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19 [Open session]

20 THE REGISTRAR: We are in open session, Your Honours.

21 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I will have objections with regard to

22 this witness when you're prepared to hear them.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, the witness to whom you're referring, I

24 assume, is John Sweeney. Can I take it, Ms. Moeller, that that is the

25 next witness?

1 MS. MOELLER: Indeed, Your Honour, he is.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, before Mr. Sweeney is brought in, let me hear

3 what Mr. Ackerman has to say in objection.

4 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, Mr. Sepenuk has a preliminary matter

5 and then I have some others.

6 MR. SEPENUK: Yes, I also had an objection, Your Honour, to

7 certain portions of the statement, but I believe we've resolved it. I had

8 objected to the first four paragraphs on page 10 of the statement. I

9 spoke to Ms. Moeller about this before the session, and she has agreed to

10 delete those four paragraphs.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Ms. Moeller.

12 MS. MOELLER: That's correct, Your Honour.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. So we can take our pens through these

14 four paragraphs. Thank you.

15 Now, Mr. Ackerman.

16 MR. SEPENUK: Thank you, Your Honour.

17 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, the first objection I have regards

18 page 9 of the statement, starting with the paragraph: "Their statements

19 cross-corroborated ..." and every remaining paragraph of that page

20 basically involves the opinions of this witness. I think it's

21 inappropriate to have a witness come talk about the truthfulness of what

22 people have told him. He talks about -- that it's his opinion that there

23 had to be a plan for what he saw happen, happen, just a number of

24 opinions. He's not brought here as an expert witness, he's not qualified

25 as an expert witness, and has no business giving these kinds of opinions

1 to this Court. I would therefore ask that those paragraphs all be

2 excluded from his statement because they are opinion testimony, pretty

3 much all of it.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we're on -- this is all on page 9, is it,

5 Mr. Ackerman?

6 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes, it's page 9, from "Their statements

7 cross-corroborated..." to the bottom, and then the first four of the next

8 page have already been eliminated.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, there are factual statements included in

10 these paragraphs as well.

11 MR. ACKERMAN: I'm aware of that, Your Honour. I found it very

12 difficult to try to separate them out from the opinion, however, and I

13 thought perhaps we could eliminate the whole thing; and if they're

14 important enough to be dealt with, they can be dealt with live.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, that's one way of doing it, Mr. Ackerman.

16 Thank you.

17 Ms. Moeller.

18 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, I disagree with my learned colleague,

19 respectfully. As Your Honour's already noted, there are several points of

20 factual statements in there, and I don't see a need to take out the few

21 parts that may not be factual, because I think this is not a jury trial,

22 it's a trial, led by professional judges who are fully in a position to

23 distinguish, having the full statement, between these elements that are

24 fact elements and that can be given some evidentiary weight and others

25 that may just be ignored when you finally come to your opinion about this

1 trial.

2 Maybe, if I may add in particular, in some paragraphs, in this

3 part of the statement that Mr. Ackerman wants to delete, are two aspects

4 in there that I actually intend to address with the witness, factual

5 aspects of mass destruction which he saw himself and the displacement of

6 Kosovo Albanian refugee which will be part of his testimony today.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: In the parts that he's referred to, there is

8 reference to the witness "being left in no doubt as to the truthfulness of

9 the statements that had made to me." You would submit that's an

10 appropriate piece of evidence for him to give?

11 MS. MOELLER: I think it is his impression of the accounts he

12 received from the persons he spoke to in Mala Krusa very -- and actually

13 already in Albania, very close to the events. And I think it is fair for

14 the witness to make up his mind about whether he would believe these

15 people or not.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, speaking for myself, one paragraph that would

17 concern me would be the third-last paragraph on the page. First of all,

18 it would appear to be a form of expert evidence from someone who's not an

19 expert; secondly, there's no factual basis set out for it and it would

20 probably require weeks of evidence to set the factual basis for that

21 particular conclusion, whereas the witnesses would undoubtedly be able to

22 state the facts as he experienced them in relation to the events that this

23 statement is mainly dealing with, and there are then conclusions that you

24 can, no doubt, invite the Trial Chamber to draw about whether or not there

25 was an organisation or a plan behind this. So we shall consider the

1 position briefly.

2 [Trial Chamber confers]

3 JUDGE BONOMY: The only paragraph that we are prepared to exclude

4 from admission at this stage is the one beginning, "At this time I have

5 known Yugoslavia for eight years ..."

6 We take the view that the very first paragraph to which Mr.

7 Ackerman drew attention is problematic, but the issue of the weight to be

8 given to any individual witness's assessment of the reliability of

9 evidence given to him which he then relays to the Court is a matter that

10 can only be addressed at the end of the day in this case when we come to

11 assess all the evidence. And it's a matter on which submissions will

12 undoubtedly be made by the parties at the end of the day, including

13 submissions about the propriety of taking account of this sort of view.

14 But it's not a view that we are prepared to exclude from admission at this

15 stage; it's one to be taken into account, if appropriate, at the end of

16 the day.

17 So far as the rest of this page is concerned, the rest that

18 attention has been drawn to, we consider that it would be wise of the

19 Prosecutor to spend some time in live evidence with the witness so that,

20 if there are any more particular objections that you wish to take, they

21 can be taken at that stage. And if the Prosecutor fails to do so, then we

22 are alert to the possibility of further submissions once you have

23 cross-examined the witness.

24 So we don't say for a moment, Mr. Ackerman, that there isn't some

25 force in the point you make so far as what weight might be given to these

1 sort of comments, and, indeed, do recognise you may make even stronger

2 comments than simply to attack the weight that might be given to them.

3 But we think that over the piece, these are issues for determination at

4 the end of the case. We shall now hear from --

5 MR. ACKERMAN: Well, Your Honour, that's not the end of my

6 objections.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Oh, I'm sorry.

8 MR. ACKERMAN: I said I had several, and I do.

9 Your Honour, I appreciate what Ms. Moeller said about you all

10 being professional Judges and I totally accept that; but the other side of

11 that is we are in a court of law and there must be standards regarding the

12 admission of evidence. I totally -- you know, I'm totally comfortable

13 with you all reading what I'm trying to exclude here because I know, if

14 you will exclude it, you will exclude it from your minds completely. But

15 it should be excluded if you're going to do that.

16 I want to go now to a bunch of video-clips that the Prosecution

17 seeks to play to you today. These are all clips from -- I think from

18 documentaries that were created by John Sweeney, who is, among other

19 things, a documentary film-maker, with a certain view that he wanted to

20 propagate to the world that doesn't necessarily, in all cases, fit with

21 reality.

22 The thing that I find inadmissible or maybe bizarre about the

23 proposal to play these video-clips - and I assume Your Honours have the

24 transcript of these clips there with you - it seems to me it makes no

25 sense for the Prosecution to play, while John Sweeney is sitting on the

1 witness-stand, John Sweeney making pronouncements on video. If they are

2 things that he should be saying, then he should be saying them live here

3 rather than on video. And many of the things he says on video are things

4 that you'd never permit him to say here as a live witness; for

5 instance, "Little Krusa is empty, abandoned, yet full of ghosts," and

6 things like that.

7 That goes all the way through this video. And mostly what they're

8 going to play is John Sweeney talking. Occasionally somebody he's

9 interviewing gets to say something, and in all cases these are people who

10 have not been here and who won't be here and are people we'll never have

11 an opportunity to cross-examine.

12 I understand Your Honours can make your own evaluations regarding

13 that, but it just seems to me that this is inappropriate. If John Sweeney

14 is brought here to tell us what he saw when he visited Mala Krusa, then

15 let him tell us what he saw when he visited Mala Krusa and not give us his

16 opinions of what all he saw means. It just makes no sense to me that we

17 would have to sit here and watch him pronounce on television what he might

18 be able to say, if properly asked, during his live testimony.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, this objection, I take it, relates to the

20 material referred to also on page 10.

21 MR. ACKERMAN: Well, Your Honour, I think they have selected

22 certain clips that they call clip 1, clip 2, clip 3, clip 10, clip 4, 5,

23 6, 7, 8, and 9, ten clips from his video material. I don't think they

24 intend to offer any additional video material; if they do, I have the same

25 objection.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

2 Ms. Moeller.

3 MS. MOELLER: First of all, to clarify, we do seek to tender the

4 full video documentaries, not only the clips; however, it's correct we

5 selected a number of clips which are visual evidence. It is true that

6 Mr. Sweeney speaks over the visual effect, but it is more the visual

7 impact that Mr. Sweeney cannot describe as well as it is shown on the

8 tape. For instance, when he walks through Mala Krusa, you see the state

9 the houses were in, and this was the very week when UNMIK first entered

10 Kosovo after the war. This was about a month before any exhumation team

11 from this Tribunal ever came to this village. So it is very

12 contemporaneous evidence, it is the best evidence that you could have, and

13 I don't see that an oral description by Mr. Sweeney would replace such

14 kind of evidence fully.

15 The same relates to further clips we selected. The site where the

16 hay-barn was standing, again, Mr. Sweeney was there a month before the

17 exhumation team ever got there. He looked, in proofing, at the photos of

18 the exhumation team and noted immediately that this was much later than

19 when he was there, and the video does prove that it looked differently.

20 The next video-clip we selected because Mr. Sweeney provides for

21 the provenance of some documents that we wish to tender through him, which

22 are mentioned in his statement; as well, the lists of Serbian names. And

23 you can actually see in the video-clip how he physically seizes the

24 material, and he explains what the material is. So there is a connection

25 to tender this evidence.

1 Then the next clip relates to pictures of the perpetrators he

2 found, identifying the perpetrators who are appearing in these lists and

3 duty rotas.

4 The sixth video is a short scene showing forensic work in Mala

5 Krusa, again contemporaneous evidence depicting some attempts made to

6 exhume whatever was there still left to be found, and we have the

7 exhumation report relating to this examination that we will seek to

8 tender.

9 Then we have two clips relating to the Drini River. One of the

10 clips, again, Mr. Sweeney discovered a lorry which was half dumped into

11 the Drini River and he got to this lorry, very closely, and made some

12 discoveries that nobody else did. The exhumation team did not see or

13 examine this lorry, but Mr. Sweeney saw it at this very early time.

14 And the very last clip I selected is showing the victims who were

15 killed in this incident, because we do not have any antemortem photos of

16 these victims. And I would wish to tender this under the aspects of

17 victim impact and also the aspects that some of these victims who have

18 disappeared forever would be given a face. And that's what these clips

19 are about. And I think it would be admissible to play them for the

20 purposes that I have just outlined.

21 MR. ACKERMAN: May I respond very briefly, Your Honour?

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

23 MR. ACKERMAN: I agree with Ms. Moeller that, if there are videos

24 which will give you a better understanding of what Mala Krusa looked like

25 when he went there, those are probably admissible, and I'd have no

1 objection to those being shown in court without sound and he can describe

2 them live. But we don't need the drama of his video presentation, his

3 drama documentary, where he was taking a particular tack regarding this

4 matter. I think that's for the Court to make the decision about. But he

5 can describe what he saw, and I have no problem with that being shown in

6 court that way. But his on-camera descriptions are a little strange, Your

7 Honour.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, Mr. Ackerman, it's very difficult to simply

9 exclude all the commentary because there will, no doubt, be parts of which

10 are helpful in setting the factual position clear. When we heard a little

11 part, I think, of the first of these videos yesterday, I think I detected

12 on it rather somber and dramatic music that overlays some of the videos

13 and films you see about Yugoslavia. I can assure you that, if anything,

14 that simply alerts me to be very cautious about just how tendentious the

15 presentation may, in fact, be rather than activating a button that becomes

16 oversympathetic. So I think you need not worry about the Bench reacting

17 inappropriately to comments that happen to be there, if, over the piece,

18 the film is setting out the facts at a particularly relevant time and some

19 of the commentary is of assistance in clarifying the facts.

20 The one other matter that you may help us with, though,

21 Ms. Moeller, is this: I am not, for one, prepared to spend time on 80

22 files of Mr. Sweeney's newspaper and broadcast comments without being

23 directed to the particular relevance of the parts that you wish me to

24 concentrate on. So you will not have from me a sympathetic ear to the

25 reception of the two floppy disks that are referred to in the statement or

1 the 40 VHS tapes. I'm assuming that you have selected for presentation to

2 us in the clips the bits that you wish the Trial Chamber to consider and

3 that the rest is simply the source material to which, if matters arise

4 later, you would direct our attention to specific parts.

5 MS. MOELLER: Absolutely, Your Honours. I never intended to

6 tender the two floppy disks or the 40 tapes of raw material. From this

7 raw material I have selected one very short clip which relates to the

8 lorry in the river, which is not in the documentation but which I think is

9 very important first-hand evidence, and this is in this presentation. It

10 has been given an exhibit number. But for the rest, none of this material

11 is tendered.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. And that takes us, then, back to the two

13 video broadcasts. Can we not take it that you've selected from them what

14 is relevant and that it's not for us, then, on our own to explore these

15 but simply to confine our attention to the parts that you play in court?

16 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, we would respectfully seek to tender

17 the full two documentaries because it contains a lot more useful and

18 reliable, we submit, explanatory evidence. For instance, it also contains

19 clips where two of the witnesses who have testified here as court

20 witnesses, Mr. Ramadani and Mr. Krasniqi, appear in this tape and

21 demonstrate on this tape how the incident happened. This may be useful

22 corroborative evidence to their statements. And there is other material

23 showing the village, the surroundings, and other things that we would

24 submit is helpful to paint a full picture of the location and the events.

