died. But we're speaking

3 hours, if not longer.

4 Q. That person, what are the possibilities for

5 that person to move about without assistance?

6 A. Well, one can never underestimate what people

7 can do in situations, and they potentially could crawl

8 or heave themselves around. Yes, that's a possibility.

9 Q. Could that person cover a certain distance, a

10 kilometre, or several hundred metres, or maybe more, if

11 you can give us an answer?

12 A. I think it's almost impossible to answer

13 these questions. I would say nothing is impossible,

14 and a person with the will power and the strength of

15 will to do that could probably do that.

16 Q. Thank you. My next question has to do with

17 the Glogova grave.

18 On page 21, you describe the number of shots

19 on the bodies. In accordance with your previous

20 answer, I assume that in this case too, these are the

21 minimum number of shots per person. Is that correct?

22 A. That's correct, yes.

23 Q. You have seen Exhibits 257, 258, that is, two

24 skulls, Prosecution exhibits, on which injuries are

25 shown inflicted by a blow with a blunt object. Could

Page 3957

1 it be established whether these injuries were inflicted

2 post-mortem or ante-mortem?

3 A. I cannot say for definite this was

4 ante-mortem or post-mortem, just as with the gunshot

5 injuries. All I can say is that these were the only

6 injuries on this person, and that must raise the

7 possibility that these happened in life.

8 Q. But the possibility of them being inflicted

9 post-mortem is not excluded, is it?

10 A. It's not excluded. I'm not sure how it would

11 be inflicted, but I can't exclude that these are

12 post-mortem injuries, no, particularly bearing in mind

13 that there are two of them.

14 Q. In this grave, that is, Glogova, were there

15 several burials, in your opinion?

16 A. Yes, there appeared to be several different

17 graves within the overall grave site.

18 Q. Dr. Clark, in answer to a question by my

19 learned friend Mr. Cayley, you spoke about your overall

20 impression regarding the causes of death in all the

21 grave sites on the basis of your investigations in

22 1999. If we exclude Nova Kasaba grave site, Konjevic

23 Polje, and perhaps a part of the grave site in Glogova,

24 is there a greater probability that the persons buried

25 in those graves did not meet their death as a

Page 3958

1 consequence of mass executions?

2 A. I think that is fair to say, because one of

3 the pointers against all of these people, that is, all

4 the four grave sites being combat casualties was the

5 fact that in Kozluk, at least, so many had blindfolds

6 and ligatures and disabilities. So in that sense, the

7 fact that Konjevic Polje, Nova Kasaba, and Glogova,

8 none of the victims there had blindfolds or ligatures,

9 none of them had any obvious physical disabilities,

10 yes, that does reduce the pointers against, but still

11 doesn't take away from the fact that there were no

12 injuries from other military weapons.

13 And I stress that in combat situations, the

14 commonest type of injury are injuries other than

15 bullets; in other words, fragmenting items such as

16 grenades and shells. And this has been shown

17 repeatedly in many conflicts, not least in Croatia in

18 1992. Also, we still have the evidence that the bulk

19 of people had been shot to the back of the body rather

20 than the front, and the absence of the large numbers of

21 wounded which we would expect in a combat situation.

22 But to return to your overall initial

23 question, yes, excluding Kozluk, the pointers against

24 the other three grave sites being combat casualties are

25 reduced. I would accept that.

Page 3959

1 Q. Dr. Clark, I have no further questions.

2 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] That ends my

3 cross-examination, Mr. President.

4 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

5 very much, Mr. Visnjic.

6 Mr. Cayley, some additional questions?

7 MR. CAYLEY: I just have a few questions,

8 Your Honour.

9 Re-examined by Mr. Cayley:

10 Q. Dr. Clark, could you find in the pile of

11 photographs Exhibits 248, 252, and 256. Actually, if

12 you could place 252 onto the ELMO first.

13 Dr. Clark, this is a skull that we've already

14 discussed, and it's from the Konjevic Polje site.

15 That's where the body was recovered from. Is that

16 correct?

17 A. Yes, that's right.

18 Q. Would you agree with me that the bullet to

19 the side of the head is a fairly well-aimed shot if one

20 was intending to kill this individual?

21 A. This would be the immediate assumption, yes.

22 Q. If you could then place Exhibit 248 onto the

23 ELMO. This is from another grave. This is Nova

24 Kasaba.

25 Again, considering the shot to the middle of

Page 3960

1 the back of the head, if you were intending to kill

2 this person, would this be a fairly well-aimed shot?

3 A. Yes. And we had a large number of people in

4 which this was a very typical injury, an injury -- a

5 bullet hole to the back either in the midline or just

6 to the side of it. This was a very common finding.

7 Q. If you could finally turn to Exhibit 256,

8 which is from Glogova, and this is, I think, a shot to

9 the middle of the spine from the back, is it not?

10 A. Yes. Better like that. Yes, that's right.

11 Q. Again, stating the obvious, if you were

12 intending to kill somebody, this is a place where you

13 would shoot them?

14 A. Well, not necessarily. I mean, it's a shot

15 to the middle of the back. It's not an area which

16 would be immediately fatal.

17 Q. But it could be fatal?

18 A. It could be fatal, yes, but it's not as

19 immediately fatal as a shot to the back of the head.

20 Q. Now, considering these three photographs, and

21 we spoke about distance, the distance from which

22 somebody could have fired to actually hit these three

23 individuals, I know you've stated that in order to

24 determine distance accurately, you need to be able to

25 inspect soft tissue, but would you agree with me that

Page 3961

1 these three photographs at least provide a factor that

2 would suggest that they were fired at from close range

3 because of the position that these bullets hit these

4 bodies?

5 A. Yes, I agree entirely. They are, if you

6 like, targeted areas, and it is easier to target

7 somewhere the closer you are to the person, yes.

8 Q. No further questions, Dr. Clark.

9 MR. CAYLEY: No further questions,

10 Mr. President. Thank you.

11 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

12 very much, Mr. Cayley.

13 Judge Fouad Riad.

14 Questioned by the Court:

15 JUDGE RIAD: Good morning, Professor Clark.

16 A. Doctor, not professor.

17 JUDGE RIAD: You are a senior lecturer.

18 A. Yes.

19 JUDGE RIAD: In my country they would call

20 you Professor. Now, just one question and then -- two

21 questions perhaps. The first one is a minor one. You

22 might be able to tell me about it. You said that in

23 Glogova site, they each started at 12 and from 12 to

24 71. What was the percentage of the children? Twelve

25 is children, I mean, between 12 and 18, for instance.

Page 3962

1 Could you tell me what was the percentage?

2 A. I don't know that, and I'm going to be a

3 little hesitant of giving ages. This is more the

4 anthropologists who determine this. What I can say is

5 from their reports they gave us ranges, and they ranged

6 from as young as 12. That's not to say that we had a

7 12-year-old, but within the limits of being able to

8 determine these things, it could have been as young as

9 that.

10 I don't know -- all I do know is that in

11 GL-05, there was a preponderance of young people. I

12 think we're speaking about people in their late teens,

13 early 20s mainly, rather than 12- or 13-year-old

14 children.

15 JUDGE RIAD: In their teens?

16 A. Yes, late teens.

17 JUDGE RIAD: Late teens would be 16 or 17?

18 A. Yes.

19 JUDGE RIAD: That's a teenager.

20 A. Yes, late teens.

21 JUDGE RIAD: But if they couldn't decide if

22 they were 12 or 13, how could they decide that they had

23 people at the age of 85? Is it easier to --

24 A. No. It's easier to age people the younger

25 they are.

Page 3963

1 JUDGE RIAD: It's easier?

2 A. Yes.

3 JUDGE RIAD: How could they age that people

4 were 85?

5 A. That's a sort of broad range they've given.

6 I mean after the age of about 45 or 50, it's actually

7 very difficult to age them at all, and this was just an

8 upper range they gave. I mean, I suppose they could

9 have said a hundred, but there's no real cutoff point.

10 JUDGE RIAD: But definitely it was old age?

11 A. There were people who could have been older,

12 yes. The trouble is after about the age of 40 or 50,

13 it's almost impossible, just from looking at the bones,

14 to say that that person was 50 or was 60 or was 70.

15 JUDGE RIAD: After the age of 50 or 40?

16 A. Possibly that, yes. Forty, mid-40s to 50, it

17 becomes increasingly difficult to tie down an age even

18 within about 10 or 15 years.

19 JUDGE RIAD: And you mentioned -- just

20 another little question -- most shots or injuries were

21 from gunshots, and you said it was, for instance,

22 87 per cent in Nova Kasaba. What was the source of the

23 other injuries in such cases?

24 A. Well, 87 per cent, I suspect, is an

25 underestimate. That was the number of gunshots which

Page 3964

1 we professionally felt we could definitely prove.

2 There were other injuries on these bodies which could

3 well have been gunshot injuries, but in the limits of

4 our proof, we could not say definitely they were.

5 Other people could have died from blunt-force

6 injuries, kicking injuries, beating injuries; that's a

7 possibility. There were a number of individuals in

8 which we actually found no injuries whatsoever on the

9 body, no fractures, no nothing, and that included some

10 bodies which were well preserved. They could have died

11 in other ways, including natural cause. They may have

12 been elderly people who had travelled some distance,

13 maybe had heart conditions, and who just collapsed in

14 the heat or whatever. I suspect that there will be a

15 few people like that.

16 JUDGE RIAD: Now I come to my main question,

17 and perhaps it's due to a difference between your

18 scientific approach and the social science approach.

19 In the social science approach, there is always room

20 for doubt, but sometimes in the scientific approach you

21 are more categorical. So I would like to understand

22 more your answer concerning the possibility that the

23 injuries resulted from a fight or battle injuries.

24 First, in your answer to the Prosecutor, you

25 said that you cannot refute entirely that these

Page 3965

1 injuries resulted from combat, but you mentioned many

2 reasons, which you repeated to the Defence counsel, and

3 I noted them down, of course, that hand tied; physical

4 disabilities; people were shot in the back; and people

5 were usually wounded in a fight and not only all

6 killed; of course the back shots too; and many, many

7 other reasons which you mentioned, and then still you

8 said that you cannot refute entirely. Is there any

9 reason to doubt that this could result from fight?

10 You said that perhaps concerning Kozluk. You

11 seem to have excluded Kozluk. You said that there are

12 pointers, reduced pointers to the contrary with regard

13 to Kozluk.

