100630IT

Page 3330

2 Q. Colonel, I have a few questions to put to you on three or four

3 topics. The first concerns three borders around the enclave which you

4 testified about in Popovic. You refer to them -- and for the record this

5 is at transcript pages 2477 and 2645. You referred to three borders

6 around the enclave. Would you please give the Trial Chamber a

7 description of what you were referring to when you spoke about three

8 borders.

9 A. I will. There was what I call the UN border said as well --

10 named as well as the Morillon Line. And there was with the Serbs quite

11 another idea, that the border was up until 1 kilometre within the enclave

12 that should have been the correct border. And the Muslims had the idea

13 that the border was up to 1 kilometre outside the UN border. So in fact,

14 there were more or less three enclaves, a UN enclave, that's what the

15 Serbs considered as being border of the enclave and that what the Muslims

16 considered being the enclave. Is that enough? Is that an answer?

17 Q. Thank you, Colonel. And was there a relationship between the

18 UN border, as you described, and the location of the observation posts?

19 A. The observation posts were on the -- mostly on the very edge of

20 the UN border, so directly in front of the observation posts there was

21 the UN border of the enclave.

22 Q. Colonel, was there ever one border that everybody agreed upon,

23 the UN, the Serbs, and the Muslims, around the Srebrenica enclave?

24 A. Not to my knowledge. There should be formed a so-called

25 Joint Commission, three parties, being UN, Serbs, and the Muslims, to

Page 3331

1 agree upon the order of -- the border of the enclave. That never came to

2 an actual situation because they didn't want to speak to each other, so

3 it was pretty difficult to coordinate the exact consented border of the

4 enclave. So we kept as to the UN border being the real one.

5 Q. Next topic, Colonel, Observation Post Echo. You testified in

6 Popovic, and this is at transcript page 2452, about how on the

7 3rd of June, 1995, the VRS attacked that OP and forced the peacekeepers

8 out of it. How was this information being relayed to you at the time,

9 and how involved were you personally with the events concerning the VRS

10 attack on OP Echo?

11 A. OP Echo was in the area of responsibility of my B Company, who

12 was responsible for the southern part of the enclave. The OP reported to

13 the company and the company to me, so I got the information through the

14 HQ of the company, that in the morning there was some movement in front

15 of the OP, which in the end showed -- proved to be an attack on Echo,

16 about 40 infantry men supported by a T-55, that's a main battle tank, and

17 then the anti-aircraft gun on the high ridge directly on the western part

18 of that area.

19 They asked me permission to withdraw. I did not give that

20 permission. Because I wanted to be sure that that there was actually an

21 attack and the Serbs opened fire, and the very last moment or the last

22 possibility, I allowed the OP to withdraw which they did.

23 Q. Now, when you say, "They asked me for permission to withdraw,"

24 who are you referring to when you say "they"?

25 A. Company asked me permission to withdraw that OP. Perhaps of any

Page 3332

1 interest is that the Serbs, before they started the attack, summoned the

2 OP crew to leave the OP, and they did that by means of a loud-speaker, in

3 English. Which we refused.

4 Q. Now, can you describe for the Trial Chamber the design, the size,

5 the appearance of these OPs, to give the Trial Chamber an idea of what we

6 are talking about when we talk about one of these observations posts?

7 A. The observation posts were, in fact, militarily seen, a complete

8 joke. Because they were out in the open, on the top of hills or directly

9 in a valley, where they, in fact, didn't hardly see anything because they

10 had to deter by presence. They had to be seen by all parties that we

11 were there. They were painted white and by night we had to put on lights

12 on it so that even at night everybody could see that UN was there. So

13 the military position was absolutely ridiculous. For instance, Echo was

14 down on the road, 5 metres on the left side, there was a slope up to

15 10 metres, and woods on it, on the right side there were bushes and a

16 part of a river and buildings. And that is not a position which you

17 would choose if you reckoned with defending that position, because that

18 is absolutely idiotic. You can't control the approaches and you can't

19 can be outmanoeuvred on your left and right flank whenever the opponent

20 wants because you can't fire in that area. You can't bring your weapons

21 to action, in fact, to that area.

22 So the aim of the observation post was only to show the flag, to

23 show that we were there. But then again, a military defence position, I

24 would have fired the officer that would have chosen that location to

25 defend that area.

Page 3333

1 Q. And this will probably come up during your testimony and

2 throughout the trial, so can you briefly explain the difference between

3 what we refer to sometimes as indirect fire and direct fire? What does

4 that mean?

5 A. Well, direct fire is when the gun or the weapons system directly

6 sees the target and fires on it. Indirect firing is, for instance,

7 artillery or mortars who fire in a - what do you call it? - a bow. And

8 mostly is led by an observer which controls and corrects that fire. So

9 the indirect firing, the weapons system can't see the target and fires at

10 it on indication of an observer or on a coordinate, but that gets a bit

11 technical now. Direct firing is, for instance, a tank seeing a target,

12 firing at that target. Is that enough an answer?

13 Q. Thank you, Colonel.

14 The reports that you were receiving concerning the attack on OP

15 Echo, were you getting report that this was direct fire or indirect fire

16 on that OP?

17 A. Reports as I recollect were direct firing.

18 Q. And what was the damage, if any, that was done to the OP?

19 A. I know the tower, the observation tower, was hit, was a big hole

20 in that. And the defence wall was damaged.

21 Q. Now, you refer to a defence wall, Colonel. What is a defence

22 wall?

23 A. Well, some kind of a container existing of metal threads and

24 filled with small rocks and sand, about the height of about 2 metres and

25 the width is about 150. And in general, it protects against direct

Page 3334

1 firing. Initially, I should say.

2 Q. Just follow up on that, what do you mean by "initially"?

3 A. Because if you keep on firing on a defence wall by a heavy

4 weapons system, like a main battle tank, you'll blow the defence wall

5 away. That's what I meant with "initially." The first hit it can

6 manage, second probably as well, but a third hit, it's gone.

7 Q. When this attack on OP Echo occurred, Colonel, did you seek any

8 support from the higher command in the UN?

9 A. Yes. We thought that the conditions for air support were

10 fulfilled and we asked for air support.

11 Q. And why did you feel justified in seeking air support?

12 A. It was a direct attack on UN facilities, on UN troops. The Serbs

13 were entering the enclave and that were both -- and there were what they

14 called smoking guns, which meant that there was an actual fire contact.

15 And that were three of the conditions UN had for allowing air support.

16 Q. And how important was air support to you and your mission,

17 Colonel?

18 A. My initial mission was, of course, to deter by presence, so we

19 were not equipped to -- for a real fight, nor weapons systems, nor the

20 number of troops I had. So to equalise the lack of fire-power I had on

21 the ground, I absolutely needed air support to give enough fire-power to

22 do the job, being there and defending an OP or whatever.

23 Q. Now, you said equalise, what did you need to equalise to?

24 A. The lack, the lack of fire-power I had compared to the VRS.

25 Q. And from your experience, from what you could see from the VRS

Page 3335

1 side, how much of a concern to the VRS was the potential of NATO air

2 support?

3 A. Sorry, just reread that question. Well, in other regions, they

4 showed that they -- it was proved that they were pretty -- under the

5 impression of air support were more or less petrified when that came in.

6 So I thought again that it was a very good means to stop that attack.

7 Q. Now, you testified in Popovic, and this is at transcript 2450,

8 about a meeting you had with the Muslim military leadership about what

9 DutchBat would do and what the Muslim forces in the area would do in the

10 event of a VRS full-on attack on the enclave. What prompted that

11 meeting?

12 A. Well, in fact, I could not completely coordinate any action in

13 case of an attack because I was still a UN unit and supposed to be, not

14 only supposed to be, but I was impartial, so I couldn't take a side

15 before things happened. Through a pretty complicated discussion, we

16 concluded that UN would, as ordered by the UN, would defend its OPs, and

17 the BiH would cope with the area between the OPs without a really fire

18 co-ordinated fight, because I was not allowed to do that. But in fact,

19 we said, We'll defend the OPs, and the BiH said, Okay, then we'll defend

20 the area between the OPs. OPs being observation posts.

21 Q. Do you recall whether this meeting was before or after the attack

22 on OP Echo?

23 A. That was before.

24 Q. So was there anything in particular that prompted this meeting

25 that you had concerning what you might do in an event of an attack?

Page 3336

1 A. I don't know exactly the period, but somewhere in beginning of

2 May, this meeting took place on the initiative of the Chief of Staff of

3 the 28th Muslim Division. And they thought that a Serb attack was

4 evident in that time. Well, we didn't have any indication that that was

5 correct, but after that being established, we had this discussion. They

6 thought the Serbs would come in and were, of course, curious what

7 DutchBat would do.

8 Q. And was there any relationship between the increase in close

9 firing incidents in which DutchBat patrols and OPs had been fired at by

10 VRS soldiers or positions?

11 A. Yes. As stated before, there was a pretty massive increase in

12 firing at our patrols and at certain OPs. But to us, that was not a

13 direct indication that an attack would be evident. Probably for the BiH

14 it was or they had information I didn't because, you know, the normal

15 military intelligence did absolutely not work there. I got no

16 information whatsoever from the UN about troop movements or whatever the

17 Serbs did.

18 Q. Now, during the attack on OP Echo, what happened to any elements

19 of Bosnian Muslim forces that may have been in the area, if they were in

20 the area?

21 A. They were in the area, but what proved to be later on a kind of

22 bad habit, they -- we, in that discussion which I had with the Chief of

23 Staff of 28th, we agreed that the Muslim forces would inform us when they

24 would withdraw from their positions, logically, because otherwise my OPs

25 were defending, like, just one little spot surround by Serbs, and that is

Page 3337

1 a bad thing to do. But the first time at Echo, the BiH disappeared

2 without notifying us and that is why the Serbs got the opportunity to

3 come that close and come on my flanks.

4 Q. And when the VRS was firing directly at the OP, were there Muslim

5 forces in or near the OP such that the Serbs might have been firing at

6 them?

7 A. No, absolutely not. There were no BiH soldiers in positions in

8 that area that could interfere with the fight or the attack on Echo.

9 Q. Now, you testified in Popovic at transcript 2455, about a

10 commander's assessment which Colonel Karremans sent following the

11 increase in firing incidents and the attack on OP Echo, and as you put

12 it, the increasing vulnerability of the Swedish Shelter Project. Did you

13 have an opportunity recently to read a copy of that assessment?

14 A. I did read it, yes. It coped with my memory.

15 Q. Do you recall the date of that report?

16 A. 4th of June. As far as I know, early in the morning.

17 Q. And do you recall to whom Colonel Karremans sent that report?

18 A. He sent that to UN headquarters in Sarajevo and a copy went to

19 the Sector North-east, which officially was our direct higher echelon.

