1 Tuesday, 31 October 2006

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 9.01 a.m.

5 [The witness entered court]

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Good morning, Mr. Riedlmayer.

7 THE WITNESS: Good morning.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Your evidence will continue now, subject to the

9 usual rule that the solemn declaration which you took at the beginning to

10 tell the truth continues to apply to that evidence today.

11 Mr. Hannis.

12 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour. When we stopped yesterday, I

13 said I had no more questions for the witness, but there had been a couple

14 matters that have come up in connection with some satellite photos and

15 regarding whether or not there were additional text pages in his database

16 concerning a couple of the mosques in Vushtrri that we showed photos for

17 but we did not show the related pages, and also some issues about the

18 so-called White Book regarding Serbian allegations about NATO damage to

19 Serbian monuments which he spoke to. And I would like to ask him a few

20 questions about some of those matters, if I may, to confirm whether or not

21 the satellite photos we do have to confirm whether they are the ones he's

22 talking about.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. Please carry on, then.

24 MR. HANNIS: And regarding the White Book, a couple of questions

25 as well.

1 WITNESS: ANDRAS JANOS RIEDLMAYER [Resumed]

2 Examination by Mr. Hannis: [Continued]

3 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, yesterday, a couple of times, you mentioned

4 satellite photos and they're referenced in your database as part of your

5 source for the information regarding either the pre-existence of a

6 particular site or the damage or both.

7 MR. HANNIS: I would like the registry officer to bring up P98 for

8 us, please.

9 Q. This regards Bela Crkva. You mentioned that there -- that you had

10 seen a satellite photograph showing damage -- well, both before and after

11 pictures concerning the mosque. I'm not sure of the quality that's in

12 e-court, and I have a hard copy that I could ask the usher to hand you as

13 well. Yes, I think your hard copy may be better, and I don't know if the

14 hard copy will show up better on the ELMO than the e-court version does.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Please put the hard copy on the ELMO.

16 MR. HANNIS:

17 Q. And while we're getting the ELMO started, Mr. Riedlmayer, do you

18 recognise that photograph?

19 A. Yes, I do.

20 Q. Is that the one you were referring to yesterday?

21 A. It was. On the hard copy, at least, you can see on the left the

22 mosque intact with a minaret and a big dome and a series of little domes

23 to the left.

24 Q. Okay. If we could have you handed the pointer and then if you

25 could point to the photograph on the ELMO and indicate where you're

1 talking about. On the left it's described as --

2 THE INTERPRETER: Would the speakers please slow down and make

3 pauses between questions and answers.

4 MR. HANNIS:

5 Q. "Buildings Intact, 11 March 1999." Can you tell us where the

6 mosque is on that photograph?

7 A. The left-hand photograph, at the very centre here, is the image of

8 the mosque; in the middle, the tall thin structure is the minaret; to the

9 right is the large dome over the prayer hall; to the left, the small domes

10 over the entrance.

11 Q. And the right half of that exhibit is described as buildings

12 damaged 2 April 1999, and I recall when we had the opening statement, and

13 at the bottom of this photograph there's a notation, that this appears to

14 be the same area but 180 degrees rotated, based on the curve of the

15 river. Would you agree with that?

16 A. Yes. You can also orient yourself again. This time the main dome

17 of the mosque is on the left of the building and the small domes, on the

18 right.

19 Q. And are you able to tell whether the minaret is still --

20 A. The minaret doesn't appear to be there.

21 Q. Thank you.

22 Next I would like to show you --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Riedlmayer, how did you obtain this photograph?

24 THE WITNESS: This was displayed on the web, on the NATO web site.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

1 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

2 Q. Next, could we show you on the e-court Exhibit P2455. You

3 mentioned yesterday, when we were talking about the library and the mosque

4 in Djakovica, that you had seen a photo, a satellite photo, showing

5 actually that area burning and while the minaret was still intact.

6 A. Yes, sir.

7 Q. I have a hard copy that may be slightly better than what's on the

8 screen.

9 A. The screen version isn't very bad.

10 Q. Okay.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Let's just go with the screen version.

12 MR. HANNIS:

13 Q. Let's go with the screen, then.

14 A. In the centre of the image you see the mosque with the minaret to

15 the left - it's the very thin structure - and to the left of that, the

16 library. And the street running diagonally from top to bottom to the left

17 of that is the street of shops that I was referring to with the individual

18 shops on both sides of the street missing their roofs. Their interiors

19 are vacant; they are burned out. And what's remarkable to me is that none

20 of the buildings of the street, meaning to the left of the street, beyond

21 the row of burnt shops, appears to be damaged in any way.

22 You can see a large cloud of smoke rising just above the mosque.

23 If you look at the hard copy, probably you can see more detail as to

24 exactly where the smoke is rising from. I assume it's rising from some of

25 the shops, but it also appears to be rising from the library building.

1 Q. And where did you obtain this photo?

2 A. This photo is still available on the US Department of Defence web

3 site.

4 Q. Okay. Thank you.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, how do we establish the date of this?

6 THE WITNESS: On the web site it appears with the date. I

7 believe, I'm speaking from memory, but I believe the date may be the 25th

8 of March, so the day after the first NATO air-strikes.

9 MR. HANNIS:

10 Q. And is that consistent with other information you obtained about

11 when the damage occurred in that area as far as burning of buildings

12 versus when the minaret was toppled?

13 A. Yes, sir. Your Honour, with respect to this mosque, with your

14 permission, I'd like to say something concerning the question you asked me

15 yesterday ...

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Remind me what the question was, Mr. Riedlmayer.

17 THE WITNESS: The question was who was the person who informed me

18 about the details of the destruction of the mosque.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

20 THE WITNESS: And last night I thought about it some more. It was

21 an October morning, seven years ago, almost exactly, and I thought about

22 who I spoke with that morning and I am quite sure it was Mr. Boshi. He

23 was the only person we spoke to at the mosque site, and as I recall now,

24 he wasn't the imam of the mosque but a senior member of the congregation

25 of the mosque.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

2 MR. HANNIS: And finally, if we could show Exhibit P2456 [Realtime

3 transcript read in error "2445"] to the witness.

4 Q. Yesterday, Mr. Riedlmayer, we showed you some photos of a damaged

5 mosque in Vushtrri. The first one we showed you was the one that was

6 completely destroyed, and then we showed you two others from which the

7 minaret had been toppled, but we didn't have related text pages from your

8 database.

9 I'd like to show you now, if you look at the screen on the first

10 page there, we looked at a photo of the Karamanli mosque. Are these the

11 pages from your database that relate to that mosque?

12 A. Yes, they are.

13 Q. Okay.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, I'm confused by this number, Mr. Hannis,

15 because we had P2445 yesterday and it was a pre-war photo of the mosque at

16 Celine.

17 MR. HANNIS: That was 2445, Your Honour.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: And that's what this one bears to be, according to

19 the transcript. Have I got the wrong number?

20 MR. HANNIS: I believe this one should be 2456, thank you.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: It's wrongly recorded, then, on the transcript.

22 Sorry.

23 MR. HANNIS: I may have misspoken, Your Honour. And if we could

24 just scroll down to the bottom of this page.

25 THE WITNESS: There, you see the two photographs shown in court

1 yesterday.

2 MR. HANNIS: And if we could go to the next page.

3 Q. That's a pre-war photograph on the right?

4 A. Yes.

5 MR. HANNIS: The next page, please.

6 Q. It's just your bibliography concerning that entry.

7 MR. HANNIS: And the next page.

8 Q. Does this relate to the third photograph of a mosque in Vushtrri

9 that we looked at yesterday?

10 A. Yes, sir.

11 MR. HANNIS: Scroll to the bottom, please.

12 Q. Okay. And the top photo was the one that we saw yesterday?

13 A. Yes, sir.

14 Q. And what is on the bottom of that?

15 A. On the bottom is a second photograph of the mosque that I took.

16 MR. HANNIS: Could we go to the next page, please.

17 Q. Yes.

18 A. That is a pre-war photo with the minaret intact.

19 MR. HANNIS: And the next page. Thank you.

20 Q. Those are the pages from your database that related to those

21 additional two photographs we showed yesterday?

22 A. Yes, they are.

23 Q. Now, one other thing I wanted to ask you about concerned the

24 so-called White Book. Do you recall what the full title of that document

25 is?

1 A. It is cited in the last section of my report, of my expert report,

2 among the sources of allegations, and the title is indicated there.

3 Q. Is that "NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia"?

4 A. Yes. And it's two volumes.

5 Q. Divided chronologically between the 24th of March and the 24th of

6 April, in volume 1?

7 A. Yes. I see them in front of you there.

8 Q. Okay. Those are the ones in which you said there were allegations

9 of damage by NATO bombing that you checked out and they appeared to be

10 accurate.

11 A. Yes, we tried to check every allegation.

12 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I believe that's all the additional

13 questions I had.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you, Mr. Hannis.

15 JUDGE CHOWHAN: I have a question, just to clarify certain things.

16 For purposes of verifications, did you refer only to the University of

17 Harvard repository, or were you able to also check things or verify facts

18 from other such repositories, like Topkapi in Istanbul and the British

19 museum, or the one, the Louvre, as you call it, in France? Because these

20 are also repositories on these areas. Topkapi would be very essential,

21 just to check that.

22 And the second was, when you talk about "NATO Crimes in

23 Yugoslavia," is this a book now?

24 THE WITNESS: It is a two-volume book.

25 JUDGE CHOWHAN: Thanks. I'm grateful for that.

1 THE WITNESS: And with respect to libraries, I worked for three

2 months to gather documentation primarily from the Harvard libraries, but I

3 also approached other libraries when materials were not available at

4 Harvard.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, Mr. Ivetic, do you wish to take up the issue

6 of objections to exhibits?

7 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, it was brought to my attention that I

8 indicated we would do that at the conclusion of direct. I think the prior

9 witnesses we had similar objections to we waited until all the evidence

10 was in. So I propose we do that so we don't take up cross-examination

11 time with that.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Very well.

13 Mr. O'Sullivan.

14 MR. O'SULLIVAN: Yes, Your Honour, the order will be: General

15 Lazarevic, Mr. Sainovic, General Pavkovic, General Ojdanic, Mr.

16 Milutinovic, and General Lukic.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac.

18 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Yes, Your Honour. Thank you very

19 much.

20 Cross-examination by Mr. Bakrac:

21 Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Riedlmayer, I'm Mihajlo Bakrac,

22 attorney-at-law, one of the Defence counsel for General Vladimir

23 Lazarevic.

24 At the outset, I wish to go through your CV. And with respect to

25 professional associations, I see that you're a member of the Society for

1 Turkish Studies, also Historians of Islamic Art, Middle East Librarians

2 Association, Society for Iranian Studies, Art Libraries Society of North

3 America, Middle East Studies Association of North America, and

4 International Association of Orientalist Librarians. Is all of this

5 correct?

6 A. It is.

7 Q. Apart from that, Mr. Riedlmayer, when talking about your

8 professional experience, from the very beginning of your professional

9 career, you worked on the Ottoman Empire and Islamic culture. Is that

10 also correct?

11 A. That is correct.

12 Q. When we look at your publications, mostly, they all refer to the

13 Ottoman Empire and the Islamic cultural heritage. Is that also correct?

14 A. Most of them do. I have written about Serbian heritage as well,

15 however.

16 Q. But, Mr. Riedlmayer, nowhere in your publications have I found

17 anything not about the Serb heritage but about Orthodox or Catholic

18 cultural heritage. Perhaps you may have mentioned it in passing or when

19 discussing Bosnia, but nowhere do I see any publication dealing with that

20 heritage.

21 A. I have written on Orthodox heritage in Bosnia. If you have the

22 most recent version of my curriculum vitae, you may see an article on Zito

23 Mislic, the Serbian Orthodox monastery in Herzegovina. That was destroyed

24 during the war in Bosnia. I have also an article about -- two articles

25 that deal with the destruction of Serbian Orthodox monuments in Kosovo,

1 both during the 1999 period and, more recently, in March of 2004.

2 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, perhaps I really do not have your latest CV, but

3 you will agree that the two articles mentioned, compared to everything

4 else in your eight-page CV, is not very much, because most of it refers to

5 the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic cultural heritage. So you will agree

6 with me, will you not, that you spent almost your entire career studying

7 the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic cultural heritage?

8 A. I have no wish to dispute that; it's my academic specialty.

9 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. Yesterday, you said that you initiated

10 a project concerning the cultural heritage in Kosovo, in June 1999. And

11 you also told us that in June and July, you had some information about the

12 events in Kosovo. From where did you glean this information?

13 A. In June and July, when I hadn't done my field-work in Kosovo yet,

14 the information came primarily from published sources, as the war ended

15 and Kosovo became accessible to international media. I also had some

16 contact with individuals who had travelled to Kosovo and relayed their

17 information to me via e-mail, both professionals and journalists.

18 Q. Did you then have any contacts with people or experts from Human

19 Rights Watch?

20 A. No, I did not.

21 Q. Did you read their reports from the ground?

22 A. I am -- I saw their reports. My primary contact, in terms of

23 human rights organisations, was with Physicians for Human Rights, who are

24 mentioned in my report as one of the sources of allegations.

25 Q. Did you also read the reports about allegations made by refugees

1 from Kosovo?

2 A. Yes. That was what I just referred to. Physicians for Human

3 Rights had an interview project during the war where they interviewed

4 heads of households among refugees from Kosovo.

5 Q. In June and July 1999, when you conceived the idea of initiating

6 this action, did you know that an indictment had been brought against

7 Slobodan Milosevic, who was still then the President?

8 A. It was public knowledge.

9 Q. Were you also aware of what the indictment contained? Did you

10 read it?

11 A. Yes, I did.

12 Q. Before you set out for the field, you first came to the OTP, in

13 The Hague, to offer your services. Is that correct?

14 A. I offered my services, actually, before setting out. Asking --

15 simply asking the Office of the Prosecutor whether they would be

16 interested in any data I collected. And they suggested, and strongly

17 urged, that I visit The Hague before I go into the field.

18 Q. Wasn't it logical, Mr. Riedlmayer, for you to first go out to the

19 field and gather information in the shortest possible time-period, rather

20 than visiting the OTP before setting out?

21 A. The visit to the OTP took one afternoon, on the way from Boston to

22 Skopije and Pristina. It did not significantly delay our investigations.

23 Q. And what task - if I may call it that - were you given by the OTP?

24 What was to be the subject of your investigation in the field?

25 A. We were not commissioned to do this --

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Just a moment, Mr. Riedlmayer.

2 That question has been answered. Now, I know you're entitled to

3 cross-examine, but if there's a particular point on which you wish to

4 cross-examine, Mr. Bakrac, then you should try to focus it more quickly.

5 But the witness already explained in full his contact with the OTP, and if

6 you have a challenge to make, then please focus on that.

7 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

8 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, what was your main task in the field? What task

9 did you set for yourself on arrival in Kosovo? What did you focus on

10 mostly in your investigations?

11 A. We focused on -- within the limits of our capabilities, in terms

12 of time available and sites that were accessible, to visit every site

13 concerning which there had been an allegation of damage during or

14 immediately after the war; and having visited, to document what we saw.