25 We will not ask, Your Honours, however, of course, to rely on any

1 conclusions drawn by Mr. Sweeney in this documentary or on any opinions he

2 puts forward. And I think that may alleviate some of the concerns of my

3 learned colleague Mr. Ackerman or the Court, hopefully.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

5 [Trial Chamber confers]

6 JUDGE BONOMY: We will admit the video-clips. We will reserve our

7 position on whether to admit the two videos in their entirety until the

8 end of the examination-in-chief. We'll now hear from -- sorry,

9 Mr. Ivetic.

10 MR. IVETIC: Sorry, Your Honour, I thought we might finish this

11 witness a bit quicker if I take care of all matters before we have the

12 statement submitted.

13 Your Honour, I would seek the Court's guidance as to a part of the

14 transcript that I have an objection to. It's on page 6 and deals with a

15 very lengthy recitation of what Mr. Sweeney purports that an individual

16 (redacted)

17 page 7. Unlike the other persons that Mr. Sweeney talks about, this

18 individual is not one who is coming before this Trial Chamber as an OTP

19 witness and therefore is not available for cross-examination.

20 The recitation of what Mr. Sweeney purports this witness stated or

21 this person stated is not sworn, not under oath, but is being presented --

22 and I believe is the only source for these allegations. I think that that

23 would go towards a violation of Rule 92 bis insofar as it's being

24 submitted in written form, and it clearly is styled as if it were a

25 (redacted)

1 word and there doesn't appear to be anything in that section that Mr.

2 Sweeney himself observed or heard from other people or confirmed through

3 any independent or objective analysis. And insofar as it goes towards

4 someone who, it might be argued, would be a subordinate of the accused,

5 therefore I think it does constitute a violation of Rule 92 bis and what

6 may be introduced in that regard.

7 Again, this is the section that starts with: (redacted)

8 (redacted)

9 The remaining paragraphs on page 7 -- the next paragraph on page 7, I

10 think, can come in because we did have another witness who talked about

11 that paragraph. But I think that the -- I see now that they've redacted a

12 large portion of that in the newest version of the statement that we just

13 received this morning. But I think that the remaining portions also ought

14 to be taken out insofar as --

15 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you may have advantage over me. Are you

16 saying that there is another version of this produced today?

17 MR. IVETIC: Yes, Your Honour. I have just been made aware that

18 the redacted version that has --

19 JUDGE BONOMY: And what's been redacted?

20 MR. IVETIC: Obviously the name of a certain witness was redacted.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Oh, yes.

22 MR. IVETIC: Then there is also -- it looks like the last entire

23 two paragraphs of page 6 have been redacted.

24 (redacted)

25 (redacted)

1 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, we should probably go into private

2 session as well.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Let me hear from Ms. Moeller first of all,

4 Mr. Ivetic, please.

5 MS. MOELLER: We redacted that part of the statement for security

6 reasons of another witness, and if I need to explain it further, we would

7 need, indeed, to go into private session for a second. We did not redact

8 it in order to take it out. We are not suggesting that this should not be

9 part of the statement. And if you will --

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay. So as far as we are concerned, the statement

11 remains as it was, and the redaction is simply to ensure that there is no

12 prejudice to security.

13 MS. MOELLER: That's correct, Your Honours. On your remark

14 yesterday that we should --

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

16 MS. MOELLER: -- attempt to have a speedy, unredacted version ready

17 of statements we tender under seal, we had this prepared for this witness

18 today already, and this is what Mr. Ivetic just referred to.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

20 Now, Mr. Ivetic, going on to page 7, what are you saying about the

21 top two paragraphs?

22 MR. IVETIC: Well, they are a continuation of the statement of the

23 individual. I think we are going to need to redact something that Your

24 Honour and I mentioned previously.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. What, this morning or --

1 MR. IVETIC: Yes.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: -- this afternoon?

3 MR. IVETIC: This afternoon, Your Honour. I just realised

4 something and that's why I wanted to go into private session to direct as

5 to what needs to be redacted from our discussion.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, let's go to private session for that purpose.

7 [Private session]

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18 [Open session]

19 THE REGISTRAR: We are in open session, Your Honours.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

21 Now, Mr. Ivetic, I thought you were saying that the first two

22 paragraphs on page 7 fell into a different category. Are you saying that

23 they also --

24 MR. IVETIC: They're just a continuation of the same portion and

25 so I think that they fall under the same objection.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. Thank you.

2 Now, Ms. Moeller, what's your response to that?

3 MS. MOELLER: My response to that would be that this is first-hand

4 hearsay evidence and, under the Rules of this Tribunal, admissible, and

5 that this is no reason to exclude this kind of evidence. We have a range

6 of jurisprudence on hearsay evidence in the Tribunal and -- for instance,

7 the Appeals Chamber in the Aleksovski decision --

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Can I put a particular question. What you say may

9 apply to the first paragraph that we're looking at. But what's the

10 position when the evidence that's hearsay contradicts the evidence of an

11 eye-witness who has given evidence here in court? Should that be

12 admissible?

13 MS. MOELLER: As far as I'm familiar with the jurisprudence, it

14 does not exclude the admissibility but it goes to the weight of the

15 evidence. And there is jurisprudence saying that usually live evidence

16 will have a greater weight than hearsay evidence, and I think that's also

17 a rule that applies, more or less, universally in legal systems. But

18 according to the jurisprudence here, I don't think it would be a reason to

19 exclude the evidence from the beginning.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

21 [Trial Chamber confers]

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, in admitting the statement, we will admit

23 these various paragraphs, but we draw attention to the jurisprudence of

24 the Tribunal which essentially would normally prefer the evidence of a

25 witness who has come here to be cross-examined to that of a witness whose

1 evidence is expressed by another hearsay where cross-examination of the

2 true source of the evidence is not possible. So we are particularly alert

3 to the difficulty of accepting hearsay evidence as against that of a

4 witness who's given evidence live in court.

5 Now, are there any other objections? Very well. We can now hear

6 from Mr. Sweeney, I think.

7 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, before the witness comes in, may I

8 address you on one -- actually, respond to one inquiry you made yesterday

9 about some IC pictures that were taken about where the Sejdi Batusha house

10 was on Exhibit P99, the aerial view of the village Mala Krusa. I would

11 have the reference for you now. It is IC64 and IC65, and it is referred

12 to by Mr. Ramadani in the transcript of 28 September, transcript page 4289

13 to 4290.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

15 [The witness entered court]

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I don't think Mr. Sweeney will need these

17 just for the moment. We can rig them up in due course, I think.

18 Good afternoon, Mr. Sweeney.

19 THE WITNESS: Good afternoon.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Could you please make the solemn declaration to

21 tell the truth by reading aloud the document which is now being placed

22 before you.

23 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the

24 whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Please be seated.

1 THE WITNESS: Thank you.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, it's probably as well you get fitted up with

3 the earphones for later in the evidence.

4 Ms. Moeller.

5 MS. MOELLER: Thank you, Your Honours.

6 WITNESS: JOHN SWEENEY

7 Examination by Ms. Moeller:

8 Q. Good afternoon, sir. Could you state your name for the transcript

9 once more, please.

10 A. Yes. It's John Sweeney.

11 Q. And where are you from, Mr. Sweeney?

12 A. I'm from London. I work for the BBC now.

13 Q. And before I go any further, I may remind you what I was reminded

14 of by the interpreters before the session, that we need to pause a little

15 bit between question and answer for the purpose of translation into

16 Serbian and other languages.

17 Mr. Sweeney, you already stated your profession. How long have

18 you been working in this position?

19 A. I have been a reporter since 1977, too long, and in that time I've

20 worked for a number of newspapers; the Observer newspaper for 12 years.

21 And then towards the end of that time I was also doing films for Channel

22 4, dispatches, which is why I am here today. And since 2001, I have been

23 working for the BBC.

24 Q. And how would you describe your -- what kind of journalist -- as

25 what kind of journalist would you describe yourself?

1 A. Well, in the sense --

2 Q. In terms of -- maybe I can lead a little bit. Would it be fair to

3 say you're an investigative journalist?

4 A. Some people think I'm a terrible journalist, but others -- I'm an

5 investigative journalist. I have won a number of awards when I was on the

6 Observer, the UK Journalist of the Year. I've won prizes from Amnesty

7 International for an investigation into torture in Chechnya. I've won

8 television prizes for a massacre in Kosovo, for my reporting of that, and

9 also for an investigation into miscarriages of justice in Britain. So

10 I've won a series of awards. I'm currently the Paul Foot prize winner

11 which is a prize in honour of an investigative journalist. So I am an

12 investigative journalist and I have some track record.

13 Q. And you said already you won an award for a documentary regarding

14 crimes committed in Kosovo?

15 A. Yes. Obviously, this Court isn't about the quality of one's

16 journalism, but I did -- in the spring and summer of 1999, I did two

17 television documentaries along -- at the same time, I was writing articles

18 for the Observer newspaper. And essentially it was the story of the

19 massacre in little Krusa, in Albanian Krusha e Vogel, in Serbian Mala

20 Krusa.

21 Q. Mr. Sweeney, did you give a statement to this Tribunal on the

22 22nd, 23rd, and 24th January, 2001?

23 A. I did, yes.

24 Q. And did you review this statement when you came here this week?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And do you attest that the statement accurately reflects your

2 evidence and what you would say if examined today?

3 A. Yes.

4 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, I would like to tender at this point

5 Exhibit P2363 under seal, this is the unredacted version; and the redacted

6 version, which is P2383.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

8 MS. MOELLER:

9 Q. You already told us a little bit about your experience. How many

10 years did you work on issues related to the Balkans before you did the

11 documentary about Mala Krusa?

12 A. I first went to what was Yugoslavia in 1991, after President

13 Milosevic, as was, sent the tanks in against the students. That's around

14 the spring -- certainly in the spring of 1991. I covered the sieges of

15 Vukovar, Vinkovci, Osijek, Dubrovnik, the battle for Zagreb, the movements

16 of people, refugees, killings of policemen initially and then refugees.

17 In 1992, I covered the Balkan war from the summer onwards, and I made

18 trips back in 1994, I believe, as well.

19 I came back to the -- the region -- it's fair to say that I've

20 covered the region from 1989, the revolution in Romania. I wrote a book

21 about Ceaucescu. So, in all, I've been in the region for quite a while,

22 and in Yugoslavia -- former Yugoslavia, in particular, from 1991.

23 Q. Thank you. Now I would like to talk to you about these two

24 documentaries that you did about the events in Krusha e Vogel. The names

25 of these documentaries are "Witness to Murder" and "Prime Suspect." Is

1 that correct?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. How did you first hear about Krusha e Vogel at all?

4 A. What happened was that the whole world knew that there was --

5 there was great trouble brewing. There had been a series of killings in

6 Kosovo, and most journalists, like myself, find it extremely difficult to

7 get visas into Yugoslavia, into Serbia, and into Kosovo in particular. So

8 I had come to Albania and was in -- my base was Tirana. I was trying to

9 essentially get as close to what was going on. We heard very quickly NATO

10 had dropped bombs on Belgrade, and we knew that there would be a reaction

11 to this by the Serb authorities. There was. There was a river of

12 refugees running from Kosovo into Albania, and so as soon as I practically

13 could, myself and a couple of newspaper colleagues went to the border --

14 to as close as we could to the border to interview people. Basically what

15 we were trying to do was to find out the most recent, the most fresh

16 information.

17 I wasn't working for Channel 4, the television company, at this

18 time; I was just working for the Observer. And what happens is, as we're

19 driving towards the border, essentially we're going sort of east back from

20 Tirana to the border between Kosovo and Albania. We're driving the car

21 and we see a group of, I would say, I don't know, five, six, seven men who

22 were clearly exhausted, who got themselves by the side of the road, and

23 they lay there and they looked shattered. We stopped the car, put the car

24 in reverse, and we talked to them. They were, I believe -- I think they

25 were the (redacted). But they were the men who had lived in little Krusa,

1 but on the other side of the road from where most of the men and boys were

2 killed, and they had managed to escape.

3 Now, they said that some of their relatives had been killed and

4 there had been a massacre in the village. How many? More than a hundred,

5 they said. And I wrote it down in my notebook, little Krusa, Mala Krusa.

6 And --

7 Q. Okay --

8 A. -- it stuck in my mind to see if I could get to the bottom of this

9 one. What happened subsequently was we got to the front line and we saw

10 the general, sort of, scenes of chaos. But I thought now I'm going to try

11 and find out about this massacre, about what happened there.

12 Q. Can I stop you here?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. We have to move on. After you found out generally about this

15 massacre, so-called massacre, had happened according to these people, did

16 you then start to try to find some of the survivors in refugee camps in

17 Albania, did you?

18 A. Yes. Well --

19 Q. Yes. Let me --

20 A. Sure thing.

21 Q. We have only limited time.

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. I'm sorry to cut you short a little bit.

24 A. It's okay.

25 Q. To how many of these refugee camps did you go, if you remember?

1 A. We trawled in Albania. We went to Elbasan, Fier, again and again

2 and again. We'd heard -- by this time, I'd heard a story that there was a

3 man who'd survived the massacre who'd run away, and he had burnt hands.

4 Q. Yes. Thank you.

5 MS. MOELLER: Can we play a short video-clip showing the situation

6 in the camps in Albania.

