Wednesday, 1 February, 2006
Wednesday, 1 February, 2006
Prosecutors first sought in July 2005 to enter fresh evidence into their case against Milosevic, including the now infamous video allegedly showing Belgrade-linked paramilitaries murdering Muslim men from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.
In December, however, the judges noted that the new material and witnesses could only justify reopening the prosecution case if they hadn’t been available before the end of the original case and couldn’t have been obtained at that stage with reasonable effort. Much of the proposed evidence, they said, had not been shown to meet these conditions.
They added that of the remaining material, “none is of significance for the ultimate legal question of whether the accused is responsible for the crimes alleged in the indictments”.
Prosecutors subsequently abandoned their efforts to introduce a large amount of the material in question, including the Yugoslav army personnel files of high-ranking military officials, as well as new evidence of an alleged plan to ethnically cleanse large parts of Bosnia and of Belgrade’s alleged links with crimes there and in Kosovo.
But they sought leave to appeal the trial chamber’s decision insofar as it related to the so-called Scorpions video - named after the unit it apparently features - and materials intended to explain its providence and content.
In this week’s ruling, however, the trial judges reiterated that they were unconvinced that the issue would significantly affect the outcome of the trial.
While this latest development means that prosecutors will not be able to place the issue before the appeals chamber at this stage, the trial chamber noted that they might choose to include it as part of a final appeal once the initial trial proceedings against Milosevic are wrapped up.