20 Q. And Sector North-east, where is that based, sir?

21 A. Tuzla.

22 Q. What in particular do you recall about that report, if anything

23 stands out?

24 A. Well, he described the situation. He described the attack. He

25 assessed what the meaning of that attack was. That far is normal. And

Page 3338

1 he described the position of the state the battalion was in, and by that

2 I mean the absolute lack weapons system, heavy weapons systems,

3 ammunition, the lack of fuel, et cetera, so the logistic situation with

4 all these limitations to the operational possibilities. And he described

5 the situation of the people of the enclave, the civil people, being a

6 very bad situation because there was hardly any food, et cetera,

7 et cetera.

8 Q. And there will probably be some reference in the future to the

9 Swedish Shelter Project. Can you just briefly describe what that is for

10 the Trial Chamber, please.

11 A. Yes, before DutchBat III came in, and I don't know exactly when

12 it was built, it was built by an NGO in a kind of village with barracks.

13 And in those barracks there were housing about 3.000 refugees, being

14 people that came to the enclave from the area outside the enclave in

15 1992, I suppose.

16 Q. Just roughly, geographically in the enclave, where was it

17 located?

18 A. About 800 metres west of OP Echo, direct north of Delta and Kilo.

19 So let's say, in general the southeastern part of the enclave. South,

20 southeastern part.

21 Q. Okay. And we'll look at a map in a couple of minutes with those

22 OPs on them.

23 I want to turn your attention now to the period of the actual

24 VRS attack on the enclave. And I want to show you P621, which actually,

25 I don't think we looked at during your proofing, but I think you can

Page 3339

1 handle it, Colonel. Tell me when you see it on your screen and when

2 you've had an opportunity to familiarise yourself with it.

3 A. I see some text on the right side. And as far as I can see it

4 is, yeah, another assessment of Colonel Karremans. Just hold. I more or

5 less read the first four points and it looks like an assessment of the

6 situation.

7 Q. Okay. Let's just go to page 2, if we could, and then we'll go

8 back to page 1 after you've had a chance to look at page 2.

9 A. Yes. Thank you. Very small. Okay. I read it.

10 Q. Colonel, how personally familiar are you with the topics that are

11 discussed in this report from Colonel Karremans?

12 A. I didn't read this one before but the assessment is correct. I

13 didn't read or know about his advices in the point 10, that's new to me.

14 Q. Okay. Well, let's go back to page 1 and we'll focus on some

15 particular points in this report. We can see that it's dated 9 July,

16 1995.

17 A. Mm-hmm.

18 Q. And Colonel Karremans starts out by talking about, as of

19 Thursday, 6 July, the VRS, he refers to it as BSA, but we'll continue to

20 refer to it as VRS, started offensive operations, shelling OPs, battalion

21 headquarters, Srebrenica itself, and refers to civilian casualties.

22 Were you, yourself, personally receiving reports of this

23 activity, Colonel?

24 A. Yes, because the ops room directly -- the ops room, sorry, that

25 is the nerve centre of the battalion where all the information came in,

Page 3340

1 operations room. And I always got directly the information from that

2 operation room. Mostly in these days summaries, but I can confirm that

3 this happened. And I mean the events as described in 1, and 2, and 3,

4 et cetera.

5 Q. If we look at paragraph 2, he refers to attacking ABiH, that's

6 Muslim Army, and UN positions, shelling the enclave and suppressing

7 DutchBat through intimidation by using artillery, mortars, and MLRS,

8 overhead compound Potocari with over 200 soldiers.

9 First of all, what's MLRS stand for, Colonel?

10 A. Multiple launch rocket system. It's a system with - what do you

11 call that? - pipes on it where rockets are in and they are able to give,

12 this type, as I remember well, eight rockets at a time, which covers an

13 area of 400 by 400 metres in a devastating way, for soft targets, of

14 course. Is that too military technical or is that an explanation?

15 Q. I think somebody will let you know if it's too much.

16 A. Perhaps it's a modern version of the old RussianKatyushas, some

17 people know that. Stalinorgel or Stalin organ they called it in the

18 Second World War.

19 Q. Okay?

20 A. Perhaps that makes it clear what I mean.

21 Q. Now, Colonel Karremans goes on and he says:

22 "Most of my OPs have been shot by mortars."

23 A. That's correct.

24 Q. "BSA does exactly know what they are doing, until how far they

25 can go. They do execute their operations according to a predominated and

Page 3341

1 well-organised plan."

2 Based on your observations, the information you are receiving,

3 your experience there at the time, what is Colonel Karremans saying here?

4 What is he communicating to the higher command?

5 A. He is communicating that, to his conviction and mine, it was a

6 co-ordinated plan and there were patterns recognisable in firing. It was

7 clear that they were firing and shooting at the area of the HQ for

8 intimidation, which happened in the same time as shelling our OPs, and

9 that can't be incidental or something, that must have been co-ordinated

10 and ordered.

11 Q. And when he refers to "until how far they can go," what is he

12 talking about there and what do you understand that to mean?

13 A. Probably -- but as I don't know because I don't know what his --

14 the reasons or his arguments were to say this, but it is an assumption

15 what I'm doing now. I think that he meant that, in this day then, we

16 already knew that the BSA had quite a lot of artillery mortars, and that

17 they were trying to give just that amount of fire to immobilise DutchBat

18 and to try to make us prepared to surrender or to stop fighting or to

19 stop opposing them. I think that is what he meant. But again, we didn't

20 discuss this and I have to try to find arguments why he said that. But

21 that is what I see as a reason for this remark.

22 Q. In paragraph 3, he writes that:

23 "Yesterday at 1400 hours, OP F, Foxtrot, did receive another

24 three hits by T-55, while ABiH positions were already left due to heavy

25 fighting and have been disabled."

Page 3342

1 What does that refer to?

2 A. Well, in fact, I said that about Echo, the first time that the

3 ABiH left the positions on our flanks without telling us so. This is the

4 second time they did that. And so the OP Foxtrot was, as we call it, in

5 the air, alone, on the top of a hill, in sight for every weapons system

6 the VRS could bring up.

7 Q. And do you recall what effect that direct tank firing --

8 A. Yeah, the northern part of the defence wall, north-eastern part

9 of the defence wall was blown away, so they were in the open.

10 Q. And if we could go to page 2 of this document, sir. If we look

11 at paragraph 6, we see a reference to the Swedish Shelter Project in the

12 south being shelled. Is that what you were talking about a few moments

13 ago?

14 A. Yes. That's the same project I was talking about, yes.

15 Q. And in paragraph 7 under the heading "Commander's Assessment,"

16 Colonel Karremans refers to the VRS taking positions around Zeleni Jadar

17 and what he expects them to do next, and he says, "I did express these

18 concerns already last month."

19 Does that reference to expressing his concerns last month refer

20 to any particular report, to your knowledge?

21 A. Not to my knowledge, but again we talked about that before, the

22 increase of close firing and pressure and, well, violence at the VRS site

23 was not direct reason for us to think they would attack the -- on short

24 term attack the enclave, but we thought that the situation was

25 deteriorating. And I think he -- without any doubt, he reported that to

Page 3343

1 the higher echelon, and that's what he is referring to.

2 Q. And on the transcript, I note that what is written here says,

3 "close firing and pressure and violence at the VRS site." Is that what

4 you meant to say or did you mean to say something else than at the VRS

5 site?

6 A. Well, it's strange to say, but he meant probably by the VRS, but

7 he wrote at the VRS site. But this is what I meant to say, yes.

8 Q. Okay. Now, paragraph 10, Colonel Karremans says that:

9 "Using close air support, CAS, in all possible ways is, in my

10 opinion, not feasible yet. It will provoke the BSA in such a way that

11 both Srebrenica itself and OPs and compounds will be targeted by all

12 means."

13 Then he refers to:

14 "Especially the MLRS north of OP P, Papa, the MLRS within

15 Bratunac, and all their artillery and mortars will launch their missiles

16 and rounds at fixed targets. Unless these weapons systems could be

17 eliminated in once, which is hardly impossible."

18 Can you explain whether you and Colonel Karremans had discussions

19 about what is contained in this paragraph, and if you could expand on

20 what this paragraph means a little bit for the Trial Chamber, please,

21 especially in regards to what you were facing at this period during the

22 VRS attack?

23 A. Having read it completely now, I think it's based on advice I

24 gave. I happened to be close air support specialist for armored infantry

25 brigade. And what he referring to is that it's great to have an

Page 3344

1 aeroplane destroy one tank, but the consequence will be that the VRS will

2 use all its artillery to respond, so the only way to do this is take

3 their hardware, their artillery and their tanks, as far as we knew where

4 they were, take them out, then close air support is evident again. And

5 that's -- probably we'll come to that, that's the story of the

6 air-strike, why we gave later the advice and asked for an air-strike,

7 it's an air request where we gave all the targets we knew with the

8 request to wipe them out in a short period.

9 To make clear what I mean, if there are 30 guns, artillery pieces

10 or mortars or whatever, and you take just one out, the other will respond

11 and fire increasingly with the same damage. So it's little use to take

12 out just that one piece. The VRS had, compared to us, an overwhelming

13 amount of artillery and we, ourselves, didn't have weapons systems to

14 cope with that. We couldn't attack them because they were out of sight

15 and it didn't have anything to reach them. So the only way then to

16 neutralise the plus and fire-power the VRS had compared to us, is take

17 all their hardware, all their artillery you know of, take them out in one

18 big blow and then you are pretty successful in getting even -- more or

19 less even amounts of fire-power at our side and the VRS side.

20 I hope I made myself clear because it's getting a bit technical,

21 but I can't help that.

22 Q. Let's --

23 A. Sorry, but the sum and effect what he says here is, close air

24 support is not feasible yet, we shoot, do an air-strike, take all their

25 hardware out, and then when they come with a single tank or some tanks or

Page 3345

1 what, then we can use close air support. And that, I suppose, is based

2 on a discussion he had with me about air support. I hope I made myself

3 clear.

4 Q. You referred to the term "forward air controller." Just briefly,

5 what is that?

6 A. There are a lot of possibilities to oppose the -- your enemy with

7 air support. One of them is close air support, what that does mean is

8 that the enemies came quite close to your own positions, so to prevent

9 the pilots of making mistakes, and by mistakes I mean attack own troops

10 and not the enemy, there's an observer who has contact with the plane and

11 leads him to that target. And that's called a forward air controller.

12 The other system is battle-field air interdiction, and that is what we

13 meant later on with the air-strike. Then their own troops can't see the

14 target but know where it is, and the pilot finds it himself.

15 MR. THAYER: Let's take a look at a map, and is P00104, please.

16 This is page 8, please, of the map book. If we could scroll down and if

17 it's possible to blow up the purple ring area that's marked with the

18 letters a little bit, maybe centre that if we could in the -- blow up and

19 centre it a little bit in the screen. Perfect. Great, thank you.

