Page 10065
1 Thursday, 17 February 2011
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 2.27 p.m.
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Good afternoon to everybody in the courtroom.
6 Our apologies for the delayed start. There were other matters to deal
7 with. Before the next witness is being called in, I would, on behalf of
8 the Chamber, like to put some comments related to yesterday's hearing on
9 the record.
10 The Chamber would like to make one final remark on the discussion
11 that occurred at the end of last night's session. The Chamber is
12 concerned about the position of the OTP. At page 26, line 18, of the
13 transcript of yesterday, the Prosecution advised that, and I quote: "It
14 is absolutely essential that the witness be able to leave tonight."
15 The Chamber was guided by this during the session. Later, after
16 the departure of the witness, the OTP told us and the Defence that the
17 witness would be available today for further cross-examination. This is
18 a serious contradiction. It must be borne in mind that the Chamber
19 relies on information provided by the Prosecution regarding the
20 availability of witnesses.
21 Furthermore, the Chamber would like to stress that in accordance
22 with Article 20 of the Statute, this trial must be expeditious and also
23 fair with full respect for the rights of the accused and due regard for
24 the protection of witnesses. The Chamber will do its utmost to ensure
25 this, and the parties should also take this into account during
Page 10066
1 examination of witnesses throughout the proceedings.
2 The Chamber can't accept the position of the Prosecutor that the
3 accused has to show of proof what he needs to ask the witness about, and
4 this is taken from the record of yesterday: "... and of course the
5 Judges, absolutely ..." We don't understand quite well what Mr. McCloskey
6 was referring to yesterday. But on the record we have a clear message
7 received. And therefore a last comment: The Chamber doesn't accept the
8 attitude in which the Prosecutor yesterday was addressing the Chamber
9 after the remark of Judge Mindua. Although Mr. McCloskey offered his
10 apologies, the Chamber is concerned about this situation. We have to
11 consider which measures have to be taken to make sure that this will not
12 happen again.
13 I hope that it's a clear message toward the Prosecution.
14 Mr. Vanderpuye.
15 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you --
16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We don't want to discuss this matter today.
17 MR. VANDERPUYE: I understand that, Mr. President. I did want to
18 place on the record, as you can see, Mr. McCloskey is not here today and
19 so he is not obviously in a position to address the Trial Chamber. I did
20 have an opportunity to speak with him yesterday, and he does and I think
21 he has expressed his regret in the manner in which he addressed the
22 Trial Chamber and in particular His Honourable Judge Mindua pursuant to
23 those comments. He couldn't be here today because of a planned mission
24 that was scheduled well in advance of the proceedings yesterday and
25 obviously today, and I do - and I will abide by your instruction not to
Page 10067
1 address the issue further - but I do want to briefly stress that under no
2 circumstances would the Prosecution suggest to the Trial Chamber a course
3 of action to take with respect to a witness as it concerns the fairness
4 of the proceedings. That is inconsistent with the rights of the accused
5 and also that invades the prerogative of the Trial Chamber to determine
6 the appropriate course of action in these proceedings. I don't believe
7 that Mr. McCloskey intended to suggest that to the Trial Chamber, and I
8 don't think that any of the prior conduct on behalf of the Prosecution
9 was directed to that end. So I just wanted to make that clear, and I'll
10 leave it at that.
11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Judge Mindua -- Judge Nyambe.
12 JUDGE NYAMBE: Thank you, Mr. President. I think we can
13 appreciate your comments, Mr. Vanderpuye, and your intervention, but in
14 view of the fact that you were not present in court when this took place,
15 I hardly believe you are in -- I don't think you are in a position to
16 read the mind of Mr. McCloskey to tell us as to what he meant and what he
17 did not mean. We observed his conduct in court yesterday. So we
18 appreciate your intervention, as indeed we would expect from a team
19 spirit. Thank you.
20 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Judge --
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Indeed this is the position of the Chamber.
22 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Your Honours. I did -- if I didn't
23 mention before, I did have an opportunity to discuss the proceedings with
24 Mr. McCloskey after the conclusion of proceedings and I of course have
25 read the transcript with respect to them and that's essentially the basis
Page 10068
1 of my understanding of what happened. Obviously I'm not sitting on the
2 Bench and I wasn't in court, so I don't know what your impressions were
3 with respect to it.
4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye, we should stop the discussion
5 here. We don't want to lose court time.
6 And the next witness should be brought in, please.
7 [The witness entered court]
8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Good afternoon, Mrs. Ibrahimefendic. Welcome to
9 the Tribunal. Please read aloud the affirmation on the card which is
10 shown to you now.
11 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I solemnly declare that I will
12 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
13 WITNESS: TEUFIKA IBRAHIMEFENDIC
14 [Witness answered through interpreter]
15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much. Please sit down and make
16 yourself comfortable.
17 First I would like to express my apologies that we had a delayed
18 start. We were occupied by another matter.
19 Ms. Hasan has questions for you during the examination-in-chief
20 by the Prosecution.
21 Ms. Hasan.
22 MS. HASAN: Good afternoon, Mr. President, Your Honours, and
23 everyone else in and around the courtroom.
24 Examination by Ms. Hasan:
25 Q. Good afternoon, Madam Witness. Before I ask you my questions,
Page 10069
1 could you please --
2 A. Good afternoon.
3 Q. Would you please state your name for the record.
4 A. I am Teufika Ibrahimefendic. I'm a psychotherapist from the
5 centre for therapy and rehabilitation called Vive Zene from Tuzla.
6 Anything else?
7 Q. Ms. Ibrahimefendic, have you recently had the opportunity to
8 listen to your testimony from the Krstic case?
9 A. I listened to the entire testimony from 2002 the day before
10 yesterday, this is, from the Krstic case.
11 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction: From 2000.
12 MS. HASAN: Thank you.
13 Q. Was the evidence that you gave in the Krstic case true and
14 accurate to the best of your knowledge?
15 A. This testimony was from ten years ago. It reflected the
16 situation as it was at the time. It reflected the state of the
17 traumatised persons at that time, and it reflected on their suffering and
18 what I was doing during those years with them and what I managed to say
19 in court about my work and about my experiences on that matter.
20 Q. So in that context and given your knowledge and experiences at
21 that time, were the answers that you gave true and accurate?
22 A. Of course they were true and accurate. But if we observe the
23 traumatic process over the past ten years, you can add to the state the
24 suffering and the symptoms that were evident at the time, you can add a
25 large number of facts, you can describe their situation right now, the
Page 10070
1 state of suffering right now, their individual needs, their individual
2 suffering. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, you could also
3 describe the social dimension of the trauma or the context in which they
4 live, actually in which all of us are living, including myself, over
5 there.
6 Q. Thank you. I'll be asking you some questions about that in just
7 a moment.
8 MS. HASAN: At this stage, Mr. President, if I can offer into
9 evidence the transcript of Ms. Ibrahimefendic from -- of her testimony in
10 the Krstic case, and that's 65 ter 1574, into evidence.
11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: That will be received as an exhibit.
12 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, this document shall be assigned
13 Exhibit P1817. Thank you.
14 MS. HASAN: And with your leave, Mr. President, if I may now read
15 a summary of that testimony.
16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes. Please, go ahead.
17 MS. HASAN: Ms. Teufika Ibrahimefendic is a Bosnian Muslim born
18 in 1948. She is a psychotherapist who has undergone medical and social
19 work training. Educated in psychology and pedagogy at the University of
20 Sarajevo, Ms. Ibrahimefendic went on to study war trauma and the
21 psychosocial counselling of traumatised women and children.
22 After working as a pediatric nurse and a psychiatric social
23 worker at the clinical centre at the hospital in Tuzla,
24 Ms. Ibrahimefendic assumed the position of the co-ordinator of Vive Zene,
25 a multidisciplinary organisation for the treatment of victims of war
Page 10071
1 trauma.
2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Please slow down a bit while reading. Thank you.
3 MS. HASAN: In addition to co-ordinating the Vive Zene programme,
4 Ms. Ibrahimefendic treated women and children who were victims of the
5 1995 events in Potocari and the separation of the women and children from
6 the men and boys.
7 The women she treated exhibited an exceptionally high level of
8 trauma. At the time of her testimony in the Krstic trial in 2000,
9 Ms. Ibrahimefendic reported that the women and children of Srebrenica
10 were still suffering from the trauma which manifested itself in vivid
11 memories, nightmares, fear, irritability, nervousness, aggressiveness,
12 loss of concentration, avoidance, and in some cases, depression, apathy,
13 passivity, as well as grief, loss of motivation, and the will to live.
14 Having treated other victims of trauma, Ms. Ibrahimefendic
15 explained that the trauma suffered by the Srebrenica women was unique.
16 The Srebrenica syndrome, as their trauma is described, is a consequence
17 of the disappearance of their male family members, including their
18 fathers, son, brothers, husbands, and uncles. Not knowing the truth of
19 what happened to these men and their search for an explanation has been
20 exhausting and discouraging for these women, who also carry with them a
21 profound sense of guilt for the fate of these men.
22 The children of Srebrenica, having witnessed the separation of
23 their brothers and fathers, and having lived the adverse conditions in
24 Potocari, also exhibited a high level of trauma. In addition to the
25 trauma-induced symptoms experienced by these children, Ms. Ibrahimefendic
Page 10072
1 observed that the absence of male role models in their lives stripped
2 them of a sense of identity and impacted their enjoyment of life.
3 The Srebrenica events left a lasting impact on the social lives
4 of the surviving women and children. Ms. Ibrahimefendic gave evidence
5 about the difficulties the women and children have encountered in
6 re-establishing both familial and community relationships. The guilt the
7 women of Srebrenica feel prevents them from declaring their missing
8 husbands dead; a declaration that is a prerequisite for getting
9 remarried. The difficulties in re-establishing marital relationships are
10 compounded by the scarcity of men living in those areas.
11 Ms. Ibrahimefendic also testified about the changing societal role of
12 these women after the 1995 Srebrenica events.
13 The victims that had undergone therapy showed significant
14 improvement. However, Ms. Ibrahimefendic qualified that their condition
15 oscillates and that regressions in their progress take place in some
16 circumstances. Though optimistic, Ms. Ibrahimefendic anticipated that
17 the children of Srebrenica would probably continue to face developmental
18 problems. She testified that the road to recovery of these women and
19 children who have received treatment is long. And in some cases, despite
20 the therapy, recovery was not likely. She also noted that there were
21 those women and children who did not receive any therapy at all and
22 others who did not want any assistance.
23 When asked by the Honourable Judge Rodrigues in the Krstic case,
24 Ms. Ibrahimefendic was not able to say how many generations it would take
25 for normal life to resume for these victims.
Page 10073
1 Q. Ms. Ibrahimefendic, since your last testimony in 2000, could you
2 briefly outline the work you have engaged in?
3 A. During the past ten years, the Vive Zene organisation became a
4 more professional organisation, which means that it started to work not
5 only on individual wounds, not only with individual patients, women, but
6 it also became active at the level of the community groups, families, and
7 also on the education within the community, because there was a level of
8 social destruction at the level of the community and the trauma. So
9 there is a multidisciplinary team in Vive Zene that tried to create a
10 special programme in order to work on recovery from trauma, not only at
11 the level of the individual, but at the level of the entire community.
12 In the meantime, I personally went through a lot of training,
13 many conferences, meetings, conferences, and discussions with experts who
14 deal with trauma. And in particular over the last decade or decade and a
15 half, the world is beginning to look differently at traumatised persons
16 because in the most recent wars a lot of civilians were casualties, so
17 their suffering could not be marginalised. It could not be sidetracked.
18 So at the international level, this matter became very important
19 for the recovery of any community that had gone through war. I would
20 just like to add that this means that science has made a lot of
21 advancements in the treatment of trauma. New diagnoses have been
22 developed. Not only has PTSD been linked with traumatised persons which
23 as a consequence of war -- occurred as a consequence of war, but trauma
24 has began to be looked at as a kind of process, as a process that is a
25 continual one. This means that even though the war has stopped, the
Page 10074
1 traumatic occurrence continues to develop within the people who are
2 living in that society.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mrs. Ibrahimefendic, sorry, Ms. -- I realise that
4 you have to tell us a lot about the development of this scientific area.
5 On the other hand, Ms. Hasan has put to you a very specific question.
6 And the Chamber would be happy if you could respond to that.
7 Could you briefly outline the work you have engaged in since
8 2000; that was the question. And it would be helpful if you could focus
9 on that, especially to save some time.
10 MS. HASAN: Perhaps I can just restate the question a different
11 way.
12 Q. Have you continued to hold the position of co-ordinator of the
13 Vive Zene programme since 2000?
14 A. I'm still the co-ordinator of the psychosocial programme. I
15 continue to work with clients, I continue to work with families of
16 missing persons. I am still working with women who were raped or persons
17 who went through different kind of torture. I'm a member of the
18 Vive Zene multidisciplinary team. And in the meantime, I have
19 specialised in trauma; I'm trauma treatment specialist. In the meantime,
20 I have also become an educator, a trainer, for other professionals in
21 Bosnia-Herzegovina. I am also conducting trainings for victims and even
22 professionals, investigators, researchers, policemen, people who are
23 taking statements from victims who could be potential victims, because
24 the OSCE, the organisation of the OSCE in Bosnia-Herzegovina, asked the
25 organisation, and I'm the co-ordinator for that programme, to carry out
Page 10075
1 trainings with prosecutors, investigators, and potential victims in order
2 to motivate people to begin to testify.
3 So I work not only at the level of the federation, I worked in
4 Republika Srpska as well. I worked in the Bijeljina Prosecutor's Office,
5 the Brcko district, together with victims, investigators, and my goal was
6 to educate them about trauma so that they could know what a traumatic
7 event or suffering has -- what sort of an effect has on people so that
8 they could work with such people.
9 So this is a brief summary of all the work that I have been
10 carrying out over the past few years.
