1 Tuesday, 27 May 2008

2 [Open session]

3 --- Upon commencing at 2.17 p.m.

4 [The accused entered court]

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Registrar, could you please

6 call the case.

7 THE REGISTRAR: Thank you and good afternoon, Your Honours. This

8 is case number IT-03-67-T, the Prosecutor versus Vojislav Seselj.

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. Registrar.

10 This is May 27th, 2008, and I greet the representatives from the

11 OTP, Mr. Seselj, as well as everyone helping us.

12 I have two oral decisions to issue, one requires a closed session

13 and the other one an open session, so we'll first have the one in closed

14 session.

15 Could we please move to closed session.

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18 [Open session]

19 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, we're now in open session.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Oral decision on time spent.

21 Noting the hearing of May 22nd, 2008, during which the accused

22 made a great number of interventions which should have been done during

23 cross-examination but which the accused said were objections, notably at

24 the following pages: 7280, 7284 to 7285, 7291 to 7294, 7300, 7307 to

25 7308, 7315 to 7318, 7328 to 7331, 7349 to 7350, and 7362 of the French

1 transcript; noting the many warnings given by the Trial Chamber during

2 the hearing, warnings saying that these interventions belonged to the

3 cross-examination, notably on pages 7284, 7307 to 7308, 7315 to 7318,

4 7332, 7349, and 7363 of the French transcript; noting Rule 90(F) of the

5 Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the Tribunal, according to which the

6 Trial Chamber shall exercise control over the mode and order of

7 interrogating witnesses and presenting evidence so as to avoid needless

8 consumption of time; noting the order in which the guidelines on the

9 presentation of evidence and behaviour of the parties during the trial,

10 order dated November 15, 2007, in which, at paragraph 22, the

11 Trial Chamber said the following, I quote:

12 "In order to make sure that the trial will be fair and speedy,

13 the Trial Chamber considers that the time spent in cross-examining a

14 witness should not exceed the time spent during examination-in-chief,

15 unless there are specific circumstances such as a very short

16 examination-in-chief, an expert witness, or when fairness requires it, in

17 such case cross-examination may be lengthened."

18 Considering that at this stage of the procedure, the

19 Trial Chamber has noted that the accused has spent a great amount of time

20 for interventions during the Prosecution's examination-in-chief, whereas

21 these interventions should belong to the cross-examination; considering

22 that fairness requires that when such interventions are made, the time

23 used should be taken out of the time provided to the accused for his

24 cross-examination; considering, of course, that this mechanism will also

25 be applied to Prosecution, if need be; on these grounds, pursuant to

1 Rule 90(F), orders that the time spent by a party to make interventions

2 which the Trial Chamber will believe as belonging to the

3 cross-examination, will be taken out of the total time given to this

4 party for cross-examination, which means, in a nutshell, that if

5 objections are made when actually these objections should be questions

6 put to the witness during cross-examination, the Trial Chamber will

7 decide whether the time spent then will be deducted from the time

8 allocated to this party for its cross-examination. We wanted this to be

9 extremely clear.

10 I will now ask to move back into a private session, please.

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5 [Open session]

6 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, we're now in open session.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, I believe you

8 wanted to say something about the oral decision we handed down on time

9 allotted, unless I'm mistaken. I don't know.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I wanted to ask where the

11 sense of all that is, because in that way my procedural rights are being

12 curtailed; that every time I have to think whether what I'm going to say

13 is in order or not. And if the Trial Chamber deems that it is not all

14 right, then that time is deducted from my cross-examination. I'm just

15 letting you know that none of my objections meant asking questions of the

16 witness. It was an objection to the manner in which the Prosecutor was

17 conducting the examination-in-chief. And you saw, when the previous

18 witness was examined, how many times the Prosecutor intervened, and each

19 time there was no serious reason for him to do so. So it seems that

20 there's a rule for the Prosecution here and another set of rules for me,

21 and you won't be able to convince me that that is not so.

22 And you cautioned the Prosecutor that he had gone too far in

23 objecting and interrupting me, just for interrupting me, whereas each of

24 my objections had meaning. Now, it's up to a subjective assessment

25 whether the objections should be made during the examination-in-chief or

1 during the cross-examination. I believe that those objections should

2 have been made during the examination-in-chief, because otherwise the

3 Prosecutor would be the one who dictates and determines in advance what

4 my cross-examination is going to be like. So the objections I raised in

5 Court here have nothing to do with my cross-examination and my Defence

6 case as I have conceived it. And you'll see, when I come to

7 cross-examine, I'm not going to mention the matters at all that I raised

8 objections about during the examination-in-chief.

9 And it is my right to intervene at all times whenever I consider

10 that the Prosecution is not conducting the examination-in-chief properly,

11 according to the Rules, and that is when the Prosecution doesn't want to

12 learn the truth, all he wants to do is to score points for the

13 indictment. And the Prosecutor must not behave in that way. The

14 Prosecutor must be interested in establishing the truth, first and

15 foremost, to assist the Trial Chamber to arrive at the truth, and not to

16 keep quiet about the facts that it knows are true and sweep them under

17 the carpet and just to insist upon something that could bear out the

18 indictment, although it knows in advance that many of those matters are

19 not based on the truth. So you've curtailed that right, as far as I'm

20 concerned, and the argument you gave was that you were going to save

21 time. But I can see that you're going to save far more time quite soon

22 than you expected to save. What can I do about that? There we have it.

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] A very brief explanation. It

24 is always useful to highlight this with examples.

25 Let's imagine the witness coming in, in a few moments' time,

1 well, the Prosecution will show a picture to this witness and say, "Look

2 at the minaret, and it's the one on the ground," and you will stand up

3 and say that, "This a leading question," and you would be quite right.

4 Then your time is not deducted, and then you are right to raise an

5 objection because the Prosecution should have said to the witness, "Look

6 at the picture and tell us what you see." "On this photograph the

7 minaret is not standing and there are stones on the ground." That's my

8 first example.

9 My second example is this: The Prosecutor says, "Look at the

10 photograph. What can you say about it?" The witness then answers and

11 says, "Well, the minaret is on the ground." And the Prosecutor would

12 then say, "Is it Seselj's men who have done this?" And then you get to

13 your feet and you raise an objection, and you say, "Well, Seselj's men

14 have nothing to do with this. These are Arkan's men. This has got

15 nothing to do with me." This objection should be part of your

16 cross-examination, and this is a theoretical example I've provided. On

17 answering the question put, the person said, "These are Seselj's men,"

18 but you would like to say that -- or you could say, "There were other

19 people there, too, not only Arkan's men. How do you know that these were

20 Seselj's men?" That is a typical question that can be put during

21 cross-examination.

22 These are just examples, but of course we don't want to prejudice

23 you in any way. Some objections can be substantiated; others can only be

24 put during -- or other questions can only be put during

25 cross-examination. It's for you to establish a clear distinction between

1 the two. Since you are well-versed in procedural matters, when you see a

2 problem, you highlight it. This hasn't escaped me.

3 "During my cross-examination, if the Prosecutor raises objections

4 all the time, then his time is not taken off him." You're quite right in

5 that sense. But you may have noticed that I have already seen that I am

6 somewhat irritated when objections are raised which wastes time of the

7 Court.

8 The Trial Chamber has a number of instruments at its disposal.

9 If it feels that the Prosecution is not doing its work properly, and when

10 too many objections are raised during the Defence case or during

11 cross-examination, the Trial Chamber has a whole series of instruments it

12 can use, and we shall be very careful. The Prosecutor can say or raise

13 an objection and say as part of the cross-examination, certain facts are

14 mentioned which are not contained in the indictment, that can happen, and

15 then the Trial Chamber will see what to do. But if the objections are

16 aimed at destabilising you or, rather, to interrupt the thread of your

17 arguments, then we will intervene. And if we can't take time off, we

18 have other means of coping with the problem. I have said this many a

19 time.

20 The trial does not rest on objections and incidents in the Court.

21 The trial rests on the evidence of the witnesses and on the documents.

22 This is what, at the end of the day and beyond all reasonable doubt, we

23 will base our conclusions on, and we will then decide whether it is a

24 question of determining guilt or not, but this will not rest on any

25 objections.

1 I would like to tell both parties again that what we are

2 interested in, what the Bench is interested in - we are professional

3 Judges - are the facts of the case, and to avoid objections on whether

4 there are leading questions or not leading questions, it is important to

5 be disciplined, each of you. Try and put questions in a neutral fashion.

6 For instance, look at the type of questions the Judges put. The way the

7 Judges put questions lead to no disputed question afterwards. It's not a

8 matter of knowing whether it's a leading question or not. We put

9 questions in a neutral fashion which triggers an answer which will have a

10 much greater probative value than a leading question, for which the

11 probative value will be less important.

12 So I beseech you, rather than wasting time with objections which

13 we have to then settle, which we have to then explain, since we are all

14 professionals, please keep to your field of expertise. We're perfectly

15 capable of putting questions. Mr. Seselj, you're perfectly capable of

16 cross-examining a witness. You have demonstrated this many a time.

17 This is what we want: We want the truth to emerge from the

18 questions that are put. We don't want a sterile war of words between the

19 parties, which wastes the Court's time. It's not because you accuse each

20 other of various things that we will have any facts that are important to

21 us in this case.

22 I don't know how much time we still have for this witness.

23 Registrar, could you give me the countdown again, please, and then we

24 shall bring the witness into the courtroom.

25 Mr. Seselj.

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I would just like to remind you,

2 Mr. President, of the case when we had those photographs. In one

3 photograph, we saw a mosque intact, and on another photograph, we saw the

4 ruins of some mosque. Both the Prosecutor and the witness insisted it

5 was one and the same mosque. However, when I see that this is an obvious

6 forgery, I have to intervene, I have to say that to you. It cannot go

7 unobserved, can it?

8 You saw this wrought-iron gate by the mosque. No one could have

9 changed anything with a mosque that is 300 years old, so obviously these

10 were two different mosques. That is why I believe that I do have the

11 right to intervene and to object. However, you've been very restrictive

12 in terms of my rights.

13 I would like to remind you of the previous three expert witness,

14 Oberschall, Theunens and Tomic, who were instructed, trained as a matter

15 of fact, to spend as much of my time as possible, and they kept dodging

16 my questions and went on talking and talking about all sorts of other

17 things. I was not protected by the Trial Chamber then, although I

18 cautioned you a few times. So this was artificial use of my time.

19 They've been trained to do that kind of thing, and we'll see whether this

20 one's going to do the same thing. However, when I intervene --

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, this is a perfect

22 example, and I thank you for having quoted it. Yes, in fact, there was a

23 photograph where you could see a mosque, and another photograph alongside

24 it. Then you could have perfectly well said that you challenged the fact

25 that these photographs were photographs of the same mosque, and during

1 cross-examination you can then say this to the witness, "Look at the

2 photograph. You see a wrought-iron ramp on the side. When does this go

3 back to, is it 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th century?" Then you could have

4 highlighted what is important to you, and you could have presented the

5 facts of your case. But it's during cross-examination that you need to

6 do this. And you can develop your argument, and then we weigh your

7 argument afterwards. So you could have just said, "I challenge the

8 photograph because these two photographs are not photographs of the same

9 mosque, and I shall demonstrate this." And then, when the time comes for

10 your cross-examination, you address the issue again.

11 So this was a perfect example, and in a few seconds you just say,

12 "I disagree with these photographs, and I shall demonstrate it during

13 cross-examination," and then we move on. It's quite simple.

14 Mr. Mundis is on his feet. Mr. Mundis, I believe you want to say

15 something.

16 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President. Before I do that, let me

17 just say good afternoon to everyone in and around the courtroom.

18 Two points. First of all, as we indicated on Thursday, during a

19 number of the interventions by the accused, it's improper to object to

20 the answer that's received, and that is what happened last week and

21 consumed a disproportionate amount of time during the direct examination,

22 and we will continue pushing that point in the future when and if it

23 arises. The fact that the witness -- that the witness answers a question

24 in a way that is not satisfactory to the accused is not the proper

25 grounds for an objection.

1 As the Presiding Judge has simply indicated, all of these matters

2 are questions that he can put to the witness during cross-examination.

3 If the accused thinks that there are parts of the report that are forged,

4 then he can raise objections at the point when we tender the report into

5 evidence. But it is not a time for a running debate between the accused

6 and the witness during the direct examination. That is improper, and we

7 will continue to push that point in the future on this.

8 I also must put on the record a vehement objection to the accused

9 indicating that we have trained witnesses or coached witnesses to avoid

10 answering the questions that the accused puts to them. That is

11 absolutely incorrect, and I must vehemently oppose any statements made by

12 the accused that the Office of the Prosecution trains witnesses not to

13 answer his questions or coaches witnesses not to answer his questions,

14 particularly with respect to expert witnesses. We do not do that, we

15 have not done that, we will not do that. That is not something that is

16 proper, and it is not something that is done. And I want to make it very

17 clear, for the benefit of the transcript and the record and the audience

18 and the public and the Trial Chamber, that we do not coach witnesses, we

19 do not train them to avoid giving answers.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Let's bring the

21 witness in now, please.

22 Let me remind you that he is an expert witness.

23 The Prosecution has 25 minutes left. This is the countdown: We

24 have 25 minutes left for the Prosecution. Mr. Mundis, you have 25

25 minutes; is that right? Did you do your own calculations?

1 MR. MUNDIS: Yes, Mr. President, and again, of course the

2 Registry's numbers are definitive and we have 25 minutes left.

3 [The witness entered court]

4 WITNESS: ANDRAS RIEDLMAYER [Resumed]

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Good afternoon, sir. Welcome

6 back in the courtroom. I hope the time you've spent here hasn't been too

7 long for you.

8 Normally speaking, your testimony should come to an end today. I

9 hope that there will be no mishaps which would prevent this.

10 The Prosecution has 25 minutes left to put questions to you.

11 After that, Mr. Seselj will cross-examine you.

12 I shall now give the floor to Mr. Mundis.

13 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President.

14 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I'm sorry, I don't wish to slow things

15 down, but I don't know the procedure.

16 As instructed on previous occasions, I did not discuss my

17 evidence with anyone, but I did consult my notes when I was back at the

18 hotel, and I found a better pre-destruction photo of the mosque about

19 which there was the confusion in Mostar, the Sevri Hadji Hasan Mosque, so

20 if Your Honours would find it useful, I can show it to the Court; if not,

21 I can put it away.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Let's put it up on

23 the ELMO straight away, please.

24 THE WITNESS: And I brought extra copies in case anyone --

25 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Let's give a copy to

1 Mr. Seselj.

2 THE WITNESS: And if you could also put up the image of the

3 Sevri Hadji Hasan Mosque.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Can you tell us about this

5 photograph which you have found?

6 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry. The photograph is captioned as to

7 source and what it shows. It's a photograph -- archival photograph from

8 the 1960s, showing the mosque before it was destroyed. And the reason I

9 brought it into Court is, first of all, it shows the fact that as of the

10 1960s, it had no fence. The fence is something that was erected sometime

11 between the time that this photo was taken and the time of the

12 destruction of the mosque in 1992. And, secondly, it is a much better

13 view of the facade of the mosque that shows the destruction that was on

14 the PowerPoint display. And you can see, next to the base of the

15 minaret, that the windows almost go down to the ground.

16 Can we have the PowerPoint image?

17 MR. MUNDIS: We've located that, and it's available in Sanction.

18 THE WITNESS: Okay. If you look on the image on the right and

19 then compare the image on the ELMO or in the handout, you can see that it

20 is indeed the same building. If you compare the image on the left, you

21 can see, from the shape of the minaret, that the minaret is identical, as

22 is the general profile of the building.

