1235 THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL CASE NO. IT-94-1-T FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
IN THE TRIAL CHAMBER Monday, 20th May 1996
(10.00 a.m.)
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Tieger, would you like to continue with your witness, please?
MR. TIEGER: Yes, your Honour, thank you. MR. MUHAREM NEZIREVIC, recalled.
Examined by MR. TIEGER, continued.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Good morning. Mr. Nezirevic, you are under oath. You understand you are still under oath, do you not? THE WITNESS [In translation]: Yes.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Tieger, you may continue.
MR. TIEGER: Thank you, your Honour. (To the witness): Good morning, Mr. Nezirevic.
A. Good morning.
Q. Just before the adjournment yesterday, you were discussing the takeover of the transmitter at Lisina. Following the takeover of that transmitter, was there a change in the television broadcast which people at Prijedor could receive?
A. Yes.
Q. What channel and from what area were people no longer able to receive television transmissions?
A. The most important thing is that the population of Prijedor and Banja 1236 Luka had to watch
on channel 2 of Sarajevo television what was sent from his Lisina transmitter, that is, on channel 2 they could only watch the news of the Belgrade television.
Q. Previously what programmes had been available on Channel 2 through Sarajevo television?
A. On Channel 2 Sarajevo television alternately take over the news of television Belgrade and television Zagreb and a multi-ethnic programme called "Yutel".
Q. Was Yutel managed by people of different nationalities?
A. Yes.
Q. Serbs, Muslims, Croats?
A. Yes.
Q. What kind of attitude did Yutel television take toward the war in Croatia, for example?
A. Yutel was trying to contribute to peace and togetherness of the former Yugoslavia in all
the ways possible.
Q. Sometime after the takeover of the transmitter Yutel was no longer available; is that right
A. Yes, in the beginning we could see it now and then, and after a while it stopped completely, Yutel stopped completely.
Q. You indicated that after that point only Belgrade TV was available on that channel. What kind of broadcasts came from Belgrade?
A. I have to say that one could also watch Sarajevo television on 1237 Channel 1. I am referring now to Channel 2 of Sarajevo television which regularly transmitted Belgrade prime time news, and on that channel they commenced very, very harsh propaganda directed against all other peoples of Yugoslavia.
Q. Did you see extremist national leaders on Belgrade TV?
A. Yes, I saw Seselj, Arkan.
Q. For example, what was Seselj depicted doing on some of those broadcasts?
A. Seselj attended several rallies. If I remember well, it was a rally in Vojvodina which is a region in Serbia and he spoke openly about what greater Serbia should look like. He listed the names of towns to belong there. He spoke about the threat to the Serb people, and other, the whole Serb people should live in one country. I saw him at a parade, at a review, where he attended a military parade.
Q. Did he participate in some way in that military parade either by meeting with officials or reviewing the troops?
A. Yes, he did meet them and, as far as I remember, he also met with Mrs. Bijeljina Plavsic.
Q. With regard to his meeting with the troops, first of all, are we talking about the JNA?
A. Yes, they looked like JNA soldiers.
Q. How did they respond to Seselj's presence?
A. Quite normally, as if he was a high ranking politician.
Q. Did they salute him?
A. Yes. 1238
Q. You mentioned you also saw Arkan on TV with Mrs. Plavsic, I believe you said?
A. Yes.
Q. What were the two of them doing together?
A. They were evidently very close -- "close" is perhaps not a good expression, but they seemed to have a friendly relationship.
Q. What was depicted on the footage you saw that indicated they had a friendly relationship?
A. As far as I can remember, I saw them greet each other and hug each other
Q. During this time did you also have an opportunity to read periodicals and magazines from Belgrade?
A. Yes.
Q. What themes appeared in those magazines or periodicals?
A. More often than not what I found in those papers were supplements from the modern and more remote history of Serbia, mention of the battle on Kosovo, Dusan's empire as a state, a threat to the Serbs, criticisms for the falsified history about the Serbs, and very disagreeable, very unpleasant critique of the Croats, Slovenians, Muslims, Albanians.
Q. Did such promotion and dissemination of such themes appear to have an effect on relations between the national groups within Prijedor?
A. Yes.
Q. What effect did it begin to have?
A. Slowly people began to see, to look for, friends among their own 1239 ethnic group, that is, mistrust began to be created. This was politics; people began to support that kind of state of affairs, and others criticised that. But people who were good friends until that time began to mistrust one another.
Q. Did people begin to talk about each other or even report each other to authorities?
A. I do not know what period of time you have in mind before the takeover of power in Prijedor or after that, but after the takeover of power there were instances of that kind.
Q. When we get to that point I will ask you specifically about that. Did the Serbian people within Prijedor begin to openly advocate the same views which were being espoused
from Belgrade TV and through Belgrade media?
A. No, not so openly but there were some groups which did it openly.
Q. Yesterday you also spoke about the difficulties which were occurring within the local assembly of Prijedor between the SDS and the SDA?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you have an opportunity to observe the last meeting that was held at the local
assembly prior to the takeover?
A. Yes.
Q. Was that a co-operative or harmonious meeting?
A. No.
Q. What was the main point of contention at that meeting?
A. The main points of contention were the political order, political 1240 system, of Bosnia-Herzegovina, whether Bosnia-Herzegovina should remain in Yugoslavia, the
army and the manager, the head of the public auditing service.
Q. What position did SDS politicians take with respect to Prijedor's relationship with Yugoslavia or Bosnia-Herzegovina?
A. Well, the position that was repeated many times before that, that the Serbs wanted to remain with their mother country Serbia, and to remain part of Yugoslavia even if rump -- that expression, that term "rump" was used very often.
Q. Did SDS politicians publicly proclaim support for greater Serbia?
A. They manifested open support to remaining linked to the mother country, Serbia, but they did not refer to it as greater Serbia; often they said it was Yugoslavia, even if "rump".
Q. Did you hear them refer to greater Serbia in private conversations or discussions?
A. Yes, often times they had their private debates and they would forget themselves and say, "We want it to remain a part of Serbia".
Q. Had the SDS leadership indicated what it believed to be greater Serbia or Serbian land?
A. SDS leadership kept pointing out what one could hear from Belgrade, all Serbs in one
state, and I heard Mr. Karadzic saying that all the areas with at least five per cent of the Serb population were to be considered as Serb territory.
Q. How did that last meeting of the assembly end? 1241
A. It ended like many times before, very simply representatives of SDS proposed to
withdraw, to go to their MP club, and that after a while they would notify about their decision and it lasted, well, perhaps more than an hour, and then they only said that they did not want to go on because not all matters had been cleared and that on some other occasion at some other session they would try to clarify it. So that that particular session was discontinued without a result.
Q. Is that the manner in which previous sessions had ended and were unable to achieve any kind of concrete results?
A. Very often. It was almost a practice in the work of the assembly of the Prijedor municipality. There were almost always some excuses found why a session could not
end, could not adjourn, in a normal way.
Q. Excuse was found by whom or by which party?
A. SDS.
Q. During the period of time before the takeover, was there a discussion or discussions about separating Prijedor or dividing it?
A. Yes.
Q. Who proposed that Prijedor be divided?
A. SDS.
Q. How did they propose to divide Prijedor?
A. They proposed to divide it according to what they had found in Cadaster registers, and they announced that 70 per cent of Prijedor territory belonged to Serbs, and they even published a map of their 1242 division in Prijedor, that is, in Prijedor municipality.
Q. This was a map of the proposed division of Prijedor for Serbs in one part and Muslims in another?
A. Yes.
Q. What part of Prijedor was allocated to the Muslim community?
A. The Muslim community would get the outskirts of the town where more Muslims lived, such as old towns, Stari Grad, Rizvanovici, Kozarac, etc., and the central part the town of Prijedor itself, all the institutions and almost all industries would go to the Serbs.
Q. How did the Muslim community respond to the proposal by the SDS that Prijedor be divided so that the Serbs received the industry or most of the industry and most of the institutions?
A. Well, they responded diversely, of course. They tried to prevent it in a way, and even the SDA President, Mirza Mujadzic, suggested in a public broadcast that the areas of Prijedor, Sanski Most, Bosanski Novi and Kljuc remain a neutral zone, a zone of peace, that would not belong either to the Serb or to the Muslim entity.
Q. Did the national groups in Prijedor live in such a way that a division in Prijedor could be achieved simply by drawing an arbitrary or theoretical line through the opstina?
A. No.
Q. What would be the result of any proposal to have Muslims in one area and Serbs in another?
A. Terrible effect would ensue because we lived together, we lived in the same houses, we married, we took wives or husbands from other 1243 ethnic groups, we had children, we were friends and would be the same as to divide one body, one soul.
Q. Was there also discussion about establishing a separate Police Force?
A. Yes.
Q. Did that discussion involve Serbian officials from outside the opstina?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recall any particular Serbian official from outside Prijedor who came in to participate in the discussions about the possibility of a separate Police Force?
A. Yes, I remember it well.
Q. Who was that?
A. It was Mr. Stojan Zupljanin, chief of the regional district of Banja Luka in charge of security.
Q. Do the decisions by the Prijedor police have to go through the CSB or the security office in Banja Luka?
A. I do not know their organisation, but I assume that the main centre was Sarajevo. However, I am not sure if Prijedor had to be under the Banja Luka patronage.
Q. When Mr. Zupljanin came over from Banja Luka, did he come with the apparent authority to resolve the issue of separate police on behalf of the Serbs?
A. I assume he did have such authority which normally I did not see, but as everybody received him, accepted him and accepted help from him, it is natural to assume that he 1244 did have the authority to do it.
Q. Who had proposed separate police departments or Police Forces?
A. I do not know exactly who was the person who had proposed it, but about a month or two before the takeover of power there was plenty of discussion in the police station, that is, Prijedor SUP, about this and I know it well that they held joint meeting altogether in the police station at SUP and that they decided to go on as one, as joint Police Force.
Q. Who announced that decision?
A. It was announced on the radio and in the paper.
Q. Who made the decision publicly on behalf of the Serbs?
A. On behalf of the Serbs, I do not know who decided that, that is, to keep the joint police before the arrival of Mr. Zupljanin, but the public was told that it had been agreed within the Prijedor SUP to keep the joint Police Force.
Q. Were they told that after Mr. Zupljanin came from Banja Luka?
A. Before Mr. Zupljanin, but when Mr. Zupljanin came it was repeated again.
Q. You mentioned yesterday the plebiscite which was held in November 1991. Was that plebiscite regarded by local SDS officials as an important event?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the reason for that, what was the plebiscite's importance to local SDS officials?
A. As far as I know, at the time Yugoslavia as a state was already 1245 facing imminent columns, Slovenia, Croatia. The foundations of the former Yugoslavia were already shattered and now there remained the problem of Bosnia. SDS wanted to ensure the support of the people to join the mother country Serbia, that is, to remain in the so-called rump Yugoslavia.
Q. Were the results of the plebiscite cited or focused on by Serbian officials when separate institutions by Serbs were later created?
A. Yes.
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, I would like to bring you to the period of time immediately before the takeover of Prijedor. First of all, I would like to ask you about the extent of military presence in Prijedor at that time. Were you aware of military forces in Prijedor?
A. Yes, and that was a very important fact, this military presence at Prijedor. I knew that in Prijedor at the airfield at Urije there was a unit that had been located there -- we called it the units from Pancevo of the JNA, a unit of the JNA -- and we heard that a missile unit was located at Kozara. The war in Croatia, in Pakrac and Lipik, and almost all the people who were armed then who went to that war, they would be coming back home bringing arms with them. The atmosphere in the town was very bad, so that we felt that we were under some kind of silent occupation.
Q. What was the ethnic composition of those troops?
A. I know that a very small number of Muslims and Croats had accepted the call for mobilization and to go to war to Pakrac and Lipik. So we can conclude from that, as far as I know the people from Prijedor 1246 and the situation there, that a very high percentage, an enormous percentage -- I could not tell you the exact percentage -- that was practically a Serb army.
Q. When you said that "we felt we were under some kind of silent occupation", who did you mean by "we"?
A. Well, of course, I mean the Bosniaks and the Croats and the other people who are not Serb.
Q. Does "Bosniaks" refer to the Muslim community?
A. Yes.
Q. You mentioned the Pancevo unit that Urije airport, what kind of unit was this?
A. I am not really an expert of military things, but I could see that was a tank unit. I know what a tank is. I was going through a street after they had arrived at Urije and on a tarmac road you could still see damage that had been made after the mechanized part of the tanks passed, these mechanized units, and the mud; everything that a normal person, an average person, who is not a soldier could notice to know what things were going on.
Q. You also mentioned that soldiers who returned from the war in Croatia retained their weapons and were in the town. What was the nature of their behaviour when they got to town?
A. Very arrogant, very arrogant. I felt in the town an almost military atmosphere. They would be coming back home for a rest and then go back there in certain intervals. They would shoot after each goal at a match. They would wound people, civilians, by chance. Even in the 1247 part where I lived, there was a primary school, a child had been injured there and a man who was standing at his balcony, they used machine guns to shoot out of the windows. They were showing off the force.
Q. In addition to the JNA troops in the locations you mentioned and returned Reservists, were other Serbs in opstina Prijedor armed?
A. No.
Q. Do you know whether or not there was any effort to arm Serb civilians?
A. I know, concretely.
Q. Did you observe such an effort?
A. Yes, yes.
Q. Was that in your neighbourhood?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you see?
A. My colleague was sitting at my place on the 6th or 7th April 1992, we were expecting the news about the recognition of Bosnia as a state. He came back. I was looking through the window of my flat. I saw a truck full of arms. I saw people who would come and take those arms, and I very concretely saw Dragan Kaurin, my neighbour, who took an automatic weapon and put it under his coat.