14 Speaking of Kozluk, you mentioned that 41 per

15 cent had their hands ligated, that 13 per cent were

16 blindfolded, that some were shot seven times, and most

17 in the head. Now, why did you exclude Kozluk from your

18 general assessment that it was not -- that these

19 injuries could not be battle injuries? Was Kozluk, in

20 your opinion, a fight?

21 A. Well, to be fair, I was asked to exclude

22 Kozluk by the Defence, and that was a rather separate

23 grave because that was the only grave with the people

24 with ligatures and blindfolds. And I would have

25 thought that's a very, very strong pointer against

Page 3966

1 these being combat casualties.

2 JUDGE RIAD: And the others?

3 A. The others are less, because we don't have

4 that factor.

5 I see what -- you're trying to say, "Why is

6 there any doubt?" Well, it depends what you mean by

7 "combat casualties", and it's up to others to put that

8 forward.

9 But we have people who have been shot. Now,

10 this is two groups of men facing each other or fighting

11 each other. It is still possible that in that

12 situation, a number could be shot in the back, if there

13 was surprise from a different direction. If it's a

14 situation that the only weapons being used in that --

15 unusually being used in that situation were guns, then

16 that still leaves a possibility. So it very much

17 depends on what sort of combat is being presented.

18 JUDGE RIAD: So in the other sites, there is

19 a possibility there could have been a combat?

20 A. I can't entirely exclude it, no.

21 JUDGE RIAD: You can't entirely?

22 A. No.

23 JUDGE RIAD: But, for instance, for --

24 A. But I'm saying the findings would be very

25 untypical from all the other findings from other

Page 3967

1 conflicts reported in the literature, and this is in

2 context with the type of injuries which have been

3 inflicted, the lack of wounded individuals and, to some

4 extent, the direction of shots. I think these are very

5 strong pointers.

6 JUDGE RIAD: They are strong pointers?

7 A. Yes.

8 JUDGE RIAD: But only in Kozluk, it was --

9 A. Kozluk is even more strong, because it's

10 inconceivable that you could suggest that people were

11 fighting with their hands tied behind their backs or

12 fighting with blindfolds.

13 JUDGE RIAD: Were there any people with hands

14 tied behind their backs in the other sites?

15 A. No, none at all.

16 JUDGE RIAD: Not at all?

17 A. No.

18 JUDGE RIAD: But the other pointers were

19 there; shots in the back?

20 A. Yes, the other pointers were certainly

21 there.

22 JUDGE RIAD: Were certainly there?

23 A. Yes.

24 JUDGE RIAD: Thank you very much, Dr. Clark.

25 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

Page 3968

1 very much, Judge Riad.

2 Madame Judge Wald.

3 JUDGE WALD: Dr. Clark, I have just one

4 question.

5 In your summaries of the various sites from

6 which you examined bodies, you pointed out -- in a few

7 cases, you pointed out similarities or what might be

8 systemic patterns in the places where the shots

9 appeared in the bodies, et cetera. You've also pointed

10 out the differences in the ligatures, the presence of

11 ligatures and blindfolds in Kozluk.

12 Would you say, looking at all the sites from

13 which you have examined bodies, and excluding for the

14 moment the possibility of combat, excluding the

15 hypothesis of combat, and accepting the hypothesis

16 which I did take to be the one that you thought more

17 likely, that there had been mass executions of some

18 sort at these various sites, would you say that your

19 observations of the patterns of injury were more

20 consistent with all of those burials being under a

21 unified plan or part of a general motus operandi, or

22 would they be just as consistent with a hypothesis that

23 you could have had four or five spontaneous killings,

24 of executions, unconnected with each other, which

25 resulted in the bodies that went into the different

Page 3969

1 graves?

2 A. There were different patterns between some of

3 the graves, and I would suspect that this was

4 different -- these were different incidents, albeit

5 carried out in the same general intention. But we did

6 have some slightly different patterns. I was

7 mentioning the very distinctive pattern in Glogova, the

8 shots in the back. Some of the grave sites, the

9 average number of shots was higher than others, so that

10 there were subtle differences between some of the grave

11 sites -- between the grave sites, yes.

12 JUDGE WALD: And your general -- just to

13 follow through on that, your general knowledge and

14 observations of mass graves or the results of

15 executions here and in the past would have led you to

16 tilt in which direction; that these grave sites were

17 basically part of a single operation or they just as

18 consistently could have come about from spontaneous

19 reactions in different places?

20 A. I'm not sure that I can distinguish the two,

21 if the two should necessarily be distinguished. If

22 you're saying this is the same person or group of

23 persons going around and killing all of these people --

24 JUDGE WALD: Not the same persons, perhaps,

25 but some general pattern, command operation.

Page 3970

1 A. Well, in the sense that we have what appeared

2 to be deliberately targeted injuries in each of these

3 grave sites, yes, there is an overall pattern of

4 execution-type injuries.

5 JUDGE WALD: Thank you.

6 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

7 very much, Judge Wald.

8 Dr. Clark, I shall perhaps go a little

9 further but along the same path as my colleagues.

10 Your experience has allowed you to

11 reconstruct the situation that occurred before what you

12 actually observed, and you were asked, when doing these

13 post-mortems, in a sense to reconstruct the situation

14 prior to death. Are you in a position to give us a

15 general idea, after having observed a large number of

16 bodies and body parts, are you in a position to give us

17 a general idea of what you were able to reconstruct,

18 the situation that led up to these consequences that

19 you actually observed? I don't know if I was clear

20 enough.

21 A. Yes, it's a difficult question. Our main --

22 my main expertise was in looking at the bodies. I

23 think you've got to take into consideration the

24 findings at the grave sites and how bodies were placed

25 in the graves, which I don't have any detailed

Page 3971

1 knowledge of. All I would say is that from the

2 findings of the bodies overall, there's every

3 indication that these were people who were executed and

4 placed in the various graves. I don't think I can go

5 much farther than that.

6 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

7 very much.

8 Mr. Cayley, I think we have some documents to

9 admit.

10 MR. CAYLEY: Yes. Thank you, Mr. President.

11 We do.

12 The first exhibit is Prosecution Exhibit 195,

13 which is a document that shows the sites which

14 Dr. Clark was concerned with; Exhibit 235, which is his

15 curriculum vitae; Exhibit 236, which is his report;

16 236A, which is the B/C/S version of that report; 237,

17 which is the example of the autopsy report, and 238,

18 which is the table of nationalities of his staff. 239

19 to 257 are the photographs. If I could apply for

20 formal admission of those exhibits.

21 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation]

22 Mr. Visnjic, have you any objections?

23 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] No,

24 Mr. President.

25 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Then the

Page 3972

1 exhibits are admitted into evidence as a whole.

2 You may be seated, Mr. Cayley.

3 Dr. Clark, you have finished your testimony

4 and your communication with us here. We wish to thank

5 you very much for coming here, and we also thank you

6 for the work you have done.

7 THE WITNESS: Thank you very much.

8 [The witness withdrew]

9 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Yes,

10 Mr. Cayley.

11 MR. CAYLEY: Mr. President, just before the

12 next witness, there's a small housekeeping matter, and

13 it concerns the evidence of Mr. Jean-Rene Ruez.

14 Mr. Ruez testified on the 15th of March of

15 this year in respect of an exhibit, Prosecutor's

16 Exhibit 22/8. This is on page 742 of the transcript.

17 He stated that that photograph was taken in April of

18 1998, and he was mistaken. The Prosecutor's records

19 indicate that that photograph was, in fact, taken on

20 the 21st of April, 1997.

21 My learned friend Mr. Harmon has spoken with

22 the Defence on this matter. They are in agreement to

23 stipulate to that fact in order to correct the

24 transcript, and I bring it to the Court's attention so

25 that it can be placed on the transcript.

Page 3973

1 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation]

2 Mr. Petrusic.

3 MR. PETRUSIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President,

4 we have discussed this matter with representatives of

5 the Prosecution, and after the evidence provided, we

6 agreed that this was indeed an error.

7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] In that

8 case, Madam Registrar, will you please take note of

9 this and make the correction in the transcript along

10 the lines proposed by Mr. Cayley. Is that all right

11 now?

12 MR. CAYLEY: Yes, Mr. President.

13 The next witness is going to be taken by the

14 senior trial attorney, so I will retire to the back and

15 allow him to come forward.

16 [The witness entered court]

17 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Good

18 morning, Dr. Lawrence. Can you hear me?

19 THE WITNESS: Mr. President, yes, I can.

20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Please read

21 the solemn declaration that the usher has handed to

22 you.

23 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will

24 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

25 truth.

Page 3974

1 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] You may be

2 seated.

3 WITNESS: CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE

4 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] I think

5 that you are quite familiar with the proceedings in a

6 courtroom, so you will feel quite at ease. Is that

7 true?

8 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Mr. President.

9 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation]

10 Dr. Lawrence, you will first be answering questions put

11 to you by Mr. Harmon.

12 Mr. Harmon, you have the floor.

13 MR. HARMON: Thank you very much,

14 Mr. President. Good morning, Your Honours,

15 Mr. President, counsel.

16 Examined by Mr. Harmon:

17 Q. Good morning, Dr. Lawrence.

18 A. Good morning, Mr. Harmon.

19 Q. Now, because we speak the same language, I'm

20 going to ask you to pause after I finish my question so

21 the interpreters have time to catch up with the final

22 interpretation of the question, and I'll pause after

23 you give an answer so they can do the same.

24 A. Yes, I understand.

25 Q. All right. First of all, Dr. Lawrence, could

Page 3975

1 you state your full name and can you spell your last

2 name for the record?

3 A. Christopher Hamilton Lawrence. Lawrence is

4 spelled L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e.

5 Q. What is your current occupation,

6 Dr. Lawrence?

7 A. I'm a forensic pathologist employed at the

8 New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine in

9 Sydney Australia.

10 MR. HARMON: Mr. President, Your Honours and

11 counsel should have a copy of the curriculum vitae of

12 Dr. Lawrence. It's marked as Prosecutor's Exhibit 221.

13 Q. Let me just take you through some of the

14 salient portions of this CV, Dr. Lawrence. First of

15 all, what is your nationality?

16 A. I am Australian.

17 Q. Can you inform the Trial Chamber of your

18 educational background, please?

19 A. I have a medical degree from the University

20 of Sydney, where I graduated in 1983. That is the

21 American equivalent of the MD. I have a science degree

22 in physiology also from the University of Sydney. I am

23 a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of

24 Pathologists, which as a pathologist, it is the

25 American equivalent of the board certification in

Page 3976

1 pathology.