15 Q. To document and establish the damage that had been caused. Did I

16 understand you correctly?

17 A. That is correct.

18 Q. But your task was not to investigate and establish who caused the

19 damage and how. Is that correct?

20 A. Only in a secondary way. Our primary task was to record the

21 damage. If there were observations to be made about the damage that could

22 establish when and how it was inflicted, then we would record that as

23 well.

24 Q. It was only you and Mr. Herscher who did the surveys.

25 A. We were the only ones who did the assessments. Obviously we were

1 assisted by photographs and other information that we collected from other

2 sources.

3 Q. Did you have someone in your team who understands ballistics or

4 military matters? Did you have any military experts with you?

5 A. No, we did not.

6 Q. Do you have any knowledge of ballistics or military knowledge?

7 A. I am not a military expert, no.

8 Q. In your analysis, you determined exactly in your expertise that

9 you assessed both the Islamic and the Serb Orthodox and the Catholic

10 cultural heritage. I note that, regarding the Islamic heritage, you

11 stated the exact number of mosques and other cultural property, while your

12 report on the subject of Serb Orthodox and Catholic cultural property does

13 not state the exact number. Why is that?

14 A. For the number of pre-war mosques and pre-war churches, we had to

15 rely on published information. In the case of the mosques, we were

16 fortunate to find a pre-war published source. In the case of the Orthodox

17 churches, if you read my discussion in our expert report, you will see

18 that we discussed the problem that most of the literature does not clearly

19 distinguish between archaeological ruins and intact churches.

20 By the parameters of our study, we excluded archaeological sites;

21 only dealt with buildings that had been intact before the war. The

22 closest we could come was a publication of the Republican Institute for

23 the Preservation of Heritage -- Preservation of Monuments of Serbia,

24 published very shortly before the war, which listed a total of 210 Serbian

25 Orthodox churches and monasteries that were regarded as protected

1 monuments. I assume that that is a subset of a larger number, which

2 includes buildings that were not considered significant enough to be

3 granted legal protection.

4 Q. And outside that list of protected monuments, did you inquire into

5 others? Because you did so with Islamic monuments. With regard to

6 Serbian Orthodox monuments, did you inquire into those that did not have

7 such legal protection?

8 A. Yes. We were fortunate in that the Serbian Orthodox church,

9 especially during the period of our survey, was very active in publicising

10 damage to Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo. They published a book

11 called "Crucified Kosovo," which appeared just as we arrived there. They

12 also put this information up on the internet. That listed a total of 80

13 churches that had been damaged or destroyed in the months after the war.

14 We visited as many as we could, and for the remainder, we either

15 took information from the church web site and from "Crucified Kosovo," or

16 we exchanged photographs with Father Sava Janjic. Some of our photographs

17 subsequently appeared on the Orthodox church web site.

18 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, what I would like to know, in light of all my

19 previous questions -- in fact, what I'm especially interested in is that

20 in your expert report regarding Islamic monuments, you stated precisely

21 which mosques are active, which are out of use. And we don't know any

22 such thing regarding Serbian Orthodox temples; we don't know how many of

23 them are in use, how many of them you have seen. Can you tell me why?

24 A. In terms of the number that we have seen, I believe that is listed

25 in our report. In terms of the number that are in or out of use, again,

1 there didn't happen to be a published source that gave that figure.

2 Q. You did not find anywhere a single source where that number would

3 be included?

4 A. As I tried to tell you earlier, we looked at a lot of published

5 information on Orthodox heritage in Kosovo. One of the most recent and

6 comprehensive is a book by Gojko Subotic, "Kosovo Art of the Sacred Land,"

7 which includes many, many sites, but it does not distinguish between sites

8 that are standing, sites which are medieval ruins, and sites which are

9 merely mentioned in medieval charters but of which no traceable ground

10 exists today. Since he did not provide the statistic, we did not feel it

11 necessary to try to calculate our own.

12 Q. Very well. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. If I understood your

13 testimony yesterday well, you personally assessed 144 monuments in Kosovo

14 before making your expert report. Is that correct?

15 A. That's correct.

16 Q. Do you have any record, perhaps, as to how many of those buildings

17 that you personally visited fall into the category of Islamic heritage?

18 A. I believe it's mentioned in my report. I don't recall it

19 off-hand.

20 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, the witness does have a hard copy.

21 And your report, Mr. Riedlmayer, is located at tab, I believe,

22 1789, if that assists.

23 THE WITNESS: But I can give you an approximation, if you wish.

24 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Yes. Mr. Riedlmayer, we'll not waste time on details. I'll try

1 to assist you. Do you agree with me that you visited personally around

2 100 buildings of Islamic heritage?

3 A. That is probably correct. In terms of Orthodox heritage, simply

4 as an economy of time, given that so much documentation had been made

5 available by the Serbian Orthodox church, we did not try to duplicate many

6 of their already-documented sites but concentrated on sites for which they

7 did not have documentation, which is how we were able to exchange

8 information with them.

9 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, again, if I understood you correctly when you

10 spoke yesterday, out of 225 damaged Islamic monuments, you visited less

11 than half, that is, around a hundred. Is that correct?

12 A. That is correct. For the rest, we relied on documentation from

13 other sources, photographs and so forth.

14 Q. Therefore, you based your expert report concerning that other half

15 on photographs. You based your assessments on photographs. Is that

16 correct?

17 A. Wherever possible, we would try to confirm any information from

18 multiple, independent sources. We included no sites for which we didn't

19 have photographic evidence, but if there was other corroborating evidence,

20 such as, you know, the Institute for Protection of Monuments mentioning

21 that a site was destroyed, we would mention that in our report. But the

22 photographs were what we primarily relied on.

23 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, I'm interested in this: Is it possible for a

24 serious assessment of damage to be made only on the basis of photographs?

25 A. Yes. Given that our criteria were based on plainly observable

1 visual evidence - we were not out there doing technical tests - it was

2 possible as long as the photograph was legible and showed clearly

3 discernible damage to say something meaningful about the damage on the

4 basis of only the photograph. If you see a building without a roof, if

5 you see a building covered with soot, or if you see a pile of rubble,

6 there are certain conclusions that you can draw from that.

7 Q. Yes. Conclusions may be on the degree of damage, but you will

8 agree with me that one cannot make any conclusions, on that basis, about

9 the way damage was inflicted?

10 A. I would disagree with that. If a building has been destroyed by a

11 blast, it leaves a very different kind of ruin than a building which has

12 either been burnt down or vandalised. So I think there are ways in which

13 you can draw conclusions regarding the nature of the damage.

14 Q. When you say "explosives" or "blast," do you know that there are

15 cruise missiles and grenades that also contain explosives; that there are

16 rockets that set on fire the building they hit? Are you aware of that?

17 You did say you were not a military expert, or an expert in ballistics,

18 but you are now making an excursion into that field. So I would like to

19 know whether you can make the distinction.

20 A. I am not a military expert; therefore, I cannot distinguish

21 between different calibres of munitions used or kinds of munitions used.

22 But, first of all, I have, in the course of my field-work, observed

23 hundreds of buildings that have been damaged. I have also read a good

24 deal of the technical literature; and, therefore, for example, know that a

25 building that has been burned from the inside will have a very different

1 look from a building that has been hit by any kind of aerial munitions. I

2 can give you a very specific example, if you like.

3 In many cases, in Kosovo, you saw buildings that had been burned.

4 And if the -- if you went into the building, the entire inside of the

5 building would be carpeted by an even layer of roof tiles, totally

6 undisturbed. I think it is a sensible conclusion, even if you are not a

7 military expert, that the roof simply collapsed due to a fire, rather than

8 that something smashed through the roof. You know, I think a lot of this

9 is simply common sense.

10 Q. Precisely, Mr. Riedlmayer. So when making your assessments, you

11 were guided by common sense. Is that right?

12 A. Common sense informed by experience and research.

13 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, I'll move on to a different subject, but I have to

14 tell you, unfortunately, I have lived through a bombardment. And I know

15 that cruise missiles can go through a window --

16 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour --

17 JUDGE BONOMY: It may be bring some comfort to Mr. Bakrac, but it

18 important that we confine our questions and the evidence to that of the

19 witnesses.

20 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, just in case, if you

21 have an objection, I wanted to mention that I did live through a

22 bombardment. So you should bear that in mind.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: It doesn't really show, Mr. Bakrac.

24 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you very much, Your Honour. I

25 hope that was sincere.

1 Q. So, Mr. Riedlmayer, I'll rephrase my question. Do you know that

2 there are rockets with a lower charge, very precise, that can fly even

3 through a smoke pipe? That's my last question on this subject. Are you

4 aware of this?

5 A. I told you, military is not my expertise.

6 Q. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. When you were working on

7 the ground and when you were inspecting these buildings, did you talk to

8 eye-witnesses; purported eye-witnesses, I must say?

9 A. Yes, on occasion.

10 Q. As far as I remember, you told us, yesterday, that you had forms

11 prepared for each of the buildings?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. When you talked to the witnesses, did you write down their

14 statements immediately into those forms?

15 A. Basically, in most cases, I just wrote a summary of what they

16 said, along with their contact information, if available. But on the day

17 that we -- at the time that we received the information, Mr. Herscher and

18 I visited every site together. And we would usually have a division of

19 labour. One of us would handle the camera; the other one would be

20 recording information.

21 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you will not hold it against me if I make a

22 mistake, because I had to read a lot of documents. But I think I saw it,

23 somewhere, that you ordered those interviews after you completed your day

24 in Pristina. I mean, you ordered those notes about the talks you had with

25 witnesses.

1 A. I simply organised the papers that we had from a single day's

2 excursion. Because we were worried about mechanical malfunctions, or the

3 possibility theft, we did not take computers along with us. So every day,

4 when we set out into the field, we would take a large stack of photocopies

5 of all the information we had about the sites we were going to visit that

6 day.

7 We also had a of blank forms to fill out for each site that we

8 visited. When we would return in the evening, among the tasks would be

9 sorting through these documents, making sure that we had records of which

10 negative numbers referred to which sites, that kind of thing.

11 Q. So in the course of a day, you would talk to certain persons. And

12 then in the evening, when you organised your papers, you would write down

13 the gist of those conversations. Is that a correct understanding?

14 A. No. The conversations were written down at the time that the

15 conversations took place.

16 Q. But since you took notes, immediately, as you were talking, would

17 you read back your notes to the person who gave you that information? And

18 would the person authorise your notes by signing what you had written?

19 A. As I told the Court, we were not in the business of taking

20 depositions. We were simply taking basic information, and it was up to the

21 Court, I believe, to see what -- whether to pursue that, in terms of

22 subpoenaing witnesses.

23 Q. Thank you. In your report, when discussing the objectives and

24 methodology of your research, you said that you did not restrict yourself

25 to monuments designated by the Institute for Culture as protected

1 monuments. Is that correct?

2 A. That's correct.

3 Q. Why did you not restrict yourself to those buildings designated as

4 historic monuments by the Institute for the Cultural Heritage Kosovo?

5 A. I believe, I set out the reasons in my expert report, but I can

6 also sum it up now. First of all, because we -- our task, as we set it

7 for ourselves, was to investigate all allegations made with respect to

8 destruction of heritage. And many of those allegations involved sites that

9 had not been granted legally protected status. Secondly, also because the

10 list of protected monuments, in fact, had altered a number of times. And

11 we were not sure really which of those to regard as authoritative.

12 And, most importantly perhaps, because the distribution of sites,

13 among the protected monuments was very uneven. There were many more

14 protected sites that were Orthodox monuments than Islamic monuments. Only

15 a little more than a dozen Islamic monuments, in all of Kosovo, had been

16 designated as legally protected sites, whereas over 210 Orthodox sites had

17 been.

18 Q. I'm sorry. I'm trying to find it in the record, but I got back in

19 the interpretation that you said, "a dozen Islamic monuments." Is that a

20 misinterpretation or is that what you said?

21 A. I believe the total number was 15.

22 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you said the reason for that was ideological and

23 political. Is that so?

24 A. That's what I said.

25 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, are you aware that in 1977, at the time of

1 Kosovo's full autonomy, even when the Institute for the Protection of

2 Monuments of Kosovo was staffed mainly by Albanians, a law was passed on

3 the protection of cultural monuments that designated a list of all

4 protected cultural heritage?

5 A. I am aware of that.

6 Q. Do you also know that this law was valid all the way until 1994?

7 A. I was not aware of when the law was changed. I do know that in

8 the most recent pre-war document that we examined, that publication by the

9 Institute for the Protection of Monuments, there were a number of

10 designations of buildings that dated from the 1990s and which, I assume,

11 could not have been included on the 1977 list.

12 Q. Are you also aware that, by virtue of an UNMIK decree from

13 December 1999, a decision was made on the laws to be applied in Kosovo,

14 and that it was accepted to apply the law on the protection of the culture

15 of Kosovo from 1977? Do you know that?

16 A. I was aware of the UNMIK decree. I am also aware of subsequent

17 UNMIK decrees that are now -- although I don't know whether they have been

18 enacted into legislation yet, which, in order to avoid any contentious

19 issue, simply designate all religious structures as protected monuments.

20 Q. Since we agreed that this UNMIK decree from December 1999 restored

21 this law from 1977, is it the case that, in the meantime, some new

22 cultural property was included in the list of protected cultural property

23 in Kosovo?

24 A. I don't think I understand your question. Could you repeat it,

25 please.

1 Q. The gist of my question is this: You said that you doubt that

2 this list of protected cultural monuments is completely free of

3 ideological and political considerations, but what I want to know is,

4 since UNMIK came to Kosovo and issued this decree to apply the law from

5 1977, is it the case that some new monuments found their way into that

6 list?

7 A. I don't know the situation at present in Kosovo; however, with

8 regard to this whole issue of designations, let me point out that, while

9 there are certain objective criteria that can be used to designate sites

10 for legal protection, such as age or prominence in the world literature,

11 by and large, in addition to factors such as age, the main judgement is a

12 value judgement as to what you consider to be important for a country,

13 important for a government, to protect. And these are always issues that

14 involve subjective considerations.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Just a moment. If you don't mind, Mr. Bakrac.

16 I understood the question to be: Was it possible that the list,

17 when reinstated in December 1999, might have been different in content

18 from the list of 1977 because certain buildings had been added to it? Do

19 you know the answer to that?

20 THE WITNESS: I do not.

21 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

22 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, are you aware that the UNESCO expert mission

23 visited Kosovo after the war and the hostilities --

24 A. Yes,

25 Q. -- in 2004 and earlier? Are you aware of that?

1 A. 2004 is after the conclusion of my study. I have read news

2 reports of that; I have not seen what reports they have issued.

3 Q. Yes, I understand that you have not seen what reports they have

4 issued, but do you happen to know whether they had anything to say about

5 the list of cultural property prescribed by the law on the protection of

6 cultural property of 1977?

7 A. Are you aware, sir - and, as a member of the Orthodox church, I

8 don't wish to glorify it; I only want to deal in facts - but are you aware

9 that the UNESCO mission which was in Kosovo from the 12th of March to the

10 18th of March, 2004, drew up a report which designated six cultural

11 properties of the Orthodox heritage as the most significant, including

12 Decani, Gracanica, Banjska, Sveti Archangel Mihail, Prizren, and the

13 Church of Our Lady --

14 JUDGE BONOMY: It may be that this is going to turn into something

15 relevant, Mr. Bakrac, but what is the relevance of this particular

16 question?