Q. What national group did your neighbour belong to?
A. He was a Serb.
Q. What national group did the others who came to take arms from the truck belong to? 1248
A. They were Serb.
Q. Were other Muslims in your neighbourhood also aware of the distribution of arms to Serb civilians?
A. Yes. They were observing that.
Q. What impact did that have on the Muslims in your neighbourhood?
A. A very terrible impact; fear, helplessness, completely lost.
Q. Around this time did you begin hearing the use of offensive terms regarding Muslims used in public and in the media?
A. At that time, not in the local media, I could not hear it that often, but I could hear and read it in other media where we, the Muslims, were always called "Turks".
Q. What did that term connote when it was used in the media?
A. It is very easy to conclude if you take all the time into account, the constant syndrome that we, Muslims, have, the syndrome of Turks, they were constantly repeating about the Kosovo battle, the Czar Dusan and the Prince Lazer and carrying around about symbols of Prince Lazer, and all the preparations for the 600th anniversary of the Serb battle, and the Turks are presented as the people who kill; and if we were called the "Turks", it is not very difficult to conclude what they mean.
Q. You mentioned the presence of the army in Prijedor. Who was the Commander or Commanders of the army units in Prijedor?
A. I know that Mr. Radmilo Zeljaja and Mr. Radmilo Arsic were that. Those were two persons that participated in the public life and I cannot tell you who was the real Commander. 1249
Q. Did either one of them have a connection to any of the local political parties?
A. Yes, one could say that people like Mr. Radmilo Zeljaja were more close to the SDS party; whereas Mr. Arsic would more often come to the meeting of the assembly of the municipality.
Q. Would Arsic speak at the meetings of the municipality?
A. I cannot recall that because I was not a member. You could ask somebody else, but I can suppose that he did take part.
Q. Did he also associate with members of the SDS?
A. As far as I know, maybe he could, but Radmilo Zeljaja did it more than he did.
Q. You have mentioned the takeover of Prijedor several times. Do you remember the date of that event?
A. 30th April 1992, it was a Thursday.
Q. About what time of the day did you first discover that the takeover had taken place?
A. On that day at 6.10.
Q. What was it that you saw or heard that alerted you to the fact that something had happened?
A. Somebody phoned me from the radio, phoned me at home, telling me that not to ask any questions and to come to the studio. I passed through the town. I saw machine gun nests at various points in front of the public auditing office building in front of the bank, in front of the museum, in front of the town hall and in front of the police station, there were armed soldiers, also people with 1250 snipers. There was a Serbian flag on the town hall. In front of the studio, there were very many soldiers and in the studio there were at least 30 to 40 soldiers.
Q. What nationality were these soldiers?
A. Serb nationality.
Q. Were they JNA soldiers?
A. They were dressed in various ways. People wearing military uniforms with or without a helmet, camouflage uniforms. They had ranks, some had insignia over their pockets, and they wore armed bands of different colours.
Q. Was any SDS leader present in the studio when you arrived?
A. Yes, Milomir Stakic, who in normal times before the takeover used to be the Vice Chairman of the Municipal Assembly, but before the takeover when the Serb Assembly separated and said they would not continue working together and formed their own Serb municipality, he had been appointed Chairman of the Serb municipality of Prijedor, Mayor of the Serb municipality of Prijedor.
Q. Did Mr. Stakic tell you or indicate to you what had happened?
A. He told me we took over the power in Prijedor and this should be announced.
Q. Was Mr. Stakic announced on the radio?
A. Yes.
Q. With what title?
A. Yes.
Q. I am sorry, what title were you or the announcer told to give for Mr. 1251 Stakic?
A. "The Chairman or the Mayor of the Serb municipality of Prijedor, Mr. Milomir Stakic".
Q. Did Mr. Stakic explain on the radio what had happened and ---
A. Yes.
Q. -- and what the SDS intended to do with Prijedor thereafter?
A. Yes.
Q. What did he explain?
A. He said that, among other things, the Serbs could not tolerate any more such atmosphere without work and such discord, so they decided to take the power in their hands. Upon the question, "What would happen to Muslims?" he answered, "They do not interest us. Their territories, those territories that belong to Muslims and the municipality of Prijedor can be organised and managed in the way they decide. We are only interested in our areas".
Q. At that point had the Serb military forces taken control of all the institutions in Prijedor?
A. All the institutions from police, the town hall, industrial plants, radio, communications, the bakery, the medical centre, the bank, the public auditing office, traffic -- everything of vital importance for the life in the municipality of Prijedor.
Q. In addition to the soldiers you mentioned earlier, did you see heavy equipment or heavy arms in Prijedor that day?
A. Yes.
Q. At what time? 1252
A. It was on 2nd May. We were watching a tank unit that was passing through the street Sava Kovacevic, and then they continued through the JNA street across the bridge on the Sana towards Sanski Most, and then we heard that it had been located in Lusci.
Q. Did you see any heavy artillery?
A. Yes, tanks with canons. I cannot tell you anything about calibres or the names of these weapons, but there were tanks and canons. The whole part of town was resounding while they were passing through it. It was a very, very long column.
Q. During the days following the takeover did Muslim leaders attempt to speak on the radio?
A. Yes.
Q. Who came to the radio station and tried to speak?
A. Mr. Becir Medunjanin and Ilijas Memic from Kozarac came.
Q. What was it they wanted to say?
A. They wanted to go into the studio and broadcast to the public saying that from Kozarac no danger was coming, that they would even put somebody to guard in front of the orthodox church in Kozarac so that somebody would not do anything inappropriate, but they were not allowed to do so.
Q. Who stopped Mr. Medunjanin and Mr. Memic from speaking?
A. They were stopped by two or three armed soldiers with automatic weapons. They told them to go to Mr. Cadja at the police station and in case he allowed them, they could do it.
Q. Did Mr. Medunjanin and Mr. Memic indicate what the nature of their 1253 message was?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you try to get them to be allowed to speak?
A. Yes.
Q. Were they ultimately permitted to speak on the radio and explain that Kozarac was under no threat?
A. No, no. Again in the same way when they came back from Cadja, they said that Cadja had told them he had nothing to do with it, and once again I took them to the studio and then the soldiers once again prevented them to go in with automatic weapons and I said I will be going with them.
Q. Were SDS leaders permitted to speak on the radio?
A. Yes.
Q. Did they have any access to the radio station that they desired?
A. Always.
Q. Did one Muslim leader get an opportunity to speak on the radio after the takeover?
A. Yes.
Q. Who was that?
A. That was Mirza Mujadzic.
Q. What did he say?
A. He called through the phone so he was not in the studio, he telephoned, and he said that he considered that to be a military coup and he was trying to explain that the previous day somebody killed, the killing of a policeman and that that was not the result of the 1254 Muslim attack, but that the Serb themselves had killed that policeman in order to create an incident.
Then Milorad Kovacevic called, the chairman of the Executive Council of the Serb Assembly. He threatened that he would come and kill everybody, why were we allowing that person to broadcast and that he was going to rape our female presenter.
Q. That was Mr. Kovacevic's response to the fact that Mr. Mujadzic from the SDA had been permitted to be heard on the radio?
A. Yes.
Q. You had mentioned yesterday that you made unsuccessful efforts to moderate the tone of the coverage about the war in Croatia?
A. Yes.
Q. As time went on and those efforts continued to be unsuccessful, did you become increasingly marginalised within Radio Prijedor?
A. Completely.
Q. Were you the only Muslim on the editorial board?
A. Yes.
Q. After the takeover did you resign from Radio Prijedor?
A. Yes, after a couple of days.
Q. You had mentioned the nature of the coverage which followed the war in Croatia. What was the nature of the coverage of events from Radio Prijedor and Kozarski Vjesnik after the takeover?
A. For the first two weeks it was almost as normal, slightly attenuated. They were even, you could even hear Muslim songs up until 20th May, up until the incident at Hambarine on 22nd May 1992, and then after 1255 that everything became open, and then open propaganda started against everything Muslim and Croat.
Q. What kind of propaganda? Can you give us some examples?
A. Yes, I can. To me, as a person and as a journalist, it is inconceivable how much very respectful people in Prijedor, professional people like doctors -- for example, you could hear Dr. Musta, that was a physician, a specialist, a gynaecologist, Mr. Zeljko Sikora, and it was written that he, as a Croat, was castrating women and newly born Serbian children, Serb children, in order to prevent further reproduction and further procreating of Serb people. There were also something against an internist and cardiologist Muslim and saying he survived all therapies, and it was said that Dr. Mahmuljin wanted practically to kill his colleague, Dr. Zivko Dukic, because he was all the time after a
heart attack of the other doctor, he was on purpose giving him the wrong type of drugs, and had it not been for a Serb lady doctor, Dr. Zivko Dukic would have died. They said for Dr. Mirza Mujadzic that he was a dwarf-like doctor than Dr. Ali Cehaja. They said he was a doctor, he was only corrupt, of Ustasha origin. There had been very many such examples.
I think they picked up on purpose people who were respected, because in Prijedor area people respect and believe in doctors; and if you say for two doctors, a Muslim and a Croat, and if you write something like that about them, then ordinary people -- I mean, it is very easy to say to ordinary people: "You see what kind 1256 of danger can be threatening you from the Croats and the Muslims".
Q. In addition to such attacks on respected Muslims in the town, what terms were used generally to characterise Muslims?
A. "Fundamentalists", "Alijas", "Mujaheddin", "Alija Balija", "Ustashe", fighters and so on.
Q. You mentioned the term "Balija", is that an ethnic insult?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it a term used in polite company?
A. No.
Q. In addition to attacks on Muslims, were there other things which dominated the propaganda in the new Kozarski Vjesnik?
A. There were such topics, that the whole world was against the Serbs, that media the world over were writing only against the Serbs, that the Serbs were a heavenly people, that they were a much suffered people which was armed, and they knew how to defend themselves, they attacked numerous western politicians and a very low ethical level falling beneath both the human and journalistic code of conduct.
Q. Was a curfew imposed on Prijedor?
A. Yes, on 2nd May 1992.
Q. What were the hours of curfew?
A. Well, from 10.00 to 5.00 at first and then, as far as I remember, from 9.00 to 6.00.
Q. Did it become difficult for Muslims and Croats to travel in Prijedor?
A. Yes.
Q. What mechanisms were imposed to restrict the movement of Muslims and 1257 Croats?
A. At first, there were checkpoints in all areas at all entrances and exits from the town and in the town itself and in different parts of the town, and then I was surprised, I was staggered, very surprised, when I saw a neighbour who put a white arm band, and I ask him, why; it had been announced that all those who wanted to go out and move about had to wear a white band over the arm.
Q. When you say "all those", do you mean every member of the community?
A. No, I mean the Muslims and Croats.
Q. It was the Muslim and Croat community which had to wear the white arm band?
A. Yes.
Q. Was there a control of movement in the individual buildings?
A. There was.
Q. Individual apartments or apartment buildings?
A. Inside of the buildings and in the apartments themselves.
Q. How was that imposed? Was there a register of some sort?
A. The Muslims were either given notices or were sent on holidays. They had no arms, no uniforms, normally in civilian clothes. They were then -- duty guards were organised for Muslims. They had to sit in front of the buildings and note down all those entering, who they were visiting, why they were going into the building, when they would come out, etc., with the ID No.; and in the evening they submitted these to one of the Serbs, to a Serb, responsible for a particular building. In my building the man in charge was a gentleman called 1258 Egic.
Q. Let me ask you about something you mentioned that was terminations from employment; did Muslims and Croats begin to be discharged or terminated from their positions?
A. Yes.
Q. Was that limited to people with regular jobs or low paying jobs? Which segment of Muslim society was terminated from employment?
A. No, at first they fired heads, directors, those who held some positions, and then immediately in May, Mr. Miroslav Turnsek, manager of the biscuit factory, was fired because the propaganda said that he had been shipping weapons from Croatia in margarine he needed to make biscuit and cookies in his factory. Then Idriz Jakupovic, a director of the Centre for Social Work, and others followed suit, but the first one to be fired was the Mayor of the municipality as they did not allow him to enter the building.
Q. Did local Serbs react to the continued presence of Muslims or Croats in their positions if they managed to retain those jobs?
A. I do not know if they reacted and how they reacted, but none of the Serbs rank and file citizens in enterprises, in schools or wherever, when Muslims and Croats were given notice, they never protested or asked why, and in some schools there was even applause when the principal read out the Muslims, Croats had to leave the session and that there was no room for them in that company any more.
Q. One thing I wanted to raise with you that you mentioned earlier: I had asked you whether or not people began talking about members of 1259 other groups or even reporting them to the authorities, and you indicated that that was something that happened after the takeover. What were you referring to?
A. Yes, well, it sufficed for someone to call the police station and say, "My neighbour listens to radio Zagreb or watches HTV"; it sufficed for that to detain that person. Excuse me, another instance, if I may?
Q. Please.
A. In the bank, Privredna Banka, a bank clerk came, saw a Croat, Mr. Marijan Zec, screamed and asked: "Is it possible that this Ustasha is still working at the bank?"
Q. Did you know Marijan Zec?
A. Yes. He was in the Omarska camp.
Q. Was he associated in any way with Ustashas?
A. No.
Q. You mentioned an incident which preceded the attack on Hambarine. How did you learn about that incident?
A. I was listening to Radio Prijedor and Mr. Zivko Ecim was reporting about how Serb patrol had been attacked in front of Hambarine in a field, and he mentioned then that an incident had happened after the Serb had fired first. Then the ultimatum was issued that men, Muslims, who had provoked that incident were to surrender, and that was how I learned about it because the shelling of Hambarine ensued.