20 Q. Sir, I think we'll all agree what we are looking at is a map that

21 shows the locations of the UN OPs; correct?

22 A. That's correct.

23 Q. I'm going to ask you to do something a little probably imprecise

24 for your taste, but if you could take the pen that's connected to the

25 computer there, the Trial Chamber has seen now various references in your

Page 3346

1 testimony and the documents to these weapons systems, those VRS weapons

2 systems that were located to the north of the Charlie Company compound at

3 Potocari, the UN base in Potocari, near OP Papa, I think you said. Can

4 you just draw some lines to indicate where these weapons systems were and

5 what their line of fire was, whether it was a direct line or indirect

6 line of fire. You referred in your testimony, for example, to not

7 wanting the refugees to enter the front of the compound because you were

8 afraid that they would be fired upon. If you could just identify the

9 locations of those weapons systems, maybe with a 1, 2, and 3, and define

10 which each was?

11 A. I'll try. There was a high edge here, that is, I'll try,

12 number 1, being the anti-tank gun sitting in a saddle on that high ridge,

13 having view and possibility and did fire like this. But again, it's

14 pretty inaccurate what I'm doing now. Directly northwest of it was the

15 position that, I'll number that 2.

16 THE INTERPRETER: Could the witness kindly speak into the

17 microphone. Thank you.

18 THE WITNESS: Sorry. I leaned forward too much. Position 2 is

19 one of the positions the main battle tank had, the T-55, but that

20 switched positions oftentimes, which is usual. But that is the initial

21 position, and the multiple launch rocket system was around here, as far

22 as we know. The tank, the number 1 and number 2 had a view and a reach

23 or a fire zone more or less given on the map by the red lines. And the

24 multiple launch rocket system is a system which fires indirectly. As far

25 as I know, the reach of that system was, in fact, the complete enclave.

Page 3347

1 MR. THAYER:

2 Q. And you've indicated that MLRS system with a circle; is that

3 correct?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. Just for the record.

6 A. I'll put 3 in it.

7 Q. Okay. Thank you.

8 A. There you go.

9 Q. All right.

10 A. But we didn't know the exact position. We extracted that from

11 the times that he fired. So on hearing of the firing, we guessed his

12 position. It's somewhere in that area. We didn't see the thing actually

13 because it was behind that high ridge.

14 Q. All right. Thank you, Colonel.

15 MR. THAYER: I think we are done with this. If we could save it

16 and I would tender this exhibit at this time, Mr. President.

17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This marked map will be received.

18 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibit P627.

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And I take the opportunity to do something that I

20 forgot when you tendered several documents with this witness. The

21 documents P606, P608, P610, P618, and P619 have no translation yet. So

22 these will be marked pending translation.

23 We must have our first break now, I think, and during the break,

24 the system shall be restarted so that have we no longer any problems with

25 it.

Page 3348

1 We resume at 11.00.

2 --- Recess taken at 10.37 a.m.

3 --- On resuming at 11.02 a.m.

4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, Mr. Thayer.

5 MR. THAYER: Thank you, Mr. President. Two quick issues. First

6 is, we will be able to have our witnesses here, given the change in the

7 schedule. We might have to change the order around, because of flights

8 and so forth, but it will be the same witnesses and we'll be able to fill

9 the time.

10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The Chamber is very grateful for that.

11 MR. THAYER: Number two is, I'm mindful of the time I estimated

12 for this witness and I've already exceeded it. I've reduced some of the

13 areas I had for Colonel Franken further, but I do seek the Court's

14 permission for some additional time with Colonel Franken. I think some

15 of these issues are, I hope, helpful to the Trial Chamber, and I'd like

16 to continue with the areas I have to cover with him.

17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Could you give an indication about the time.

18 MR. THAYER: I think it's going to be another half an hour,

19 Mr. President.

20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This seems not to be a problem.

21 MR. THAYER: Thank you.

22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Please proceed.

23 MR. THAYER:

24 Q. Now, good morning again, Colonel. You testified about the direct

25 firing by this T-55 tank at OP Foxtrot, blowing away its defence wall.

Page 3349

1 Again, you spoke about the situation at OP Echo a month earlier. Let me

2 ask you again, with respect to this direct firing by the tank, given your

3 experience as a trained infantry officer, is there any way that

4 OP Foxtrot was fired at accidently by the VRS on that occasion?

5 A. Absolutely not. The distance that Tango 55 from the OP was about

6 150, 200 metres. Alas, we didn't have means to deal with that tank

7 because I didn't have any anti-tank weapons anymore. But from a distance

8 of about 150 up to 200 metres, on an OP which is completely in the open,

9 without any targets in the area, it can't be by accident. That would be

10 nonsense.

11 Q. Did you request close air support or air support of any kind that

12 day, Colonel?

13 A. On Foxtrot we did again, yes, because we did that many times,

14 but -- and I don't know what excuse there was on this occasion, but we

15 didn't get it. There were several reasons given by the UN why air

16 support was not possible.

17 Q. Just briefly, what were some of those reasons, sir?

18 A. There were no planes available. They didn't consider it as an

19 attack or a heavy attack enough to justify air support. The other reason

20 I got was that, to their opinion, my own infantry and the Serb infantry

21 were mixed, so air support was impossible, which was nonsense, et cetera.

22 Reasons like that, sir.

23 Q. And again, what was your justification for requesting air support

24 at that time?

25 A. More or less the same reasons. Direct attack on a UN unit, Serbs

Page 3350

1 entering the enclave, well, that were the main reasons and that coped

2 with the conditions the UN had for air support.

3 Q. And I think we are all agreed that shortly after that direct fire

4 at the OP Foxtrot, Private Van Renssen was killed by ABiH fire. Can you

5 tell the Trial Chamber why DutchBat didn't request any kind of air

6 support with respect to the Muslim forces?

7 A. The killing of Private Van Renssen was when OP Foxtrot withdrew

8 to his base again, being B Company in Srebrenica. The fact that ABiH

9 fired at DutchBat couldn't be seen as a real attack. Perhaps I should

10 explain that. ABiH had massive disciplinary problems. Local commanders

11 did exactly what they would and not what the division said. It led even

12 to us picking up the Chief of Staff of the 28th Division, brought him

13 into the line of fighting to get his local commanders to reason. So this

14 was a tragedy, in fact, but we saw it as an incident because there was

15 not -- you couldn't speak of an organised attack or whatever. It was,

16 alas, a BiH, more or less, soldier who went bananas.

17 Q. Now, other than the OP structures themselves, you've described

18 damage to the watch-tower, the observation tower, the defence wall

19 getting blown away on another one. Did DutchBat lose any particular

20 pieces of equipment to direct VRS firing?

21 A. Yes. As far as I recollect, one or two unarmed vehicles, jeeps,

22 and three APCs. That's correct, three APCs, yes.

23 Q. I want to show you another document, Colonel.

24 MR. THAYER: This is P602. I've been told by our language people

25 that both the English and the B/C/S translations which we have and are

Page 3351

1 trying to improve are a little rough.

2 Q. So what I'd like to ask to you do, Colonel, is simply to read --

3 MR. THAYER: If we could have the Dutch original on the screen.

4 It's a pretty short document.

5 Q. If I could ask to you simply read the essential text of this

6 document and explain to the Trial Chamber what it's about.

7 A. That is information for Captain Groen, being the commander of

8 B Company, the company stationed in the south part and his base camp in

9 the city of Srebrenica. And that concerned a message we got from the

10 BSA, sorry, VRS and an ultimatum we got from the VRS and a UN reaction

11 with an ultimatum to the VRS. Why in writing? Because I was pretty busy

12 in the location of our headquarters so I couldn't go in the direction of

13 the captain, and I wouldn't like to use the command net radio

14 communications we had for messages like this because he was busy leading

15 his company, and then you don't interfere with messages like this on his

16 command net. It comes to the fact that the other commanders were by

17 hand, they were all stationed with their HQs in Potocari, quite next to

18 my own HQ, so I could tell them, and Captain Groen, commander B Company,

19 had to be informed in this way.

20 Q. If I could ask you to just translate what you've written here in

21 this in this message to the captain with respect to the VRS ultimatum?

22 What was the ultimatum here that you wrote?

23 A. Well, the VRS gave us a message by radio saying, The UN did not

24 or doesn't disarm the ABiH so we will do that as of 11, 600 hours. 11 is

25 the date, 600 hours is 6 o'clock in the morning. Plus 48 hours.

Page 3352

1 Civilians, soldiers of ABiH, so Muslim soldiers, and DutchBat, turn in

2 their weapons and leave the enclave through Yellow Bridge. Yellow Bridge

3 is a location in the north of the enclave, the entrance of the enclave

4 next to that Observation Post Papa you saw before on the map. The

5 reaction of the UN, you want that as well?

6 Q. Please.

7 A. The UN then sent ultimatum to the VRS. VRS is to withdraw after

8 the lines -- behind the lines of Morillon, being our UN border I

9 described before, with [indiscernible] it says the old enclave as we --

10 that looked as we came in. "Every VRS attack has to be stopped. As of

11 600 hours tomorrow morning the withdrawal has to start. If not," the

12 text stops.

13 Q. Okay. I think what happened in the last trial was either we

14 didn't have the second page or we forgot about the second page but we

15 didn't talk about the second page, although you talked about the

16 substance of the second page.

17 MR. THAYER: So if we could go to page 2 of the original Dutch,

18 which hopefully will be in the system. There we go.

19 Q. I think at the top it says: "If not," and if you could translate

20 for us.

21 A. "Massive air attacks on all VRS targets in and around the

22 enclave. Mission as of 600 hours, take cover." It's a normal procedure

23 when you get massive air support, then you have to -- everything that is

24 not necessary outside, you want them in cover. "Vehicles without the

25 compounds marked." Marked is with orange flags on the top of a vehicle,

Page 3353

1 so all the pilots can recognise own troops. That is a NATO procedure,

2 and that is done again when close air support is delivered so the pilot

3 can't make a mistake who is the enemy.

4 Q. Okay.

5 A. And then it's underlined, it's a mistake or repeating of the same

6 message probably printed and there is a cross through it, but it's the

7 same text as at page 1.

8 Q. And this refers to --

9 A. Sorry, I forgot one. There's a note then writ: "Your mission to

10 defend the city is still evident."

11 Q. And the original VRS ultimatum spoke about, as you said, by 0600

12 on the 11th of July, plus 48 hours, everybody leaves. So what day did

13 you send this message to the captain?

14 A. Oh, that's good question, just try to recollect that. I suppose

15 it is the 10th.

16 Q. Okay.

17 MR. THAYER: Mr. President, I would tender P602 at this time. Is

18 that already in? That's one of the original documents. Being redundant,

19 I'll withdraw that request, Mr. President.

20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you. But perhaps you can tell us if

21 there's an English translation?