11 Q. Thank you. And during your work, have you treated women and
12 children affected by the war from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina?
13 A. I worked with women, children, men who came from throughout
14 Bosnia and Herzegovina who had experienced different traumatic events,
15 because they lived in different parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
16 Q. And did you continue to treat the women -- the Bosnian Muslim
17 women and children from Srebrenica?
18 A. Women from Srebrenica were our clients as early as 1994, even
19 before the fall of Srebrenica. We had a group of women that were staying
20 as our inpatients while their husbands were in Srebrenica and I was a
21 witness of all of their hopes that they would come back and that, as they
22 said, Srebrenica would not fall. I was also working with them on crisis
23 intervention, because they were afraid, they were in a panic at the time.
24 And when the rest of their families were transferred to Tuzla, when
25 members of their families were at the Tuzla Airport, members of our team
Page 10076
1 were transporting them to the airport to meet up with their relatives.
2 And then we monitored them throughout that whole period afterwards
3 whether they had found their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, and
4 so on and so forth.
5 So we have been following up on these women and observing them
6 throughout this whole process that they are going through.
7 Q. I'd like to focus on these women and children of Srebrenica. And
8 I'm going to ask you my question but I'll preface my question first by
9 asking you: Do you recall testifying in the Krstic case about the
10 suffering experienced by these women from the July 1995 events, and in
11 particular I'm talking about the problems that made the suffering of
12 these Srebrenica women and children different from the other trauma
13 victims? Do you recall testifying on that issue in the Krstic case?
14 A. Yes, of course I do remember that. Even today after 15 or
15 16 years the women still mention Potocari. They still talk about the
16 times when they were being separated from their husbands. They talk
17 about the time when they were detained in Potocari, about their departure
18 to Tuzla, and so on. But in their daily lives as well, they are reminded
19 of those times as well, because the graves are still being dug up, the
20 process of identification is still going on. They are still under
21 stress. The process of grieving has not started yet. They are still
22 searching for their dear ones. The women in Tuzla on every 11th of the
23 month go out and protest; they want to focus attention of the politicians
24 and all of those others who have already for gotten about them to focus
25 these people on themselves. They cannot forget their victims. So all
Page 10077
1 those images from Potocari are still happening.
2 Q. Thank you. Now, this Trial Chamber has heard evidence of the
3 human remains that have been exhumed from the mass graves and that with
4 the assistance of DNA analysis, some of these bodies and body parts have
5 now been identified. Is it -- are you aware of this process of
6 identification?
7 A. The identification process is always a public one. Everything
8 that happens is broadcast in the media, where mass graves are found, how
9 many have been identified. So that I am updated about it, on the one
10 hand. On the other hand, we participate in numerous conferences where
11 missing persons are discussed, their suffering. Very frequently foreign
12 organisations and domestic organisations organise meetings, conferences
13 on that subject, results are summarised, how far we have come, what has
14 been done. So these are all things that have to do with the exhumations
15 and the process of identification.
16 At such times perhaps our clients from 15 years ago ask us for
17 assistance. They even ask us to provide an escort when they have to go
18 for identification or when they have to ask -- when they are asked to
19 recognise articles or items that have been found. They have the feeling
20 that they cannot really bear it, so they do ask the social workers, the
21 psychologists, and even doctors, for support, to go with them for support
22 so that they would be able to face the bones, I would say, because then
23 this is the final facing of the truth.
24 So what struck me the most is that in a documentary film that was
25 made, when a woman finds the bones of her son, she says, I believe in
Page 10078
1 science but I don't believe my very own eyes, looking at the bones that
2 were spread out on a piece of newspaper, paper. They were arranged on
3 it. So these moments again cause upset and so in a way our whole team is
4 there to provide support for these women whenever they need it.
5 Q. Now, based on your observations which come from your treatment of
6 these women and children of Srebrenica, now that some of these women have
7 had their -- the death of their relatives confirmed, have they been able
8 to face that reality of death? Are their lives now back to normal?
9 A. When you lose a loved one through normal losses, you go through a
10 process of grieving. And this process of grieving has stages, from shock
11 and disbelief that it happened, to the gradual acceptance of this loss.
12 And after a certain period of time, you get back in your normal life and
13 you start functioning normally again. However, when we're dealing with
14 traumatic losses, then the process is a lot more complicated, primarily
15 because they are missing people and you don't know what happened to them.
16 So people will be burdened by the circumstances of their death, how they
17 died, whether they were killed, whether they were executed, whether they
18 had been tortured, hungry, thirsty, et cetera.
19 So the grieving process can only start once you face and see the
20 mortal remains that have been found. But whenever you -- whenever a
21 person is identified and certain procedures are carried out and the
22 family is informed that a person had been found and identified, then you
23 establish the date for the funeral and then these people would go through
24 the same process as if these people had just disappeared or just died.
25 So they will go through the stages of disbelief, guilt, anger, all over
Page 10079
1 again. On the one hand, they will accept these remains as belonging to
2 that person and on the one hand they believe that this person is indeed
3 dead, but there is still some hope left in them that this is not the
4 truth. They accept these remains as something sacred and frightening at
5 the same time. They are sacred because they had been told that the
6 remains belonged to their loved ones, and at the same time this terrifies
7 them because the knowledge means that there is no more hope, that there
8 is nothing left to wait for and death is final.
9 So on the one hand they can finally say, It's fine and there will
10 be a place where I can bury them, I'll be able to visit the grave and
11 I'll be able to go through the usual rituals that are organised after
12 somebody dies in a regular way; and then after the remains are found,
13 then certain rituals, religious rituals, are carried out.
14 So in this way one could say that they face the death, and then
15 the grieving process begins. And this process is very complicated. It's
16 not simple at all. Many women have psychological twins to themselves,
17 like they are unwilling to let go of that person. They dream about them,
18 they talk to them. There are even certain objects that link them to the
19 missing people or the dead people such as photographs or some objects
20 that were a part of them. Even children can become what we call a
21 linking object if there are children who had survived. So the grieving
22 process is not the same as what it would be in case of a normal death, in
23 case of a death that we all might face.
24 Q. And in terms of the psychological impact, you previously
25 testified about the symptoms these women and children were experiencing,
Page 10080
1 including the nightmares, the irritability, the avoidance, depression,
2 and so on; are these women and children -- are those symptoms still
3 persisting in these women and children?
4 A. Well, the initial symptoms are those of reliving the event as if
5 the event was happening at this very moment. People experience
6 nightmares and then there are other intrusive symptoms that we discuss
7 such as insomnia, anxiety, aggression, anger, and so on. After this many
8 years, it can happen that even professionals or the women are able to
9 connect their initial symptoms with the original traumatic event that
10 happened 15 years ago. Now they are a lot more depressed and more
11 isolated. They are bothered by crowds or company, they can't be in a
12 group. There's a lot of distrust, primarily distrust towards one's own
13 competency than distrust of others. They feel that others don't
14 understand what had happened. They feel like they've been left to their
15 own devices. On the one hand they feel isolated and feel empty. They
16 feel like they can't experience love and can't experience joy and yet
17 they can't experience grief either.
18 Some of them are hypersensitive, one could say, and some are
19 hyposensitive; so some are too sensitive and some not enough. Among
20 those who are hypersensitive may have high blood pressure. There are a
21 lot of psychosomatic problems, so they will frequently pay visits to
22 doctors. And sometimes the doctors or the social workers might be a
23 problem because they are not sensitive enough and they treat them as
24 patients. And sometimes it's enough if they just ask them, Where are you
25 from, what have you gone through? So a conversation, a simple
Page 10081
1 conversation, might be a lot more effective than the bunch of medicines
2 they are given.
3 And I would just like to add that there are many of them who are
4 apathetic, depressed; not sad, because sadness can be treated with
5 medicine. Sadness is treated by sharing things, by meeting with people.
6 There are lots of problems in the family, lots of problems with children,
7 because some of these children have grown up, they are adolescents, and
8 the culture is such that those who are not present are not discussed,
9 they're not talked about. So there are a lot of children who have no
10 information about their fathers. They don't know where their fathers
11 went missing.
12 Three days ago a woman came to see me - this was before I came to
13 The Hague - and her 16-and-a-half-year-old daughter got married. She was
14 ten months old when she arrived from Zepa with her mother and she had no
15 photograph of her father or anything. And the mother, because of her own
16 suffering, never had the energy to tell her about her father, to tell her
17 about what he was like, or to tell her what she had heard about the
18 circumstances of his death. So the girl went to Srebrenica to the
19 registry, herself, and she asked the municipality to provide her with a
20 photograph of her father and then she got very angry with her mother and
21 left home. She told her mother, Everything is more important to you than
22 I am.
23 So there are a lot of problems with children now, because these
24 children never process the loss rationally. They only listen to the
25 stories of the adults. They were flooded emotionally, but depending on
Page 10082
1 the age, they were not able to process this rationally or mentally.
2 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreter didn't understand the last
3 sentence.
4 MS. HASAN:
5 Q. Ms. Ibrahimefendic, you have spoken a little bit about the
6 breakdown of the relationships at the family level. I'd just like to ask
7 you to tell us briefly about the relationships that exist at a community
8 level based on your observations and interactions with these women and
9 children. And if you can just talk about the period from 2000 until the
10 present day, your knowledge from that period of time, because the
11 evidence you gave in the Krstic case is evidence in this case, so we
12 don't need to repeat that. Thank you.
13 A. If I understood you correctly, you want me to tell you what's
14 happening at the level of the society, what changes happened?
15 Q. Correct. How are the July 1995 events experienced by these women
16 and children affecting the relationships at the community level?
17 A. The loss of such a large number of people in a day or two or
18 three had a huge impact on the whole community, particularly because all
19 these women arrived to Tuzla, they were accepted, and they survived.
20 They made their decisions later to go to other towns or to other
21 countries outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina. So not only were
22 individuals destroyed, but all of society was destroyed, at the social,
23 political, material, legal level. So society didn't have the capacity to
24 handle all these problems, all the difficulties that happened, and
25 society didn't provide adequate support and help at the time, the support
Page 10083
1 that was needed in this sequence of traumas.
2 And many families from Srebrenica, those who survived, started
3 thinking about going abroad. A lot of my clients who were treated with
4 us in 1995, 1996, and 1997 left Bosnia-Herzegovina and today live all
5 over the world. Those who stayed decided not to return because what
6 happened was -- was an extreme traumatic event. So returning to the
7 place where all this happened was horrifying to them and it was
8 traumatic. And the women, a lot of them, didn't dare return because they
9 were afraid. Some did return. Some returned. But some continued living
10 in Tuzla or elsewhere.
11 However, there's a problem with their identity. They don't know
12 who they are anymore, not even the children. Even though they might have
13 lived in Tuzla for 15 years, when I asked them, Where are you from? The
14 reply will be, I'm from Srebrenica. And that means that they haven't
15 accepted where they are and they haven't integrated in the place where
16 they are living. A part of their former identity is something they
17 cannot forget and they continue to suffer because of Srebrenica, I think
18 continue to think about what life was like before and how they lived
19 before.
20 The discussions among the surviving women whose husbands
21 disappeared are very characteristic. In 2008 and 2009 until last year, I
22 worked with a group of women whose husbands went missing, and among them
23 were women who had one or more family member go missing. At the
24 beginning, they all said things like, I found my husband, I found his
25 head, I found his thigh bone, these weren't my husband's teeth, and so
Page 10084
1 on. So the contents of the conversations that they have amongst
2 themselves is still horrifying. And then you can imagine what goes on in
3 the children's heads, what's happening to them.
4 Q. And I'd like to now ask you about those children of Srebrenica.
5 And, again, this is something that you discussed in your prior testimony,
6 the impact of the children, so I'd like you to restrict your answer from
7 your -- the observations you have coming from your treatment of these
8 children post-2000.
9 And I'd like to ask you: These surviving children of Srebrenica
10 who, if I may say so, are the future of this group, can you tell us how
11 the disappearance of the male population, be it their fathers, their
12 brothers, uncles, cousins, the traditional providers in the patriarchal
13 society that they live in, their leaders, and their role models, how does
14 the absence of that part of their population affect their lives or --
15 affect their lives today?
16 A. If during their development the children didn't have any models
17 to identify with who would be the surviving men, or closer relatives,
18 uncles, and so on, and if they didn't have the opportunity to share their
19 experiences, the children will be rather lost and confused in all this
20 chaos. Older adolescents act as if nothing happened, so the family
21 members thought wrongly that they didn't feel anything. However, it was
22 just too difficult for them to face this because in a way they were
23 escaping from all of this. Younger children soaked in the older people's
24 emotions, and when I talk to them individually and asked them whether
25 they knew anything, whether they heard anything about their fathers, they
Page 10085
1 would say things like, My family thinks I don't hear anything, that I'm
2 asleep, but I can hear everything. I know that they found him, I know
3 that they went to identify him, and so on.
4 So there's this discussion with children. And children between
5 the ages of five and ten can't understand the concept of death as being
6 something final. Between the ages of five and nine, they think that
7 death is a reversible thing and that those people who are now listed as
8 dead will appear. There are children who have a lot of fantasy because
9 as they have a lack of real information, real explanations, then in their
10 imagination, they imagine their father, what he was like, what he looked
11 like, and so on, and sometimes this can be very dangerous.
12 And I have dealt with some cases and talked about this with some
13 of my colleagues who work with children who say that children, in a lack
14 of support and a lack of real information or because their mothers are
15 being overprotective because they think that these children are incapable
16 of handling such information, are in fact causing more damage. And as
17 some of them grow, grow up, they are very concerned about their
18 appearance. They think that they will be very strong. And when we ask
19 them why they are taking so much care of their bodies and why they want
20 to be so strong, they will mainly say that they don't know. But what's
21 behind all this, in fact, is fear. They feel afraid, they feel
22 threatened, even though there is no threat, there is no real threat.