17 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, well, that's why I

18 prefaced my question by saying I didn't want to glorify one culture at the

19 expense of others. I'm dealing with facts. The witness, in his expert

20 report, seems to imply that the list of monuments was politically and

21 ideologically coloured, and his only arguments are based on statistics,

22 the proportion of Orthodox sites on the list compared to Islamic sites. I

23 want to draw a parallel with the findings of an independent UNESCO

24 commission and what it established after the war in Kosovo, whether they

25 established any kind of evident discrepancy with respect to what

1 Mr. Riedlmayer has been saying.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: But do the findings of the body you're now

3 referring to come to the conclusion that roughly 15 Islamic sites was a

4 reasonable proportion to assign protection to in 1999? Which was the law,

5 as I understand it, at the relevant period of this indictment.

6 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I'm only trying to

7 establish whether there is a foundation for what Mr. Riedlmayer is saying,

8 that these monuments were neglected for political and ideological

9 reasons. If this was so, an independent UNESCO commission, I assume,

10 would have had to correct such an irregularity.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac, it appears that they were looking at a

12 situation where the 1977 list had been restored. They weren't comparing

13 the situation in 1999, at the period of the indictment. Or have I

14 misunderstood you?

15 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, what I want to find out

16 is whether the law of 1977, or rather, whether the witness knows of any

17 cultural monument not in the list of 1977 but subsequently included based

18 on the UNESCO findings. That's what I would like to find out.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: And how is that relevant to the case?

20 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, it's relevant to assess

21 the objectiveness. All my questions refer to whether the expert report of

22 Witness Riedlmayer is compromised in its objectivity by the facts. One

23 fact is that his main field of research has been Islamic culture. I won't

24 repeat all my questions from the beginning --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: I don't dispute that you followed a line which is

1 clearly comprehensible, and I was confining my question to you to the

2 particular issue you're raising here. Now, it's impossible for us to

3 judge whether this is, in fact, relevant; it doesn't look it. But, on the

4 basis of your assurance that it will prove relevant, then -- sorry,

5 Mr. Hannis.

6 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I didn't mean to interrupt, but before

7 you finish, I had a different objection.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Which is?

9 MR. HANNIS: It has more to do with foundation. I can understand

10 the line that -- I understand him to be pursuing, but without some more

11 information about what this UNESCO report is and what its standards are

12 and what it's based on, I don't know how we can begin to make any

13 comparison that would shed light on whether or not Mr. Riedlmayer's

14 opinion or position was objective.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, it may be that the foundation can be

16 established through questioning Mr. Riedlmayer. Of course, if he has

17 insufficient knowledge of these findings to give meaningful answers, then

18 your objection would be well founded, Mr. Hannis.

19 I will allow you to continue this, Mr. Bakrac, but we will be

20 paying close attention to its relevance, bearing in mind that you're the

21 one that's told us that the 1977 law was revoked in 1994, which seems, to

22 me, to be the most relevant feature of this evidence so far.

23 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I was trying to save

24 time. As Mr. Riedlmayer did not deny this, I will refer to PD13, the

25 UNMIK decree, which is in e-court, 5D14, "Decision, World Heritage

1 Committee, 30 com 8(b)" -- [In English] 53 [Interpretation] and 5D15, the

2 same decision, B54. We can look at these in e-court, and these are the

3 documents on which my questions on the UNMIK decree and the UNESCO report

4 were founded.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Your first reference there was to something called

6 PD13. What does that mean?

7 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction: 5D13.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: It's 5D13. In any event, I think you should

9 continue to seek an answer to the first question you asked. And if that

10 can't be adequately answered by Mr. Riedlmayer, it may be necessary for

11 you to go into these exhibits.

12 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

13 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, are you aware that, pursuant to the decisions I

14 have read out and the inspection carried out by UNESCO in Kosovo, these

15 six monuments, which were Orthodox monuments, were put on the World

16 Heritage List?

17 A. As far as I understand, only the Decani monastery was declared a

18 World Heritage Site.

19 Q. That was in 2004. And in July 2006, all the other monasteries

20 I've mentioned were added to Decani. Are you aware of this?

21 A. Not of the latter, but in any event --

22 Q. [Previous translation continues]...

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Allow the witness to finish the answer.

24 THE WITNESS: In any event, I wanted to say that all six of these

25 were on the protected list to begin with, but that's six out of 210.

1 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

2 Q. I'm referring to those monuments placed on the World Heritage

3 List --

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, now it's clear that you're asking about

5 something I didn't understand you were asking about, in the first

6 instance. I thought you were asking, earlier, about the list that

7 related to Kosovo, that's the internal list of Serbia and Montenegro. And

8 it seems to me, Mr. Bakrac, that the placing of these sites on the World

9 Heritage List is immaterial; in 2004 and 2006, is immaterial to this

10 indictment. So you should not pursue that line any further. Move on to

11 something relevant.

12 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] I will move on, Your Honours. My

13 last question, however, is whether Mr. Riedlmayer knows whether the UNESCO

14 commission, in respect of the list drawn up by Yugoslavia, or, rather, the

15 1977 law had any monuments to add to that list.

16 Q. Do you know anything about that?

17 A. Whether anyone had anything to add to it, whether UNESCO did? I

18 told you I have not read their report.

19 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer.

20 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I will now move on to

21 the sites listed in the indictment. I hope we will move through this

22 quickly.

23 Q. In your report, Mr. Riedlmayer, and also in the course of your

24 examination-in-chief, you said that you visited the Catholic church of St.

25 Anthony in Djakovica.

1 A. I did.

2 Q. As far as I was able to understand, the site of that church was in

3 the immediate vicinity of the JNA barracks. Is that correct?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. When you inspected the church, you established that only the glass

6 had been shattered, as a result of the NATO bombing of the JNA barracks.

7 Is that correct?

8 A. That is correct.

9 Q. When you inspected the church on site, did you notice any other

10 damage? And had the glass already been replaced?

11 A. I noticed no other damage, and the glass had been fixed.

12 Q. You said that you received information that, immediately before

13 the beginning of the bombing, the command and operative base of the

14 Yugoslav army was there; that's what your report states.

15 A. Yes. That's what the parish priest told me.

16 Q. Are you aware that there was no command and no operations base

17 there, but, rather, the medical platoon and that surgery was carried out

18 there, with the previous approval of the Catholic priests. Are you aware

19 of those facts?

20 A. This is not what the parish priest told me. I spoke to him in

21 person, without an interpreter.

22 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, could we have on

23 e-court Exhibit 5D11. As the witness is an English speaker, but, as I

24 understand it, he also reads Serbian; however, I would like to have it in

25 the English version.

1 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, this is the order issued by the commander of the

2 52nd Artillery Rocket Brigade, Anti-Aircraft Defence, of the 19th of May,

3 1999, but the relocation of the medical platoon from the Catholic

4 monastery --

5 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I see it only talks about being

6 relocated from the present location, without an indication as to what the

7 present location is.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac.

9 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, in point 3, it

10 says: "On relocation, hand over the Catholic monastery back in the same

11 state that it was found when it was requisitioned." And it says: "A

12 report is to be made and control damages to be established. The building

13 is to be restored to the same condition it was found before moving in."

14 Q. So are you aware that an unarmed medical platoon, which only dealt

15 with wounded, was located there with the approval of the Catholic priests?

16 A. Again, I only know what the Catholic parish priest told me.

17 Q. And you said that the Catholic priest told you that there were

18 signs of vandalism. Did he describe these signs?

19 A. Yes. He told me that computers, televisions, and other equipment

20 had been looted from the building, and that the walls had been defaced,

21 and that, in short, the place was not inhabitable when they came back.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: I think your report said that that was for a period

23 of two months?

24 THE WITNESS: Yes.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: And that's from the beginning of the war?

1 THE WITNESS: Yes.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Which is fairly consistent of moving out on the

3 19th of May?

4 THE WITNESS: Yes. He told me he -- the priest told me he stayed

5 in Djakovica throughout the war.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: This particular order is dated the 19th of May, as

7 you'll see.

8 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

9 Q. And he told you that somebody had scraped the walls on purpose,

10 and these were the traces of vandalism. Is that what you wanted --

11 A. He didn't say scraped the walls; he said defaced, whatever that

12 may mean. We were speaking in Turkish. He came from Prizren and he knows

13 Turkish. And I lived in Turkey for three years, so I can speak Turkish.

14 Q. I understand that. But he didn't tell you anything about the kind

15 of damage; he just said that it was necessary for the walls to be

16 whitewashed. But he didn't say what kind of damage this was.

17 A. No. He said the doors and windows were broken and that the

18 furnishings, including computers and other equipment, had been taken.

19 Q. Very well. We understand that, the doors and the windows, as a

20 result of the NATO bombing and -- of course, I'm not trying to justify

21 theft. If it's true that the computers and other equipment were stolen, I

22 don't justify it. But it doesn't amount to destruction of cultural

23 property; it's common theft.

24 But let's move on to another site, Mr. Riedlmayer. The stari

25 bazaar in Pec, the old market. Did you, yourself, visit that site?

1 A. I did.

2 Q. I have before me part of your finding, where it says that the

3 photograph was taken by Begolli and the other photograph was taken by

4 Xhavit Lokaj, and it doesn't say anything under who inspected the site.

5 There's no record of the fact that you conducted the inspection, in your

6 notes.

7 A. I specified that in my statement in court yesterday, that it was I

8 who inspected the site.

9 As for the photographs, the pre-war photograph from Mr. Begolli I

10 solicited myself. Mr. Begolli runs a photographic shop in town, and I was

11 told that he had recent pre-war photographs. So I approached him and he

12 went through his negatives and came up with several of them. I chose this

13 one because it happens to match the shot taken by Mr. Lokaj.

14 Now, Mr. Lokaj was there just a month after the end of the war,

15 and I put his photograph in the database because it shows a clear picture

16 of what it looked like immediately after the war. When I was there, some

17 of the shops already were beginning to get fixed up. You could still see

18 the damage quite clearly, but it wasn't as clean a documentation as you

19 would have, you know, immediately in the aftermath of the end of the war.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac, what's the exhibit number for that one?

21 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, this is part of P1550.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

23 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you furthermore did not designate any of the

25 persons you interviewed or who supplied you with information. Is that

1 correct?

2 A. Where? In this particular record?

3 Q. Yes. The old bazaar in Pec. I have your report before me in

4 English. It says "Information Statements" and it's blank. And where it

5 says "Media Reports," it's also blank.

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. So there was no information, no media reports, but this did not

8 prevent you from assessing the damage to the report, or rather, from

9 saying that it was burnt down by the Serb police in June 1999. Why did

10 you note this where you should have described the nature of the damage,

11 which was your task?

12 A. Okay. In this case, I didn't have a single person who came up

13 and, sort of, formally informed me. I spoke to several residents who

14 barraged me with information. I should have, I assume, kept the

15 information to the description itself, given that I could see that. The

16 damage was quite clear in terms of seeing marks of burning; also,

17 bulldozer tracks where the rubble had been pushed to the backs of sites.

18 What --

19 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer --

20 A. Yes.

21 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I don't think he was finished answering

22 the question.

23 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. Excuse me, I apologise.

25 A. So when people told me that these shops had been burned and then

1 bulldozed, it seemed like a reasonable remark. As to the time when this

2 happened, I just wrote down what people told me at the time. I should

3 have noted the name of an informant; I regret I did not in this case.

4 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you have just told us that you noted on the spot

5 what people told you. Isn't that what you said just a little while ago,

6 that you noted down everything people told you immediately? Now we see

7 that, in fact, you did not.

8 A. What do you mean? What I have on my entry in the database is what

9 I copied from my handwritten form. The handwritten form consists of the

10 notes I took in the field. You know, I was out in the field and I took

11 very short -- brief notes, in many instances, since we had a lot of field

12 to cover.

13 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I am waiting for the

14 interpretation. I also had the impression that Your Honour wished to say

15 something.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: No, I've changed my mind, Mr. Bakrac.

17 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, it's almost time for a break. Are you trying to

19 tell me that you have the names and details of the persons you talked to

20 but did not include them in the form?

21 A. No. What I'm trying to tell you is that in this case I neglected

22 to take names.

23 Q. And on site you saw evidence that the Serb police burnt down the

24 bazaar in June. Is that what you were trying to say?

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Don't answer that question, Mr. Riedlmayer.

1 If you are putting a serious point, Mr. Bakrac, then put it in a

2 serious way.

3 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I see it's time for a

4 break, and I will move on to a different site after the break.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, there is no reason why you can't ask the

6 source of that information, but I think we made it clear yesterday that,

7 where a statement of that nature depended on a general proposition coming

8 from, for example, the organisations that Mr. Riedlmayer spoke to who said

9 this was the information they had or, if it's come from, as he describes

10 it here, a barrage of information from people, then we would never draw a

11 conclusion that that accurately reflected who carried out this attack or,

12 indeed, that that what necessarily happened on the occasion. He's already

13 acknowledged the weakness of that material. Mr. Hannis has indicated a

14 number of times yesterday that what actually happened depends on

15 information from other sources. The principal evidence we're getting from

16 Mr. Riedlmayer is the nature of the damage.

17 But also where there is some specific indication of the cause from

18 his investigation or from what was said to him by someone he's identified,

19 then he's reflected that and that's something that may have some weight,

20 in due course. But I think it will be easy for you to identify the parts

21 of that report to which we would give no weight in isolation and those

22 that may carry some weight even on their own.

23 So, we will be adjourning now, Mr. Riedlmayer, for 20 minutes or

24 so. Could you again go with the usher, and we'll see you at ten minutes

25 to 11.00. Just leave the courtroom. The practice we're following now is

1 for the witness to leave before the Court does.

2 [The witness stands down]

3 JUDGE BONOMY: And we'll assume at ten to 11.00.

4 --- Recess taken at 10.31 a.m.

5 --- On resuming at 10.51 a.m.

6 [The witness takes the stand]

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac.

8 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

9 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, before the break we discussed the Catholic convent

10 and then we moved on to the bazaar in Pec, but I just missed out on one

11 thing in my notes; namely, that in your report you also stated that the

12 army of Yugoslavia used the Catholic church in Pristina; namely, to place

13 an air defence radar on its tower. Is that correct?

14 A. That is what the parish priest told me.

15 Q. I just want to know whether you pursued this interest any

16 further. Do you know how the radar works, and its antenna system? It

17 cannot be placed on a tower because it emits electrical and magnetic waves

18 and cannot deal with obstacles. Doesn't that make the claim of this

19 priest absolutely absurd and illogical?

20 Plus another question which is a part of this: Can you estimate

21 in how many seconds NATO would have located that radar and destroyed it?

22 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I'm going to object. That's a compound

23 question. I don't know which of the three he's supposed to answer.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Let's take them one question at a time, please,

25 Mr. Bakrac.

1 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

2 Q. So, first of all, you received this information from the Catholic

3 priest. My first question is: Did you cross-check this allegation? Did

4 you verify it in any way?