22 MR. THAYER: There is. There is an English translation, again

23 though it's -- I'm being told by our language people that it's a little

24 rough, so we'll get a better one and upload that as soon as possible, and

25 it's being worked on.

Page 3354

1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: In that case we should mark it for

2 identification, pending English translation.

3 MR. THAYER: And I guess technically, Mr. President, page 2 of

4 this document was not part of, from what I can see, the original document

5 in Popovic. So maybe I need to formally tender it now just to be on the

6 safe side.

7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The second page will be part of this document.

8 MR. THAYER:

9 Q. Colonel, during these events, this VRS attack on the enclave,

10 things were clearly moving pretty quickly. You are receiving a lot of

11 information, making a lot of decisions, making a lot of calls, receiving

12 a lot of information and reports. How confused were you, was DutchBat,

13 about who was shooting at you?

14 A. I was not confused about who was shooting at me. There were some

15 incidents with BiH, but without shooting at us, where they didn't allow

16 us to withdraw or to move with our vehicles. But the shooting was quite

17 clear to me it was done by the VRS, and to DutchBat as well, not only me.

18 Q. And when Private van Renssen was killed, you knew that that was

19 by the BiH and not by anybody else, is that fair to say?

20 A. That's correct. That is correct.

21 Q. How were your communications functioning during this period of

22 time?

23 A. With my units, good. At least the units that were not taken POW

24 by the VRS, but with my units, with my companies, it was perfect. No

25 problem. We had some problems with communications to the higher

Page 3355

1 echelons, but they were not severe that we couldn't speak or for a longer

2 time didn't have any communications to the UN.

3 Q. Now, you testified in Popovic that Mladic had announced that

4 there would be separation of the men. This was at transcript page 2496.

5 When did you first hear, to the best of your recollection, that

6 General Mladic had made this announcement?

7 A. Could have been the night of the 11th, when Colonel Karremans

8 came back from his second meeting, but I'm sure I heard it on the debrief

9 on the 12th, when he came back from his final meeting. But I -- as far

10 as I recollect, I already knew about that the 11th, late.

11 Q. And do you recall any particular ages that were mentioned, age

12 range of men that would be separated?

13 A. Men from 16 up till 60. 1-6 till 6-0.

14 Q. You've testified and we've spoken about today this

15 Colonel Jankovic, and I want to show you a photograph. We are going to

16 do this on Sanction as opposed to e-court and just ask you if you

17 recognise any of the people in the picture. If you can tell the

18 Trial Chamber who they are.

19 MR. THAYER: And this, for the record, is P624.

20 THE WITNESS: The right side is the -- by -- mentioned by you the

21 Colonel Jankovic, and the left side it's quite clear who he is.

22 MR. THAYER: Your Honour, I would tender P624 at this time.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The witness, you didn't mention the name of that

24 man --

25 THE WITNESS: Sorry, on the left side was Mladic. Yes, sorry.

Page 3356

1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you. It will be received.

2 MR. THAYER:

3 Q. Did Colonel Jankovic ever tell you what his actual position was?

4 A. No, he did not. He introduced himself as being the officer,

5 again, from Pale. They all said they came from Pale. And his job was to

6 coordinate and make arrangements for the withdrawal of DutchBat.

7 Q. Did you ever ask him to try to find out what his actual position

8 was?

9 A. Of course I did, but I didn't get an answer. Answers like, Well,

10 it's not evident, it's not important, my job now is clear, I hope,

11 et cetera. Answers like that. He never gave his correct position on

12 what staff or what function.

13 Q. Now, from what command level did you understand Colonel Jankovic

14 to be from?

15 A. Main Staff, sir.

16 Q. And after the -- well, I'll withdraw that and save some time.

17 Did Colonel Jankovic ever provide you with information about what

18 was going on outside the compound?

19 A. Well, he was the one that informed me that the -- the Muslims,

20 being parts of the 28th Division plus plus, and -- broke out of the

21 enclave in northern direction and had contact with the VRS. And by that

22 occasion, he reported to me that they already had about 6.000 prisoners

23 taken.

24 Q. Do you recall whether Colonel Jankovic referred to any particular

25 location when he referred to that break-out and taking those prisoners?

Page 3357

1 A. Yeah, well, not -- I do not remember a city or a town or

2 something like that, but I know he said that they broke out from the

3 enclave in northern direction and that's the information he gave. I

4 don't recollect villages or whatever.

5 Q. Let me just quote you a section from your OTP statement and see

6 if this refreshes your recollection, whether you agree with it or not.

7 This is from page 7 of the English and page 9 of the B/C/S. We don't

8 need to put it up on e-court but it's P607 if anybody wants to check.

9 You say in that statement that:

10 "Jankovic told me that the BH Army had tried to get through

11 Kasaba and then further on to the north in the direction of Zvornik."

12 Does that refresh your recollection about the location?

13 A. Yes, that sounds a bell but I couldn't remember at the very

14 moment.

15 Q. I want to turn your attention now, Colonel, to the issue of the

16 evacuation of the wounded people who remained at the Potocari compound

17 and some of whom were also at the hospital in Bratunac.

18 MR. THAYER: And in that connection, if we could see P626,

19 please.

20 Q. What we have here is a report from Colonel Jankovic to the

21 Main Staff intelligence and security sector. I want to focus your

22 attention on paragraph 1. Colonel Jankovic refers to the completion of

23 the removal of the entire Muslim population, and then he refers to the

24 numbers of wounded who remained. Do you see where it says:

25 "A list of names has been taken from the UNPROFOR."

Page 3358

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. Can you comment on that at all, Colonel? Do you know anything

3 about a list of the names of wounded?

4 A. Yes, because we tried to get them out by UN means which was a

5 NORMEDCOY, a Norwegian unit being in the area of Tuzla who was supposed

6 to get the wounded out. We had to start a procedure of asking permission

7 for a permission of a convoy again and an absolute demand was then that

8 there were lists with the exact names of every person, being UN member or

9 not, in that convoy. That's the reason why they had that list.

10 Q. Now, if we go down a little further in that paragraph, it reads:

11 "The deputy commander of the battalion has told me that he will

12 try to arrange this with international humanitarian organizations so that

13 their medical treatment can continue in the FRY."

14 Now, and we see immediately after that that Colonel Jankovic is

15 recommending that they -- those wounded be transferred to Zvornik to get

16 treatment there. Why did you want to arrange for an international

17 organisation to take over those wounded?

18 A. Because I wanted them without the grip or influence of the VRS,

19 and the international organisation was because the UN units, Norwegian

20 Medical Company, tried to reach us but they did not succeed crossing the

21 CL in their area -- sorry, confrontation line in their area, whether that

22 was by fire or whatever. But I was reported that it was impossible for

23 the UN unit to come and evacuate those wounded. As I said before, I

24 didn't want them to come into the hands of the VRS. The only solution

25 was try the ICRC to get them out, International Red Cross. And through

Page 3359

1 MSF I finally succeeded in arranging that. MSF is Medecins Sans

2 Frontieres, an NGO.

3 Q. Why didn't you want those wounded to be in the custody of the

4 VRS, Colonel?

5 A. Experience we had. We tried to bring the wounded out during the

6 evacuation. We had a hell of a lot of trouble at the crossing point in

7 the area of Kladanj. People were beaten, bandages were taken from the

8 people to see whether they were really wounded or not, and they were sent

9 back. That is where a couple of them landed in Bratunac because the

10 Serbs took them out, and just a few of them, of which one died already,

11 came back to the camp. So having that experience, I absolutely didn't

12 want those wounded in the hands of the VRS. I hope that's an answer.

13 Q. And was there -- did you have any concerns for their overall

14 physical safety at that point, and if so, what was the basis of the

15 concern?

16 A. Well, that is what I tried to explain. Seeing -- having

17 experience how the VRS handled those wounded, I didn't have a reason to

18 believe that it would be different if I handed them over now, and I

19 wanted those people in security. So the only way to do that is bring

20 them out of -- through the VRS area, out of that area, and it could only

21 be done by the ICRC, obviously.

22 Q. And by that time, on or about the 17th of July, had you received

23 any reports of executions or other atrocities that had been committed by

24 the VRS?

25 A. Yes, proven were nine dead in the vicinity of our main gate, west

Page 3360

1 of the so-called White House, a building right in front of our main gate.

2 We had a report of the execution of one man by two VRS soldiers in the

3 area of the bus station, just out of the parameter of the UN at that

4 time. And there were, of course, all kinds of rumours but not proven.

5 Every time when we got a report out of the civil population, we tried or

6 we went out to see whether executions had been performed or there were

7 dead, but we never found them. And then again, it was not that far

8 because we were not allowed or it was impossible to go out, by occasion,

9 400 or 500 metres out of the compound because then our patrols were

10 blocked by the VRS.

11 Q. Now, if we go back up to this first paragraph. Colonel Jankovic

12 writes that:

13 "A doctor from the UNPROFOR has stayed in the hospital in

14 Bratunac at the request of the hospital staff, to make sure that the

15 patients are properly treated. I intend to send him away tomorrow, under

16 the pretext that his help is not necessary."

17 Do you have any knowledge, sir, whether that actually happened on

18 or about the 13th of July?

19 A. It did not. That happened -- no, he was not sent away, but the

20 wounded he was supposed to watch over. That's why we left him there. I

21 don't know anything about a request of the hospital staff. We left him

22 there to watch over the wounded to be sure that they were treated

23 properly. Later than 13th of July, and I don't recollect exactly the

24 date, he was called away for a lunch, invited for a lunch with the

25 hospital staff. And when he came back the wounded were gone. That made

Page 3361

1 his job there oblivious.

2 Q. You testified about this meeting that was led by Colonel Jankovic

3 on the 17th of July, regarding the evacuation of these wounded. Is it

4 fair to say that this was sort of a two-part process that day; the first

5 part having to do with identifying the wounded who were actually going to

6 be permitted to leave and then a second part dealing with something else?

7 A. In fact, the reason for that -- that meeting was to transfer the

8 wounded to the ICRC and arrange or coordinate the actual leave of the

9 wounded of the VRS area and, of course, my compound. Nikolic,

10 Major Nikolic, Bratunac Brigade, insisted on checking the wounded,

11 whether there were soldiers amongst them, and he demanded that they were

12 then -- should have been -- wrongly, sorry, I correct. That they should

13 be handled like POWs.

14 ICRC consented that inspection. I sent some of my soldiers

15 along. And in the time that inspection took place, Jankovic presented to

16 my surprise, a declaration which he spoke of before, a declaration in

17 which the representative of the civil population, in this case being

18 Mr. Mandzic, declared that everything went according to rules and nothing

19 happened during the evacuation.

20 Q. Okay. We'll look at that in just a moment.

21 MR. THAYER: Your Honour, first I'd like to tender P626, which is

22 the report of Colonel Jankovic.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It will be received. And at this point in time,

24 I would like to take you back to a tendered photograph, P624. I was told

25 that this whole document contains 105 pages.

