In a surprising turn of events, the defence team for Srebrenica wartime commander Naser Oric threatened to call off their case altogether, just three days before it was due to begin.
The defence have requested 73 witnesses to support their case, but the trial chamber, led by Presiding Judge Carmel Agius of Malta, said at a July 1 pre-defence conference that was “too many”, and indicated he would allow only a fraction of that number to be called to testify in court. He also said that the defence could not expect 120 trial days as they had requested.
The prosecution case lasted for full eight months, and during that time they brought to court 50 witnesses.
“If we are allowed only 25 per cent of the time that was allocated to the prosecutors, then this will be a sham, a mockery trial!” said Oric’s defence counsel John Jones.
He expressed his concern that the judges’ decision to drastically cut the number of defence witnesses is the result of the pressure put on the tribunal to comply with the court’s completion strategy, which calls for all the trials to wind down by 2008.
In a letter that the tribunal’s president Theodor Meron sent to the UN Security Council on January 18 this year, he indicated the tribunal’s intention to finish “the Oric case before the end of November 2005”.
Jones said that judges knew about this letter months ago and “could have cut the amount of time allocated to the prosecutors to 4-5 months”, so that the defence would have enough time to present their case. This way, he added, “the completion strategy takes precedence over the fairness of the trial”.
But this comment seemed to have enraged Judge Agius, who struggled to control his voice as he told Jones that he “didn’t expect to hear such words in a public hearing”.
“It doesn’t do you any good, Mr. Jones, to cast a shadow on the integrity of this tribunal!” he exclaimed.
But Jones reminded him these were the judges’ own remarks recently put forward as an argument to explain why the defence case had to be shortened.
Later on, Judge Agius appeared to have calmed down and indicated that “the judges have heard enough evidence already from the prosecution witnesses on many issues related to the indictment, which go to your client’s favour” – and then went on to enumerate the issues that in his mind the defence doesn’t need to address anymore.
During the break, a lawyer with a long history of engagement with the UN court, who was present in the public gallery, said he had “never heard a judge telling the defence so bluntly that the prosecution case is weak, that they actually don’t need to bring their own witnesses to challenge it”.
Oric, 37, has been charged on the basis of command responsibility for the crimes allegedly committed by the troops under his command in 1992 and 1993.
He was originally accused of six charges, including plunder, looting and wanton destruction of Serb property in the villages around Srebrenica, as well as with murder and abuse of Serb prisoners held in the Srebrenica prison in that period.
But on June 8 this year, the judges unanimously acquitted him of two out of six charges, namely those of plunder of public or private property.
The pre-defence conference was still ongoing at the time IWPR went to press.