5 A. I was there merely to verify what happened to the church during

6 the war. The church seemed to be in good shape. I talked to the priest,

7 who had spent the entire war in the rectory building right next to the

8 church, and when I asked him what had happened to his church during the

9 war, this is what he told me, so I wrote it down. I am, as I have already

10 stated, not an expert on military installations and I had no way of

11 verifying whether this was either technically feasible or whether it, in

12 fact, happened. I took down the information and I took down the priest's

13 contact information and therewith I saw my task in this regard to have

14 been fulfilled.

15 Q. So, if I understand you correctly - and it's necessary for the

16 record - you do not know the weight of that radar or how it was hoisted on

17 the top of the church cathedral.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac, Mr. Riedlmayer is not here fighting a

19 case. Mr. Riedlmayer had a job to do. He's explained both to Mr. Hannis

20 and you what that job was, how he did it, and what the limitations were so

21 far as this case is concerned. I don't think it's really fair to him to

22 then go over details as if you're trying to make a point, when it's

23 perfectly plain from his answer that he had no way of verifying the

24 information that was given to him at all. And he is no military expert

25 and he won't know the detail of radar installations or anything of that

1 nature.

2 Now, that's something you can found upon in due course when it

3 comes to assessing the value of the report for our purposes, bearing in

4 mind that he was doing it for a different purpose.

5 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour. I will move

6 on.

7 Q. Prosecution Exhibit P1773 deals with a mosque in Orahovac, built

8 in 1916, in modern times. Did you assess the mosque on the spot.

9 A. Which is the mosque? I'm sorry.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Celine.

11 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

12 Q. In the village of Celine, Orahovac municipality.

13 A. Okay.

14 Q. You, personally, or Mr. Herscher made the assessment of that site.

15 A. We did not personally visit that village. This is one of the

16 sites where we made our assessment based on photographs. I think in this

17 case the assessment that the building was completely destroyed is not hard

18 to conclude from the photograph.

19 Q. And based on the photographs, you concluded that the mosque was

20 burned down by Serbs and that the Serbs razed it to the ground using a

21 bulldozer. That's what you concluded on the basis of photographs.

22 A. No. As I explained in the direct examination, that is the

23 information that was provided for me by the Islamic community, which I

24 note in the report. The visual evidence of what you see there is

25 consistent with that. I noted the pile of rubble, the burnt timbers, and

1 the intact houses in the background.

2 Q. But, Mr. Riedlmayer, wouldn't it have been enough to say that the

3 mosque was burned down and completely destroyed? Wasn't that the mission

4 of your research, to establish damage, rather than who inflicted the

5 damage, from a third-hand source? In this case, you had no witnesses and

6 no media reports.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: We're becoming very impatient, Mr. Bakrac, with

8 this. You know perfectly what the job was that Mr. Riedlmayer was doing,

9 including noting any information that might be of use to establish the

10 circumstances in which the damage was done. But he, by no means, meant to

11 establish that on the basis of what he heard. He made it clear to you

12 that he was hoping to give guidance to others who might find it useful to

13 follow these leads up. And he's made it clear already in his evidence

14 that what he was doing when he noted these circumstances, in the section

15 you're referring to, that he was noting down what he had learned from

16 information given by others.

17 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you said information came from the Islamic

19 community. What I see here is "International Management Group" as the

20 source of this information. It was their database.

21 A. No. If you go down to the bottom, you will see that Mr. Sabri

22 Bajgora is also listed. He was the contact person at the Islamic

23 community who provided me with the photos and some of the information.

24 Q. Why isn't he mentioned in the line that says, "Citizen providing

25 the information"? He's designated only as the photographer.

1 A. No. Down below it says, "Surveyor." "Surveyor" is shorthand for

2 source of information. All the way at the bottom of the page.

3 Q. I see that. But there is also a line, "Citizen Reports," with the

4 names of one or two citizens. You did not mention that Mr. Bajgora made

5 one such report himself. I see him only in a different line, together

6 with the International Management Group database.

7 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry. Can we have a reference to what page

8 we're on.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: I think it's informants' statements in the English

10 version that Mr. Bakrac is looking at.

11 MR. HANNIS: I understood we were talking about the Celine mosque.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

13 THE WITNESS: Yes.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: And there are no informant statements.

15 THE WITNESS: And so your question is, sir?

16 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

17 Q. My question is: Did you receive information from the

18 International Management Group?

19 A. I did not. I merely received their database, which consists

20 entirely of photographs and technical descriptions of buildings.

21 Q. From whom, then, did you receive information as to what had

22 happened; that is, who did it?

23 A. This particular information came from Mr. Bajgora. The reason, in

24 case that's what you were aiming at, that his name appears here, rather

25 than as a separate informant statement, is because for convenience sake,

1 since so many of my photographs of mosques came from the Islamic

2 community, for brevity's sake, given that the information was usually very

3 brief and often sketchy, I often incorporated it in the first page, rather

4 than going on to the second page of the survey report.

5 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, now I would like to know about the mosque in

6 Orahovac municipality, Bela Crkva. Did you personally, or Mr. Herscher,

7 perform the assessment of that one yourselves? It's P1774.

8 A. No. Bela Crkva is not one of the sites that we visited

9 personally; however, here we had photographs from multiple sources. We

10 made our assessment on the photographs and information we had, rather than

11 a firsthand site visit.

12 Q. As for information, I also see no informants named. Is that

13 correct?

14 A. If you would scroll down on the e-court display, please.

15 Okay. We had --

16 Q. We can move one page further.

17 You will see informants there.

18 A. And I think it's this similar situation, as to what we had with

19 Celine. We had the photographs, and we had some very minimal information

20 from Mr. Bajgora. We, however, had photographs also from two other

21 sources showing the same damage. And so we felt fairly confident in our

22 damage assessment. It's a building we assessed as having been heavily

23 damaged, and the minaret blown up.

24 Q. In this case you also had some media reports; whereas, yesterday,

25 you said that you never took media reports without other corroborating

1 information from witnesses or eye-witnesses. Did I understand that

2 correctly?

3 A. I believe you did not understand it correctly. Our criteria were

4 we never included a site in our report, based exclusively on media

5 reports. Media reports were an add-on, if we had information from the

6 sources we considered reliable, which are listed in our report. And there

7 was also a media report which could help to pin-point the date or stage of

8 the damage, we would include that. But we had no criteria saying we

9 wouldn't include media reports unless we also had witnesses.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac, if you look at the media reports, you

11 will see that there are parts highlighted which Mr. Riedlmayer considered

12 relevant. And each of the highlighted parts relates to the state of the

13 mosque, and you have a date for the media report. And the state of the

14 mosque, as described in these, is being said by Mr. Riedlmayer to be

15 consistent with the photographs. And that's the only use to which he was

16 putting these media reports, as he explained yesterday.

17 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] I'll move on to another site, P175,

18 the mosque in Brestovac.

19 Q. Do you agree that's another location that you never visited?

20 JUDGE BONOMY: I think --

21 THE WITNESS: Yes --

22 JUDGE BONOMY: I think that's P1775.

23 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Yes, that's what I said. Maybe it

24 was a slip of the tongue.

25 Q. So that's another location that you did not visit yourself. Is

1 it also correct that you have no informant statements here or any media

2 reports again?

3 A. No.

4 Could you please scroll down, all the way. Okay.

5 Here, we had photographs from two independent sources, and we made

6 our conclusions on the basis of the photographs.

7 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you say you based it on photographs from the

8 International Management Group database. Didn't you say in your report

9 that that group dealt only with modern buildings?

10 A. I didn't say they dealt only with modern buildings. Their primary

11 mission had to do with establishing the state of infrastructure in these

12 municipalities. So they primarily dealt with public buildings of all

13 sorts; however, as a public facility, they included what they called

14 heritage facilities, which included houses of worship. Insofar as they

15 were able to provide photographs taken in these places, their teams

16 covered many more villages than we were able to visit ourselves, and so

17 they provided that information in the photographs.

18 In every case we made a good-faith effort to corroborate

19 information from multiple sources. So even in the case where we already

20 had photographs from other sources, the IMG data served to corroborate

21 that. It was a professionally run organisation, serving mainly the needs

22 of the European Union, which was tasked with making assessments for

23 reconstruction in Kosovo. The implementation on the local level was

24 somewhat uneven, as I note in my report.

25 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, while we are with this mosque in Brestovac,

1 Orahovac municipality, from what I see you used only the photograph of

2 Sabri Bajgora from 1999. What does the reference "IMG Database" mean?

3 Where are the photographs from that group?

4 A. If you take a look at my expert report, you will see that the --

5 for technical reasons, we could not extract the photographs from the IMG

6 database and insert them into this report, and so we submitted a CD with

7 the IMG database along with the report. So the fact that we are only

8 showing one photograph doesn't include -- imply necessarily that we have

9 only one.

10 Also, in order to limit the size of the database, we tried to put

11 in the minimum number of photographs. If you put in too many, the

12 database slows down and becomes hard to operate. So, in many of these

13 cases, the number of photographs you see in the database entry is only a

14 subset of the number of photographs that were available to us when we're

15 making our assessment.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: That CD is confined to the IMG database, is it?

17 THE WITNESS: Yes.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Hannis, does that have an exhibit number?

19 MR. HANNIS: No, Your Honour, that's a separate item that we have

20 not submitted to you.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

22 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

23 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, would you also agree with me that you did not

24 perform a direct assessment of the mosque in Velika Krusa either?

25 A. No, I did not.

1 Q. And that for this mosque, again -- no, strike that.

2 For this mosque, you, again, have a report from the human rights

3 group, without naming the person who provided the report. Is that

4 correct?

5 A. Could you please put it up on the screen.

6 Q. 1776, an exhibit, P1776.

7 A. Here we have our assessment that it's heavily damaged, and - if

8 you can scroll down, please - you can see the description that the

9 minaret's blown up. There's a large hole in the side wall, structural

10 damage; interior of the mosque is vandalised and partially burned. That

11 was the extent of our assessment. And, you know, any informant statements

12 are merely supplementary, to be taken for whatever value the Court chooses

13 to assign to them.

14 You can also see that --

15 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: This is, perhaps, a good example to clarify the

17 role of Sabri Bajgora. To what extent was the conversation between you

18 and him about the nature of the damage?

19 THE WITNESS: For the most part, we -- well, on our three visits

20 to Kosovo, I visited the offices of the Islamic community each time. Each

21 time I came away with a bag full of photographs. We had, in each case, a

22 several-hour conversation, during which I took notes. As he handed me the

23 photographs, he would identify what they were and, in some cases, say

24 things about them, you know, when it was destroyed or when it had been

25 built. He was speaking from his own notes. He didn't hand me any kind of

1 document.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: But when you conclude "minaret blown up, leaving a

3 large hole in side wall of the mosque and structural damage" --

4 THE WITNESS: That is my own conclusion from looking at this

5 photo. You can see the stump of a minaret and you can see big cracks in

6 the building radiating from where the minaret used to be, which, to me,

7 having seen many dozens of such buildings, indicates that there was some

8 kind of internal blast in the minaret causing this. You can --

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, I understand that, Mr. Riedlmayer. But can I

10 take it that that was your approach in every case, to make an independent

11 assessment --

12 THE WITNESS: Yes.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: -- from the photographs.

14 THE WITNESS: Yes. If there's outside sources, I usually tried to

15 indicate where that information came from.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac.

17 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

18 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, I'm now interested in P1777, which is a

19 Prosecution exhibit. I see that you personally made the assessment of

20 this building, with due respect to every building in every community. I

21 see that this one was built in 1997, two years before the war. To what

22 extent does it constitute a cultural and historic monument?

23 A. Well, it was a house of worship and, as such, it served a cultural

24 purpose. I don't think a building has to be centuries old to be a

25 cultural monument. And, as I also noted, in the list of monuments granted

1 legally protected status in Kosovo under the Yugoslav administration,

2 there were any number of buildings that were of no great antiquity. I'm

3 thinking, for example, the church built in Djakovica on the various eve of

4 the war, which is almost the same age as this building. It was a memorial

5 church for Serbian war dead.

6 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, although this question may have sounded not

7 sufficiently serious, initially this is precisely the reason why I put it.

8 When you said that the list was coloured by politics and ideology, you

9 gave an examples saying that some buildings, built between 1930 and 1990,

10 were put on the list. This, if I'm not wrong, was also one of the reasons

11 why you challenged the list.

12 A. No. I challenged the list nearly on the basis that the number and

13 age of Islamic monuments in Kosovo would have suggested that more than 15

14 might have qualified; and, in fact, they did not. And given that things

15 like state money for reconstruction and conservation work depended on this

16 official status, I considered that to have been ideological potentially.

17 Q. Is it also correct, Mr. Riedlmayer, that the mosque in Cirez,

18 Srbica municipality, is another one which you did not inspect personally?

19 That's 1778, Prosecution exhibit.

20 A. That is correct.

21 Q. And you have no information from citizens or newspaper reports

22 concerning this mosque?

23 A. No. All I can describe is its condition.

24 Q. Thank you. Is it also correct, Mr. Riedlmayer - and this is

25 Prosecution Exhibit 1785 concerning the mosque in Vlastica - that you did

1 not visit this site either or inspect it personally?

2 A. That's correct.

3 Q. Is it also correct that in your report no report by citizens is

4 listed?

5 A. That is correct.

6 Q. I would now like to know, Mr. Riedlmayer, on what basis you wrote

7 that the village was the scene of a crime committed by Serb forces in the

8 spring of 1999.

9 A. Could you please scroll down so I can see what I actually wrote.

10 Okay. I was merely repeating the information that was in the

11 indictment, I believe.

12 Q. You were using the indictment against Milosevic when compiling

13 this. Do you remember I asked you that before, and you now seem to be

14 confirming that you used the Milosevic indictment.

15 A. No. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, if we had been using

16 the Milosevic indictment as a guideline to -- for sites to visit, we

17 surely would have visited these particular sites. No. In the final stage

18 of compiling the report, we thought it might be helpful for the OTP, for

19 whom we were giving this report, to note the sites which pertained to

20 their indictment. It was, you know, an attempt to be helpful, that's all.

21 But we didn't use the indictment as our guideline.

22 Q. So where it says that the village was the site of an atrocity by

23 Serb forces, you were trying to help the OTP and support the indictment.

24 Is that the only reason why you included this? Let me ...

25 [Defence counsel confer]

1 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

2 Q. Page 49, line 10 of the transcript, you said that you were

3 repeating the information in the indictment; that this could be useful for

4 the OTP.

5 A. I was merely noting which sites might be of interest to them. It

6 was probably foolish because they could have done that work themselves.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: And it's not consistent because you didn't do it in

8 every case.

9 THE WITNESS: Yes. Well, the final indictment was actually issued

10 after we submitted this report.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Was the indictment you had access to one which had

12 only one accused on it, or did it have more than one accused?

13 THE WITNESS: Well, we submitted this report in, I believe,

14 September of 2001. The final amended indictment was issued in October of

15 2001. So we used whatever would have been available as of early

16 September.

17 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Thank you. Mr. Riedlmayer, is it also correct that you did not

19 inspect the mosque in Kacanik? That's P1786.