Page 3362

1 MR. THAYER: Yes, Mr. President. We are at this time seeking

2 only to tender that one photograph. I think at a later time, you will

3 hear testimony from one of our investigators about how that book was put

4 together. For the time being, we would tender just that page

5 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]

6 JUDGE FLUEGGE: To make the situation very clear, it should be

7 uploaded as a single document, this photo, and it will be received with a

8 separate document number.

9 MR. THAYER: Okay. In that case, Your Honour, I think what we'll

10 do, it might be easier, if we could, just to MIF it and then wait until

11 we get the whole thing in evidence through the investigator so we don't

12 have little bits and pieces with different numbers. If it's all the same

13 to the Trial Chamber, if we just MIF it for the time being, and then when

14 we get the whole thing in it will be part of that exhibit.

15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I'm told that it is already marked for

16 identification.

17 MR. THAYER: Okay. Then we'll just status quo.

18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you, please carry on.

19 MR. THAYER: Ms. Stewart has let me know that I also neglected to

20 tender P621, which was the 9 July report sent by Colonel Karremans to his

21 superior command, and Colonel Franken looked at that and testified about

22 that a little earlier.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It will be received as P621.

24 MR. THAYER:

25 Q. Now, Colonel --

Page 3363

1 MR. THAYER: If we could look at P28, please.

2 Q. You just told us that Colonel Jankovic shows up at this meeting

3 for the evacuation, to arrange the evacuation of these wounded and he

4 produces a declaration. And if we could take a look at it, I don't want

5 to go over it in much detail since it's in the Popovic transcript, but

6 it's dated the 17th of July. That's four days after the last of the

7 population had been removed; is that correct?

8 A. That is correct.

9 Q. We see here --

10 MR. THAYER: If we could scroll down just a little bit.

11 Actually, if we can go to the next page in English. I see that this has

12 been -- and the page after that. There should be a version that you

13 signed, I can see it's been uploaded in a slightly different order. If

14 we can go to the next page, please, in English. Okay. Let's try

15 65 ter 20 because that might have the full version.

16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I'm told, Mr. Thayer, that is this is exactly the

17 same document.

18 MR. THAYER: With the same number of pages, Madam Usher?

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes.

20 MR. THAYER: Okay. So, unfortunately, we've not uploaded every

21 pages of this document.

22 Q. In any event, then we can see here on the unsigned version that

23 it says on Jankovic's declaration:

24 "No incidents were provoked by any side during the evacuation,

25 and the Serbian side observed all the regulations of the Geneva

Page 3364

1 Conventions and the International Law of War."

2 And you added something in your own handwriting: "As far as

3 convoys actually escorted by UN forces are concerned."

4 What did you try to achieve by writing that?

5 A. The text preliminary to my handwritten sentence was, in fact,

6 nonsense because it was not correct. Colonel Jankovic gave to me that

7 the signing of this declaration was, well, more or less a condition to

8 get the wounded out properly. So by adding this sentence in, to my

9 opinion, I made this document worthless because I say all the, I would

10 almost say, bullshit mentioned before does only concern the convoys

11 escorted by UN forces, and as you know by former testimony, we were only

12 able to escort the first and second convoy. And that is correct, the

13 first and second convoy nothing happened. So that is what I meant by

14 adding this sentence because there were incidents we couldn't escort

15 because we couldn't see happened to the people.

16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer, now we have the second page in B/C/S

17 on the screen with three signatures. Perhaps you can clarify the

18 handwritten portion above the signatures. It seems to be in B/C/S.

19 MR. THAYER: Yes. Mr. President, there is a version that was

20 translated on the spot, I think as Colonel Franken has testified, that he

21 wrote in English on -- this language that we see translated on the right,

22 and then that was in turn translated into the B/C/S at the time on this

23 copy that you see here. What I was hoping to be able to show

24 Your Honours was the copy of the English translation, which was done at

25 the time that Colonel Franken wrote his sentence in English but we don't

Page 3365

1 have that right now, but we can certainly get that soon enough for you.

2 So that's what we see here.

3 Q. And, Colonel Franken, can you comment on that all and is that

4 accurate? Or do you have anything to add?

5 A. I can't see whether the text in B/C/S is accurate but I can

6 recognise my signing it, my name, and on the left on the side of that

7 B/C/S page, and I know there's an English version that is a look-a-like,

8 only in English.

9 JUDGE FLUEGGE: May I ask, who did this handwriting in the B/C/S

10 version?

11 THE WITNESS: My interpreters. To be brief about it and perhaps

12 for your information, Jankovic presented that declaration in B/C/S to me,

13 so I said, Well, I can't read that. So I had my own UN interpreters

14 translate it in an English version, and then I added in handwriting that

15 sentence we spoke about and he wrote it in the B/C/S translation, the

16 same sentence, but in Bosnian Croatian language.

17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.

18 Mr. Thayer, please carry on.

19 MR. THAYER:

20 Q. Colonel, you mentioned a few moments ago that you tried to make

21 this declaration worthless by --

22 A. That's correct.

23 Q. -- by adding the language that you added. Whether you added

24 anything to this declaration or not, and let's just focus, for example,

25 on this reference to the Serbs -- the Serbian side observing the

Page 3366

1 regulations of the Geneva Conventions and international law. Based on

2 what you observed and what you had reported to you at the time, how does

3 this invocation of the Geneva Conventions and the international law

4 square with what you saw and what you had reported to you was happening

5 at the time?

6 A. I could compress my comment to nonsense. It's incorrect. Some

7 of the -- I can give some examples. We had those nine deaths, we had the

8 execution at the -- proven execution at the bus station. The time my

9 patrols could get into the house because we want to check how they were

10 treated, we cut some men loose who were hung to the ceiling at their

11 thumbs, we cut them loose and then stayed around. I had my UNMOs, sorry,

12 United Nations Military Observers, who were not under my command but

13 there was a team of UNMOs within the enclave, I had them check at least

14 how many men went in and how many went out. There was -- in fact they

15 were treated badly. I gave you one example. And when we tried to

16 control that and to correct that, in the end or pretty soon we were

17 blocked by armed Serb soldiers, number about 40, who absolutely blocked

18 over the street our approach to that house. So only these examples is

19 for me a reason to say that the declaration is incorrect.

20 Q. Now, can you identify for the Trial Chamber the various issues

21 about which you complained to Colonel Jankovic?

22 A. Yes. I complained to Jankovic about the treatment of the men in

23 the White House, about the fact that we were not able to control that, to

24 be present, although we were -- initially we were allowed to escort and

25 to control the whole evacuation. I complained about him -- to him about

Page 3367

1 the robbing of my escort teams and the losing of weapons and vehicles. I

2 asked him why still there were not medical supplies allowed to be brought

3 in, because we were out of it. I asked him and complained about the fact

4 that any logistic transport could take place now to improve the situation

5 for the civil population as well because they needed water, for instance,

6 and I didn't have any, or hardly. Well, all these, probably there are a

7 lot more of examples, but just for the record. I complained and spoke to

8 him or made him responsible for all things that went wrong in my opinion.

9 And if the next question is did anything happen, no. He said, I'll see

10 to it, I'll see in that. Nothing happened. One of his answers was,

11 Well, we are another army than your army, orders are not always followed

12 by everybody, and that's it.

13 Q. Based on your interactions with him, Colonel, did you believe

14 that he didn't have the power to influence the situation?

15 A. Well, his point of view was, I'm only here to coordinate the

16 withdrawal of DutchBat so all the other things is not my piece of cake

17 and I can inform the commanders doing that, but, yeah, I don't know

18 whether they do anything with it. And I do not believe that if he really

19 wanted he couldn't. There's a nice example where with one phone call he

20 had that ICRC truck pass the border within minutes, which meant to me

21 that he had influence. He could obviously give orders which were

22 followed.

23 Q. You testified in Popovic about seeing Nesib Mandzic, one of the

24 Muslims who had been selected to represent the community during the

25 meetings with General Mladic, after he returned from the second Fontana

Page 3368

1 meeting in the evening of 11 July and that he was in a state of panic.

2 Do you recall the -- one of the other representatives, a woman whose

3 first name was Camila?

4 A. Yes, I did.

5 Q. Can you tell the Trial Chamber what happened to her, basically

6 after this?

7 A. She was one of the three members of that committee that should

8 and would represent the civil population, the Muslims in our area. And

9 on my request, that committee was registering the men within the UN

10 parameter. We spoke of that before. When she came out of our camp to

11 register the men in the area of the bus station, she was provoked or

12 handled by the VRS in that way that she -- well, she broke down. After

13 that she was a patient in the hospital as well. She was completely,

14 yeah, what do you say, off the world. She was intimidated in such a way

15 that she really broke down, completely. And she went, in the end, out as

16 a patient when the battalion went out.

17 Q. Just a couple of more questions for you, Colonel. In connection

18 with your testimony in the Slobodan Milosevic case, do you recall

19 reviewing a large stack of UNMO and UNPROFOR reports dated 6 July through

20 the 18th of July?

21 A. Yes, I saw them, yes, yes.

22 Q. And do you recall at that time reading them and being asked to

23 indicate which -- whether each report appeared to you to be authentic and

24 whether each report accurately described the events?

25 A. As far as I remember, they were correct, yes.

Page 3369

1 MR. THAYER: Let me show you P623, please.

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The Defence would kindly ask that

4 we be given a reference as to where these excerpts are in the Milosevic

5 transcript. Thank you.

6 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer.

7 MR. THAYER: I'll have to get back to the Court to give you that

8 exact cite about where it is in the Milosevic transcript. I don't think

9 there's any question that in connection with that case, Colonel Franken

10 was shown these UNMO reports and confirmed, in this document that we see,

11 its contents, but I'll get back to you.

12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: No dispute about that --

13 MR. THAYER: There's no dispute about that --

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: -- but it is necessary to have the reference.

15 MR. THAYER: I'll see if I can get the reference for you.

16 Q. Now, Colonel, we have here an itemisation of these UNMO reports

17 that you reviewed, and we can see your comments. Are those your initials

18 in the lower right-hand corner?

19 A. That's correct.

20 MR. THAYER: And if we could go to the last page of the document.

21 Q. Is that your signature there, sir?

22 A. That's my signature, yes.

23 Q. Okay. Do you stand by the comments that you made and are

24 contained in this document about these UNMO reports, sir?

25 A. Yes.

Page 3370

1 MR. THAYER: Your Honour, I would tender P623 at this time.

2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It will be received with this P number.

3 MR. THAYER:

4 Q. Now lastly, Colonel, we have 65 ter 427.

5 MR. THAYER: If we could see that on the screen, please. Okay.

6 Q. Do you see a document that's popped up on the right?

7 A. I do.

8 Q. Okay. And what is that, sir?

9 A. That's the declaration presented to me and signed by me on the

10 17th of July, during that meeting originally meant for the coordination

11 of the transfer of the wounded out of the area.