Q. How long after the ultimatum did the shelling begin?
A. One can see it in an issue of Kozarski Vjesnik. The ultimatum was 1260 very terse, but the Crisis Staff announced that they were cutting shorter, cutting the ultimatum shorter. I do not know the deadlines exactly, but I know that the deadline was very short.
Q. You mentioned the Crisis Staff, do you know when that was established?
A. The Crisis Staff was established after the takeover of power.
Q. Who belonged to the Crisis Staff?
A. Those whom I know whom I have recorded on the tape at the session, I know there was Mr. Radmilo Zeljaja, Slobodan Kuruzovic, Spiro Marmat, Simo Miskovic, Slavko Budimir.
Q. Before the takeover, was Slavko Budimir a prominent person in Prijedor?
A. No.
Q. Was there anything about his background which impaired his prospects for political success before the takeover?
A. Yes.
Q. What was that?
A. I remember that some seven or eight years before that, perhaps, he wanted to take up a position, but he was told that he could not be appointed to that particular post because his father was a Chetnik.
Q. After the takeover he became a member of the Crisis Staff?
A. Yes, and chief of the public security station, that is, head of all the security in the municipality of Prijedor instead of Mr. Becir Medunjanin.
Q. Where were you when the attack on Hambarine began? 1261
A. I was on my way from my sister's to Mr. Sefik Bijlkic in the yard and then I hurried home and I was at home and then we were absolutely flabbergasted. It is very difficult to explain to one who has lived in peace for such a long time and in such a nice way to suddenly feel the sound of heavy shells from Urije airfield and count up to seven -- I remember that exactly -- from the moment it will be fired to its hitting whatever because one could feel the sound. It was terrible.
Q. Can I ask for Exhibit 79, the Prijedor map, to be shown to the witness? (Exhibit 79 handed) (To the witness): Mr. Nezirevic, are you able to locate Prijedor on that map?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you find the Hambarine area as well?
A. Here.
Q. Is Hambarine on an elevated portion of the Prijedor area?
A. Yes, on a hill, on the way towards Ljubija.
Q. How long did the shelling of Hambarine continue for?
A. I cannot remember exactly, but I know it was for quite a long time. I cannot say if it was three, four or five hours, but it must have been more than just a few hours. There may have been intermissions.
Q. Did you become aware of an attack on any other part of Prijedor after that?
A. After that, the attack on Kozarac ensued.
Q. Can you point out where Kozarac is on that map as well, please?
A. (Witness indicates).
Q. Given the distance between Prijedor and Kozarac, is one who was in 1262 Prijedor able to see what was happening in Kozarac?
A. No.
Q. Did you see people from Kozarac coming into Prijedor?
A. Yes.
Q. Were those people gathered at particular places?
A. Yes.
Q. Where were they taken?
A. Gymnasium sports hall, Mladost, in the centre of the town near the secondary school building.
Q. Did you hear reports on Radio Prijedor about the attack on Kozarac?
A. Yes.
Q. What was reported?
A. They spoke tentatively that roadblocks put there by Muslim extremists had to be prevented, that they had to use a tank sent there to clear it and then the posse of Muslim extremists began.
Q. Is there any report about what had happened to the police at Kozarac?
A. Yes.
Q. What was that?
A. They said that 13 or 14 policemen had been captured and liquidated immediately.
Q. Were you in Prijedor on May 30th?
A. I was.
Q. What happened the morning of May 30th?
A. In the morning of May 30th, I heard on Radio Prijedor that Prijedor had been attacked by Muslim extremists. It was described in detail 1263 from both sides; they had come from Hambarine across the Sana River, that they had attacked Partizanska Street, were moving towards the radio station, the police station, the town hall, the municipal hall building, but owing to the quick intervention and force of the army that the attack was rejected, that many were liquidated, some arrested and that some had fled.
Q. Did you stay in your home that day?
A. Yes.
Q. Were there any troops in your neighbourhood?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you taken from your home that day?
A. No.
Q. Do you know what happened in other parts of Prijedor?
A. In the town itself, do you mean, or in the municipality?
Q. In other parts of Prijedor town, on May 30th?
A. Other parts of the town, I learned that afterwards there were major fighting in Partizanska Street which goes along the Sana River in Stari Grad, the old town, that is, in direction of the Sana and its tributary Berek, and that major fighting was between those attackers, as they call them, Muslim extremists, next to Radio Prijedor, in the secondary school building, near the police station and the municipal hall building.
Q. Over the succeeding days did you learn whether or not members of the Muslim community from Prijedor town were being removed from the town?
A. Yes. After the attack on Kozarac I learned even that the Muslim 1264 population was taken to Trnopolje, rather, that the road was open for them from Kozarac to Trnopolje. Then a few days later we heard that over 30 carriages, that is, freight carriages with women and old people had been taken away in an unknown direction; and after the attack, the so-called attack, on Prijedor, from my neighbourhood, from my area which is Rajkovac, Skela, Stari Grad, many men were taken away and women and children also. They were released later. They were put in the Balkan Hotel. Some of them were directly taken to SUP and some to Omarska.
Q. Prior to the attack on Hambarine, attack on Kozarac and the beginning of the removal of the Muslim community from Prijedor, had there been announcements or calls for Muslims and Croats to surrender weapons in Prijedor?
A. Yes.
Q. How were those announcements made?
A. There were invitations to surrender all arms, personal, that is, those legally obtained even before the crisis and the weapons of the Territorial Defence.
Q. How did Muslims respond to that demand for surrender of weapons?
A. ... and even on the radio and television, Banja Luka radio and television, were shown various areas to show how Muslims were coming, surrendering their weapons on tractors, cars, trucks, or some other smaller vehicles.
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, we missed the first part of your answer because of a technology problem. The question was, how did Muslims respond to the 1265 demand for surrender and the beginning of your answer was, if you recall?
A. They responded.
Q. Did some members of the Muslim community go out in the community and encourage people to do so?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recall any of those people?
A. Yes.
Q. Who were they?
A. I remember Dr. Esad Sadikovic, an eminent citizen who was a doctor who worked for the United Nations, and Mr. Dedo Crnalic an eminent citizen of the town of Prijedor, a sports executive, a man of integrity.
Q. They went around to urge people to surrender any weapons they might have?
A. Yes.
Q. Did those include weapons for which people had lawful permits?
A. Yes.
Q. Did that include hunting weapons?
A. Yes, all of that -- pistols even.
Q. Did you have any weapon?
A. No, never.
Q. Did the people you knew who had weapons surrender them?
A. I know of three cases in my building because in my area there was an office assigned for that purpose for people to come and surrender 1266 their weapons. My neighbours, Sefik Trovjik, Kamil Pajalic and Abaz Jakupovic went there and surrendered their pistols for which they had the licences before the crisis. They surrendered them in that office.
Q. Why did the Muslim people surrender these weapons?
A. Because they were afraid, because they did not need them, because it was futile, it was of no use to have a pistol; and it was very dangerous because there were daily searches in almost every flat inhabited by a Muslim or a Croat.
Q. Was your telephone service interrupted?
A. Yes. After the interrogation at Keraterm. I was taken to Keraterm first and after that my line was cut off.
Q. When were you taken to Keraterm?
A. In early June 1992.
Q. How long were you held on that occasion?
A. For only one day for interrogation.
Q. What kinds of questions were you asked during the interrogation?
A. Almost all the time I was asked, why did I resign as the editor and under whose pressure.
Q. Did you serve a useful purpose for the editorial board and the Serbian officials as a Muslim editor of Kozarski Vjesnik?
A. I believe, yes, up until a certain moment when everything became open.
Q. Were you abused or mistreated during that one day in Keraterm in June? 1267
A. No. Yes, the actual arrest had been unpleasant. I was on the pavement in the town and a car pulled up, and soldiers jumped out of the car and put me into it. They drove me to the military barracks and after that to Keraterm.
Q. Before you were taken to Keraterm, did you learn whether or not friends and neighbours in the Muslim community were being taken away from their homes and disappearing?
A. Yes, I know that. That was the usual, one could even say an everyday practice. You would just hear people say, "Yes, did you hear about it?" That is how we would discuss it among us. Marijan Zec, Sead Softic, Sefik Bijlkic were taken away almost every day regularly. So that almost every Muslim and every Croat at every moment would expect the same thing to happen to him. Whenever I would hear the sound of a car in front of my building, I started to dress.
Q. You started to dress in anticipation of being taken away?
A. Yes. It is maybe not a nice thing to say, but my wife told me, "it seems as if you were just waiting to go".
Q. After you were returned home following one day in Keraterm, were you again arrested?
A. Yes.
Q. Where were you taken that time?
A. On 24th June 1992.
Q. Who arrested you?
A. I was arrested by my neighbour who lived in the house next door. He was a professional policeman, by name of Ranko Kovacevic. He was 1268 Milorad Kovacevic's brother. He came in a Mercedes. I was as a civilian on duty in the morning in front of the entrance of the building. He told me that I had to go with him. I asked him, "Where to?" and he said, "To Omarska".
JUDGE STEPHEN: You have just said that you were on duty in the morning in front of the entrance of the building as a civilian. I do not understand what you mean by "on duty".
A. All of us, Muslims and Croats, that lived in particular buildings, we were all obliged to sit during the day in front of the entrance of our house and take down the notice of all those people who were going in and out of the house and in the evening to give all this information to Mr. Egic, saying who came to visit whom, at what time and for how long that person stayed there.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: We will stand in recess for 20 minutes.
(11.30 a.m.)
(Adjourned for a short time) (11.55 a.m.).
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Tieger, would you like to proceed?
MR. TIEGER: Thank you, your Honour. (To the witness): Mr. Nezirevic, after you were seized by the policeman Kovacevic, where did he take you --- Mr. Nezirevic, could you turn on your microphone, please? The interpreter in the booth cannot hear you.
A. [Original in Serbo-Croat]: He took me to the police station in Prijedor.
Q. Once inside the police station where were you taken? 1269
A. I was taken to a cell in that police station.
Q. Were you searched first?
A. Yes.
Q. Were whatever possessions you had taken from you at that time?
A. Yes, I was particularly upset because they took my shoelaces off because I am no criminal.
Q. Were other people in the cell when you were taken there?
A. There was only one man by the name of Aziz Maksuti. He was the owner of a restaurant in Prijedor; Albanian by nationality.
Q. Did other people join you and Mr. Maksuti in the cell?
A. Yes.
Q. How many people?
A. With us there were -- we were eight together.
Q. What was the nationality of those people?
A. One was a Croat, his name was Dado Zombra, Aziz Maksuti, an Albanian, and the six of us were Muslims, Kasim Mesanovic, Basic, three young men from Alisic, whose surname was Alisic, and myself.
Q. You were arrested in the morning; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. What time was it when you were finally taken from the cell?
A. It was somewhere past 10 o'clock in the evening.
Q. Did you receive any food or water during that time?
A. No.
Q. At 10 o'clock or after 10 o'clock that evening what happened?
A. They opened the door of the cell, this is a metal door, they started 1270 to shout, saying, "Get out, you Ustashas and fundamentalists". They started swearing, beating and they ordered us to stand against the wall in the yard of the police station having our legs spread out and the arms against the wall. They were beating us, they swore at us, threatened us.
Q. What did they use to beat you with?
A. With police batons.
Q. What were they swearing at you as they beat you?
A. They swore our mother, our Ustasha fundamentalist or extremist mother -- very, very heavy words which this Tribunal could not accept as something that was underneath anything that could be spoken in polite company.
Q. Then did they direct you to go somewhere?
A. They did not tell us, but in the centre of the yard, some 20 metres from that wall, there was a special police vehicle open as a van -- we call it a black Mariah -- and next to that black Mariah there were two lines of policemen as in a gauntlet, and they ordered us to run towards the open door of that vehicle. We were running as fast as we could because they were beating us. Kasim Mesanovic fell down. He received a blow with a boot in near the eyes. Then we ran in that van. It is a very small space. We were full of blood, the eight of us holding our hands. Then the door closed behind us and we were taken in an unknown direction.
Q. When that journey was over where were you?
A. When the journey was over we found ourselves at Omarska. 1271
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, have you had a brief opportunity to look at the exhibit in front of you?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recognise that as being a model of the Omarska camp to which you were taken?
A. Unfortunately, I recognise it.
Q. Where did the van stop when you arrived in Omarska, where were you taken out?
A. The same procedure again as when we were escorted from the police station in front of this wall here, here, here, the van stopped roughly speaking here. We were following from this direction and here, here. They ordered us out of the car and then in front of these walls here, we had to put our arms against the wall, spread our legs and then the beatings again.
Q. Who was beating you this time?
A. We were beaten by the people who were there at Omarska waiting for us.
Q. What were you and the other prisoners beaten with?
A. These were not only police batons now. Various types of weapons made from wood, then of wooden cane or something that looked more like a mallet, then a lengthy part in wood with various kind of pointed bits on it.
Q. Were the persons beating you saying anything to the prisoners or yelling anything at them as they beat you and the others?
A. The same thing again. The same type of vocabulary just in a 1272 different way, maybe in a more violent way, more severe, more offensive, just the nuances were different.
Q. Were there ethnic curses against Muslims?
A. Yes. Yes.
Q. Curses against Croats and Ustashas?
A. Yes.
Q. After the beating finished, where were you taken?
A. To the white house.
Q. Can you point to the white house? I am not sure you can reach it completely but point to it.
A. Yes, here is the white house.
Q. Where were you taken inside the white house?
A. I was taken to the second room on the right.
Q. Were the prisoners already in the white house?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the nationality of those prisoners?