23 However, some things that they didn't experience also feel threatened.
24 Q. And the impact that you have just described on the children, is
25 that based on the -- your discussions with these children during the
Page 10086
1 course of their treatment -- during the course of your treatment of them?
2 A. It is based on conversations. What I'm saying now is based on my
3 personal experience from my practice. I can give you an example. A
4 mother brought in a young boy in 1997. He was five years old at the
5 time. And last year she brought him in because he wasn't doing well at
6 school, he couldn't focus, he couldn't study. He was always in his room,
7 and he was always on the computer. He wasn't leaving the house or didn't
8 have any friends. And when he came to therapy, I needed quite a lot of
9 time to gain his trust so he would tell me anything at all about himself.
10 It was very difficult, so I asked him to draw something for me.
11 He is now in secondary school. And the drawing that he did was
12 one that frightened me personally because it was the picture of a ghost
13 and he said that this ghost was always present in his room, always
14 standing in a corner, and that he sometimes talks to the ghost, and so
15 on. However, when I tried to explain this to the mother, she denied all
16 of this because on the outside he was very well developed, he was very
17 handsome.
18 And I would say that he's a psychiatric case. He needed the help
19 of a psychiatrist. He was functioning at two levels. There was one part
20 that he exhibited to the outside, that he exhibited to his friends. He
21 talks to them to the degree that is necessary to him. He goes to school,
22 he ignores the professors, doesn't talk to them much. And then he comes
23 home in his inner world and then within himself there's this sense of
24 terror that's constantly present. There's intense suffering, intense
25 turmoil within him. And one could say that for him there are two
Page 10087
1 realities: One, his inner reality that only he knows about, that only he
2 is in contact with; and one that the others can't see. And in order to
3 make peace between these two realities, one needs to handle these
4 horrific images. One should share these horrific images with somebody,
5 talk to somebody about them. However, from the very beginning, he is
6 completely closed up and he is quiet.
7 And another thing that's interesting, and the reason I mentioned
8 him, is that he was a very hyperactive child when he first came to see us
9 in 1997. He was very naughty. It was very difficult to calm him down.
10 At the time, he was one of the most hyperactive children. And now he has
11 turned into somebody who is completely closed up, who doesn't communicate
12 anymore, and who is practically incapable of establishing contact with
13 others. He is afraid of going outside. He is afraid of groups of
14 people, and so on.
15 Q. Thank you. Ms. Ibrahimefendic, could you tell us if there's been
16 any decrease or diminution of the impact on these women and children
17 since you last testified in July of 2000?
18 A. Whether the impact of the war has diminished on women and
19 children, well, that's a very complicated question because if we start
20 from the theory that trauma develops not only as a result of the initial
21 event but that it continues and that in this way it is reflected in
22 various sequences, that is, it has its own shape in the various
23 sequences, then it's very difficult to say whether the situation has
24 improved.
25 However, one can say that I'm personally very much engaged in
Page 10088
1 seeing what helped these women survive, which psychological mechanisms
2 gave them the strength to go through all of this, to continue with their
3 lives, to assume the roles that were suddenly imposed upon them. And a
4 lot of women have shown that in their recovery they have set goals for
5 themselves and they relied upon these goals that they were supposed to
6 achieve. They used various psychological mechanisms in order to protect
7 themselves from the pain that they were experiencing. The initial denial
8 and avoidance to think about the events that happened, even though these
9 are negative mechanisms, they helped them continue their lives.
10 However, parallel with the treatment of their individual wounds,
11 it is very important to monitor the processes that are happening in
12 society at the economic, social, and other levels, on the legal level,
13 for example, to see how far the processing of war crimes has gone.
14 So the process of the trauma continues but now it has a different
15 shape. And capacities are being created for those who have developed
16 these mechanisms to be able to continue handling the events that are
17 currently happening.
18 However, I would like to add that those who have still not found
19 their relatives, it's as if time has stopped for them. And these
20 families, together with their children, have a special traumatic process
21 that they are going through. Their children are living the lives of
22 their parents, namely, and in the lives of those families, there's only
23 the past and the present. And the children are constantly in the
24 situation that the mothers are helpless and they are those who are to
25 provide their mothers strength to overcome this helplessness, but when
Page 10089
1 there is an identification, for example, the past becomes the present and
2 all the capacities for a future are destroyed. There is no longer any
3 future. There is no vision of the future.
4 It's very interesting when I ask, Can you imagine yourself where
5 you will be in five years' time? And she would say, I don't know. They
6 don't have any plans; they don't dare to plan, to make plans. They
7 cannot imagine without fear, for example, that in five years my son will
8 graduate from university. No. For them, this is something that is
9 alien.
10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Ms. Hasan, I'm very sorry, I have to interrupt at
11 this point in time. We must have our first break earlier than usual
12 because I have a very urgent commitment in another Chamber. We must have
13 our break now, and we will resume five minutes past 4.00.
14 MS. HASAN: Thank you, Your Honour
15 --- Recess taken at 3.33 p.m.
16 --- On resuming at 4.07 p.m.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Ms. Hasan, please carry on.
18 MS. HASAN: Mr. President, I have no further questions for this
19 witness.
20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.
21 Ms. Ibrahimefendic, now Mr. Tolimir is conducting his
22 cross-examination.
23 Mr. Tolimir, you have the floor.
24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.
25 I would like to greet Ms. Ibrahimefendic. I would like to wish
Page 10090
1 her a pleasant stay amongst us. I wish for peace in this house. And I
2 would like for the trial today, as well as the entire proceedings, to end
3 as God wills and not as I will. Thank you.
4 Cross-examination by Mr. Tolimir:
5 Q. I have a few questions. First of all, I read your statement that
6 you gave on the 20th of June, 2000, which doesn't contain as much data as
7 you presented during this examination-in-chief. The other thing is, did
8 the Prosecution ever ask you to write an expert report, and did you do
9 that? Because that would be of more interest also to the Trial Chamber,
10 to the accused, because then they would also have available the data that
11 you are talking about. Thank you.
12 A. No, nobody ever asked for my views. The trial never asked me or
13 the organisation that I work for, for such a report.
14 Q. Thank you. Now we're going to cover today's questions during the
15 examination-in-chief. On page 7, line 24, you said the children from
16 Srebrenica, after they saw their father's being separated from their
17 families, experienced trauma, they lost their identity. This is stated
18 on page 8, line 4.
19 So my question to you would be this: Do you know if they were
20 separated in Potocari itself, the children from the families, or were
21 they separated earlier from their parents when they decided that the
22 families should go to Potocari and that they would go to attempt the
23 break-through along the road that they took? Thank you.
24 A. The bulk of the children was separated from their fathers by
25 saying good-bye from -- to them from home, at home. Some of them never
Page 10091
1 got a chance to say good-bye to their fathers. A small number of them
2 were separated in Potocari itself. I had a number of cases where the
3 father and mother came together with the child to Potocari and they were
4 separated from each other and the children saw that.
5 Q. Thank you. Since a younger population would tend to have younger
6 children, let's say fighters, ranging in age from 20 to 30, they didn't
7 avoid going to Potocari, they either did or didn't go there. Can you
8 tell me whether this number is known to you and whether you investigated
9 that? Thank you.
10 A. I don't know the number. We didn't research that particular
11 aspect. Only on some occasions I heard from some women that, for
12 example, the husband of one of them who was a teacher in school or was
13 not in good health, they thought that if they went together with their
14 wife that it would be better for them, but I don't know the number. We
15 didn't investigate that number.
16 Q. Thank you, Madam Ibrahimefendic. On page 10 of the transcript,
17 lines 15 to 21 all the way to page 11, you talked about how you worked
18 with women who were raped. Then after that, in line 21, you say: I am
19 doing trainings for professionals who take statements from victims.
20 I would like to ask you this in relation to this matter: Did you
21 speak with any women who were raped in Srebrenica, or are you working
22 with women who were raped in other places in society in the course of
23 their lives?
24 A. I have five cases right now, five women from Srebrenica who are
25 undergoing therapy and who were raped. They didn't speak about it up
Page 10092
1 until 2000. They didn't talk about it when they came to therapy for the
2 first time. But recently, now they are being sent to our centres by
3 psychiatrists, their personality has changed quite substantially by now,
4 some of them have psychiatric diagnoses, so they are being sent for
5 treatment to our centre. Because we are a centre for therapy and
6 rehabilitation and because we are a trauma centre, we are the only place
7 in town where such persons can be accommodated, persons who had
8 experiences of that nature.
9 We have a lot of experience. We know a lot about trauma. So we
10 are also engaged by others, for example, by courts, to train
11 professionals so that they learn as much as possible about trauma so that
12 in their contacts with victims they would be able to observe what is
13 going on and to be able to create trust between them and the victims.
14 For example, on the 19th of October of last year, I had
15 34 investigators in Banja Luka last year, and very young, very young
16 policemen investigators who are processing war crimes, but they knew very
17 little about trauma. And besides the trauma issue, they also had a
18 problem in how to approach these people, and they expressed the desire of
19 learning as much as possible in order to be able to approach a woman
20 victim, a man who had been an inmate in a camp, they wanted to know as
21 possible about that.
22 Q. Could you please tell the Trial Chamber, these five rape cases,
23 do you know if these women were raped during the war in Srebrenica and do
24 you have information about when this rape took place and how did this
25 come about? Thank you.
Page 10093
1 A. These five women told us that they were raped in Potocari.
2 Q. Thank you. Are you able to tell the Trial Chamber about one
3 case? How did these rapes happen in such a short time when they were in
4 the UNPROFOR base?
5 A. They told us that they were going to get water, that the children
6 were thirsty, that they went to get water behind the base building, that
7 they were going towards the river, towards the creek, and that they were
8 stopped there and that they were taken. They said -- for example, two
9 women said that there were some tents where they were taken and raped.
10 And there are even eye-witnesses.
11 Q. Are you aware that the tents were something that only
12 representatives of the UN had? Were their tents used for such
13 activities? Thank you.
14 A. I really don't know. I don't know what the base looked like
15 during the war. Later, I was in Potocari, I saw those buildings. I
16 don't know how they were organised. I don't know if tents were there,
17 how all of that was organised. I really don't know.
18 Q. Thank you. Can you please provide any kind of documents that
19 would talk about these matters for the Trial Chamber?
20 A. No, I can't do that. But there is an Association of the Women
21 Victims of War and that association has a database with all the women who
22 were raped during the war, women who reported to that centre, who
23 provided statements, stated all the circumstances, all the details of the
24 rape. They brought witnesses. So this association can provide such
25 data, not the organisation that I personally work for.
Page 10094
1 Q. Thank you. Please, are you able to tell us of any case of
2 somebody agreeing to testify after the training and conversation with
3 you, because you said you were training professionals who were taking
4 victim statements? Thank you. And that after that therapy, victims were
5 interviewed and they were brought before a court. Thank you.
6 A. Many victims are afraid. Even professionals are reluctant to
7 come to court and to testify. On the one hand, they are afraid of how
8 they are going to talk about what they experienced. This is one type of
9 stress. The other type of stress is how to come before a Trial Chamber,
10 how to come to court, and how to testify. Not because they're afraid.
11 Not because they're afraid that they would be exposed to any kind of
12 threat. It's more of their personal, individual fear before a
13 Trial Chamber, being in court, because trials are quite stressful. I
14 know that from personal experience.
15 Regardless of the procedure that is followed in court, one has to
16 approach the victims in order to have them come to testify. On the other
17 hand, there -- they tell of their experiences during trials. For
18 example, here they would talk about their experience, so the idea is for
19 them to have as little stress as possible. But, actually, the whole
20 story is not about preparing the witness about what they will say.
21 Q. Thank you.
22 A. Let me just add something: Well, the preparation consists of how
23 to free the person of the fear, how to relieve them of the fear in order
24 to be able to testify. How a victim can overcome obstacles in themselves
25 in order to be able to come. The way in which they will talk about the
Page 10095
1 traumatic experience is something that has an end, with the victim
2 talking with the Prosecutor. So the way -- the preparation also consists
3 of the way in which the victim will talk about their experiences.
4 Q. Thank you, Ms. Ibrahimefendic. I would like you to answer the
5 specific part of my question in as many sentences as you see fit about
6 things that I'm asking you about.
7 The question is: Did the Prosecutor ever ask you to speak with
8 any potential witness that refused to come because of that fear that you
9 have just talked about? Thank you.
10 A. No, no. If you are thinking of this Prosecutor's Office, no.
11 The Prosecutor's Office in Tuzla had problems relating to witnesses who
12 refused to testify. And then we had these seminars, seminars that lasted
13 for two or three days, where the victims would talk about the problems
14 they encountered while testifying. The Prosecutor spoke about their
15 problems in relation to this testimony, where they spoke to each other
16 about problems that they had with each other. For example, there was a
17 case where a witness told one of the Prosecutors in Tuzla, You spoke to
18 me and while you were speaking to me you kept answering calls on your
19 mobile phone. And she was very much bothered by that.
20 Q. Could you please not speak about events that are not related to
21 Srebrenica. We have limited time.
22 A. This is nothing to do with Srebrenica. This has to do with
23 training, education, about trauma. Because in Bosnia the thinking is and
24 the discussion is that it was necessary to explain to people that we are
25 still in a certain trauma situation, going through certain trauma
Page 10096
1 sequences, the trauma is still on-going, and that the trial proceedings
2 have to go on. They have to be completed so that society can start
3 moving in a different direction.
4 Q. Thank you.
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, I would like to assist you.
6 You have explained very well during the examination-in-chief the
7 way you were educating professionals. Now, Mr. Tolimir is focusing on
8 specific parts of your testimony. It's not necessary to go through these
9 processes again. And the question was really a very clear one, and you
10 said, No, I was not asked by this OTP, by this Prosecutor's Office. That
11 was enough what Mr. Tolimir wanted to know. Please focus on the specific
12 question. Thank you very much.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.