12 Q. Thank you, Colonel.

13 MR. THAYER: Your Honour, I would tender 427 at this time.

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Do I take it that this is the same document now

15 with a signature of the witness on the English version; is that correct?

16 MR. THAYER: Yes, we are talking about the same things, but this

17 is the English translation which wasn't included in the exhibit that was

18 uploaded into e-court previously. We just have it for some reason under

19 a separate number. They got split up.

20 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer, I was told that page 2 and 3 of this

22 document contain B/C/S text. Could you please clarify that before we

23 receive it.

24 MR. THAYER: Yes, why don't we -- just to make everything crystal

25 clear, let's forget about P28 for the moment. Pretend we didn't see

Page 3371

1 that, and we'll just proceed through 427 and we'll see if we can clarify

2 to the Trial Chamber what documents we have here.

3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And you are referring to 65 ter 427?

4 MR. THAYER: 427, Mr. President, yes.

5 Q. So we've, I think, explained that this is the English translation

6 which was done by your translator on the spot; is that correct, Colonel?

7 A. That is correct.

8 Q. And if we note here, if we look at the fourth paragraph, it's one

9 of the larger ones that lists all the various participants, just for the

10 record and I'll tie this up in a minute, we have various individuals

11 listed, Mr. Simic, Davidovic, Vasic. Then we see a reference to

12 General Krstic, corps security chief, Mr. Popovic, and then we have

13 listed here a Colonel Krstic. I just note that for the record, we'll tie

14 that up in a second, as I said. So we've got two references to a Krstic

15 in the English translation that was done by your interpreter; correct?

16 A. That's correct.

17 MR. THAYER: Okay. Could we see the next page, please, and see

18 what we are looking at.

19 Q. And now what we see here, obviously, is something that's not in

20 your language?

21 A. No.

22 Q. And we can see, if we look at the translation of this document,

23 which is to the left, in that big paragraph where there are a number of

24 names listed, we see in the B/C/S original of this declaration that we

25 have Mr. Vasic, General Krstic, Mr. Popovic, and then Colonel Kosoric.

Page 3372

1 So instead of two Krstics in the original declaration which

2 Colonel Jankovic presented to you, we have here Colonel Kosoric

3 identified. Do you see that, sir, in the translation?

4 A. I'm doing my best. Yes, I see it. Yes. Okay.

5 Q. All right. So I put it to you that what happened was, when your

6 interpreter translated this document on the fly on the 17th of July, he

7 simply instead of writing "Kosoric" in the English version that you

8 signed, mistakenly repeated Krstic, and that's why we saw two Krstics in

9 the first version that we looked at, the one that you signed. Would you

10 accept that? Does that make sense to you?

11 A. Yeah, it does make sense, yes.

12 Q. Okay. All right.

13 MR. THAYER: I think we are done with this document.

14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Are you tendering it now?

15 MR. THAYER: Yes, Mr. President, I think we are ready to tender

16 that.

17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It will be received, including the B/C/S part.

18 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibit P628.

19 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]

20 MR. THAYER: Lastly, Mr. President, just to get back to you about

21 the citation in the Milosevic trial, just by way of background, in that

22 case Colonel Franken's testimony was introduced via 98 bis with

23 cross-examination. So there was a dossier of documents that came in

24 associated with Colonel Franken and then he was made available for

25 cross-examination by Mr. Milosevic in that case. So if we look at

Page 3379

1 Q. [Interpretation] We can see here the statement given on the

2 22nd and 27th September, 1995. To whom did you give this statement? Did

3 you give it to members of the Dutch army, or did you give this statement

4 to representatives of the International Tribunal, because there's no

5 indication about that in this statement?

6 A. I'm just trying to read it, and seeing the fact that it was given

7 within the military barracks in Holland, that would be probably given to

8 the commission assigned by the Ministry of Defence after we came back to

9 investigate the situation, or what happened in the enclave. But that is

10 the only reason -- location where this statement was made, that is the

11 base of my conclusion, I should say.

12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer.

13 THE WITNESS: Excuse me, because I gave that much statements that

14 I can't recognise it from paper where I give it, but that is logical.

15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer.

16 MR. THAYER: Mr. President, maybe just to save some time, if the

17 witness can be shown page 8 of the English and page 11 of the B/C/S, that

18 just might help move things along on this issue.

19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: If you may look at the witness acknowledgement on

20 the bottom of that page, perhaps you can identify the people you gave the

21 statement to.

22 THE WITNESS: Yes, that more or less confirms me my previous

23 statement, that this statement was given to the committee that, on order

24 of the Ministry of Defence, did survey to the way of things in the

25 enclave when we returned, sir.

Page 3380

1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

2 Please carry on, Mr. Tolimir.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

4 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

5 Q. Thank you, Mr. Franken. It's clear now to whom you gave this

6 statement. It is important for us that we see that it's authentic, that

7 you actually did give it, and that I can ask questions on the basis of

8 that statement.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we please look at page 2 in

10 Serbian, and I'd like to keep page 1 in English. Thank you. Thank you.

11 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

12 Q. In the period while the DutchBat was deployed in Srebrenica, you

13 were deputy battalion commander of Colonel Karremans, and you were head

14 of the logistics as well, and all this is stated in the first paragraph

15 of your statement; is that correct?

16 A. Correct.

17 Q. Thank you.

18 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I apologise to the interpreters.

20 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

21 Q. Please, can you tell us, when you took over the duty, had you

22 been briefed previously about the situation pertaining to the enclave?

23 A. Yes, during the preparation of the battalion before we went

24 there, there was a weekly brief about the situation. And I took over on

25 the 15th.

Page 3381

1 Q. Thank you. Can you please tell us, had you received any specific

2 information about deployment, arms, and locations where members of the

3 VRS were, and things of that nature? Thank you.

4 A. That information I got from DutchBat II, which was the battalion

5 was -- we were -- that was there before us. And we got some information

6 about VRS, some brigade structures were recognised, and there was

7 information about personnel or the liaisons with which we had to deal.

8 Q. Thank you. Can you please supplement this answer that you have

9 given me by telling me whether you had any information about members of

10 the BH army, its members and the lines that they held?

11 A. That is correct. In fact, the same sort of information we knew

12 that the BiH had a brigade structure as well within the enclave. We more

13 or less knew which brigade was operating in which zone, and we knew that

14 they still had about 4.000, 4500 rifle-like weapons, mostly the

15 Kalashnikov AK-47.

16 Q. Thank you. Can you please tell us, were you surprised by the

17 fact that you arrived in a demilitarised zone and that in spite of that,

18 there were two parties to the conflict and that they were both armed?

19 A. No, I was not surprised because the information I already got in

20 Holland was that the ABiH was not completely demilitarised in the area.

21 I knew that.

22 Q. Now, you said that they had brigades within their structures, you

23 knew their locations, and that they had about 4.500 people armed with

24 Kalashnikovs; is that correct?

25 A. That's what I said, yes.

Page 3382

1 Q. Thank you. Can you tell us, according to what you knew, what was

2 the strength of a BH brigade?

3 A. Well, they had not an organisation and not every brigade was as

4 big as the other one. A brigade more indicated that they had some kind

5 of an area of responsibility and they called that a brigade. I know of

6 the units being responsible for the area around our HQ was not bigger

7 than about 200, 300 men, but we never saw them together. It was guessing

8 and just extracting from pieces of information we got. For instance, the

9 brigade in the Bandera triangle, as we call it, it's the area in the

10 southwest of the enclave, was much stronger. But how big exactly, we

11 don't know. We didn't know, I should say.

12 Q. Thank you. When you mentioned this triangle, there were soldiers

13 of yours there who had been disarmed, we can deal with that later.

14 However, what is your assessment? What was that force that took prisoner

15 100 of your soldiers?

16 A. Just to be clear, I was one of those soldiers. We were not

17 disarmed and we were not taken prisoner, but probably we come to that

18 later.

19 Your question was, what was that force that took prisoner of 100.

20 Well, they didn't take prisoner, but I think you mean what was the unit

21 in the Bandera triangle. It was an area where we did not have freedom of

22 movement. We tried to establish that on orders of Sector North-east, did

23 not succeed, and when we tried to push on, so do that more massively, the

24 UN withdrew his order and said, okay, leave it.

25 In that area, there was -- at the outside it looked like a more

Page 3383

1 or less organised unit, and the leader of the -- the brigade commander,

2 who I know by the name of Zulfo, well, that's a fact the -- everything

3 we know about it because we were not allowed to enter that area, so what

4 exactly was this that area we did not know.

5 Q. Thank you. Can you tell us whether the villages in the area that

6 you controlled, where the population from which the BH Army had been

7 recruited lived, did they have armed units? Were they organised on the

8 basis of villages in terms of their army, because here we have maps and

9 other documents relating to the Army of Republika Srpska for brigades and

10 whatever, but now let us see what it was that you had concerning that

11 enclave. Thank you.

12 A. The only thing we knew about their local organisation was the

13 Bandera triangle unit was organised based on villages and the area around

14 that, so they recruited the soldiers locally from those villages. How it

15 worked in the rest of the enclave, we did not know.

16 Q. Thank you. Does that mean that you only studied that part of the

17 enclave where you came into conflict with them, where you encountered

18 certain problems when carrying out your own tasks? Thank you.

19 A. No, that does not mean that we tried to get information only

20 about the units in the Bandera triangle. We tried to get that

21 information from the other units as well, but on questions, we didn't get

22 an answer. And seeing the fact that the ABiH was not uniformed in any

23 way, it was incredibly difficult to try to identify units or the, what do

24 you say, the number of members of a unit because, yeah, well, if we are

25 all civilians and only they knew who was a soldier and who was not a

Page 3384

1 soldier. We could not identify units. Again, they were not uniformed.

2 Q. Thank you. Did they carry rifles when they wore civilian

3 clothing, when you say that it was hard to tell who was who because they

4 didn't have uniforms? Did your superior command ever ask you for a

5 report on how many armed groups were there and how they used these

6 weapons, in shifts, two or three shifts, various positions? Because

7 during your examination, you said that there were three lines of

8 separation. I'm sure that you toured these lines of separation. Thank

9 you.

10 A. Your first question, they did not carry rifles because the few

11 times that we discovered them carrying rifles, we tried to unarm them.

12 We had one small problem, the very moment they flew into a house, we were

13 not authorised to enter that house and we had to call the local police

14 and then have them check the house. So that was not very effective, so

15 to say.