A. Muslims.
Q. What was their condition? What did they look like?
A. They were in a very poor state. For me who had only arrived there from what I could call normal life, it came as a shock to me. On the floor people, silhouettes, were lying, frightened people, piled up on one on the others, dark in colour, starved, huge beards, their eyes were like they were inside their heads. There was not a square centimetre of space there on those tiles. I had the feeling they were lying one on the other. 1273
Q. Did you know those prisoners personally?
A. No.
Q. Do you know where they were from?
A. Later on I learned, from one person next to whom I lied down (whose last name was Sahbaz) that these were young men from Kamicani, Kevljani and from Kozarac who had surrendered to the Serbs, to the Serb army, at Mrakovica on Kozara mountain.
Q. Incidentally, do you remember if there was a man there with a hearing problem?
A. Yes. I do not know whether his name was Deumic or Dautovic but I know that he used to work at the bakers' shop in Kozarac. His hair was long. He was not completely deaf and dumb, but he had a hearing problem.
Q. After you joined the others, the prisoners, in that room, what happened that night?
A. When I calmed down, next to that man Sahbaz, next to a wall on these tiles a guard came and somebody said, and he said: "Who said who would be fleeing from here?" Nobody could say anything, utter a sound, even say that they would run away from there. Then he told me: "You, come here, get out". He told me to get out. In front of the white house there was fire there. They were around that fire, drunken, laughing, provoking, asking: "Where's your rifle?" "Which rifle?", said I, "I never had any kind of weapons, let alone a rifle." "Go inside" where I really could not wait to go back and calm down. 1274 Then underneath the open window of the white house I could hear sounds like a hog, then Radio Prijedor which is a provocation instead of Prijedor, then I hear: "Come here, come here, why do you pretend you are asleep? Come here to the window". I came to the window and I heard: "Pull out your head of the window". I pulled out my head of the window, and said: "Close the window". I shut it. Only my head was outside in the dark, and then I do not know who, but somebody put the point of the knife under my throat and then said: "Where's your rifle?" because they used to ask everybody where their rifle was. I once again said the same. Maybe I was a bit more open and I said: "No, I never ever had a rifle, nor I needed one".
Then they asked me whether I had any money. In a small pocket I had ten billion of old dinars. I gave that money away. They asked me whether I wanted to buy cigarettes. I said: "Yes". What else could I say?
They told me to go back to my place and after five minutes a hand came through a window and two packets of cigarettes were given to me.
Q. Were prisoners from your room beaten that night?
A. Yes.
Q. When did that start?
A. It started, it is difficult to say exactly at what time because you were not even allowed to look at a watch, not move even slightly in order not to catch anyone's attention, but it happened in the 1275 evening, in the late evening, when Nermin or Ermin Foric was called out. I know his parents. I do not know exactly whether his first name is "Nermin" or "Ermin", but his last name is "Foric". He went out after they called him, and some 10 minutes later he came back with a huge bloody blue under his eye and his head was bloody, but he was wearing a smile and I could see that he was happy, he survived another calling up of names. An elderly man covered under a table with his body, his young son, and he exposed us his body in order to protect his son who was younger than 18 years. A bigger man was lying on the table. He was crying with pain, because he wore no shirt you could see huge blue bits along his body, bruises.
Q. Approximately how many prisoners were called out of your room that night and returned beaten?
A. Maybe some five to six. As far as I can recall, because I might have even fallen asleep for a while, for half an hour or an hour. That was not real sleep, but the nature has its own rules and that is sometimes stronger than the feelings.
Q. Did those beatings continue during the night?
A. Yes.
Q. The next morning did guards come with any water or food?
A. It was not in the morning. It was maybe noon already or thereabouts, because nobody dared to ask whether they could go to the toilet or go to drink some water. In the corner by the door there were two black plastic buckets, cut the upper part, and maybe some kind of motor oil 1276 was in there previously. One was -- both were used for toilet, one for urinating; the other one was used for water, and in that black bucket they brought water. We were thirsty and we were all holding, touching the edges of this plastic bucket trying to drink, and we were so desirous of drinking so that the bucket broke up, completely destroyed, and then on a newspaper a guard brought just crumbles of bread. Everybody was so hungry that they were even cutting the paper and the crumbles trying to find something to put in their mouth.
Q. Did you have an opportunity to see who else was in the white house, in the other rooms of the white house?
A. Yes, in the morning I was able to see in the second room on the left that was opposite my room, I saw Husein Crnkic, a teacher of mathematics who was the head master of the secondary grammar school, then Asif Crnkic who was the manager of one part of the Omarska mine. I saw Marijan Zec, an economist from the bank and Sead Softic, an optician; Asim Kadic, the owner of the restaurant "Sport" in Prijedor. I saw in the first room to the right Esad Sadikovic; Sabahudin Avdagic, an engineer; Mehmedalija Sarajlic, another engineer; Zlatau Besirevic, the manager of Bosuamontaza company.
Q. In addition to their professional lines, were any of these people soldiers at the time they were brought to Omarska camp?
A. No, nobody, nobody. They were all wearing civilian clothes. Civilian clothes, shirts, t-shirts, trousers. Nobody.
Q. Were any of these men extremists?
A. I do not know that any one of them was an extremist. I know them as 1277 ordinary people, people whom I used to meet daily in my town.
Q. Did any of them ever express any interest or ambition to attack the JNA or Serb military forces?
A. I do not know completely but, as far as I know them personally, no, never. They never had such a desire. I cannot guarantee what somebody holds in one's head, but I know those people as being honest, good, not having any weapons, wearing civilian clothes, respectable citizens. I could never believe that they wanted war, extremism or to do harm to somebody else.
Q. What nationality were these men?
A. Marijan Zec is a Croat; the others were Muslims.
Q. What was their physical condition?
A. They were worse. It was worse than my condition because I had only arrived, but it was better than those of a group of people I saw in the room where I was there. One could see some markings or some signs on their faces, either a wound or a bruise or a trace of blood, and what marked me most were their eyes, the look. Whenever I looked at some of them, even later, I had a feeling those eyes were not on the outside but somewhere deep, deep inside, in the head.
Q. Did you also have a chance to see the first room on the left in the white house?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you describe what that looked like?
A. It was a -- this was a death room, a small room, and the door was open, we would run out for food, and for short, brief intervals one 1278 could see. Then I saw Anes Medunjanin, a young man whom I knew from before, but I could hardly recognise him. He was not like other people with a lost face, but he was some kind of a heap, his eyes were peering almost. Everything was inflamed because of blows and he was kneeling near the wall. Then I saw Ekimovic, son of Omer Ekimovic, and called "Dado". I could see bloody stains on the walls that were dark in colour. On the tiles I saw puddles of blood. I saw something that a man never, ever wants to see again or to describe.
Q. Were there persons other than Anes and Adnan in that room?
A. Yes, but I know those two people, that is why I mentioned them. Only later I learned who were other people there so I can tell you, if you want me to.
Q. What was the condition of the other men in the first room to the left?
A. In the same condition in which I described Anes was.
Q. Did Adnan Ekimovic also have a relative in the camp?
A. Yes, he did. His father Omer Ekimovic who was in the second room on the left; whereas Adnan was in the first room on the left. I saw Omer when he was coming back from lunch. He was so fearful, but with this eye he was turning his head towards the first room on the left to see his son.
Q. Did he try to communicate with his son or send things to his son?
A. It was impossible.
Q. Did he try to get any food to his son?
A. Every time when he would go to lunch, he would leave half of his bit 1279 of bread for his son, Adnan, and he would ask Eso Sadikovic, a physician, to take that bread to him; and later on at one occasion Eso said: "I went to give Adnan this part of bread, he is not there". Adnan disappeared. I cannot tell this to Omer. He did not tell him and some days later Omer disappeared as well.
Q. What was the nationality of the men in the first room to the left?
A. The first room to the left were people of Muslim nationality, but earlier on I had heard that Slavko Ecimovic used to be there. He is a Croat by nationality, but when I came to Omarska I did not find him there.
Q. Do you know whether or not there was a Serb in the camp as a prisoner?
A. Yes. Yes, there was one, Darko, a young man, 20-ish, 25 perhaps. I saw him in front of the white house begging the guards to spare him, to say, "I am a Serb, let me go", and they were forcing him to repeat his entreaty once again to try to prove that he was a Serb; he was trying to, they laughed. Then he said, "Let me go. I am urinating blood. I cannot stand it any longer. I cannot stand up". Throughout the time they were sprinkling him with water, with a powerful jet of water, which normally was -- at normal times was used in the mines to wash tyres on those big trucks.
Q. Was this Serb accused of somehow being sympathetic to or being in alliance with Muslims?
A. As far as I know, yes. They said that he was on the side of the Muslims. 1280
Q. As that day grew into evening, did the prisoners begin to prepare themselves for anything?
A. Yes, for a fight, to be beaten.
Q. How did they prepare themselves?
A. It is difficult to say "prepare themselves"; encouraged one another, whispering, and each one of us somehow tried to withdraw into oneself, to somehow reduce the size of one's body in this tremendous desirous attempt to disappear, to somehow shrink. Then if one managed to shrink then there was this illusion that you would be less noticeable and, therefore, less beaten. I have already described that father who covered his son with his own body.
Q. Did a guard come to the door before the beatings began?
A. Yes. A huge guard, a very tall guard came. I cannot really say whether he was really as tall as that or did he simply seem to us since we were lying on the floor all emaciated. He had a red beret and he took out a Kama which is an army knife and with the tip of that knife he began scratching on the glass saying, "There will be meat tonight."
Q. Were prisoners called out that night and beaten again?
A. Yes.
Q. Did that continue through the night?
A. It did.
Q. Did you also hear any sounds coming from the corridor of the white house?
A. Yes. 1281
Q. What sorts of sounds were they?
A. At first laughter, shouts, ridiculing, then the cry of a woman, the entreaties of a male voice, then laughter again, sobbing, a scream. - then a guard came in, said: "I'm looking for two who are stronger". Kasim Mesanovic, who was arrested together with me, was one of those. Then we learned that on the table put in the corridor rape was prepared of a young girl, and she was being raped by a Mehmedalija Sarajlic, an engineer, a Muslim, a respected citizen, a man of my age. They stripped her naked, that girl. They stripped him, forced him to undress, beat him. They wanted him to rape her and he was begging, imploring, saying, "She could be my child". I am really sorry for the coarse language, but then said to try to do it with a finger. He did that and it hurt her. She was screaming. He then gave it up completely. They beat him. He had a weak heart. In the morning when were taken out six by six to the loo, to the left of the white house to a lawn, I saw Mehmedalija Sarajlic's body.
Q. How long were you held in the white house?
A. Two nights and two days.
Q. Where were you moved to after that?
A. Interrogation.
Q. Where was the interrogation conducted?
A. The interrogation was conducted on the upper floor of this building here; in the offices here. This is where one entered this building, up these stairs and depending on the room, which the prisoner went to which room, we were taken for interrogation. This was the entrance 1282 up the stairs and then here.
Q. What were you asked for in the interrogation?
A. First they asked me why I had resigned. Again it was under some pressure, things like that. Then they asked me about specific persons. The interrogator was leafing through a notebook with covers, it had handwriting in it, as if incidentally or by the way, "Well, what do you think about Djedo?" I did not know who Djedo was. They asked him, "Is it Djedo?" About Mursel and then finally about Haris Silajdzic and Silvije Saric. I asked him in the end what will happen to us? He answered: "I don't know what will happen to us, let alone you."
Q. Did you recognise the person who was interrogating you?
A. No, I did not recognise him. There was -- we had heard that there were several persons apart from people from Prijedor, that there were some from Banja Luka, but according to what I learnt later this could have been possibly, I am not sure, Popovic, that is Jovan or Jovica Popovic, who also came from Banja Luka for these questionings. It was a man of a middle height, up to 40 years of age, balding. He looked very urban.
Q. Where were you taken after the interrogation?
A. The pista. This is the pista, this was an area between this here building and this one. We were allowed to move up to this part, roughly here, so that one could get through, from here up to here and I was next to my friend by this wall here about 10 metres from the corner of this building here. 1283
Q. Can you estimate how many prisoners were held in the pista area?
A. Between 600 and 800.
Q. How much room was there for each prisoner?
A. As much as, enough to sit down or lie down, but with a part of the body over the body of another person.
Q. Did prisoners from on the pista stay there during the day?
A. Yes, the whole day.
Q. And at night where were you?
A. At night it was the worst because we were compelled to go to the restaurant, all of us, on the pista to this restaurant here, here, and to spend the night there and look at the area here on the pista. While it was, shall we say, comfortable in this small restaurant, we had spend, all of us had to spend the night there. There was barely room for sitting down sometimes, and in the morning once again running to the pista to find some space on the pista.
Q. What did the prisoners do during the day on the pista?
A. During the day the prisoners on the pista did nothing unless they had been called out for further questioning. They sat or tried to lie down waiting, seeking the permission of some guards to go to the loo, to get some water, and usually somebody would, someone with enough courage to ask to go to the toilet, they would take a group from this side through this hangar here, it is this building here, and there were some 700 to 800 prisoners and they would go through the hangar because the toilet was on that side. Then sometimes they would close it. They would allow one to go into the toilet but they 1284 would break in and start beating. There were often times people would avoid it who were afraid of asking for water or to go to the loo.
Q. Let me ask you some questions then, Mr. Nezirevic, about the general conditions in the camp. How often were prisoners fed?
A. Once in 24 hours.
Q. How much food did prisoners get?
A. As regards bread it was 1/8th of a loaf, 1/8th, and some fluid in a plate.
Q. You call it "fluid". Did you know what it was?
A. More often than not I did not know what it was at all in terms of taste or its appearance. One could find some beans in it, so one could guess. Sometimes there were some potatoes, but more often than not I simply did not know what I was eating.