14 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
15 Q. Mrs. Ibrahimefendic, on page 16, line 4, of today's transcript,
16 you said that persons don't trust others, they are having a lot of
17 problems, they cannot experience joy or love or grief. So what I'm
18 interested in is: Did you speak with anybody who formed a new family
19 after the Srebrenica event, and is that also true for them, that they
20 cannot experience joy, love, and grief? Are there cases like that that
21 you encountered?
22 A. Yes, of course there are cases like this, but these relationships
23 are always complicated. On the one hand they experience joy, on the
24 other hand there is guilt because she is still alive, because she is
25 sharing smiles with somebody else. So always in the background there is
Page 10097
1 this sense of guilt for a person.
2 Q. Thank you very much. On page 17, line 9 to 21, you said: Three
3 days ago this woman came to me with a 16-year-old daughter, and so on and
4 so forth, and the mother never told her about her father and she went to
5 Srebrenica and there she found her father's pictures and so on. Do you
6 remember that?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Can you please tell us, can you answer my question, can you
9 please tell me this: Would a child of six months, because you said that
10 the child was six months old when she lost her father, can a
11 six-month-old child have a feeling of intense loss of a parent, of a
12 father, when they didn't even remember him or see him? Because you know
13 a child of six months cannot remember anything. Or is this the case only
14 with some people of that age who could remember and recall that?
15 A. If a child doesn't have a father, they create one in their
16 fantasy. All the children in the school that this girl attended, most of
17 them, had fathers. She didn't have a father. So if she was denied
18 information by her mother about her father's disappearance, if she kept
19 telling her for five years, Your father is coming, your father is coming,
20 he's alive, he's going to come back, and he never actually did come back,
21 then the child lost her trust in her mother and stopped talking to her.
22 The mother -- this is now the responsibility of the mother. And the
23 treatment consists of strengthening the resources of the mother. A
24 mother, and its her duty, she has to explain to the child what happened.
25 She is the sole parent. She must try, because the child is not
Page 10098
1 responsible for that, she must try to find a photograph or some kind of
2 memento. But the child, in this case, had to do it herself.
3 Q. Since the Trial Chamber is not aware of circumstances in Bosnia,
4 how was a child able to go to Srebrenica on her own and how come they had
5 a photo there and they didn't have anything at home, since nothing was
6 left after the war in Srebrenica?
7 A. She found out in the registry office in Srebrenica, in the
8 municipality where you would get your ID card, that the former
9 documentation, the archive, before the war had been preserved and that
10 her father had an identity card. So she went to the registry office
11 where she asked for her father's file. She said, My father had an
12 identity card before the war, so could you please look whether there is a
13 photograph in that file. The woman and -- the girl said this, the woman
14 very kindly found the file, gave her the -- gave it to her. So she
15 photocopied the picture and she returned the document to the
16 municipality.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Ms. Hasan.
18 MS. HASAN: Just a correction for the record: At page 17,
19 line 13, the witness had testified that the child was ten months old and
20 not six months old.
21 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Ten months old.
22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
23 Mr. Tolimir, please carry on.
24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.
25 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
Page 10099
1 Q. Ms. Ibrahimefendic, if you recall, on page 23 you said that many
2 women try not to think about the problem and you said that this was a
3 negative method. My question is: If that's a negative method, then in
4 psychology, when they say that our lives are the same as our thoughts
5 are, then is that a negative or a positive way? Does that mean that we
6 shouldn't think about something negative in order to overcome it? Is
7 there any contradiction there?
8 A. I said this in a different context, in relation to the
9 psychological mechanisms of self-defence. If something is difficult for
10 us, if we can't accept it, then we will deny it. And the mechanism of
11 denial means that we're keeping ourselves in suspense, we're living a
12 lie. However, this denial mechanism helped them survive.
13 Imagine a situation where they were being transported to Tuzla
14 and if at that point they had thought that their husband was dead, at
15 that point they were denying that they were dead. They kept thinking
16 that they were alive. So this mechanism helps them survive. Sometimes
17 you can't accept the truth because it's very painful and we act as if it
18 was not happening. We act as if it didn't happen.
19 To this day, there are quite a lot of people, a lot of elderly
20 women, who are trying to get their lives back from before the war. They
21 picture that person alive. They dream about them, they talk with them.
22 So this psychological twin exists. And in this way, they are denying
23 reality. Others will say -- others will tell them, He's dead. And this
24 person will say, No, to me he is not dead. So in that sense this
25 psychological defence mechanism is not good for recovery.
Page 10100
1 The question isn't how long it will take for them to accept the
2 loss, the question is how they will face the truth. They have to ask
3 themselves, How am I going to face the truth? I have a woman whose three
4 sons are no longer alive and she says, How is that possible? And I can't
5 answer that. So I'm trying to help her find a way to handle this.
6 Q. Thank you, Ms. Ibrahimefendic. You talked quite a lot about the
7 social situation that the families from Srebrenica found themselves in
8 and you talked about the problem of losing a loved one. I would like to
9 ask this: That social problem, is it experienced by all refugees,
10 wherever they fled from in Bosnia, and do all those who lost a father in
11 combat in the Tuzla region, at the front line, experience it the same
12 way? Is it the same characteristics?
13 A. That pain is universal. And everybody in Bosnia and Herzegovina
14 or all over the world who loses a loved one, regardless of the
15 circumstances, will experience pain. However, when it comes to missing
16 persons, and there are a lot of them throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, there
17 is uncertainty and there is still some hope. There's a lot of
18 ambivalence. On the one hand it's like they are alive, and on the other
19 hand they're dead but there's no certificate. In normal circumstances,
20 you need to know that somebody is alive or dead. But here, you're in
21 suspense. And the pain is universal.
22 Q. Thank you, Ms. Ibrahimefendic. Please tell us whether the social
23 problems that we talked about, with all the refugees and everybody who
24 went through certain trauma as a result of a loss of a loved one, and who
25 moved into new communities, as there are a lot of people from rural areas
Page 10101
1 who moved into towns, is this one of the reasons why they cannot return
2 to their old places of residence? You can tell the Trial Chamber who's
3 in power in Srebrenica, so they should be able to go back. But they
4 don't want to go back because they are not used to that life, they don't
5 know how to herd cattle. Did you consider this problem as well?
6 A. When I think about this problem, I look at it from the
7 psychological aspect. Namely, what once was will never return. And many
8 people think that life should go on, that life should go on the way it
9 was before the war. And when they return from where they had been
10 expelled or from where they left, they realise that life is different.
11 In the new communities, in the new towns, they had already started a
12 life. The fact is that their children have grown up. So there's a
13 problem within the family, because some want to go back and some don't
14 want to go back.
15 Some crave and long for their home and others don't long for
16 their home. So conflicts regarding the return exist in the family. So
17 that makes things complicated, as does unemployment, the economic
18 situation, or the return to their original place of residence. And this
19 means that they can't have medical insurance, they can't get educated.
20 And social problems are similar in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
21 Q. Thank you. I asked you this because you're a psychotherapist,
22 Ms. Ibrahimefendic, so are these problems complex because of all these
23 aspects and because of this new situation -- so are these problems more
24 expressed than during -- than the problems during the conflict?
25 A. Well, of course the social aspect and the social dimension of
Page 10102
1 traumatisation cannot be neglected. Apart from the psychological
2 problems that I mentioned, such as things can't go back to the way they
3 were, there are economic problems and there are political problems, legal
4 problems, spiritual problems, and so on. And all these further
5 complicated the situation, because society has been destroyed. A lot of
6 mechanisms that kept society together and that provided a framework for
7 the functioning of this society have been destroyed.
8 Q. Thank you, Ms. Ibrahimefendic. I would be very interested to
9 talk to you, but there isn't enough time. We are limited with time.
10 In your statement, you said that from 1995 to 2000 you had about
11 60 women who you treated. My question is: Is there any sort of a
12 database or a record of the people who you treated psychologically after
13 the war, and could this be provided to the Trial Chamber?
14 A. The Trial Chamber can have all these documents. We have a very
15 good database for each of our clients. For every visit they made there
16 is a record of what we had discussed, the problems why they were
17 admitted, how long they spent in our institution, how many times they
18 came to therapy, whether it was outpatients treatment or not; these
19 documents and the entire database is available, if necessary.
20 Q. Thank you, Ms. Ibrahimefendic, for this conversation. I don't
21 have any more time to ask you any more questions. I enjoy talking to you
22 and learning something from you as an expert. We appreciate your
23 expertise and I wish you a good journey, God bless you, and I wish you a
24 good trip back home.
25 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Thank you.
Page 10103
1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, thank you much. But you have more
2 time if you need more time. You indicated one and a half hour and you
3 have used little less than one hour. Just to make it clear: You have
4 time if you want to continue. But it's up to you.
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. I'm
6 doing this because of the next witness. It was told that he has to be on
7 today, and a lot of time was used up for the previous witness and this
8 witness. Thank you.
9 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.
10 Ms. Hasan, do you have re-examination?
11 MS. HASAN: I have no questions for re-examination,
12 Mr. President.
13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much.
14 Judge Mindua has a question for you.
15 Questioned by the Court:
16 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Good afternoon, Witness. I have a
17 question for you. In today's record, on page 23, line 19 up to line 25,
18 you explained very clearly that it's very difficult and very complicated
19 to assess the consequences of the war, that is, what effect the war had
20 on the lives of the women and the children and that it's very difficult
21 to know whether and to what extent pain has diminished, whether the
22 consequences have lessened. And on page 24, from lines 17 to 18, you
23 said that the process of trauma continues but in a different way. I'm a
24 little bit confused because I am translating the English transcript to
25 myself in French. So, the cycle of trauma continues and it changes
Page 10104
1 shape; that's what you said. So I would like to ask you the following
2 question in relation to this: In these conditions, do pain, the
3 suffering, and the trauma that caused it, are they incurrable? Is
4 something like that incurrable? That is, is it possible at all to cure
5 your patients, your clients; or should they be monitored, treated, all
6 their lives? Is the therapy limited by time or not?
7 A. What I said about the cycle of trauma and that the trauma
8 continues, that the symptoms are there but in a different shape - I will
9 say this very shortly - in relation to theory, that helps us strengthen
10 our clients and our patients in this process of recovery. We go through
11 the beginning of their trauma with them. Trauma goes through a cycle.
12 First the expulsion, leaving home, getting to a certain destination where
13 you're a refugee; then another shock when they become refugees. Although
14 they think it's a safe place, they are worried and preoccupied with their
15 physical survival, food, accommodation. And then in a way, they adjust;
16 they develop some adaptive capabilities. They are still not aware of the
17 psychological pain and trauma that they've been through. And since the
18 war went on as long as it did in Bosnia-Herzegovina, some went abroad,
19 then again it was a country where they didn't speak the language or it
20 was a different language, then they adapted again, they developed new
21 symptoms. They suffer because of the homes that they left behind. They
22 adapt to the new circumstances, life goes on, their childrens [sic] grow
23 up, they have new obligations, and they are exhausted. And then new
24 trauma might occur such as Srebrenica in 1995, so they return home, and
25 so on, and they find the dead.
Page 10105
1 Each of these cycles has its own symptoms, traumatic events which
2 are stressful for a particular person. And through this entire cycle of
3 trauma, a person gets through by developing certain skills. And at the
4 same time, their physical health and their mental health is weakened.
5 Some people get through all these cycles successfully but they remain sad
6 all their lives because practically trauma becomes a part of their life
7 story. It's a part their personal history. And it determines their
8 personal history and it determines their life.
9 The traumatic event changes their life. Instead of everybody
10 having a vision of how they will develop in life and what path they will
11 take, something happens and it takes you in a completely different
12 direction. And all of a sudden you have to leave your previous life
13 behind. Even though you may want to forget it, you can't. You have to
14 process it somehow. You have to take what's good in that life and then
15 move into a new life.
16 So some will continue to function, and they will exhibit normal
17 functioning, but on the other hand there will always be something that
18 they will regret, something that they will suffer for. I don't know if
19 that's sufficient.
20 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Thank you.
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye, I see you are on your feet.
22 MR. VANDERPUYE: I am, Mr. President.
23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Can we release the witness?
24 MR. VANDERPUYE: I was just going to address that very issue.
25 And the reason why I'm on my feet obviously is because of
Page 10106
1 General Tolimir's representation with respect to your question about
2 whether he had any further questions. I just wanted to be clear on the
3 record, because his response indicated that he was terminating his
4 cross-examination in view of the witness that is following. I don't know
5 what representations have been made to him with respect to the following
6 witness. And in particular in light of the events that transpired
7 yesterday, I want to be sure that General Tolimir is -- has completed his
8 cross-examination appropriately, in other words, not based upon some
9 representation or some understanding with respect to the following -- to
10 the witness that will follow. And if that's the case, then I think it's
11 not an issue, but I just want to be sure of that before we discharge this
12 witness.
13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you, Mr. Vanderpuye.
14 Mr. Tolimir, you heard the submission of Mr. Vanderpuye. What is
15 your position on that?
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I thanked
17 Ms. Ibrahimefendic and I gave her my blessing. Among us Christians, when
18 you send a blessing, it's communication through God, so there is no
19 returning to a previous point. I wished her a safe return home, so I
20 don't intend to re-open my cross-examination. And I thank the Prosecutor
21 for asking me to clear this up, but I have no further questions for this
22 witness.
23 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much for this common
24 understanding.
25 Ms. Ibrahimefendic, thank you very much that you came here to
Page 10107
1 The Hague again after 11 years and for the help you could provide us.
2 Thank you very much again, and now you are free to return to your normal
3 activities. Good-bye. And the Court Usher will assist you.
4 [The witness withdrew]
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The next witness should be brought in.
6 Dr. Brunborg will continue cross-examination.
7 [The witness takes the stand]
8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Good afternoon, sir. Please sit down. Welcome
9 back, Dr. Brunborg, to the Tribunal.
10 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honour.
11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: It's good that you could make it again. And I
12 have to remind you that the affirmation you made at the beginning of your
13 testimony still applies.