7 [Videotape played]

8 "JOHN SWEENEY: But there are so many claims of massacre. What's

9 needed is hard evidence. We set out to uncover what really happened in

10 just one small place. We set out to find someone who didn't just hear of

11 the killing but saw it with their own eyes. We set out to name the

12 killers. Albania, Europe's poorest country, has had to cope with an

13 avalanche of humanity. Finding anyone from little Krusa, just a thousand

14 souls in the chaos of half a million refugees, was not going to be easy.

15 We are looking for people from Krusha e Vogel. We are looking for people

16 from Krusha e Vogel. Yes, from Krusha e Vogel."

17 "UNKNOWN MAN: We go there because they are telling us there are

18 people ..."

19 "JOHN SWEENEY: To help me I call up an old friend, the writer

20 Agim Neza who knows his way around."

21 [Technical difficulty]

22 "JOHN SWEENEY: But there are so many claims of massacre. What's

23 needed is hard evidence. We set out to find out what really happened in

24 just one small place. We set out to find someone who didn't just hear of

25 the killing but saw it with their own ..."

1 MS. MOELLER: I'm sorry, Your Honour, there has -- seems to have

2 been a technical mistake. I think we're -- it was actually supposed to go

3 on into the camp. I think we will move on.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Sweeney, where was that camp?

5 THE WITNESS: Some of -- it's difficult to tell precisely. We

6 started off in Tirana, and we went to a good number around -- we found a

7 woman who knew somebody from a neighbouring village, and we managed to

8 pursue a family member to Elbasan, who was able to tell us more.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you're misunderstanding my question.

10 THE WITNESS: Yes.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: I'm looking at the broader picture and trying to

12 identify which particular camp this was.

13 THE WITNESS: This is a camp, a refugee camp, on the outskirts of

14 Tirana; that's where we started.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: So the buildings we see in the film are part of

16 Tirana.

17 THE WITNESS: Yes.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: That's helpful to know.

19 THE WITNESS: Sure thing. We started from there and we sort of

20 trawled through a number of refugee camps.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Ms. Moeller.

22 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, I would like to try to replay it from

23 the sequence where it suddenly jumped back because that shows the actual

24 camp, with your leave.

25 [Videotape played]

1 "UNKNOWN MAN: We go there because they are telling us there

2 are ..."

3 "JOHN SWEENEY: To help me I call up an old friend, the writer Agim

4 Neza, who knows his way around. Cruelty cannot be measured by numbers

5 alone. Everyone here - doctors, peasants, teachers, labourers, and poets

6 - has their own story of agony. It's hard to take in all this pain. But

7 if we understood the horror of one war crime, it would help to understand

8 the horror that is Kosovo. No one from little Krusa here."

9 MS. MOELLER:

10 Q. Mr. Sweeney, the other camps that you went to and tried to find

11 survivors of the killing, was the situation for the refugees similar to

12 the one we just saw in this clip?

13 A. Yes, yes. People were scattered, literally, across Albania, and

14 the -- the story was the same. They had been chased out of their homes at

15 gunpoint. They were afraid. There were some stories -- in a sense, we

16 were focussing on Krusha e Vogel, but there was just a mountain of misery

17 these people had run.

18 Q. Okay. Approximately which time was it that you went to these

19 refugee camps?

20 A. Well, immediately after the NATO bombing, so it's in, essentially,

21 the week we're talking about.

22 Q. So April of 1999.

23 A. Yes, it's April 1999 -- well, it's late March and -- very late

24 March and early April.

25 Q. Mm-hmm. And for the first documentary, "Witness to Murder," you

1 actually never got to go into Kosovo before this documentary was aired,

2 was it?

3 A. No. We succeeded in finding, I think at the end, three

4 witnesses - certainly we put, I think, three on film - who had been in the

5 massacre, they said, and they had managed to run away and survive. We'd

6 also spoken to a good number of the women folk who had witnessed the

7 scenes running -- essentially the selection, what happened to the village

8 before and after, and we used that evidence. We didn't say -- we didn't

9 say we'd gone back to the village because that would have been wholly

10 untrue. We were accurate and fair in saying that these are the stories

11 that we hear from them.

12 Q. And you say that you talked to a number of people. Could you

13 describe to the Court how you would interview the people you talked to

14 about these events.

15 A. Well, what we tried to do, bearing in mind the chaos of this mass

16 refugee -- with the chaos, the number of people that were running, what we

17 tried to do was interview individual people on their own, as much as

18 possible. There is an awful lot of, sort of, white noise of chaos. And I

19 wanted to say to people: "No. Did you see with it your own eyes?" And I

20 wanted to interview them, where best, person to person, so there's just

21 myself, the translator, and the camera, and I wanted to find out who did

22 it, who did they see -- in particular, the women, who did they see coming

23 towards -- and, as far as possible, we tried to do that. Sometimes we

24 failed; some of the time we succeeded.

25 But we managed by focussing on this one particular thing, we

1 managed to build up a clear picture of who we were looking for and who the

2 key personalities in it were, and who had been killed.

3 Q. This first documentary, "Witness to Murder," was aired in Great

4 Britain in May 1999 already?

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. And only after that point you then got to actually enter Kosovo,

7 where you then made the second documentary, "Prime Suspects." Is that

8 correct?

9 A. Yes. Bear in mind, for a journalist like myself at this time, it

10 was impossible for me to get a visa into Serbia because of the way Serbia,

11 then Yugoslavia, was controlled, so that I wanted to go there but I

12 couldn't. And it was only when NATO went in that we were -- had the

13 occasion, from the 12th of June onwards, I went in, as it happens, on a

14 British tank, hitched a lift. And a couple of days later, we drove down

15 from Pristina down to the south-west corner --

16 Q. Yes.

17 A. -- and that's when I got to little Krusa.

18 Q. So you entered basically the day when UNMIK entered.

19 A. I entered the day that NATO -- well, whatever the name of the

20 army, on the 12th of June, yes, that very first day, but I went to

21 Pristina with the British army. A couple of journalists, German

22 journalists, were killed, I think, that day or the next day.

23 Q. Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Sweeney, we cannot hear all the details

24 today.

25 A. Sure thing.

1 Q. You already mentioned you went from Pristina down to Krusha e

2 Vogel. What did you notice on your way there? How was the state of the

3 villages you came by?

4 A. There was an astonishing, obvious discrepancy. Albanian homes had

5 been burnt; Serb homes were untouched. There had been NATO bombing, and

6 when I saw a couple of the big TV -- I think a TV mast in Pristina had got

7 hit, but the hits by NATO were very, very precise. The rest of the

8 countryside, you could go through a Serbian village and the routes were

9 untouched. Now, that changed later when there was some Albanian payback

10 on the Serbs, but at the time I was first there, it was self-evident. You

11 knew you were in a village with Albanian homes because they'd been burnt

12 down, the route had gone, the people had fled, and you'd see animals,

13 cows, dogs, running around. And this general -- without their owners.

14 And this general picture was certainly the case in Krusa -- in little

15 Krusa.

16 Q. And which villages or cities did you come by while you were in

17 Kosovo where you noticed the kind of destruction that you just described,

18 if you can recall?

19 A. It was -- the destruction got worse the closer you went west, the

20 more -- in a sense, I think there was an attempt by the Serb military and

21 police to close down the possibility of any support for the people they

22 would see as the guerillas, the UCK, from Albania --

23 Q. I'm sorry to interrupt you again, but --

24 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I'm going to object to the witness

25 giving his thoughts about an attempt by Serb military and police to do

1 things he doesn't know about. He doesn't know that.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: I think, Mr. Sweeney, you should confine yourself

3 to answering the particular questions that are asked of you --?

4 THE WITNESS: Okay.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: -- because there are contentious issues that we know

6 about which may not be the uppermost in your mind but which the court has

7 to be alert to. That is why counsel are themselves trying to control the

8 questions they ask you.

9 THE WITNESS: Right. It's fair to say that there was much more

10 damage done to homes in the west of the country --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: We've had that answer --

12 THE WITNESS: Yes.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: -- so let's move on to the next question, please,

14 Ms. Moeller.

15 THE WITNESS: Okay. Sorry.

16 MS. MOELLER:

17 Q. On which day did you enter Krusha e Vogel, if you remember? Just

18 the date.

19 A. I think it was the 14th of June.

20 MS. MOELLER: Can we play the next video which shows the village

21 at that time.

22 THE WITNESS: By all means.

23 [Videotape played]

24 "JOHN SWEENEY: It's mid-June. The war is over. Powers of the

25 NATO rolls into Kosovo. I'm close on their heels. The Serb forces are

1 retreating, but liberation comes too late for 10.000 murdered Albanians.

2 Krusha e Vogel? Krusha e Vogel? Our murder inquiry starts at the scene

3 of the crime. This is little Krusa, a ruin of a village in a ruin of a

4 country. You can't get to the bottom of 10.000 murders; you can try with

5 a hundred. Little Krusa is empty, abandoned, yet full of ghosts. This is

6 the aftermath of ethnic cleansing."

7 MS. MOELLER:

8 Q. How many of the houses in Krusha e Vogel looked like the ones

9 depicted in the documentary?

10 A. Most of them, most of them, the majority -- a certain number of

11 the village, most of them had been gutted. The ones which weren't, we

12 found, were the ones who'd belonged to the Serbs who fled. By the time we

13 got back, most of the Albanians -- the Kosovars who were in the refugee

14 camps hadn't returned, so we, in fact, got there before they did.

15 Q. And close to your arrival in Krusha e Vogel, you also tried to

16 find the Batusha hay-barn or cow-shed in which the killing had allegedly

17 taken place.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. All right.

20 A. It was unrecognisable. Your Honour, bear in mind that all our

21 descriptions had come from the refugees, and they were -- they were

22 talking about the time -- they were advising us about the time. They

23 didn't know that their homes had been burnt. I think they'd seen smoke in

24 the distance, but they weren't sure. We were looking for a hay-barn and

25 couldn't find it at first. Then one of the villagers showed us. When we

1 arrived it was a hole in the ground.

2 Q. And we are going to play the next clip which will show this

3 sequence.

4 [Videotape played]

5 "JOHN SWEENEY: The trail of evidence begins with a hay-barn, but

6 where is it? The village is full of gutted hay barns. One of the first

7 refugees to return is someone who'd actually survived the

8 machine-gunning. Everything he owned is ashes, and that is not the worst

9 of it. Shamil Shehu lost 40 members of his family. He knows exactly

10 where the hay-barn is. The last time Shamil had taken this path, he had

11 been forced at gunpoint along with 111 men of his village. The hay-barn

12 isn't here anymore; instead, just a crater. No bullets. No blood. No

13 bodies. The Serbs had blown it up."

14 "SHAMIL SHEHU: I still find it hard to believe that I'm alive. I

15 wish that they'd killed me rather than my sons. Here I lost two of my

16 sons, three brothers, and five nephews. Altogether, 40 of my family were

17 killed. Now I have to look after what's left of my family."

18 "JOHN SWEENEY: This man, Rasim Batusha, is the owner of the

19 hay-barn. He's alive because he was away working on a building site in

20 Germany. Now everything is gone. Twenty-two of Rasim's relatives were

21 murdered here, among them, his three brothers and his eldest son."

22 "RASIM BATUSHA: I found this over there in the middle of that

23 pit. It can't be anything else but a human bone."

24 MS. MOELLER:

25 Q. So just for us to understand, in June 1999, when you first came to

1 the site where the hay-barn had been, was one of the holes actually not

2 yet filled with water?

3 A. Yes. Those pictures are taken from the very earliest time, I

4 think, so if there's no water in it, there was no water at the time.

5 Let's remember, if it rains a lot, it's going to fill up and go. We were

6 there quite a while, but I think those were some of the very first

7 pictures we took.

8 Q. And the bone was found in the ditch that was filled with water or

9 in the other one, if you recall?

10 A. I can't recall where it was found. I didn't find it. I don't

11 know whether that's a human bone or not. In a sense, we're reporting

12 their suspicions. What they're trying to do is find their relatives.

13 They're trying to find bones; they're trying to find bodies. They think

14 they're dead and they couldn't find them.

15 Q. And the next step in your investigation in this matter was that

16 you started searching in some of the abandoned Serbian houses in the

17 village, did you?

18 A. Yes. We were worried lest they be booby-trapped, but it struck

19 me -- we'd got a series of names from the Albanians, the people -- that

20 the women had eye-witnessed basically back in -- a couple of months before

21 that. They had seen their neighbours; they identified them. Dmitri

22 Nikolic was one name; Savo Nikolic was another.

23 Q. Yes.

24 A. And I went to their homes to look for them.

25 MS. MOELLER: Can we play the next clip, please, that shows this.

1 [Videotape played].

2 "JOHN SWEENEY: Our third break. The Serbs were outnumbered ten

3 to one in Kosovo. They were the ones with the fire power. Nearly every

4 Serb man and boy in the village was armed and mobilised in the local

5 militia. The Serb militia were careless. They left this behind. It

6 looks like a scruffy exercise book, but it's material evidence. In it are

7 a series of names of soldiers who were on guard in little Krusa after the

8 massacre. Amongst the names are two that are becoming all too familiar -

9 Sveta Tasic and Sava Nikolic. And there is another find - a duty rota,

10 another item of material evidence. It's astonishing they've left this

11 behind. This list identifies 24 names, making up three militia platoons

12 in little Krusa. Some we know have form. The document places all 24 men

13 on militia duty in the village. All of these men know something about the

14 clean-up operation. Some of them know something about the murders. All

15 are suspects now."