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] So you are saying that the

24 wall, which we can see, and the metal ramp or the metal fence was built

25 after the photograph taken in 1960; is that right? Is that what we

1 should understand?

2 THE WITNESS: That is correct. The wall is on the side that

3 separates it from the next lot, and the fence with the columns and the

4 iron was on the street facade. And since it's clearly not there in the

5 photograph taken in the 1960s, I assumed that it was built sometime in

6 the years between the taking of that photograph and the destruction of

7 the mosque.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. At the risk of having

9 this taken away from my own time yet again, Mr. President, please have a

10 look at this first mosque now. I have to use two screens now. There are

11 no windows on that mosque. On the other mosque, there are windows, and

12 there is also a wrought-iron fence. And the other one has windows and no

13 fence whatsoever. You see that the third mosque is right by the road, a

14 very wide road at that, and you see that the first one is in the middle

15 of a field. You can see that the older one has trees that are a bit

16 smaller. However, these trees would have been a lot taller if there had

17 been that much time in the meantime. I really don't know. The minarets

18 are similar, but that is not a rare thing. There are similar minarets in

19 the same area.

20 However, now, if we look at these three photographs, do they

21 pertain to the same building? I think that is highly unbelievable.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, please, two things

23 have been highlighted by Mr. Seselj. I noticed this myself.

24 Two things: The trees. The photographs you've given us, in 1960

25 there are some trees that don't have any leaves, seemingly, but a few

1 years later, 20 or 30 years later, these trees should have been much

2 bigger. But on the photograph we have here on our screen, the trees are

3 much smaller than the trees we can see on your picture taken in 1960. So

4 that is a question mark, the first question mark.

5 The second question mark: The windows. If you look at the

6 windows, on your photograph which was taken in 1960, the windows are at

7 the top or at the bottom. On the top, on the first floor, the windows

8 are black, and at the bottom, they're black also. On the photograph

9 which you show us on PowerPoint, strangely enough the windows at the top

10 seem to have been walled in. They're little holes, small holes you can

11 see, but the windows at the bottom are difficult to distinguish. They

12 seem to be the same, but this does raise a doubt, I must say. I'm not

13 quite sure whether these photographs are photographs of the same mosque,

14 and I doubt all the more when I look at the photograph that shows the

15 destruction of the mosque, where -- from what angle was this photograph

16 taken? What is destroyed? Did the photographer take this photograph

17 when he was standing in front of the minaret or did he take this from

18 another angle where you can see both? But if it's from the angle, then

19 you can see that the windows are not the same.

20 So these are just remarks of mine. I don't know. What do you

21 have to say to this?

22 THE WITNESS: Okay. Your Honour, first of all, let me orient the

23 Court.

24 The three photographs are taken from three slightly different

25 angles. Starting with the 1960 photograph on the handout, okay, that's

1 taken facing the corner of the building. You can see both the facade

2 that is perpendicular to the street and the facade that is parallel to

3 the street. Okay?

4 On the photograph on the PowerPoint, on the left, you can see

5 that the two top windows, they're not walled in. It's not a very

6 good-quality photograph, and for that I apologise, but in restoration in

7 the former Yugoslavia, it was quite common to try to imitate the old

8 Ottoman carved stone grills by having these prefabricated concrete insets

9 with round holes in them inserted into the window. And on the Miharab

10 wall, those two windows have had those set in. I've seen that in a lot

11 of mosques. Apparently, on the street facade they didn't do that, and so

12 the windows are still much more visible. It means they're glazed,

13 meaning they have glass instead of the grill.

14 The post-destruction photo, if you look very carefully, is

15 clearly taken from the street. You can even see a bit of the sidewalk.

16 As to the trees, the 1960s shot shows trees only along the edge

17 of the sidewalk. You don't see those at all in the photograph on the

18 left in the PowerPoint because it's taken from another angle, showing the

19 facade that is perpendicular to the street. And the destruction shot is

20 so close up that you don't see anything to either side, so it's hard to

21 tell anything about trees.

22 That's all I really wanted to say. The photographs are in your

23 hands to examine and to draw whatever conclusions you see fit.

24 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, now let's go beyond

25 this issue of understanding whether this mosque is the same on those

1 pictures.

2 This mosque of Sevri Hadji Hasan in Mostar, this mosque was

3 destroyed, wasn't it?

4 THE WITNESS: It was heavily damaged, yes.

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] And today, has it been rebuilt

6 since or is it still in the same condition as what we see on the

7 photograph, if it's the same mosque?

8 THE WITNESS: I saw that mosque for the first time in the year

9 2001, when reconstruction was just beginning under the auspices of

10 UNESCO. At that time, it looked not all that dissimilar from the

11 photograph you see on the PowerPoint, the difference being that the

12 PowerPoint was taken in 1992 and so it surely shows only the damage that

13 the mosque suffered in 1992. Since then, in 2004, the reconstruction has

14 been finished, and now the mosque is once again standing.

15 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

16 Mr. Mundis, you have the floor.

17 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, the Prosecution would tender this

18 handout that Mr. Riedlmayer has produced to be given an in-court exhibit

19 number, please.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Let's have another exhibit

21 number, Registrar, please.

22 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, that will be Exhibit number P445.

23 Examination by Mr. Mundis: [Continued]

24 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, I'd like to pick up where we left off on

25 Thursday, and if we could perhaps return to that part of the slide show

1 where we left off.

2 Now, if you look at the screen, if you could please, again, for

3 the benefit of Mr. Seselj, read the caption of this slide for his

4 benefit, please.

5 A. "Neighbouring buildings remained intact."

6 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you discussed this subject in your report, and

7 I'm wondering if you can just briefly give us the conclusions that you

8 reached.

9 A. Okay. In my field survey and in my report, I took great care,

10 whenever possible, whenever that information was available, to note the

11 condition of buildings near the destroyed mosques. The reason I thought

12 this information was useful, potentially, is it would show whether the

13 building had been singled out or whether it had been caught in some

14 generalised destruction of the area. And in my findings, in footnote

15 number 9 appended to paragraph 18, this is 0469-3678, I point out that in

16 the great majority, 80 per cent of the 88 cases for which such

17 information was available, other buildings adjacent to the damaged or

18 destroyed Islamic sacral site were either found to be intact or had

19 suffered lesser degrees of damage.

20 In the remaining 20 per cent of the cases, both the mosque or

21 other Islamic site and the adjacent buildings had suffered the same

22 degree of damage. And a very similar statistical conclusion comes out

23 for the Roman Catholic monuments in the survey, and if you hold on a

24 second I can get you the footnote on that. Yes, that is on page 4693685.

25 It's footnote 19, and it is appended to paragraph 40. And there it's

1 84 per cent of the 25 cases out of 27 for which such information was

2 available. The house of worship, the church, showed a higher degree of

3 destruction.

4 In the cases for which information like this was not available,

5 those were buildings that stood by themselves, and therefore it was not

6 relevant.

7 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then perhaps go to the next slide,

8 please.

9 Q. And before you comment on this, Mr. Riedlmayer, I point out this

10 is in the B/C/S version of the report at page 623, and in the English

11 version ERN number 0469-2575.

12 Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us, please, what this slide depicts?

13 A. This is a pre-war photo of the Krpic Dzamija or the mosque by the

14 hospital in Bijeljina. It's a funeral at the mosque before the war.

15 MR. MUNDIS: And if we could please, just for the benefit of

16 time, skip ahead two slides.

17 THE WITNESS: This is a photo -- a set of two photos that I took

18 of the place where the mosque used to be when I visited Bijeljina on my

19 field survey in July of 2002. They show two sides of the rectangular

20 plot. You can see that the building is completely gone, but you can also

21 see that the buildings surrounding the square on all sides are, in fact,

22 intact. And I took the trouble of walking around and looking at the

23 buildings to see if they had been recently reconstructed, and that was in

24 fact not the case. The paint on them was old, the roof tiles had a

25 pattern on them, so from that I conclude that they were not harmed and

1 the mosque, indeed, was destroyed. The only thing left on the site of

2 the mosque is a man selling fruit and vegetables and the usual large

3 containers of rubbish.

4 MR. MUNDIS:

5 Q. Can you tell us what you mean, Mr. Riedlmayer, about the usual

6 large containers of rubbish?

7 A. I mention this in my report, that in a considerable number of

8 cases in my survey, especially when the mosque was located in a town or a

9 city, the site of the mosque seems to have been singled out as the place

10 to pile large overflowing containers of rubbish, in some cases junked

11 automobiles. It is a conclusion that I make that this has to be some

12 sort of deliberate act meant to signify something, given that in the

13 middle of the town, just from public health reasons, you wouldn't

14 normally deposit large amounts of garbage. This is tidier than most, and

15 we'll see examples where you see much more of it.

16 MR. MUNDIS: If we could please go to the next slide. While

17 that's coming up, this is --

18 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, please, this question

19 about the refuse or garbage, of course, you can see bins, dustbins, which

20 are close to the site of the mosque. It may be just by chance. There

21 are cities where there aren't any dustbins at all. You can see, for

22 instance, in Italy, even in Paris, in major cities, there are dustbins.

23 So why do you make a connection between garbage bins and the mosques?

24 Could they just happen by chance to have them there? They have to be put

25 somewhere.

1 THE WITNESS: Yes, they do have to be put somewhere, but it is

2 not a coincidence, Your Honours, that in virtually every town where there

3 was an empty site where a mosque used to be, there were large amounts of

4 garbage, and it was often located in such a way that it was clearly where

5 the entrance of the mosque used to be. In some cases, it was located

6 right next to a hospital or an apartment building, not a place where a

7 well-maintained municipality would choose, normally, to deposit its

8 garbage.

9 This, unfortunately, for the garbage is not a particularly

10 graphic example, but if you have patience you will see another one and I

11 list a number of them in my report and you can see the photos on the

12 database. It is not the exception; it was definitely a pattern.

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] For Bijeljina, there is no

14 mosque left. I don't know today what is the ethnical composition of that

15 place, but if there are Muslims, they do go and pray somewhere, don't

16 they? And, therefore, then they could ask the municipality to rebuild

17 the mosque in question. They can insist on that. There are programmes

18 for reconstruction of mosques. There's UNESCO, but there are also Arab

19 countries, donor countries. Why is there no rebuilding of a mosque,

20 according to you?

21 THE WITNESS: This is not according to me, Your Honour. A case

22 was brought, in fact several cases were brought before the Human Rights

23 Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina, asking -- brought by the Islamic

24 community, asking for the return of the use of these parcels and for

25 permits to rebuild mosques. The permits were refused, and the

1 Human Rights Chamber's judgements were ignored over a period of years.

2 In very recent times, one mosque out of five has been

3 reconstructed in Bijeljina, but at the time I was there in 2002, the

4 prayers were being performed in the basement of an ordinary house,

5 because that was the only space available.

6 MR. MUNDIS: If we could please turn to the next slide, and this

7 is contained in the B/C/S report at page 598 and in the English version

8 at page 0469-2607 through 2608.

9 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us, please, what's depicted on these

10 two slides, beginning with the picture on the left?

11 A. On the left, you see the Catholic parish priest in Bosanski Samac

12 holding a photograph and standing next to an architectural model of what

13 his parish church looked like before the war.

14 On the right, you see a photograph taken shortly after the war by

15 ICTY investigators. The empty plot with the fence is where the Catholic

16 church used to stand. Across the street from it, intact, is the

17 Serbian Orthodox church.

18 Q. And just for the benefit of the transcript, sir, can you describe

19 what the Serbian Orthodox church looks like?

20 A. The Serbian Orthodox church is standing across the street, it was

21 along the same street and in fairly close vicinity to the site of the

22 former Catholic church, and it looked in immaculate condition when I was

23 there.

24 MR. MUNDIS: Can we go to the next slide, please.

25 Q. This is described in page 531 of the B/C/S version of the report,

1 and in the English report at ERN number 0469-2700 through 2701.

2 Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us, please, what these slides

3 depict, beginning again with the photo on the left?

4 A. The photo on the left is a pre-war photo of the Dugalica Dzamija

5 or the Dzamija -- the mosque of Veljudin Bakrac in Nevesinje. It's a

6 16th century mosque. The photograph on the right shows the empty site of

7 the mosque. In the background, you see some houses surrounding the site.

8 By database entry, it also shows the other side of the site with more

9 intact houses.

10 What's notable is behind the red car on the right-hand picture is

11 the Serbian Orthodox church, which was across a very narrow alleyway from

12 the mosque and which is intact. On the pre-war photo, just to orient

13 you, the alleyway is on the shaded side of the stone wall. It is a way

14 of cutting through from a street where I'm standing in the right-hand

15 photo to the next street, which is where the clock tower in the

16 background is.

17 Q. And can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, who took the photograph on

18 the right?

19 A. I took the photograph on the right. The photograph on the left

20 comes from a publication put out in 1990, just before the war.

21 Q. And just so we're clear, sir, in the photograph on the right, can

22 you tell us where the mosque previously stood?

23 A. The mosque stood basically in the space in front of the

24 red-and-black car and all the way to the space behind the weeds on the

25 right.

1 MR. MUNDIS: If we can please go, then, to the next slide.

2 Q. And again, sir, turning to a new topic, can you read the caption

3 of this slide for the benefit of Mr. Seselj?

4 A. "Catholic and Muslim libraries and archives were destroyed."

5 MR. MUNDIS: And this photograph, Your Honours, is described in

6 page 410 of the Serbian language version of the report and at

7 page 0469-2871 of the English report.

8 Q. Can you tell us, sir, who took this photograph, if you know?

9 A. The photograph comes from the Roman Catholic bishopric of

10 Sarajevo, of Vrhbosna, Sarajevo.

11 Q. And what does this photograph depict?

12 A. The photograph was taken immediately after the war, and it shows

13 the -- what remains of the archives and library of the Order of the

14 Handmaids of the Child Jesus, the only Roman Catholic women's religious

15 order to be founded in Bosnia. This is their mother house in Sarajevo

16 where the order was founded in the 19th century, and it contained all the

17 records of the order for about a century.

18 MR. MUNDIS: Can we then go, please, to the next slide. This is

19 described on page 350 of the Serbian --

20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection.

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj.

22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That pertains to the relevance,

23 because here it says that this monastery was allegedly set on fire around

24 Christmas of 1994, and this is not relevant for the indictment against

25 me. It is not covered by that period.

1 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, in the English text

2 I can see here that this would have been burnt around Christmas 1994?

3 THE WITNESS: Not this one. The reference is to the convent of

4 the nuns, the previous entry, and it says here that the convent was

5 occupied in April of 1992, and the nuns expelled, and then a second stage

6 was when it was burned. So the 1994 is not the only incident.

7 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes. That --

8 THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I will give you the floor in a

10 moment.

11 According to the text that you have marked here, you have said

12 that you got some information from the Catholic Church the convent was

13 occupied in April 1992 by Serbs. The nuns were expelled, and therefore

14 there would have been looting and vandalism, after which last phase,

15 Christmas 1994, and then it would have been burnt, the convent would have

16 been burnt. So --

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can I put in my objection, please?

18 First of all, this Prosecution expert cannot talk about the

19 occupation, who occupied the monastery.

20 Secondly, what -- why is this any business of his that the nuns

21 had been expelled? They may have been expelled, but that is none of his

22 business. That's not part of his expertise. He can base his statement

23 that this monastery was demolished on the basis of hearsay. He only can

24 say that this monastery was set on fire and that was set on fire in 1994.

25 That is the only topic that he can deal with in his expert report. All

1 the rest is just conjecture, hearsay.

2 So I'm just making this objection regarding the relevance of all

3 this, because I cannot be held responsible for things that were torn down

4 outside of the period covered by my indictment.