Q. How much time were prisoners given to eat?
A. Not more than a minute and a half to two minutes.
Q. Did the prisoners go to eat individually or in groups?
A. Regularly in groups of 30.
Q. Did some prisoners on occasion avoid going to get their 1/8th of a loaf of bread and whatever fluid was available?
A. Yes, I believe there were at least not less than 100 to 200 prisoners refused to go for their meals daily because they were afraid of beating. I did that often.
Q. Were prisoners beaten when they went to eat?
A. Yes. 1285
Q. Who would do that?
A. Guards escorting them or at the entrance into the restaurant or in the restaurant itself or along the line in the restaurant or at the exit from the restaurant.
Q. What nationality were the guards of the camp?
A. Serbs.
Q. What about facilities for personal hygiene? What was available to prisoners?
A. Nothing, nothing except water at times, not even the toilet.
Q. How did prisoners take care or attempt to take care of their personal hygiene or personal needs?
A. At times it did happen that a prisoner, again through some guards, would get a plastic bag from home with a little bit of soap or chocolate or something else, but always small quantities, but regular invariably we never got anything, received anything from the authorities or in Omarska, we never got anything, any hygienic, any toiletries, toilet paper or anything.
Q. What about prisoners who were sick or had suffered injuries, how were they taken care of?
A. Only Eso Sadikovic, a doctor. He took care of them. He was also a prisoner in that camp himself, but he had no aids, no implements. He had nothing except an ordinary needle and thread.
Q. Did he attempt to bind prisoners' wounds with that needle and thread?
A. Yes, on many occasions, one even with hairs. He tied hairs on their head to try to protect the brain of a prisoner; because his head was 1286 cut so much that he tried to do it in that way.
Q. In what position were the prisoners who remained in the pista during the day - standing, sitting, moving about?
A. No, they sat. Perhaps from time to time somebody would walk two or three metres to someone. Some were lying down but free movement was not allowed. More often than not we heard orders when new prisoners would be brought in, and they were brought in daily, either on Mercedes or a van and it would stop here, in this part here, and they would take them out. We would be ordered then to turn to face the wall here along the pista. One day we were lying prostrate on the pista for 11 hours.
Q. This was July, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Was there any shelter from the sun?
A. Never. I mean how could we be shielded in the sun? Those were orders. It was an order to lie down. You were simply ordered to lie down and we would lie down and there was no room enough to stretch. So just as we happened to be in the position that we happened to be in, somebody's leg perhaps on my neck and my foot on somebody's stomach. If anyone moved there would be shots in the air. They were firing at pigeons above us. Once a friend of mine had put a sock here, to dry here in this wall here between the bricks, and as I was lying there a soldier from here fired at that sock. I simply felt the sound above me and bits of plaster, bits of the wall which fell off. 1287
Q. Were there women in the camp, women prisoners?
A. To my knowledge, as far as I know, there were 38 women.
Q. Where did you see them in the camp?
A. In the restaurant. In day time they sat in the restaurant in a form of a corner. In this part here and this part there there were chairs and they sat all the time while some women helped in the restaurant. They washed dishes or passed plates where we would come there for meals.
Q. You indicated that new prisoners would come to Omarska and arrive in buses or Mercedes on the back side of the kitchen building. What happened when they arrived?
A. Those here I could see them while I was on the pista and those who were brought by buses I could hear them, because I was in this room later and buses came up to here. But when they would take them for interrogation it was usually depending on the kind of prisoners. As they would wait for interrogation they had to kneel in front of this wall with their hands against the wall and we had to turn our backs on them, but we could hear the blows, sobs, threats. After interrogation a number of people would be thrown out on to the pista, sprinkled from the hose and be gone.
Q. How long were you held in the pista?
A. Ten to 12 days. I am not sure, but roughly.
Q. After that where were you taken and where were you held?
A. I was taken to a room we called "mujo’s" room. The door was here on this side, then passing through the corridor and arriving in this 1288 part here; not upstairs but on the ground floor. Here was a window and I lied down along that window.
Q. You said that from that particular room you could hear bus loads of new arrivals coming to camp?
A. Yes. It was sometime in mid July 1992. We heard buses stopping and then that silence set in in this room where we were 600 to 700 of us and I was beneath a broken window. Then terrible threats began. Unloading, they were not throwing them, they were not throwing people off, they were unloading them and we could hear: "Look at this one, he's got soppy shoes. Look at this jacket. Look at this football player. This one's got two fingers missing." Then the sounds of blows, sobs, "Oh mother". The sound from the outer side of the wall, beatings and we knew that new prisoners were arriving. We heard that most of them came from Rizvanovici and Biscani.
Q. As those prisoners were being beaten could you hear whether the guards were hitting them in particular places or throwing them against the wall in particular ways?
A. I heard the beating, blows, but how they spoke the guards, "Until you break through this wall with your head, I won't let you". I could not see what he was doing behind the wall.
Q. Then you could hear the sounds of the prisoners reacting in pain?
A. Yes.
Q. How often did new bus loads of prisoners arrive?
A. After mid-July there was a period when they arrived often, and then in early August it stopped or end of July, but then we can come back 1289 to this later when buses came from Keraterm.
Q. How many prisoners were in the room that you were taken to after the pista, the mujina room?
A. 600 to 800.
Q. How much room was there for those prisoners?
A. When I came back to that room I tell immediately how much room there was. I could not even find a place to sit until a friend of mine, Fiko Zjakic, suggested that we alternate, that he sits until midnight and that I then sit after midnight. Nobody could stretch out his legs or lie on his back. It was simply we were trying to manage as best we could, but we were patient and sometimes we would get angry if someone would put his foot on your face.
Q. What was on the floor of the room?
A. Nothing.
Q. Were prisoners called out of that room that night?
A. Yes, almost every night.
Q. Did some of those prisoners return to the room?
A. Most of them did not.
Q. Of those who did what was their condition generally?
A. More often they were beaten, battered, but sometimes they came back looking quite normal as if nothing that happened to them.
Q. Were you called from the room at any point?
A. Yes, on 23rd July 1992.
Q. Where were you taken?
A. I was taken by Ckalja to a room which was from the corridor directly 1290 next to the staircase. Jadranka Kondic was there with Ckalja. There was another one with moustaches, round cheeks. They told Jadranka to go out. Told me to sit down. Ckalja sat on the table, the other one was standing, and they told me: "We have something to tell you. You are in the first category. Do you know what that means? Liquidation." I got scared and my head dropped on one side and I began sweating. "But it can be arranged", he said. "Money, German Marks, 10,000 German Marks." "I don't have them. I have never had that much money." I offered the garage, land, household appliances, everything I had. No. "Will you write a note, sign, give a telephone number?" They told me then: "We'll try to bring it down to 3,000 and you have eight days to find that money, that your wife find it." I was merely back and I was called out again. Kemal Pajalic first, a man who had never been in the camp; then I, Mehmedalija Kapetanovic, Hajrudin Campara and Asim Kadic. We were told to take our things and come out. When you are called out in this manner then you know it is liquidation. We were taken out to this part here and waited to see what would happen to us. Then I saw two prisoners being brought out of the white house, two prisoners bringing out the lifeless body of Muhamed Burazirevic, Braco, from the white house.
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, did you attempt to contact anyone on the outside to obtain the 3,000 deutschemarks demanded by Ckalja?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did you write to?
A. I wrote a letter to my wife first and said, "I may not be alive when 1291 this message reaches you". I explained that I needed 3,000 marks; and to my friend Rezak Hukanovic who had a Serb friend among the guards and who came every three or four days below their window hiding from others, bringing messages. When after a day later, I asked Rezak, "Did you send the message?" He said, "No, because I would have caused a tragedy in the family, and they read those messages". Then I wrote another message, tried to tone it down, without "I may not be alive", and sent it through Rezak.
MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, may I have this marked for identification as Exhibit 132, please? (Document handed). (To the witness): Mr. Nezirevic, would you look at that document and tell us if you recognise it, please?
A. Yes, I can.
Q. Is that the message you just referred to which you sent to your wife, or a copy of that message?
A. Yes, it is.
MR. TIEGER: We tender that for admission, your Honour.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Any objection to 132?
MR. WLADIMIROFF: No, your Honour.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Exhibit 132 will be admitted.
MR. TIEGER: Can we put the English translation of that message on the video, please? (To the witness): Mr. Nezirevic, in your message did you tell your wife after you toned the letter down that the wheels were turning slowly and the situation was very uncertain and that you loved her very much? 1292
A. Yes.
Q. Did you ask her using an exclamation point after her name to "please send immediately 3,000 deutschemarks"?
A. Yes.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: We will stand in recess until 2.30.
(1.00 p.m.)
(Luncheon Adjournment) (2.30 p.m.). PRIVATE
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Tieger, would you continue, please?
MR. TIEGER: Yes, your Honour, thank you. Your Honour, may I have these documents added to Exhibit 132? They should comprise part of the same exhibit.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Has the Defence seen the entire 132?
MR. TIEGER: Yes, your Honour, for the benefit of the Defence, those additional two notes in the original language and another translation.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: OK, four pages, five pages -- how many pages?
MR. TIEGER: It should be a total of five.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: OK. Exhibit 132 is admitted again with the addition of those pages.
MR. TIEGER: May the entire exhibit be presented to the witness? (To the witness): Mr. Nezirevic, did you attempt to contact your wife once again in an effort to obtain the 3,000 dollars that Ckalja indicated would save you from liquidation?
A. Not dollars but German marks. Yes, I tried to through this contact 1293 of Mr. Rezak Hukanovic and she did not manage to return a message, a personal message, but she in the message sent by Mr. Rezak Hukanovic's wife, it was said "Muharem's wife says she cannot find that".
Q. Do you see the message that you sent to your wife in the Exhibit 132, if you can look through those documents?
A. Yes, I knew straightaway what it was about.
Q. I am sorry, I was not clear with that question. Mr. Nezirevic, if you can look through the documents that are in front of you and tell us if you see the message that you just referred to, the second message you sent to your wife asking for 3,000 deutschemarks?
A. Yes, this I asked her and I wrote, "In case something could be done it should be sent by a secure person", and I mentioned the names that were told to me by Ckalja when he asked the money, who were those people with whom it was safe to send the money with.
Q. The third message in Exhibit 132, is that a message you sent to your family before you were confronted with the demand for money by Ckalja?
A. Yes, on 11th July, yes.
Q. That was just a brief message trying to make contact with your family
---
A. Yes.
Q. -- in which you indicate that, "We are all somehow in a game of Russian roulette, some of us more, some less"?
A. Yes. 1294
JUDGE VOHRAH: Can we have a look at it?
MR. TIEGER: Yes. Can we have a look first at the message of July 11th, please? Can we now see the message of August 1st? Mr. Nezirevic, were you able to come up with the money, the 3,000 deutschemarks?
A. No, not even in theory. Later on my wife told me that she understood it was 300 deutschemarks and she barely managed to find 300 deutschemarks, but later on she read the message a bit better and she saw 3,000 deutschemarks. She decided not to ask for further help.
Q. Did Ckalja ever show you any confirmation of his claim that you were on the liquidation list?
A. Yes. He was accompanied by a short man in uniform; cannot tell you his last name for sure but I think his name was Prcac. Around the corner from this building at the very corner, I was called, and I was shown a piece of paper with a name and a surname with the mention "L", the letter "L".
Q. What did he tell you the "L" represented?
A. It meant "liquidation".
Q. After the deadline expired, did Ckalja, in fact, return and demand his money?
A. Yes, and then he told me on that occasion, "I arrange with an inspector. We are going to give him 2,500 deutschemarks and the two of us are going to take 500. Run away, hide, do not go anywhere so that no one could notice you and when you would be going away, I will put you somewhere and we will see where you will get".
Q. Ultimately, when you were not able to come up with the money, did 1295 Ckalja return again?
A. No. Every day I was waiting to be called. I was silent. I was not going anywhere. Very often I skipped going to meals, and then the date of the roll calls came deciding who was supposed to go where.
Q. Roll calls for what purpose?
A. For the purpose of the third and the second category; the third category were the so-called inoffensive, which were put on the pista and which had to go to Trnopolje. The second category was supposed to go for exchange, and the first category for liquidation.
Q. What happened on the date of the roll calls?
A. When they call the roll on that day, everybody went out, lots of people went out, from my room either on the pista or just outside, but some 20 or 30 of us were not called out at all.
Q. What happened to the 20 or 30 of you who were not called out?
A. You meant what happened? I do not know what happened to the others, but I saw a policeman at this roll call and he used to work in a butcher's shop, a chicken shop. As far as I know, his last name was Zgonjanin and his nickname was "Koka". I went towards him and asked, "Why am I not on the list?" and he said, "I am going to check that." He left, went upstairs into the room and came back an hour later. He called me and I saw I was the third person whose name was being, was added to the list.
Q. How long after that was it before you left Omarska?
A. I did not understand quite the question too well.
Q. How long was that before you left Omarska? 1296
A. It was about an hour or an hour and a half or two hours before I left.
Q. Was that when the majority of prisoners were taken from Omarska and sent to other camps?
A. Yes.
Q. Which camp were you sent to?
A. To Manjaca.
Q. First of all, how did you go from Omarska to Manjaca?
A. It was the most difficult day in my life. Although I had spent 44 days at Omarska, it is very difficult for me to speak about that, I am sorry; I have to. They called us out from the hangar, that is here. We were all put into the hangar, all of us that were meant to go to Manjaca. They tried to organise a group of 30 people, but then they abandoned that and we thought that we were to be sent to Trnopolje, but when I saw that next to the buses parked there there were pit guards then the military escorts, I doubted that we would be taken to Trnopolje.