16 MS. MOELLER:

17 Q. The notebook and the list of names that were just shown in this

18 clip, did you find both items yourself?

19 A. No, I didn't. I didn't find the notebook, which is the first

20 document. That was handed to me by one of the Albanian women. The second

21 document I believe I found myself. It's hard to remember this far back,

22 but I was talking to my colleague, the producer, and he said, "No, John,

23 you found nearly everything in there," because it almost became a mission

24 of mine to find the evidence, anything we could. I was also looking for

25 photographs so we could put images to names. So I found the second piece

1 of paper, I believe, but the notebook was handed to me.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Sweeney, where are these documents?

3 THE WITNESS: I think they are with you.

4 MS. MOELLER: Yes. They're now in the possession of the Office of

5 the Prosecutor, Your Honours.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: And are they exhibits in the case?

7 MS. MOELLER: They are, indeed.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

9 MS. MOELLER:

10 Q. You just referred to having found photographs as well. Once you

11 had these photographs, did you meet up with some of the survivors who had

12 at that point returned to the village to identify the persons on the

13 photos?

14 A. Yes, we did.

15 Q. And how did you do this procedure?

16 A. Well, what we wanted to do was to be absolutely sure -- let's

17 remember that this is -- there isn't a more serious allegation you can

18 make against someone that they've taken part in a massacre. So we wanted

19 to be absolutely sure that we had a correct match between the photo and

20 the name. So I think we did this process several times, but we also -- we

21 filmed -- we filmed it with two of our key Albanian witnesses from the

22 village. Let's bear in mind, by the way, that this village had been --

23 was half and half, Albanian and Serb, so everybody knew everybody else.

24 Q. Thank you.

25 MS. MOELLER: Can we play the next clip which depicts this

1 identification procedure.

2 [Videotape played]

3 "JOHN SWEENEY: I'd taken a pile of photographs from the Serbs'

4 houses. I began with a list of four suspects. Now I've got 24. But are

5 any of these mug shots of the men I am looking for? The next step is to

6 get Mehmet and Shamil together to identify the line-up."

7 "SHAMIL SHEHU: He was the first to shoot at us. As our families

8 were heading for the mountains, Sava shot at us from his house."

9 "JOHN SWEENEY: Now we can put faces to names: Sava Nikolic; his

10 comrade in arms, Sveta Tasic; their friend and neighbour, Momcilo Nikolic,

11 and his uncle Dmitri Nikolic. Now we know what the men on our wanted list

12 look like. We can start to track them down."

13 MS. MOELLER:

14 Q. Now, would it be fair to say that you had already been in the

15 village for some time before the exhumation team for the ICTY ever arrived

16 there?

17 A. Yes. They -- I'm not sure when they turned up, but we'd been

18 there for a -- for about a month, I think, but certainly two or three

19 weeks before they turned up. They had other work to do, so it's not as if

20 they were being lazy. It was just that -- but this place was our

21 priority.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Sweeney, who was the person who referred to

23 being shot at in the last clip?

24 THE WITNESS: That man is -- is that Mehmet Shehu? No, that's

25 Shamil; that's his first name. What he's referring to, Your Honour, is

1 that there was a day when the Serb forces first arrived, the Serb forces

2 and their neighbours, chased the villagers -- or the villagers ran off

3 into the hills, and I believe that Sava Nikolic shot at them -- or his

4 testimony is referring to that man, or what he's saying is referring to

5 that moment. And they came back the next day.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Please bear in mind my question again. It was just

7 simply the identification of the person I was after. It's important you

8 confine yourself to answering the questions that are asked because of the

9 time constraints that are on us. It gets very boring referring to these,

10 but they are important.

11 THE WITNESS: Fine.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: You've answered it.

13 Ms. Moeller.

14 THE WITNESS: Shamil Shehu, I believe.

15 MS. MOELLER:

16 Q. Yes. And the second person you've already mentioned, Mehmet, the

17 second person that was sitting there with you.

18 A. That's Mehmet Krasniqi, who, in my deposition -- you can answer

19 that point, I think.

20 Q. Yes, thank you. I think the Court is familiar with this name.

21 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, I see we are approaching the time for

22 a break.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: How long is your examination going to be,

24 Ms. Moeller?

25 MS. MOELLER: I have -- I have three more clips that I would like

1 to play and ask some questions --

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, all right.

3 MS. MOELLER: -- so maybe another 10 to 12 minutes.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Very well. We'll resume at ten minutes past 4.00.

5 Mr. Sweeney, the usher will show you where to wait while we have

6 our break. If you can just leave the courtroom just now, please.

7 THE WITNESS: Thank you.

8 [The witness stands down]

9 --- Recess taken at 3.49 p.m.

10 --- On resuming at 4.20 p.m.

11 [The witness takes the stand]

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Just before we continue, Mr. Sweeney, you said that

13 this was a village where the population was about 50/50, Serb/Albanian.

14 We've had evidence already from eye-witnesses to this incident, including

15 Mehmet, now Krasniqi, but you may have known him as Avdyli, who said that

16 it had a minority Serb population. There were only about a quarter of the

17 number of houses -- sorry, in fact, he said there were only about 23 Serb

18 houses, yes, and about a hundred Albanian houses. You had a different

19 impression?

20 THE WITNESS: No, I'm wrong. It's his village. Geographically

21 there was a kind of -- a small part of the village where the massacre took

22 place where --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: I don't need to know any more than that --

24 THE WITNESS: Right.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: -- If you accept that he's more likely to be

1 correct.

2 THE WITNESS: He lives there; I don't.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Second question I would like to ask you: We saw

4 these two documents, the book and the document. To what organisation did

5 they relate?

6 THE WITNESS: I don't know. My guess -- my educated guess was

7 that it was some kind of a duty rota.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: I understand that, but anyway, you don't know the

9 answer to what organisation they relate.

10 And my third question is: What happened to the uniform that you

11 showed on the video-clip?

12 THE WITNESS: We -- that would have been left there. Essentially

13 we went into these places, filmed them, and then left. The exception --

14 the things that I took from the places, the Serb homes, were passbooks and

15 photographs.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

17 Ms. Moeller.

18 MS. MOELLER:

19 Q. And just picking up on the uniform issue, was that the only

20 uniform you saw in this house, or did you find uniforms in several houses

21 or in any other house?

22 A. I believe I found -- there were sort of militia uniforms or police

23 or army uniform in a number of houses. It's difficult to remember at this

24 distance, but yes -- it wasn't a surprise. It was just -- it was a nice

25 shot of one uniform. I'm sure I saw others.

1 Q. Do you recall how the others you saw looked like?

2 A. I would hesitate --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Not surprisingly --

4 THE WITNESS: Yes --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: -- because you don't remember, as far as I can tell

6 from this end.

7 THE WITNESS: Yes. That's it.

8 MS. MOELLER:

9 Q. Yes. Okay. We left off before the break talking about the

10 exhumation team arriving in Krusha e Vogel, and I would like to play the

11 next short clip, which is two short consecutive clips. Your team actually

12 filmed part of this procedure, did it?

13 A. Yes.

14 [Videotape played]

15 "JOHN SWEENEY: Two months after the end of the war, forensic

16 experts from Scotland Yard arrive in little Krusa. They are working for

17 the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, but they've been busy. There are

18 10.000 murders to solve in Kosovo. Their task is to find out who was

19 killed and how. There is precious little for them to do at the hay-barn,

20 so they are probing what's left of this second murder site in the

21 village."

22 [Videotape played]

23 "JOHN SWEENEY: This is all that remains of six men. Shot in the

24 back and burned in yet another war crime. The relatives of the 106 men

25 murdered in the hay-barn haven't got even this grim consolation.

1 Unidentified bones and other debris have been found by the river Drin.

2 All the clues point to this as the place where the victims of the hay-barn

3 murder were dumped."

4 MS. MOELLER:

5 Q. This lorry that we just saw on the River Drin, did you investigate

6 that any further?

7 A. Yes. I went for a swim.

8 Q. And you had a closer look at that one, did you?

9 A. Yes, I swam down to it. It was in a difficult position to get the

10 camera around. But I swam around and saw what I believed to be

11 bloodstains.

12 MS. MOELLER: Can we play the next two short clips on this,

13 please.

14 [Videotape played]

15 "JOHN SWEENEY: So, there's a tarpaulin lorry. It's empty, but

16 this looks like lots and lots of blood on the lorry."

17 [Videotape played]

18 "JOHN SWEENEY: Okay, so, um ..."

19 "CAMERAMAN: Is there anything?"

20 "UNKNOWN WOMAN: Are there still bloodstains over there?"

21 "JOHN SWEENEY: Sorry?"

22 "UNKNOWN WOMAN: Bloodstains."

23 "JOHN SWEENEY: Yeah, there's -- there's -- it's absolutely soaked

24 in blood."

25 MS. MOELLER:

1 Q. Do you know whether the exhumation team ever had a look at this

2 lorry?

3 A. I don't believe they did. I can remember trying at the time to

4 get NATO to fish it out, but they were -- I believe they were very busy.

5 But I don't believe anybody has got, sort of, images of that. The camera

6 angle -- essentially, the bloodstains were on the river side, so we

7 couldn't get our camera at it. We didn't use that clip in our film, for

8 whatever reason, but I -- it's bringing it back to me and I can remember

9 there was what looked to me like a lot of bloodstains.

10 MS. MOELLER: Your Honour, this exhibit has its own number because

11 it's a small excerpt from the raw material that we do not seek to tender.

12 It's Exhibit Number P2364.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I object to it. It shows nothing but

14 Mr. Sweeney going for a swim.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, the practice we follow here, Mr. Ackerman, is

16 that these exhibits that are used in court are there to illustrate what

17 was shown, and the only way we can know that's all it shows is to have it

18 in the process. So it is admitted under our practice, but that doesn't

19 carry with it any other implication than that it will be evaluated for

20 what it shows.

21 So, carry on, please, Ms. Moeller.

22 MS. MOELLER:

23 Q. Now I would like to ask you some more questions in relation to

24 your statement. You speak about having seen -- in June 1999, having seen

25 mass destruction of Albanian homes and shops inside Kosovo. Do you

1 remember any villages or cities where you saw that? And only give us the

2 name, if you can.

3 A. The damage -- the serious damage, the kind of -- where almost not

4 a home was missed, would be on the west side; towns like Gjakova, all the

5 villages down from Gjakova to Krusha e Vogel. And there was a strange --

6 it stopped around Prizren. So, for whatever reason, there wasn't

7 violence, there wasn't evidence of arson of Albanian homes, roofless,

8 gutted, burnt down around there; but going north up that road, there was.

9 So virtually all the villages -- certainly the village greater Krusa was

10 damaged. I believe that 20 people killed there. And on to Gjakova.

11 Those are the places I can be absolutely certain of. But we're talking

12 about the destruction of almost every single Albanian home. And then

13 you'd pass through a Serbian area and the homes would be untouched at that

14 time.

15 Q. And how would you know at that time which area was Albanian and

16 which was Serbian?

17 A. Well, almost -- almost because you could -- whether they -- they

18 had a roof on their homes or not. This is what people told us. But

19 essentially the stories became -- it became obvious that it was true. And

20 certainly my experience of both little and greater Krusa, which I knew in

21 some detail, it was clear that all of the Albanian homes had been -- or

22 nearly all of them had been burnt -- burnt and destroyed. And the

23 wreckage was devastating.

24 Q. And another point I wish to clarify in your statement. It's on

25 page 9, the second-last paragraph. Therein you say that from March 1999

1 you saw hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees displaced from

2 their homes at gunpoint. I wish to clarify what you meant to say by that,

3 because you weren't in Kosovo at that time, I understood.

4 A. Yes. No, it's poor use of English. They told me that they had --

5 that they had fled. What I saw was a stream of refugees, hundreds of

6 thousands of them - myself and many other people, journalists, aid

7 workers, people from the UN, and so forth - a constant river of humanity,

8 trucks -- a few trucks, mainly tractors, on foot, mothers, old people,

9 screaming -- all saying the same story, that they'd been pursued by the

10 Serbs, they'd been told to go, to fuck off to Albania.

11 Q. Now, you were also given a home video by the Batusha family, if I

12 understand correctly, showing men and boys that were killed in the killing

13 in the Batusha barn, when they were still alive at a wedding. Is that

14 correct?

15 A. Yes. It's a simple thing lots of families would have everywhere

16 in the world. It's a video of their wedding party.

17 MS. MOELLER: Could we play this clip, please.

18 [Videotape played]

19 "JOHN SWEENEY: Rasim, granny Batusha's eldest son, is the only

20 man left in the family. He has given up his job in Germany and come to

21 look after the wives and children of his dead brothers. He brought the

22 only record left of the men of little Krusa - the video of the wedding

23 party of his murdered son Agi."

24 MS. MOELLER:

25 Q. The women and children that you see in this clip, who were they?

1 A. They're members of the Batusha family. I first met them in

2 Albania, in April, and essentially by this time they were -- they'd

3 realised that their men had been killed. They knew that pretty much.

4 They didn't see their men being killed. They were very much part of the

5 selection; they were the people who were put to one side. Then their men

6 trooped off - this is what they told me - and then they heard the

7 machine-gun fire.