14 Mr. Tolimir has more questions for you.
15 Mr. Tolimir.
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.
17 WITNESS: HELGE BRUNBORG [Resumed]
18 Cross-examination by Mr. Tolimir: [Continued]
19 Q. [Interpretation] Good afternoon, Mr. Brunborg. I would like you
20 a pleasant stay [as interpreted], and I thank you for coming back. I
21 apologise if you have had to come back again because of us. In any case,
22 I would like to wish God's peace on you and all your activities. And I
23 would like this cross-examination to end as God wills it and not as I
24 will.
25 I would just like to remind you of what we talked about last
Page 10108
1 time, during your testimony on the 10th of February. We talked about the
2 discrepancy between the B&H army data and the data of the International
3 Committee for Missing Persons, which you used to draft your own analysis.
4 The international committee had its own data negated by the B&H army, and
5 we could see this on all the documents that were presented here during
6 your testimony.
7 What I would like to know is: Do you know if the
8 Prosecutor's Office investigated the phenomenon of people who were killed
9 earlier who were found in the graves? For example, if they were killed
10 in 1992 or around that time but were found in a common grave in 1994?
11 Thank you. Or 1995.
12 A. Information on this comes partly from the ICTY's own exhumations
13 and investigations and partly from the ICMP exhumations. And as I said
14 last week, I am not an expert on exhumations, but I believe if -- that
15 there are certain mass graves were considered as Srebrenica-related,
16 meaning that if a body was found in such a grave, it was accepted as a
17 dead person, a person who died in connection with the fall of Srebrenica.
18 There were a few cases, I've been told, of a mixture of deaths of
19 people in 1992 and 1995, but these are only a few cases, perhaps only
20 one, I've been told, about Bratunac. But I'm not an expert on this.
21 Q. Thank you. But we can see from your analysis that to a certain
22 extent, just like in your answer now, you gave precedence to data of the
23 International Committee of the Red Cross --
24 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreter would kindly ask the accused to
25 repeat his question.
Page 10109
1 THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]
2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, the interpreter didn't catch your
3 question. Please repeat it. I was asked by the interpreters.
4 I stopped him to give him this information.
5 Please repeat it.
6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.
7 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
8 Q. We could see on the list that we showed the last time that the
9 army did not wish to accept, in a number of cases, that those persons
10 were found in graves, even though the Red Cross claimed that their DNA
11 was found in the graves.
12 So my question is: These cases, and there were plenty of them -
13 we cited ten of them here - do these cases deserve a special
14 investigation so that we could see what this was -- what this was about?
15 And why does it occur that different data is entered regarding persons in
16 respect of the way that they died? Thank you.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.
18 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. It may be an
19 interpretation issue or a translation problem, but I think it would be
20 helpful in either event with respect to this question if General Tolimir
21 has a particular document in mind that he show it to the witness. The
22 reason I raise it is because here we have a reference to the Red Cross
23 claiming that DNA was found in the graves, and I think the record is
24 quite clear that that's not what the Red Cross represented, and that is
25 something that is more generally associated with the ICMP and -- the
Page 10110
1 International Commission of Missing Persons. And so I think it would be
2 helpful if General Tolimir has a particular document in mind, to show it.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
4 Mr. Tolimir, it would help the witness to provide you with his
5 knowledge.
6 THE ACCUSED: [Microphone not activated]
7 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I was thinking of the International
9 Committee for Missing Persons, the ones that deal with the DNA, not the
10 ICRC.
11 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
12 Q. And is it possible that the differences are so drastic that the
13 B&H army did not accept them, in spite of the pressure that was exerted
14 on them to do so? Thank you.
15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Do you have a specific document in mind?
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. I do
17 have a document. This is 1776. Can we please look at it in e-court.
18 Last time, we discussed it. So I thought that I wouldn't have to go over
19 things again that we already had been over because of the time. This is
20 the expert report of this witness, P1776.
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And it would help the witness to refer to a
22 certain page, for instance.
23 THE WITNESS: Well, I think he refers to page 95 of our
24 April 2009 report; is that correct? The English version.
25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Your most important report, indeed.
Page 10111
1 THE WITNESS: Thank you. I would --
2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. If that would help the
3 witness, then, of course, he can look at it. I was thinking of page 220;
4 that was the last page.
5 THE WITNESS: Of the transcript? Page 220 of what?
6 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Now, of your report.
7 THE WITNESS: Which has only 105 pages.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. I didn't finish my
9 sentence. I meant the 220 persons that are disputed in terms of data
10 between the B&H army and the ICMP. Thank you.
11 THE WITNESS: Thank you. I think I'd like to sum up a little
12 bit. More than 5.000 bodies have been exhumed and found dead, almost
13 5.500, by ICMP, and a few others have been identified in other ways.
14 Matching with the army list, so that 70 per cent of those identified as
15 dead were indeed also registered with the ABiH. When we checked the
16 dates and place of disappearance, there were 220 out of these several
17 thousand, 3-, or 4.000, exhumed bodies that had been reported as missing
18 before -- not -- excuse me, not reported. Who were listed by the army as
19 having died before 1995, that is, in 1992 or other dates, in spite of
20 families having reported these as disappearing around the fall of
21 Srebrenica.
22 So first, it is less than 5 per cent that have
23 inconsistent [Realtime translation read in error "consistent"] day of
24 death. 220 out of 5.371. So it's a very small number, 3, 4 per cent.
25 Secondly, these 220 records were -- when we looked at those closely,
Page 10112
1 140 of them were confirmed, identified, and related to Srebrenica
2 grave-sites by the ICMP. If you want to know about the methods of ICMP
3 to -- and what they -- how they define Srebrenica-related grave sites, I
4 think it is more appropriate to ask somebody from ICMP or my colleague
5 Ewa Tabeau who has worked more closely with ICMP.
6 Also on page 95 it says that after these 220 records were sent to
7 the Ministry of Defence in Bosnia for clarification, 127 of them were
8 corrected by the Ministry of Defence in response to the request from OTP.
9 So I do not know the reasons for these changes, but there are often
10 mistakes are made, also by ministries, regarding dates. Regarding date
11 of death or date of disappearance, et cetera. Whether these were
12 misprints or some other errors, I do not know. But anyway, the ministry
13 corrected 127. But they did not correct all of them. There were
14 38 cases out of the 220 that they did not correct. So it's hard to see
15 that this was a sort of systematic approach by the ministry to correct
16 all of them, make all of them Srebrenica relevant, so to say.
17 They corrected -- I do not know, but I would assume that they
18 have good reasons for making the corrections that they, in fact, did
19 make. Out of the 38 cases - now we are down from 220 to 38 - that are
20 still undecided, we have requested further clarification. And my
21 colleague Ewa Tabeau can respond to possible responses to that further
22 clarifications. Remember that this report was finished in April 2009,
23 almost two years ago. Thank you. Sorry for this rather long answer.
24 JUDGE FLUEGGE: May I ask you for a clarification. On page 47,
25 line 9, on the record you are recorded having said:
Page 10113
1 "So first, it is less than 5 per cent that have been consistent
2 day of death. 220 out of 5.371."
3 THE WITNESS: Okay.
4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Was it correct to say "consistent"? Or
5 "inconsistent"?
6 THE WITNESS: It should have been "inconsistent." Excuse me,
7 sorry, as here on page 95 in the report.
8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Inconsistent. Yes, thank you very much.
9 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Gajic.
11 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I think that it would
12 help us if we look at page 97 in the e-court, in the English, and I think
13 it's enough just to show that page on the screen.
14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
15 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] I'm sorry, this is also page 104 in
16 the Serbian, if that's necessary for the transcript.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, please carry on.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.
19 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
20 Q. I'm going to begin right away from the third list -- person on
21 the list on this page. I don't want to read the names out because the
22 Prosecutor asked us not to read the names out. He's the third person in
23 order from the top, and he disappeared in 1994. And it states that he
24 was found in Kozluk. There's also the person above, who disappeared in
25 1992, both persons, but the ICMP has them listed as persons who were
Page 10114
1 found in the graves.
2 What I'm interested in is, as Mr. Brunborg stated, that this is
3 almost 5 per cent in relation to 5.000, so these 5.000, is that the
4 actual number of persons who were executed, or is this some number that
5 is being taken by ICMP in order to have this statistical data and to be
6 able to use it for this particular report? I mean, this statistical
7 margin of 5 per cent, is that enough in order to investigate this
8 further? Can the ministry just decide like that about these 128 cases?
9 Is there a decision that would indicate how these 127 persons were judged
10 to be in accordance with the data of this commission and would be
11 something that does not tally with the figures of the B&H army? Thank
12 you.
13 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, if you look at the transcript,
14 page 49, from line 5 to 20, 15 lines is your question long. And in fact
15 there were many questions in one. It is very difficult for a witness to
16 answer such a complex question.
17 Dr. Brunborg, would you try to answer this question.
18 THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your Honour. First General Tolimir
19 started out with a wrong statement. He said that the two -- the second
20 and third people disappeared before 1995. That's not the case. They
21 were reported by family members to ICRC as going missing around the date
22 of the fall of the enclave of Srebrenica. Otherwise, we would not have
23 included them in our list of missing persons.
24 It is the dates, the DoD military, as it says at the top, are the
25 dates that these persons are listed as having died by the army, maybe by
Page 10115
1 age. On what criteria, I don't know. But when -- we requested them that
2 they should check these dates because there were inconsistency between
3 when families had reported them as going missing and the dates of the
4 military.
5 Moreover, these were found in Srebrenica-related mass graves. So
6 they -- which indicates that they died in connection with the fall of
7 Srebrenica. Now, that is my -- I hope I answered all the questions.
8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Brunborg, you said: "When -- we requested
9 them that they should check these dates because they were inconsistent,"
10 and so on. What was the response by the ABiH army?
11 THE WITNESS: The response is given on page 95. Out of the 220,
12 127, that is more than half, were corrected by the ministry in 2003 in
13 response to the OTP request for clarification of inconsistent ABiH
14 records.
15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
16 Judge Nyambe has a further question.
17 JUDGE NYAMBE: Just to clarify, so that we are absolutely clear:
18 Which army we are talking about?
19 THE WITNESS: The Army of the Federation of Bosnia.
20 JUDGE NYAMBE: Thank you.
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir.
22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I would ask for
23 these entries here to be looked at of when these people disappeared, the
24 persons listed as 1, 2, are the records by the army indicating that they
25 disappeared in 1992. Thank you.
Page 10116
1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The witness just say has explained that this is
2 not a date of disappearance, but the Army of BiH listed them as dead.
3 This is a difference. This is not an entry about disappearance. The
4 witness just explained that.
5 THE WITNESS: Excuse me, Your Honour, it says in the title of the
6 table that "with inconsistent date of death/disappearance." It is
7 possible that the army also included some for which the exact date of
8 death was not known but they had disappeared. So it is possible -- I
9 don't know the exact criteria of the army, but my understanding is that
10 these are mostly or perhaps solely the date of death as reported in the
11 army archives.
12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you for this clarification.
13 Mr. Tolimir.
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.
15 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
16 Q. Statistics and paper can take everything --
17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't know if the witness is
18 hearing what I'm saying.
19 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation].
20 Q. Statistics and paper can record everything, or -- but Srebrenica
21 is a small place and you couldn't leave it during the war, you are aware
22 of that, so is there a chance that somebody could have hidden from the
23 army in Srebrenica throughout the whole war? Thank you.
24 A. Thank you. I don't understand what you mean by the question
25 "hidden from the army." We know that there were -- 70 per cent of those
Page 10117
1 who were reported as missing were indeed part of the army ... part of the
2 army, so how could they hide from the army?
3 If I may continue, it could be, of course, that they -- that they
4 were dressed in civilian clothes. And whether they wore arms or not,
5 dressed in civilian or military clothes or not, I do not know anything
6 about.
7 Q. Thank you. Is it all right, then, for the Court and for myself
8 to draw conclusions, reliable conclusions, on the basis of the figures?
9 Or is it necessary also to have some other data and documents that also
10 deal with these matters?
11 A. Thank you. What is -- if I may ask you what the exact questions
12 are one by one, please.
13 Q. Thank you.
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Aleksandar, could you please read
15 out exactly what I asked, from the transcript, please.
16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This would be my task. Mr. Tolimir, I have some
17 concern about this question.
18 "Is it all right, then, for the Court and for myself to draw
19 conclusions, reliable conclusions, on the basis of the figures?"
20 And so on. What the Court does with these figures, it's up to
21 the Court. You may ask: If you are in the position to draw conclusions
22 of that. This is a different story. And then the question would read:
23 Is it all right, then, for you, Mr. Tolimir, to draw conclusions,
24 reliable conclusions, on the basis of the figures? Or is it necessary
25 also to have some other data and documents that also deal with these
Page 10118
1 matters?
2 Is that understandable, Mr. Brunborg?
3 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour. I have been tasked, and my
4 colleagues also, to estimate or provide a list of persons missing --
5 sorry.
6 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Please continue.
7 THE WITNESS: -- list of persons missing or dead in connection
8 with the fall of Srebrenica. So we are providing names and also total
9 numbers, a total number, which keeps increasing. But that is not the
10 whole story. I do not claim to understand everything that went on in
11 Srebrenica or to know everything. And that is exactly, as far as I
12 understand, why there is a court where many -- there is a court where
13 many reports are presented, there are many witnesses testifying on
14 different aspects of the fall of Srebrenica and what happened.
15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
16 Mr. Tolimir.
17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. Thank you,
18 Mr. President, I'm not going to lose any more time. I just said -- I
19 asked the witness can the Defence and the Court come to reliable
20 decisions only on the basis of the witness saying maybe this and maybe
21 that. I do not want to go any further than that. Of course it's up to
22 the Court to reach its own conclusions.
23 Can we now please look at P1776, page 2. Actually, it's page 46
24 in the Serbian, page 42 in the English. And it's paragraph 2. We can
25 see the report. Thank you.