2 Q. Now, let me focus on your education. When

3 you received your Bachelor of Medical Science in

4 physiology, did you receive any prizes or medals?

5 A. Yes. I was the winner of the P.O. Bishop

6 Medal and the H.G. Chapman prize for that thesis.

7 Q. And what -- can you explain those prizes and

8 why they were awarded?

9 A. They were awarded to the top Bachelor of

10 Medical Science graduate of the year.

11 Q. Now, let me turn briefly to some other

12 aspects of your career. Between October 1989 and June

13 of 1991 were you appointed as a specialist in forensic

14 medicine in New South Wales, to the Institute of

15 Forensic Medicine in Glebe, Australia?

16 A. Yes, I was.

17 Q. Between June of 1991 and June 1993, were you

18 a Fellow in forensic pathology in the State of New

19 Mexico in the United States at the Office of the

20 Medical Examiner at the University of New Mexico School

21 of Medicine in Albuquerque?

22 A. In the first year, I was a Fellow. In the

23 second year I acted as a staff pathologist at the

24 Office of the Medical Investigator.

25 Q. Now, from August of 1994 until the present

Page 3977

1 time, have you been appointed and do you act as a

2 clinical lecturer at the Department of Pathology at the

3 University of Sydney in Australia?

4 A. I do.

5 Q. Now, in addition to those qualifications,

6 Dr. Lawrence, have you been accepted as an expert in

7 the field of forensic pathology in the courts of your

8 country?

9 A. Yes, I have.

10 Q. And have you been accepted as an expert in

11 the field of forensic pathology in courts in the United

12 States?

13 A. Yes, I have been accepted -- sorry. Yes, I

14 have been accepted as an expert witness in the States

15 of New Mexico and Colorado.

16 Q. Now, Dr. Lawrence, we've heard, in the last

17 few days, testimony about the composition of exhumation

18 teams that examined human remains in Bosnia at various

19 times and the interrelationship between anthropologist

20 and pathologist. I don't intend to ask you a great

21 deal about anthropology, but have you had some training

22 in anthropology?

23 A. Yes. Sorry. Yes, I have had training in

24 forensic anthropology.

25 Q. Can you describe just the extent of that

Page 3978

1 training?

2 A. In addition to practical experience, I have

3 attended a number of courses.

4 Q. Where were those courses?

5 A. I attended courses at the Smithsonian

6 Institute in Washington, the Armed Forces Institute of

7 Pathology course which was run in New Mexico, another

8 forensic anthropology course run in New Mexico, and a

9 course run in the investigation of buried remains in

10 Brisbane.

11 Q. Thank you very much, Dr. Lawrence.

12 Now, what was your role in exhumations

13 conducted by the Office of the Prosecutor in Bosnia in

14 1998?

15 A. I was the -- sorry. I was the chief

16 pathologist in Bosnia for the ICTY in 1998.

17 MR. HARMON: Now, could I have Prosecutor's

18 Exhibit 259 placed on the ELMO, please.

19 Q. Perhaps that is in front of you,

20 Dr. Lawrence. If not, the usher will assist you. It

21 is this exhibit.

22 Now, Dr. Lawrence, how many sites were

23 exhumed in 1998?

24 A. Eight sites.

25 Q. Was it your responsibility to examine the

Page 3979

1 human remains from each of those exhumed sites?

2 A. Yes, it was.

3 Q. Now, does the Prosecutor's exhibit which has

4 been placed on the ELMO identify in orange the sites

5 from which you examined human remains?

6 A. Yes, it does.

7 Q. We've heard testimony earlier in this case,

8 Dr. Lawrence, but for the sake of clarity for the

9 people in the gallery, only one of the sites that you

10 exhumed was a primary grave site?

11 A. Yes. One of the sites was a robbed primary

12 site.

13 Q. And all of the -- and that is the site that

14 is indicated as the dam; is that correct?

15 A. That's correct.

16 Q. The other locations marked on this exhibit in

17 orange were secondary grave sites?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And you examined the human remains from each

20 of those sites; is that correct?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. When I say "you," I mean you and members of

23 your staff.

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Now, Dr. Lawrence, in respect of each of

Page 3980

1 these sites that are marked in orange, was a report

2 prepared by you in respect of the findings made at each

3 of those sites?

4 A. Yes, it was.

5 Q. Now, in front of you, Dr. Lawrence, are the

6 reports that were prepared by you.

7 MR. HARMON: And for the record, Your

8 Honours, that includes Prosecutor's Exhibit 261, which

9 is the primary site of the dam; 262, which is the

10 secondary site CR-12; a report on autopsies at 263

11 dealing with Cancari Road 3; 264 dealing with autopsies

12 for the Hodzici Road site 3; 265, Hodzici Road site 4;

13 266, which deals with the findings in respect of

14 Hodzici Road 5; 267, which is Zeleni Jadar site 5; and

15 lastly, 268, which is the Liplje site 2.

16 Q. Now, Dr. Clark -- Dr. Lawrence, I'm sorry, in

17 addition to those reports that deal with sites that

18 were exhumed and your analysis of the human remains

19 from those sites, did you also prepare a report in

20 respect of human remains found on the surface at

21 Kozluk?

22 A. Yes. There were two body parts recovered in

23 1998, and those were examined because it was felt

24 incorrect to leave them till the next year.

25 MR. HARMON: And that, for the record, the

Page 3981

1 report prepared by Dr. Lawrence is a one-page report.

2 It's Prosecutor's Exhibit 260.

3 Q. Now, Dr. Lawrence, we've heard about the

4 procedures that were used by Dr. Clark and his team

5 that assisted him in respect of the exhumations in

6 1999. You operated in Bosnia in 1998, and I'd like to

7 focus then on your procedures on what facilities were

8 available to you.

9 Could you, first of all, describe to the

10 Trial Chamber the morgue facility that was available to

11 you?

12 A. Yes. The morgue facility used was the same

13 one as was used in 1999. It is the Gradska Groblja

14 mortuary facility in Visoko. It had three tables; it

15 had facilities for fluoroscopic equipment, and a secure

16 room where evidence could be locked.

17 During the course of the year, we had more

18 material than we could conveniently handle in that

19 facility, and for the last third of the year, we also

20 used two temporary mortuaries which were also on the

21 site which also had another three or four tables in

22 them in order to facilitate the processing of the

23 remains.

24 Q. Dr. Lawrence, in order to convey succinctly

25 the procedures that you used in 1998 that were followed

Page 3982

1 by members of your staff, I'd like to take you through

2 a case study, if you will, and what I'd like you to do

3 is describe the procedures that were used by you and

4 members of your staff upon receipt of a body bag

5 containing human remains and take us through the

6 procedure to the time the analysis and the examination

7 had been completed, the body bag was sewn up and turned

8 over to the Bosnian authorities.

9 A. Yes. The body bags were received in a

10 locked, refrigerated container. I had one key. The

11 crime-scene officer from the scene had one key.

12 We removed the bodies from the refrigerated

13 container as we were using them and locked it after we

14 had taken the bodies out. The bodies were taken out,

15 and as soon as the body bags were opened, a photograph

16 was taken of the contents of the body bag.

17 The body bag would then be taken by the

18 pathologist who is going to handle the case and X-rayed

19 using a portable X-ray equipment, a fluoroscope.

20 Q. Now, let me stop right there for a moment,

21 Dr. Lawrence, and I'd like you to take a look at

22 Prosecutor's Exhibit 262, which is the report on

23 autopsies of human remains from Cancari Road site 12.

24 There are four photographs following page 5 of your

25 report, and I'd like you to take each of those

Page 3983

1 photographs and inform the Trial Chamber of what the

2 procedure was when you're fluoroscoping these remains.

3 MR. HARMON: For the record, Your Honours, in

4 that report, Dr. Lawrence will be referring to the four

5 photographs immediately after page five of his report.

6 Q. I see you've placed the first photograph on

7 the ELMO. Why don't you describe this particular

8 procedure.

9 A. This photograph depicts or shows an image

10 made by the fluoroscope. It depicts the -- a left

11 elbow joint with the joint itself in the centre of the

12 picture. You can see a number of fractures in the bone

13 just above centre here, and you can see a shadow here

14 which represents a metal object which is, in fact, a

15 bullet.

16 Now, the pathologist would look on the

17 fluoroscope for fractures and for bullets. If it was

18 convenient at the time, he would recover the bullet and

19 submit it for evidence. If not, he might wait and

20 recover it later. He would also look for any bony

21 abnormalities that could be demonstrated on X-ray.

22 He would then prepare a handwritten report on

23 what he saw, and the body would then be taken from the

24 fluoroscope to the main area where it would be placed

25 on a table.

Page 3984

1 Q. Now, Dr. Lawrence, would you explain the

2 successive three photographs in this particular

3 report. And this, I take it, depicts an injury of some

4 kind. Is that correct?

5 A. Yes. This is from the same case as the

6 fluoroscope. It shows -- sorry. It shows the left

7 forearm [indicates] on the right of the picture. There

8 is a hole in the skin here and a second hole here.

9 These correspond to bullet holes. This tissue

10 [indicates] has been cleaned for the purposes of

11 examination.

12 Q. Would you turn to the next picture, please,

13 Dr. Lawrence. What is that?

14 A. This shows [indicates] the bullet that we

15 could see -- sorry, the bullet is slightly to the left

16 here. This shows the bullet recovered from the soft

17 tissue. You can see it has the same outlines as the

18 X-ray image. This was marked and submitted for

19 evidence.

20 Now, finally, to confirm the presence of

21 the gunshot wound, this is the same case again

22 [indicates]. This is the distal or the elbow part of

23 the left upper arm, and you can see the anthropologists

24 have reconstructed the fractured humerus. The white

25 material here is glue, and you can see the path where

Page 3985

1 the bullet has gone through the elbow joint.

2 Q. Thank you, Dr. Lawrence. Why don't you

3 continue with describing the procedure. After the

4 human remains or the body is removed from the

5 fluoroscope room, what happens?

6 A. Once the body is removed from the fluoroscope

7 room, it's put on the main -- on the working table. It

8 is searched, the clothing is removed, and the external

9 surface of the body is examined for evidence of

10 injuries. Now, at this stage the procedure would vary

11 depending on whether there was a large amount of soft

12 tissue or the remains were skeletalised.

13 Q. Now, why don't we start with the procedure

14 with the body that has a large amount of flesh

15 remaining on it. First of all, so we're perfectly

16 clear in what you mean by that, if you would turn to

17 your report, Prosecution Exhibit 263, the image

18 following page 6 of that, would you place that on the

19 ELMO, please. What is that?

20 A. This is a body from Cancari 3, showing a

21 relatively intact body with relatively complete soft

22 tissue.