8 Q. Thank you.

9 MS. MOELLER: Your Honours, that would complete my questions.

10 Would you like me to tender the exhibits now or at a later stage?

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we know what exhibits you've actually used,

12 but I need to find out from Mr. Sweeney a little more about the two video

13 films that were broadcast in 1999.

14 What, on these, have we not seen that will help us to determine

15 what happened and who was responsible?

16 THE WITNESS: Well, it's hard to -- hard for me to give a short

17 answer to that, but basically we tried quite hard to be as correct and as

18 dispassionate about the evidence that we got. The survivors of the

19 massacre in the film -- or the survivors, in particular the women,

20 identify the people who were at the selection. And then we have the men

21 who climbed from underneath the dead bodies and ran away. There is one

22 particular image which sticks in my mind which made me understand what

23 took place and -- well, it's -- in fact, some of the survival testimony.

24 The man with burnt hands, Mehmet Krasniqi, he's holding his hands behind

25 his back, and there's a moment where he ducks before the machine-gun

1 fire. And that's why he got to the ground. And then he was covered with

2 the people who had been mortally wounded.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: You have to --

4 THE WITNESS: Yes.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: It's helpful for you to tell us that, but bear in

6 mind we've seen him.

7 THE WITNESS: Yes, you've seen him. You've seen him in a

8 courtroom some years after the event. We filmed him at the -- well,

9 within a month or two of it happening. But I wouldn't want to, in any

10 way -- to tell you to watch this film. You're Judges; you're wholly

11 capable of making up your own mind about the evidence. All I can say is

12 that there are a number of scenes in the film which we found compelling.

13 Now, we may have got little bits and pieces wrong, but we found the

14 picture we told compelling of the hundred-plus men and boys taken to the

15 hay-barn, a tiny number of survivors. The women are witnesses to it, and

16 they know at least some of the people who did that, because they recognise

17 their neighbours, bearing in mind they also said that the army and the

18 police were there, too.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

20 [Trial Chamber confers]

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Ms. Moeller, what do you maintain that viewing the

22 rest of these films would add factually to our knowledge and enable us to

23 determine what happened and who was responsible?

24 MS. MOELLER: I think it would -- as I already said, it contains a

25 lot of -- which would be hearsay evidence, of course, of other persons

1 talking about the events, the females who were concerned by these events.

2 It also contains extensive footage showing the two witnesses who testified

3 here and who talked about the same event in a contemporaneous manner, very

4 close after the events occurred, which would corroborate their testimony

5 they gave here and the exact nature. It would also --

6 JUDGE BONOMY: One person giving an account on two occasions can't

7 be corroboration; it's the same source of evidence, the same person.

8 MS. MOELLER: Yes, but what I tried to say is it would demonstrate

9 that the recollection of the witnesses when testifying here was still very

10 clear and vivid, as the accounts are so identical that were given on both

11 occasions. It does also show some more visual documentary evidence

12 about -- the second video, which was filmed in Kosovo, gives some more

13 visual evidence about the situation in around Mala Krusa at the time, in

14 June 1999, as it was.

15 THE WITNESS: Sir, I --

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Please, this is not a matter for you now,

17 Mr. Sweeney.

18 [Trial Chamber confers]

19 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. We have decided that we will admit

20 these two video films in their entirety but are particularly conscious of

21 the fact that anything said by an apparent eye-witness to these events

22 will be regarded as hearsay which has not been subject to

23 cross-examination.

24 Mr. O'Sullivan.

25 Sorry. Judge Chowhan has a question before we ...

1 JUDGE CHOWHAN: [Microphone not activated]

2 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

3 JUDGE CHOWHAN: I apologise to the counsel for this.

4 Well, I just want to understand your personality, because it's

5 essential that we know about a witness. Now, for that, I had two names

6 before me of journalists, to find out which one of them you go along

7 with: Is it Walter Lippman or is it Phillip Simpson -- John Simpson?

8 Just to understand how you persevere. Or do you go for men like Domenico

9 Lapar [phoen] or things like that? They're all historical. Yes, some

10 more like that.

11 THE WITNESS: I would -- I would go for a different set of names,

12 and the key name is the man whose name escapes me right now, who is the

13 American reporter Murrow, Ed Murrow, who fought against McCarthy-ism. I

14 admire all of the people you've named. I think some of the people I'm not

15 sure about. I would seek to have done my best.

16 One of the things I think I'm quite proud of, as a programme team,

17 was that after we'd been in the village about two months, the Albanians

18 burnt down the Serb homes. Remember, the Serbs had done. But we show

19 that in the documentary. So the point is -- I'd like to make, is that

20 this isn't -- we didn't set out to make propaganda; we set out to try and

21 find out what had happened. And so when the Albanians burnt down the

22 homes of their Serb neighbours, albeit that the Serb neighbours had gone,

23 we showed that, too.

24 So I think it's very important for a journalist, when they come

25 across inconvenient truths, to report those, too. Those are the kinds of

1 journalists I admire.

2 JUDGE CHOWHAN: I thank you.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. O'Sullivan.

4 MR. O'SULLIVAN: Yes, Your Honour. The order will be: General

5 Pavkovic, General Ojdanic, General Lazarevic, Mr. Milutinovic,

6 Mr. Sainovic, and General Lukic.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman.

8 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, Your Honour.

9 Cross-examination by Mr. Ackerman:

10 Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Sweeney.

11 A. Good afternoon, sir.

12 Q. Right at the beginning of your testimony, you said there were some

13 people who think you're a terrible journalist. Why would someone think

14 you're a terrible journalist?

15 A. It was a joke.

16 Q. Oh, it was?

17 A. Yeah.

18 Q. Oh, okay. We were provided with a bunch of documents that you

19 apparently gave to the Prosecution, which they then gave to us, a number

20 of things that you have written, and I wanted to talk to you just a little

21 bit about some of those things.

22 Before I do that, I want to ask you something else, though.

23 You're now working with BBC?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. And is there any particular project you're working on now?

1 A. No -- well, I've just finished a film which aired concerns about

2 David Mills, his relationship with Silvio Berlusconi, and his wife or

3 estranged wife's business/personal conduct as well. She is the Secretary

4 of State for Culture. That was a BBC panorama piece that was aired on

5 Sunday. I am now waiting for the next thing I'm supposed to be doing.

6 Q. Have you been doing anything with regard to, for instance, Iraq or

7 Lebanon or any of the more recent conflicts?

8 A. I have to say that the cameraman, James Miller, who shot the

9 second film was killed by an Israeli soldier in 2003, and almost as a

10 direct result of that death, I have pretty much ceased to go to war

11 zones. I did spend -- I was actually in Iraq when I heard about James'

12 death; I spent a month in 2003 in Iraq. But since then I haven't been

13 anywhere that people would consider a war zone.

14 Q. All right. Now, let's go back to these documents. The first one

15 I want to talk about is a letter -- it looks like a letter; it may not

16 be. It may be a message of some kind. It says: "From John Sweeney to

17 Paul Vickers, 8 July 1999," and it was something you were writing to him.

18 And what you said in that was: "The war in Kosovo has changed the way the

19 democracies will fight battles forever. The tyrant of Belgrade was

20 humiliated and not a single soldier or airman was lost in the battle, even

21 though NATO, despite the bluster, only hit 13 tanks."

22 You mention the bluster of NATO. What do you mean when you speak

23 of the bluster of NATO?

24 A. Well, there was a -- well, first of all, I'm not quite sure,

25 unless I see it, what that was. Paul Vickers is a friend of mine. Was

1 this something that I had written for a newspaper or for the BBC, or am I

2 e-mailing a friend? That's my first point.

3 Second point: NATO, for many of us on the ground, we saw, had

4 been aware of a stream of violence coming out of Belgrade from 1991

5 onwards, to do -- driven by Slobodan Milosevic, and there was -- certainly

6 as far as most of my fellow journalists were concerned, there was an

7 annoyance that NATO sort of said, We'll have air cover, air support. It

8 didn't actually stop the wars happening in Bosnia and in Kosovo. So

9 that's what I meant by "bluster."

10 Q. All right. And then you talk about NATO only hitting 13 tanks.

11 To your knowledge, today, the knowledge you have today, is that an

12 accurate figure?

13 A. At this distance, I wouldn't want to stand by it. Certainly I've

14 been to Belgrade since then, I think sometime in 1999 or 2000, and

15 obviously -- no, the 13 tanks was a story at the time, so I think it was

16 roughly accurate. That's what people were saying at the time. If we know

17 better now, then fine.

18 Q. Now, you know, don't you, that NATO had Predator

19 drone-surveillance kinds of aircraft operating over Kosovo; they had other

20 kinds of surveillance aircraft; they had A-10 warthog tank-killer

21 aircraft. You know about all that, don't you?

22 A. The people who were running the predators weren't advertising that

23 in 1999. Certainly, if this was written on the 8th of July, 1999, I

24 wouldn't have known all that detail. I was aware of the stuff -- one was

25 aware of it. I didn't see any predator drones. So your question is --

1 well, I don't quite see what you're getting at.

2 Q. Well, what I'm getting at is, if this figure is correct, this 13

3 tanks, with all of the air power and capability that NATO had at the time,

4 would you agree that only 13 tanks were hit because the tanks must have

5 been kept very well hidden from NATO air cover?

6 A. Well, what you're asking me to defend is -- if I understand it

7 correctly, it's an e-mail to a friend --

8 Q. I'm really not asking you to defend anything. I'm asking you for

9 what knowledge you might have.

10 A. Right.

11 Q. I know you went to a lot of NATO briefings, so I know you were

12 familiar with what NATO was doing.

13 A. I think I went to -- because I was on the ground, you couldn't --

14 and I think I only went to one -- I did one trip to NATO Brussels

15 headquarters, where I was very sceptical of what NATO was saying because I

16 had seen the performance on the ground. I believe that they must have hit

17 more than 13 tanks, because subsequently we learnt more about what they

18 did. There was -- NATO said publicly, "We do not want to hit civilians,"

19 and there were a number of atrocities which were blamed on NATO, and I

20 investigated two of them. These were strikes against tractors. Obviously

21 this is more than 13 tanks. Those very stories -- that one had real

22 doubts about what really had happened. I can go on, if you want me to.

23 Q. No, I think that's good enough. What I do want to tell you is, if

24 I mention any document that you would like to look at before you answer,

25 if you let me know, I can get it brought over to you, because I have them

1 all here.

2 A. For example, if we're going to talk about this some more, then you

3 should show me a copy of this, whatever it was, e-mail, to my friend Paul

4 Vickers. But I would say that I'm not the NATO high commander. Basically

5 I'm a reporter who spent a lot of time in little Krusa, from June 1999

6 onwards. I mean, not a huge amount of time, but I spent every day there

7 for about four weeks, spread over six weeks, having been informed by the

8 survivors of the massacre in late April -- late March/early April of what

9 had happened.

10 Q. In the same e-mail - and, again, I'll show it to you if you want

11 to see it - in the same e-mail, you speak of a journalist by the name of

12 John Pilger. Is that the way you pronounce his name?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. And you say that he denounced your reporting from his gilded south

15 London salon.

16 A. Yes. I'd stick by that.

17 Q. So you know John Pilger well, do you?

18 A. I know of him. He was a man I used to admire. But the problem is

19 that he was denouncing my journalism about what had happened and he hadn't

20 been to Kosovo. He hadn't been before or he hadn't been after. And there

21 is a certain point to which, if you're a reporter, you report what you see

22 on the ground. And if somebody in London says, "This is rubbish, this is

23 not true," then you -- one reacts quite -- it's annoying, because how does

24 he know, if he's in London, what's going on in, say, little Krusa?

25 Q. You started your testimony today by -- I guess what you were

1 trying to do was tell the Chamber that you were an accomplished and

2 believable journalist by telling us the awards that you had won. John

3 Pilger was, according to a document I have here, Descriptive Writer of the

4 Year, 1966; Reporter of the Year, 1967 --

5 A. I was at school then.

6 Q. -- Journalist of the Year, 1967; International Reporter of the

7 Year, 1970; New Reporter of the Year, 1974; Campaigning Journalist of the

8 Year, 1977; Journalist of the Year, 1979; United Nations Media Peace

9 Prize, Australia, 1979 and 1980; United Nations Media Peace Prize, Gold

10 Medal, Australia, 1980, 1981 --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman, this is not a place for determining

12 the relative worths of journalists. If there are material pieces of

13 evidence that this witness has given that you want to challenge, then it

14 would be helpful to have our attention drawn to that.

15 MR. ACKERMAN: This is just a round-about way of getting there.

16 But if you don't want me to get there, you tell me. I mean, you're the

17 Judge, and if you don't want me to get there this way, then I won't.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, but it follows on from a statement that the

19 witness made about another journalist. And if you're going to put

20 something that Pilger has said that you think is relevant, fine; but if

21 you're not going to do that by going through the history of his biography,

22 it's not really going to enlighten us.

23 MR. ACKERMAN: I agree. It would be silly to be doing this if I

24 wasn't going somewhere with it. I'm not just trying to make Pilger look

25 good for the world. I'm going somewhere with it and I have something that

1 he said that I want to use with this witness. Advise me what you'd like

2 me to do, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: I'd like you to ask the question that you want to

4 ask, rather than go through a catalogue of his biography.

5 MR. ACKERMAN: Well, then, can I come back to his biography, so

6 you will understand that we're dealing with a very reputable journalist?

7 JUDGE BONOMY: If it turns out to be relevant. But just because

8 he's a reputable -- I suspect you will get the witness to agree that's

9 he's regarded as a reputable journalist, but perhaps not by him now.