Page 10119
1 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
2 Q. And you say, in this second paragraph:
3 "A concise yet exhaustive overview of the exhumation and
4 identification status in the former Yugoslavia, and in Srebrenica in
5 particular, is not available from a single organisation. For
6 Srebrenica" --
7 And then, actually, at the end of the paragraph you add:
8 "The Institute for Missing Persons and the State Commission for
9 Missing Persons are now in the process of creating a central database on
10 exhumations and identifications. Unfortunately, this database does not
11 yet exist in a useable electronic format."
12 You say that there is no database, either of the Institute or of
13 the State Commission for Missing Persons, and that it's not useable.
14 What do you imply by that? Are you suggesting that this database
15 should exist? And when will it be completed? Is it going to be before
16 or after the end of these proceedings?
17 A. When this report was completed in April 2009, there was, to my
18 knowledge, no central database on exhumations, identifications. There
19 may have been developments only since then. But as far as I know,
20 there's still not any unified comprehensive database on this. But the
21 things are changing fast and something may have happened on this. There
22 are, as you know, also other sources on missing and dead persons,
23 including the Bosnia Book of Dead, but that is really not a database on
24 exhumations.
25 My understanding is that the ICMP has -- is taking care of most
Page 10120
1 of the identifications, exhumations identifications. Thank you.
2 Q. Thank you. Bearing in mind what you just said and what you said
3 that the differences are great, if the Institute for Missing Persons does
4 not recognise the lists of the army, if it does not recognise the lists
5 of the Prosecutor's Office, then the question is: Do they at all
6 recognise the work of other commissions and other organs or is the basic
7 criterion the one they provide or is the basic criterion the one provided
8 by the BH CTMP [as interpreted]? Thank you.
9 A. Thank you. I have not said as -- that the Institute for
10 Missing Persons does not recognise the list of the army or that it does
11 not recognise the lists of the Prosecutor's Office or other commissions
12 or other organs. So may I ask you, please, to repeat your question?
13 Q. Thank you. I'll repeat. We were in the position to hear about
14 various lists during your testimony by the Commission for Missing
15 Persons, the ICRC, and the Prosecutor's Office, so the question is: Does
16 the ICRC recognise the work of the Tribunal's OTP in relation to dead and
17 missing persons from Srebrenica? Thank you.
18 A. My understanding is that the ICRC is getting information from the
19 ICMP regarding new, identified, and missing persons who have been
20 identified as dead. What do you mean by, "the ICRC recognise the work of
21 the ... OTP"? I do not quite understand. I -- my understanding is that
22 they think this is important work but they are basing their own work on
23 other sources.
24 Q. Since you were studying the Court's documentation, is there any
25 discord between the lists of the ICRC and of the Prosecutor's Office?
Page 10121
1 Thank you.
2 A. As I explained last week, we started our work on establishing a
3 list of missing persons mostly from the ICRC's lists. In addition, we
4 used data from the PHR, an humanitarian organisation, so -- which I did,
5 actually, only a few -- I think less than 100 missing persons. So this
6 means that the OTP's work was initially based almost solely on the ICRC's
7 lists.
8 Later, we have also received data from the ICMP both on
9 identified dead persons, but also on additional identified dead persons
10 who were not on the ICRC's list of missing persons. But in addition to
11 that, we do not have -- we are not including missing persons from any
12 other source, missing or dead persons from any other source than ICRC,
13 PHR, and ICMP.
14 Q. Thank you.
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could we now have page 52 in the
16 Serbian and page 48 in the English, please. The last sentence of the
17 paragraph.
18 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
19 Q. Now we can see it. In the one-but-last paragraph in both
20 languages, the final sentence.
21 "Note that the ICMP number of closed cases is not necessarily the
22 same as the number of closed cases declared by local courts."
23 My question is this: Will you agree with me that for statistical
24 purposes and for the purposes of demographic examination, one person can
25 be declared dead once there is a valid decision by a court? And what is
Page 10122
1 the usual practice in Norway; can a missing person be on such a list
2 without a decision by a court that has jurisdiction?
3 A. I do not quite see the relevance of the question, as we do not
4 have lists of missing persons in Norway. We do in fact have some --
5 there are some people who have disappeared and they are not found on
6 their address, and it is possible that they are declared dead, but then I
7 think that's a court decision. This is very -- applies to very few cases
8 each year. For example, if a fishing boat has been lost, then it may be
9 assumed that the people on the fishing boat are dead after some time and
10 after a long search procedure.
11 Q. Thank you. Thank you for the answer. My next question is: Did
12 you check the degree of discrepancy between the lists of people on the
13 ICMP as identified or dead and the data of local courts which issued a
14 valid decision declaring somebody dead? Thank you.
15 A. As far as we -- I know, we did not receive data from local
16 courts.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, I think this is time for our second
18 break. The tapes have to be rewound.
19 We adjourn for half an hour and resume at 6.00.
20 --- Recess taken at 5.29 p.m.
21 --- On resuming at 6.03 p.m.
22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Yes, Mr. Tolimir, please carry on.
23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.
24 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
25 Q. While we have this document on the screen, Mr. Brunborg, could
Page 10123
1 you please look at the paragraph that we were looking at before the
2 break, the paragraph I showed you where you talk about the differences
3 between information published by the ICMP, which does not -- where
4 positive DNA reports are under review.
5 THE INTERPRETER: Could the accused please repeat the end of his
6 question.
7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, the interpreters didn't catch the
8 last part of your question. The last part which is recorded reads as
9 follows:
10 "... where you talk about the differences between information
11 published by the ICMP, which does not -- where positive to DNA reports
12 are under review."
13 And there was something following which was not caught by the
14 interpreters.
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. I'll repeat.
16 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
17 Q. After this, my question, and I'll quote.
18 Those identifications which are underway, are they included in
19 the list of the Prosecution from 2009? Thank you.
20 A. I think we included those that are underway if we had -- if we
21 received information about such cases with case numbers from the ICMP.
22 Q. Thank you. Could you please tell us whether the list of the
23 Prosecution is public? Thank you.
24 A. In principle it is. But, again, I think that since it may
25 contain names of dead persons who -- where the legal process and
Page 10124
1 notification of families have not yet been completed, I think the
2 whole -- parts of the list is under seal.
3 Q. Thank you.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could we now see page 12 in the
5 B/C/S, and that's page 11 in English, of Exhibit P1176 [as interpreted].
6 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
7 Q. Before we move on to this question, since you said partly, can
8 the expert, public, check your lists? Thank you.
9 A. Whether -- I don't think there's a distinguish between public
10 experts and public -- the public in general, so if parts of the lists are
11 under seal, it is not available to experts either.
12 THE REGISTRAR: Just to clarify the record: This is
13 Exhibit P1776. Thank you.
14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much indeed.
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you.
16 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
17 Q. Mr. Brunborg, could you please look at bullet point number 3 in
18 paragraph 2.3. I will quote:
19 "Additionally, any indication of Srebrenica survivors that came
20 to our attention from any document, data source, press report, book,
21 report, witness recollection (be it a statement or testimony of the
22 person), et cetera, brought to our attention by others (including both
23 the Prosecution and the Defence) were checked one by one and excluded if
24 confirmed surviving."
25 Please tell me, the demographic department, did it try to put
Page 10125
1 together a list of sources that you used during this verification that
2 you mentioned of books, reports, or witness recollection? Does something
3 like that exist? Thank you.
4 A. Not to my knowledge. We consulted a number of documents,
5 press reports, books, but the point here is that we did not find any new
6 names of possible survivors. So this exercise, this search, did not
7 result in anything. We mostly consulted the list with several names, be
8 it of a displaced persons, refugees, soldiers, voters. All these are
9 discussed at length in the appendices to this report.
10 I should also add that in the first report as of 2000,
11 February 2000, we did consult -- we looked at certain books and lists,
12 and it's under the chapter called, "Attempts at Undermining These Lists,"
13 and the references to such books and articles are given in the 2000
14 report, which is also tendered here.
15 Q. Thank you. So your reply is that you did not find any survivors.
16 I would now like you to look at 1D574 in e-court, please. This
17 is part of a book by Milivoje Ivanisevic, Srebrenica, July of 1995,
18 "Searching for the Truth." We can see the title which says --
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we look at page 2, please.
20 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
21 Q. There. Now we see it. People for whom there are court decisions
22 establishing that they died at another time or in a different location.
23 The list was compiled based on some registers of death. The introduction
24 says, and I quote:
25 "Having viewed certain registry books of death which were kept by
Page 10126
1 the Muslim authorities, we established that the people whose names we
2 list in the continuation of this overview were not victims of the
3 massacre in July of 1995 in Srebrenica. Instead, the majority of them
4 died of natural causes in other places and at other times.
5 "Unfortunately, we are not in a position to have even a
6 perfunctory view of the majority of registry books of death either in
7 Srebrenica or in other neighbouring municipalities. We believe that in
8 that case this list would be significantly longer. However, even without
9 this, the fact that there was an attempt to increase the number of
10 alleged Muslim victims of Srebrenica of those killed in the massacre
11 during the return of Serbs in July of 1992 and buried in the memorial
12 centre and the Potocari cemetery, this abuse is confirmed by the
13 following findings:"
14 Before I move on to those findings, tell me: Were you ever in a
15 position to see this list or a similar list, since Ivanisevic's book was
16 published in 2007, before your report of 2009, since you said that you
17 consulted even the media? Thank you.
18 A. Thank you. I've seen several similar lists. And whether this
19 list was also considered, I don't know, but I should think that this --
20 my colleague Ewa Tabeau has consulted and studied this list as well.
21 What we have found when we look at such lists is that the people on the
22 list were not including in our list of missing persons. We will be happy
23 to check whether these names on your lists are indeed included on our
24 list of missing persons.
25 Q. Thank you. Did you use registry books of death kept by the
Page 10127
1 Muslim authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to establish the number
2 of people registered as missing or who were identified based on DNA
3 analysis and who died of natural causes or before or after the events in
4 Srebrenica? Thank you.
5 A. Well, again you ask a number of questions in one sentence. We
6 made certain that when a person was reported as dead, first that that
7 person was listed as a missing person. If we had data on the cause of
8 death and that being a natural death, of course that is -- that would not
9 be listed as a dead missing person. But I don't recall any such
10 examples.
11 It is possible that the ICRC have looked at this and then deleted
12 such persons from their lists. But the number of persons who have been
13 deleted from the lists for such reasons is very small.
14 Q. Thank you. Please look at this list; we see it now on page 2.
15 It's 1D580. And on this list there is information from the book that
16 we're talking about by Mr. Milivoje Ivanisevic. And we, the Defence, has
17 matched this to the lists of the Prosecution from 2000, 2007, and 2009,
18 and we found 58 names mentioned in these lists who were established to
19 have died in a different place or at a different time and not in relation
20 to the events in Srebrenica. Did you bear that in mind when you wrote
21 your report? Thank you.
22 A. As I said, I don't recall having seen this list, since I did not
23 work here in 2007 and later. My colleague Ewa Tabeau may have seen it.
24 But to answer, did you say 8 or 28 names? Here are only 8 names, I see,
25 but maybe there are more.
Page 10128
1 Q. Thank you for that question. There is a total of 58 names.
2 A. Okay. We would need to check those names to see whether your
3 finding is valid.
4 Q. Thank you.
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could we please have page 1.
6 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
7 Q. And while we're waiting for it, I would like to say that six
8 names from this list are not on the lists from the previous years, either
9 on the list from 2000 or 2007. They are not on the list. That's six
10 names. However, these names do appear on the list from 2000 and 2007; so
11 once they are on your lists, and once they're not on your lists.
12 So my question is this: Based on what did you delete these six
13 names of the total of 58? And is there any documentation and explanation
14 for why you deleted these six names in 2009? Thank you.
15 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, for a better understanding, for the
16 witness and for the Chamber, could you indicate what kind of list is
17 this? You said: "Please look at this list; we see it now on page 2,"
18 and then you changed to another document. Is this part of the book we
19 have seen earlier, or is it a different list? We need an explanation for
20 that.
21 Mr. Gajic.
22 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I believe I will be
23 able to explain that very shortly. The list that we are looking at right
24 now was put together by the Defence and it was created after having
25 compared entries in the book by Milivoje Ivanisevic and the list of the
Page 10129
1 Prosecution. We can see matches in Column 1, where we can see the name
2 and father's name of each of these people, then in Column 2 is the place
3 of disappearance based on the lists of the Prosecution, and in Column 3
4 is the place of death listed in Ivanisevic's book and data which is
5 claimed to have been taken from the appropriate court records.
6 The record of death provides -- the record of death is provided
7 in the next column, as follows from the appropriate registers, and all
8 this is matched to the lists of the Prosecution. The final three columns
9 provide the 65 ter numbers of those Prosecution lists. 65 ter 00536 is
10 the Prosecution's list from 2000. OTP 65 ter 2197 is the Prosecution's
11 list from 2007. And finally, it is the Prosecution's list from 2009.
12 You will also be able to see in the table itself, in parts which indicate
13 the lists of the Prosecution, it says: "Da," meaning "yes," meaning it
14 is on that Prosecution list. And it also lists the page number in
15 e-court, that is, the page number where this person's name that had been
16 matched to Ivanisevic's book is located.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much for this explanation,
18 Mr. Gajic. That helps for a better understanding. I take it that this
19 list was compiled by the Defence in this case? Mr. Gajic, I take it that
20 this list was compiled and created by the Defence of this case; is that
21 correct?
22 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Yes, Mr. President. This was
23 compiled by my associates and I was in a position to check most of the
24 entries and I did not notice any mistakes.
25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Just one more thing --
Page 10130
1 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I just wanted to know, what is the provenance of
2 this, to know -- for a better understanding how it came about.
3 THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]
4 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir and then Mr. Vanderpuye.