20 A. Would you bring it up on the screen, please?

21 JUDGE BONOMY: This is such a waste of time, Mr. Bakrac, because

22 we know he didn't from the report itself. If there's another particular

23 question to be put, then we could move on to that.

24 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, there is a question. I

25 may have missed it, but I don't see a photograph here. It doesn't say who

1 inspected the site. There's no photograph, no citizen's report.

2 THE WITNESS: It says --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: But it's quite clear there was a photograph from

4 this IMG database. So you know what the source of the information is.

5 Now, you may have a point to make later that the Prosecution haven't

6 bothered to provide us with the database. There's possible a good

7 argument for you in closing arguments, but where are we going with the

8 question?

9 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, that's precisely my

10 intention. I don't know how the inspection was conducted. We don't see

11 the church or mosque. We can't check what kind of damage there was. We

12 don't know what can be seen on the photograph.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: But Mr. Hannis will, no doubt, point to other

14 evidence about this mosque as well. So you've got to take account of

15 everything that relates to it in the case.

16 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Very well. Your Honour, I'm now only

17 asking for Exhibit P1788 to be put on the screen. It's a photograph of

18 this mosque. Or rather, I do apologise. My assistant is now telling me

19 that it's actually P1799. Could we have that on e-court, please.

20 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you said that this was the market mosque in

21 Vucitrn?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. And this pre-war photograph was one you compared with the

24 photograph you took on site?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. I assume that you made an effort to take the second photograph

2 from the same vantage point that the first was taken from; is that

3 correct?

4 A. Actually, in this case, I wish I had, but I just got lucky.

5 Vucitrn was the very first site we visited in Kosovo, and I didn't have

6 Mr. Virmica's photos until several days later when we visited Prizren,

7 which is where he lives. So it just happened that I happened to have a

8 photograph that shows approximately the same vantage point. At the time I

9 was there, I was not in possession of the pre-war photograph.

10 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Can we now move to page 2 of this

11 exhibit. But before that, I withdraw that -- sorry, I have one more.

12 Could we have the previous page again, please, to clear up one

13 more detail with Mr. Riedlmayer.

14 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, there's a tall residential building to the left of

15 the mosque, and you stated that this was an identifying element. Is that

16 correct?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Do you agree with me that both this building and the mosque, or

19 rather, that the right-hand wall, the right-hand edge of the building, is

20 parallel to the left-hand edge of the mosque and that there is a space in

21 between? The two walls are practically parallel, and the mosque is on

22 the -- to the right of the wall of this building.

23 A. It is, but the residential building is considerably in the back.

24 It is much further from the viewer than the mosque is.

25 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, if I remember well, yesterday, when you were

1 explaining the second photograph, you pointed to an entrance. Would you

2 agree that the entrance to the mosque was facing the building that you say

3 is an identifying element?

4 A. No. If this photograph were clearer, you would see that the

5 mosque, which is actually an old building, has had a modern entrance

6 structure added to it, facing the photographer here. It's got two steps

7 side -- on either side there are steps leading up to it. The minaret is

8 to the right of the entrance.

9 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Could the usher now please show us

10 page 2 of this exhibit.

11 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, do you recognise in the background --

12 A. That's the same building, yes.

13 Q. Do you agree with me, if we established on the previous photograph

14 that the right wall of this tall building is parallel to the left wall of

15 the mosque, that the mosque would have to be completely outside the frame

16 of this photograph? Would you agree with me?

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Hannis.

18 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I object. There's a lack of foundation

19 for that question. We don't know which camera was used and what angle

20 each of the photos were taken. All kinds of things don't support that

21 question.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: I'm satisfied that there's an adequate foundation

23 and that the witness will be able to deal with the question.

24 THE WITNESS: Okay.

25 A. Well, first of all, if you look at picture number 1, it was taken

1 at some distance and down hill. This is much closer to the building. It

2 is very hard to orient oneself in the field of rubble, but if you move

3 back to the previous photograph, photograph 1 of this set - could you do

4 that, please; yes - the elements that I was able to identify were parts of

5 the ablution fountain, which is separate from the mosque, and the large

6 utility pole, which was lying across the site with one side very charred,

7 and pieces of rubble, which had carved and painted elements which, I

8 assume, came from the mosque. But since everything had been graded by

9 heavy machinery, identifying particular points within the site was very

10 difficult.

11 In addition to the mosque, you can see there were low buildings

12 surrounding it on the rear. Those were parts of the Carshia, the

13 traditional goldsmith's bazaar, which, according to our information - and

14 we cite the name of the informant - had been burned down and pillaged the

15 same time that the mosque was burned down. I was there at the site. I

16 can vouch for the fact that, you know, there is no mosque there now, or at

17 least wasn't in October of 1999. It may have been re-built since then.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac, to help understand this point, can you

19 explain what your case is on this?

20 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, yesterday, the witness

21 identifying the photograph had pointed to the spot where the mosque had

22 been located. The Defence is convinced that the ruin shown by the witness

23 cannot be the correct area, in the correct area, because, looking at this

24 photograph, it's evident that the mosque is to the right, below the road,

25 and that the ruins marked by the witness as the ruins of the mosque

1 cannot, in fact, be the ruins of the mosque, in view of their location.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: So the point isn't that there's something odd about

3 the photograph; the point is that the mosque may well have been destroyed

4 but its ruins are not what the witness examined. Is that your position?

5 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Yes.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, thank you.

7 THE WITNESS: May I interject something? As I look more closely

8 at the pre-war photo, you will see the fenced-in ablution fountain to the

9 left of the mosque, which also has a set of low concrete steps. It may

10 well be that I mistook the foundations of the ablution fountain in the

11 post-war photo for the foundations of the mosque proper. But I can vouch

12 for the fact that where the mosque used to be there was only rubble.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Bakrac.

14 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

15 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, are you aware how many historical monuments of

16 Serb culture were destroyed after the departure of the Serb forces from

17 Kosovo?

18 A. Yes, and I list them in my database, where the number that I cite

19 and the number cited by the Serbian Orthodox church, in its publication

20 "Rasveta Kosovo," are roughly the same, 80. Of these 80, roughly half

21 were lightly damaged or vandalised, and -- I'm sorry, and roughly half

22 were totally destroyed, so we're talking something less than a hundred

23 total.

24 Q. So a little less than a hundred Serb cultural historical monuments

25 were damaged or destroyed in the presence of KFOR when these monuments

1 were supposed to be protected and when there were no war operations in

2 Kosovo. Do we agree?

3 MR. HANNIS: I object, Your Honour.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, can I have a basis for this? What's the

5 relevance to the indictment?

6 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, in a part of his expert

7 report, the witness even concluded that the aim of the attack seems to

8 have been to destroy cultural monuments linked to the Albanian population

9 at a time when war was raging in Kosovo. I would like to know whether a

10 similar number of monuments were destroyed at a time when there were no

11 military operations, and the witness himself said that many of these

12 cultural and historical monuments were protected by FOR. In our

13 subsequent analysis, when we look at whether this was part of some kind of

14 joint plan, this should be kept in mind, in my view.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Hannis, what's your point?

16 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I don't see how that's relevant.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, it does seem, to me, to be relevant because

18 Mr. Bakrac is suggesting that a lot of monuments can be damaged even when

19 they're being guarded by military forces, and that does seem to be a point

20 relevant to the activities in the earlier part of 1999. So let's hear

21 what the witness has to say about it and we'll assess it in due course.

22 Mr. Bakrac.

23 THE WITNESS: So could you very briefly restate what the question

24 was, please.

25 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation]

1 Q. My question is: Would I be right in saying that the vast majority

2 of these cultural and historical sites were being guarded by KFOR; and

3 that, in spite of this, they were damaged or destroyed and you yourself

4 drew attention to the need to protect these monuments?

5 A. Yes, I did. During my visit to Kosovo, I tried to impress on the

6 officials we spoke to in Pristina the need to protect even isolated sites.

7 But the fact is during the first summer after the war and in October when

8 we visited, the principal Baedeker sites, the sites that appear in all the

9 guidebooks, like the Pec patriarchy, the Decani monastery, or Gracanica,

10 or the principal monuments in Prizren. All had KFOR guards in the front

11 of them, as did every Serb church in a village which still had Serb

12 inhabitants.

13 The places where we found Serb churches that had been blown up

14 tended to be isolated, rural settlements that had been abandoned by the

15 Serb population in the initial phase after the war. And I assume that

16 KFOR had its priorities as to where it would place guards. But in places

17 like Drsnik and Dolac, we found nobody. It was empty, and we were

18 actually risking life and limb by climbing through the ruins, which could

19 have very easily had land-mines.

20 So it's not true that they were all guarded at the time.

21 Eventually they realised the sensitivity of the issue and started putting

22 soldiers in front of every church that still stood and even some of the

23 ruined ones. As we know, you know, there were attacks even after that.

24 Q. Now, Mr. Riedlmayer, I have one last question for you, which I'm

25 sure will make Their Honours very happy. In the light of your finding

1 that the aim of the attacks seems to have been to destroy the cultural

2 heritage linked to the Albanian population. I wish to ask you whether the

3 majority of cultural and historical monuments in Kosovo originated from

4 the Ottoman Empire.

5 A. That is not a statistic that, you know, I would support. In fact,

6 on the one hand, the Ottoman Empire controlled Kosovo for more than half a

7 millennium, really until 1912. Standing buildings tend to be the most

8 recent ones. So I would say of the standing Orthodox churches, a

9 considerable proportion dates from the 20th century. Some, including

10 parts of the Pecka Patriarchia were constructed during the Ottoman period,

11 and some from the middle ages. Similarly with respect to --

12 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer.

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. It seems we did not understand each other. You said or you

15 mentioned the figure of 600 mosques. Is it true that more than half of

16 those originate from the Ottoman Empire, from Turkish times, and that many

17 of those that were damaged originate from Turkish times?

18 A. That is correct.

19 Q. My question, Mr. Riedlmayer: Is it not the Ottoman heritage, is

20 it not equally the heritage of the Serbs and the Albanians and Turks,

21 Egyptians, and others who have been living in the area, and that there was

22 no destruction until the war broke out?

23 A. Obviously all of the architecture of Kosovo is the joint heritage

24 of the people who live there. But certain communities are obviously

25 connected to certain parts of the heritage in different ways than others.

1 Orthodox religious believers, who tend to be mostly the Serb population,

2 clearly attach special importance and symbolism to Orthodox heritage; and

3 likewise, Albanians are attached to their Islamic or Roman Catholic

4 heritage. It is simply a fact that ethnic divisions in the Balkans tend

5 to follow religious lines.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Can you point out for me, Mr. Bakrac, where that

7 conclusion is in the report.

8 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] On page 6, Your Honour. I think it's

9 the same page in English. The paragraph begins: "Three out of four

10 well-preserved town nucleuses in Kosovo suffered serious damage in the

11 spring." It's the sentence the last in the paragraph.

12 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters note: They were not quoting

13 the exact wording of the text.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. And it goes on to say: "And religious

15 monuments associated with Kosovo's Albanian population ..."

16 And you'll bear in mind, of course, that the charge we are dealing

17 with, in Count 5, is the charge of persecutions, which is not a question

18 so much of culture, in this case, as religion.

19 MR. BAKRAC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour. I have no

20 further questions for this witness.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

22 Mr. Fila.

23 MR. FILA: [Microphone not activated].

24 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

25 Cross-examination by Mr. Fila:

1 Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Riedlmayer, my name is Toma Fila, together

2 with my colleague Mr. Petrovic. I appear for the accused Mr. Sainovic. I

3 will question you very briefly, and if you give me brief answers you'll be

4 rid of me very soon.

5 I have the impression that you somehow rushed this research of

6 yours. I don't know how else to explain this division into parts of

7 cultural heritage that you have seen, which you suddenly abandon in favour

8 of second-hand sources, whether -- regardless of whether this Court

9 tolerates that or not. Is there any reason -- and of course I agree, your

10 research was worthwhile, it was a very good idea to start it. Is there

11 any reason for suddenly abandoning it? Because I cannot escape that

12 impression.

13 A. First of all, I'd like to point out that, as I mentioned in my

14 report, one of the urgencies that gave rise to this project was the simple

15 fact that there had been war and destruction in Kosovo and winter was

16 coming. And if one had to identify damage, for whatever purpose, whether

17 for the purposes of this Court or for purposes of reconstruction and

18 conservation to save what could be saved, it was very important that

19 information be gathered as expeditiously as possible before winter set in.

20 The reason is that if you have a ruined building and its interior

21 is filled with rubble, when you have the winter snow and rain coming and

22 freezing, it can literally push the walls apart. And so after one or two

23 seasons, even a building that might have been salvageable will no longer

24 be salvageable. So that's why we were in a hurry. But we only had a

25 month to do it in, so we did what we could. And we economised our time in

1 such a way that, for example, with the Orthodox sites we tried to cover

2 those sites that the Orthodox church didn't already have photographs of.

3 And similarly, with the Islamic sites, we picked our documentation

4 in such a way that we would visit the sites that were most endangered and

5 which were also accessible to us.

6 I don't know if that answers your question.

7 Q. I'm sorry, but I have to interrupt you. But it's obviously not

8 the case. My objection is not that you went places but that you didn't go

9 everywhere. That's what I'm asking. You told me that you had to work

10 fast because of the weather and all the other restraints. You don't have

11 to pursue any of that; you are knocking at an open door.

12 What I want to know is why you had to wrap some things up so

13 quickly and thus fail to visit some localities at all. Instead, you used

14 some second-hand sources, such as Mr. Bajgora. I'm not saying that those

15 sources were bad. But why didn't you see those sites personally? Why

16 didn't you photograph them personally? What prevented you?

17 A. First of all, as I mentioned, winter was coming. Our research was

18 in October. In that part of the Balkans, the first snow starts coming in

19 November.

20 The second reason was funding. We had a limited amount of funding

21 and we wanted to make the best use of it. We did make two follow-up

22 visits to Kosovo, to try to fill in some gaps, in 2000 and 2001.

23 Q. The reason I'm asking this is that I have the impression your

24 quick wrapping up has something to do with the arrest of Mr. Milosevic and

25 I think you were receiving instructions from the Prosecutor to wrap things

1 up as quickly as possible so that the indictment can be supplemented.

2 That is the feeling that I have. If I'm not right, please do not take it

3 personally, but it is still my impression.

4 A. Actually, Mr. Milosevic was pretty much the last thing on our

5 minds, because, as of 1999, the notion that he might be overthrown,

6 arrested and handed over to this Tribunal was a very distant possibility.

7 So, in 2000 and 2001, our main focus had to do with the other parts of

8 the -- the other purposes of the study, which is to assist in

9 reconstruction.

10 Q. Then that brings me to my next question. Why, then, later did you

11 not continue? We would not then have to ask these questions at all, the

12 kinds of questions like my colleague Mr. Bakrac asked. Why did you say

13 there were Serbian crimes, et cetera. Why didn't you continue your work

14 in the spring? Because snows do start but they also end at some point.

15 A. In part, it was a question of funding; money, the root of all evil

16 and also, unfortunately, the only thing that makes such work possible.