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] This has been recorded.

6 Mr. Mundis, you have the floor.

7 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you, Mr. President. If we can continue, then,

8 please, with the next slide. This is depicted on page 350 of the Serbian

9 version of the report, and in the English report at page 0469-2955.

10 Q. Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what's depicted in this

11 photograph?

12 A. This is a photograph taken of the Franciscan Monastery and

13 Theological Seminary in the suburb of Sarajevo, Nedzarici.

14 Q. And, sir, why did you include this in your report?

15 A. I included it mainly because part of my commission was not to

16 look not only at building, but also at institutions, and this particular

17 institution was, first of all, an institution of education, but also it

18 was home to a famous library of prayer books and a religious archive.

19 Now, as is the case with all of the information on libraries and

20 archives, I had to rely on published information from before the war as

21 well as information supplied by the owners of those libraries and

22 archives. I was obviously not present to witness the destruction of

23 these libraries and archives.

24 Q. And the photograph, sir, on this slide, do you know approximately

25 when it was taken?

1 A. It was taken in 1996, immediately after the war. Probably, from

2 the snow on the ground, in the first two months after the war. And you

3 can see that the monastery is missing its windows and there are scorch

4 marks, so clearly something has happened to the building. It's still

5 standing.

6 Q. And I would ask you now to take a look at the slide that you see

7 on the screen. And do you know, sir, who took this photograph?

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Objection. The previous monastery,

9 it's quite obvious that it was devastated as the Serbian forces withdrew,

10 and that was after the Dayton Agreement was signed, because the Serb

11 forces withdrew from that area in that time period. Now, whether the

12 forces did that or whether this was done by unidentified civilians after

13 the withdrawal of the forces, that is of no concern of us. What is of

14 concern of us is when did this happen, and this obviously happened after

15 the period relevant for the indictment.

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] About the date of the events,

17 it seems that on page 2, you allude to a statement made by someone, who

18 says that on the 8th of June, 1992, and so on and so forth, the soldiers,

19 wearing camouflage with berets and Chetnik insignia, who told you that?

20 THE WITNESS: This comes from sources named -- it is

21 Dr. Marko Karamatic, he's a Franciscan brother and also a professor of

22 history and former librarian of the Franciscan Theological Seminary. He

23 and I corresponded by e-mail, and I asked him to tell me what he

24 remembered of the fate of his library and what happened during the war.

25 And so what you have there is my translation of what he sent me.

1 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. So he dates that in

2 June 1992, doesn't he?

3 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

5 MR. MUNDIS: Again for the record, Your Honour, this issue could

6 have been dealt with in cross-examination, in our submission.

7 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, turning now to the photo depicted on the slide in

8 front of you, can you tell us when this picture was taken and by whom?

9 A. The photo was taken in 2002, and it comes from a brochure about

10 the seminary. But I also visited it.

11 MR. MUNDIS: Can we go now, please, to the next slide, which is

12 described on page 505 of the Serbian version, and in the English version

13 at page 0469-2737.

14 Q. Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what's depicted in this

15 photograph?

16 A. This is photo of the main mosque in Zvornik, the

17 Rijecanska Dzamija or Market Mosque, which was also the headquarters of

18 the Islamic Community for the Municipality of Zvornik.

19 If you look down the street, you can see that at the end of the

20 street, on your right, is the mosque, and in front of the mosque is a

21 tree. Such trees are linden trees, they are "lipa" in Serbian, and they

22 were traditionally planted next to the entrances of mosques. I point it

23 out, because in the next photo, imagine you've walked to the end of the

24 street and turned towards the mosque, what you see there is the tree

25 still there, a large deposit of garbage at the base of the tree, and a

1 large empty site where the mosque stood.

2 According to the information I got from the former imam of the

3 mosque, who was also secretary of the Islamic Community of Zvornik,

4 destroyed along with the mosque was the archive of the local Islamic

5 Community, which held, among other things, the property deeds for the

6 Vakuf, the Islamic endowments, as well as other records of the community

7 and its members.

8 Q. And if we could again go to the next slide, and again, sir, for

9 the benefit of Dr. Seselj, could you please read this slide?

10 A. "Sites were appropriated to new uses or desecrated."

11 Q. And can you tell us what you mean by this part of the slide show,

12 as derived from your report?

13 A. This is, in part, something that was mentioned before, which is

14 the placement of garbage, or junked automobiles, or flea markets, on the

15 sites of former mosques, or turning them into parking lots, but there are

16 also other ways in which these sites were appropriated, and I show some

17 examples of that.

18 Q. And if we could please go to the next slide. This is again from

19 page 565 of the Serbian version; the English version, 0469-2652 through

20 2653.

21 Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, starting with the photo on the

22 left, what is depicted on this slide?

23 A. The photo on the left is a pre-war photograph of the Hadzi-Pasina

24 Dzamija in Brcko also known as the mosque next to the hospital. The

25 photo comes from the cover of an Islamic religious magazine from the

1 1980s.

2 Q. And the photo on the right, sir, who took that photograph?

3 A. I did.

4 Q. And when did you take that photograph?

5 A. In July of 2002.

6 Q. And what is this site being used for today?

7 A. In the background, the building you see is the hospital, and at

8 the corner of the lot you can see the typical outline of a linden tree.

9 Linden trees, when they're fully grown, tend to have a profile much like

10 a pyramid. And at the base of the linden tree, you don't see it very

11 well on this slide, but I can assure you I stood next to it, is another

12 large deposit of garbage.

13 What was remarkable about the site was that it was very hard to

14 even trace the foundations. The entrance, according to the imam of

15 Brcko, was right next to the tree, but the foundations had actually been

16 dug up. There were trenches on the field, depressions in the grass,

17 where the rubble had been. It had been all taken away.

18 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then please go to the next slide, which

19 is contained in page 577 of the Serbian report and pages 0469-2637

20 through 2638 of the English version.

21 Q. Can you tell us, sir, what is depicted on these two slides, again

22 beginning with the slide on the left?

23 A. The left-hand photo is a pre-war photo of the Sava Mosque or

24 Savska Dzamija, so-called, because it's near the Sava River, in the

25 center of the market in Brcko. You can orient yourselves, Your Honours,

1 by looking at the right-hand side of that photo. You can see, just next

2 to the mosque, the end of the iron bridge. And if you look at the photo

3 on the right, you can see the same iron bridge, and next to it you can

4 see a light stantion, which is either the same light stantion you see on

5 the pre-war photo or probably a replacement. If you look in the

6 background you can also spot some of the low buildings in the background.

7 And what's remarkable about this mosque that is once again there

8 was a deep depression. Even the rubble was dug up and taken away,

9 according to the local imam. And I was able to confirm this by looking

10 at testimony from the ICTY, which is cited in my report, as well as from

11 another archaeologist. They were employed by the ICTY to excavate a mass

12 grave on the edge of the town, and they report that rubble identifiable

13 as having come from a mosque by the carvings was dumped on top of the

14 mass grave.

15 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then please go to the next slide. This

16 is derived from page 494 of the Serbian language of the report and

17 page 0469-2748 in the English version.

18 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you please tell us what's depicted on this

19 slide, beginning with the photograph on the left?

20 A. The photograph on the left again comes from the cover of an

21 Islamic religious magazine published just before the war. What it shows

22 is the re-dedication of this shrine which was renovated just shortly

23 before the war. The shrine is the burial place of two 16th century

24 Muslim saints, brothers from Persia, who are -- according to legend, they

25 were the first to bring Islam to this area.

1 Q. And the photograph on the right, sir, can you tell us, first of

2 all, if you know, when this was taken and by whom?

3 A. This was taken by myself in July of 2002, and you can get some

4 scale by looking at the person standing in the middle background on the

5 right. They are standing next to the spot where the two saints' tombs

6 are, and parked on top of it is a wrecked lorry. And the shrine itself

7 has been razed down to its foundations.

8 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, I note the time. I'm not sure how

9 much time I have left. I have three slides left, and then I would like

10 to ask the witness a few questions about the large map.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Well, please be quick, because

12 you don't have a lot of time left. So please finish your three slides

13 very quickly.

14 MR. MUNDIS: If we could then please go to the next slide. This

15 from page 508 of the Serbian version and page 0469-2733 through 2734 in

16 the English version.

17 Q. Can you tell us, Mr. Riedlmayer, what's depicted on these two

18 photographs?

19 A. This is another mosque in Zvornik, the town of Zvornik, the

20 Beksuja Dzamija. It's in the Beksuja neighbourhood, which is up the hill

21 from the market. The photograph on the left comes from a publication in

22 the 1980s. It shows a mosque with a traditional wooden minaret.

23 At the right, you can see the site of it. Again, you see a

24 linden tree, and you can see a big pile of garbage and a little bit of

25 the foundations of the mosque.

1 Q. Who took the photograph on the right, and when, please?

2 A. I did, in July of 2002.

3 MR. MUNDIS: Can we go to the next slide, please. This is from

4 page 501 in the Serbian version and pages 0469-2739 through 2740.

5 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, again, can you tell us what is depicted in these

6 two photographs, beginning with the photo on the left?

7 A. This is the oldest mosque in the town of Zvornik, the

8 Zamlaz Mosque, so-called after the neighbourhood it's in. On the

9 photograph on the left, which comes from a publication issued before the

10 war, you can see the mosque. You can see, in particular, that it isn't

11 oriented toward the street because it has to face towards Mecca for

12 prayer.

13 What I would call to Your Honours' attention is the building to

14 the right of the mosque, which has characteristically-shaped windows and

15 a striped effect of alternating brick and concrete. If you look at the

16 photograph on the right, which was taken by a Tribunal investigator -- I

17 don't have the record in front of me, but I believe it was 2001. You can

18 see the same building on the right, but you can also see that a block of

19 flats, an apartment building, is being erected on the site where the

20 mosque stood.

21 So if you show the next slide, I can complete this. Oh, go back.

22 Okay. Here, the picture on the right is the one I took in July

23 of 2002, by which time the apartment building had been finished. Going

24 behind the apartment building, I could still see a few Muslim gravestones

25 which, if you knew, indicated that the mosque had once stood there, but

1 otherwise both the mosque and any evidence that it had been there were no

2 longer visible.

3 MR. MUNDIS: And if we could go to the next slide, please. This

4 is from page 475 of the Serbian version and page 0469-2776 of the English

5 version.

6 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us what's depicted on this slide,

7 beginning with the photograph on the left, please?

8 A. This is the mosque in the center of the village of Divic, just

9 south of Zvornik. The photograph on the left was taken just before the

10 war and comes from a pre-war publication. The photograph on the right is

11 one I took in July of 2002, and it shows the Orthodox church that was

12 erected on the site of the demolished mosque. This was also one of the

13 cases brought before the Human Rights Chamber, and the text of its

14 findings is appended to my report.

15 Q. And the final slide comes from page 393 of the Serbian version.

16 The English version of the report is page 0469-2895. Can you tell us,

17 sir, what is depicted in this slide?

18 A. This is a photograph taken by a Reuters press photographer,

19 Danilo Krstanovic, in the spring of 1996. It shows a Bosnian Muslim man

20 kissing the ground when he first returned to his village of Donja Misoca

21 in one of the Sarajevo suburban municipalities. Behind him, you can see

22 what is left of the village mosque. We saw another picture of the same

23 minaret earlier:

24 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, I note the time. I don't know if I

25 have any time left. I would like to ask the witness a few questions

1 about the large map which is attached to his report and which is here in

2 the courtroom. We could perhaps take a break, and if I'm allowed a

3 little bit of extra time --

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] How long will it take you to

5 ask those questions about the map?

6 MR. MUNDIS: I would imagine approximately ten minutes to include

7 the amount of time I would need to tender the report and the maps and

8 whatnot, but I would expect I would need about ten more minutes.

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Well, we will have the break

10 now and we will resume in 20 minutes.

11 --- Recess taken at 3.51 p.m.

12 --- On resuming at 4.15 p.m.

13 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. Mr. Mundis, you

14 have the floor. All the time used now by you will be added to

15 Mr. Seselj's time.

16 Furthermore, Mr. Seselj, we have considered that two of your

17 questions belonged actually to the cross-examination, so we will deduct

18 two minutes from your time, 120 seconds.

19 MR. MUNDIS:

20 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, turning your attention to the large map that's

21 displayed here in the courtroom, can you tell us, sir, what this map is

22 and who produced it?

23 A. Okay. This, Your Honours, is a map of Bosnia-Herzegovina onto

24 which have been plotted the sites of mosques that are either destroyed,

25 damaged, or intact as of the end of the 1992-1995 war. The map was

1 produced by Mr. Bekir Besic. Mr. Besic was a member of the Council of

2 the Islamic Community of Banja Luka before the war. Since the war, he

3 has been living as a refugee in a third country. He used as a source of

4 information the book published by the Islamic Community, by Mr. Omerdic,

5 which is mentioned in my report. I have checked the plotting of the

6 locations, and it appears to be accurate. And it is a useful graphic

7 representation of the places in which mosques were destroyed or damaged

8 in Bosnia during the war.

9 Q. And, Mr. Riedlmayer, can you tell us to what use, if any, you

10 used this map or consulted this map in producing your report?

11 A. I used it in a number of ways. First of all, it's a very

12 large-scale map, and it assisted me actually in locating some places that

13 were otherwise hard to find. It also helped me look at patterns that

14 allowed me to make certain conclusions about the pattern of destruction,

15 where things were destroyed, where things were not destroyed.

16 Q. And when you say, sir, it helped you look at patterns, what

17 patterns were you able to discern from reliance upon this map?

18 A. Okay. Well, first let me explain the map. The map, I believe,

19 also exists in an electronic version. You may not be able to see it well

20 from a distance, but all the red dots represent destroyed mosques. The

21 green circles, you can ignore. They're just places of large towns. On

22 the original map, it was a lighter green, but somehow in the copying it

23 got rather intense.

24 So the red dots are destroyed mosques. The green squares are

25 intact mosques, and the yellow circles are mosques that had been damaged

1 but not destroyed. And what you can see, really, is from a pattern

2 following the red dots, you can pretty much outline the frontlines and

3 the territory that was held by Serb forces during the war, and the only

4 place where you see intact mosques is in a territory that was under the

5 control of the Bosnian government during the war. So you can essentially

6 draw the borders of the wartime Republika Srpska by connecting the areas

7 that have red dots.

8 Q. And, Mr. Riedlmayer, this map was attached to your report; is

9 that correct?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. And why did you do that?

12 A. Because otherwise you have a scatter shot of disconnected

13 municipalities and disconnected data. I did include GPS readings for my

14 sites, but even if those were put on a map, it would result in a

15 patchwork. This has a benefit of, you know, showing a pattern that

16 extends across the country.

17 MR. MUNDIS: Thank you very much.

18 Your Honours, the Prosecution has no further questions, but we

19 would tender into evidence the report which bears 65 ter number 00 --

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes, Mr. Mundis, hold on. We

21 have noted that in the expert report, a video is mentioned. This video

22 had already been admitted as P346. This video starts at 0059 minutes and

23 ends at 0518 minutes. And the video that's attached to the expert report

24 is seven minutes and 43 seconds' long, whereas Video P346 is four minutes

25 and 21 seconds. Did you ask for this video to be tendered; yes or no?

1 THE INTERPRETER: It's P348, interpreter's correction.

2 MR. MUNDIS: P348, my understanding, the videotape has --

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Video P348 addresses the

4 destruction of a mosque, and it has already been tendered and admitted,

5 but the clip admitted is shorter than the video that is mentioned in the

6 expert's report.