10 THE WITNESS: I have his books on my bookshelf. He wrote about me

11 once in an admiring way and that was great. I never saw him in

12 Yugoslavia, not once.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: Now he's answering a question I didn't even ask.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, let's get to the question, Mr. Ackerman.

15 THE WITNESS: The point is --

16 JUDGE BONOMY: No, please, Mr. Sweeney, let's just get to the

17 question.

18 THE WITNESS: Right. I'm trying to guess it.

19 MR. ACKERMAN:

20 Q. I'm going back to your letter to John Sweeney or your e-mail --

21 A. I'm John Sweeney.

22 Q. I'm sorry, to Paul Vickers. You say to Paul Vickers: "Under the

23 immense pressure to get access, any access to the war, I would argue

24 rigorous journalism collapsed."

25 Does that mean that there was a great deal of unreliable

1 journalism coming out of the war in Kosovo? Is that what you're trying to

2 say?

3 A. There was a lot of pressure to work out what was going on, and it

4 was very, very difficult. Everything's difficult in a war.

5 Q. You told us today - and it's also in your statement - that one of

6 the things that makes you comfortable about the conclusions you drew about

7 what happened in Mala Krusa was the similarity of the statements that you

8 heard from people that had been there at the time.

9 A. I don't think I used the word "comfortable."

10 Q. You probably didn't. That's my word. Are you uncomfortable about

11 it?

12 A. No.

13 Q. That was something that was decisive in letting you draw the

14 conclusions that you drew, isn't it?

15 A. Yeah.

16 Q. Now, I have another document here that was written by you, and I

17 don't know how to identify it to you. At the very top it just has: "John

18 Sweeney, Skopije."

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. You speak of a person by the name of Audrey Gillen, and I'll show

21 it to you if you want to see it. Let me tell you what you said there, and

22 then if you want to check that, you can.

23 You said with regard to Audrey Gillen's challenge: "What's the

24 story? She is right to be uneasy of the near uniformity of the refugees'

25 claims. She is right to be uneasy about the power of hysteria and the

1 power of propaganda by the Kosovo Liberation Army."

2 A. I'd stick with that.

3 Q. All right. What do you mean when you talk there about the power

4 of hysteria?

5 A. People -- this isn't the first massacre story that I've done, so

6 I've been to a number of places where terrible things have happened:

7 Chechnya, Iraq, Burundi, Algeria. And there is a fear of speaking openly;

8 there is a fear of evidence-gathering, often because there is malevolent,

9 secret police, there is no proper free media. That's the kind of

10 environment we're dealing with, and so you have to sift evidence. And I

11 believe Audrey Gillen was a journalist for The Guardian and she wrote a

12 piece, sort of saying: There is a problem with the refugees; they're all

13 saying the same thing. But the problem is we couldn't go, certainly I

14 couldn't go, into Yugoslavia and see for myself because of the nature of

15 the regime there - police controls, police checks. And basically, if you

16 weren't a sympathetic journalist, you couldn't get inside Yugoslavia at

17 the time.

18 So we've got a problem with the people telling us the story; we

19 can't go and check it out. That's why I was very keen to get to little

20 Krusa as fast as possible and check out this story and see for myself.

21 Q. Yes, but I asked you about the word "hysteria." You used the

22 words "the power of hysteria" and I want to know what you meant by that.

23 I know you couldn't go check out the story right then.

24 A. Right, but it means that people who are afraid are sometimes not

25 careful, not precise, about what's happened to them. They just say, for

1 example, the Serbs have killed all our men. Now, for example, in little

2 Krusa, that's not literally true but it's a quick, brief shouted remark on

3 a hillside in Albania. It's not miles away from the truth. A hundred

4 men, they said, men and boys, were killed. What's the exact number? We

5 don't know. And I believe the latest number is something like 103. It's

6 not far off.

7 But there is a difference. There is a general point that I made

8 -- was seeking to make there, that yes, there is hysteria in war and then

9 there is a specific piece of evidence or bits of evidence that you find on

10 the ground. So, in the general environment, where, as we know, in war,

11 truth is the first casualty, that's the environment I'm looking at.

12 That's, in a sense, what I'm used to dealing with. That doesn't mean that

13 everything you hear from people is untrue.

14 Q. Tell the Chamber what it is you know about the power of propaganda

15 by the Kosovo Liberation Army.

16 A. Well, I believe that the KLA was -- it was the army fighting for

17 the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, capable of murdering innocent people, of

18 burning down Serb houses; that it was pretty ruthless. It didn't have

19 much of a visible presence in little Krusa. In fact, one of the sad

20 ironies of that village was that Serbs and Albanians had lived peacefully

21 together for a long, long time. My understanding - I may be wrong about

22 that - but that's what I was told. In other -- so when somebody in a KLA

23 uniform would say something to me, I'd be skeptical. I'm a reporter; it's

24 my job to be skeptical.

25 Q. Okay. I want to go to another document now. This one is -- at

1 the top it says: "John Sweeney," and then in bold it says: "NATO HQ."

2 A. This would -- I think, to set the scene for the Court, these are a

3 series of articles I would have written for The Observer newspaper while,

4 at the same time, I was making these two films.

5 Q. Okay. In this document you talk about the mistaken bombing by

6 NATO of KLA army barracks where seven KLA were killed and 20 were

7 wounded. You seem to indicate that this could not have been a mistake,

8 since these barracks were the most well-publicised KLA position in the

9 region, visited by several western journalists, including Euan Ferguson of

10 The Observer. Is that your position?

11 A. Well, that's my article. I'm sure -- I would hope it was as

12 correct as I could make it. It's clear from the article that I wasn't

13 there. What I'm -- as we say, I'm sourcing it, I'm sourcing it to people

14 who were there. I remember the story vaguely. I'm not an expert on this,

15 but if I reported that, I'll stand by that report as being correct, as I

16 knew it at the time.

17 Q. Well, this shows your skepticism that you just talked about, I

18 think, doesn't it? What you're saying is: I'm really skeptical about

19 this being a mistake because this was a well-known KLA barracks.

20 A. Yes. I'm here, I believe, to give evidence about little Krusa, so

21 I'm not quite sure where we're going. My point would be that, on little

22 Krusa, I would consider myself to be something of an expert; on this, I

23 don't know. I wasn't there. But I reported it at the time. What's the

24 date of the article?

25 Q. It doesn't have a date.

1 A. It would have had a date. The question is, if this was the time

2 period before NATO got in, some kind of free speech and free inquiry was

3 possible after June 12th. Before that time, it was very difficult to find

4 out what was going on. But if Euan Ferguson, who was a friend of mine and

5 a colleague on The Observer, had been there, then I would have been

6 reflecting his reports.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Sweeney.

8 THE WITNESS: Yes.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Excuse me. Now that you're here --

10 THE WITNESS: Yes.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: -- it's open to counsel to ask you questions about

12 anything on which they think you can give answers relevant to the issues

13 in this case.

14 THE WITNESS: Sure.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Your evidence is not confined to Mala Krusa.

16 THE WITNESS: Yes.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: So Mr. Ackerman.

18 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, Your Honour.

19 The transcript just died for all of us, I think.

20 THE WITNESS: Not for me.

21 MR. ACKERMAN: I see one, two, three, four, five. But I have it

22 here.

23 Q. In that same piece, if that's what it is, you have written

24 this: "NATO has kept the KLA at arm's length throughout the conflict, but

25 killing seven of its troops is probably taking that diplomatic nicety too

1 far."

2 What does that mean?

3 A. Again, I haven't seen this article for a long, long time, so it

4 would be useful if I could see it. I think I could work out the date of

5 it, if you could --

6 Q. If the usher could come get it and take it to you.

7 A. Thanks very much. Basically it means -- it slightly means what it

8 says, that NATO was -- as I understand it, was keen to not be fighting the

9 KLA's war for it; that NATO had its own agenda, which was that of Western

10 government, the Western public, the Western world, that they didn't like

11 mass killing taking place in parts of Europe, and they didn't want to be

12 alongside the KLA. However, I'm sure there was some information exchange;

13 espionage, intelligence, whatever, what have you. I was aware of some of

14 this going on. Killing seven members of the KLA in a well-known KLA

15 position would have been a clear mistake.

16 Q. Well, the impression I get from that sentence is that what you're

17 saying is, NATO deliberately killed some KLA just to squelch any concerns

18 that they might be working with them.

19 A. No, I think that's a little -- no, I think that's taking it too

20 far. The sense of the -- by the way, this -- I'm looking at here four or

21 five paragraphs from an article with headline "NATO HQ." With no date on

22 it, it's difficult for me to figure out whether it's a short article or

23 whether it's part of a long article. I don't know.

24 To answer your question, what was I was saying was I was making

25 the following points, I believe: One, NATO has kept the KLA at arm's

1 length throughout the conflict; true. "Killing seven troops is probably

2 taking that diplomatic nicety too far" is making the point that, having

3 made this mistake, it's embarrassing. It is true to say, obviously, that

4 if NATO was fighting the Yugoslav army and Yugoslav police and the KLA are

5 fighting it, then the two sides have got a degree of common interest.

6 Q. Well, if you look at the last paragraph there that I read to you,

7 because you got it and I can't read it now --

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. -- any reader that concluded, like I did, that what you're saying

10 is that NATO deliberately killed KLA just to squelch concerns that they

11 might working with them, any reader that would conclude that would be

12 justified in drawing that conclusion, I think, don't you? Even though

13 that may not have been what you meant.

14 A. If I read the article, then it's up to me -- I proclaim my right

15 to defend what I meant by the article, not what you take to mean by the

16 article.

17 Q. That's just not true.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman, I'm afraid this is not enlightening

19 us one little bit.

20 MR. ACKERMAN: I'll leave it alone.

21 If I can have my document back.

22 THE WITNESS: Yeah, sure thing.

23 MR. ACKERMAN:

24 Q. Do you remember writing an article, along with Jens Holst and Ed

25 Vulliamy, dated Sunday, October 17th, 1999, regarding the NATO bombing of

1 the Chinese embassy in Belgrade?

2 A. I do.

3 Q. Do you have any memory today how many people were killed in the

4 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade or in the attack on the

5 embassy?

6 A. It was a small number of people. From memory -- I haven't read

7 that article for ages. I believe the Chinese -- it was about two or three

8 Chinese and one or two locals. But the significance of the story was that

9 I was skeptical -- all three of us were skeptical of NATO's official line

10 that it was a mistake. I can explain more.

11 Q. Both NATO and the United States authorities explained that it was

12 a mistake because of an outdated map, didn't they?

13 A. Yes. We found that -- well, what we got hold of, people inside

14 the intelligence community, a serving soldier -- I don't want to blow my

15 sources, but a serving soldier who is a signals bloke and somebody else

16 who knows about how British intelligence works, and two separate sources

17 said, "That's nonsense. They hit the embassy."

18 Now, I went to the embassy --

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Just hold on there, please, Mr. Sweeney.

20 Relevance of this, Mr. Ackerman?

21 MR. ACKERMAN: It's relevant to future testimony we're going to

22 have from representatives of NATO regarding the precision of their bombing

23 and the -- and it just goes to the credibility of the reports that we're

24 going to get about what NATO was doing.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we really need to know more about the source

1 of this witness's knowledge of this before it could have any real bearing

2 on your assessment of --

3 MR. ACKERMAN: I'm going there.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: -- that particular issue.

5 MR. ACKERMAN: I'm going there.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: All right.

7 MR. ACKERMAN:

8 Q. What you -- and you can see this article again, if you'd like to

9 see it. What you wrote here is: "NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese

10 embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering that it was

11 being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications."

12 And then you say: "According to sources in Europe and the US, the

13 Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after NATO

14 electronic intelligence detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's

15 forces."

16 You apparently spoke to a Chinese embassy spokesman in London who

17 said: "We don't believe that the embassy was bombed because of a mistake

18 with an out-of-date map."

19 Now, my question to you: Was this a totally reckless article on

20 your part, or did you have a basis for this article?

21 A. We had a basis for this article.

22 Q. And that was?

23 A. As I said, I don't want to give away my sources, but we heard from

24 credible people -- remember, that there are three names, so we went to

25 some length to check it out, that they hadn't -- that the idea that they'd

1 used a street map to identify the Chinese embassy was incredible. And my

2 sources -- our sources told us - our sources told us - that they had an

3 exact knowledge of where the Chinese embassy was.

4 Now, the American government denied this story. The British

5 foreign secretary -- I put it to him at a drinks party much, much later,

6 and he didn't make a strong denial of the story, which always struck me as

7 very interesting. I'm talking about the late Robin Cook. Until China

8 opens up, we'll never know what really happened. But we had strong

9 sources for this story.

10 Q. Thank you. On May 18th, 1999, you talk about John Pilger. You

11 say, in a writing that has basically your letterhead, I think, on it:

12 "When John Pilger condemns British journalists for lickspittle

13 reporting of the NATO war machine, one pauses for thought. Pilger

14 attacked the Western media for failing to report NATO's savagery. He

15 didn't quote a single Kosovar refugee. Pilger said: 'There is no sense

16 of the revulsions felt throughout most of the world for this wholly

17 illegal action for the punishment --"

18 THE INTERPRETER: Slow down when reading, please. Please read

19 slower.

20 MR. ACKERMAN:

21 Q. "-- for the punishment of Milosevic's crime with the greater

22 crime."