When they started to load us on buses, I saw that we would not be going to Trnopolje. They put between 100 to 120 and 130 people on a bus. People were lying on the floor of the bus. They were sitting in between seats and, unluckily, I was sitting just in the first row in the seats just behind the back of the driver. My friend, Rezak Hukanovic, was seated on the second seat on the right. The escorts were the driver and two armed guards who had automatic rifles. When we left Omarska, the first escort who was nearer was 1297 holding the automatic rifles some 10 centimetres away from me. He said, "Those who are from the town of Prijedor could raise their heads up". What does that mean? We all had to lower our heads down while we were driving on-- while we were on that bus. I could not do it really. I had to put the head on the back of the seat. My friend Rezak and myself, we raised our heads. All the others remain in that position with their heads low.
Then they started to criticise, how come we are there with them? "What are you doing here?" Rezak asked whether he could drink water out of a plastic bottle. He allowed him to do so, but at that moment a tall man with a beard, with a beard, jumped on the bus. He was armed. He had a red beret and he was holding a huge stick in his hand. He saw that Rezak was drinking water and he started to beat him on his head.
As I was sort of shrunk there, I felt awful blows on the left part of my shoulder blade. I heard that that was the hottest day of the year, 36 degrees Celsius. We were all lying, seated, bent, without water, without anything. The drivers put the heating on. During the drive the people were saying, "How come you manage to capture so many of them? You are heros". They would answer, "Would you like us to take one out for you so that you can butcher them? Just choose."
They stopped at some kind of restaurant and people were throwing bottles at us and stones. We were driven from some half past one or 2 o'clock in the afternoon up until 10 p.m. and this is 60 to 70 1298 kilometres away. They parked the buses in front of the entrance of the Manjaca camp. The fronts of the buses were facing. I might have fallen asleep and I heard softly almost some sobbing. As I was turned towards the back of the bus I saw that they were beating Rezak once again.
Then I felt awful pain in my back and my neck. I was hit with a baseball bat on the neck. I screamed, not, it was like a dead man's sob, a cry. As a kind of reflex, I stood up and I was completely shivering and I felt pain in every bit of my fingers. Then I sat down once again and turned as they told me, and I was hit maybe some 10 times more on my back. I thought they had finished. I was happy I had survived.
In the meantime, I heard a cry by Nezir Krak who was outside. They were slaughtering him while we were being beaten in there. As the door of the bus was open, a soldier came dressed in a military uniform, a real one. He told me to go out, get out. Incredulously, I saw that. I wanted to say, "You have just beaten me." He told me to get off. I got off outside.
There was a circle of eight or nine soldiers who started to beat me with various objects on my head. Suddenly they stopped, and then I heard the voice of Zoran Babic: "This is how we solved the problem of Bosnia, Muharem". I ran towards the bus, and I fell. I was stabbed in part of my belly. I went inside. I was feeling blood. There was nothing I could stop the blood, everything was bloody, my trousers, my jacket. Somebody called Sistek gave me his 1299 shirt so I could stop the blood and clean myself. Then I felt an urge to go to the toilet because of fear. I did not dare go towards the door. So I did it in that part of the clothes I had on me.
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, how were conditions in Manjaca at least compared to Omarska?
A. We were joking very often, although the conditions were atrocious, sleeping, just being without food. We said, "It is as if you were in an hotel compared to Omarska". I would have preferred to stay another four months in Manjaca rather than spend one hour at Omarska.
Q. Let me ask you a few more questions, if I may, about Omarska? I am sorry to return you to those questions. Did you ever see any prisoner beaten or killed in Omarska for using a Muslim or Islamic word?
A. Yes. I saw -- I was some eight or nine metres away on the pista away from Rizah Hadzalic, a man from Prijedor, who finished eating, went out of the restaurant, sat down and while he was eating a guard came by and asked him, "Does it taste well?" and he just in a very human way, he was happy that somebody asked him something like that, he said, "Thank you, bujrum". "Bujrum" is a word used by Muslims; it is an old word and it means "here it is" or "thank you", and then I heard an awful shout of anger by a guard and then six or seven others came and they started hitting him, hitting that man, saying, "You used the word 'bujrum' for us?" I do not know for how long it lasted. Then later on he splashed him with water, with a hose, and he was dead. 1300
Q. You mentioned Djedo Crnalic before who along with Eso Sadikovic went through the opstina trying to persuade people to disarm as demanded by the new Serbian authorities. Did you see him in Omarska?
A. Yes, and we talked many times.
Q. Did you ever see him mistreated?
A. Not in Omarska.
Q. Where was he held?
A. He was held in our room, and from it there was a small, a small room, with a window there, and there in normal times miners, workers in the mine, received, were issued, their mining equipment.
Q. Did you ever see a prisoner forced to drink motor oil?
A. Yes.
Q. Where did that take place?
A. It was in July as I was on the pista, in this part of the pista, near the entrance into this building. I saw a young man whose surname was Crnalic, who had inclined this motor oil and drinking it and made strange movements as if he was flying, dancing. The guards laughed, encouraged him. After they took him to the white house and some half hour or an hour later one could hear a burst of fire and they said that he had tried to escape from the white house.
Q. Were you in Omarska during Petrovdan?
A. Yes.
Q. Before Petrovdan did you hear any guards talking about the upcoming holiday?
A. Yes. 1301
Q. Can you explain to the court, Mr. Nezirevic what Petrovdan is?
A. Petrovdan is an orthodox family holiday. In eastern orthodox believers, people of Serb origin have various holidays apart from Christmas, such as St. Nicholas Day or St. Peter's Day, and families can choose, I do not know on the basis of what criteria, may choose a saint to celebrate his day. Petrovdan, that is St. Peter's Day and Nikoldan are very important saints celebrated by orthodox. That is as far as I can explain. I am not a sociologist. I am only speaking from experience.
Q. So Petrovdan is a Serbian holiday, a Serbian orthodox holiday?
A. Yes, an orthodox, yes.
Q. What did you hear from the guards before Petrovdan?
A. Numerous threats, "Ustasha, when we come in in the morning, we say 'you'", and then we heard them say there would be meat for Petrovdan because they would roast us.
Q. On the night of Petrovdan where were you held at that time?
A. In the Mujo's room.
Q. That is inside the restaurant building?
A. Yes, yes, inside the restaurant building.
Q. From that ---
A. It is here.
Q. -- were you in a position to see what happened on Petrovdan?
A. No.
Q. You have mentioned a number of beatings that took place, both specific incidents and regular ones. Let me ask you this question. 1302 Did the guards operate in shifts?
A. There were three shifts. Momir Gruban, and then Ckalja, Milojica Kos, Krle and Radic -- I am sorry, I forgot Krkan.
Q. How often did those shifts change?
A. Over 24 hours, as far as I can remember, they would change twice, that is, Krkan's shift when we expected Krkan's shift to come on, then we thought: "Oh, he will be here the day after tomorrow, so we may still be alive".
Q. Was there some reason why prisoners paid attention to which shift was coming up next?
A. Yes. Krkan's shifts showed open brutality. They were the roughest. They threatened, shouted, nobody could go even to get some water or to go to the toilet.
Q. In addition to the regular shift guards, were persons from outside permitted to enter the camp?
A. Yes, yes.
Q. Were those soldiers or civilians?
A. Soldiers.
Q. What did they do in the camp?
A. As I was in the pista, I saw a group of four soldiers standing here, and watching what they did, simply watching. I recognised one of them. His surname was Baldic, son of Misa Baldic, a tall, dark young man. They never did anything directly. They merely watched, and another instance, there was one Suskalo in a black uniform with Chetnik insignia who went to Bijela Kuca and asked for Alija Ganic 1303 and Alija Ganic had never been in the camp.
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, I want to ask you now about the people who you saw taken from rooms and who did not return.
A. Yes.
Q. I would like to know if you can list people you knew personally who were taken from their rooms in Omarska and did not return after that and whom you have never heard from since, yes?
A. Yes, I can. Should I begin?
Q. Please.
A. Idriz Jakupovic, Nedzad Seric, Osman Mahmuljin, Zijad Mahmuljin, Adbulah Puskar, Ibrahim Kokanovic, Crnalic, Ziko Crnalic, son of Ziko Crnalic whose nickname was Caruga, were taken out. I saw returning from interrogation and dying a couple of hours later Camil Pezo. Fikret Mujakic died. Kadir Mujkanovic did not return either, nor Senad Mujkanovic; Omer Kerenovic; Aco Komsic; Meho Mahmutovic; Mustafa Tadzic; Husain Crnkic; Esref Crnkic.
Q. Did you know these people personally?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you know of their other friends and family?
A. Yes. I forget just to mention Esad Mehmedagic; he was blind.
Q. Among these men did they include the following professions: professor, economist, cardiologist, president of the local court ---
A. Yes.
Q. -- judge in the local court?
A. Yes, doctors, Rufad Suljanovic, Osman Mahmuljin. 1304
Q. Professors?
A. Yes, Fikret Mujakic, Professor Abdula Puskar, another professor.
Q. Director of the taxation office?
A. Yes, Meho Terzic.
Q. Engineers?
A. Yes.
Q. Businessmen?
A. Yes.
Q. Cafe owners?
A. Yes, Asaf Kapetanovic.
Q. While you were on the pista, did you see people in camp who would go to lunch on one day and then not see those people again in the camp later?
A. True. I saw Miroslav Solaja, a driver, I saw Hamdija Balic, I saw Ilija Drobic, engineer, dead.
Q. In addition to the people you personally knew, did you see persons who you did not know but only recognised from camp taken from rooms and not returned?
A. Yes, I did, two brothers Trto; Burhurudin Kapetanovic, Mehmedalija Kapetanovic, Mujo Crnalic.
Q. Do you know the approximate number of prisoners who were held in Omarska on any given day while you were there?
A. 3,000.
Q. During the time you were there, were prisoners arriving on a regular basis, new prisoners? 1305
A. Yes. They brought them. Strika -- they were brought by Strika and Batan, Ranko Kovacevic.
Q. Bus loads of prisoners, new prisoners, came?
A. Yes, what I described already, buses arrived from this side of the camp, of the building, and cars, Mercedes, or vans would stop here in this part.
Q. When the camp began to close down at the beginning of August, August 5th or 6th, how many prisoners were transferred from Omarska to Manjaca and Trnopolje?
A. 1,360.
Q. Where did those prisoners go?
A. To Manjaca, 1,360 went to Manjaca.
Q. How many to Trnopolje?
A. About 700.
Q. How many remained?
A. 165. Of those 165, two were killed.
MR. TIEGER: Those are all the questions I have, your Honour.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Is there cross-examination?
MR. KAY: No cross-examination, your Honour.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: I have just a couple of questions, I believe. Mr. Tieger, I wanted to ask Mr. Nezirevic what year he was born. Is there any reason why that should not be given?
MR. TIEGER: No, your Honour, there is not.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Nezirevic, what year were you born, October 20th, I believe. I did not ----- 1306
A. 1943.
Q. 1943, did you indicate? Yes, thank you. You testified that there was a flag on the town hall after the takeover on April 30th and you said it was a Serbian flag?
A. Yes.
Q. What do you mean by a Serbian flag? Is that the Republic of Srpska or Serbia?
A. We called it Serbian flag when it had four Ss, that is, four Cs around the centre of the field.
Q. So it had four Cs did you indicated?
A. S, in Cyrillic. It is four, well, it is a matter of words all beginning with the letter S, only concord, only harmony, saves the Serbs.
Q. Do you know whether that was the flag of the Republic of Srpska or the flag that Serbia used before the break up of the former Yugoslavia?
A. I would not know that. I would not know.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: I have no further questions. Mr. Tieger, do you have additional questions?
MR. TIEGER: Just one, your Honour, really prompted by your question, if I may?
Further examined by MR. TIEGER
Q. Mr. Nezirevic, did you ever see your old colleague, Zivko Ecim, in camp?
A. Yes. 1307
Q. What was he doing?
A. Taking pictures, a camera man, a journalist.
Q. Was he your old colleague from Radio Prijedor and Kozarski Vjesnik?
A. Yes.
Q. What part of the camp was he taking pictures of?
A. In the restaurant -- no, I have to apologise, I did not see him in the restaurant. I saw him later on a cassette, but I saw him in this part of the staircase here through this glass one day when all prisoners were beaten, all day long.
MR. TIEGER: Thank you.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Wladimiroff, do you have any questions?
MR. WLADIMIROFF: No, your Honour.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Is there any objection to Mr. Nezirevic being permanently excused?
MR. WLADIMIROFF: No problem.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: You may be permanently excused, Mr. Nezirevic. Thank you for coming.
THE WITNESS: Thank you. (The witness withdrew
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Niemann or Mr. Tieger, would you call your next witness, please?
MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, Prosecution's next witness is Mevludin Semenovic.
MR. MEVLUDIN SEMENOVIC, called. Examined by MR. TIEGER. 1308
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Semenovic, would you please take the oath? THE WITNESS [In translation]: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
(The witness was sworn)
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Thank you. You may be seated. Mr. Tieger? Examined by MR. TIEGER
Q. Will you state your full name, please?
A. My name is Mevludin Semenovic.
Q. Mr. Semenovic, when and where were you born?
A. I was born on 15th October 1962 in Srpska near Vlasenica.
Q. Did you move to Prijedor sometime as a child?
A. Yes, when I was two, that is in 1964, I moved to Prijedor and I have been living in Prijedor as of 1964, changing addresses; my latest address is Trnopolje.
Q. Did you go to school in the area?
A. Yes. I completed my primary education in Kozarac and secondary school in Prijedor; after that I did my military service.