17 But also the fact that, by May of 2000, UNMIK had established its own

18 department of culture, we assumed that UNMIK would be carrying out its own

19 assessment. Also, as time had passed, much of what was still quite

20 evident in October of 1999 would be less and less evident as ruins were

21 cleared, as reconstruction was underway.

22 We tried to follow the situation as best we could, but basically

23 the majority of our field-work and the part that we consider most

24 significant was done in the fall of 1999.

25 Q. Allow me not to agree with your first sentence, because I am a

1 lawyer, I mean, that money is the root of all evil. But let us continue.

2 When you set out from Harvard, you said that you flew to The Hague

3 and talked to the Office of the Prosecutor. What I want to know now - and

4 I don't mind that you talked to the Prosecutor; it's not a sin - why

5 didn't you go to the database? First, to your native country, the USA -

6 and I'll tell you at the end why I'm asking these questions - then to the

7 headquarters of NATO in Brussels, where you could have sought reports as

8 to who they bombed, when they bombed, and what they filmed on the ground

9 in Kosovo during the bombing.

10 I'm sorry to be putting this question to you, because I cannot put

11 it to the Prosecutor, and this is a question that has been bugging me

12 since the beginning of the Milosevic trial. NATO shows us some

13 photographs that are convenient to them, and you used them, too.

14 So the question is: Why didn't you ask from NATO information as

15 to exactly what they bombed, which towns, et cetera? I think my question

16 is clear. I don't want to belabour the point.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you've also answered it for yourself,

18 Mr. Fila, but see if Mr. Riedlmayer can add anything.

19 THE WITNESS: Well, our procedure actually was --

20 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] He's an expert, Your Honour, he's not a

21 regular witness, and I cannot influence him, even if I wanted to.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I'll be delighted to meet the expert at

23 getting material from NATO.

24 But at any rate, carry on, Mr. Riedlmayer.

25 THE WITNESS: Well, that was not our procedure for a very simple

1 reason. We proceeded on the basis of allegations. So we took all the

2 allegations from all sources seriously, from the Serbian -- from the

3 Yugoslav government White Book, from the Serbian Orthodox church, from the

4 refugee interviews, and so forth, and we operated on that level.

5 As far as going to interview governments and militaries, as His

6 Honour pointed out, this is not the kind of data they are in the habit of

7 sharing with outsiders. So we never approached them.

8 MR. FILA: [Interpretation]

9 Q. I know that. I tried, too. My only question is: Did you try to

10 get it? I just want to know how many of us didn't get it. Are you one of

11 those who joined the club of those who sought and didn't get?

12 A. Well, we used everything that was publicly accessible, as you saw,

13 but we had no illusions that if we went to them that they would let us

14 into their database.

15 Q. That is true of the NATO but also your own country, the USA, which

16 leads the NATO, if my understanding is correct.

17 A. We had no dealings with the government at all.

18 Q. My next question would be this: Did you, perhaps, think it useful

19 to visit Paris, as the seat of UNESCO? I'm asking this because you quoted

20 the Ambassador of Yugoslavia to UNESCO, Nada Perisic-Popovic, in her

21 demands concerning restoration of allegedly damaged buildings that

22 suffered from NATO air-strikes. In other words, did you try to get in

23 contact with UNESCO representatives, including the Yugoslav ambassador to

24 UNESCO, who was then in Paris?

25 A. No, we did not. Nada Perisic-Popovic's press conference held at

1 the Yugoslav Cultural Centre in Paris was reported by Agence

2 France-Presse, and I took it off of LexisNexis.

3 Insofar as contacting UNESCO, before we undertook this project, we

4 contacted UNESCO to find out, A, whether they were planning any

5 comprehensive mission to assess what was happening in Kosovo, since we had

6 no intention of duplicating it if they were about to do the same, and they

7 informed us that they didn't. They also informed us that they had no

8 first-hand information about what was happening to cultural heritage in

9 Kosovo.

10 Q. And then you went to The Hague, and from The Hague, you went

11 directly to Kosovo. Where? By which route?

12 A. We flew from Amsterdam to Skopije, and from Skopije by car.

13 Q. Once you came to The Hague, to the Office of the Prosecutor, to

14 get information from the horse's mouth as to what's going on in Serbia,

15 did it not occur to you that you might visit Belgrade as well? Because

16 planes fly from Amsterdam to Belgrade as well, and in Belgrade, at The

17 Academy of Sciences, you could have collected additional information,

18 especially relative to the White Book. Did you try that?

19 A. Well, first of all, we didn't come to the Office of the Prosecutor

20 to find out what was going on in Serbia or anywhere else. The only

21 information we got from the Office of the Prosecutor had to do with

22 protocols and procedure. They, at no point, told us what was going on in

23 Kosovo or instructed us as to how and what we should find.

24 As to Serbia, we had access to all the publications from the

25 Serbian government which was very -- and the Yugoslav government, which

1 were very diligent at publicising this material, both in printed form and

2 in electronic form.

3 Q. Therefore, it was your assessment that you would not get any

4 additional explanation from the government of Yugoslavia as to how the

5 White Book that you quoted in your report was written. You simply thought

6 you didn't need that; is that right?

7 A. That's right.

8 Q. And then you took that book and read it; the book that you told us

9 about yesterday. That book is not in evidence. I don't have it in

10 English, but I will remind you that you told us yesterday how Serb

11 authorities told you that in Gracanica, the Church of Ascension of Our

12 Lady had been bombed and damaged. And then you and your colleague, with a

13 camera, established that the Serbian authorities were not telling the

14 truth. Is that correct?

15 A. Well, our aim was not to exonerate NATO or to blacken the name of

16 the Belgrade government. What we were trying to find out is what

17 allegations would pan out and which ones did not. And so we went to

18 Gracanica and we took some photographs. We sent -- we got further

19 information from conservation experts. We talked to the monks, and the

20 information about the damage to the church had been publicised on the

21 Serbian information ministry web site already during the war. So ...

22 Q. I heard that yesterday. Please do not repeat yourself. We must

23 not waste time. My main objection is: Where did you find in the White

24 Book that the Yugoslav authorities had said that the monastery was damaged

25 by an air-strike, by NATO bombs? Because nobody every said that. Let me

1 tell you what was said exactly. I'll read it.

2 "In the night on the 30th of March, the village of Gracanica was

3 bombed for the third time. Four shells fell 500 metres, that is 1500

4 feet, away from Gracanica monastery," and that's all.

5 It's not written anywhere that Gracanica was destroyed, damaged,

6 or anything so that you should go camera in hand to establish that it's

7 not true. That's about Gracanica. Nobody in Serbia ever claimed that the

8 NATO destroyed Gracanica. What is your comment? You said one thing and

9 we find in writing something quite different. That's page 226 of the

10 book.

11 A. The White Book -- the White Book was not my only source for this.

12 If you look in the footnotes to my report, I cite a number of sources from

13 official bodies in Belgrade, which at various points made allegations. In

14 the case of Gracanica, I remember on one of the Serbian government web

15 sites, blurry photos alleging to show munitions fragments embedded in the

16 walls. I also quite well remember in this very same courtroom one of the

17 amici assisting in the Milosevic case, trying to establish that the

18 paintings had detached from the walls and that there was damage to the

19 historical decoration of the church.

20 Q. Damaged by shock, that's something different. But you said,

21 yesterday, speaking of the White Book, that the Yugoslav government was

22 claiming, in the White Book, that Gracanica had been damaged. I said that

23 was not correct, and now you confirm that it's not correct -- or I am

24 reading from an inaccurate book. Don't tell me what other sources have

25 said; just show me the White Book where the Yugoslav government claims

1 that the NATO alliance burned, set on fire, damaged, bombed, or whatever

2 the Gracanica monastery. The closest location of damage is 500 metres

3 away from the monastery. Do not quote to me other sources. Just agree

4 with me that it's not written in the White Book?

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Fila, where is the reference in the report to

6 the White Book being the source of that information?

7 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] He said that yesterday at this trial.

8 He mentioned it. That's why I picked it up.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Did you give that as your --

10 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] No. Let me read it back to you.

11 Footnote 11 of his report, if you can find that. That mentions the White

12 Book.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Indeed, but that footnote doesn't relate to the

14 particular damage we're looking at at the moment, does it?

15 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] Yesterday, in his testimony, he said

16 the monastery was not damaged, contrary to claims.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: But --

18 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] And in the footnote refers to the White

19 Book.

20 Q. Let's look further on. You spoke yesterday about the Pec/Peje

21 Patriarchy, saying that it was a great monument in Serbia, for Serbia - to

22 us that's another statement because it's the cradle of all of us - anyway,

23 you said that you went there and it was not established, although the

24 White Book makes allegations that the Pec Patriarchy was hit by a NATO

25 air-strike. Is that what you said yesterday?

1 A. I didn't say that it was hit. I said that it was damaged,

2 according to the White Book. There were no claims that it had suffered a

3 direct hit, but that bombing adjacent to it had caused serious damage.

4 And the fact is that people, who are more expert than I, the Italian

5 Conservation Institute carried out a study in which they concluded

6 verbatim that none of the damage they saw was due to anything other than

7 rising groundwater and deferred maintenance.

8 Q. I do not argue with you on that point. I'm saying the White Book

9 does not state that. The White Book states instead: "In the night on the

10 31st of March during NATO attacks, the reservoir station of the

11 water-supply system was hit 500 metres from the Pec Patriarchy."

12 THE INTERPRETER: The counsel is reading too fast. Could he slow

13 down, please.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Fila, could you slow, please, for the

15 interpreters.

16 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] I finished, in fact, but I have -- I

17 can repeat.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we've got "The reservoir station of the

19 water-supply system was hit 500 metres from the Pec Patriarchy."

20 Now, is that the end of the quotation?

21 THE WITNESS: Um --

22 MR. FILA: [Interpretation]

23 Q. And that's all the reference to the Pec Patriarchy.

24 A. Are you certain? There are two --

25 Q. It's never said that --

1 A. -- two volumes of the White Book, and, in addition, as I tried to

2 explain in two footnotes of my report --

3 Q. I only have volume 1.

4 A. Okay. Well, volume 2 also has a section on cultural heritage.

5 And in footnotes 9 through 11 of my report, at the very end, I speak of

6 the various sources of allegations from Yugoslavia. I wasn't relying

7 entirely on the White Book.

8 [Defence counsel confer]

9 MR. FILA: [Interpretation]

10 Q. The thrust of my questions is this: Both in the case of Gracanica

11 and the Pec patriarchy, you said your source of information was the White

12 Book. I am simply saying that's not correct and I have no other point to

13 make here.

14 The next question I would like to ask you --

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, it may be suitable to interrupt there,

16 Mr. Fila, if you're moving on to something else.

17 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] That's what I did.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. We'll take our next break now,

19 Mr. Riedlmayer, if you can leave the courtroom again --

20 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] I have only one more question.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Oh, sorry, I didn't realise that.

22 MR. FILA: One question.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Very well, Mr. Fila. You finish, please.

24 MR. FILA: [Interpretation]

25 Q. When you were viewing the remnants of the mosque in Kosovska

1 Mitrovica - that's close to a very famous bridge on the Serb side,

2 conditionally speaking - did you experience any problems from Serbian

3 authorities when you wanted to view the remains of that mosque? Did

4 anybody try to prevent you from going there and seeing?

5 A. I was with an UNMIK official at the time and was not bothered.

6 Q. Correct. Because we have information from one Prosecution

7 witness, Mahmut Halimi, that there is a mass grave there where Serbs had

8 buried some Albanians. Did you see anything of the kind?

9 A. No.

10 Q. Thank you.

11 MR. FILA: [Interpretation] That was all.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, Mr. Riedlmayer, we'll resume at ten minutes

13 to 1.00. If you could leave with the usher now, please.

14 [The witness stands down]

15 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

16 JUDGE BONOMY: We'll resume at ten to 1.00.

17 --- Recess taken at 12.20 p.m.

18 --- On resuming at 12.51 p.m.

19 [The witness takes the stand]

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Aleksic.

21 MR. ALEKSIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

22 Cross-examination by Mr. Aleksic:

23 Q. [Interpretation] Good morning, Mr. Riedlmayer, or rather, good

24 afternoon. I have only a few questions for you.

25 First of all, something that follows from my colleagues'

1 cross-examination today. At the very beginning of your report, in

2 paragraph 2, subparagraph 1, you mention your investigations concerning

3 buildings which were established to have been seriously damaged by NATO

4 air-strikes. In connection with this, in the following paragraph, you say

5 that there were no signs of damage that could be ascribed to the

6 air-strikes in these buildings.

7 My first question in this respect is what criteria you used to

8 reach this conclusion.

9 A. I explained our criteria as to the description of the damage. As

10 to the cause of the damage, obviously, it's a little more complex, but I

11 can give you some specific examples.

12 For example, there were allegations concerning the mosque in Pec,

13 which was shown in direct examination, the Barakli Xhamia at the centre of

14 the market in Pec, I believe. This was a mosque which had been alleged to

15 have been hit by air-strikes. We visited the mosque and the dome was

16 intact. The door was charred but intact, and the interior had had very

17 serious fire, fire so intense that the marble revetments on the inside and

18 the marble column supporting the women's balcony had split from the heat,

19 and yet there was no sign at all of blast damage. And without being a

20 military expert, I think it's safe to say that this must have been a fire

21 that was set rather than a fire that resulted from any kind of aerial

22 bombardment.

23 So these kinds of observations -- or, for example, the church that

24 was also shown in direct examination, the church of St. Paraskeva in

25 Drsnik, which was also alleged to have been hit by NATO bombardment.

1 There, too, if you looked at the photographs, you could see the roof was

2 intact, the interior had a small fire set in it, and there were graffiti

3 on the walls; again, not the kind of damage one would expect from aerial

4 bombardment.

5 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. But you have said, once more, that you

6 are not a military expert; however, when speaking to my colleague

7 Mr. Bakrac, you said you knew nothing about different kinds of projectiles

8 and weapons. My question is, then: Did you not consider the possibility

9 that a projectile can enter a building from the side rather than through

10 the roof? I'm not now referring to this particular location. My question

11 is a general one.

12 A. Again, in the case, all I can do is illustrate with the cases that

13 we investigated. In these two particular cases, there was no sign

14 whatsoever of blast damage, which you would expect from any kind of

15 projectile. I think they're generally meant to do that kind of damage.

16 And, you know, I think one can employ certain common sense criteria,

17 without having to be a technical expert on munitions, to come to certain

18 conclusions.

19 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. Now that we're talking about common

20 sense, one of the sites mentioned in this first paragraph is also the

21 Catholic church of St. Anthony in Djakovica. You mentioned it both

22 yesterday and today when questioned or cross-examined by Mr. Bakrac. I

23 apologise for not having the page number in the transcript, but I think

24 there is no doubt that the Catholic priest told you that the damage to the

25 door and windows was caused by a bomb falling from the air; not hitting

1 the building directly, but rather, landing in its immediate vicinity. Am

2 I right?

3 A. That's not what he told me. Basically he told me they were

4 expelled. The Yugoslav military occupied the building. And when they

5 returned in May, they found the building damaged. Since he wasn't

6 present, he couldn't tell whether that damage was done by those who were

7 in the building or others. The same goes, I assume, with regard to any

8 other loss of property or damage involved.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Is this not the case where you attributed the

10 damage to the windows to blasts?