5 Mr. Tolimir.
6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I just wanted to say that
7 Ivanisevic's data was taken from court registers regarding the deaths of
8 these 58 people and it was on the basis of this and on the basis of the
9 Prosecution lists, as Mr. Gajic just explained, that the Defence compiled
10 the table.
11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
12 Mr. Vanderpuye.
13 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I think
14 General Tolimir has in part answered the question that I had, but to the
15 extent that he has referenced that the places and, I guess, the dates of
16 deaths are taken from court records, it would be helpful to know what
17 court records he's talking about and if those records are identified in
18 any area where they can be looked at or scrutinised.
19 And I note this only because some of the entries that are
20 indicated on this particular chart as relates to the 2009 OTP list
21 correspond to the same names of individuals who are identified by DNA
22 analysis by the ICMP as coming from Srebrenica-related graves, such a
23 Glogova and Cancari and Cerska -- from Cerska. So I think it's important
24 to know what particular registers the Defence has relied on in order to
25 produce this table, since we don't have them, we don't have them before
Page 10131
1 us, in order to, A, determine the provenance of the information, and, B,
2 in order to assess its reliability.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I note that the persons listed from number 1 to
4 number 7 are listed with the same date of birth, 15th December, 1996.
5 Indeed it would be helpful --
6 THE WITNESS: Date of death, sorry.
7 JUDGE FLUEGGE: What did I say?
8 THE WITNESS: Date of birth.
9 JUDGE FLUEGGE: There's indeed a difference. Date of death.
10 Thank you for your correction.
11 Mr. Tolimir, it would be helpful to provide us with this
12 information if you want to have a comment of this witness about this list
13 we have on the screen.
14 First a comment or a correction by the Registrar.
15 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, with your leave, just to mention
16 for the clarity of the record, that 65 ter document that the Defence
17 referenced under 00536 has already been admitted into evidence as
18 Prosecution Exhibit P1782. Unlike the other 65 ter document 02197, which
19 has not been exhibited yet. Thank you.
20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you.
21 Mr. Gajic.
22 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, in the book that
23 served as the basis for compiling this list, the complete information
24 thus was taken from Ivanisevic's book. It's clear why he provides this
25 data. This is data from the registers of death, and the entries as it is
Page 10132
1 stated in the book were made on the basis of court decisions, court
2 records.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And Mr. Vanderpuye asked for these court records.
4 If you have a reference to a specific court, file number, case number, or
5 something like that.
6 But I'm -- not to waste time on that, I would appreciate if the
7 witness recalls the question. He was asked, in relation to this document
8 on the screen, with respect to six names taken from the list. And you
9 were asked:
10 "Based on what did you delete these six names of the total of 58?
11 And is there any documentation and explanation for why you deleted these
12 six names in 2009?"
13 Have you an answer to that question?
14 THE WITNESS: I do not, of course, remember all the details about
15 every person, but I think the main reason for deleting names was that
16 the -- was the information we received from ICRC are new versions of the
17 missing lists. Each time we received a new version, the total number
18 increased a little bit, but there were also some names that were taken
19 off, a few because they were found to be survivors and some for technical
20 reasons. And having -- dying for -- from a natural cause or on the date
21 that was not consistent with the fall of Srebrenica would be one reason.
22 But if I may, Your Honour, you notice that there are seven -- the
23 seven first names all died on the same -- apparently seemed to have died
24 on the 15th of December, 1996, which I find a bit - what do you call? -
25 suspicious. Is it certain that that date is not the date of the court
Page 10133
1 order? Or the date of the exhumations? That needs to be investigated
2 also. As far as I know, there was no fighting in 1996, so this could not
3 have been a battle or anything, so it's quite strange that so many, seven
4 out of 58, would die on the same day.
5 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir.
6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. If we
7 look at these sources that we cited, Ivanisevic's book, and the data for
8 2000, 2007, and 2009 by the Prosecution, which we will also tender as
9 evidence, you will be able to see exactly what was the reason for the
10 conclusion by the Defence and to establish what it established on the
11 basis of looking at those four documents. This is how this was written
12 in this document, the manner of death. And then if you look at who
13 entered this data, you will find that all the data was entered by the
14 Muslim side, not the Serb side, and the certificates of death were
15 certificates of death provided by the Muslim side for Muslim persons.
16 Thank you.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Please continue with your cross-examination.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I would like to tender these two
19 documents, please, so that we could use them later.
20 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Is the document 1D580, which is on the screen
21 now, already in evidence? No, it's not, I'm told.
22 Mr. Vanderpuye.
23 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. Subject to the
24 arguments that I've made before with respect to the provenance of the
25 information that underlies these records, particularly the Court's
Page 10134
1 observation that the recorded date of death, as the witness has
2 indicated, at least on the first page alone records
3 15th of December, 1996, for what looks like seven entries, there are an
4 additional number of entries, I would gather around 20, maybe more, in
5 the document, about 30, reflecting that same date. I think in light of
6 that observation and the failure to identify the specific records or the
7 source of the information that's provided in this document, I would ask,
8 if the Court is inclined, to consider it. That it be marked for
9 identification, pending additional information establishing its
10 reliability and its provenance. But otherwise, I would object to its
11 admission at this time for all purposes.
12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Gajic.
13 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I think that it will
14 help us if we briefly look at 1D574. I am aware of the fact that the
15 Prosecutor does not speak Serbian, and maybe that's the problem because
16 the document has not been translated yet. Can we now look at page 2,
17 please. And what we can see here on this list is the precise register
18 that was used and based on which court decision the entry was made. We
19 said that we used Milivoje Ivanisevic's book as the whole source. At the
20 moment we are not able to check all the court records and the registers
21 of death. We believe that the Prosecutor has much more at their
22 disposal, much more capacity to check these sources. So as these -- this
23 data is quoted in the book, we use that for our data in precisely the
24 same way.
25 THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]
Page 10135
1 THE INTERPRETER: Could Mr. Tolimir please be asked to repeat
2 what he is saying.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, you don't have the floor at the
4 moment. We listen very carefully to Mr. Gajic, but I have an additional
5 question to Mr. Gajic and then you will get the floor. Just a moment.
6 Mr. Gajic, you told us that you took all the information in this
7 list we have now on the screen, included in this book, and inserted them,
8 this information about the specific persons listed here, in your list; is
9 that the case?
10 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, we merged the
11 information cited in the book with the information from the lists of the
12 OTP. So we matched them up, we linked them. In the same way that the
13 OTP works when they match up their list with the register of the Army of
14 Bosnia and Herzegovina. We did the same thing. And we took just those
15 entries that are cited in the book and which overlap or match up, because
16 the investigator's dealing with this question, actually you will see that
17 there are many more names here than the names we put on our list. As
18 their basis, they took the list of names in the graveyards, in the
19 cemetery; they didn't use the Prosecutor's list because it's confidential
20 and it's accessible only to the parties in these proceedings.
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: That helps us very much. Mr. Gajic, I take it
22 that the information that -- that you have no additional information from
23 the specific files of the specific courts in the region. You took it
24 from this book; is that correct? Just to make it clear that everybody
25 understands your position.
Page 10136
1 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] We used only this book as our
2 source, yes.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.
4 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I think that solves
5 the question with respect to the provenance of the table itself that the
6 Defence is tendering, and I have no problem with it in that respect,
7 since the source of the information has been identified. I'm not sure
8 whether the book itself has been tendered. Has it been tendered?
9 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This was my understanding or it was just an
10 announcement that Mr. Tolimir will tender it.
11 MR. VANDERPUYE: Right.
12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: But I take it he is tendering this book. But
13 before we decide on that, I would like to know how many pages, which
14 pages? We see here page 156 and 157 on the screen, but you were
15 referring to page 2. How many pages does this document contain?
16 Perhaps we can get the information from the Registrar.
17 THE REGISTRAR: There are five pages in total. Thank you.
18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Five pages in e-court, uploaded by the Defence;
19 is that correct?
20 THE REGISTRAR: That's correct, Your Honours.
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I see you on your feet, Mr. Gajic.
22 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Yes, precisely, Mr. President. There
23 are five relevant pages from the book and that still has not been
24 tendered. We would like to tender this document now. This is 1D574.
25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.
Page 10137
1 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I'm still standing
2 only because it's fine for the book to come in, or the relevant pages of
3 the book to come in, I just wanted to clarify that Mr. Gajic's
4 representation as to the source of the information, that is, the public
5 records of death, upon which the book relies and in turn his spreadsheet
6 relies is included within those five pages. That is -- so if that's
7 included, then I have no objection. If it's not included, then I will
8 still ask for it to be marked for identification, pending the
9 identification of the source of that -- of that information.
10 JUDGE FLUEGGE: That was my understanding.
11 Mr. Gajic.
12 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, 1D574, that we are
13 looking at, consists of five pages from the book. 1D580 is the list
14 created by the Defence by matching up the data from this book and from
15 the Prosecutor's list. The list was made using the data that is
16 contained on these five pages. I think so far things are quite clear.
17 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I would agree.
18 MR. VANDERPUYE: I don't agree, if I may.
19 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.
20 MR. VANDERPUYE: What's missing, and it's probably just a
21 translation issue and also due to the fact that I can't read Cyrillic:
22 Does this exhibit, that is, the book, contain the source information for
23 the -- for the dates of death that are reported in the list? Does it say
24 it came from X record in X municipality or not? If it doesn't say that,
25 then I would ask that it just be marked for identification until that
Page 10138
1 information is identified. And if it does, then there's no problem.
2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I understand your request.
3 Could you clarify that, Mr. Gajic?
4 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, it's all clearly
5 stated in the book. Mr. Tolimir read the introductory paragraph earlier,
6 that the data found in this book was taken from official registers. Only
7 if we -- well, just if we look at this, if we clarify, the first entry
8 under 1:
9 "Huso Dzafic, son of Vehbija," [phoen] "1960, died on the
10 21st of May, 1992, Nova Kasaba, recorded in the Registry of Deaths on the
11 basis of a decision of the basic court in Banovici, RI 43/96, dated the
12 9th of December, 1996. Date of recording in the Registrar of deaths is
13 the 19th of December, 1996."
14 All the information provided in the table was taken from this
15 book, which clearly indicates its sources.
16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Thank you very much. I think this clarifies the
17 situation. The problem is, of course, that we are not all able to read
18 Cyrillic - not yet, I must add - and in that case I think we -- we admit
19 the list compiled by the Defence, this is 1D580, as an exhibit.
20 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honours, 65 ter document 1D580 shall be
21 assigned Exhibit D164. Thank you.
22 JUDGE FLUEGGE: And the document, that means the five pages of
23 the book, which is now on the screen, 1D574, will be marked for
24 identification, pending translation.
25 THE REGISTRAR: And shall be assigned Exhibit D165. Thank you,
Page 10139
1 Your Honours.
2 JUDGE FLUEGGE: That was a very severe and complicated
3 discussion, but we finished it. And I'm happy about that.
4 Mr. Tolimir, please carry on.
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. Since in
6 the expert report drafted by Mr. Brunborg it says that they then used
7 Defence records, TV records, Prosecution records; these are all public,
8 official documents, so I believe there should be no problem there. The
9 Defence, using these same sources, D165 and D164, found some
10 inconsistencies between those on the list at the Potocari Memorial
11 Centre, drafted by and so and so, and the list made by the Prosecutor and
12 the list provided by Mr. Ivanisevic that we are tendering.
13 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
14 Q. On the basis of looking at a number of registers of death, my
15 question is: What would be the cause of inconsistencies found between
16 the names engraved on the graves of those killed that are found at the
17 Potocari cemetery and those entered on the lists by the OTP? Thank you.
18 A. Thank you. As I said, I've never seen this list before. But
19 I -- it's possible that my co-author Ewa Tabeau has seen it. I think we
20 discussed it before -- last week, before I started my testimony, and she
21 may have said that they were not on the list of missing persons. So
22 before I can respond, we need to check whether these are really on our
23 list of missing persons.
24 On previous and similar lists and claims that these died on other
25 dates or for other causes not related to Srebrenica, then we have not
Page 10140
1 found them -- they were not included in our list of missing persons. So
2 we would need to check that. Thank you.
3 Q. Thank you. On page 27 of your report, you say that the
4 population in Srebrenica numbered 40.000. My question is: In your
5 investigation, did you come across any documents that would provide a
6 more precise number of the inhabitants in that area? Thank you.
7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This is page 26 in the Serbian
8 and 22 in English. Thank you. This is Exhibit P1776. Thank you.
9 THE WITNESS: Thank you. The sentence reads: "It is assumed that
10 about 40.000 people were in the town of Srebrenica before it fell." But
11 the exact size of this population is not known.
12 In previous testimonies, I refer to the number 42.000, which was
13 also an estimate made by, was it, humanitarian organisations, and I also
14 said that we have been looking and asking for lists of individuals who
15 were in the town of Srebrenica before it fell but we have not come across
16 any. We have asked repeated questions on that. Nobody knows the exact
17 number of people who were in the town of Srebrenica before it fell.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we look at D117 now, please.
19 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
20 Q. This is a document that the Prosecutor has. And this is a
21 document that is ERN 0092-6462. You probably had access to the document
22 as well. And the document states the exact number of the inhabitants in
23 Srebrenica and the neighbouring municipalities.
24 So my question to you is: Did you have the opportunity to look
25 at this overview that we can see, this breakdown that we can see on the
Page 10141
1 screen? Thank you.
2 A. Thank you. I have probably seen this before, but if you notice
3 at the top of the document it says: "Srebrenica, 11th of January, 1995."
4 That is really six months or seven months before the fall of Srebrenica,
5 so it is not really relevant to talk about the number of people who were
6 there in January, when Srebrenica fell in July. Moreover, I do not
7 really see the relevance of this since we do not have the names of all of
8 these. Then we could -- that would have been useful for our analysis to
9 have a list of names and date of birth of these people, but these are
10 all only summary figures.
11 Q. Thank you. I'm just asking if you use that in your work, and you
12 could just say, "Yes, I did" or "I did not." Or "we did" or "we did
13 not."