Q. What year was that?
A. I served in Leskovac in the Republic of Serbia.
Q. What rank did you have and what sorts of duties did you perform?
A. I was a soldier serving in an artillery unit.
Q. After your military service, did you return to school or return to Prijedor?
A. I returned to Prijedor, but then I enrolled in the university and went to study mining in Tuzla. 1309
Q. What is your nationality, sir?
A. Bosniak Muslim.
Q. Elections were held in 1990; is that correct?
A. Yes, November 1990.
Q. Did you become involved in the political process at that time?
A. Yes, I became politically active as of the second half of 1989. I then actively joined democratic processes and I joined the initial committee to establish the Party of Democratic Action and then also in the foundation, I participated in the foundation of the party for Democratic Action.
Q. In the 1990 election did you win elective office?
A. Yes, during the election campaign, that is, during our primary election, I was elected the first President of the party for Democratic Action in the municipality of Prijedor, and in the elections I won a seat in the Assembly of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the Chamber of the municipalities as representative of the Prijedor municipality.
Q. Just so that the court can understand a bit about the political structure, we have already heard about a local Assembly in Prijedor. You have mentioned there was also a Republic Assembly. Was there more than one Chamber or House in that Republic Assembly?
A. Yes. There were the Chamber of Citizens and the Chamber of Municipalities similar, not identical but similar, to the House of Commons and House of Lords, except that to the Chamber of Municipalities people were elected by name, that is, persons by name 1310 and surname, and one could become a member of the Chamber of Municipalities on the basis of the party membership. In the former case, we had regions as constituencies, that is, there were Banja Luka, Bihac, etc., and for the other Chamber elections took place in every municipality. Only one seat could be won, that is, there could be only one winner. From the list for the Chamber of Citizens, several people could be elected depending on the number of votes.
Q. Mr. Semenovic, for the benefit of the interpreter who is trying to keep up with you in a simultaneous fashion, perhaps I can ask you just to slow down your speaking just a bit. I have received the same request myself on some occasions.
A. Yes, I will. Thank you.
Q. So only one representative from each opstina went to the Chamber of Municipalities?
A. Yes.
Q. In the other Chamber there was a more proportional representation, depending on the size of the opstina?
A. Yes.
Q. Let me ask you quickly about the back drop of the democratic elections of 1990. What were the primary parties competing for seats in the Republic in local Assemblies?
A. Well, the local parties were the party for Democratic Action, Serb Democratic Party, Croat Democratic Union and the left coalition involving several parties, leftist parties, which mostly merged from 1311 the former League of Communists. There were Socialists, Reformists, the Communist Party, the Party of Private Initiative and some others. There was a Liberal Party also which brought together youth, etc.
Q. Were there any radical or extremist parties?
A. Yes, there was the Serb Radical Party, but it did not take part on the lists for the Municipal parliament. It only took part for the candidates on the Republican level.
Q. What was the platform or the position of the Serb Radical Party?
A. The programme of that party was very nationalistic. The essence of that platform was the political aspiration to unite all Serbs within one state, to homogenize the Serb people, and they supported Seselj who had already become well known as a symbol of extreme Serbian nationalism in the former Yugoslavia.
Q. Did Seselj ever come to speak in Prijedor?
A. Yes, as far as I can recall, he was there on two occasions. One in the area of Omarska and at one occasion in the town of Prijedor itself.
Q. Was there any evidence in Omarska or elsewhere that there were Seselj's followers in the opstina?
A. Yes, one could often see that, and the first public manifestation of that were the paroles they would write. I remember that the first written slogan was written on the railway station at Omarska, on a railway station building, and it was written "Long live Seselj", and then there were other slogans "This is Serbia", and "The Serb Chetnik 1312 movement", that was written on several places.
Q. The SDA won the elections in Prijedor?
A. Yes.
Q. And also on the Republic level?
A. Yes.
Q. Which party finished second in Prijedor?
A. The Serbian Democratic Party.
Q. How close was the voting?
A. The difference was very small. I think that we gained one or two seats more which gave us victory and the right to decide to appoint people on the leadership positions.
Q. During the preelection period, was there cooperation between the SDA and the SDS?
A. Yes. The co-operation existed during the process of creating of those parties when it was allowed by the law of the Bosnia-Herzegovina. The co-operation was very good and it had several aspects. Maybe I could give you two examples to illustrate that? In the first phase, some of those speakers from both parties would be asked to go and deliver a speech in the meeting of other party, that is, people from the SDA would go to the SDS party meetings, and we also planned to have a common poster, but that was at the very beginning. I myself was asked to talk at a preelection rally of the Serb Democratic Party at a local level in the town of Cirkin Polje and I went there.
Another example was our offer to the Serb Democratic Party, in 1313 order to win in a better way the former communists, we make a common platform in the opstina Prijedor. We had several ideas that we proposed, but the only idea that had been accepted was the one to make a common preelection poster and to put that poster around immediately before the elections.
We also agreed upon a common financing of that poster. That poster was made. We printed it in several thousand copies.
Q. Was this co-operation all in furtherance of the goal of getting past communism and introducing democracy?
A. That was our primary objective and we from the Party of Democratic Action looked at it in that way. Neither myself nor any one of my colleagues that took part in these activities I am speaking about it, did not look upon it as some kind of a national programme. At first, we tried to explain that, not only to the Muslim Bosniaks, but also to the Serbian people and the Croatian people, thinking that our programme would win some votes by all democratic -- by some democratic persons, no matter what nationality they belonged to. At first we did have some success in that.
I am going to give you an example of a committee. It was a party, a local committee, in the area of Hambarine. One of the leaders there was a Serb. His name was Jovo and his last name, as far as I can remember, started with an "R". In the local committee in Trnopolje, there was an Ukrainian who was a member. His name was Miroslav Komarnicki. He was even elected as a delegate in the parliament, in the municipality parliament. 1314
Q. What happened to that joint poster that was produced by the SDA and the SDS? Was it posted around town?
A. After several lengthy negotiations about how the poster should look like, we agreed that once the poster should be, would be, printed, that each party would put around a number of copies. We took our part, they took their part and the SDS paid whatever they had to pay, according to our agreement.
Then, for the first time, something came up which surprised us. We were putting the posters around, according to our agreement, and some people from the SDS that were supposed to do the same thing did not do it. They had even sent a group of people to tear down the posters that we had put on from the walls, the trees and so on.
Q. Who were among the leaders of the SDA in Prijedor?
A. Among the leaders of the SDA party in Prijedor there was a doctor, Mirza Mujadzic, he survived; myself; then Professor Muhamed Cehajic, he was killed; then Camil Pezo, an economist, also killed; Professor Ilijaz Music was killed; Meho Terzic, MA, was killed; Dr. Rufas Suljanovic was killed, a lawyer, Emil Dovnikovic who was killed; Refik Kadijevic whose profession I do not know and who was killed; a dentist, Danjel Dzafic who survived; Husein Basic, a lawyer, who was killed; a teacher, Becir Medunjanin, he was killed; a teacher, Mrs. Valida Mahmuljin, she was killed; a teacher, Ilijaz Memic who survived -- a long list and, if necessary, I can give you the names.
Q. Who were among the leaders of the SDS in Prijedor?
A. Among the leaders of the SDS there was a dentist, Srdjo Srdic; then 1315 Milomir Stakic; Mr. Kovacevic; then Simo Miskovic; Dragan Sidjak; Dragan Kurnoga; Slobodan Kuruzovic -- he was not one of the leaders but he would come from time to time to the meetings.
Q. Did the SDA victory mean that your party would be able to fill all political slots in the opstina with its own members?
A. No.
Q. Was there any agreement about whether or not any particular seat would be allotted to the winning party?
A. The principle was determined before the elections already on the level of the Republic and on the level of Municipality. The principle was the following: the party that wins most seats, no matter which party that would be, would have the right to have the leading position, that is, the Chairman of the Municipality. The second party, the one that comes second, would be awarded the Deputy Chairman party, that is, and then the following one, the President of the Municipal Parliament. All the other important portions would be divided proportionately according to the number of seats and the number of votes.
In Prijedor, that meant that the SDA had the post of the Chairman, his Deputy would come from the SDS and the President -- then a Chairman of the Executive Board would come from the SDS, his Deputy from the SDA, and all the rest would be distributed according to the number of votes, and we wanted to distribute that according to the election results.
Q. After your election to the Chamber of Municipalities, did you spend 1316 all your time in Sarajevo, sometime in Prijedor or did you go back and forth?
A. Roughly speaking, I would spend half of my time in Prijedor and half in Sarajevo. Most often, I would go by train to these meetings; very rarely I would go there by car.
Q. How smoothly did the process of distributing seats or positions among the parties go after the election?
A. You mean on the local level?
Q. In the Municipal Assembly.
A. The most important positions were distributed without any kind of problems, according to the agreement. The problems started to come up at the moment we had to allocate other seats.
Q. What was the nature of the problem that arose at that time?
A. The SDS insisted at that time that they had to be given the right to appoint a chief of the police. It was almost an ultimatum, the way in which they asked for it. They demanded also the position of the Manager of the Public Auditing Office. It is really an institute that arranges all payments.
Q. Were the difficulties in reaching agreement on the distribution of those positions reflected in the working of the Municipal Assembly generally?
A. Yes. At first, it did function but then the problems I mentioned started to have more and more influence to the work; that means they were blocking the work of the Municipal Assembly. In the end, after many negotiations, the chief of the police was determined SDA managed 1317 to get that position. As one of the leaders of the Party of Democratic Action, I can say that this post was important to us for various reasons, and the main one was that never before had a Bosniak Muslim been the head of the police in Prijedor. As a Muslim Bosniak party, we won the elections, so our electorate expected that somebody from the winning party could become chief of police. That was the main reason why we insisted on appointing the chief of the police and we managed to do that in the end.
Q. Otherwise was the Assembly in a position to carry out the wish of the voters as expressed in the election. Let me clarify -----
A. Partly.
Q. You were also working in the Republic Assembly at this time?
A. Yes.
Q. Were the central offices of both the SDA and SDS party located in Sarajevo, in the capital?
A. Yes.
Q. The relationship between those central offices and the local offices of SDS was that of superior office to subordinate office; is that correct?
A. Yes. I could notice that there is, there was an analogy between the degree of blockade and the quantity of problems in the Republican parliament and in the Municipal parliament. The SDS acted as if everything had been orchestrated. Whatever was going on in the Republican Parliament, there was -- we could find an identical behaviour in the Municipal Parliament by the members of the SDS. 1318 That was obvious from the very beginning.
Q. Did you ever have discussions with SDS officials which reflected their knowledge and interest about what was happening in Prijedor, and by that I mean SDS officials in the Republic Assembly?
A. Yes. I would sometimes talk to Mr. Srdjo Srdic who was a member of the Republican Parliament from the SDS from Prijedor. It was very difficult to talk seriously with him because as soon as he would approach a serious issue he would avoid speaking about these things, and he gave the impression of somebody who was not interested in those things. But I remember that he was very often criticised in Sarajevo by other SDS MPs because they were telling him he was not doing anything, and that the SDS from Prijedor leaders were not doing things well.
Q. As the difficulties and tensions you described in both the Republic and Municipal Assemblies continued, was there a movement by Serbian politicians away from the democratically elected government?
A. Yes. We could feel that, I would say secretly, a process was going on. We could not know exactly what was going on, but we could feel by the behaviour from the SDS people in the Republican level and on the Municipal level. The first incidents happened when the discussions about the army started. Then we saw that there were no effects if we discussed things about -- with arguments, because in the closed forums the Serbs would agree on a particular attitude, they declare that attitude later on in the Assembly and there is no discussion allowed about it. So we discussed for a very long time 1319 some issues with many arguments, but the final issue would always be the same. Either SDS people would leave the parliamentary session or simply they would boycott when voting was going on.
Q. Did the SDS move toward the development of a separate political structure?
A. Yes. After some very important demands, which went against the constitution and the laws of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that is why these demands were rejected in Parliaments, SDS decided to take some action which was outside the legal and legitimate framework.
The first such step was the creation of autonomous regions. Their first explanation in relation with such movements was that those were regions they wanted to create for economic interests, for the alleged lack of interest by the Republic for those regions; but we answered that the regions do exist, both by fact and by law. According to the laws of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, those regions were called the municipal communities and, in fact, they were regions -- a region of Banja Luka, a region of Tuzla and so on.
They insisted, saying that what we said was true, but that the boundaries of their regions were not natural, so that they should be changed. They made some proposals, gave some plans, and it was obvious that they wanted to change the territory along ethnic boundaries and restructure it ethnically. We rejected that in the parliament. 1320 After that they did it, nevertheless, out of their own will.
Q. Was the first framework for this economic association the so-called Assembly of Municipalities?
A. Yes. It had existed for the past 15 years, I think.
Q. Was that normally an economic association?
A. Yes, there was only an economic association.
Q. In this case when the SDS formed the new Assembly of opstinas, did it have aspects other than economic aspects? Did it have a military component?
A. It had also military aspects. One could see it from the boundaries of those regions. It contained areas with a Serbian ethnic majority. It also included some parts that neither by economic or geographic criteria could not belong to the region of Banja Luka.
Q. Did the Assembly of Municipalities develop into the autonomous region?
A. They did not recognise the Assembly of Municipalities. On their illegal forum and through unlawful methods through institutions where they represented the majority, the Serbs simply proclaimed the autonomous region of Krajina. In the municipalities where they had obvious majority in institutions, they did that by putting political pressure on those who were against it, and in the municipalities where they could not achieve this by such means, they made some kind of a coup. A drastic example of it happened in Prijedor.
Q. Eventually did those autonomous regions become part of Republika Srpska? 1321
A. Yes.
Q. Was there a plebiscite conducted in November 1991?
A. Yes.
Q. Who organised and conducted that plebiscite?
A. The plebiscite was against the law and the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was impossible to conduct it through legal municipal republican institutions. The organisation of the plebiscite was done by the Serb Democratic Party, SDS, both on the local and on the Republican levels.