23 What you can see at the top is the head,

24 chest, the arms, pelvis, and the legs [indicates].

25 Relatively speaking for this site, this was a body with

Page 3986

1 a large amount of soft tissue. Probably only around

2 five per cent of the bodies were in as good a

3 condition.

4 Q. Dr. Lawrence, let's proceed with your

5 description of the procedure, with what happens when

6 you have a fleshed body, what you do. We're going to

7 come back later to the procedures when you have just a

8 skeleton or skeletalised body.

9 A. The body would then be searched for items of

10 identification, for personal items, and the clothing

11 would be removed. The body would then be washed, and

12 the pathologist would examine the external surfaces of

13 the body carefully for injuries. At that stage, the

14 clothing would be tagged with the case name and taken

15 off. I'll come back to that in a minute.

16 The pathologist would then carry out --

17 sorry. At this stage, if there were external gunshot

18 wounds, for example, or other external obvious

19 injuries, they would be photographed.

20 The pathologist, assisted by the assistant,

21 would then open the body, open the areas of injury, and

22 attempt to define them further. Where there were still

23 organs present, those would be examined for evidence of

24 significant injury. In the case of bony injury, the

25 bones would be examined. If they were severely broken,

Page 3987

1 they would be removed and reconstructed in order to

2 ascertain, as we saw with the elbow, to confirm the

3 presence of the bullet track.

4 Q. Who would do the reconstruction of the bone?

5 A. The reconstruction of the bone would

6 routinely be done by the anthropologists assigned to

7 the case.

8 Q. Now, in the course of examining the bodies,

9 if you found an abnormal feature, for example, an old

10 injury or something that was unique, would you record

11 that?

12 A. Yes. We also examined the body for evidence

13 of identifying features. These were old injuries,

14 malformations, deformities, evidence of tooth decay, or

15 anything that might help later on identify the

16 individual.

17 Q. Now, do you have an example that you can

18 illustrate that particular point in the exhibits in

19 front of you? I believe if you refer to Prosecutor's

20 Exhibit 263, there may be one such illustration you

21 could put on the ELMO.

22 A. I have two here.

23 The first of these, what you can see here

24 just to the left of the centre is a grossly-deformed

25 ulna. That is one of the two bones of the forearm.

Page 3988

1 Now, you can see from the scale that it is extremely

2 short. It is also extremely badly malformed. This

3 person would have effectively had an extremely short

4 and strange-looking right forearm. This would be a

5 fairly characteristic sort of deformity and would have

6 caused significant problems with the function of the

7 right arm.

8 Q. Was your purpose in noting these kind of

9 deformities to assist in later identification of

10 individuals?

11 A. That was the primary purpose, yes.

12 Q. All right. Do you have another illustration

13 from the same exhibit?

14 A. This is the spine of one of the bodies from

15 CR-3. What you can see is severe -- sorry -- severe

16 sclerosis of the spine. This person effectively had a

17 completely fused spine. This would be fairly

18 characteristic and would have produced a large degree

19 of incapacity.

20 Q. What other kinds of disabilities did you

21 locate in the course of conducting medical examinations

22 in 1998?

23 A. We found people with evidence of old

24 fractures of the hip that had never healed. We found

25 old gunshot wounds with severe persistent damage to the

Page 3989

1 joints. We found a man who had had a tracheostomy;

2 that is, a tube placed in his throat. Presumably, the

3 sort of previous tumour of the larynx, but

4 unfortunately we couldn't tell. The significant thing

5 about this person is that with the tracheostomy, he

6 would be unable to speak.

7 We found people with injuries that had been

8 bandaged.

9 Q. Now, at some point in the procedure you've

10 been describing, you've done the medical examination of

11 the flesh body, where does the anthropologist fit in?

12 A. The anthropologist, in the fleshed bodies,

13 would come in to do the reconstructions of the bones,

14 as I described. But their other function would be to

15 look at the pubic bones, look at the skull, look at the

16 long bones, to try and ascertain the age and sex and

17 the height of the individual.

18 In addition, they had an important function,

19 in looking at the bony injuries, to consult with the

20 pathologist as to whether these injuries occurred at or

21 around the time of death, i.e., that they are what's

22 called pari-mortem injuries, or whether they were

23 post-mortem injuries. Those are injuries that have

24 occurred after the time of death which may have

25 occurred during the burial, digging up, reburial, or

Page 3990

1 even re-extraction of the body.

2 Q. Now, I take it the pathologist and the

3 anthropologist would consult about their respective

4 findings.

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. What would happen then?

7 A. After the pathologist had consulted with the

8 anthropologist and reviewed the reconstructed bones,

9 the pathologist would then prepare a handwritten

10 report. He would often use diagrams to diagram the

11 areas of injury. He would hand over the pieces of

12 evidence that had been taken from the body to the crime

13 scene officer.

14 In the case of the clothing, the clothing

15 would be taken off and washed. Once it had been washed

16 and dried, it would be examined by one of the crime

17 scene officers for the evidence of injury. The purpose

18 of this was that given that many of our bodies had lost

19 their skin, damage to the clothing was sometimes the

20 only evidence we had that there may have been a bullet

21 injury. The clothing was also examined for evidence of

22 military origin and also for any characteristic

23 identifying features. Now, the crime scene officer

24 would then prepare a report on the clothing, indicating

25 where he found damage.

Page 3991

1 Now, in the event that the pathologist had an

2 injury that he was not certain about, he might actually

3 go early in the piece and examine the clothing directly

4 in order to corroborate his injuries. Obviously, if

5 there is a gunshot wound in the middle of the chest,

6 then there is likely to be -- there is going to be a

7 corresponding defect in the clothing. So the

8 pathologist would cross-index his findings with the

9 clothing. In any event, the pathologist, before he

10 finished the report, would check the clothing to make

11 sure that there were corresponding defects in the

12 clothing to account for the gunshot wounds.

13 Q. Now, would the clothing be tagged with a

14 number similar to the tag number on the body itself?

15 A. As the clothing was removed from the body,

16 the assistant would place a tag on every item, clearly

17 marking the case number of the item.

18 Q. After this report has been prepared by you,

19 in consultation with the anthropologist, and after the

20 clothing has been examined, what's the next step in the

21 procedure?

22 A. At that stage, the pathologist would check

23 the report, sign the typewritten -- sorry. A

24 typewritten copy would be made of the handwritten

25 report, which would include the pathologist's opinion

Page 3992

1 as to the cause of death, amongst other things, and he

2 would check that report, check all of the evidence

3 against it, and sign the report.

4 Q. What would happen to the body?

5 A. The body, at the completion of the

6 examination, would be resealed with the case number

7 clearly written on it and would be stored for handing

8 over to the Bosnian authorities.

9 Q. Dr. Lawrence, let's take the other situation

10 that you described, because not all of the bodies that

11 you were examining were fleshed. Is that correct?

12 A. That's correct.

13 Q. Why don't you describe then, if you will, to

14 the Chamber, the procedure that was used when you had

15 skeletalised remains only.

16 A. If I may show an example.

17 Q. Yes, please, and if you would refer to

18 Prosecutor's Exhibit 261, which is the report on the

19 dam, I believe. I think there are two examples or two

20 photographs that you and I had discussed to show to the

21 Trial Chamber to illustrate this particular point.

22 They are the photographs that follow page 4,

23 Dr. Lawrence.

24 A. This photograph shows the initial step in the

25 process. This is a body bag [indicates] which has been

Page 3993

1 opened as it first comes into the mortuary, showing the

2 remains in the body bag as we first received them.

3 Now, those would then be taken and fluoroscoped. We've

4 discussed that.

5 In the event of skeletal remains, after the

6 clothing had been removed and searched and the physical

7 evidence identified, the bones would then be initially

8 examined before washing in order to examine the colour

9 of the fractures.

10 Now, I think Dr. Clark has alluded to the

11 difficulty in trying to identify the problems between

12 fractures that occurred at the time of death and the

13 fractures that occurred after death. But in a certain

14 number of cases where the fractures are fairly fresh,

15 that is, occurred post-mortem and were reasonably close

16 to the time of examination, examination of the edge of

17 the bones may reveal a very clear pale colour, which

18 may give an indication that that injury has occurred in

19 the post-mortem period.

20 So the bones were examined initially before

21 washing to establish whether they were definite

22 post-mortem injuries. Once they had been examined,

23 they were then washed and they would be aligned in an

24 anatomical position by the anthropologist.

25 Q. Now, you're turning the page and you'll show

Page 3994

1 us the next exhibit in the same document; is that

2 correct?

3 A. That is correct. This is, in fact, the same

4 case, Dam-001, after it had been washed and laid in an

5 anatomical -- roughly anatomical position.

6 You can see at the top the two upper arm

7 bones, the left shoulder blade, the sternum, the

8 thoracic spine, and the ribs.

9 The bones were cleaned up and aligned in this

10 anatomical position in an attempt to assess whether

11 injuries had occurred in the pari-mortem period when

12 all of the bodies were in an anatomical position or

13 whether they could have occurred in the post-mortem

14 interval.

15 Q. What would happen after that examination?

16 A. Again, the pathologist and the anthropologist

17 would both examine these and look for evidence of

18 injury. Some of the injuries, as you can see in this

19 particular one, this fracturing along here is almost

20 certainly a post-mortem injury due to weathering and

21 damage. But the -- again, where there were fractures

22 of bones that were -- where it was difficult to see

23 what the actual centre of the injury looked like, they

24 would be reconstructed. Again, the bodies would be

25 searched for injury, for identifying features. The

Page 3995

1 anthropologist would examine the remains for evidence

2 of sex, age, and stature, and the evidence taken from

3 the body would then be bagged.

4 The pathologist and the anthropologist would

5 usually consult regarding the injuries, because in

6 these particular cases, the anthropologist had a lot of

7 experience at looking at pure bony injury. At the end

8 of that, the pathologist would form an opinion as to

9 the injuries present and complete a report.

10 Q. Now, Dr. Lawrence, you've shown us one

11 example of an elbow being -- elbow bones being

12 reconstructed by the anthropologist. I'd just like to

13 illustrate that point one more time.

14 If you would turn to Prosecutor's

15 Exhibit 263, which is your report from the Report on

16 Autopsies of Human Remains from Cancari Road 3, and if

17 you would put on the ELMO the illustration that follows

18 page 9 of that report. I'd like you to, first of all,

19 identify the exhibit and then explain it.

