Briefly Noted

Friday, 18 November, 2005

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IWPR

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

On April 19 and 20, 68-year-old Kosta Bulatovic, a Kosovo Serb leader, had refused repeatedly to answer questions from prosecutor Geoffrey Nice, while Milosevic was too ill to be present in court.

The trial chamber had insisted that he should answer questions about his evidence assisted by the court-appointed defence lawyer Steven Kay QC. When Bulatovic refused for the second day, the court charged him with contempt.

In the hearings held on May 6, Bulatovic’s own lawyer Stephane Bourgon told the court that his client had not been motivated by a desire to deliberately obstruct the course of justice.

He explained that Bulatovic was concerned about being misinterpreted if he testified while Milosevic was away.

But the court found that Bulatovic had deliberately refused to comply with an order of the trial chamber and it was no excuse for a witness to refuse to answer questions by claiming that he disagreed “with a procedural decision”.

It further said that the witness had both “defied the authority of the court”, and “created the risk that the [trial chamber’s] authority would be undermined and the administration of justice… brought into disrepute.”

In deciding on a sentence, the tribunal took into account Bulatovic’s age and serious health problems. He was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for two years.

He had faced a possible seven-year prison term or a fine of up to 100,000 euro or both.

***

Hague tribunal judges this week convened a hearing to discuss the possibility of referring the cases of three men charged with war crimes in and around the Bosnian town of Foca to local courts in the Balkans.

Two of the men in question, Mitar Rasevic and Savo Todovic, are charged in connection with their allegedly senior roles in the notorious KP Dom prison, where inmates had to do forced labour and were beaten and murdered.

The third accused, Gojko Jankovic, is charged separately with the rape and torture of non-Serb women in Foca, where prosecutors say he was a sub-commander of the military police and a key paramilitary leader.

Prosecutors have requested that the three men be tried in Bosnia's newly-established war crimes court, as part of plans to complete all trials at the Hague tribunal by the end of 2008.

But lawyers representing the accused have argued against that option.

Vladimir Domazet and Aleksander Lazarevic, representing Rasevic and Todovic respectively, have said that their clients' first wish is to stand trial in The Hague.

In written submissions in recent weeks, they argued that the charges against their clients are too serious for the cases to be suitable for referral to a local court in the Balkans.

And if the cases must be transferred, they argue, a better option would be a trial in Belgrade.

At the May 12 hearing this week to discuss the cases, the president of Serbia's national council for cooperation with the Hague tribunal, Rasim Lajic, argued that Todovic is eligible for a Belgrade trial, since he holds Serbian nationality.

Presiding judge Alphons Orie said that the chamber would take into account the fact that Todovic only acquired Serbian citizenship within the last two or three weeks.

Domazet argued that Rasevic is also eligible to be tried in Belgrade on the grounds that he surrendered in Serbia and Montenegro.

Lazarevic used the opportunity to express concern that proceedings in Bosnia and Hercegovina would be beset with witness problems. A lack of the "safe passage" guarantee that is available to witnesses in The Hague, Lazarevic said, means many potential Serbian and Bosnian Serb witnesses would fear arrest if they travelled to Sarajevo to testify.

In their written submissions, Lazarevic and Domazet have also expressed concern about whether their clients could continue to be represented by the same defence teams before the Bosnian court.

Lazarevic also used this week's hearing to argue that Jankovic, who he also represents, would not receive a fair trial in Sarajevo. He mentioned, in particular, "inappropriate" comments made about Jankovic in a recent news bulletin on Bosnian television and in a television interview with a spokesperson for the Sarajevo court.

Lajic said the government of Serbia and Montenegro is currently looking into the question of whether Jankovic might qualify as a citizen of that country.

Prosecutors, for their part, used the hearing to insist that the Bosnian state court is well equipped to deal with all three cases fairly and expeditiously.

Prosecutor Anne Somers said regulations allowing facts established in The Hague to be introduced directly into proceedings in the Sarajevo court would be particularly helpful.

They also argue, as a matter of general principle, that it is better for cases to be referred to the country where the crimes in question are alleged to have been committed so that victims can see justice being done.

Representatives of Bosnia and Hercegovina also spoke at the hearing via a video link. They assured judges that if the cases were referred to Sarajevo, the rights of the accused would be respected fully.

***

Former Bosnian Serb army soldier Milorad Trbic has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder as a crime against humanity for his alleged role in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995.

Prosecutors allege that at the time of the massacre, Trbic was assistant to the Bosnian Serb army's Zvornik Brigade security chief Drago Nikolic, who pleaded not guilty last month to charges including genocide in connection with the same events.

In his role as Nikolic's assistant, Trbic is said to have helped organise the detention and transportation of Muslim prisoners. He is also accused of murdering a number of the detainees himself.

According to the indictment against him, Trbic later helped organise an effort to re-bury the bodies in graves away from the original sites of execution in an attempt to hide what had occurred.

At the May 11 plea hearing, Trbic told judges he had been living and working in the United States up until his transfer to The Hague.

He said he had no complaints with conditions in the UN detention unit, which he described as "quite satisfactory". Asked by Judge Jean Claude Antonetti if he was happy with the available medical facilities, the accused reported, "My health is not very good but I'm being treated on a daily basis."

Towards the end of the hearing, prosecutors confirmed that they are still working on a motion to join the cases of a number of Srebrenica indictees who have arrived in The Hague in recent weeks.

Trbic's next appearance in court will likely be at a status conference in early September to discuss the progress of his case.

***

Ivica Rajic, a wartime commander of Croatian Defence Council forces in central Bosnia currently awaiting trial in The Hague for war crimes, has taken advantage of an appearance in court to protest about the performance of his defence counsel.

Speaking at a status conference to discuss his case on May 10, Rajic said he and his lawyer Zeljko Olujic were in disagreement over details of how the trial should be handled, and complained that Olujic was not following his exact instructions.

Olujic was not present at the hearing, with the accused represented instead by co-counsel Doris Kosta.

Judge Liu Daqun urged Rajic to settle the problem as soon as possible and expressed a hope that the case could get underway at the end of this year, or early next year.

Rajic is charged with ten counts of violations of the laws or customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva conventions in connection with crimes including theft, beatings, sexual assaults and murders allegedly committed by forces under his command in late 1993.