If the trial chamber allows the prosecution to admit this new evidence, it could amount to the “smoking gun” that analysts believe was missing from the evidence against the former Yugoslav president, who faces more than 60 war crimes charges across three separate indictments.
However, this would depend on the trial chamber granting a request to introduce the tape as evidence – during the rebuttal period that will follow the defence phase of the trial or by reopening the prosecution case – and this request has not yet been made by the prosecution.
Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice told the judges this week that his team was “working energetically” to complete such an application.
The content of the tape – in which dark-clad soldiers are seen to take six beaten-looking young men from the back of a lorry and execute them – sent shockwaves across the region when it was first shown in courtroom number one on June 1. Since then, the Serb authorities have arrested several men alleged to have been involved with the Scorpions paramilitary group who have been blamed for the deaths.
While Milosevic does not dispute that crimes are committed on the tape, he argues that there is no evidence linking the killings – which took place outside the town of Trnovo – to Srebrenica, which lies some 150 kilometres away. He also argues that the Scorpions unit pictured in the tape had no links to any official Serbian military structures at the time of the massacre.
Milosevic told the court that the Scorpions unit had been set up in the early Nineties to provide security for the oil industry in the then Republic of Serb Krajina, the Serb-held entity in Croatia. This appeared to be an apparent attempt to distance himself from their subsequent actions in Bosnia.
During his re-examination by the defendant, General Obrad Stevanovic - the former assistant interior minister whose testimony has lasted a record five weeks at The Hague - told the court that the Scorpions unit had come under the command of the Belgrade authorities, in a “reserve capacity”, but only long after the end of the war in Bosnia.
“The earliest point that [the Scorpions] could have been [subordinated to the Serbian interior ministry] would have been after the end of the war in Krajina, after mid 1996 or perhaps slightly earlier [that year],” said the witness.
The killings depicted on the tape are alleged to have happened shortly after Bosnian Serb forces overran the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. Other sections of the video bear date stamps which place the footage as taking place just before this time.
However, the defendant insists that Nice has no evidence to prove that the victims came from the fallen enclave, or that the tape is authentic and has not been doctored in any way.
In response, Nice said, “Detailed information [on the tape] will come in the form of a witness statement.”
He added that the proposed witness was “a person who filmed a large part of the footage and who is able to confirm that the tape contains footage of people who were brought from Srebrenica for killing”.
When asked by Judge Iain Bonomy of Scotland what evidence Nice had linking the victims to Srebrenica, Nice repeated that the proposed new witness would deal with this matter directly – if the trial chamber chooses to allow the new evidence to be submitted.
Milosevic described the tape as “highly suspicious” and asked the prosecutor to explain why a section of the soundtrack appeared to have been scrambled or deleted – a charge denied by Nice.
The defendant appeared to be in a bullish frame of mind in court this week, earning numerous reprimands from the bench for using leading questions and impugning the prosecutor. “I am well-used to such remarks from the accused but he seems to be exceeding himself today,” said Nice.
The situation came to a head on June 8, when Judge Robinson placed court-appointed counsel Gillian Higgins on standby to take over the defence case should the former Yugoslav president step out of line again.
The court is due to reconvene on June 15, when Stevanovic will continue his marathon stint in the witness chair. His credibility was further undermined this week following a series of vague answers to questions about the content of a notebook he kept throughout the war.
Judge Bonomy seemed exasperated with the often rambling and unclear answers given by Stevanovic, and asked him for clarification. When the witness gave another unclear reply ending in “I’m not sure”, the judge replied, “Your last three words say it all”.
Alison Freebairn is an IWPR editor in The Hague.