20 A. This is the photograph referred to. This is

21 a skull from one of the bodies from Cancari Road 3. It

22 has been -- what we can see here is the top of the

23 skullcap, the front of the skull on the left there is a

24 gunshot wound in the centre marked by the arrow, with a

25 series of radiating fractures. The white represents

Page 3996

1 glue used to do the reconstruction. You can also see a

2 degree of deformity, persistent deformity of the skull

3 in addition.

4 You notice the area around the gunshot wound

5 is reasonably underformed. The gunshot wound is a

6 pari-mortem injury, but it appears, in addition, there

7 is some crushing injury which is probably post-mortem.

8 Q. So, Dr. Lawrence, this is an example of a

9 reconstruction of bone, in this case the skull,

10 performed by an anthropologist, that would assist you

11 in your examination and determination of the cause of

12 death.

13 A. Yes. It would be quite hard to see the

14 bullet hole until the fragments of skull were stuck

15 back together again.

16 Q. All right. Dr. Lawrence, you have prepared

17 eight complete reports of the eight exhumation sites

18 from which human remains were removed in 1998. I do

19 not intend to take you through each of these reports.

20 What I would like you to do is go through one

21 of those reports, because the formatting in each of

22 these reports is the same; is that correct?

23 A. Yes, that's correct.

24 Q. And using the Prosecution Exhibit 263, which

25 is the report on autopsies of human remains from the

Page 3997

1 Cancari Road site 3, I'd like you to take us through

2 the report, and if you would start by putting on the

3 ELMO the page 2, which is your Summary and Conclusions

4 on Autopsies from CR-03. If you would place that on

5 the ELMO, and if you would read your findings into the

6 record in respect of this particular site.

7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] [No

8 translation]

9 MR. HARMON: Yes.

10 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

11 very much. We're going to have a 20-minute break now.

12 --- Recess taken at 12.20 p.m.

13 --- On resuming at 12.45 p.m.

14 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Mr. Harmon,

15 we're resuming. Please continue.

16 MR. HARMON:

17 Q. Dr. Lawrence, before the break I'd asked you

18 to examine and take your report, which is the report of

19 Autopsies on Human Remains from Cancari Road 3, and

20 we'll go through that.

21 MR. HARMON: But just so the record is

22 perfectly clear, the site indicated as Cancari Road 3,

23 Your Honours, has been linked to the Kozluk primary

24 grave site, as can be seen in Prosecutor's

25 Exhibit 259. Those links were testified to by Dean

Page 3998

1 Manning, and he has identified the various sources of

2 those links that can be seen on Prosecutor's

3 Exhibit 259.

4 Q. Now, please, Dr. Lawrence, would you place on

5 the ELMO the Summary and Conclusions of the Autopsies

6 from Cancari Road 3 site and just read into the record

7 those findings, please.

8 A. Thank you. Summary and Conclusions on

9 Autopsies from CR-03.

10 1. From the anthropological examination, the

11 grave at CR-03 site is estimated to contain at least

12 160 individuals.

13 2. All of the bodies where sex could be

14 determined, that's 126, were male. There was one

15 subadult, a teenager, who wore some female clothing and

16 was of an indeterminate sex by anthropological

17 examination.

18 3. There was one individual between the ages

19 of 8 and 13 years, a child, and at least seven over the

20 age of 65 years.

21 4. None of the bodies were carrying weapons

22 or wearing army or militia uniforms. One of the bodies

23 appeared to be wearing a blue uniform, but this did not

24 appear to be a police uniform or have obvious military

25 insignia. In one of the general body bags, that is, a

Page 3999

1 mixed collection of isolated bones and clothing, there

2 was a Yugoslav National Army jacket.

3 5. There were 37 twine or fabric ligatures,

4 wrist bindings; 25 of those were associated with hands

5 or on arms, 8 were with bodies, and 4 were found loose

6 in the graves. In four cases, the hands appeared to be

7 secured behind the back. The material of the ligatures

8 is similar to that seen in CR-12.

9 Q. Let me just interrupt you there for just a

10 moment. Again referring to Prosecutor's Exhibit 259,

11 CR-12 is linked to Branjevo Military Farm primary

12 execution site.

13 With that clarification, Dr. Lawrence, please

14 continue reading from your conclusions.

15 A. 6. Eight blindfolds were found on or around

16 the bodies at this site. Four of these were around the

17 face.

18 7. The bodies were decomposed but varied

19 considerably from having recognisable organs to

20 complete skeletonisation with disarticulation, that is,

21 complete loss of soft tissue with separation of the

22 body parts.

23 8. There were 225 definite gunshot wounds,

24 five probable gunshot wounds, and 32 possible gunshot

25 wounds in 148 bodies. The most frequent sites were

Page 4000

1 torso, 112; legs, 91; head and neck, 31; and arm, 27.

2 9. CR-3 shows half the total number of

3 gunshot wounds seen in CR-12, 261 versus 422.

4 10. In the 48 bodies where gunshot wounds

5 were found --

6 Q. Sorry, it says "48". You mean in the 148?

7 A. In the 148 cases where gunshot wounds were

8 found, there were between one gunshot wound, 89 bodies,

9 and eight gunshot wounds, one body. The average number

10 of gunshot wounds in the bodies found with gunshot

11 wounds was 1.5, that is, between one and two.

12 There was no significant trend in the

13 directions of the bullet tracks. That is, I could not

14 tell you whether they had been shot from in front or

15 behind.

16 MR. HARMON: Mr. Usher, if you could show

17 that to the bottom of the page, please.

18 Q. Continue, please.

19 A. 12. There were many post-mortem tampering

20 injuries of the skull, ribs and pelvis, which would

21 tend to obscure pari-mortem, that is, injuries

22 occurring around the time of death, in these regions.

23 13. There were parts of 160 individuals in

24 the grave. Because of the separation of the body

25 parts, these were collected in 383 body bags (see

Page 4001

1 report by Professor Wright). Many of the bodies were

2 incomplete, and it obviously cannot be guaranteed that

3 the body bags are from separate individuals. Because

4 the individual bodies could not be reconstructed, I

5 have given the cause of death for each of the body bags

6 rather than each individual. It is possible that a

7 divided individual, for example, a separated head and

8 torso and legs, might be given more than one cause of

9 death.

10 In 103 body bags -- sorry. The contents of

11 103 body bags had an injury in a body part sufficient

12 to cause death due to gunshot wounds in the individual

13 from which the body part came. Thirteen of the body

14 bags had an injury in a body part which would probably

15 cause the death of the individual due to gunshot

16 wounds. Fifteen body bags had an injury in a body part

17 which could possibly cause the death of the individual

18 due to gunshot wounds. Two body bags had injuries in

19 the body parts consistent with the cause of death of

20 gunshot wounds in the individual. And 254 body bags

21 had an undetermined cause of death. Many of these were

22 isolated body parts, or commingled body parts, or

23 incomplete body parts in a general body bag.

24 Of the 35 essentially complete bodies, 29 had

25 a cause of death of gunshot wounds, while six remained

Page 4002

1 with an undetermined cause of death. In my opinion,

2 these six cases probably represent perforated gunshot

3 wounds in soft tissue which can no longer be recognised

4 because of the loss of soft tissue and the absence of

5 bony injury.

6 15. Identifying documents were found on or

7 near 12 bodies, either at the site or on searching at

8 the mortuary.

9 That completes the summary.

10 Q. Dr. Lawrence, thank you. Let's continue

11 taking a tour of this particular report, because you

12 said the format is the same.

13 I see, following your summary, there's an

14 introduction. Can you briefly describe what's in the

15 introduction of each of these reports?

16 A. The introduction describes the transfer of

17 the bodies to me and also describes the numbering

18 system used throughout the report.

19 Q. Will you turn to page 4 of your report,

20 because that is a description of the staff members that

21 assisted you in the 1998 autopsies. Would you put that

22 on the ELMO, please.

23 Now, was this a multinational staff that was

24 assisting you, Dr. Lawrence?

25 A. Yes. I had at least 14 different nations

Page 4003

1 represented.

2 Q. If we start with the pathologists, can you

3 identify the nations from which these pathologists

4 came?

5 A. Dr. Bentley is currently working as a

6 forensic pathologist in North Ireland, Northern

7 Ireland. Dr. Marie Cassidy a very experienced forensic

8 pathologist currently working in Ireland. Andrew

9 Davison is a forensic pathologist working in

10 Edinburgh. I work in Australia. Dr. Walter Marty is a

11 widely-published expert on ballistics who is from

12 Switzerland. Professor Helmut Maxeiner is a professor

13 of forensic medicine at Berlin in Germany. Dr. Yvonne

14 Milewski is the chief medical examiner at the Bronx in

15 New York. Alain Miras is forensic pathologist from

16 France. Fritz Priemer is a forensic pathologist from

17 Germany. Dr. Marcus Rothschild is a forensic

18 pathologist again from Berlin.

19 Q. Dr. Lawrence, you were also assisted by

20 autopsy technicians. First of all, can you define what

21 the role of an autopsy technician was?

22 A. The autopsy technicians basically assisted

23 the forensic pathologist and did a lot of the handling

24 of the bodies from out of and into the morgue. They

25 also processed some of the clothing and generally

Page 4004

1 assisted the pathologist in completing their report.

2 Q. Is this a multinational group of people as

3 well?

4 A. Yes. In amongst these, Deborah Brown is from

5 Scotland, as is Ishbel Hunter. Carl Lyon is from

6 Ireland. Robert McNeil is from Scotland. Alfie Moss

7 is from England. Geoff Welburn is from Australia.

8 Paul Woods is from England.

9 Q. Let me just turn to the category of

10 radiographers. Tell us about, first of all, what they

11 did and where they are from.

12 A. The radiographers ran the fluoroscope.

13 That's the mobile X-ray machine. They are technical

14 people who are used to performing X-rays and basically

15 ran and maintained the X-ray equipment.

16 Q. Where are they from?

17 A. Again, all of the people shown there are

18 currently working in London. One of them is Irish. I

19 think the rest are all English.

20 Q. And lastly in this group of specialists,

21 there are anthropologists identified in the upper

22 right-hand corner, and we have heard from one of those,

23 Mr. Baraybar, so I don't need you to identify him. But

24 can you identify the others, please, and tell us where

25 they are from?