7 MR. MUNDIS: Based on the report that -- well, let me start over.

8 Based on the videotape that's already been admitted, the

9 Prosecution found that there was no independent reason to show the longer

10 segment of that tape here in court today, as a means of saving time.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well, very well. So what

12 are you asking for now?

13 MR. MUNDIS: I'm asking, Your Honours, for the admission of the

14 report, which bears 65 ter number 00463, with all of its attachments and

15 annexes, which would include, among other things, the electronic database

16 which has been printed out. We would ask for the electronic version to

17 also go into evidence, because as Mr. Riedlmayer's explained, there are

18 searchable functions in there that might assist the Trial Chamber with

19 respect to the ultimate responsibilities of the Trial Chamber.

20 We would ask for the admission of the PowerPoint slide

21 presentation, which bears 65 ter number 00463A.

22 So we would ask for the admission of the report, all of its

23 annexes, to include this map and the electronic database, and the slide

24 show.

25 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. The Trial Chamber

1 will issue its decision after the cross-examination and after having

2 listened to Mr. Seselj's questions and possible objections, and we will

3 render a decision on the admission of this later.

4 Mr. Seselj, you have the floor for two hours and six or seven

5 minutes, I think, minus the two minutes that were deducted. You have the

6 floor.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, according to my

8 calculations, it's two hours and 16 minutes, but if you say it's less,

9 then it's less.

10 Cross-examination by Mr. Seselj:

11 Q. Anyway, Mr. Riedlmayer, what year were you born in?

12 A. I was born in 1947.

13 Q. And you graduated in 1969 from the Faculty of History; right?

14 You're a history graduate?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. I seem to remember that in the examination-in-chief, you said

17 that your MA thesis was devoted to the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Is

18 that correct?

19 A. That's correct.

20 Q. And what was the exact topic of your MA?

21 A. This wasn't an MA thesis. This was my Bachelor thesis, BA

22 thesis, and the topic was: Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Congress of Berlin

23 of 1878.

24 Q. So you're correcting the information you provided during the

25 examination-in-chief, is that it; is that right? It was your BA, right,

1 your graduation thesis.

2 Now, according to this information, it was in 1972 that you

3 received an MA and for Middle Eastern Studies, is that right, or

4 Near Eastern Studies?

5 A. That's right.

6 Q. And what was the topic, what was the exact title of your thesis?

7 A. It was the Ottoman Empire in the early 17th century, the Djelali

8 [phoen] rebellions. It was on Ottoman history.

9 Q. I didn't hear the interpreter correctly. What was it? Djelalija

10 [phoen], I see.

11 Now, you had another MA in 1998, did you, and it was Library and

12 Information Science, an MS in that in 1998; right? And what was the

13 topic of your MA thesis on that occasion?

14 A. I did not write a thesis on that one. I did an informatics

15 project, but it didn't require a thesis.

16 Q. Was that a project which had to do with methodology in

17 information or did it have some specific concrete research, or was it

18 pure methodology, method within information and library science, or some

19 concrete topic?

20 A. It had to do with the construction of text and image databases.

21 Q. Very well. Now, when you testified for the first time before

22 this Tribunal, which was in the Slobodan Milosevic trial, the

23 Prosecutor -- and that was in 2001, was it not?

24 A. In April of 2002.

25 Q. The Prosecutor announced on the occasion that the following year,

1 you would be receiving your PhD, but you still haven't finished your PhD,

2 you still haven't got the title, have you?

3 A. No, that is a mistake. The person who was finishing his PhD and

4 did finish was my co-author, Andrew Herscher. He did finish his PhD, and

5 he's currently teaching at the University of Michigan, Faculty of

6 Architecture. I've been -- I passed all my exams. I've been admitted to

7 doctoral candidacy, but I have not completed a doctoral dissertation.

8 Q. However, that co-author of yours never appeared in the courtroom

9 as an expert; it's only you who have appeared. And when the Prosecutor

10 announced that you would be finishing your PhD the following year, he

11 didn't mean your co-author. So, in fact, the Prosecutor made a mistake

12 on that occasion, right, he got it wrong?

13 A. I do not recall it that way. I believe the Prosecutor referred

14 to Mr. Herscher, my co-author.

15 Q. And what is the topic of your PhD dissertation, doctoral

16 dissertation, that has been announced ?

17 A. Well, I don't have one in progress at this point. I was working

18 on 17th century Ottoman history of the Balkans. I have published several

19 dozen peer-reviewed articles on the topic of Ottoman history, Ottoman

20 manuscripts and Balkan culture. I'm active in academic societies as well

21 as professional associations, but, no, I don't aspire to --

22 Q. All of that is well and fine. I'm just interested in your

23 doctoral dissertation. However, until the commission approves the topic

24 of your dissertation, you do not have the right to call yourself a person

25 who is aspiring for a PhD; right?

1 A. Well, the commission did approve a topic for me. All I'm saying

2 is that I have not completed it. The topic had to do with

3 Ottoman/Persian relations of the 17th century, the period of the long

4 war.

5 Q. Well, that's what I asked you, but you told me that you didn't

6 have a topic. You were telling me what it was that you were dealing

7 with. Obviously, as for the field of history, you primarily dealt with

8 political history. That is the subject of your Master's degree and your

9 Bachelor's degree, and obviously the dissertation -- the PhD that we've

10 been speaking of. Through your university studies, you have not been

11 trained to deal with what you have been dealing with here, in terms of

12 your expertise for the OTP? You don't really have proper qualifications

13 for that, do you?

14 A. Well, sir, I would counter to that that my university education

15 at this point was more than 35 years ago. For most of that period, about

16 24 years, I've been the director of a documentation centre for Islamic

17 architecture, and that is the reason why I switched to information

18 science, because that is what has assisted me, among other things, in

19 doing my job. And documenting Islamic architecture is precisely what

20 I've been doing as an expert witness here.

21 Q. That would mean that although I'm a lawyer by training, if I were

22 to become head of a public utility company dealing with sewage and

23 waterworks, I could say that I was an expert in water management, sewage

24 systems, the chemical composition of waste waters, et cetera. It's one

25 thing being in management, and it's another thing being an expert in a

1 specific scientific field like, say, the history of art, the history of

2 architecture in a narrower sense, and even more narrowly Islamic

3 architecture. So, right, you don't really have any qualifications for

4 that; am I not right?

5 A. I do not have a degree in Islamic architecture, no, but I have

6 over the past 24 years attended courses, seminars. I have written and

7 published articles on the subject of Islamic architecture, and I assume

8 that if you were to assume a different profession, if you had practiced

9 it for two and a half decades, you would have also acquired some

10 expertise both through doing and through continued education, which is

11 what I did.

12 Q. Yes, conditionally speaking, that is correct, because then you're

13 a half-trained expert. Say if you have a Master's degree in History and

14 if your doctorate is supposed to be in History, and, well, you can go

15 into medicine because you're interested in medicine, you write a few

16 texts in the field of medicine, you cannot really become an expert in

17 medicine. That would mean that you'd be a witch doctor; right? The fact

18 that you are fond of Islamic art does not mean that you're an expert. I

19 am fond of literature, but I'm not an expert in literature, in

20 belles-lettres; right?

21 A. Again, I would respectfully disagree. What you are talking about

22 here is two closely-related fields, they're in the humanities, and a

23 historian and a philologist can read inscriptions who publishes articles

24 on -- in professional journals on the subject which are peer-reviewed,

25 meaning they are passed to experts in the field for checking. Obviously,

1 that is a different story than, you know, aspiring to become a doctor or

2 nuclear engineer. I consider myself very well qualified in the field of

3 Islamic art history, in the field of Ottoman studies, and as a cultural

4 historian I find it a natural extension to deal with the material culture

5 of a particular region. And as an expert in documentation, I know how to

6 gather information, how to systematise it and how to draw certain

7 conclusions from it.

8 Q. But in your expert report, you only asserted yourself as a

9 photographer. You do not have anything more specific on the destroyed

10 cultural monuments, what is characteristic of the style of the monuments

11 destroyed, who were the master builders and so on and so forth. You do

12 not mention that at all here, so we cannot tell what kind of an expert

13 you are on the basis of that. We just see your photographs here, and we

14 see that you're a mediocre photographer who goes on a trip, forgetting

15 his flash, and then cannot take the right kind of pictures because he

16 doesn't have enough light. And also you listened to what casual

17 passersby have to say. So you're a mediocre-level photographer and an

18 expert in listening to occasional stories told by passersby; right?

19 A. Wrong. I would say, first of all, if you look at my expert

20 report, one of the things that I do with respect to every monument is I

21 list sources, I list bibliography, where you can find further on this

22 building in terms of its history, its architectural drawings, pre-war

23 photographs and so forth. What any researcher in the field of humanities

24 does is -- and especially in the field of architectural history, is

25 combine library research with field research. So you take all the

1 published information on a building, you take all the pre-war

2 photographs, you take all the post-war photographs, and then on the basis

3 of that, you draw some conclusions. Without the research, for example,

4 it would be very hard to identify a building that has been badly

5 destroyed. You need to have that kind of information.

6 Q. You stated during your examination-in-chief that you had only a

7 month to work in the field when the OTP gave you a project on the basis

8 of the indictment issued against me, to study the destruction of cultural

9 monuments in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Only a month; right?

10 A. Yes. My July 2002 fieldwork was approximately a month long.

11 However, the writing of the report took many times longer than that

12 precisely because I had to evaluate all the information that I brought

13 back, not only my own photographs but photographs I got from other

14 sources, the published information, and to -- before I could draw any

15 conclusions, I had to feed all of this into a database. I had to derive

16 certain statistical information from this, and only then was I able to

17 write the report. So it took a lot longer than a month.

18 And with respect to the fieldwork, in certain areas like Mostar,

19 like in the suburbs of Sarajevo, I did go out into the field and collect

20 some documentation. On other occasions when I visited Bosnia, which was

21 not on direct commission from the Tribunal, and I incorporated some of

22 that information into the report. I mentioned that, too.

23 Q. During that one month, you did not manage to reach all the

24 locations that you dealt with in the report; right? You dealt with some

25 locations indirectly on the basis of information collected by other

1 people; right?

2 A. Correct.

3 Q. All right. When you were assigned this project, you also got the

4 text of the indictment issued against me; right?

5 A. Actually, not. I got a list of municipalities to cover.

6 Q. And you never received a copy of the text of the indictment

7 issued against me?

8 A. Well, as far as I know, there have been several versions of that.

9 I have seen the most recent version on the Tribunal's web site, of

10 course, but for the purposes of writing the report, the only information

11 that mattered to me was the assignment to include certain municipalities

12 and not others. In fact, if you look closely at the introduction to my

13 report, you will see that the initial assignment had a much more limited

14 number of municipalities, and then later on it got expanded to include a

15 longer list.

16 Q. And did you manage to find out, at least by way of people telling

17 you, that I have been charged with crimes in the Krajina that is now

18 under Croatian occupation?

19 A. Yes, that is public knowledge.

20 Q. Did it ever cross your mind to ask counsel for the Prosecution

21 why your project did not pertain to these areas as well, not only the

22 area of Bosnia-Herzegovina, because over there as well cultural monuments

23 were destroyed, especially religious buildings?

24 A. Well, earlier in the direct examination, I was asked, I believe

25 by you, sir, about this very same question, and the fact is when the

1 Prosecutor first approached me to prepare an expert report, I was asked

2 could I do one for the Croatian municipalities as well. I pointed out

3 that I had not done any fieldwork in Croatia, and thereupon they thought

4 about it and decided that I should limit my report to the municipalities

5 where I had already done fieldwork in Bosnia so that the OTP would not

6 have to pay the expenses of another month in the field.

7 So the only reason I have not covered Croatia is simply the fact

8 that I have not done fieldwork there.

9 Q. Well, one always has to start with fieldwork. Wasn't it

10 interesting enough to you when you realised that the indictment involved

11 the area of the republic of the Serb Krajina, occupied by Croatia; did

12 that not spark your interest in terms of investigating and doing some

13 research, obtaining information, and comparing this to the situation in

14 Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo Metohija, where you also did some

15 research; right?

16 A. Well, it was not for any lack of interest on my part, sir. It

17 was entirely a question of what the assignment I was given. I was not in

18 a position to dictate the terms of that.

19 Q. Were you asked to include only non-Serb cultural monuments or,

20 rather, Muslim and Croatian ones, or was this your personal selection?

21 A. These were the terms of the mission, that I was to report on the

22 cultural monuments of the non-Serb communities. However, in the case of

23 my report on Kosovo, I included the cultural monuments of all

24 communities, including the Serb community. The difference was that in

25 the case of the Kosovo mission, the OTP did not commission that, they did

1 not pay the expenses for it. I got a grant from a foundation to go to

2 Kosovo four months after the war and do fieldwork there. And after the

3 report was already finished is when I presented it to the OTP for their

4 consideration, and it was only after that, after my testimony on Kosovo,

5 that the OTP decided to commission me to do fieldwork in Bosnia. So it's

6 not that I'm not interested in Serb cultural property. It's simply the

7 terms of the mission.

8 As you know better than anyone, Kosovo is a much smaller place

9 than Bosnia, and one can cover more territory there in a relatively short

10 amount of time than one could in a country that is several times larger.

11 Q. But as a person who aspires to work as a scholar, although it

12 doesn't sound right that someone who is about to turn 61 is about to get

13 his PhD, that would really be a disgrace in the area where I come from,

14 but perhaps it's different in your milieu, wouldn't it be professionally

15 and morally unacceptable to study and research the crimes of one side in

16 a post-war situation and not the other side in that war conflict? From a

17 moral and professional point of view, can a scholar allow himself to do

18 that?

19 A. Well, it's interesting that you should bring that up, because

20 actually my interest in the destruction of cultural property in the

21 Balkans during the wars of the 1990s long predates my association with

22 the Tribunal, and I have always been interested in all forms of cultural

23 property. The difference in this case was that for the report that I

24 submitted to the Tribunal, I had to adhere to the terms of the mission.

25 However, as you point out yourself, if one is a scholar, one has a

1 certain amount of intellectual curiosity and wants to see the whole

2 picture, which is in fact what I tried to do even during my fieldwork.

3 When I set out to do my fieldwork in Bosnia, one of the starting

4 points, given that this fieldwork took place in 2002, already a number of

5 years after the war, was to gather all information that was put out by

6 various bodies, both secular and religious, about what had been destroyed

7 during the war. Amongst that information, for my own purposes - it

8 wasn't included in the report - I took great care to look at the

9 information published by the Serbian Orthodox Church. They went through

10 three editions of a book called: "Spiritual Genocide,"

11 "Duhovni Genocid," and I looked at that information. And when I was in

12 the field, whenever it was possible to do so without making a great

13 detour, I looked at the state of the Serbian Orthodox buildings about

14 which claims of damage had been made. If you're interested, I can run

15 down it very easily. It's 11 municipalities --

16 Q. But I'm not interested. Please. You are using my time for

17 nothing, in vain. I'm not interested in what you did. I'm interested in

18 what your expert report contains. What you did, in terms of your own

19 interest, that's your own private affair.

20 You compiled a highly tendentious and one-sided expert report,

21 and an uninformed observer could conclude that in this war, Serbs were

22 war criminals who were systematically destroying Croatian and Muslim

23 cultural monuments and religious buildings, on the one hand, and on the

24 other hand there is no information to the effect that the same was done

25 by Muslims and Croats; isn't that right? An objective, impartial person

1 reading your expert report would have to come to that conclusion, that

2 it's only Serbs who are criminals here, destroying churches and mosques?

