Tribunal Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

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 1                           Friday, 19 March 2010

 2                           [Open session]

 3                           [The accused entered court]

 4                           --- Upon commencing at 9.23 a.m.

 5             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Good morning to everybody.  We apologise for the

 6     delayed start of the hearing of today.  We were informed that the witness

 7     scheduled for today is not available due to medical reasons, he's ill,

 8     but perhaps, Mr. Thayer, you have some more information.

 9             MR. THAYER:  I do, Mr. President.  Good morning to you and

10     Your Honours.  Good morning, General Tolimir, Mr. Gajic, good morning,

11     everyone.

12             The witness is very much under the weather.  I met with him, and

13     he is absolutely unable to do, I think, anything other than lie down at

14     this point.  I'm not sure what it is.  It's flu or something, but he is

15     absolutely indisposed, so he is with the doctor right now being examined.

16     He's been sick since he got here, and it's only gotten worse

17     unfortunately.  He was okay for about a day and then went off the edge.

18     So unfortunately we're not sure when he's going to be able to testify in

19     the future.  We'll have to look at the schedule because Mr. Ruez is on

20     such a tight schedule because he's only available on certain days.  We

21     have been trying to schedule our witnesses so nobody pushes him further

22     and further since he's coming from where he is currently working.  I

23     suspect that this current witness will be back sometime in April.  We'll

24     have to look at the schedule and advise all the parties.  We would have

25     scheduled him for Monday if he were healthy, but we scheduled a witness

Page 729

 1     who has flown here from overseas who has somebody with him as his support

 2     person who loses work every day they're here.  And they need to get on

 3     the stand, we hope, in one day, get off, and then get back to their home

 4     country.  So we don't want to push that person further along either.  So

 5     that's the status at the moment in terms of the witnesses.  We have

 6     approximately two hours of video more that we can play today to continue

 7     along with our video review.  That's where matters stand unfortunately.

 8             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Mr. Thayer, the Prosecution should be aware of

 9     the time we have for all hearings.  You should be prepared -- of course I

10     see we have a problem with only sitting two days a week at the moment and

11     that raises some problems for you by scheduling witnesses.  But on the

12     other hand we should be in a position to have a reserve witness in a case

13     one witness can't appear for hearing and for examination.  And we hope

14     very much that we will not have this situation too often.

15             MR. THAYER:  Mr. President, I can tell the Court that we have

16     begun making preparations to have some of those, what we call, gap-filler

17     witnesses available for the future, namely, a couple of our investigators

18     who will be available to testify on short notice about certain discrete

19     areas that will take an hour here, half an hour there.  We hope to be

20     able to insert them as the time comes.  In fact, we had one ready to go

21     on Monday in case we ran out of time, and we'll cross that bridge when we

22     get to it.  But we share the Trial Chamber's concern certainly on that

23     issue.

24             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Thank you very much.

25             You are prepared to show us some videos.  This will save some

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 1     time with witnesses, future witnesses, therefore please carry on.

 2             MR. THAYER:  Thank you, Mr. President.  I'll turn it over to

 3     senior trial attorney McCloskey.  And may I ask to be excused for the

 4     rest of the proceedings.

 5             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Thank you, Mr. Thayer.

 6             MR. THAYER:  Thank you, Your Honour.

 7             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  And welcome to you, Mr. McCloskey.

 8             MR. McCLOSKEY:  Mr. President, we're prepared to proceed where we

 9     left off.  You recall we were at what we call the first Hotel Fontana

10     meeting where they were -- General Mladic said he was calling them back

11     later that evening.  And now we have the video of that next meeting he

12     was speaking of.  And just so you know, this was material that we would

13     have always wanted to play for you, so this is not in any way some kind

14     of gap-filling material that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.  So this

15     is -- this is always going to be court time, and we will always endeavour

16     to have this kind of material for you in this event.  Thank you.

17                           [Video-clip played]

18             MR. McCLOSKEY:  Mr. President, if we could have a few minutes,

19     there's some technical difficulty.

20             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Very well.

21             Mr. McCloskey.

22             MR. McCLOSKEY:  Yes, there's been some kind of software glitch.

23     We have to get on another software to get this out, and we're not sure,

24     but if we could take a 15-minute break or maybe take the break now, I'm

25     fairly confident we can get this right.

Page 731

 1             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  I think we will have a break of 20 minutes.

 2     Adjourn now, and resume at quarter past 10.00.

 3                           --- Recess taken at 9.57 a.m.

 4                           --- On resuming at 10.20 a.m.

 5                           [Video-clip played]

 6             JUDGE FLUGGE:  Mr. McCloskey.

 7             MR. McCLOSKEY:  Yes, Mr. President, we have switched software

 8     packages, this may be -- the quality may be degraded slightly.

 9     Ms. Stewart ran this last night on -- did a dress rehearsal, and it

10     worked fine.  But, of course, now we've switched software, the quality

11     may not be as good, but we're ready to go.  We'll start now with video

12     from Srebrenica town in the morning of the next day, the 12th of July.

13                           [Video-clip played]

14             I'm sorry.  Apparently the new software has not been calibrated

15     correctly for the subtitling, and I apologise, Your Honours, for this.

16     And if we could have a little more time, I think it's important to see

17     this.  Some of this you may not get to see again, though most of it

18     there'll be a witness, if there's something of significance, that will

19     explain who these are -- who the people are, but ...

20             We're going to go back to one of the old original tapes which had

21     the next Hotel Fontana meeting from the next morning of 12 July, and

22     we'll play that right now.

23                           [Video-clip played]

24             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Mr. McCloskey.

25             MR. McCLOSKEY:  We're planning on skipping this one part because

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 1     we have an updated version that's subtitles, but that's the problem with

 2     the subtitles.  So we will skip ahead and go to another version.  But it

 3     will be self-explanatory where we are.  Thank you.

 4             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Thank you.

 5                           [Video-clip played]

 6             MR. McCLOSKEY:  Mr. President, that is all the video that we have

 7     prepared.  We will endeavour to fix the other subtitles and the other

 8     issues so we'll have more should we get gap periods.  But that's all we

 9     can play for today.

10             JUDGE FLUEGGE:  Thank you very much.  I think that's all for

11     today.  Hereto adjourn, and we will resume on Monday.  Thank you.

12                           --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 11.44 a.m.,

13                           to be reconvened on Monday, the 22nd day of

14                           March, 2010, at 9.00 a.m.

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