Page 4005

1 A. Carmen Cardoza is Jose's assistant. She's

2 from Peru. Mercedes Doretti is originally

3 Argentinian. She's one of the heads of the Argentinian

4 Missing People Programme in New York. Shuala Martin is

5 a postgraduate student in the United States who has

6 worked on, I think, three or four missions for the

7 United Nations. Amy Powers -- sorry, Julie Powers and

8 Amy Schilling are postgraduate students from the

9 University of New Mexico. Vincent Stefan is a postgrad

10 student who's just about completed his Ph.D. in

11 forensic anthropologist and does all of the forensic

12 anthropology for the office of the investigator.

13 Q. Without identifying where these people are

14 from, there's a category of people as "Data Entry".

15 What did they do?

16 A. Their main job was to transform the written

17 reports into typed reports, but they also collated the

18 reports, chased up the signatures, and prepared some of

19 the documents for handover of the bodies.

20 Q. And your logistics officer is identified.

21 What was his role?

22 A. His job was to basically provide us with

23 things like scalpels and gloves in a country where it

24 was quite difficult to maintain supplies. Forensic

25 work requires a lot of disposables, and his job was to

Page 4006

1 supply us with gloves and all the other equipment

2 required to do the job.

3 Q. Without going through the remaining people

4 and their identities and their nationalities, I take it

5 they also were multinational.

6 A. Yes. The crime scene officers were

7 principally Dutch, but there were Australians amongst

8 them. My interpreter was Bosnian.

9 Q. The next significant part of your report is a

10 section that deals with the procedures of the autopsy.

11 That starts at page 5 of your report. Since you've

12 testified already about the procedure, I'm not going to

13 ask you to repeat that.

14 So carrying on with your report, then you

15 have a section devoted to the autopsy findings, is that

16 correct, which is the section dealing with the minimum

17 number of individuals, the age of the individuals, the

18 sex of the individuals, and the description of the

19 injuries?

20 A. That's correct.

21 Q. And is it in that section where you outline

22 your findings in greater detail in respect of the human

23 remains examined from this particular site?

24 A. Yes. I've given -- some of the material is

25 anthropological and is included really to make sense of

Page 4007

1 the results I had. The injuries section basically

2 discusses the problems associated with distinguishing

3 injuries that have occurred before death to those that

4 occur at the time of death from those that occurred

5 after death. It then discusses the gunshot wounds. I

6 have included a number of tables demonstrating what we

7 found. This is on page 9 of the report.

8 What we have here is a description of where

9 we found the gunshot wounds in the 148 bodies. You can

10 see there were 25 definite gunshot wounds in the head

11 and neck, nine in the -- sorry, 93 in the torso, 24 in

12 the arms, and 83 in the legs, with a total of definite

13 gunshot wounds of 255.

14 Q. Two hundred twenty-five?

15 A. Sorry, 225. I can't read.

16 Table 2 on page 9 shows the number of gunshot

17 wounds in each of the bodies. You can see that they

18 range from 1 to 8. We have a lot with just 1, and then

19 a smaller number above that. The average -- if you

20 look at the average of the bodies that actually had

21 gunshot wounds, the average is 1.8.

22 Q. Now, could you turn to your third table under

23 this aspect of your reports found on page 10.

24 A. We attempted to tell the direction from which

25 the people had been shot. Now, given that all but one

Page 4008

1 of these was a secondary site and we were dealing with

2 quite disrupted bodies, this was relatively difficult.

3 We can see, if we look at gunshot wounds from

4 the front to the back, there were 32 that we thought

5 were definitely from front to back; 31 from back to

6 front; but a very large number, 198, where we couldn't

7 tell for certain whether it was from front or back.

8 Similarly, a fairly even distribution between

9 the right-hand and left-hand side of the body, with a

10 moderate number in the midline, and, again, we could

11 not tell direction upwards or downwards in very many of

12 the cases. A vast majority, we couldn't tell.

13 My conclusion from that is that we really --

14 there are so few we can tell that I don't think you can

15 gain any useful information from that data.

16 Q. Now, in all of your reports there appears to

17 be a diagram. You will see it on the next page. Will

18 you tell us what this represents, please.

19 A. Can I --

20 MR. HARMON: Mr. Usher, can you move that

21 ELMO.

22 A. Thanks. This is a composite picture that I

23 created from looking at the X-rays, the diagrams, and

24 the descriptions of the gunshot wounds, and I have

25 effectively placed all of the gunshot wounds onto one

Page 4009

1 body in an attempt to see whether there is a pattern of

2 distribution of the gunshot wounds, and I cannot see a

3 definite pattern to the gunshot wounds.

4 I should point thought that where we knew the

5 direction was from the back, they have been shown on

6 the posterior diagram. The front diagram shows both

7 those that we know the direction of and those we don't

8 know the direction of just in order to show roughly

9 where they occurred.

10 MR. HARMON:

11 Q. Now, Dr. Lawrence, would you turn to the next

12 page, please, and explain what that table represents.

13 If we could focus down on table 4, please.

14 MR. HARMON: Mr. Usher, perhaps you could

15 assist the witness in focusing down on the --

16 Q. It should be done for you, Dr. Lawrence.

17 A. Just zoom it down on to the diagram. Okay.

18 Basically, this shows the projectiles

19 recovered from this scene. It's again a summary of the

20 total number recovered. We found 88 complete or

21 essentially complete bullets; 155 bullet fragments

22 which weren't further specified; 57 jacket fragments,

23 these were copper jacket fragments; and 35 lead

24 fragments which appeared to come from the core of the

25 bullet.

Page 4010

1 Q. Dr. Lawrence, would you turn to page 13 of

2 your report then. This is a chart that continues over

3 to page 14 as well, but this is illustrative of this

4 point that I'd like to make. What is this particular

5 portion of this table?

6 A. This is a summary of all of the ligatures or

7 potential ligatures which were found at the site or in

8 the autopsy suite.

9 What I have described is the number, the body

10 bag number that the material came from; a rough

11 description of the material it was made of; the

12 dimensions in width; the circumference of the loop; the

13 number of loops, and the location.

14 You will note that 25 of these were

15 associated with the hands, 8 were associated with the

16 body but not obviously around the hands, and 4 were

17 found loose in the grave.

18 Q. Dr. Lawrence, turn to page 15 of your report,

19 please. Did you create a similar table for blindfolds

20 that were recovered from the bodies from CR-03?

21 A. Yes. This is the table that I prepared for

22 the potential blindfolds. Again, the body bag number,

23 the material it was made of, the width, the

24 circumference of the loop, and the location.

25 Q. Now, the next section of your report you can

Page 4011

1 see just at the bottom of that ELMO image deals with

2 the cause of death. What is described in that

3 particular section?

4 A. The cause of death section starts with the

5 intrinsic problem in dealing with extensively broken-up

6 skeletal remains; that is, how do you describe the

7 findings in bodies that are not complete?

8 In bodies that are complete, you can assess

9 the whole of the body and reach a conclusion as to

10 whether or not you have a cause of death.

11 If, for example, a body is broken in half, we

12 have the upper half of the body and we have the lower

13 half of the body, and we are unable to relate them

14 together. We've got a very large number of potential

15 victims; they are broken up. We were, in general,

16 fairly unsuccessful in being able to relate one part

17 with another part. We did have occasional successes,

18 mostly related to the identification of clothing on the

19 upper part and lower part, and occasionally where there

20 was a condition present which was identified in both,

21 for example, our gentleman with the very short forearm,

22 we were able to associate with other malformations of

23 the body, but in general, we were not able to match up

24 the top halves and bottom halves.

25 Now, the pathologist would be given a body

Page 4012

1 bag and would attempt to reach a cause of death on that

2 particular body bag. Now, the consequence of this is

3 that you might, for example, in our hypothetical body

4 that's divided in half, have a cause of death in the

5 bottom half and a cause of death in the top half, which

6 would end up with two causes of death in one body.

7 Now, there is really no way -- unless you can

8 relate every body part to every other body part, there

9 is really no way of getting around this problem. The

10 situation is much easier in the intact bodies because

11 you don't have this problem.

12 So I have listed the causes of death in the

13 broken-up body parts in order to describe the injuries

14 present, but it's a kind of difficult figure to

15 understand. So what I've also included is the causes

16 of death in the intact bodies, and I think this is an

17 easier figure to work with because it actually means

18 something.

19 Q. Dr. Lawrence, thank you. Let's continue the

20 tour of your report then. If you'd turn to page 18.

21 I'd like you to tell the Judges what you also included

22 in your report.

23 A. There's a description of the clothing that

24 was found.

25 Q. Would you put that on the ELMO, Dr. Lawrence,

Page 4013

1 please.

2 A. We were obviously looking for items of

3 military clothing. In this site, there was one body

4 wearing a Yugoslav National Army jacket and a blue

5 uniform which did not appear to have definite military

6 insignia. We also had one body which was carrying an

7 unfired round or cartridge in the jacket pocket. There

8 were no other -- there was no other evidence of

9 weapons.

10 Q. Did you note in your report any identifying

11 documents that you recovered from the bodies?

12 A. Yes. We had a number of documents which

13 would give a provisional identification. Again, you

14 can see here the body bag number; what the item was;

15 the name and family name of the individual; if I could

16 tell the date of birth; and if it was a pass, the

17 numbers on it.

18 Q. Let me turn now to page 19 of your report.

19 There's an extensive table which continues for many,

20 many pages, Dr. Lawrence. I want to ask you some

21 questions about this. First of all, what is this

22 table?

23 A. This is, if you like, the summary of every

24 body bag that we received. This is -- I've attempted

25 to be as open and transparent as I can in showing what

Page 4014

1 we had to deal with.

2 Now, what I've described is the "Body

3 Number." Now, where the body has multiple gunshot

4 wounds, each one of those is given a separate listing.

5 So, for example, in the top one, B319, there were two

6 gunshot wounds, so we've got 319.1 and 319.2.

7 Now, the "Parts Present." When the

8 exhumation was done, the loose bones, those that could

9 not be associated with any other bones, were collected

10 and placed in what were general body bags; that is,

11 they might contain bones from a number of individuals

12 which could not be obviously related to other body

13 parts.

14 Now, in this particular general body bag

15 there were identifiable gunshot wounds in the head and

16 a possible gunshot wound in the left scapula. Now, in

17 my opinion, the gunshot wound in the head would be a

18 cause of death. So we have given a cause of death in

19 that general body bag because that skull had been

20 shot.

21 Now, if we just go a bit further down, you

22 can see the gap below "General Body Bag" is because

23 319.2 also came from that general body bag. There was

24 no cause of death given on the gunshot wound to the

25 scapula because it was not felt that was a definite

Page 4015

1 cause of death.