3 A. Well, if you had let me finish my previous answer, I could have

4 told you that in the 11 municipalities which I surveyed, there were a

5 total of 14 Serbian Orthodox buildings, 13 churches plus one Episcopal

6 palace, that had been either damaged or destroyed. Out of those 14

7 monuments, and that's the total, I visited nine of them and documented

8 them for myself. In those same municipalities, you had 101 mosques and

9 27 Catholic churches that were damaged, and so that does allow one to

10 draw certain conclusions. Unfortunately, I was not able to include this

11 information in my report because that's not what I was asked to do.

12 Q. You must know that many Serbian authors, not only

13 Professor Slobodan Mileusnic, who dealt with this the most, but also

14 Sasa Miric, Drago Jovanovic, Gordana Bundalo and Miloskova Darevic

15 [phoen], then Milivoje Ivanisevic, and many others, made inventories and

16 documented destroyed Serbian churches, cemeteries, parish homes, cultural

17 monuments and so on, and the figure they reached was 700. Some of these

18 were destroyed totally and some were damaged.

19 A. Okay. According to the book "Duhovni Genocid," which is

20 Professor Mileusnic's work, the total number he mentions for destroyed

21 churches combined in Bosnia and Croatia is much less than that. I think

22 it was 212. And we were talking -- when I mentioned 14, it referred

23 specifically to the 11 indictments -- municipalities. There were areas

24 in Bosnia where the Serbian cultural property suffered more than in

25 others. Those were not included in this report.

1 Q. You mention only the churches that were totally destroyed.

2 However, according to the official information of the Serbian Orthodox

3 Church, supplied to me by the OTP, and the number here is Y0039108, it

4 says that it's only in five diocese in the territory of Croatia that 270

5 Serb religious facilities were destroyed. The OTP can find it under this

6 number, because they're the ones who provided me with this document. So

7 your information is not correct.

8 You do like to turn things the other way around. If

9 Professor Mileusnic says 270 destroyed, for you that's a total number,

10 and on the other hand you make an inventory of destroyed/damaged

11 buildings and you lump it all together. That's not right for a serious

12 scholar.

13 However, tell me, if you were tasked with submitting a report on

14 destroyed cultural heritage, why did you not include all the buildings of

15 cultural heritage, the real cultural monuments, rather, what is

16 UNESCO-protected heritage or under state protection or local protection

17 as an important local monument? You dealt with all sorts of monuments,

18 Roman Catholic and Muslim, but not any Serbian ones, because not

19 everything can be cultural heritage, not every church, not every mosque

20 can be cultural heritage; right?

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis.

22 MR. MUNDIS: Objection. This is irrelevant. It goes to a

23 tu quoque defence which the Chamber is well aware is improper.

24 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, the question you

25 have just put to the witness, you have put it to him at least two or

1 three times. It was a question I put to him right at the beginning. He

2 answered the question. He explained to you why he prepared the report in

3 the way he had. He addressed the destruction of the mosques and of the

4 churches, because that is what the Prosecution had asked him to do.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I was wondering how

6 you're going to calculate the Prosecutor's time that he spends on putting

7 the wrong kind of questions, and now you're lecturing me on what happened

8 in the examination-in-chief. I have the right to raise all the questions

9 that were dealt with in the examination-in-chief. I did not participate.

10 The Prosecution did, the Judges did; I didn't.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well, you're quite right.

12 But just one thing. Put a question to him -- you're putting a question

13 to him which he has answered already, and he's answering in the same way.

14 You put your question three times, and he has answered the same way every

15 time. I don't mind if he answers differently with regard to your

16 question; fine. I don't have the feeling that the witness was going this

17 way and that he would answer the questions differently.

18 However, as far as relevance is concerned, you know as well as I

19 do, Mr. Mundis, that tu quoque is not something which is acknowledged by

20 this Tribunal, but if you would like to provide the context and say that

21 it wasn't only Roman Catholic churches and Muslim mosques that were

22 destroyed, when at some point the witness said he had prepared things for

23 himself because he was particularly interested in this, you cut him short

24 and told him that you weren't interested. So I'm trying to understand

25 what point you're trying to make.

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, as soon as you and

2 your colleagues of the Trial Chamber establish that this Prosecution

3 expert got things confused and was given the task of dealing with the

4 destruction of cultural heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and then he

5 turned it the other way around, he turned it into a report on the

6 destruction of Islamic and Roman Catholic buildings, I thought that at

7 that moment you would send him out of the courtroom and reject his

8 report, but you didn't do that. If cultural heritage -- the destruction

9 of cultural heritage was his task, then he had to deal with the entire

10 cultural heritage of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbian Orthodox cultural

11 heritage there is hundreds of years older than Islamic heritage there.

12 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, please answer this

13 question. The title of your paper is: "Destruction of Cultural Heritage

14 in Bosnia-Herzegovina." On the basis of this title, one could believe

15 that the Orthodox churches would be part of this paper, but it seems that

16 you restricted your survey to the mosques and the Roman Catholic

17 churches.

18 Can you explain this to us, Witness? Well, you're an expert, I

19 know. Normally speaking, in my country, and in your country it must be

20 the same - in this Tribunal it's somewhat more complicated - when one of

21 the parties asks to have an expert report, then a letter is sent. The

22 party sends this letter, and the assignment is clearly spelled out.

23 Unfortunately, in your report, your assignment has not been mentioned.

24 There is no document in support of this.

25 When you testified before the ICJ at the request of

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina in the litigation between Serbia and Montenegro and

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina, I assume that someone must have sent you a letter,

3 the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina sent you a letter, saying that they

4 wished you to testify as an expert to discuss such-and-such a point.

5 What I'm interested in is this, because I've put the question to you

6 already and you've answered already, but Mr. Seselj is not satisfied with

7 your answer: What exactly were you asked to do as part of your expert

8 survey? Was it to study destruction on a massive scale or were you to

9 focus only on the Croatian churches and on the mosques?

10 THE WITNESS: Okay. Your Honour, first of all, at the peril of

11 pointing out the obvious, the title of my report is not limited to the

12 title proper. It is also subtitled, which gives the limitations of its

13 scope, both in terms of geography and time its limitation to non-Serb

14 cultural heritage.

15 As for the terms of my assignment, they are described in detail

16 in my expert report, in the introduction, starting from paragraph 7,

17 going through paragraph 11; that is, on pages 0469-3672, 73 and 74. I

18 unfortunately did not include the letter I did receive from the Office of

19 the Prosecutor in each of these cases, asking me to do it, but I

20 summarised the contents, and I'm sure that the OTP can unearth from its

21 files the corresponding documents setting the terms of my mission.

22 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes, I understand, sir, but I'm

23 not levelling any criticism at you. But I'm putting myself in the shoes

24 of someone who goes on the internet and follows these proceedings and

25 say, "Well, there's an expert in the courtroom. He's been asked to

1 report on the destruction of cultural heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina."

2 This is what the person sees. The person doesn't see the subtitle, which

3 is written in small print. And the person listens and says, "Well, there

4 are only churches and mosques that were destroyed," and therefore infers

5 that nothing happened to Orthodox churches. You see, this is what the

6 issue is all about.

7 The title should have been: "Destruction of Cultural Heritage in

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina," i.e., the mosques and the Roman Catholic churches.

9 Like that, everything would have been quite clear, what the field of your

10 survey was. But this is your title, which is -- and you explain that in

11 paragraph 7, you explain what you have been asked to do. But in

12 paragraph 7, you mention the Milosevic trial. We have not been seized of

13 this matter, so this complicates the issue even further.

14 Well, you have answered some of the questions.

15 Mr. Seselj, you have the floor, and please proceed.

16 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

17 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, in 1995 you testified before the US Congress,

18 before the Congress Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe; is

19 that so?

20 A. That is correct.

21 Q. And on that occasion, you testified about the destruction of the

22 Muslim and Roman Catholic religious buildings in Bosnia-Herzegovina; is

23 that correct?

24 A. That is correct.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Judges, I pose the question to you:

1 Why did I not receive transcripts of this testimony by Mr. Riedlmayer

2 before the US Congress from the Prosecution, although the Prosecution was

3 aware of that? I cannot contact the Prosecution directly. I can only

4 contact the Prosecution via the Trial Chamber.

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Mundis, now, the expert

6 purportedly testified before the US Congress on the same topic, and

7 Mr. Seselj is saying why was he not given his testimony?

8 MR. MUNDIS: Mr. President, we're checking our records right now.

9 Of course, the first question in any such inquiry is whether it's in our

10 possession. If we don't have it, then we don't have it to disclose.

11 Certainly, Congressional testimony is in the public domain and could be

12 found by anyone who was looking for it. But I am checking our records

13 right now to see if, in fact, we do have the transcripts of that

14 testimony and, if we do have it, whether or not it was disclosed. So

15 perhaps if we move on, I'll be in a position to address that issue a

16 little bit later.

17 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Please proceed, Mr. Seselj.

18 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

19 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, I assume that as an historian, following the

20 political developments in the Balkans, the war, and in particular the

21 situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, have often encountered the political

22 activities of the Serbian Radical Party and my political statements,

23 speeches and so on, I am not a nobody to you. I'm not somebody of whom

24 you had heard for the first time when you were given the task; is that

25 so? I assume that it is so.

1 A. No, I have heard of you, and I very well remember, during my

2 fieldwork in Bosnia in 2002, there was a gentleman on the street who was

3 handing out the glossy magazine of the Bosnian branch of your party, and

4 in the back it included advertisements for your books. I can't say that

5 I have read all of them, but I have read some of the things that you've

6 written.

7 Q. Well, the Prosecution and the Trial Chamber wouldn't be able to

8 read everything even if they did nothing but read until the rest of --

9 for the rest of their lives, not because I have a low opinion of their

10 abilities but because of the huge volume of my writings. But I would

11 like to know something.

12 Have you ever heard of me or any other official of the

13 Serbian Radical Party advocating the destruction of Muslim or

14 Roman Catholic religious buildings, of us inciting or justifying such

15 destruction? Have you ever heard anything of the sort?

16 A. That was not my assignment, to look for that kind of information.

17 Q. Do you know that, first of all, a priest of the Serb Orthodox

18 Church, Patriarch Pavle, has on several occasions made public calls

19 against the destruction of the religious buildings belonging to other

20 faiths; Muslim, Roman Catholics and so on? Are you aware of that?

21 A. I'm aware of it.

22 Q. Do you know that the president of the Republika Srpska,

23 Dr. Radovan Karadzic, issued an order in 1993 to the effect that the

24 police are ordered to strictly protect all the religious buildings in the

25 territory of Republika Srpska?

1 A. I'm aware of that particular order. In fact, in

2 cross-examination in the Milosevic case, he produced that very order, and

3 I read it in court. It was also stated in court at that time, however,

4 that after that order was issued, the destruction continued unabated.

5 And, for example, in 1993, in Banja Luka, 13 more mosques were destroyed

6 after that order was issued, in a town that saw no fighting, which was

7 under curfew at night and which was fully under the control of

8 Dr. Karadzic's police and military. And so I don't know what actual

9 effect such an order had.

10 Q. Well, that's the gist of it. The effectiveness of an order, if,

11 on the one hand, you never heard of any Serb political or religious

12 official advocating the destruction of religious buildings belonging to

13 other fates, and if it in fact happened in practice, it means that their

14 authority was not strong enough to prevent it. Is that the only -- is

15 that not the only logical conclusion we can draw, or that there are

16 hypocrites who publicly order the prevention of the destruction and at

17 the same time secretly condones and advocates such destruction, but it is

18 simply unthinkable that something like that would happen? Do you agree

19 with what I'm saying, but please be very brief in your answer, because I

20 want us to go on to address the very essence of the case.

21 A. Gladly. I think it's entirely possible for people to say one

22 thing in public and to do something quite contrary to that behind the --

23 Q. Well, do you have any evidence for any particular case in which

24 somebody said something about churches and mosques in public and then did

25 the opposite behind the scenes; is there any evidence?

1 A. I just mentioned the fact that after that order signed by

2 Radovan Karadzic was issued, I believe it was May of 1993, the

3 destruction of mosques and Catholic churches continued unabated right to

4 the end of the war. I can, if you like, cite specifics.

5 Q. But as an historian, I am aware of this destruction. You don't

6 have to point that out to me. I am aware that Orthodox, Roman Catholic

7 churches and Muslim mosques were destroyed. This is not controversial.

8 There was a detail that was controversial, as far as I was concerned, in

9 your report that had to do with manipulating photographs. But as an

10 historian, you have to know that in 1993 there was an attempted coup,

11 military coup against Radovan Karadzic in Banja Luka itself. Banja Luka

12 itself was blocked. It no longer obeyed the central authorities in Pale.

13 I don't know if you recall this coup, attempted coup. It was in

14 September of 1993.

15 A. I have a vague recall of it, yes. But as I recall, he then

16 managed to regain control of Banja Luka, and the destruction of mosques

17 happened before the coup and after the coup. And by the end of 1993,

18 there was not a single mosque left standing in Banja Luka out of 16

19 before the war.

20 Q. When you embarked on this task, as a scientist, as a scholar, you

21 had to put in place certain systematisation. Your methodology had to be

22 based on certain rules. So in the systemisation, or typology, you had to

23 make a clear distinction between the religious buildings that are on the

24 frontlines that could have been destroyed in the combat activities

25 launched by one or other side, and religious buildings that were

1 destroyed not in any kind of fighting deep behind the frontlines; that

2 would be the basic methodological distinction to be drawn in your task?

3 A. If you've read my report, you will see that I addressed this from

4 several aspects. First of all, looking at context, which I addressed in

5 some detail a little while ago, were buildings around the churches or

6 mosques destroyed to the same degree that the churches or mosques were.

7 That gives you some idea.

8 Secondly, I did look at the context in terms of whether there was

9 fighting going on at the time of destruction, and there are many places,

10 such as Nevesinje, Banja Luka, Bosanski Samac, Bijeljina, where the

11 destruction happened after the Serb authorities had full control of the

12 situation. For example, in Bijeljina, the main destruction happened in

13 the spring of 1993, which was almost the year after there had been no

14 fighting in Bijeljina.

15 So, yes, it's addressed in some in detail in my report. And it's

16 also clear from my report that the only buildings that escaped damage, to

17 a large degree, meaning that were only lightly damaged, were buildings

18 that were either on the frontlines and far enough behind the frontlines

19 so they weren't badly hit, or a limited number of cases of buildings

20 which hadn't been officially registered as active mosques or churches

21 which were in Serb-held territory but for some reason did not make it

22 onto the list of things to be gotten rid of. It's the only way I can

23 explain a situation like in Zvornik, where you had an inaccessible mosque

24 on a cliff top in Kuslat being destroyed, whereas a mosque that was only

25 a few feet from the highway was untouched, and my contention is that this

1 says something about the spontaneous versus planned nature of the

2 destruction.

3 Q. As an historian, for instance, when you came to Nevesinje, you

4 ascertained that the mosques in Nevesinje had all been destroyed, despite

5 the fact that there was no fighting there. You had to have learned the

6 basic facts as to when it happened, who was in power in the municipality

7 at the time and who might be responsible. Had you done that, you would

8 have learned that at that time the municipality was governed by

9 Vuk Draskovic's party, the Serb Restoration Movement. That is one of the

10 two municipalities in Republika Srpska ruled by the Serbian Restoration

11 Movement. The other one was Sipovo up there in Bosnia. Are you aware of

12 that?

13 A. It was not my responsibility to establish which particular party

14 may have been responsible for the destruction. My focus was on

15 documenting the destruction and, to the extent possible, establishing

16 when it occurred.

17 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, let's be clear. You

18 are right to say this. I don't contest it.