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Can we now look at D166 so that the
15 witness can look at it.
16 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
17 Q. I have to read this exhibit that we can see. I have to read it.
18 We don't have a translation. Actually we do have a translation, so I'm
19 not going to read it. But what the document says, and we can see that it
20 was signed by the president of the Presidency of Srebrenica municipality
21 Fahrudin Salihovic, the document was drafted on the
22 11th of January, 1994. The document is -- concerns the data of the local
23 population and the number of locals who have been displaced from their
24 homes in the municipality and the number of the population expelled from
25 the municipality. In the note it states:
Page 10142
1 "The requested data that we hereby provide for statistics should
2 not be shown to international organisations because we are basing our
3 calculations with them on a population figure of 45.000."
4 My question is this: Since you indicated that the data from
5 1995, and then we have data from 1994, would you say that the number of
6 the inhabitants grew so rapidly in the enclave or did it fall rapidly?
7 Are you able to tell us which one it is? Thank you.
8 A. Assuming that these are good estimates, this gives an estimate of
9 45.000 as of January 1994. The previous estimate was 40.000 for
10 January 1995. So a similar calculation shows that the population
11 declined by 5.000. But we don't -- I do not know the quality of the data
12 and how they were collected. Some of these figures were produced for
13 support reasons, therefore, so that the national community could make
14 estimate how much provisions, how much food, this population would need.
15 Q. Thank you. Thank you. I think that the president of the
16 municipality is the authorised body, because this is not information just
17 from anyone, and he does give the exact figures. And then he says how
18 much he has increased the number.
19 My question is: Did you ask for such and similar documents from
20 the B&H authorities since this document also comes from the authorities
21 in Srebrenica?
22 A. On a number of occasions we asked B&H authorities for lists of
23 people who were in Srebrenica before the fall, in July 1995. We did see
24 similar documents and heard estimates such as those you have mentioned,
25 but our approach was really to work on data on individuals. So for this
Page 10143
1 it was not so much help to us, such a document just stating some
2 aggregate figures. Thank you.
3 Q. Thank you. Earlier we looked at a document which states that in
4 January 1994 that there were 37.000 inhabitants. We also looked at a
5 document earlier, before this one, which states that there were
6 36.057 inhabitants. Can we conclude, then, that only, in just one year,
7 1.294 people left the enclave?
8 A. It's interesting to read the note at the bottom of this document,
9 where -- which you quoted also:
10 "The requested data that we hereby provide for statistics should
11 not be shown to international organisations because we are basing our
12 calculations with them on the population figure of 45.000."
13 So the mayor gave a total of 37.000 but in the dealings with
14 international [Realtime transcript read in error "national"]
15 organisations they used 45.000, probably to get more rations than for
16 just 37.000. So this indicates something about the quality of this data.
17 I think the data material is really too poor to say anything
18 about the decline of the population of Srebrenica before, especially
19 before July --
20 Q. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't understand you. They were not
21 furnished to whom? You said they were not furnished to national
22 organisations. Can you please tell us who do you mean?
23 A. It says, the note: "It should not be shown to international
24 organisations," in the note.
25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The witness said:
Page 10144
1 "... a mayor gave a total of 37.000 but in the dealings of
2 national" -- no, it was wrongly recorded. "International organisations"
3 it should read, on page 77, line 16.
4 There's a mistake, I think, in translation or in the recording.
5 It was referring to the international organisations like we can see in
6 the document.
7 Go ahead, please.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you. I would like to tender
9 this document and the previous document into evidence, if they haven't
10 been tendered already, and then I would like to look at P176 in e-court,
11 please.
12 JUDGE FLUEGGE: The document D166 is already an exhibit.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] 1776. 1776. Thank you.
14 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This is also a document -- I just -- you were
15 tendering a document and I just commented it is already an exhibit.
16 That's all.
17 Go ahead, please.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President.
19 MR. TOLIMIR: [Interpretation]
20 Q. On page 26, the sentence in the middle of the second paragraph,
21 in the English this is page 22, one paragraph but last, it states the
22 following, I quote the sentence:
23 "The local authorities and international humanitarian
24 organisations are said to have compiled lists of people in the enclave,
25 but we have not been able to locate such lists and we doubt their
Page 10145
1 existence."
2 This is what is stated in your report. My basis -- my question
3 to you is: Based on what did you express your doubt about the existence
4 of these lists which we actually have presented here and which we
5 obtained from the Prosecution? Thank you.
6 A. As I've said previously, we made numerous requests in meetings
7 with various local and national organisations and also NGOs for such
8 lists and nobody could provide us with any list. We also did not get any
9 affirmative answer on the question, Are there such lists -- or is there
10 such a list? So we concluded that there were no such lists, at least not
11 available then, and that such lists do not exist. They could have
12 existed, the exact figures that you quoted, that the mayor quoted, which
13 add up to 37.000, may indicate that there are such lists, but also the
14 counting, such numbers could also be arrived at not by adding up names in
15 a list, but just by more simple counting. Thank you.
16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Tolimir, for today we must come to an end.
17 Your indication for the time used for continuation of cross-examination
18 was one hour 30 minutes to two hours. You have used now approximately
19 one hour 35 minutes. How do you want to proceed?
20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. President. We are
21 going to take a number of questions that were not put here and that the
22 witness suggested we put to Ms. Ewa anyway, so we are going to do that
23 because she is also one of the signatories of the report.
24 I am just going to state the following: Even the United Nations
25 had this data, and I would just like to show the witness that document.
Page 10146
1 What I mean to say is the Prosecution had the document; we see that the
2 United Nations also had this document. Thank you.
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Vanderpuye.
4 MR. VANDERPUYE: Thank you, Mr. President. I do want to point
5 out that we do have some re-direct examination for Mr. -- Dr. Brunborg.
6 So to the extent that General Tolimir has not concluded his
7 cross-examination, which I understand he hasn't, we will work out a way
8 to make or to have Dr. Brunborg available for the continuation of that
9 cross-examination and for the re-direct examination. I think we don't
10 have a date yet in the schedule for that, but we will try to work that
11 out between us, the Defence and the Prosecution, so that -- and also
12 Dr. Brunborg with the Court's leave, so that we can have him available,
13 hopefully, to the Court sooner rather than later to complete his
14 testimony. And I think my understanding is that General Tolimir had
15 estimated initially six hours for the cross-examination of Dr. Brunborg,
16 which he hasn't quite reached yet. So that having been said, I think
17 that might be a good way forward.
18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I was told of the six hours indicated earlier,
19 there are only seven minutes left, but this is different to the
20 estimation for today.
21 I would like to put the following proposal to all present: We
22 could continue tomorrow. We are not sitting tomorrow, we are not
23 scheduled for tomorrow, but it is very unfortunate that this witness has
24 to come a third time to The Hague.
25 What is the position first of the witness and secondly of the
Page 10147
1 parties?
2 Dr. Brunborg, how is your availability?
3 THE WITNESS: If necessary, I would spend another night here. I
4 would prefer then to -- that the session were in the morning tomorrow, if
5 possible, so I could come home, go home at a reasonable time. Because if
6 it's in the afternoon, it may -- I may not even be back on Friday night.
7 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]
8 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Gajic.
9 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Your Honours, I've just consulted
10 with Mr. Tolimir. As far as the Defence is concerned, we have concluded
11 the cross-examination of Mr. Brunborg. So if there were any outstanding
12 issues or questions, we will put them to the witness who is on the list,
13 and that's Ms. Ewa Tabeau. Mr. Brunborg mentioned her several times
14 today. So as far as the Defence is concerned, this witness is free to
15 go, but we are prepared to come in tomorrow as well, if that's in the
16 interests of the Prosecution.
17 [Trial Chamber and Registrar confer]
18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: If I take it that there's no further
19 cross-examination, we are considering at the moment the possibility that
20 you -- if you don't have too much questions in re-examination, if it's
21 possible to have an extended sitting for ten more minutes and we could
22 resolve the whole problem, if that is enough, for your re-examination?
23 MR. VANDERPUYE: To be frank, Mr. President, I don't think it's
24 enough for the re-examination. I probably have more closer to half an
25 hour than to ten minutes.
Page 10148
1 The other thing is: To the extent that General Tolimir has
2 concluded his cross-examination as represented by Mr. Gajic, I do want to
3 inform the Court, and I think it may have been represented already at
4 the -- some time earlier in the proceedings, that there is the
5 possibility that we might -- we may not call Dr. Tabeau. And so if
6 General Tolimir has questions that he's reserved for Dr. Tabeau that he
7 wishes to put to this witness, I think it's probably the more prudent
8 course of action to put it to this witness rather than, if we decide --
9 the Prosecution decides not to call Dr. Tabeau, claim that he didn't have
10 the ability to put the question.
11 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Indeed, Mr. Vanderpuye, the Chamber has received
12 such indication by the Prosecution that Ms. Tabeau will not be called or
13 she will be withdrawn by the Prosecution on the list. I think we should
14 come to a final decision.
15 Mr. Gajic.
16 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, because of the
17 testimony of this witness and because he mentioned Ms. Tabeau as being
18 competent to answer certain questions that he cannot answer and since
19 Ewa Tabeau is going to testify based on Rule 92 ter, we believe it would
20 be in the interest of justice that Ms. Tabeau testify after all, since
21 she is on the witness list. I don't know if I understood correctly,
22 Mr. Vanderpuye will correct me if I'm wrong, she is here with the
23 Prosecutor's Office, so it's not a problem for her to testify at any
24 point necessary.
25 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I think we have now two options: One is to
Page 10149
1 resume tomorrow to finalise the examination of the witness. It seems to
2 be more in his interest to stay tomorrow morning. We can't resume at
3 9.00 because there must be so many organisation. Interpreters,
4 court recorder, the security; all that has to be organised. I think at
5 the earliest we could resume at, for instance, 11.00. But I'm not in the
6 position to decide that immediately. We have to check with
7 administration.
8 The other possibility is - and this is now -- we need your
9 position, Mr. Vanderpuye - to call the witness again, a third time, to
10 give either -- perhaps you should indicate earlier a final decision if
11 Witness Tabeau is -- will be called or not, and this has a certain impact
12 on the decision of Mr. Tolimir if he would put more questions to the
13 current witness. I think this is -- would be a wise decision. But I
14 would like to receive your comment on that.
15 MR. VANDERPUYE: Would you like me to broach that issue now or
16 would you like me to broach it with Mr. Gajic after the session and
17 inform the Court? I think in my own personal --
18 JUDGE FLUEGGE: We have to give Mr. Brunborg an indication if we
19 would need him tomorrow or not.
20 MR. VANDERPUYE: I think - I think - it is perhaps more
21 convenient to have the session tomorrow. However, I don't think that I'm
22 in a position at this time to make a definitive determination as to
23 whether or not the Prosecution will call Dr. Tabeau in light of the
24 questions put to Dr. Brunborg. Since I can't do that tonight, it seems
25 to me that the better course of action would be to have Dr. Brunborg come
Page 10150
1 back, hopefully not immediately so that it's exhausting for him, but
2 giving him some period of time to resume his normal activities back home
3 and then to come back.
4 Since General Tolimir has completed his cross-examination in any
5 event, there should be no prejudice whatsoever that iners to the Defence
6 as a result of delaying that portion of -- delaying the re-direct
7 examination, essentially. In fact, it gives him a little bit of time to
8 digest the transcript and figure out whether or not he has some other
9 questions he wants to pose as a result of it.
10 But I think given the -- I think, in that circumstance, it can be
11 organised that way, and it just requires a little bit of logistics,
12 co-ordination with Dr. Brunborg, I guess through Victim Witnesses Unit,
13 and Mr. Gajic to accommodate the schedule. But I don't think it's a
14 problem because it would be a short examination in any event, not more
15 than half an hour to an hour.
16 JUDGE FLUEGGE: Mr. Gajic.
17 MR. GAJIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, I would just like to
18 reflect upon one issue regarding the testimony of Ms. Tabeau. She is on
19 the witness list, and it's not whether the Prosecution wishes or does not
20 wish to call somebody as a witness. Right now we need a decision by the
21 Chamber. And if a request is made for Ms. Tabeau not to testify in this
22 case, then we will appeal that. And we believe that we will prejudice
23 certain things in that appeal and quote some of the words of
24 Mr. Brunborg.
25 As for the witness coming later, in a month or two or three, the
Page 10151
1 Defence has nothing against that.
2 [Trial Chamber confers]
3 JUDGE FLUEGGE: This makes the situation even more complicated.
4 And I think, under these circumstances, there's no way to sit tomorrow
5 because we would have so many administrative problems to make it possible
6 to sit tomorrow. We don't know if there are enough interpreters and
7 court staff are available. And in that case I think there will be the
8 problem of withdrawing Ms. Tabeau. And we have heard the position of the
9 Defence. The name Tabeau was indeed mentioned by Dr. Brunborg several
10 times. We would like to receive written submissions in this respect so
11 that we can deal with that properly and decide how to work on that.
12 I think we must adjourn, this witness unfinished.
13 I'm very sorry for that, Dr. Brunborg, but that happens
14 sometimes. We've done what we could to keep you here as much as
15 possible, to finish it, and to -- for your relief, but on the other hand,
16 we would be glad to see you again here in the courtroom to finish your
17 testimony.
18 Mr. Vanderpuye, I see you are still on your feet. Do you want to
19 raise something?
20 MR. VANDERPUYE: No, Mr. President, thank you.
21 JUDGE FLUEGGE: I'm glad for that. Thank you very much.
22 We adjourn and resume next week, Tuesday, I don't know in the
23 afternoon or in the morning. I think -- not Monday - we are not sitting
24 on Monday - Tuesday, in the morning, at 9.00 in this courtroom.
25 We adjourn. Thank you.
Page 10152
1 [The witness stands down]
2 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 7.13 p.m.,
3 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 22nd day
4 of February, 2011, at 9.00 a.m.
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