16 Your second question was, my superior command never asked me

17 details about the present ABiH which should have been logical, but awhile

18 ago I already told that you the whole intelligence cycles didn't work

19 within UNPROFOR. And lines of separation between the brigades, I assume

20 you mean, no, I did not tour them because I never could find any

21 confirmation of the fact that there was a line of separation. When there

22 were people around, there were civilians and they never -- we never saw,

23 until the final attack, that all the positions were taken or there was

24 personnel in their ditches, et cetera. It was once in awhile and

25 occasionally on different spots, so it was very difficult so if not

Page 3385

1 impossible, again, to identify units and their lines of separation and

2 their operation zone.

3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, I think we have reached the time to

4 have the second break, then after that you may continue your

5 cross-examination.

6 We adjourn now and resume at 1.00.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.

8 --- Recess taken at 12.37 p.m.

9 --- On resuming at 1.03 p.m.

10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, Mr. Tolimir, please proceed.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. I would

12 like to thank the witness, too.

13 And I would now like to have a look at P107 that was tendered by

14 the Prosecution. Could we have that in e-court. We see what the

15 deployment of forces was there, we can see what the UNPROFOR had and what

16 other parties had, and you could explain this to us.

17 P107 in e-court, please. Thank you. Thank you. Could you

18 please show in e-court the map where there were translations into both

19 languages so that the witness could see that. Could you please display

20 the map with the translation. Thank you. Thank you. Could you please

21 zoom in the part where there is the text in Serbian and in English that

22 pertains to Srebrenica. Thank you.

23 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

24 Q. There is Zepa and Srebrenica here, but we are going to look at

25 what has to do with Srebrenica. Can you read it --

Page 3386

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Actually, can you zoom in a bit

2 more. Thank you.

3 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation].

4 Q. Now we see that it says what the population is, between 35- and

5 38.000. The forces of the 28th Division of the 2nd Corps of the ABiH are

6 in the enclave. The division consists of the following brigades: The

7 280th, the 281st, the 282nd, the 283rd, the 284th, and the battalion of

8 the Light Infantry Brigade. The division has about 5.000 to

9 5.500 troops. Police forces have 200 to 250 men. Muslim forces in

10 Srebrenica are armed --

11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, it's not necessary to read the whole

12 text on the record because we have this as an exhibit already. Perhaps

13 you just -- and the witness can read it. Just put the question to the

14 witness.

15 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

16 Q. Did you know that there were five brigades there, as written

17 here, and that the Muslim forces were armed, as is written here, and as

18 you could read for yourself because I did not read out the whole text to

19 you. Thank you.

20 A. Please give me a moment to read the whole text, just hold. Yes,

21 I read the text about the Muslim forces. As I recollect we identified

22 four brigades, not five. The number of troops they had were, to my

23 knowledge, 4.500, the not number standing here. The police force

24 astonishes me. When you have a police force of about 50, 60 men, so I

25 can't imagine where the number -- at least the number 200, 250 is strange

Page 3387

1 to me. The arms that are described there, I only can confirm that we

2 knew they had semi-automatic and automatic rifles and some light

3 machine-guns. The hand-held rocket launchers, well, rumours about them

4 but never saw them. The heavier weapons were, as far as I can see, all

5 in the weapon collection point at the compounds of B Company in

6 Srebrenica. The amount of ammunition I did not know or at least I knew

7 not that there should have been enough.

8 Commander Naser Oric is known to me. Then UNPROFOR, Dutch

9 battalion did not have 550 troops to the extent within the enclave we

10 claimed to 312. 21 APCs is correct, only the anti-tank missile systems

11 are connected to the APCs here, that's incorrect. They were portable

12 systems. There are currently, I don't know what currently is,

13 340 soldiers in the enclave, yeah, well, I don't know the date but they

14 thought about saying 340 but that is the max, a bit less but the max we

15 had in the enclave before. As a result of what we called convoy terror,

16 that number was diminished. Is that an answer?

17 Q. Thank you. Thank you. Could you just tell us, for the sake of

18 the transcript, you said there were only 500 soldiers, but a moment ago

19 you said that there were between 4.000 and 4.500 and that there was an

20 equal number of rifles. Is that what you said here? Is that what you

21 actually said or did you misspeak perhaps or was this a mistranslation?

22 A. Well, I -- the number 500 was, as far as I know, not spoken by

23 me, but I meant to say that there were about 4.500 armed men within the

24 enclave being a member of the ABiH, as far as we knew.

25 Q. Thank you. May I state that in addition to the corrections that

Page 3388

1 you made, you assessed all the rest as being realistic, except that you

2 said that there were four brigades rather than five as stated here?

3 Thank you.

4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Sir, could you answer this question.

5 THE WITNESS: Sorry. I didn't recognise it as a question. Yes,

6 to my knowledge, there were only four brigades. I am sorry, Your Honour,

7 I thought it was a statement not a question.

8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It's a mixture of a statement and a question.

9 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

10 Q. I would now like to ask you -- well, thank you once again.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could you please show in e-court

12 what the deployment of forces was. Can you enlarge the red and blue

13 lines so that the witness could see that. Thank you. Thank you, that's

14 right. Could you scroll down a bit more so that we see Srebrenica rather

15 than Zepa. Thank you. Thank you. This is what we were interested in.

16 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

17 Q. Could you please indicate to us here where the Bandera triangle

18 is because that is what we'll be dealing with in our next questions.

19 Thank you.

20 A. Yes. That would be approximately because to give it --

21 Q. I will appreciate that. Thank you.

22 A. About this area, like that. And it's not adequate, but then I

23 have to see a further in-zooming of the map, but that's the Bandera

24 triangle.

25 Q. Thank you. Tell me, while we are looking at the map, can you

Page 3389

1 infer why you were blocked by the BH Army and why you were not allowed to

2 move about?

3 A. Yes. Then I have to pick up some history. When we took over

4 from DutchBat II, there was not a freedom of movement in that area

5 because the local brigade commander didn't want UN to come in. That had

6 something to do with an incident of a not -- just a temporary OP, being

7 Bravo, in the midst of that Bandera triangle, more or less around that

8 point.

9 That was reported to the UN, of course, and the -- in January,

10 when we just arrived, we got order to restore or try to restore our

11 freedom of movement in that Bandera triangle. We made our plan and had

12 about, let me just think, totally six patrols who were bound to enter the

13 Bandera triangle. The first patrol that went in was led by me with the

14 purpose of establishing a new OP in the centre of that area so we would

15 have that under control.

16 Doing so, I was blocked by the brigade commander and about

17 40 armed infantry men, my patrol was seven men, who tried to get us out

18 of there. I did not respond and took a route generally west through the

19 area. In the meantime, the other patrols were started and entered that

20 area. Well, to make a long story short, we were all blocked by superior

21 forces and we couldn't return to our base. That's when I decided to go

22 with my patrol and a battalion reserve we met, about 3, 4 APCs who was

23 waiting to, if necessary, help within the Bandera triangle, to retreat to

24 OP Charlie, being an observation post to the CL directly on the south

25 border of the Bandera triangle.

Page 3390

1 And then we -- I proposed to my battalion commander to get in

2 again and with more force. I don't know whether he had some -- some

3 discussion with the UN or not, but that was not done, and I had to stay

4 on my spot and wait. They were negotiating. That is the story you

5 meant.

6 Q. Thank you. Can you just tell us whether this point that is

7 marked with a black circle here, where you put a blue marking, a blue

8 triangle, was that removed afterwards, after this protest by the Muslims?

9 Was this UNPROFOR checkpoint moved away and could you mark that also,

10 using the blue colour, where it was moved to?

11 A. I understand your question, but I have to make something clear.

12 If the black point is our OP Bravo, which I so to see is, OP Bravo was

13 not always teamed, not always manned. So in the time this took place,

14 OP Bravo was not manned; there was just the infrastructure of that OP was

15 present.

16 What I meant by the aim of my patrol was that directly eastly of

17 Bravo there's a high ridge and the idea was to make a new -- to establish

18 a new OP in that area, so you couldn't speak of removing anything. We

19 never came to establish that new OP, and the old Bravo was not manned, so

20 empty. Is that an answer to your question?

21 Q. Thank you. You did give an answer, but could you just mark the

22 place where you were, because you were not in this triangle, so could you

23 please mark the place where you were that was closest to the triangle.

24 Thank you.

25 A. Probably a misunderstanding. I was in the triangle because I

Page 3391

1 personally commanded the first patrol that went in. And I came - just

2 hold please - around here. There I was stopped by the ABiH, as described

3 before, and I went out in this direction, came out at this point. There

4 we were blocked by and out-forced by the ABiH, and that's the point where

5 I decided to withdraw to OP Charlie, which should have been here more or

6 less. Is that clear, sir?

7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: For the sake of the record, could you please put

8 a number 1 near to the first spot you marked. And a number 2 to the

9 second spot.

10 THE WITNESS: [Marks]

11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Okay. And a number 3 to the third spot.

12 THE WITNESS: [Marks]

13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And to make it very clear, could you very shortly

14 tell again what is indicated -- depicted with number 1 in the map.

15 THE WITNESS: Number 1 is location of a UN observation post

16 called Bravo, B. Not manned. Number 2 is the farthest limit that I got

17 with my patrol, starting from thousand direction, came to 2, was blocked

18 by ABiH, and proceeded in the direction that the arrow indicates. Number

19 3 is the existing and manned Observation Post Charlie, C, where I

20 withdrew with my means and had to stay there in order of my CO.

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.

22 Mr. Tolimir.

23 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

24 Q. Thank you, sir. Can you tell us, within this blue triangle where

25 you put numbers 1 and 2, later you were denied access because of the

Page 3392

1 protests by the Muslims; is that correct?

2 A. Yes. The situation was that we did not have -- we were not able

3 to restore that freedom of movement because the order to do so was

4 withdrawn by the UN.

5 Q. Thank you. Do you know what was so important even for the UN to

6 decide that you shouldn't be there and you were supposed to monitor and

7 control the demilitarised zone?

8 A. To prevent any misunderstandings, the UN first ordered us to

9 restore our freedom of movement there, but then when it escalated, they

10 withdrew the order. Important, of course, for the UN was that DutchBat

11 had the complete control over the area, and important to the Muslims was

12 an act that's only guessing. They didn't want us to see what they were

13 doing there, I suppose.

14 Q. Thank you. Was there any strategic significance for the Muslims

15 that they went to such length to bring this issue before the UN, and that

16 is to say that there were discussions between your superior command,

17 Sarajevo, Zagreb, and the UN headquarters, was that point so

18 strategically important?

19 A. If you look to defensive strategy, it is in that way important

20 that it is one of the easier approaches within -- into the enclave,

21 seeing the terrain there. If you should look offensively, it is not

22 important because it's only of interest for armoured forces, and they

23 didn't have armour.

24 Q. Thank you. Concerning the first answer, when you said that these

25 two enclaves were close to one another, can you tell me how fast one

Page 3393

1 could pass from one enclave to another?