11 THE WITNESS: Well, let's differentiate. There was -- there's the

12 church, which was a major monument built in the 19th century --

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

14 THE WITNESS: -- and adjacent to it, a modern rectory.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

16 THE WITNESS: Both of them were near the Yugoslav military base.

17 What the priest told me was that, before the bombing happened, about a

18 half an hour before, the military came and expelled him and the nuns from

19 the premises. After it was over, the only damage to the church were some

20 shattered windows. In the case of the rectory, it had been vandalised and

21 pillaged.

22 The allegation that I was -- that moved me to examine these

23 premises was an allegation that the building of the church had been hit by

24 NATO bombs; and in fact, there was no damage. I went inside and outside

25 and it looked in good condition.

1 There was another church a couple hundred metres down the street,

2 which was disused and which they were planning to rebuild but hadn't,

3 which did suffer some damage from air blast. But no allegations

4 concerning that were ever raised by any party.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: But did you not say earlier today that there was --

6 I thought it was that church, where the windows --

7 THE WITNESS: The windows were blown out.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Blown out.

9 THE WITNESS: Yes.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: So this is the one?

11 THE WITNESS: Yes.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: That's fine. Thank you.

13 Mr. Aleksic.

14 MR. ALEKSIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honours.

15 Q. In paragraph 2.2 of your report, you mention kulla and the

16 destruction, or rather, you mention towers and that towers were the main

17 subject of attack, the main targets. They were perfect for the KLA to

18 engage in military activity from them, weren't they?

19 A. Well, this was already examine -- addressed in the

20 cross-examination by Mr. Milosevic during that trial, where he made the

21 same contention. And my reply to that is that these kulla, most of which

22 were built before World War I, were indeed used as refuges during times of

23 insecurity and especially during blood feuds. But while they were an

24 adequate defence against muskets and hunting rifles, they stood absolutely

25 no chance against modern weapons.

1 In the case of several kulla, where I talked to the owners who

2 said that they had fled to the slopes above and watched the destruction of

3 their kullas, they said the kullas were destroyed by a single projectile

4 held -- hit from a hand-held device, fired into the flammable roof

5 structure, which was enough to cause the whole thing to burn down and

6 collapse. So in a redoubt in late 20th century warfare, they had

7 absolutely no utility.

8 Q. Yes. Yes. But, Mr. Riedlmayer, my question was: Were these

9 suitable places to shoot from? I wasn't asking about the kind of weapons

10 that might be used to destroy them. On pages 28, 29, and 30 of

11 yesterday's transcript, you mentioned two new references not available to

12 you when you testified in the Milosevic trial, and these are publications

13 by Mr. Krasnici and Mr. Krunic.

14 In the course of yesterday, I glanced through these publications.

15 Mr. Krasnici says that the main purpose of these kullas was defensive;

16 that they were two or three storeys high; that usually the ground floor

17 was built of stone; and that instead of windows they had loop-holes.

18 Would you agree with that?

19 A. Like many -- the principal purpose of these was to serve as

20 shelter for people and animals. Like many pre-modern buildings in Europe,

21 the animals and the people generally lived under one roof. The people

22 lived under the upper storeys, which had windows; the lower storeys were

23 used for storage of provisions and stables for the animals.

24 Now, since the kullas did also have this defensive purpose, they

25 had openings on the lower storeys, which could of course be used for

1 shooting. But the fact is that since they were so vulnerable, I think

2 they would make very poor redoubts in any kind of modern warfare. I

3 don't know if that answers your question.

4 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. I'll move on now. In A2.3 of your

5 report on page 19, you speak about information received from the Kosovo

6 Islamic community, and you say that in some cases verbal descriptions of

7 the extent of the damage were exaggerated.

8 And then you say that the dates given for construction should be

9 taken with caution because they often refer to the date when the

10 foundation was laid, rather than when the building was finished. So you

11 were provided with this information that had to be checked. Is that

12 right?

13 A. Yes. With regard to destruction, this was a problem with all the

14 religious communities, including the Serbian Orthodox church. They tended

15 to speak of destruction in very general terms and did not have a very

16 specific vocabulary.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: I don't think you need to elaborate on this. If

18 counsel wants more information, Mr. Riedlmayer, he can ask for it.

19 Because you've dealt with this ad longum yesterday.

20 MR. ALEKSIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. Yesterday during the examination-in-chief, page 26, lines 1 to 4,

22 when answering Mr. Hannis's questions, you said that evidently if a

23 building was damaged by a projectile and there was a strong blast, there

24 would be holes in the walls and bullet traces on all side; and that in

25 that case, it would be logical to conclude that such damage was not caused

1 in peacetime.

2 Also, when you testified in the Milosevic case, you spoke about

3 the mosque in Djakovica. And on page 26, lines 18 and forward, you said

4 that the minaret had been toppled and that you could see several small

5 round holes in it. Can you describe these holes?

6 A. Yes. I believe I already described them in court here. They were

7 approximately maybe 30 centimetres, 40 centimetres across. I can't give

8 you an exact measurement, since I was looking at them from the ground up.

9 There were approximately four or five of them in the part of the minaret

10 that was still standing. The top of the minaret above the balcony had

11 been sheared off. They looked like the kinds of holes that might be made

12 by some kind of projectile.

13 Q. Maybe I was insufficiently precise. The first part of yesterday's

14 transcript, which I quoted, is one from which it follows that you saw

15 bullet -- traces of bullets on all sides in some locations. Is that

16 correct?

17 A. In some locations, I saw buildings that had clearly been shot up

18 by small arms. This was, by far, the minority of cases. And it wasn't

19 always clear whether this was a building caught in some sort of battle or

20 cross-fire or whether it was an act of vandalism. I can give you an

21 example of the latter in Pec where I visited the mosque called, in

22 Albanian, Xhamija e Kuqe, the red mosque, which had been burnt down.

23 And since it wasn't listed in the literature, I was looking for

24 some kind of inscription to figure out what it was called in Baedeker.

25 And I found an Islamic an inscription on the fountain right next to the

1 mosque, part of complex. And somebody had clearly emptied a whole clip

2 into the inscription. All the bullet impacts were in the Arabic

3 inscription on top of the fountain. So clearly that's not the mark of a

4 battle, but somebody getting very angry about something.

5 Q. Were there other sites where you saw traces of bullets which might

6 be the traces of battles?

7 A. I can't from memory cite any specifically, but there were

8 buildings that were badly destroyed where you did indeed see sprays of

9 bullets in the wall. I would need to have my database in front of me to

10 hunt it down.

11 Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer. One last question on this topic. You

12 testified in the Milosevic case. And on pages 2684, lines 21 to 22, you

13 said, "We saw no signs that the mosques had been hit by small calibre

14 weapons." Is that correct?

15 A. I don't have the transcript in front of me, so I can't comment on

16 the context thereof. But I can say in general, when we saw mosques which

17 had suffered damage, we didn't see -- it was very uncommon to see any kind

18 of small-calibre impacts. And you would expect that, for example, if

19 someone's trying to take down a sniper, the most efficient way is,

20 obviously, to try and shoot him down.

21 MR. ALEKSIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honours. I have no

22 further questions.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you, Mr. Aleksic.

24 Mr. Visnjic.

25 MR. VISNJIC: No questions, Your Honour.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. O'Sullivan.

2 MR. O'SULLIVAN: No questions.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic.

4 MR. IVETIC: Yes, Your Honour.

5 Cross-examination by Mr. Ivetic:

6 Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Riedlmayer. My name is Dan Ivetic and I am

7 one of the attorneys for Mr. Lukic in these proceedings, and I've got some

8 questions to ask you. I'll try to move along quickly and not repeat items

9 that have already been dealt with, since we have time constraints.

10 Now, I'd first like to ask you, you've been asked and you've

11 specified several times that you are not a military expert. I have some

12 other questions about your --

13 THE INTERPRETER: Mr. Ivetic, would you kindly slow down a little

14 bit for the interpreters.

15 MR. IVETIC: So much for trying to speed things up. I'll try and

16 keep it slow.

17 Q. You've been asked, and you've answered, about your lack of any

18 military expertise. I would like to ask you about other areas of

19 expertise that I believe are relevant to some of the work you did.

20 Now, first of all, sir, am I correct that you never had any formal

21 education or training in the fields of fire-scene or bomb-scene

22 investigations?

23 A. No, I did not. I'm not an arson investigator.

24 Q. Okay. And you did not, in fact, employ or consult with any such

25 expert while you were in the field, did you?

1 A. No. However, I could tell you that, in the course of my

2 investigations both in Kosovo and in Bosnia, I have seen, in person,

3 several hundred sites and, on photographs, several hundred more sites

4 about which I had other information and have accumulated a fair degree of

5 experience. And I've also been reading the technical literature. So, to

6 a certain extent, I have become self-educated in this. But I have no

7 technical training in that field.

8 Q. Okay. And what about forensic structural engineering? You

9 haven't had any formal education or training in that field, have you?

10 A. No, I'm not a structural engineer and we did not try to do

11 structural testing; however, I was accompanied in my field-work in Kosovo

12 by Mr. Herscher, who is a trained architect and who is qualified to make

13 some judgements about the buildings, based on visual inspection. As I

14 said, we had no means to carry out technical tests.

15 Q. And just to be clear, Mr. Herscher is an architect; correct?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. Okay. Now, would you agree with me that, in order to

18 definitively, as an expert, give descriptions of and make conclusions of

19 exactly in what manner these buildings and mosques were damaged, you would

20 need to have had the assistance of such an expert, that is to say, a

21 bomb-scene or fire-scene investigations expert and a forensic structural

22 engineer, as the literature indicates?

23 A. Well, in the best of all circumstances, that's what you would hope

24 to have; however, in our field survey, we had much more modest goals and

25 those were, I think, achievable through simple visual observation and

1 application of certain basic criteria.

2 Q. Fair enough. And you've already talked about the modest goals and

3 the results obtained, so I'm not going to ask you about that.

4 Now, if we can turn to your factual findings on the ground and

5 your knowledge and experience, you've mentioned Bosnia. Would you still

6 agree with your assessment that you stated during the Milosevic

7 proceedings, at page 2714, lines 18 through 21, that as far as the Balkans

8 were concerned, "the biggest driving force for desecration and looting of

9 religious sites was quite aside from any political motives and boiled down

10 to just simple human greed."

11 A. I don't have the reference in front of me, so I don't know the

12 exact context. But as far as I can recall the remark, it was addressed to

13 the fact that, in many of these cases, before a site was destroyed, it was

14 looted. So, for example, in the case of Vucitrn, the market mosque was

15 surrounded by the goldsmith's bazaar, all the shops being endowments of

16 the mosque, meaning the rental income of the shops supported the mosque.

17 And before it was all burned down, according to local residents, the

18 goldsmith's shops were systematically looted and then set on fire.

19 So I think when people talk about ideology or ethnic hatreds or

20 troops getting out of control, what they neglect to mention is the profit

21 motive.

22 Q. Okay. So you've answered my other question, which was going to be

23 if you agreed that this applied to Kosovo and Metohija. I take it from

24 your response, citing an example in Kosovo, that you do agree that human

25 greed and profit motive had a role potentially --

1 A. They certainly had some role.

2 Q. Okay. Now, based upon my reading of the Milosevic proceedings and

3 the transcript therefrom, it's my understanding that at that point in

4 time, while you were being cross-examined, you learned for the first time

5 that certain information that you had received, particularly from

6 Djakovica, came from KLA members, specifically one Petrik Domi, who was a

7 member of the 124th Brigade of the KLA.

8 Now, since the Milosevic case, have you done any more work to

9 check and determine if any of your other informants or sources had any

10 compromising or potentially compromising ties with the KLA?

11 A. The photograph you referred to was one that was shown in court

12 here. It showed the Djakovica market on fire. Now, I didn't acquire it

13 directly from Mr. Domi, I acquired it from the news agency which

14 distributed it in 1999. It was clearly just one piece among several

15 pieces of evidence on the destruction of the bazaar, and, you know, if you

16 throw it out, I don't think it would change my assessment. I'd leave it,

17 obviously, to the Court to determine what utility it has.

18 I only received very few photos from individuals. Most of them

19 came from the religious communities or other institutional sources, but

20 all the individuals are named.

21 Q. Okay.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: This individual is named in relation to one of your

23 sites, is he?

24 THE WITNESS: He's named as a source of one photograph of the

25 burning market. He is a resident of Djakovica and claims to have taken

1 that photograph while the market was being burned.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: But your source of --

3 THE WITNESS: Was --

4 JUDGE BONOMY: -- your copy was Reuters, I think you said

5 yesterday.

6 THE WITNESS: Yes, it came from a news agency.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

8 MR. IVETIC:

9 Q. Now, sir, to clear up something that my colleague Mr. Hannis, I

10 think, misspoke about yesterday, you were talking of kullas and Mr. Hannis

11 asked you if, in fact, the family compounds, as he called them, that we

12 had heard about in other evidence were, in fact, kullas. Now, am I

13 correct that not all family compounds on the territory of Kosovo and

14 Metohija are, indeed, kullas; that, in fact, there are ordinary residences

15 that are built as compounds?

16 A. Yes. Both rural Albanians and, to some extent, rural Serbs lived

17 in extended families. They're known in the Balkans as zadrugas. And they

18 often are built as compounds, several houses within a walled enclosure.

19 In the areas we're talking about, western Kosovo and northern Kosovo, this

20 is where kullas are concentrated. But family compounds can be found

21 anywhere in Kosovo, and very often they consist of modern buildings.

22 Q. Thank you. And without having reviewed the evidence that

23 Mr. Hannis was generally speaking of, you would have no way of knowing

24 whether the family compounds that are relevant to this case and to other

25 witnesses were, indeed, kullas or these residences, these zadrugas. Is

1 that correct?

2 A. Well, if the sites were identified by name -- the kullas had been

3 studied in the literature, so you could know, for example, the old town of

4 Decani was almost entirely composed of kullas, as was the town of Junik.

5 There are entire villages which are almost exclusively kullas. In other

6 places, you know, I wouldn't expect to see kullas, for example, down in

7 the south of Kosovo.

8 Q. Would you expect -- I have to slow down since we both speak

9 English. If I cut in right after your answer, the interpreters have

10 trouble.

11 Would you expect a person testifying about a compound to use the

12 word -- would it be -- would they use the word "kulla"? Would that be the

13 way of differentiating between a zadruga and a kulla?

14 A. Well, a zadruga -- I'm sorry, I should slow down. Zadruga is

15 simply the name of the extended family; it's not the name of the building.

16 Q. All right.

17 A. So extended families can live in modern apartment buildings, if

18 you like. But I can't speak for what a witness would say. If you asked

19 them what type of house it would be, if it was a kulla, they would

20 probably identify it as such. My study was not based on those incidents;

21 it simply notes that of the extant kullas in Kosovo, which various experts

22 estimate around 500, some 90 percent were destroyed in 1998/1999, which

23 seems a very high proportion. It is certainly borne out by local studies,

24 like the one carried out by UNMIK, Urban Institute in Pec, which found

25 that in the municipality of Decani, for example, out of 260-odd kullas,

1 230 had been damaged or destroyed.