19 There were two things. You're an expert. You go on-site, you

20 make pictures. You're capable -- you don't need to make deep studies to

21 make a difference between a Catholic church or an Orthodox church or a

22 mosque. Therefore, you could have, first of all, had a series of

23 photographs before the conflict and then after the conflict, and draw

24 conclusions, so many mosques, so many churches were destroyed, seriously

25 or not at all. But when one looks at your report, one sees that you have

1 interrogated some people to help you, and this is understandable. These

2 persons gave you some information, some hearsay information, which you

3 put in your own report. Why not? That's what you've done. I have

4 nothing to say against that.

5 But coming back to the example given by Mr. Seselj for Nevesinje

6 as a place where there were no fights, but mosques were destroyed, and

7 there I start wondering why you did not go to the town hall or the

8 municipality building to ask where -- or perhaps at the police station,

9 to ask how is it possible that in a place where there was no fight,

10 mosques have been completely razed to the ground? Why didn't you do this

11 so that some people might have told you, yes, the municipality is held by

12 X or Y, it's a complicated matter? This may seem a bit strange, odd.

13 You have an answer in particular in places where there was no fighting,

14 so if there was no fighting in those places, a simple mind could see two

15 possible causes; either people who came from elsewhere in the framework

16 of a programmed operation with a big means, because as you told us, there

17 were explosives used, and that could be one cause, or a second cause, the

18 people of the municipality themselves may have decided to raze the mosque

19 to the ground, or the Catholic Church.

20 So why for some do you gather information about this or that

21 specific element and in other places you don't do anything about it?

22 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, my purpose in getting any kind of

23 statements revolved around the issue of when something was destroyed.

24 If, in the process of me asking that question, the informant provided

25 other information, I put it down. But as you note yourself, I am not

1 someone who is empowered to depose people, to collect sworn statements or

2 anything of the sort, and that certainly was not my assignment for this

3 mission. My mission was to document the destruction and to find out when

4 it happened. I tried to make sure that the buildings I saw destroyed

5 hadn't been destroyed before or after the war, and if they were destroyed

6 during the war, I tried, to the best of my ability, to cross-check any

7 information provided to me from multiple independent sources. Of course,

8 these were not always available, but when they are, I list them in my

9 entry.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] While you were speaking, I had

11 a look out of curiosity on paragraph 52 of your report. You note this

12 monastery, this Franciscan monastery with 60.000 books destroyed, and now

13 I see you speak of Serb troops, and then you describe this. This is very

14 strange, very odd. Here, we've got a lot of details, and in other cases

15 none. So did you actually -- were you aware of that, is it possible that

16 in certain cases you were aware of things you could have done and which

17 you didn't do?

18 THE WITNESS: My mission mentioned not only places of worship but

19 also archives and libraries, and the only way I could get information on

20 archives and libraries was by, as in this case, consulting the librarian

21 of the institution. I would think that he would be in the best position

22 to provide firsthand information on what was in the library and what he

23 knew about its destruction. This was the kind of approach that I could

24 only take under special circumstances such as this. In other -- but I

25 treated it much like I treated other cases. I didn't just take his word

1 for it. I looked up all published information on the incident and on the

2 library, and I included that in my report.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

4 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

5 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, when you were given the assignment from the

6 Prosecutor to compile an expert report within the frameworks of the legal

7 proceedings against me, the trial against me, did you at that time have

8 any prejudices against me? Did you consider that I was some infamous

9 leader of paramilitaries, somebody engaged in ethnic cleansing and things

10 like that? Did you consider me anything like that, did you have that

11 view of me, that prejudice against me?

12 A. No, I did not. Frankly, the political aspects of it are not of

13 great interest to me. My specialty is what this report addresses, and I

14 would figure that, you know, other people would have the job of assessing

15 whatever political aspects there were. I'm not a political scientist,

16 and generally speaking, as a historian, I like to look at things which

17 are far enough back in time that the dust has settled.

18 So as far as you personally are concerned, I reserve judgement.

19 Q. I very much appreciate the fact that you presented views about me

20 in such an honest way and that you reserve judgement and had no

21 prejudices, but we come to a key point here where I'm catching you out in

22 lies, Mr. Riedlmayer.

23 May we have document number 1 placed on the overhead projector,

24 please.

25 You say you did not consider that I was the leader of notorious

1 paramilitary organisations and someone who is engaged in ethnic

2 cleansing, whereas I have a text of yours here dated the 22nd of

3 December, 2004. It is your text on crimes in Brisevo, in Prijedor

4 Municipality. Do you remember that article of yours? And look at the

5 portion I've marked. And this is what you say here. You say that in a

6 destroyed Roman Catholic church, my name was written up in Cyrillic, it

7 said "Seselj," and then you said I was the leader of the Serbian Radical

8 Party and of its notorious paramilitary organisation or militia now

9 awaiting trial in The Hague. That's what you wrote at the time, whereas

10 you say that you had no prejudice against me.

11 So here we have your opinions of me before you received your

12 project and assignment, and then -- just a moment, please, just wait.

13 Towards the end of the text, you go on to say, it is line 5 from the

14 bottom, that the Bosnian Serb Army and Seselj's paramilitaries cleansed

15 at enormous human cost this place Brisevo. That's what you wrote, is it

16 not? That's your text; right? Just "yes" or "no," please.

17 A. I would not say "yes" or "no." I would simply say that the first

18 part, that you're the head of the Radical Party and that the

19 Radical Party has a paramilitary organisation, is simply a statement of

20 fact. It's not prejudicial.

21 The last part there about the cleansing of Brisevo, at that point

22 there had been already testimony about what happened at Brisevo, and, you

23 know, I did include the fact that Brisevo was cleansed by paramilitaries.

24 But I would also note that this is an informal e-mail message I sent to

25 someone, and someone posted it on the web site. It's not something that

1 is a sworn statement or part of my report. And as you, yourself, points

2 out -- point out, this occurred before I was commissioned for my report.

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, precisely the

4 problem is there, there is the problem.

5 Witness, before you were asked to draft your report, which I

6 remind you that the expert is unbiased, you draft a text, 22 December

7 2004, in which, without adding too many niceties, you say the

8 paramilitaries -- you mention the paramilitaries of Mr. Seselj, the

9 cleaning of Brisevo, and anybody who reads this text can see that the

10 person responsible is Mr. Seselj, and that is -- in fact, you add,

11 "awaiting trial in The Hague," so you indicate there is a case -- a

12 lawsuit in The Hague, and after that you accept to become an expert.

13 Can't you see any problem in this?

14 THE WITNESS: Well, sir, I would -- Your Honour, I would urge you

15 to look at my report, where I do not assign any responsibility to either

16 Mr. Seselj or to his followers. The report is unbiased in terms of it

17 deals with facts, presents those facts to the best of my ability to do so

18 accurately, and draws conclusions which emerge from the facts and not

19 from any preconceived notion.

20 The fact is that in terms of what I did for the report, I think

21 there is nothing in there that can be challenged as prejudicial on its

22 face. You know, consider the function that I was performing when I did

23 the report versus this particular item.

24 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] In the text of 2004, what

25 allows you to say that Seselj's paramilitaries cleansed or cleaned --

1 what did you base yourself to reach such conclusions?

2 THE WITNESS: Various materials. Again, this is not a formal

3 conclusion, it's an informal text, but it also emerges from having read

4 reports on what happened in Brisevo. Again, it's not a legal document in

5 the sense that I footnoted anything or, you know, put in elaborate

6 sources. What suggested to me to include that phrase is the information

7 in reports on the destruction of Brisevo and the fact that there were

8 graffiti inside the destroyed church.

9 That's all I can say.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

11 Mr. Seselj.

12 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

13 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, now that I've caught you out in a lie, I'm going

14 to provide you with a piece of information first and then ask you your

15 opinion about it.

16 The Brisevo case was dealt with in the judgement of

17 Radoslav Brdjanin, the first-instance judgement, in paragraphs 411 and

18 412. I hope that the Registry can find that and have it up on our

19 screens. I have the translation into Serbian, but may we have

20 paragraphs 411 and 412, where the Brisevo case is described, and no

21 mention is made of the Serbian Radical Party at all or Seselj's men

22 either, not a single word about any of that. So why do you think that

23 is? Paragraph 411 and 412 of the judgement.

24 A. Please refresh my memory. When was the Brdjanin judgement

25 issued?

1 Q. Well, four or five years ago, as far as I remember. I'm not

2 quite sure of the exact date. Let's say that it was about four years

3 ago. Well, the OTP must know that. No, it's the 1st of September, 2004.

4 It says there. That's the judgement. It's the judgement of the

5 Chamber -- Trial Chamber of 2004, and the paragraphs are 411 and 412.

6 Have you got that, Judges?

7 And you can see that no mention is made there of either Seselj's

8 men or the volunteers of the Serbian Radical Party.

9 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, the Registrar

10 promised that we would see 411 and 412 on the screen, so we're just

11 waiting for that.

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Is that going to be outside my time

13 available, if we're waiting, or shall I carry on while you're waiting for

14 that?

15 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well, let's proceed.

16 Please proceed.

17 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

18 Q. While you were in Brisevo, you took four photographs, do you

19 remember that, and you published them on the internet? One photograph

20 shows the whole church. The second one is from a distance, where you can

21 see the destroyed roof of the church, and a closer-up image of the

22 destroyed church. And the last photograph is inside the perimeter of the

23 church.

24 Can we place that on the overhead projector?

25 And nowhere is this graffiti where it says "Seselj." Why didn't

1 you take a photograph of that? That would have been a good thing to see.

2 You see that the lighting inside the church was fine. It had no

3 roof, so that meant that the lighting is fine. So if you take the roof

4 off a house, you get very good light, so why didn't you do that? Is that

5 your photograph?

6 A. It is not my photograph. That particular photograph is from the

7 Sivko Merica's [phoen] book, and you can see him in the church there. I

8 do have photographs of the interior of the church and I do have a

9 photograph of the graffiti, but I did not post them on the web site. In

10 fact, I didn't post this web site at all. I sent information to someone

11 at Haverford College, who then posted it.

12 Q. I see. Very well, Mr. Riedlmayer. Did you write at one time

13 that the Serb nationalists in Republika Srpska enacted some racial laws

14 against the mixing of genes, according to which every non-Serb who would

15 marry a Serb woman or who had sexual relations with her would be deemed

16 to have committed a crime?

17 A. I remember writing that based on published information in 1993.

18 As you can see, that particular item is dated, I believe, the summer of

19 1993. The war was still going on, and there were reports coming in that,

20 for example, non-Serbs were made to fly white flags on their houses, to

21 wear special armbands, and this was among the things that was being

22 reported in the press at the time. This was while the war was still in

23 progress. At that point, I think Biljana Plavsic had yet to make her

24 famous statement about the degenerate genes of Bosnian Muslims.

25 Q. Let's leave Biljana Plavsic alone. She's a collaborator of

1 The Hague Tribunal, as she did work for them, and dirty work for the

2 Western powers in Republika Srpska. But let's look at this text, and it

3 is document number 3.

4 First of all, let's see the title page so that we can see the

5 heading. It's a brief history of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and then turn to

6 page 3 straight away, page 3. And here you speak of the persecution of

7 Muslims, Croats and even Gypsies and Jews in Banja Luka and other

8 occupied Bosnian towns. So who occupied those Bosnian towns, I ask you,

9 Mr. Riedlmayer?

10 A. The Bosnian Serb Army occupied them.

11 Q. Did the Serbs occupy themselves, then? In Banja Luka, they were

12 a considerable majority in town and in the surrounding villages. Did

13 they occupy themselves, the Serbs?

14 A. No, the Serb nationalist parties in Banja Luka took power by a

15 coup on the eve of the war in Banja Luka, which is why Banja Luka saw no

16 fighting.

17 Q. Well, didn't a coup take place in Sarajevo, when the Muslims and

18 the Croats, in a one-sided manner, in spite of Serb opposition,

19 proclaimed unilaterally the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina? Do you

20 realise that without the Serb people, no one had the right to declare

21 independence for Bosnia-Herzegovina? As a historian, you should know

22 that the Serbs were a constituent people of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

23 A. I believe that this is taking us outside of the topic here, but

24 I can answer if you like. To the best of my understanding, what happened

25 in 1992 was a vote by the Bosnian parliament, and the Bosnian parliament

1 declared independence. And this independence was then recognised by

2 foreign countries, and Bosnia was admitted into the United Nations.

3 I'm not a constitutional scholar. I cannot tell you whether or

4 not this was in accordance with the constitution of the time.

5 Q. Did you find out later that there were no Serb laws against the

6 mixing of genes and that it was never proclaimed that every Serb who

7 would have had sex with a non-Serb woman or married a non-Serb woman was

8 not a crime? Did you realise that later?

9 A. Yes. I know now that certain things have been substantiated,

10 such as the requirement to wear special armbands or mark your houses, and

11 certain other things which were mentioned in the press during the war did

12 not pan out. This particular text, if you page to the very end, I

13 believe, is dated June of 1993 and has not been amended ever since.

14 Well, this doesn't -- oh, yes, here. The summer of 1993.

15 Q. You've lied once again, that non-Serbs had to wear white

16 armbands. And when you realised that what you stated was not true, why

17 didn't you write a new text? Why didn't you apologise to the

18 intellectual public, saying, "I made a mistake at such-and-such a time.

19 It's not true that there were racist laws or, rather, laws against

20 misogynation;" why didn't you do that?

21 MR. MUNDIS: Your Honours, again Mr. Seselj can't just simply

22 accuse the witness of lying. He's done that several times. It's

23 improper, and we object to that.

24 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes. Mr. Seselj, this question

25 about lying or false testimony, a person may in good faith say certain

1 things which are untrue. It doesn't mean that he had the intention to

2 lie or to deceive anybody. This is the difficult point.

3 When you say that, "You are now bearing false testimony and you

4 are saying things which are untrue," first of all, you have to prove it.

5 And even if you have proved it, one has to say that this was done

6 deliberately, willfully, with an intention to deceive, because in good

7 faith one can be mistaken. I could say that I see 25 armchairs in the

8 room, and in fact there were not 25 but only 20, and someone could say

9 that I made a false statement. While in good faith I thought there were

10 20, there might have been 24, that's the problem. So the Prosecution

11 objects.

12 Mr. Mundis.

13 MR. MUNDIS: Also, Your Honours, I do note on page 76, lines 6

14 through 9, I didn't want to interrupt Mr. Seselj, but we do also object

15 to him characterizing Biljana Plavsic as a collaborator. That is also

16 inappropriate, and of course the use of the term "collaborator" can be

17 interpreted in a number of different ways. We do object also to that

18 characterization of Mrs. Plavsic.

19 And, again, just one other issue, if I could before the break,

20 Your Honours. I do have the Congressional testimony of Mr. Riedlmayer,

21 which I'm prepared to re-disclose to Mr. Seselj, but I do indicate that

22 the -- we did have Mr. Riedlmayer's testimony to the US Congress

23 translated into Serbian, and that was disclosed to Mr. Seselj on

24 April 2nd, 2008, under disclosure receipt 296. In the event he doesn't

25 have that, I do have an extra copy, both of the receipt and of that

1 transcript here in the courtroom, which I can give him for his possible

2 review and use during the break.

3 So perhaps if the usher could assist me in re-disclosing this.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have never received this before.

5 This is the first time I have it in my hands. And the fact that you have

6 some kind of a certificate containing a large number of documents, I

7 really cannot check each and every time whether these piles of documents

8 are all there. I mean, I receive them in good faith, but I cannot check

9 each and every document.

10 However, this is not an ordinary citizen. This is not a person

11 who may misspeak, who may make a mistake. This is a Prosecution exhibit.