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we please have the image back

3 on the screen in e-court. Thank you.

4 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]

5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I think there happened a mistake. The markings

6 were lost. We have to do them again, if you want to tender the marked

7 map, Mr. Tolimir. I think it is appropriate to have it done again.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That was precisely what I wanted,

9 and I would kindly ask the witness to put the triangle again and numbers

10 1, 2, and 3, so that we can admit this thus marked map into evidence.

11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, please repeat that again, sir.

12 THE WITNESS: Okay. That should do, Your Honour.

13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much. This marked map will be

14 received as an exhibit.

15 THE REGISTRAR: As Exhibit D65.

16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

17 Please carry on, Mr. Tolimir.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

19 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

20 Q. While we still have the map on the screen, can you please draw

21 this path that was connecting the two enclaves and you said that was very

22 important in view of the closeness between the two enclaves?

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The map should be scrolled up a little bit. Yes.

24 And now please try to mark this corridor.

25 THE WITNESS: I will as far as possible, Your Honour. The only

Page 3394

1 thing I know is that there were movements of the ABiH in the direction of

2 Zepa, but we thought to know where they go -- went out, that's one of the

3 reasons where we build a new OP, Observation Post Delta, but what path

4 they followed, I don't have a clue. So I can't draw that path. The fact

5 is that Zepa and Srebrenica enclaves were relatively close.

6 Another question of Mr. Tolimir that I -- whether I could give an

7 indication how long it would take to go or how fast one could pass from

8 one enclave to the other, I can't give that answer this way because I'll

9 have to study the terrain, and I suppose that he means by foot, and that

10 would be theoretically -- I don't have the knowledge which path and how

11 long it took. The only thing I can see, as you can, is that both

12 enclaves are pretty close together.

13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

14 Mr. Tolimir.

15 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

16 Q. Thank you. Since we keep losing this image with the triangle,

17 can you please use this other map and mark the entry to the enclave by

18 using a number 4, because you knew where that was because you wanted to

19 install your observation post so that you can know where the point of

20 entry was for them.

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Just to clarify the situation, the marked map is

22 not -- was not lost again, but it's an exhibit. And if you want to have

23 an additional marking to the marked map, you should indicate that,

24 otherwise this one should be marked.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. Before it was admitted,

Page 3395

1 I wanted the witness to mark the entry point to Srebrenica from Zepa

2 which is where they wanted to install their point, and that was the

3 reason that sparkled the conflict in which the UN was involved.

4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Should we have the map D65 again on the screen.

5 There it is. Now, you could ask the witness to mark.

6 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

7 Q. Yes, we can see the map. Could you please just indicate with an

8 arrow the entry point next to which you wanted to set up your point. So

9 just put an arrow as an entry point into this zone by unauthorised

10 persons.

11 A. Yes, first a remark, I did not know exactly where it was. We had

12 one report that's a column of police came in and so we concluded that

13 that was at least one of the routes where the ABiH went out of. That's

14 in the area of Delta. And it is -- sorry, in this area. The other one

15 we suggested and not confirmed that was a possibility was in the area of

16 Kilo, I suppose you want all the routes we estimated as very possible,

17 was here.

18 Another route there, in this area, and, yeah, well, I can't

19 pinpoint it, is directly beneath the Bandera triangle, where you see all

20 those brown lines, was impossible to establish an OP there because we did

21 not have the means anymore, which meant we were not able to build

22 anything there, infrastructure, and that had something to do with what I

23 called convoy terror.

24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Would you please put a 5, near the last --

25 THE WITNESS: Sorry, yes, I will, Your Honour.

Page 3396

1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

2 Mr. Tolimir, is this sufficiently marked and would you tender

3 this document?

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

5 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

6 Q. One more thing, was there any spot within the triangle from which

7 one can exit the zone and go to another zone, and you said that you had

8 been driven from that point next to the road, your OP, actually, which

9 was installed by the road was removed? Thank you.

10 A. Sorry, I have to ask you a question just to make sure that I

11 understand the question correct. You asked me to a spot in the triangle

12 and my OP actually was installed by the road and removed. I did not

13 understand that. What are you referring to, sir?

14 Q. You understood it well. Can you please mark where this

15 observation point, where you didn't have any people manning it, and to

16 which you had no access any longer?

17 A. Well, I don't usually ask questions when I understand something,

18 but I now understand that you meant OP Bravo and it's already marked with

19 the figure 1.

20 Q. Thank you. Please, for having your marks admitted, next to

21 number 1, can you put an X, because we have no legend in this map. Or

22 rather mark it with a number 6.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, it is marked with a number 1. At

24 the outset, the witness indicated that this is the observation point --

25 Observation Post Bravo. It is not necessary to mark it again with a

Page 3397

1 different letter.

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. This

3 could have been Bravo post just like any other post, however, this one

4 was strategically important and that was why UNPROFOR was driven away

5 from it. That's why I'm asking the witness to put an X or any other mark

6 indicating the place from which they had been chased out.

7 THE WITNESS: Okay. I'll put an X additional to the 1. There

8 you are.

9 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

10 Q. Thank you. Later, because today we are not going to have enough

11 time, we are going to see in Muslim documents why this was strategically

12 important and that's why I asked you to do the markings as I did.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So I would kindly ask now for this

14 map with all the markings inserted by the witness to be admitted into

15 evidence. Thank you.

16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Should that replace D65? To have all markings on

17 one map? It will be received, and I would like to ask the Registrar to

18 tell us the right number now.

19 THE REGISTRAR: The new -- the map with the new markings has now

20 been saved as D65. Therefore, has replaced the previous exhibit.

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.

22 Mr. Tolimir, please carry on.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.

24 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Thank you, Witness, for clarifying this situation regarding the

Page 3398

1 Bandera triangle to all of us. Now, I would kindly ask the witness to

2 lay a foundation for something that I would like to know whether I

3 understood properly. This was the deployment of forces 1 and 2, blue

4 were the Muslims and the red were the Serbs. As for UNPROFOR, can you

5 please use a pencil that you, as UN, marked as a line, and you were asked

6 about this by the Prosecution. You can probably connect these dots, if

7 possible. Can you please say which particular line you had in mind.

8 Thank you.

9 A. I take it you refer to what I call the UN boundary; is that

10 correct, sir?

11 Q. That's correct. Thank you very much.

12 A. Well, when I connect the points, being our OPs, just like this,

13 then probably it wouldn't be very accurate because then I have to look in

14 detail. But generally, the UN border, it's almost impossible to do that.

15 It's 15 years ago that I was there.

16 Q. Thank you. Was this UN line coinciding with the Muslim line, the

17 Serbs line, or was it somewhere in between? You referred to it as the

18 Morillon line, can you indicate where it was?

19 A. It was in general, when I can see it like this, in between those

20 lines. It was further outside the enclave as the blue line marked on

21 this map, and it was farther inside the enclave as the red line, the red

22 positions marked on this map. But it's impossible for me to put a line

23 on this map with any accuracy, and I hope you understand that.

24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Before this -- now the map disappeared.

25 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

Page 3399

1 Q. Thank you, Witness. Can you please put a dotted line indicating

2 this imaginary line, we are not going to consider it a real one, and you

3 can indicate in your own handwriting that it was an imaginary line

4 stretching and running between the lines held by the two warring parties?

5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Thayer.

6 MR. THAYER: Two issues, Mr. President. The first is I think

7 Colonel Franken has been clear that it's, and I'm just quoting from his

8 last answer, "It's impossible for me to put a line on this map with any

9 accuracy, and I hope you understand that."

10 The second issue is, General Tolimir is showing Colonel Franken a

11 map that has different coloured circles on it, as we see, these

12 representations, and I think it's incumbent upon him to lay a foundation

13 or at least tell Colonel Franken what his position is with respect to

14 when this map was created, what period of time these boundaries as

15 reflected on the map reflect, as of what time, and then ask

16 Colonel Franken if he insists, and if the Trial Chamber insists, on

17 Colonel Franken trying to draw this line that he has said it's impossible

18 for him to draw. Otherwise, I don't think this is going to be very

19 helpful to anybody if we don't have any date context or even any idea of

20 what exactly these lines are supposed to represent.

21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, you should carry on, but take into

22 account that the witness said, "It's impossible for me to put a line on

23 this map with any accuracy." What is the purpose to draw a line without

24 any accuracy?

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.

Page 3400

1 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

2 Q. Sir, can you indicate the so-called Morillon line, because you

3 had spoken about three lines, so in order for all of us to have a clear

4 picture about this problem, you should do this because it was something

5 that the Prosecutor asked you about as well.

6 A. Well, yes, I can indicate, and I already indicated, that the --

7 let's start it another way. I take it that the blue lines on this map

8 are more or less the defensive positions of the ABiH. And the red lines,

9 I recognise a lot of VRS positions. Well, let's be clear about that.

10 The so-called Morillon line is in between those lines and only, as I

11 recollect, in the north-western part, the line went exactly between those

12 two OPs directly, really straight, not recognisable in the area. So

13 there you could say the blue positions are a bit out of the UN line as I

14 see it now on this map. But then again, I take it the blue lines or more

15 or less the positions the ABiH had prepared for defence, and I can't

16 guarantee that they are accurately on the spot. That's impossible on

17 this map. And I take it the red lines are VRS positions. And I already

18 described Morillon line is in between there, these positions.

19 So it means that positions of the ABiH are more or less within

20 the Morillon lines, not denying the fact that they already discussed

21 about that the Morillon line was not the correct line, but that is the

22 actual situation I see on this map. Morillon line somewhere between the

23 blue lines and the red line.

24 And again, Your Honour, it's absolutely impossible to -- even if

25 I indicated with dots, it is more or less useless because that can differ

Page 3401

1 4- or 500 metres. We are talking about a confrontation line, 400,

2 500 metres accuracy or lack of accuracy is deadly, is nonsense. So I

3 hope I gave an answer and answered your question, Mr. Tolimir.

4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you, Witness. I think, Mr. Tolimir, this

5 very precise description of the recollection of this witness should be

6 sufficient for your purposes in comparison to this map shown to the

7 witness.

8 We have only two or three minutes left, please carry on.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.

10 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]

11 Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Franken, for your explanation. Can you

12 just tell me this: Was the Morillon line the line that existed in the

13 gap that was between the red line and the blue line?

14 A. Yes, that is what I tried to make clear in my former statement.

15 Yes.

16 Q. Thank you very much. You have clarified the position of that

17 line and it will become even more clear tomorrow when we discuss other

18 documents.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] And with this, I would like to

20 conclude. I'm not going to raise a new topic because we only have two or

21 three minutes, if you agree, Mr. President. And I would like to thank

22 everyone for the assistance with my Defence.

23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much, Mr. Tolimir. I'm not sure

24 if there was another problem with the marked map, so I would like to have

25 D65 again on the screen. Yes, we see the cross has disappeared again.