23 Was he criticising you for lickspittle reporting at that point?

24 Were you specifically criticised?

25 A. I'm not sure that I was.

1 Q. All right. Now, one of the things you have attempted to do - and

2 I don't know what the status of it is - with regard to the investigation

3 you did in Mala Krusa was to make a book out of it and sell that book.

4 Have you had any success in selling your book?

5 A. No. I'm a journalist. Every now and then one wants to write a

6 book about something you know about. I believe that most Western

7 publishers weren't -- publishers in Britain weren't interested in the

8 story. Too much grief from the Balkans. I think -- I'd forgotten I

9 intended to write a book. But it's happened before; it will happen again.

10 Q. Well, you submitted it to, apparently, more than one publisher,

11 submitted not the book but a proposal for a book, and one of the things

12 we've been given is a -- I don't know what you call it. It has a big

13 headline: "The Machine-Gunner was Running Late," by John Sweeney, and in

14 it you describe the book you wanted to have published and the things you

15 found in Mala Krusa that you thought were significant and sensational

16 enough to justify the publication of a book. Is that true?

17 A. I wouldn't have used the word "sensational."

18 Q. Well, I guess you'll agree with me that the more sensational you

19 could make the story, the more likely it was that you would be able to

20 make a book out of it. Is that true?

21 A. I repeat my earlier answer.

22 Q. Well, you know, on page 4 of this -- of this thing you are trying

23 to promote, this book you're trying to promote, you speak of Sava Nikolic

24 and you say this: "Sava's passport shows him to be a man who could easily

25 be thought of as handsome, but he has a rapist's eyes."

1 Now, what on earth are a rapist's eyes?

2 A. So what we're talking about here is a proposal for a book that was

3 never used, that was never written --

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Could you answer the question, please, Mr. Sweeney?

5 We don't have all day, I'm afraid. We have to concentrate on your

6 evidence.

7 THE WITNESS: Fine. I'll answer. There was something cold and

8 chilling about his eyes, and I found -- I can remember feeling discomfort

9 about that point. I believe -- but what I'm being asked about here is a

10 proposal for a book which was never written, so that I'm -- and I feel --

11 asked about it now, I feel uncomfortable about the phrase. How do I know

12 what's going inside that man's head? So, for example -- well, it's

13 certainly no part whatsoever of the documentary. Put to me now, I regret

14 the phrase. I don't know. It's not a good phrase. I shouldn't have used

15 it.

16 MR. ACKERMAN:

17 Q. Well, you just denied any sensationalism and that kind of leans

18 that way, doesn't it?

19 A. I said I wouldn't have used that word. It's not a word I like

20 using. I don't like using the word "comfortable" either. But being

21 reminded of it, "a rapist's eyes" strikes me as being a bad phrase,

22 because it means -- it implies I've got some knowledge of what's inside

23 this man's mind, and I don't. And no good reporter should ever say, "Ooh,

24 he was thinking this," because how do I know?

25 Q. All right.

1 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I have just one more little area to go

2 into and then I'll be finished, and to do that I think we need to go into

3 private session, for reasons that we went into private session earlier

4 today.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: And these relate to the security of individuals?

6 MR. ACKERMAN: It does, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

8 We shall go into private session, then.

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17 [Open session]

18 MR. SEPENUK:

19 Q. In any event, we all appreciate that Edward R. Murrow was known

20 for his fairness and objectivity; correct?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Of trying to go down the middle, for being fair to both sides if

23 he could.

24 A. Well, fairness and objective, but he was also willing to strike

25 what he thought was cant. You can't watch -- being given some of his old

1 documentaries to watch, and when he struck out against Senator McCarthy,

2 that was brave and passionate reporting and he was taking a position there

3 as well, on evidence, but he was taking a stand.

4 Q. I totally agree with that. Just as you've taken a stand on little

5 Krusa. That has been something that you're an expert on and something

6 you've written about, something you're deeply passionate about. Is that

7 correct?

8 A. I would -- I wouldn't want to say that. Well, it certainly feels

9 to me, for example, by some of the other things I've been asked about, I'm

10 much less of an expert. I did my best to report what happened in little

11 Krusa as fairly and accurately as I could do, yes.

12 Q. So you condemned what happened in little Krusa?

13 A. Well, a hundred -- as I believe our films -- my reporting to be

14 correct, a hundred people were killed in cold blood, men and boys. Yes, I

15 condemn that.

16 Q. Certainly, sir. We all do. And I want to ask you about the KLA.

17 You said you were skeptical about the KLA.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Okay. And you also recognise the power of propaganda, as you put

20 it, of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And I take it you also recognise, since you're an experienced

23 reporter in Kosovo, that the KLA used ruthless and brutal tactics on many

24 occasions against both Serb security forces and Serbian civilians.

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And you know of situations, for example, where the KLA kidnapped

2 and shot Serb security forces and sometimes just ordinary Serbs.

3 A. I believe that happened, yes. And I've reported on it a couple of

4 times, too.

5 Q. And then the KLA would sometimes just leave the police to pick up

6 the bodies.

7 A. The nature of -- yes, that would happen.

8 Q. Okay. And specifically - and I'll do just one example - in little

9 Hoxha, about 10 miles from little Krusa, two Serb brothers were kidnapped

10 and mutilated by KLA forces.

11 A. Yes. When did that happen?

12 Q. I don't know the precise date. Maybe you can enlighten us.

13 A. I can't remember -- I don't know when -- I think that happened

14 after NATO invaded, entered the country. That's my memory of it.

15 Q. Thank you, sir. And, given the brutality of the Kosovo Liberation

16 Army forces, I take it that, if you had a chance to do it, you would have

17 done a documentary about those atrocities, too. Isn't that a fair

18 statement?

19 A. No, because the numbers don't match. We're talking about two dead

20 in that particular example and a hundred dead in little Krusa. So there

21 is no parity in the number of people who were murdered.

22 Q. So whether you do a documentary, then, depends upon numbers and

23 not to show a pattern of brutality. Is that correct? You only want to

24 show numbers; you don't want to show a pattern of brutal conduct, as you

25 well could have, with the Kosovo Liberation Army? You can answer that yes

1 or no, and I ask you to do that, sir.

2 A. Can you formulate the question so I can say yes or no?

3 Q. Yes. What appears to be important to you is numbers, so that even

4 though, as you've testified, there's a pattern of conduct by the Kosovo

5 Liberation Army showing ruthless and brutal tactics against both Serb

6 security forces and Serb civilians, including kidnapping and murder, just

7 because it was a smaller number, for example, than a hundred, you wouldn't

8 be interested in doing a documentary concerning that conduct. Is that a

9 fair statement?

10 A. May I answer in this way: That if I'd seen evidence of 800.000

11 Serbs fleeing the mountainside and them saying that they had been victims

12 of many, many massacres, then I would have done a documentary on that

13 because that's the evidence. Here, there was no doubt in my mind so many

14 people, hundreds of thousands of people, fled what they said was Serb

15 persecution. The massacre numbers --

16 Q. You interviewed hundreds of thousands of people, did you?

17 A. No, of course I didn't, but I was --

18 Q. All right.

19 A. Hold on a second. But I was on a hill-side, where you would wake

20 up in the morning, or whatever, and then you'd see thousands of people

21 walk by you during the day; you would see the television news, other

22 reporters who you trust telling you the same story; and then the next

23 morning, the same. Endless track -- I do not think it was a fiction.

24 But I take the -- I'll answer the point. If I saw a parity of

25 violence, I would have reported that. But what was so striking was that

1 it was unequal. Small numbers of Serbs dead; big numbers of Albanians

2 dead.

3 Q. And, of course, you're also aware of the fact that there were

4 many, tens of thousands of Serbs who left during the NATO bombing. You're

5 aware of that, sir, are you not?

6 A. Indeed, I am, yes.

7 Q. Thank you, sir.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac.

9 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, the Defence of General

10 Lazarevic has no questions for this witness.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. O'Sullivan.

12 MR. O'SULLIVAN: No questions.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Fila.

14 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] I would have just one question, Your

15 Honour.

16 Cross-examination by Mr. Fila:

17 Q. [Interpretation] Do you believe, Mr. Sweeney, that it is a little

18 bit speculative to say that, if you had seen 700.000 Serbs fleeing from

19 Kosovo, you would have done a documentary. If there had never been

20 700.000 Serbs -- there were only 10 per cent of Serbs in the population,

21 because as the numbers stand, if 700.000 Serbs had been there, then it

22 would have taken 7 million Albanians to flee. If you look at the numbers

23 proportionately, how many -- in proportion, how many Serbs fled from the

24 NATO air-strikes and how many Albanians fled? That's one question.

25 Second, you said a moment ago that you had been following the

1 situation in Yugoslavia. Did you maybe film a documentary about the Serbs

2 fleeing from Operation Storm and Flash, or were you filming only things

3 that were convenient to Britain and the NATO alliance? That's my

4 question.

5 A. Thank you. The first question: I believe that I accurately and

6 fairly reported what I saw on the ground, which is a huge number, hundreds

7 of thousands of Albanians fleeing what they said was Serb persecution and

8 killing.

9 Second question: I started in 1991, and one of the things I

10 reported was the murder of Serb civilians by Croat death squads, led by a

11 Hungarian Croat fascist called Eduard Flores. Now, a friend of mine

12 called Paul Janks investigated this story of how this group of lunatics in

13 Osijek went around killing people, most of whom were innocent Serbs. And

14 I did a documentary about it. Paul Janks himself was killed, I believe,

15 by one of the Croat fascists.

16 So I'm wholly familiar with what happened in Croatia: Violence

17 upon violence; different communities killing each other. And I'm wholly

18 aware, in my view, that all of the communities were guilty of barbarism

19 from time to time.

20 But, as I said, what happened -- what I saw in Kosovo and in

21 little Krusa in 1999 was what I was told was Serb oppression, and as far

22 as I can tell, as fairly and accurately as I told the story, that more

23 than a hundred men and boys, Albanian men and boys, were murdered by their

24 Serb neighbours and the Serb police and the Serb army.

25 Q. I understood that part.

1 A. But as to your --

2 Q. My question was this: You noted yourself that later Albanians

3 came and looted Serb houses, that's what you said; that Albanians took out

4 of those houses what they needed before you came. And then Albanians came

5 back after NATO came in and did what they did, what you called payback.

6 But are there any Serbs left now in Mala Krusa, where Serbs and Albanians

7 lived half/half? Why didn't you film a documentary on that if you are

8 involved in objective journalism? I personally think you are not. That's

9 the point, if you agree with me.

10 A. My answer to your question is that, after the massacre, the

11 Albanians would not live with the Serbs and that's why they burned down

12 their houses.

13 Q. I'm sorry that I had sat down.

14 A. Okay. Nema problema.

15 The answer to the question is that, after the massacre, the

16 Albanians wouldn't want to live with the Serbs. Today there are no Serbs

17 living in that village. That's a great tragedy. But at the same time,

18 the people who precipitated that tragedy, who made it happen, were the

19 people who carried out the massacre. So that the Albanians burned down

20 the houses was wrong and stupid; it was foolish. They were biting off --

21 whatever they did was wrong. But as a moral wrong, it's nowhere near as

22 bad as killing a hundred of your neighbours. And I believe that is what

23 happened in that village.

24 Now, you said earlier -- sorry, just to finish a point. You said

25 there's a problem of "you doing NATO propaganda." Your colleague sort of

1 did raise the story I did about how NATO had been lying when it said it

2 hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake. So I would say that there

3 aren't that many British journalists who are willing to say -- for

4 example, to take the line of the Chinese government against the line of

5 the British government on a story as big and as important as that, which

6 means that when I say that I believe this was a massacre -- now -- carried

7 out by the Serbs against the Albanians, I believe that to be the case.

8 Remember that I'm very skeptical of people in KLA uniform, but

9 most of the stories I got was from the mothers and the daughters of the

10 dead men and the six survivors that we managed to find.

11 Q. I don't hold it against you that you condemn the massacre in

12 Krusa; I condemn it, too. It shouldn't have happened; we shouldn't be

13 talking about this. There's no one in this room who wouldn't say that it

14 wasn't wrong.

15 But the point I was trying to make is that something else happened

16 after the Albanians' departure. We were bombed in Belgrade and the

17 building of the television was hit, and I didn't see you protest against

18 that. And your colleague journalists were killed in their work-places.

19 Your source in the NATO alliance was the lawyer of -- if your source had

20 been the lawyer of the families, he would have told you that it was

21 against Milosevic, but you didn't write about that. And your colleagues

22 were hit by bombs very far away from Krusa, very far away from Krusa.

23 Thank you. Thank you. I have no further questions.

24 A. To be fair to me, I believe I did criticise and condemn the

25 bombing of the journalists and the TV station, as only journalists would.

1 I don't believe that anybody should bomb journalists.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

3 Mr. Ivetic, do you have questions?

4 MR. IVETIC: Yes, I do, Your Honour.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Will you be lengthy?

6 MR. IVETIC: No. I have approximately maybe about 20 minutes'

7 worth, so I should be able to complete most of it in the ten minutes we

8 have left and then shortly after the break, if I'm counting the time

9 correctly.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. Well, carry on.

11 MR. IVETIC: Thank you.

12 Cross-examination by Mr. Ivetic:

13 Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Sweeney. My name is Dan Ivetic and I would

14 have some questions for you. Since our time is limited, I would ask you

15 to pay close attention to my questions and try to give the most accurate

16 and truthful and concise answer possible.