2 Q. I hate to cut you short, sir, but I'm try to finish you and leave

3 time for the Prosecution for re-direct. So I apologise if I seem to speed

4 along on some thing. You already talked, I think at length, with my

5 colleagues about whether or not these kullas could be used for -- for

6 battle purposes. Now -- and the question I want to ask you is: With

7 respect to that, you answered that you talked with people who told you how

8 the kullas had been damaged or destroyed. Now, I want to ask you: Is it

9 correct that you cannot actually definitively exclude that some of these

10 instances may be misreported to you, to serve propaganda goals of the KLA

11 and protect the KLA?

12 A. I can't exclude anything, seeing as I didn't take statements under

13 oath. However, I can tell you that in these specific cases, I'm talking

14 of a village called Gornje Streoce, just between Decani and Pec. That's

15 S-t-r-e-o-c-e. The kullas had no bullet-holes on them and they were

16 completely gutted with fire, which seems consistent with what they told

17 me.

18 Q. Okay. Now, yesterday we went through the -- actually, I guess

19 today as well, we went through the extracts from your report that talked

20 about a variety of sites. And based upon my rough calculation, it would

21 appear that a majority of them, or some seven or eight of the sites, come

22 from -- come from this Sabri Bajgora in the IMG database listed as the

23 surveyors, which you listed today as shorthand for the source of

24 information. Now, am I correct that this IMG database actually does not

25 contain any information relating to how a particular building was damaged;

1 it only contains information as to the extent of the damage and the costs

2 to repair the same?

3 A. That's correct.

4 Q. So then would it be fair to say that the bulk of the information

5 as to how these structures were damaged came from this Sabri Bajgora?

6 A. Insofar as there is specific information as to when and by whom,

7 it would come from them.

8 Q. And obviously --

9 A. If I say it looks like it's been burned, that may come from me.

10 Q. Right. Okay. And as far as this Islamic community headed by Mr.

11 Bajgora, you don't know whether in fact they conducted any interviews, if

12 at all, or whether they relied upon newspaper accounts or media accounts,

13 do you?

14 A. If there were newspaper or media accounts, I suspect if it was

15 international ones I would have seen them. What I do know, from talking

16 to Mr. Bajgora, is that in July and August and September, for the three

17 months after the end of the war, he said he was continually on the road

18 visiting the various local Islamic communities, taking pictures, and

19 collecting information on what had happened to his communities' properties

20 during the war. So, yes, he did do field-work. So what extent he

21 corroborated this from other sources, I do not know.

22 Q. Okay.

23 A. But I assume that his main information was firsthand, talking to

24 local people.

25 Q. You indicate there that if there had been media accounts; you

1 suspect you would have seen them. There are at least several occasions in

2 the excerpts where -- for cites that you received information from Mr.

3 Bajgora, you also had newspaper accounts. My question for you is: If, in

4 fact, it turns out that Mr. Bajgora used those same newspaper accounts for

5 reaching his conclusions, the newspaper accounts that you cited can't

6 really be corroborative or cross-referencing Mr. Bajgora's claims, can

7 they?

8 A. That is certainly one way of looking at it. The fact is that the

9 instances, where I have newspaper accounts, are mainly limited to a few

10 cites that were particularly notorious and which, therefore, attracted the

11 attention of the international press. I doubt, actually, that in the

12 circumstances prevailing in Kosovo in the immediate aftermath of the war,

13 that Mr. Bajgora or his community would have been so clued in to the

14 international press. There was no power and no telephone communication,

15 and in all of Pristina there was one internet cafe charging outrageous

16 rates.

17 Q. Okay. Now, if I can ask you about one particular site that you

18 did visit, the Rogovo site, the Xhamija e Hasan Ages, that you visited

19 with Mr. Herscher -- I apologise. That's P1784, if anyone wishes to

20 follow along.

21 Now, in that damage description, the last line of that

22 says: "Village site of 29 January 1999 MUP operation in which 24

23 Albanians were killed."

24 Now, I note that there is no reference to Sabri Bajgora, there are

25 no media accounts, and the informant's statement from an unnamed

1 storekeeper does not mention anything from this January of 1999 incident.

2 A. The January of 1999 incident was widely publicised at the time in

3 news accounts. But I had no idea what they were going to include in the

4 final indictment. I simply put this in, essentially saying, "Here it is

5 if you're" -- "if it's of any interest." But, you know, whether the

6 destruction of the mosque actually happened subsequent to that.

7 Q. Right. That's what the -- at least what the informant states. So

8 this is put in here simply to assist the Prosecutor in its other

9 investigations and is not part of your -- of the task that you were --

10 A. No --

11 Q. -- the primary task of your --

12 A. No. And it was put in the at the last moment.

13 Q. Fair enough. Now, for each of these incidents that we've gone now

14 for two days of damage to specific sites, you cannot positively exclude

15 the possibility or the fact that if these acts were done intentionally,

16 the damage may be the spontaneous reaction due to angry, rage, or greed of

17 local Serb inhabitants, either responding to attacks of NATO or the KLA,

18 can you?

19 A. No, I can't.

20 Q. Okay. And, in fact, I believe many of the reported incidents, at

21 least according to the newspaper accounts and the informants' information

22 of when the damage occurred, most of them occurred, if not all occurred,

23 after, immediately after, NATO attacks had commenced. Isn't that right?

24 A. That I cannot speak to.

25 Q. Okay. Now, in fact, where the manpower and facilities were

1 available -- or should I say: Did you have knowledge of the fact that,

2 when manpower and facilities were available, the Serb authorities actually

3 tried to protect and control such Islamic religious sites from mob

4 activity during the course of the NATO bombings?

5 A. I wasn't aware of that.

6 Q. Okay. For instance, had you heard or did you inquire about the

7 Prizren mosque? First of all, are you familiar with the mosque in Prizren

8 that is considered to be the central landmark and symbol of the Islamic

9 community in Kosovo and Metohija?

10 A. Yes, the Sinan Pasha mosque.

11 Q. And are you familiar with the fact that they Serbian police

12 posted, in the city of Prizren, guards on a daily basis to protect and

13 secure that mosque from any potential mob activity on the part of the

14 local populace?

15 A. I hadn't heard that. I did hear that, during the war, both the

16 prayer in the mosques and the call to prayer were forbidden in Prizren.

17 This is according to Mr. Virmica, when I spoke to him. He lives in

18 Prizren. But he never said anything about guards.

19 Q. Okay. Now, yesterday, when testifying about a picture that you

20 bought from a journalist - I forget the name of the journalist, but it was

21 relating to Pristina - you stated in your sworn testimony here that on

22 June 15th, 1999, hours before the arrival of the KFOR units, I believe it

23 was the Islamic library that was set on fire by Serbian police, who ran

24 into the building and ran out.

25 Now, again, we have no source for that, and, in fact, I did not

1 see it referenced in any of the exhibits that were tendered from your

2 report. So, first of all, what was the source of this information? Was

3 it the news journalist who sold you the photographs?

4 A. It was actually another news account which is in my database. I

5 don't believe it was among the pages from the database that was entered

6 into evidence. The photograph was by a Reuters photographer named Oleg

7 Popov. And I didn't buy it from him, I bought it from the Reuters

8 archive.

9 Q. Okay. Are you aware of the fact, sir, that as far as Pristina is

10 concerned, the first KFOR contingents arrived there already on June the

11 12th, 1999?

12 A. I may have had the date wrong, and I believe I indicated that in

13 court because I'm speaking from memory. But the burning of the Islamic

14 archive, which is what it was - it was the archive where all the property

15 records of the Islamic community and other documents were held - did

16 happen in the hours before the arrival of KFOR in Pristina. It wasn't --

17 it doesn't hang on a single photograph. There was news footage on various

18 outlets, from CNN to BBC, showing the burning building. It was a widely

19 reported thing, because reporters were coming in in advance of the troops.

20 Q. Footage showing the burning building but not the perpetrators.

21 A. Not the perpetrators --

22 Q. Okay. Thank you.

23 A. -- but the reporters interviewed people who had seen the

24 perpetrators.

25 Q. Okay. Now, in the course of your personal interviews with

1 informants and sources for your study, isn't it true that you came across

2 instances when persons had misrepresented things to you, trying to

3 actually blame Serbs for damage to sites that, in fact, were damaged in

4 some other way?

5 A. Yes, there was at least one instance of that. It wasn't connected

6 to buildings, but in Vucitrn there were some smashed tombstones. And

7 initially, when I talked to residents, some children said, "Oh, it must

8 have been the Serbs," and then some others said, "No, this just happened

9 last week" and that it was done at the behest of an aid agency from the

10 United Arab Emirates who were working on some sort of fanatical sect. So

11 there were some smashed tombstones. But that's the only instance I know

12 where people were falsely attributing it.

13 Similarly, in Djakovica, there was one other instance where there

14 was a foundation of a mosque and a minaret standing but no mosque. And

15 somebody tried to tell me that this was ruined in the war, and then I

16 asked the Islamic community and they said, "No, it was an old mosque. We

17 tore it just before the war and had intentions to reconstruct it." But

18 these are the only two instances I can think of.

19 Q. All right. Let me go back for a moment to Vucitrn to try and

20 refresh your recollection some, because I think we're talking about the

21 same instance but you've got a couple things turned around in there.

22 The Prosecution tendered today a new exhibit, P2456, and on the

23 fifth page of that, it talks -- this is the report from your database

24 talking about the Gazi Ali Bej mosque in Vucitrn. And according to that,

25 it says: "Old man encountered in mosque courtyard initially tried to

1 blame Serbs for damage to cemetery but several young people said that that

2 was not true," and then it goes on to give the part that you had

3 mentioned. So you, in fact, had heard the mistruth not from children, as

4 you had said here, but from an old man. Does that sound more like the --

5 A. Yes, the -- and then it was corrected.

6 Q. Thankfully it was corrected by persons who had actually seen the

7 damage being done at the bequest of the aid agency. Now, the question I

8 have for you is: Based upon this experience, you cannot, therefore,

9 exclude the possibility that some of the other statements you heard,

10 particularly where there was only one person involved, were, likewise,

11 attempts at misrepresentation, can you?

12 A. As I said, I only recorded what was told to me. I did not depose

13 people under oath.

14 Q. Okay. Now, as far as some of the other informants or news

15 accounts that you relied upon in reaching your reports, I find some, in

16 particular, inconsistent with one another and I'll very briefly

17 summarise. The one, in particular, I'm talking about is Exhibit P1781

18 dealing with the Hadum mosque and bazaar in Djakovica. According to the

19 excerpt from your database that was submitted into evidence, one informant

20 says that Serb police and civilians are to blame for this damage. The

21 other informant that you had in that case said Serb police and military,

22 but makes no mention of civilians, were responsible. And finally, the

23 news report, based upon multiple accounts by Chris Stephen, from The New

24 York Times, says very explicitly that 50 persons in military uniforms

25 alone did the act.

1 Now, sir, all I want to ask you about the inconsistencies is to

2 confirm that you are not in a position, based upon the knowledge that you

3 collected, to reconcile these different accounts, are you?

4 A. Which is why I included them, as they stand.

5 Q. Fair enough. And, in fact, if we can focus for a moment on the

6 essay by Chris Stephen from The New York Times, you only have an excerpt

7 included in there. Do you recall, from reading that article, that

8 immediately after your excerpt in his essay, he describes how the old town

9 where the mosque and bazaar were located were "the epicenter of Kosovo

10 Liberation Army activity, a haven for guerillas at war with the Serbs."

11 A. I don't recall, but it was seven years ago.

12 Q. Okay. Did you recall, or do you know, that, in fact, a KLA

13 headquarters was located precisely in that part of Djakovica city,

14 precisely in March of 1999, as the article that you have identified as a

15 source also indicates?

16 A. I used it as a source only for what it had to say about the

17 building. I was not particularly interested in the other aspects.

18 Q. Okay.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic.

20 MR. IVETIC: Yes.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Do you have an exhibit number for the rest of the

22 article?

23 MR. IVETIC: I don't have it because I thought that I couldn't use

24 it, given that I did not know of the article until last night, which was

25 obviously after I could have given notice of it. So I do not.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: I think that should be put into the system.

2 MR. IVETIC: Just the excerpts that I've talked about, or --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, the additional excerpt.

4 MR. IVETIC: Yes.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: We've got part of the report here and you're

6 supplementing that --

7 MR. IVETIC: Right.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: -- so that should be put into the system and the

9 Chamber notified, in writing, of its number.

10 MR. IVETIC: I will do that, then.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

12 MR. IVETIC: And that, actually, is the last question I had for

13 this witness, so hopefully we have time to finish him today.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

15 MR. IVETIC: Thank you, sir.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Hannis. I mean, you have some time if -- if

17 you just give me a second.

18 MR. HANNIS: Yes.

19 [Trial Chamber confers]

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Since there is no other case in this courtroom this

21 afternoon, we can allow Judge Nosworthy to depart for her other case and

22 we can sit, under 15 bis, a little longer to enable us to clear up issues

23 over exhibits and complete the re-direct. It's only going to take five or

24 ten minutes, I image, and --

25 Mr. Hannis, you look doubtful about that.

1 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, in light of what just happened with

2 supplementing the newspaper article, there was some questions put to this

3 witness concerning the White Book and some of the sources of the Yugoslav

4 authorities and the Yugoslav web sites concerning damage that this witness

5 relied on.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

7 MR. HANNIS: And I had proposed to introduce some of those

8 documents, or portions of those documents, to supplement what was asked

9 him on cross-examination.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, if you're given half an hour, would you

11 manage, then?

12 MR. HANNIS: Well, I could do it in the amount of time if I could

13 find the material, but I don't have it all at hand.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: You have a witness here who you anticipated would

15 be two days and --

16 MR. HANNIS: I did, Your Honour.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: We can accommodate that and it's disappointing that

18 you can't. Does it help if we break briefly and do this? Because --

19 MR. HANNIS: It could.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: -- or is that not going to be of much assistance to

21 you?

22 MR. HANNIS: Well, that could be of assistance to me. Your

23 Honour, I guess if I can inquire of the witness, if it's inconvenient for

24 him to return tomorrow. I don't know what his travel arrangements are. I

25 would defer to him because he's come here on numerous occasions in the

1 past and I'll adjust my schedule to his.

2 THE WITNESS: My return flight is booked for Friday, so ...

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, it's regrettable, Mr. Hannis, that we can't

4 make use of these -- the opportunity when it's there to get everything

5 heard at the one time and help our understanding of the situation. But if

6 it's got to be tomorrow, then so be it.

7 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

8 [Trial Chamber confers]

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, Mr. Riedlmayer, you'll need to return, I'm

10 afraid, tomorrow to resume at 9.00. And, again, please bear in mind what

11 I said about no discussion about the evidence meanwhile. You may leave

12 the courtroom now and we will see you at 9.00 tomorrow.

13 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honour.

14 [The witness stands down]

15 JUDGE BONOMY: 9.00 tomorrow morning.

16 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.46 p.m.,

17 to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 1st day of

18 November, 2006, at 9.00 a.m.

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