2 If we go down now we can see, at 322, this

3 consisted of legs. There were no identifiable gunshot

4 wounds, and the cause of death was undetermined.

5 323 was a head, letter "H"; arms, the letter

6 "A"; and chest. Now, in this there was a gunshot

7 wound in the left thorax and a cause of death was given

8 as gunshot wound to the thorax.

9 Q. Dr. Lawrence, we won't go through all of this

10 report but there are a number of terms I'd like you to

11 define. For example, "not ascertainable," and that

12 appears in the "Cause of Death" column. There's "not

13 ascertainable," "undetermined," "probable gunshot

14 wound," and "possible gunshot wound." Can you explain

15 those terms?

16 A. I was dealing with a number of people from

17 different jurisdictions. A lot of my training is

18 American based, and I tend to use the term

19 "undetermined." A lot of the British pathologists use

20 the term "unascertained," "unascertainable," or "not

21 ascertained." For veracity, I have written down what

22 the pathologist who handled the case called it, not

23 what I would call it.

24 Q. Lastly in your report, Dr. Lawrence, I would

25 like you to refer to page 30 of your report, and I'd

Page 4016

1 like you to put that table on the ELMO, and I'd like

2 you to explain what that table represents.

3 A. This table shows all of the features in all

4 of the bodies that we observed that might assist in

5 identifying the individual if once the process of

6 reconciliation with the information from the living is

7 complete; that is, for example, individual number 319

8 had had a previous shrapnel injury, a healed shrapnel

9 injury in the left hip, so with other information this

10 might lead to identification of this particular

11 individual.

12 Q. So one would find in here the shortened ulna,

13 for example, that you described?

14 A. We would find all of the old injuries

15 described. We would find all the disabilities, the man

16 with the fused spine.

17 Q. I see also there are artefacts such as

18 hearing-aids and --

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. -- tin boxes and the like.

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Now, I won't go through all of your

23 comprehensive reports, Dr. Lawrence, but what I would

24 like you to do, please, in respect of the eight reports

25 that you did prepare, I'd like you to summarise your

Page 4017

1 findings to the Judges, please.

2 A. To summarise all of the graves that I dealt

3 with in 1998, there was a minimum number of individuals

4 of 883; there were 2.239 body bags; there were 254

5 relatively intact bodies.

6 Q. Now, let me interrupt you right there. Two

7 hundred and fifty-four relatively intact bodies. All

8 but one of the sites that you examined were sites

9 that -- where the bodies had been removed from another

10 location and reburied?

11 A. Yes, that's right.

12 Q. So is a number of intact bodies consistent

13 with the removal bodies from one site to another?

14 A. It's consistent with it.

15 Q. Please continue with your findings.

16 A. Now, based on the anthropological evidence,

17 there were 7 children, that is, people between the ages

18 of 8 and 13; 48 teenagers; 96 young adults. The bulk

19 of the people were over the age of 25, approximately

20 688. At the other end of the range, there were

21 12 between the ages of 55 and 65, and there were at

22 least 9 over the age of 65. Of the 883 individuals,

23 686 were identifiable as male and 197 were not

24 determined.

25 There were 1.307 definite gunshot wounds.

Page 4018

1 There were 6 shotgun wounds, 25 shrapnel wounds. Now,

2 of those 25 shrapnel wounds, 24 of them were in one

3 site; that was Zeleni Jadar number 5. The largest

4 number of gunshot wounds in a body was 11.

5 The cause of death in the essentially intact

6 bodies, the 254 essentially intact bodies, 203 had

7 gunshot wounds, 1 had died of gunshot wounds and

8 shrapnel wounds, and 55 had an undetermined cause of

9 death.

10 Q. Fifty or 55?

11 A. Sorry, 50 [Realtime transcript read in error

12 "55"] had an undetermined cause of death, and that

13 includes 13 where they were probable or possible

14 gunshot wounds.

15 Ligatures, there were 53 definite ligatures

16 associated with the arms and potentially as many as

17 83. Blindfolds, there were 44 definite blindfolds and

18 potentially as many as 103. And possibly identifying

19 documents were found on 53 bodies, either at the site

20 or at the morgue.

21 Q. Dr. Lawrence, thank you very much.

22 MR. HARMON: Mr. President, I have concluded

23 my examination of Dr. Lawrence.

24 In the transcript there is an error. Sorry,

25 Mr. President. The witness corrected --

Page 4019

1 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

2 MR. HARMON: The transcript is in error on

3 13:26:46. I asked the witness whether it was 50 or

4 55. The witness answered "50" and the transcript still

5 reflects "55." So on the question of -- I can ask the

6 witness one more time.

7 Q. Dr. Lawrence, insofar as the number of

8 individuals who had an undetermined cause of death, how

9 many individuals did that represent?

10 A. There were 50 individuals with an

11 undetermined cause of death.

12 MR. HARMON: Thank you.

13 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

14 very much, Mr. Harmon.

15 Mr. Visnjic, do you have -- I'm sure you have

16 many questions.

17 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President,

18 not that many.

19 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Very well.

20 Let us see how we go, and we'll have a break somewhere

21 along the line.

22 Dr. Lawrence, you shall now be answering

23 questions put to you by Defence counsel Visnjic.

24 Cross-examined by Mr. Visnjic:

25 Q. Good afternoon, Dr. Lawrence. Dr. Lawrence,

Page 4020

1 most of my questions will be referring to the autopsies

2 linked to the Zeleni Jadar grave site; that is to say,

3 Zeleni Jadar 05.

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. According to the evidence presented by the

6 Prosecution to the Court, this site is termed a

7 secondary grave site in comparison to the primary grave

8 site of Glogova.

9 A. Yes, I believe so.

10 Q. Within the frameworks of your report, you

11 provide a table which represents the number of injuries

12 from firearms and shrapnel on the bodies.

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. Bearing in mind a statement made by your

15 colleague Dr. Clark, I assume that you are dealing with

16 the minimum number of injuries from a bullet or gun or

17 shrapnel on the bodies.

18 A. In those cases with shrapnel wounds, we've

19 described all of the bodies where we identified actual

20 possible shrapnel wounds. It is, of course, possible,

21 given the decomposition, that some of the injuries and

22 some of the shrapnel had been lost from the body. So,

23 yes, it is probably a minimum.

24 Q. I assume that this same question would be to

25 whether this is the case with the injuries caused by

Page 4021

1 projectiles. Does that apply there too?

2 A. I think I am a little less conservative than

3 Dr. Clark, but, yes, I think there were probably more

4 gunshot wounds than we're reporting.

5 Q. During your examination-in-chief, when you

6 introduced your associates, you said you had a

7 pathologist who had many reports on ballistics

8 published.

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. Bearing in mind the injuries and the wounds

11 caused by the shrapnel and the remnants you found in

12 the bodies of the victims, were you able to ascertain

13 perhaps the type of firearm used, the type of weapon

14 used; not in detail, but generally speaking, the type

15 of weapon?

16 A. In general, the type of injuries were those

17 caused by a medium, high-powered rifle.

18 Q. What about in the case of shrapnel, the

19 shrapnel you found?

20 A. I am a forensic pathologist with some working

21 knowledge of ballistics. I don't have working

22 knowledge of ordnance.

23 Q. Thank you. In your report, in one body you

24 found fragments of some safety glass, and I suppose it

25 was glass from a vehicle, an automobile.

Page 4022

1 A. Yes, that was my opinion.

2 Q. Do you have an explanation for that perhaps?

3 A. Yes, I do have an explanation. I understand

4 that in the Kravica warehouse, there were a number of

5 parts of cars. I assume that the safety glasses

6 probably come from one of those vehicles, although I

7 guess fragments of safety glass might be found

8 incidentally in other places.

9 Q. At what depth was the safety glass found with

10 respect to the surface of the body?

11 A. If I might -- I'm not sure I know that. I

12 didn't do the actual autopsy. If you give me one

13 moment, I will just ...

14 It's described as being found in the pelvis.

15 I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that.

16 Q. In view of the position that the glass was

17 found, the place it was found in the pelvis, as you

18 say, embedded in the pelvis, does that perhaps indicate

19 that the body hit an object which was moving at a high

20 speed, in view of the spot where the glass had become

21 embedded?

22 A. Sorry. Could you just repeat the first part

23 of that question?

24 Q. In view of the spot that the glass was found,

25 as far as I was able to see, you found it embedded in

Page 4023

1 bone. Is that correct, glass embedded in bone?

2 A. No. My understanding is it was found in the

3 pelvis in the soft tissue.

4 Q. I see. Thank you. Well, if we take that to

5 be the case, is it possible that the glass got to the

6 place it was found through the impact of the body with

7 an object having the glass, a strong impact?

8 A. I guess it's a possibility. I had always

9 viewed it as being -- the glass being accelerated into

10 the body, the opposite way. But I can't exclude it. I

11 don't remember seeing major tears of the soft tissue

12 over it to suggest that it had struck an object, so my

13 assumption was that it was glass that was accelerated

14 into the body rather than the body accelerated against

15 an object.

16 Q. In your opinion, can a particle of glass

17 penetrate the skin, perforate the skin, if it is, say,

18 on the floor of a room of some kind?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. Bearing in mind the number of injuries in

21 this last grave site and the number of shrapnel

22 injuries, in particular, in keeping with that, this

23 Zeleni Jadar 05 grave site, does it differ in any way

24 from the primary and secondary grave sites that you

25 examined?

Page 4024

1 A. Yes, very much so. In this site, we found 24

2 shrapnel wounds. We only found one other shrapnel

3 wound amongst the other seven graves.

4 Q. Dr. Lawrence, in case of conflict, that is to

5 say, combat operations between two sides, the

6 assumption is that if the two sides are facing each

7 other in a sort of front-line position, that most of

8 the injuries would be caused through a projectile

9 entering the body from the front?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. In the case of having a group of people in an

12 encirclement under siege, would this assumption be

13 brought into question? That is to say, if the combat

14 operations were such that the people were coming under

15 crossfire, would, according to your experience, this

16 assumption be seriously jeopardised?

17 A. I'm not sure I can help you on that. I don't

18 know.

19 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] I apologise,

20 Your Honours. I have just one more question. May I

21 take a minute to confer.

22 Q. And following on from my last question, can

23 you tell us, in a situation that I tried to describe a

24 moment ago, where would most of the injuries be located

25 on the bodies as a consequence of this type of

Page 4025

1 conflict?

2 A. An encirclement?

3 Q. Yes.

4 A. I think they could be anywhere around the

5 body.

6 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Thank you.