17 Now, first of all, sir, when looking at the Mala Krusa tragedy,

18 one of the matters that you testified about, and it's contained in your

19 statement, is this list that you found of the local militia members that

20 you said had been involved in this event, and I want to ask you a question

21 about this.

22 Am I correct that you went over this list with the persons that

23 you interviewed and the individuals from the village, and they confirmed

24 that all these people on this list were local Serbs from the Mala Krusa

25 village? Is that correct?

1 A. I'm not sure that I asked them, every single last one, but there

2 were a key number of names who had been identified by the women, and it

3 was those that we were at most pains to identify.

4 Q. Okay. And I believe you had said that you did not know what

5 organisations they were a part of, but you did know for certain persons --

6 for instance, you did know that Dimitri Nikolic worked in a rakija factory

7 before the war, didn't you?

8 A. Yeah.

9 Q. And, in fact, he ran a cafe in town. Isn't that correct?

10 A. I didn't -- I didn't know that he ran a cafe in town.

11 Q. Okay.

12 A. By the way, on the organisation point --

13 Q. I'll ask you the questions, sir.

14 A. Okay.

15 Q. We've got time restraints we've got to deal with.

16 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, at this time I would like to tender in

17 part, I think in similar fashion to what the Prosecution did previously

18 with this exhibit from the bar table, Exhibit P2335, to the extent that

19 some of the individuals that this witness has identified in his statement,

20 there are names of -- there are these names on this list, and that would

21 be page 2 of the exhibit, the response to ICTY request number 1098. And

22 for the record, the following individuals appear on the list that the

23 witness has provided and also appear on this exhibit as being individuals

24 for whom the MUP has no information about. They are -- and these are the

25 numbers from the exhibit: Number 6, Rasko Nikolic; number 7, Miladin

1 Nikolic; number 8, Danilo Nikolic; number 11, Sveta Tasic; number 14,

2 Golub Cvetkovic; number 15, Stanko Cvetkovic; number 16, Stanislav

3 Stankovic; number 17, Pera Stankovic; number 18, Trajce Stankovic; number

4 21, Steva Petkovic; number 22, Golub Petkovic; number 26, Aleksandar

5 Petkovic; and number 27, Darko Tasic.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Ms. Moeller, any comment on that?

7 MS. MOELLER: I have no objection, Your Honours.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Very well. We will admit that document to the

9 extent that it deals with these various individuals.

10 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour. Now, to talk about certain

11 other individuals for matters of witness security, I need to go into

12 private session for about five questions.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Very well. Private session.

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6 (redacted)

7 (redacted)

8 [Open session]

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Can I ask the interpreters if it's necessary to

10 break at this stage? It may be. Yes, the information is it is, so we'll

11 break for 20 minutes, since we had half an hour at the last break.

12 [The witness stands down]

13 --- Recess taken at 5.50 p.m.

14 --- On resuming at 6.12 p.m.

15 [The witness takes the stand]

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic.

17 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

18 Q. Mr. Sweeney, in your statement you describe your return -- your

19 visit to Mala Krusa. Am I correct that this took place approximately two

20 and a half months after the events that transpired when persons were said

21 to be killed at the hay-barn and two and a half months after the witnesses

22 you spoke with in Albania had left their home village?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. And am I also correct that during the intervening

25 two-and-a-half-month period, you have no objective personal knowledge of

1 how the condition of the village might have changed during that time?

2 A. No objective reporter could have done.

3 Q. Okay. Am I also correct that when you first arrived in Mala

4 Krusa, you immediately ran into a young lad named Fadil, 14 years old, who

5 was from the village and was a relative of someone whom you -- or you

6 believe was a relative of someone who had perished in the Batusha barn?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. And when you met this young lad, he was carrying a Kalashnikov

9 assault rifle and a knife, according to your statement at least. Do you

10 recall if he was dressed in civilian clothes or a uniform at the time?

11 A. He has a makeshift uniform on, I think a military hat of some

12 kind, a beret.

13 Q. Okay. And --

14 A. His pistol was a toy.

15 Q. The Kalashnikov was real though?

16 A. Yeah.

17 Q. Okay. And the knife was real?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And now do you know whether he -- whether there were other persons

20 walking around with arms in Mala Krusa or the surrounding area at that

21 point in time when you returned to the village on or about June, I think

22 it, the 14th -- you said was probably the date you returned?

23 A. Yes. It was not a huge number of KLA/UCK, but there was some

24 around.

25 Q. You say these were KLA/UCK. Did all of them have on uniforms, or

1 were some of them dressed in civilian a garb?

2 A. Not that many. We would have filmed them because there weren't

3 that many people around at that time. So I can't remember seeing any KLA

4 soldiers in uniform in little Krusa because I think we would have filmed

5 them, because we were alert to the possibility of what were they up to

6 now. There were certainly a small number of -- of men with guns around.

7 That's all I can help you with I think.

8 Q. That's fair enough. Fair enough.

9 Now, you go on to describe in your statement that you entered the

10 homes of some of the local Serb villagers who were believed to be

11 perpetrators of the killing, and you describe that these homes had been

12 abandoned and "already been looted by the Albanians." Am I correct that

13 by the time you arrived in Mala Krusa on about June 14th, 1999, almost all

14 of the Serb households in that village had been looted by Albanians prior

15 to your arrival?

16 A. I think that's too sweeping. The -- it was -- I could go into

17 these homes and find clothes -- I think some of the clothes had been taken

18 out of wardrobes and so forth but not all, and I certainly wouldn't be

19 able to say that of every home. People -- so, for example, I'm thinking

20 about some of the homes I went into. I was the first person to take some

21 of the documents, some of the photographs, because they had remained

22 undisturbed. But remember, I was looking for that kind of evidence rather

23 than to sort of steal a bicycle or whatever might be -- might be left.

24 Q. Or valuables?

25 A. Yeah. So I was looking for particular things.

1 Q. Now, of the homes that were -- that had been looted by Albanians,

2 were there a large number of homes that had been looted, at least in part,

3 by Albanians prior to your arrival in Mala Krusa in June of --

4 A. They weren't -- well, the significant moment for us - and I was

5 away on holiday when it happened - was when the Serb houses, which had

6 been pretty much extant, were burnt and their roofs came off in the fire.

7 Q. I'm asking about the time-period before you arrived.

8 A. Yes. I'm -- what we're talking about -- for example, I can

9 remember there was -- in one house there was a cow which was -- had been

10 cut with a scythe and it was dying but not yet dead, but the homes were --

11 were on the whole empty-ish. I -- yes. It seems as though there had been

12 some evidence of some of -- obviously or presumably the Albanians going

13 into these homes and looking for valuables.

14 Q. And you would agree with me, sir, that you have no way of

15 confirming that in fact the same persons who looted the Serb homes are not

16 the same persons that looted the other homes in the village, objectively

17 speaking?

18 A. Well, I'm afraid I have to answer that in the context of

19 everything else that I was aware of, and I would find it surprising -- in

20 fact, very surprising --

21 Q. That's fair enough.

22 A. -- to draw that inference. Basically you're looking at the whole

23 context, and you can see why the Albanians would have thought: Why can't

24 I go and steal from my old Serb neighbours, given what had happened? But

25 I wasn't there.

1 Q. Okay. Now, were you there and did your film crew film any funeral

2 or memorial service in Mala Krusa?

3 A. Yes, I wasn't there; the film crew was. I think I was on

4 holiday. I had spent about a month on the trot there. Then I went away

5 on home, and there was somebody else or another part of the team stayed on

6 and filmed the funeral rites and there were lots of KLA soldiers there at

7 the time. And I can remember James Miller talking about it and saying

8 that -- you know, where had these buggers come from? We hadn't seen them

9 before in -- in any numbers before.

10 Q. And these KLA soldiers that were present, they did a memorial gun

11 salute to the persons -- victims that were buried?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Okay.

14 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, I have no more questions for this

15 witness.

16 THE WITNESS: There's something I'd like to say, Your Honours --

17 MR. IVETIC:

18 Q. Thank you, sir.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you, Mr. Ivetic.

20 About what, Mr. Sweeney?

21 THE WITNESS: It's actually about a matter which I believe ought

22 to be heard in secret session about one of the other witnesses who were

23 under some kind of protection.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Very well.

25 We'll go into private session for that reason.

1 [Private session]

2 (redacted)

3 (redacted)

4 (redacted)

5 (redacted)

6 (redacted)

7 (redacted)

8 (redacted)

9 (redacted)

10 (redacted)

11 (redacted)

12 (redacted)

13 (redacted)

14 (redacted)

15 (redacted)

16 (redacted)

17 [Open session]

18 THE REGISTRAR: We are in open session, Your Honours.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

20 Now, Ms. Moeller, I don't think I gave you an adequate opportunity

21 to deal with the exhibits, now that I look at the state of the numbering.

22 There must be numbers to be attached to certain exhibits. So could you

23 please do the exercise of identifying what we should be considering in the

24 way of exhibits.

25 MS. MOELLER: Yes, most certainly, Your Honours.

1 The first documentary Witness to Murder is Exhibit P114; the

2 second documentary Prime Suspects is Exhibit Number P115; then the clip

3 from the raw footage that we also seek to tender is Exhibit P2364. In the

4 meantime, we have also provided an exhibit P number for the sequence of

5 the ten video-clips that were shown in court today, and we could make

6 available a CD-ROM with these clips to the Bench, and this would be

7 Exhibit Number P2384 just so that it is clear on the transcript then to

8 which specific clips the testimony related. And in addition to these

9 exhibits, I would also seek to tender Exhibit Number P2328 and 2327, which

10 are the notebook and the list of names that appear in the documentary and

11 that were addressed today with the witness in his testimony.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: And do you have some re-examination?

13 MS. MOELLER: No, Your Honour, I don't think so.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, these various exhibits are admitted. Thank

15 you.

16 [Trial Chamber confers]

17 JUDGE BONOMY: It's always possible for witnesses who come here,

18 Mr. Sweeney, to leave with the impression that they've been rushed.

19 Inevitably, we're covering a very large area and very large number of

20 events; this is a significant one, and therefore your contribution is

21 important. But you have to bear in mind also that we've heard from some

22 eye-witnesses directly ourselves. There is other material relating to

23 these events, so we have to put your evidence into context. We're

24 extremely grateful to you for coming to give that evidence, and you're now

25 free to leave.

1 THE WITNESS: Thank you.

2 [The witness withdrew]

3 MS. MOELLER: Your Honour --

4 [Trial Chamber confers]

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Ms. Moeller.

6 MS. MOELLER: Your Honour, before we break for the day, I would

7 also wish to tender from the bar some exhumation reports in relation to

8 the site Krusha e Vogel because we completed leading evidence on this site

9 at this point, and I think the fact that bones were fact near the

10 Drin River was referred to by several witnesses and we have corresponding

11 exhumation material that I would seek to tender.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: So what are the reports that you seek to tender,

13 sorry?

14 MS. MOELLER: These are reports from the Metropolitan Police, the

15 anti-terrorist branch from the United Kingdom, and it's a series of

16 individual reports of exhumation activities undertaken in Krusha e Vogel

17 at different locations.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: What are the numbers of these?

19 MS. MOELLER: The numbers are Exhibit P100, 102, 103, 104, 105,

20 106, 107, 110, 111, and 112. These are reports and photos, and I cannot

21 really tell Your Honours why they all have separate P numbers, but they

22 all pertain to the same site and the same exhumation operation.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Do any of these identify any victims?

24 MS. MOELLER: They identify -- no, they do not identify any of the

25 victims from the barn. They only speak about bone fragments having been

1 found and some other material, shoes, et cetera, at different locations

2 along and in the close vicinity of the Drin River. But they do not --

3 there is no identification of these men.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

5 Mr. Ivetic.

6 MR. IVETIC: Well, first of all, Your Honour, without -- and I

7 thought that the persons -- the forensic persons were going to testify

8 with respect to these documents; without that, I don't know what probative

9 value they have. Secondly, I do not know -- these particular exhibits

10 were not referenced with respect to this witness, so I did not take the

11 time to go through them one by one. I'd like to know from the other side

12 whether these are all of the Mala Krusa exhumation reports, since when I

13 did review them previously, as I recall there were a fair number of them

14 that dealt with bones and bone fragments that turned out not to be human

15 bones. So I don't know whether this is the -- whether these exhibit

16 numbers that have been listed are the entire set of forensic documents,

17 which include verification that some of the remains found were non-human,

18 or if this is just a selective view of them. If they are going to come

19 in - and I would still think that there should be an objection to that -

20 but if the Court were to overrule that objection, I think that it's either

21 all or nothing should come in.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, what we'll do is give you an opportunity to

23 review this material, and we'll postpone a decision on it until sometime

24 next week. We'll give you time to discuss it with the Prosecution, and I

25 leave it to you to alert us again sometime before -- before Thursday -- on

1 or before Thursday of next week of your respective positions in relation

2 to this, and we'll make a decision at that time.

3 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

4 MS. MOELLER: May I --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

6 MS. MOELLER: -- just respond to one inquiry directly. These are

7 all the reports that are on our exhibit list in relation to Krusha e

8 Vogel. So it's a complete set of what we intended to tender from the

9 start.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

11 Well, that brings us to the end of this week, and we'll resume at

12 9.00 on Monday.

13 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 6.29 p.m.,

14 to be reconvened on Monday, the 16th day of

15 October, 2006, at 9.00 a.m.

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