12 He has a double Master's degree, and when he says that Serbs had laws

13 against the mixing of genes, then he has to have proof for that, because

14 he has scientific aspirations. If he writes all of this without any

15 proof and then he ultimately admits that it's not true, and if he does

16 not then issue a denial himself, then he is a liar. There is no other

17 word to use in connection with that.

18 When I catch someone out this way, a witness, I have the right to

19 say, in cross-examination, that he is a liar. And this is confirmed by

20 case law and jurisprudence, and you know that.

21 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, when you write that,

22 that there were racial laws, what did you base yourself on to write this?

23 Did you see any evidence? What made it possible for you to write this?

24 THE WITNESS: This was written in 1993, at a time when there was

25 very little information in English available on the conflict in Bosnia

1 and its background. Somebody, a layman, asked me to write a little

2 backgrounder, which I did, and it got posted on the web. This was 15

3 years ago. At that time, I had not -- the Tribunal didn't exist, the war

4 was still going on, and I had yet to go to Bosnia. Since then, I have

5 learned a great deal, and I would probably be much more circumspect in

6 what I might write.

7 The fact is it was written in an informal circumstance during the

8 war and for a very non-specialised audience. It was not the kind of

9 publication that one formally retracts or amends.

10 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Yes, but just this is it: If

11 you were aiming at a non-specialised audience, this is all the more the

12 reason to be extremely careful when it comes to your scientific approach.

13 If you're saying things that are more or less true towards experts, they

14 will right away be able to make the difference; but if you're talking to

15 a non-scientific audience, the farmer in Arkansas, you know, who has

16 internet and through the web, since you're an authority in your own

17 country, given your position, this farmer could read, "Oh, this person

18 says there are racial laws," well, and who knows, you know, he would take

19 it at face value. You see my point. This can be very dangerous, you

20 know, when you say things that are only half truths.

21 Do you understand this now, with the hindsight?

22 THE WITNESS: I do, sir, but also I would point out that I had to

23 rely, during the war, on information that was publicly available then.

24 What I knew then is not what I'm in a position to know now. And also the

25 difference between something produced informally and something produced

1 for a scientific publication is that in a scientific publication, you are

2 prepared to be reviewed by your peers, you cite sources, and you, you

3 know, cross every "t" and dot every "i". In an informal setting, one is

4 often less careful.

5 The fact is, in 1993, there were published reports making these

6 allegations, there was no way for me to check them. As I pointed out,

7 the Tribunal at that point was not up and functioning yet, and so if my

8 attempt at writing a brief history of which this is only a small segment

9 is in parts flawed, I accept that, but it's something I wrote under

10 different circumstances 15 years ago.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

12 Let's have a 20-minute break. We will resume at 10 after 6.00.

13 We have to stop now because the tapes are almost up.

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could you just tell me how much

15 time I have, please, taking into account the extension of 15 minutes?

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The Registrar, just before the

17 problem, told me that you had one hour and six minutes left.

18 --- Recess taken at 5.53 p.m.

19 --- On resuming at 6.11 p.m.

20 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The hearing is resumed.

21 Mr. Seselj, you have the floor.

22 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I hope, Judges, that you received

24 the two paragraphs from the first instance judgement in the Brdjanin

25 case. I have nothing more to comment, except to state that my name is

1 not mentioned here, nor are any "Seselj's men" or the volunteers of my

2 party.

3 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, do you consider me a fascist?

4 A. I don't know. I mean, you have your ideology, of course.

5 Mussolini had his. I've heard people call you a fascist, yes, but ...

6 Q. Well, do you think that the Serbian Radical Party, of which I'm

7 still the president, which is the strongest political party in Serbia,

8 that it is a fascist party, in fact? You know that it is the single

9 strongest party in Serbia, it has the largest number of members of

10 Parliament, it is about to form the government, the cabinet. It is very

11 powerful at the local level. So is it a fascist party, in your opinion,

12 as a historian?

13 A. I told you, I'm not a political scientist, but I do believe that

14 it espouses extreme nationalism, which some people have characterized as

15 fascist.

16 Q. But I do hope you realise that not all nationalists are fascists.

17 Was de Gaulle a fascist, the greatest French nationalist in the 20th

18 century? There's no doubt about that, is there, but could one say that

19 he was a fascist at all?

20 A. De Gaulle not, maybe, but Le Pen, certainly.

21 Q. So you could prove that Le Pen is a fascist?

22 MR. MUNDIS: Objection. Relevance.

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, could you tell us

24 the relevance of all this?

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I asked the witness whether

1 he considered me to be a fascist. The witness said that he didn't, but

2 that people did say that. I asked him whether the Serbian Radical Party

3 was a fascist party. He said that he couldn't say that it was a fascist

4 party, but that it was a nationalist -- a radical nationalist party,

5 which is not controversial. That is very important for me, because --

6 could you please show document number 4 up on the screen.

7 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you published a paper -- or, rather, this is your

8 statement in an article entitled: "Andras Riedlmayer re events in

9 Kosovo." Could you please go to page, I believe -- could you just leaf

10 through it? I think it's page 3, but I'm not sure. In fact, it's

11 page 1. Since I have this version in the Serbian language and this is

12 the English version, you see here that in the middle paragraph, the one

13 that's marked, you stated:

14 "The current political crisis in Serbia -- the beneficiaries of

15 the current political crisis in Serbia are more likely to be the

16 Radicals, who under Seselj's successor, Tomislav Nikolic, have been

17 trying to remake their image into something less scary than the

18 neo-fascist party that they are."

19 So here again you state -- the date of this article is the 13th

20 of March, 2008, so it's just before you came here to testify. You stated

21 that we, the Radicals, are a neo-fascist party; is that so?

22 A. I certainly wrote this. On the other hand, this is not a

23 publication -- [French interpretation on English channel]

24 It's an e-mail I sent to a friend, who then put it up on his

25 blog. Blogs are web logs. They're informal commentary by people on

1 current events and various other things. It's not a formal publication.

2 I -- as I indicated in my earlier answer to you, there are many people

3 who do, indeed, characterize the SRS as neo-fascist, and --

4 Q. This is not about many people. We're talking about you. I'm not

5 interested in what you say about many people. I'm interested in you.

6 And again I caught you lying. You said here that the Serbian Radical

7 Party was a neo-fascist party, and you know that things that are

8 published on web sites, on the internet, are as much published as if they

9 were printed in the newspapers or magazines or if things like that were

10 broadcast on TV, it's published, made public?

11 MR. MUNDIS: Objection again with, "Again I caught you lying."

12 Even if the witness were expressing an opinion as to the characterization

13 of the SRS, that is not something that in any way, shape, or form could

14 be characterized as a lie. We object to this.

15 And again, Your Honours, we strongly object to the accused

16 calling witnesses liars, false witnesses, et cetera, on the record.

17 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, the witness sent an

18 e-mail which was posted on a blog. I'll come back to this later.

19 The interested party is talking about your political party, your

20 successor, and so forth and so on, and then you said, "I caught you

21 lying." "Again I caught you lying." What did he lie about? Could you

22 tell us exactly what you mean by this, because I can't really understand.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I asked the witness

24 whether he considered me a fascist. He did not say "yes." Then I asked

25 him if he considered the Serbian Radical Party, and I am an active and

1 current president, whether it was a fascist party. He did not say "yes."

2 He said this is something that can be heard from other people, but he did

3 not say that this was his position. And now I found an article where it

4 transpires that he labels the Serbian Radical Party a neo-fascist party.

5 I'm attacking his credibility, and I think I'm very successful in it.

6 I think -- I hope that you already realise that, that I was successful in

7 impeaching this witness.

8 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, at first Mr. Seselj

9 asked you whether you considered him as a fascist. You answered by

10 saying, "I'm not into politics. I don't know." Then he asked further

11 questions, and you said -- in a few words, you said "no." And then we

12 have a document cropping up where it is written, black on white, that the

13 Serbian Radical Party and its members are neo-fascists, but that some are

14 trying to reshape their image, such as Nikolic. You see that there is a

15 difference between what you said earlier and what you have written in

16 this paper.

17 THE WITNESS: You will note, Your Honour, that I was saying that

18 it has been characterized as such. I didn't say that I didn't think so.

19 But if I have to be rude, I'll say it. The Radical Party, in its

20 programme, historically at the time of the Balkan wars and during the

21 Kosovo war of 1999, had a programme that was in many ways justly

22 characterizable as fascist. It has been trying to remake its image, and

23 that's what I was commenting on. It's simply a comment on the current

24 political situation.

25 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] I'm not going to go into this

1 debate, because we have not been seized of the question as to whether

2 this party is this or this party is that. However, I would like to tell

3 you how surprised I am.

4 You have already testified in a number of major cases which were

5 picked up by the media. You knew that you were called here as an expert

6 witness, not just a plain witness but an expert witness for the

7 Prosecution. You know that, by definition, an expert witness is somebody

8 that is totally unbiased, that is not prejudiced against anything, but on

9 March 13, 2008, just a few weeks ago, you send a document which was

10 posted by the recipient on a blog. You're saying this is informal. Very

11 well, but of course you know that the communication -- everything is on

12 the internet, everything is on web sites and on blogs and everyone knows

13 everything. Didn't you consider that by sending this e-mail to a person,

14 when you were supposed to testify just a few weeks later, this could

15 create a problem?

16 THE WITNESS: I was rather surprised when he posted it on the

17 blog. I had sent it to him as a private communication. This was not

18 meant for a general public. On the other hand, I am an observer of

19 current events, like anybody else, and make comments about current

20 events, including political events. My understanding is that as an

21 expert here, I'm an expert on matters other than politics, and as such,

22 anything I've said about the matters relating to my expertise before this

23 Tribunal has yet to be challenged, in terms of its veracity or its

24 fairness.

25 I took an oath when I took the witness stand here, and I promised

1 to say the truth, as I saw it, and certainly I've been doing my best to

2 do that. You know, I --

3 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

4 Mr. Seselj.

5 JUDGE LATTANZI: [Interpretation] I would like to add, after what

6 I read in the transcript, that the witness said -- answered negatively to

7 the question put by Mr. Seselj, when he asked him whether the witness

8 thought that Mr. Seselj was a fascist. This is when he said "no."

9 As far as the party is concerned and as far as this paper that

10 was posted on a blog, there, there is no answer, or at least the answer

11 that we have is a bit ambiguous, and the only answer we have is the

12 following. The witness says:

13 "I believe that Seselj's party espouses a very -- an extreme

14 nationalist view, and that some could characterize this party as

15 fascist."

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj.

17 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

18 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you went on to say there were some fascist parts

19 in the Serbian Radical Party programme earlier. Could you please be more

20 specific? What elements in the policies and activities of the

21 Serbian Radical Party were actually fascist?

22 A. Well, it's been a long time since I've read your party's

23 programme, but I do recall reading it in the 1990s, and some of the items

24 in your programme, referring to Kosovo, certainly sounded to me like

25 coming from that point of view, from an extreme point of view. It's been

1 a decade since I saw that, and it's not the matter of my expertise. If

2 I'd known that you were going to ask me about that, I would have reread

3 your programme.

4 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, it is one thing to be extremist, and it's a

5 completely different thing to be a fascist. It's one thing to be

6 radical, which means to go to the root of the things - that's why our

7 party is called the Radical Party - and it's a completely different thing

8 to be fascist.

9 Have you ever found, in the programme of the Serbian Radical

10 Party, any elements that would indicate that we were opposed to

11 individualism?

12 MR. MUNDIS: Objection. This goes way beyond -- this goes way

13 beyond the scope of the witness's expertise and his report and his

14 testimony. This issue -- this topic has been questioned on and it's

15 exhausted.

16 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] You are partially right. This

17 witness is also a historian and well read.

18 Witness, please, if you can answer, please answer. If you

19 believe that this goes beyond your field of competence, just say, "I

20 can't answer." You're the best one to know how to answer.

21 THE WITNESS: As a historian, my training is in Ottoman history,

22 not in current political events. I believe this goes beyond my

23 expertise.

24 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, it suffices that I read Philip Hitti's book.

1 It's a rather lengthy one, 700 pages. It was in Serbian, The History of

2 the Ottoman Empire, and on the basis of that one book, I can -- I now say

3 that I'm an expert in the matter. I can't say that.

4 You had general studies in history, and you know that fascism,

5 Nazism, communism, that they're characterized by collectivist ideology;

6 isn't that right? So in the programme of the Serbian Radical Party, did

7 you find anything resembling a collectivistic ideology? Let's take

8 things in order, so "yes" or "no" to that question.

9 A. It's beyond my expertise to talk about that. As I told you, it's

10 been over a decade since I saw the programme of your party. By now, most

11 of what I retain of it is a general impression rather than the specifics.

12 I am not in a position to go through it point by point with you.

13 Q. Well, how, then, are you able to state that the Serbian Radical

14 Party is a neo-fascist party? You must have proof and evidence of that

15 and say that, for example, we advocate collectivism, that we're opposed

16 to democracy, that we are anti-intellectualists, that we're racists, and

17 things like that, that we're against a multiparty system, that we're some

18 variation of some social Darwinism. It's easy to put a label and say

19 "fascist," but if you do that, if you label someone, you must have

20 evidence to show that. You just slap this on someone, slap a label on a

21 party, and finish there.

22 JUDGE LATTANZI: [Interpretation] Mr. Seselj, if you are using

23 this argument like you have in the past, to test the credibility of the

24 witness, I understand full well. You have done this, you've tested his

25 credibility, and we'll see. But if you wish to address the merits of

1 these questions, you must understand that he is not here to talk about

2 those questions. He is not competent in that area. His report deals

3 with different subjects. So if you go beyond the question of the

4 credibility of this witness, then of course we need to address the

5 relevance of this. And to my mind, your last questions were not

6 relevant.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Judge Lattanzi, the total time of

8 those two minutes that you deducted from my time because of abusing the

9 objections during the examination-in-chief, I challenged the

10 professionalism of this witness and his expert report, and I am

11 challenging and destroying his credibility. And once I complete this

12 process, there will be nothing left of this witness's credibility, so

13 that's my aim.

14 Why should I speak of professionalism when he's not professional

15 in anything, an expert in anything. If we talk about photography and the

16 lack of a flash, not enough light when photographs were taken, or to talk

17 about what some man might have told him in a location, I don't think

18 those are professional questions. So the two minutes that you took away

19 from me, I managed to destroy him, in professional terms, and now I'm

20 turning to his moral credibility. I'm challenging that, and I have a new

21 question for you, Mr. Riedlmayer, since I still have not destroyed your

22 credibility as much as I would like to have done, although the results

23 are catastrophic thus far.

24 Q. But in testifying in the Milosevic trial and the Krajisnik trial,

25 you also testified about the burning of the largest library in

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina in the building of the municipal building in Sarajevo,

2 in fact; do you remember that? The town hall?

3 A. [Previous translation continues]...

4 Q. You wrote an extensive article on the subject, "From the ashes of

5 the cultural heritage of Bosnia-Herzegovina," words to that effect, and

6 you describe the town hall which was set alight, and said that 1.500.000

7 books were burned in the process; is that right?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And that is your article dating to 2002; is that right?

10 A. That is correct.

11 Q. And the Prosecutor gave me a report by the Parliamentary Assembly

12 of the Council of Europe, dated the 20th of September, 1993, and that is

13 a document IT-03-67-57/12 --

14 THE INTERPRETER: Those numbers were far too fast for the

15 interpreter to repeat.