7 Dr. Lawrence, during your examination-in-chief, you

8 have dealt with most of the things that were not clear

9 in the testimonies of the previous witnesses. This was

10 asked you by the Prosecution. Therefore, the Defence

11 has no further questions of this witness,

12 Mr. President.

13 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you,

14 Mr. Visnjic.

15 Mr. Harmon.

16 MR. HARMON: Dr. Lawrence, I only have one

17 question.

18 Re-examined by Mr. Harmon:

19 Q. Reference was made to the Zeleni Jadar site,

20 and I was going through this report and I've realised

21 that I failed to ask you one question.

22 In the Cancari road report that you prepared,

23 we put on the ELMO the staff and you identified various

24 members of the staff. In looking at the staff used in

25 the Zeleni Jadar autopsy reports, there appear to be,

Page 4026

1 for example, 11 pathologists as opposed to 10

2 pathologists on the Cancari road autopsies, and some of

3 the names of the pathologists appear to be different.

4 Am I correct in saying that in each report

5 you identify the staff members that participated in the

6 examination of the human remains from the particular

7 site?

8 A. Yes, yes. The people would come from between

9 two weeks to a month. Each of the sites would usually

10 have different personnel.

11 MR. HARMON: All right. Thank you.

12 I have no additional questions,

13 Mr. President, Your Honours.

14 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

15 very much, Mr. Harmon.

16 Judge Fouad Riad has the floor.

17 JUDGE RIAD: [Interpretation] Thank you,

18 Mr. President.

19 Questioned by the Court:

20 JUDGE RIAD: [In English] I can still say good

21 morning, Dr. Lawrence.

22 A. Good morning, Your Honour.

23 JUDGE RIAD: You said something which struck

24 me. You said you were less conservative than

25 Dr. Clark. What does that mean in your field?

Page 4027

1 A. What it means was that I included in my

2 reports possible injuries and probable injuries. Now,

3 in part, that was because John was dealing with primary

4 graves and I was dealing almost entirely with secondary

5 graves. So I was dealing with cases that were more

6 broken up and so therefore more difficult to

7 interpret.

8 As well, I took the view -- I mean this

9 discussion about gunshot wounds in the thigh came up,

10 the leg. My view was that if left untreated, a gunshot

11 wound that went through the bones of the leg has a

12 relatively high likelihood of killing you if untreated

13 and would give the gunshot wounds in the thigh as a

14 cause of death, given the view that these people were

15 not given transfusions of fluid and were not bandaged

16 and tourniqueted. That's what I mean. I probably

17 listed some injuries that Dr. Clark would probably not

18 have listed as definite gunshot wounds.

19 JUDGE RIAD: I see. For instance, you

20 mention that, just as an example, that 44 were

21 blindfolded and potentially as many as 103. Is that

22 what you call potentially 103?

23 A. Well, the 44 are the number that we found --

24 this is the -- these are the blindfolds, the -- sorry,

25 I'm just -- right.

Page 4028

1 If you're looking at blindfolds, there were

2 44 where there was evidence either at the site or at

3 the morgue that these were around the face. Now, we

4 found identical -- well, identical pieces of cloth next

5 to bodies or in the grave. Now, I suspect that if we

6 had been there at the time, we would have seen a lot

7 more blindfolds than 44, but I'm trying here to give

8 you those that I can say are definitely blindfolds and

9 also an estimate of how many there could have been as

10 well. I want to be fair about this.

11 JUDGE RIAD: Then let us come to the ages you

12 mentioned.

13 You say there were seven children between 8

14 and 13.

15 A. That's right.

16 JUDGE RIAD: Do you have -- could you

17 determine, with precision, the age of a child? Or

18 let's say not exactly but under 13, over 13?

19 A. That's a question you should probably put to

20 the anthropologists, because they are the ones who

21 formally did the --

22 JUDGE RIAD: They did that?

23 A. They are the ones who did the

24 identification. They did that.

25 JUDGE RIAD: But you seem to be corroborating

Page 4029

1 it.

2 A. Yes. I believe that they are around that

3 age, yes.

4 JUDGE RIAD: And also the people over 65, you

5 can say that a person is over 60 or under 60?

6 A. Age estimation over the age of 50, using the

7 current techniques, is quite difficult. Sometimes you

8 get a better impression from just looking at the

9 development of osteoarthritis and those sorts of

10 things, the loss of bone and so forth. That is, again,

11 an estimate, but I think that you will find that there

12 were -- given the other evidence, the hearing aids and

13 so forth, I think there probably were a number over

14 that age. But, again, this question, the expert on

15 this is the anthropologist, not me.

16 JUDGE RIAD: Now, in an exchange of, let's

17 say, of ideas with Defence counsel, you mentioned that

18 you could not answer his question when he told you what

19 would happen if people are encircled and how they would

20 be wounded and so on. Could you continue this debate?

21 A. Yes. I do not claim to be a military

22 expert. I have some understanding of what might

23 happen.

24 JUDGE RIAD: In the light of the wounds that

25 we have at the deaths, could it have happened to people

Page 4030

1 encircled or between -- could it be possible that

2 people between two groups received such wounds?

3 A. I think it's possible. Whether it did occur,

4 I don't know.

5 JUDGE RIAD: I mean in light of your

6 experience in this case.

7 A. Again, I was not as successful as Dr. Clark

8 in determining the direction of all of -- from which

9 these all came, so I don't think I can make a strong

10 conclusion as to the direction, and hence I can't tell

11 which -- can't really answer that question from a

12 pathological point of view.

13 JUDGE RIAD: Thank you very much,

14 Dr. Lawrence.

15 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

16 very much, Judge Fouad Riad.

17 Judge Wald has the floor.

18 JUDGE WALD: Dr. Lawrence, in your Cancari

19 number 3 report, in table 7 on page 18, this was the

20 provisional identification by documents. Do you have

21 that?

22 A. Yes, I do.

23 JUDGE WALD: Okay. I just wondered if you

24 could explain to me two items in there. One, several

25 times it says "pathology report." That doesn't mean

Page 4031

1 they were carrying a pathology report around, or does

2 it?

3 A. Yes, yes, there was one --

4 JUDGE WALD: It does. What would be an

5 example of that?

6 A. I think one of them had a blood count or

7 something. Yeah, it was a report from a --

8 JUDGE WALD: It's the same thing, basically.

9 It's like a medical letter.

10 A. Yeah, medical letter.

11 JUDGE WALD: Okay. The second item in the

12 same column is "Red Cross Letters". Do you happen to

13 know what just the gist of a Red Cross letter would be

14 that several people had, apparently?

15 A. Yeah, I mean probably somebody else can

16 explain it better, but these were messages that

17 appeared to be transmitted to and from people, to

18 refugees. They had gone through the Red Cross. Now,

19 obviously they had letters from people and to people,

20 so it was sometimes difficult to tell necessarily who

21 was the recipient, and sometimes they might carry

22 letters from more than one individual. But these were

23 the letters that were transferred through the Red Cross

24 to these people.

25 JUDGE WALD: Thank you.

Page 4032

1 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation]

2 Dr. Lawrence, I would like to go back to the situation

3 when we spoke about the encirclement. I'm going ahead

4 a bit.

5 Would it be possible to have a situation of

6 gunfire, that people would mutually kill each other

7 under conditions of an encirclement?

8 A. I'm not familiar with the customs in this

9 court, but I think in Australian courts I would tell

10 you when I think I'm being dragged out of my area of

11 expertise, and I think I'm being dragged out of my area

12 of expertise here.

13 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Yes. I

14 asked this question because you said that in that kind

15 of situation, the people in the centre could -- that

16 the gunshots were coming from several directions. But

17 if you shoot from this direction, for the person in the

18 middle the gunshot could go ahead of the person in the

19 middle.

20 I asked you this question because you did

21 give your opinions, but of course I won't insist and I

22 understand your answer fully, Dr. Lawrence, and accept

23 it.

24 Mr. Harmon, have we got any documents to

25 tender?

Page 4033

1 MR. HARMON: Mr. President, I have a number

2 of documents in respect of Dr. Lawrence's testimony and

3 one document in respect of Dr. Clark's testimony that

4 was omitted.

5 In respect of the exhibits introduced through

6 Dr. Lawrence, that would be Prosecutor's Exhibit 260

7 through 268, and there are B/C/S and French versions as

8 well. The B/C/S versions are marked with the letter

9 "A". The French versions are marked with the letter

10 "B" in respect of those exhibits. I'm informed there

11 are no French translations, however, for 263 and for

12 266. In addition, we have Dr. Lawrence's CV, which is

13 Prosecutor's Exhibit 221, and a diagram that was marked

14 as Prosecutor's Exhibit 259.

15 So there are those exhibits in respect of

16 Dr. Lawrence's testimony.

17 And in respect of Dr. Clark's testimony, if I

18 could, it's with respect to Exhibit 258, which is a

19 photograph of a defect in the back of a skull.

20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation]

21 Mr. Visnjic, have you any objections?

22 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President,

23 no objections.

24 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Madam

25 Registrar, would you take note of the different

Page 4034

1 versions of the documents, and the documents have been

2 accepted into evidence.

3 Dr. Lawrence, that completes your testimony

4 in this International Tribunal. We extend our

5 gratitude to you for having come and for your

6 cooperation with international justice. We wish you

7 every success in your future work.

8 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Mr. President.

9 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Yes,

10 Mr. Visnjic, I see that you're on your feet.

11 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President,

12 I should like to take advantage of this opportunity to

13 request that our expert, Mr. Stankovic, also be allowed

14 to leave the courtroom.

15 [The witness withdrew]

16 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Yes, and we

17 should like to thank him as well.

18 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your

19 Honour.

20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Mr. Harmon,

21 normally this is the time for our 20-minute break,

22 which means that we would have 10 minutes after the

23 break. The question now is the following: Are we

24 going to take a break now, and do you have something

25 for the other ten minutes left, or are we going to

Page 4035

1 complete our work for today? What do you think,

2 Mr. Harmon?

3 MR. HARMON: I think it would be appropriate

4 to complete our work today if all I have left is ten

5 minutes. So thank you very much, Mr. President, Your

6 Honours.

7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Do you

8 agree, Mr. Visnjic?

9 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] I do indeed,

10 Your Honour.

11 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Very well.

12 We're not going to have a break and come back into the

13 courtroom, but we'll go on and tomorrow at 9.30 we will

14 resume.

15 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

16 at 1.55 p.m., to be reconvened on

17 Thursday, the 1st day of June, 2000,

18 at 9.30 a.m.

19

20

21

22

23

24

25