16 MR. SESELJ: [Interpretation]

17 Q. It was a document published nine years before you published your

18 article, and in paragraph 25 of that document -- I hope you have the

19 document on your screens, on e-court already. I have adapted myself, you

20 see, to e-court, and I hope the Prosecution has done the same. Anyway,

21 in paragraph 25, this is what it says: According to the report by the

22 Fund for Assistance to the National and University Library in Sarajevo,

23 the fire caused by Serb bombing on the 23rd and 24th of August, 1992,

24 destroyed the depot on the upper level, and the lending out inventory,

25 that is to say, the library cards and everything else, all the records,

1 all manuals, and the musical documents, music documents, what was

2 retained was the Incanabula, which are important medieval manuscripts, as

3 you know as a historian, other manuscripts, archives, rare books, the

4 Bosnian collection, and a large portion of the collection of the

5 periodicals of Bosnia-Herzegovina, not to mention some titles from other

6 libraries that were stored in that building. In other words, the damage

7 was luckily less than was at first feared, when it came to the loss of

8 irreplaceable documents, but it remains very serious. Perhaps 600.000

9 books or titles are concerned. Dr. Mustafic, 1.500.000 library units.

10 So nine years before your article appeared, the Council of Europe

11 made these observations, that is to say, that the most valuable works

12 were saved in the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina, they remain

13 intact, although a large number of books were destroyed, but they were

14 more recent editions that can be replenished. It is easier for me to

15 learn of somebody beating someone than when a book is burnt.

16 Anyway, I spent a lot of time working in that library, and there

17 I differ from you, because the library was very useful to me in my life

18 and work.

19 Anyway, you have an official report here, and you continue to say

20 "1.500.000 books." You quote that figure. Now, there are some exotic

21 things here that appear. For instance, you say that while the fire was

22 being put out, the Serbs, from their surrounding hills, used machine fire

23 to cut the fire hoses. Do you remember saying that?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Do you know, Mr. Riedlmayer, that there are no hills where Serb

1 positions were located from which any machine-gun can fire into the town

2 hall building; that's quite impossible?

3 A. All right. Several things on that, since it was a complex

4 question.

5 First of all, that report was from 1993, six months after the

6 destruction of the National University Library. At that point, Sarajevo

7 was still under siege. The rescued volumes were in storage in several

8 locations. Full assessment had yet to be made.

9 After the war, more extensive assessments were made and

10 published, and I refer to them in my expert report to the -- for the

11 Milosevic trial.

12 Secondly, yes, some special collections that were in the basement

13 of the library were saved largely because of a lack of oxygen. The

14 intensity of the fire was such that it drew all the oxygen upward, and

15 the items in the basement, to which some of the more valuable items in

16 the collection had been moved, survived. But the volume of material that

17 was saved is relatively small. I was shown six or seven large trunks

18 that contained some of the most precious items in the collection.

19 However, a very large part, a majority of -- for example, the Bosnian

20 periodicals collection was lost. This is material that no library, other

21 than the National Library, collected to such an extent.

22 A large percentage of the deposit publications, a fairly complete

23 collection of everything that had been printed in Bosnia from the

24 mid-19th century until the war, a large percentage of that vanished.

25 What remained has been estimated at roughly 100.000 items. What was lost

1 included not only books, but special collections, maps, photographs, and

2 other items. So the 1.500.000 is a very firm estimate of the number of

3 library items that was lost, this according to Bosnian colleagues who had

4 published extensive material about it.

5 As to what happened to the firemen, I interviewed a number of

6 firemen who had been in the fire brigade at the time of the attack on the

7 National Library. What they reported was that the water had been cut at

8 the time of the attack and that they had to expose themselves by running

9 hoses to the Neretva River, to pump water from there.

10 When you are out on the "obala", on the promenade along the

11 river, you are in plain sight from several directions, from the

12 mountaintops, which were indeed held by Serb forces.

13 The fire hoses were then snaked into the narrow street between

14 Bascarsija and the library. I have raw video footage of the firemen

15 trying to put out the fire, with the fire hoses spurting water everywhere

16 because they had been punctured in numerous places. What the calibre of

17 ammunition was used to achieve this effect is beyond my expertise,

18 because I'm not a military expert, but I was told by the firemen

19 that,(a), they were fired on with heavy calibre and that anti-aircraft

20 munitions, aimed at street level, were shot at --

21 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, that's a very long story. Tell me, how long did

22 those firemen need to rush to the Neretva River and take up some water

23 from there?

24 A. The hoses were run from the library, across the main street, and

25 into the river. I didn't ask them how long that took, but presumably if

1 hoses are leaking all over the place, one placement may not have been

2 enough.

3 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, for them to run to the Neretva River, they --

4 A. [Previous translation continues]...

5 Q. -- they would need 15 days. This man Mustafic, Dr. Mustafic,

6 says that 600.000 titles were burnt, and later on it turned out that less

7 were burnt. But you should know that for days before the fire broke out,

8 the Muslim authorities used trucks to pull out the most valuable books

9 from the town hall, which means that the fire was prepared.

10 Do you know that during that fire itself, in Sarajevo there was

11 the most prominent French Serb-hater present, Henry Bernard Levy, or the

12 other way around, but "Levy," anyway. Have you heard of him and that he

13 was there at the time? Have you heard of him?

14 A. I've heard of him. I have not read anything he's written --

15 Q. Without any moral scruples, that man is, so you don't have to

16 read about him or hear about him. He has no scruples and he is

17 anti-Serb, he hates the Serbs. And he bragged that the famous Sarajevo

18 "hagada," that is to say, a manuscript that the Jews brought when they

19 were persecuted from Spain, that he personally saved this manuscript.

20 Did the firemen tell you about that there, the ones that you interviewed?

21 A. Okay. Well, if he bragged about it, then he was not telling the

22 truth. First of all, the Sarajevo "hagada" was never in the

23 National Library, it was in the Zemaljski Muzej, the National Museum.

24 And, secondly, I doubt that he personally had anything to do with its

25 rescue. It was evacuated from the museum weeks before the National

1 Library was shelled.

2 What I rely on is not statements like that, but video footage of

3 what happened, statements from eyewitnesses, professional assessments

4 published in the journals of the local librarians' association,

5 interviews with librarian colleagues. You can read about it in my expert

6 report. Obviously, it has more detail than the article you just cited,

7 but, nevertheless, I would disagree with those preliminary figures from

8 1993.

9 As for the question that -- alleging that the books were

10 evacuated before the attack, that presupposes,(a), that they either knew

11 of the attack or that the attack didn't happen and it was somehow ignited

12 from within. I have spoken to enough eyewitnesses who have seen the

13 shells landing, independent multiple sources, that I have no doubt that

14 the library was, indeed, shelled, and it was shelled with incendiary

15 munitions.

16 Q. Your sources are unidentified, Mr. Riedlmayer, and on the

17 videotape that you mention, there was no explosion of a shell, nor a

18 machine-gun firing? Just say "yes" or "no". That wasn't on the tape,

19 was it?

20 To use the time I have, I'd like to show you another document, so

21 don't take up my time. If you're able to say "yes" or "no", if not --

22 A. [Previous translation continues]... very short. I will simply

23 say that the videotape footage was taken the day after the attack. The

24 attack occurred at nightfall on one day and the fire was still burning

25 the next day, and so it doesn't show the original shelling because it was

1 getting dark when the original shelling happened. But I talked to people

2 who were there.

3 Q. You've answered the question, yes, and that's an extensive answer

4 and I'm quite satisfied.

5 Now, Madam Usher, document number 2 on the overhead projector,

6 please.

7 Have you heard of the Centre for Research into Crimes against the

8 Serb People, the leader of which is Mr. Milivoj Ivanisevic? Have you

9 heard of the centre?

10 A. I have.

11 Q. I have a document which I received from Mr. Ivanisevic, himself,

12 and I would like to show you parts of that document; not the entire

13 document, very brief excerpts. Anyway, he describes his knowledge, what

14 he knows about the burning of the town hall in Sarajevo and says the

15 following:

16 "During my work in compiling studies on the Serb victims of

17 Sarajevo, I would like to remind you that there were an enormous number

18 of Serb victims who, according to present knowledge, amounts to 5.776

19 victims and 859 persons of Serb ethnicity whose fate is still unknown.

20 And I came across material which relates to self-shelling, as well as

21 documents and material which relate to the destruction of cultural

22 monuments and the cultural heritage in this town. One of those cases, in

23 my opinion, deserves special attention. That is the burning of the town

24 hall in which the National and University Library was located. This

25 event, although it was early in the morning, at around 3.00 or 4.00 a.m.,

1 was directly broadcast live by all television stations, CNN Sarajevo and

2 others, just as happened in all other cases when the Muslims in Sarajevo

3 organised spectacles of this kind. In the surrounding streets,

4 Vasko Miskin [phoen], Veselin Maslesa, Veliki and Mali Curciluk and

5 others, around the Evropa Hotel, you could hear people talking loudly.

6 There was a lot of noise, soldiers wearing black uniforms shouting to one

7 another from the unit under Commander Cele [as interpreted]. They were

8 boasting amongst themselves how, that with a Frenchman, they set fire to

9 the town hall, and they stressed the capabilities and skill of their

10 French collaborators, especially, and all the inhabitants in the streets

11 could hear this.

12 "Remembrance of this event was published in a programme,

13 'Klica [phoen] Kulture' on TV Sarajevo, a sort of roundtable held on the

14 premises of the town hall that was burnt down on the 6th of December,

15 2001, in a programme led by some foreigner, but several guests took part.

16 Among them was Mr. Henry Bernard Levy, Mrs. Cupicic, a guest from

17 Belgrade. Mr. Henry Bernard Levy joined that programme, was triumphant

18 in showing the Sarajevo 'hagada,' which allegedly he himself saved from

19 the fire. And he testified to the fact that at the time when the town

20 hall was set on fire, he happened to be present, and as he said, he saved

21 the 'hagada'.

22 "I would like to remind you that many books from the library were

23 taken out several days earlier, but that books remained in the library

24 which were mostly by Serb authors. We don't believe that the 'hagada'

25 was among them. After so many years, this is the first public testimony

1 about the presence of Mr. Levy during that tragical event as far as our

2 culture is concerned. They didn't know the name of the Frenchman present

3 and it was only the competence of Commander Cele who spoke of this

4 Frenchman."

5 What do you think of that, Mr. Riedlmayer, as a historian and as

6 an expert witness for the Prosecution?

7 A. I would say that, first of all, I'm not prepared to take this

8 without some supporting evidence of some sort. It's somebody's

9 assertion.

10 During the war, there were numerous different rationales given

11 for the shelling of the library. It was variously claimed that it had

12 been used as a military position - this is what Mr. Milosevic

13 subsequently claimed. Mr. Karadzic, in September of the same year, 1992,

14 when the library was burned, told Elivisal [phoen] that the Muslims had

15 set it on fire because they didn't like its architecture.

16 There were all kinds of allegations and rumours, but I simply

17 have trouble believing anything that's stated in this. I've never heard

18 Bernard Henry-Levy claiming that he had rescued a book from the burning

19 library that was not in the burning library. I don't exclude the

20 possibility that he may have done so, but if he did, he is boasting,

21 because the "hagada" was never stored in the National Library.

22 So I don't think much of this document.

23 Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, is it clear to you that the treasury of the

24 National Library is equally important to Serbs, Muslims and Croats who

25 live in Bosnia-Herzegovina, that there is no way in which it can be more

1 valuable to the Muslims there than to the local Serbs? Is that not fully

2 clear to you?

3 A. Of course. The National Library was the repository of the

4 cultural heritage of everyone in Bosnia. The only reason I can see why

5 it would have been shelled is, (a), it was a Bosnian national institution

6 and Bosnian national identity, and Bosnian national institutions were

7 abhorred by the ideology of the Bosnian Serb forces like Mr. Karadzic and

8 his SDS.

9 And, secondly, you can see --

10 Q. First of all, Mr. Riedlmayer, there is no national identity of

11 Bosnia, Bosnian national identity. There is only the multinational

12 identity of Bosnia. There is no Bosnian nation. Serbs, Croats and

13 Muslims lived in Bosnia, and all the way up to the Second World War, the

14 Orthodox Serbs were the most numerous group. There is no Bosnian

15 national identity. This started only during the course of the war, when

16 somebody proclaimed the Bosnian Muslims to be Bosniaks, so that they

17 could seize Bosnian cultural heritage. Why would Serbs be less Bosniak

18 than Muslims? If I was born in Sarajevo, if both of my parents are from

19 Herzegovina, am I not a Bosniak, in terms of my territorial and national

20 belonging? Why would a Muslim be more of a Bosniak than I am as a Serb

21 Orthodox if my folk lived there since time immemorial?

22 A. I agree, you are a Bosnian and a Herzegovac, but again I think

23 we're wandering outside of the subject. The fact is that --

24 Q. No, no. State, not national, because if it's national, then it

25 belonged to the three officially-recognised nations, the Muslims, the

1 Serbs and the Croats, irrespective of the order you take. It doesn't

2 matter. Even the constitution changes the order; Serbs, Croats, Muslims;

3 Muslims, Croats, Serbs, and so on and so forth. You know that

4 constitution from the former Yugoslavia, the constitution of

5 Bosnia-Herzegovina, so it was equally Serb, Croat and Muslim. Why would

6 the Serbs then be interested in destroying this cultural treasure? In

7 destroying the traces of Serb existence for almost a thousand years

8 before the Turks came to Bosnia-Herzegovina, that is the kind of traces

9 that are there, from the Tartars of Kulin Ban and so on and so forth. Do

10 you know about that? And do you know that anyone conducted a serious,

11 impartial investigation about the burning down of the town hall? Have

12 you ever heard of anything like that? Just say "yes" or "no," please.

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. Who was that?

15 A. It was the International Court of Justice, which in its judgement

16 in the case Bosnia-Herzegovina versus Serbian Montenegro, made very few

17 rulings on facts. Most of the facts it relied upon were from the

18 judgements of the ICTY, but on this one they ruled.

19 Q. I have to interrupt you at this point. The International Court

20 of Justice never conducted any kind of investigation. They heard

21 witnesses that were called by the two opposing parties, but they did not

22 conduct an investigation. No one conducted an objective, impartial

23 investigation, because all the Western observers in Sarajevo knew

24 straight away what this was all about. Had they had any suspicion that

25 it was done by the Serbs, they would have carried out an investigation in

1 order to brand this as barbarism. Since they knew it was the Muslims who

2 did this, there was no investigation, not by the Council of Europe, not

3 by the UN, no one; isn't that right?

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Witness, we're going to have to

5 put an end to this. Mr. Seselj's argument is that the disappearance of

6 these books, these works, important works for the three important

7 components, elements of Bosnia-Herzegovina is, according to him, due to

8 the Muslims and not to the Serbs. What do you say about that?

9 THE WITNESS: I believe there is no credible evidence to support

10 that.

11 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

12 So the Registrar shall tell me now how much time Mr. Seselj has

13 yet.

14 You have 26 minutes left, Mr. Seselj, for tomorrow, after

15 deduction.

16 So tomorrow, we will resume our hearing at a quarter past 2.00.

17 Mr. Seselj will have the floor for 26 minutes, after which maybe

18 Mr. Mundis may wish to redirect. And if there are no questions after

19 that, we will thank the witness, who may withdraw.

20 I was very optimistic, Witness, at the beginning of this hearing.

21 I was hoping we might finish today, but unfortunately we still need 30

22 minutes. So you may stay until tomorrow; is it possible for you?

23 THE WITNESS: Yes. My wife will be unhappy, but I will.

24 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well.

25 Therefore, you will apologise for us to your wife, but in the

1 interests of justice we need you to be here tomorrow. Therefore, please

2 convey my regrets to your wife, and we meet again tomorrow at a quarter

3 past 2.00.

4 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 7.02 p.m.,

5 to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 28th day of

6 May, 2008, at 2.15 p.m.

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