Q. Subsequently, was there a referendum held on the question of the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the SDS position on the referendum?
A. The SDS was absolutely against the referendum and wherever they could they would boycott it.
Q. Within opstina Prijedor itself, was there a movement by the SDS toward a separate political structure within the opstina?
A. Well, the aspirations were obvious to us, but what period have you got in mind?
Q. Prior to the takeover, were you or other SDA members aware of any movement by local officials toward the development of a separate political structure within Prijedor?
A. Yes, before the takeover by a military coup, some months prior to that, it became obvious that SDS did not want full co-operation with the SDA party in order to exercise power. The demands put by SDS had 1322 become ever more an ultimatum. Then, according to Serb movements by the SDS, we came to the conclusion that they were starting to create parallel forms of authority.
Q. Did SDS create a separate Serbian Municipal Assembly?
A. The SDS, after the blockade of the Municipal Assembly of Prijedor, SDS did not attend the meetings, but they continued holding their meetings. We did not know officially at that time that that was a Serb Assembly, but we could come to such a conclusion according to what we could see.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: We will stand in recess for 20 minutes please.
(4.00 p.m.)
(The court adjourned for a short time)
(4.20 p.m.)
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Mr. Tieger, you may continue.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Thank you, your Honour. (To the witness): Mr. Semenovic, before the recess you had discussed the indications that there was a separate Serbian Municipal Assembly. Let me ask you if there were also some signs of a parallel Serbian government within the local communes.
A. Immediately before the military coup, almost all power structures in those areas where Serb constituted an ethnic majority were held by Serbs and were unlawful and they were not legitimate. Those were parallel Serb authorities. The only areas where parallel Serb authorities did not exist were those inhabited by Bosniaks, Muslims, in other words, Kozarac, the so-called Brdo, comprising several 1323 villages, and the area around Kozarac.
Q. In the local communes were people who did not belong or were not members of the legitimate organs of government presented as authorities?
A. Yes, yes. On some occasions it was evident that some persons were exercising, discharging important functions of power in the Serb people and did not belong to lawful authorities. For instance, in Trnopolje, when an attempt had to be made to find a way to relax the tension and to try to appease, to calm down, the fear which had already appeared among the people. The (indecipherable) Ostoja Skrbic appeared to enjoy, to be the most authoritative person among the Serbs even though he held no official post. We asked why him, and they said he was the most -- the person with most authority and that he had amended and the right to discuss matters with individual groups on behalf of the Serbs.
Similar situations also occurred in some other neighbourhood communities in some other Mejsna Zajednica. In the town of Prijedor, one could see how SDS meetings would be attended by considerable groups of people of Serb ethnic origin who did not make part of any party structures or any other authorities; such an example for instance is Marko Pavic who at that time began to come to SDS regularly, yet he was not formally a member of SDS. We assumed that in this parallel system there were a number of people about whom we did not know, and we only knew those I mentioned and it turned out to be true later on. 1324
Q. Focusing on the summer of 1991, was there a difference between the SDA and SDS position on the mobilization for the war in Croatia?
A. Yes, there was.
Q. What was the SDS position?
A. The SDS absolutely supported the army's plans to intervene in the Republic of Slovenia, the Republic of Croatia, and the SDA was against it. The army began to hold military drills evidently in preparation of some major army moves, and the Serbs gladly accepted the summonses for these drills, and even the population who were not summonsed prepared food for them and carried enormous quantities of food or beverages to those places, to those areas, where there were larger concentrations of men of soldiers and equipment. It turned into a kind of popular holiday.
A typical instance happened at the Urije airfield where they organised two Serb folk festivals. Hundreds of women brought food and they spent part of days, part of a particular day, with soldiers. We were against that because, globally speaking, that is, the former Yugoslavia's level, the position of the army was evident, I mean, towards the Serb people, and that army's position towards Slovenians and Croats even though nominally the army was common, but it was no longer the case.
Q. Did some Muslims volunteer for service in the army at the time of the war in Croatia?
A. Very, very few; a symbolic number. I know only of several people.
Q. Did those people come back to Prijedor and report on the kind of 1325 treatment Muslims received in the army?
A. Yes, yes. Yes, I had the opportunity to talk to some of them.
Q. How were they treated in the JNA?
A. I shall tell you about the conversation with one of the soldiers who came back. Salih Elezovic, a young man, who was a Reserve Lieutenant, 2nd Lieutenant, he was mobilized and took part in the war in Croatia for a while. Then he was slightly injured and returned home at the same time when some people deserted. He told me that during the campaign there the army was increasingly Serb, that there was less and less respect, less scruples towards people of other origin, that is, of Muslim or Croat origin, that would increase in frequency there was nationalistic Chetnik songs especially in between battles, in between fighting where some of the army would get drunk, and then in that state of drunkenness they would utter, they would say, things that they would not had they been sober. Even at that time already some soldiers put some badges or insignia on their caps and their uniforms, some traditional Serb insignia, or markings used by some Serb formations in World War II. They sang in glorified Serb myths, and a few Muslims or Croats in that army were the object of ridicule and someone whose leg may be pulled whenever it would occur to anyone.
Q. Mr. Semenovic, you indicated that the SDA opposed the mobilization. Did they do so in theory or did they attempt to physically obstruct the mobilization?
A. Only in theory, it was our political stand. In point of fact, our 1326 political position was that we condemned the war, that we are against the war, but that we shall not either by force or in any other way prevent those who of their own will wanted to accept the summons for mobilization, because the Yugoslav People's Army was still lawful and legitimate, and during that first stage of war in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina had still a kind of a legal tie with Yugoslavia. Later on, things took a different direction -- and very suddenly at that.
Q. Did the dispirit response to mobilization result in a change in the composition of the JNA, in the ethnic composition of the JNA?
A. Yes, undoubtedly. After the first mobilization wave, it became solely a Serb army and I should say that there would be about one soldier of non-Serb origin as against several hundred Serbs.
Q. As time grew closer to the time of the takeover, did it result in a change in the presence of the military within Prijedor itself?
A. Yes. Yes, in Prijedor, of the nucleus of the JNA, and that was a small garrison there, at the time of mobilization, that is what I am referring to, a large military formation was set up of volunteers and a small number of army members from Serbia. This large army formation was sent as the 5th Kozara Brigade to the front in Croatia. Its task was to conduct military operations in the areas of Pakrac, Lipik and Novska.
When the first groups returned to Prijedor for vacations, they immediately began to provoke incidents. They used to shoot quite a lot, and it was characteristic that when they would come home for 1327 holidays they did not leave their weapons in their barracks or at any other specific point, but they brought them back home, both weapons and ammunition.
When the 5th Kozara Brigade returned from Croatia to Prijedor for the first time, a major incident happened. The fire lasted several hours. Five people were wounded by stray bullets, I think that one person died, and at the same time during that period of time the Yugoslav People's Army was intensively deploying its forces in several important positions around the town of Prijedor and in the municipality of Prijedor.
Q. In addition to the presence of Reservists, was there a build up of troops in other parts of the opstina?
A. Yes. Forces from the Yugoslavia, from the former Yugoslavia, that is Serbia, were brought and amassed in the area of Mrakovica. Then troops were also built up north west, to the north west along the boundaries of the Prijedor municipality, and there were also large concentrations of troops along the Prijedor Sanski Most axis, somewhere midway between, between them, but these were a considerable build ups of troops, but this was far away from the road itself, in the woods somewhere.
I had the opportunity to talk to an officer -- I have already mentioned him -- who left that army. He told me that, formerly speaking, those were places, meeting points of Reservists who were to go to the war in Croatia. But, in point of fact, and he saw that, he was present there, they were concentrating enormous immense 1328 quantities of ammunition and weapons and equipment, and that a camp had been organised there for the drill, for the exercise, for the training of soldiers, that is, Reservists, those who had no war experience. He was not a layman in military matters. He explained that it was something completely different, that it was not the meeting point as it was officially represented to those soldiers.
Q. You indicated that the JNA had become an almost exclusively Serbian military force. Let me ask you about the TO in Prijedor, the Territorial Defence. The Territorial Defence was designed to constitute the citizens, the able bodied citizens, of any particular municipality; is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And under normal circumstances would reflect the demographics and ethnic makeup of that community?
A. Yes, on the constitution and Statute.
Q. Was the TO in Prijedor armed in 1990 at the time of the elections?
A. No.
Q. Where had the arms gone?
A. The arms were withdrawn from territorial units, that is, from neighbourhood communities, before the elections while the reorganisation of the Yugoslav People's Army was underway, when the Sarajevo army district was abolished. It used to cover the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was decided then to take almost all the -- to withdraw almost all the weaponry and armaments from the Territorial Defence, that is, territorial units, and to store them in 1329 a central depot in Prijedor.
The territorial units were left with only a symbolic number of pieces, weaponry, and by law, by Statute, they were kept in territorial units, locked. In point of fact, those weapons were there so that in case of danger those storage room would be opened, unlocked, and under the relevant procedure the members of the Territorial Defence would be armed and then perform whatever duties they had.
Q. So all weapons were first removed from the TOs and stored in the central depot by the JNA?
A. Yes.
Q. And then a symbolic number was returned to the TOs and ---
A. Yes.
Q. -- stored in the -----
A. I have to add something. When the tension became evident and when the Yugoslav People's Army became Serb Army formally, then because of the fear among the population, it became a necessary to return those weapons once removed from them to territorial units. This request was addressed to the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Republican staff of the Territorial Defence ordered that a certain amount of this weaponry be returned to the field.
However, in the case of Prijedor, this was done only in the symbolic amount, that is, it was far from the quantity of weapons that should exist in various places on the basis of the existing 1330 criteria, the supplies to those areas where the Muslims constituted the majority. In the areas where the Serbs were the majority, the situation was completely different.
Q. Thank you. In addition to the returning Reservists who came back from Croatia and the JNA units which were brought into Prijedor, was there arming of Serb civilians in opstina Prijedor by the SDS or the JNA?
A. I do not know what they called it, but I remember that their youth organisation, the youth branch of SDS was conducting some preparations, but it was more to raise the awareness of the people. As for some paramilitary formations, there was no need for that among the Serb people because there was full compatibility with the army.
Q. Were there any reports of the JNA introducing troops to Serbian civilian populations?
A. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, it was right on the eve of the takeover of power. SDS decided then to arm the rest of the unarmed Serb people, that is, who were not fit for the army, had not been mobilized for the army. The weapons were distributed publicly and in some neighbourhood communities, in some local communities, one could see it with one own's eyes; for instance, in Orlovci or in Cirkin Polje, that is, where this was done around 1300, 1.00 p.m. next to the local municipal station building in the street where there were passers-by, so nothing was done at night, nor was it concealed. At the same time -- no, even before that, we had already noticed the Yugoslav People's Army used helicopters. I know of two such cases 1331 that helicopters brought and that the helicopters landed in some Serb villages, in the Serb village or hamlet, rather, Sajaci and Petrov Gaj. In Petrov Gaj, they were seen by people who were working on a farm, those were largish crates, and the helicopter which landed at Sajaci, we requested some explanation in the local commune from the representatives of the Serb authorities there and they denied, that is, they admitted that a helicopter had landed but their explanation was that the helicopter had brought a soldier from that village and that they had landed to take a cup of coffee in his home and then leave off again. That was the explanation given us.
Q. As the time grew closer to the takeover of Prijedor, did the SDS propose a division of Prijedor?
A. Yes. When the President of SDS, Radovan Karadzic, proposed in Sarajevo to divide Bosnia into Serb and Muslim and Croat, at the same time the SDS in Prijedor also came up with a proposal to divide Prijedor into two municipalities, Muslim and Croat. But we did not want to discuss this proposal because it was completely unlawful and signified division which was not either in the political programme or acceptable under the laws of our country, but SDS continued to insist on it.
After some time, they concluded that the discussion about that matter was yielding no fruit and the non-Serb population would not go along with this division, and then they came out in public with this proposal. I mention it that the proposal, that until that time this proposal was mentioned only at various sessions in discussions with 1332 the Party of Democratic Action. After that, Kozarski Vjesnik carried the article by a Serb journalist -- unfortunately, I do not remember his name -- and the article insisted on the division, and there was a large map of Prijedor drawn there with "Serb areas", and they do it under quotation marks, marked and where "Muslim areas" again in quotation marks were marked too.
Q. In your answer you indicated that the SDS proposal was to divide Prijedor into two municipalities, Muslim and Croat. Was that accurate or -----
A. And Serb, and Serb.
Q. The map that appeared in Kozarski Vjesnik and indicated the regions that were to be allocated to the Serb community and to the Muslim and Croat community, what portions of Prijedor did the SDS proposal distribute to the Serbian community?
A. About 80 per cent of the territory of the Prijedor municipality on this map was marked as Serb territory. All the industrial complexes were marked as Serb areas. All the state property, that is forests, large farms, all this was marked as Serb territories or, rather, Serb opstina Prijedor, and about 20 per cent was not marked as Muslim.
Q. But 20 per cent was marked or not marked as Muslim?
A. They were marked as Muslim.
Q. Under the SDS proposal, approximately what percentage of the local communes would have to be divided in order to achieve that end?
A. I did not quite understand.
Q. I am sorry, I will try to clarify that. In order to divide Prijedor 1333 into an 80 per cent Serbian held community and a 20 per cent Muslim held community, would there be any impact on the local communes?
A. Yes, yes. Yes, the two areas had a marked Bosniak Muslim majority, the area of Kozarac and the so-called Brdo, several villages west, the southwest, of Prijedor. The largest number of Bosniak Muslims lived in mixed places, mixed settlements, with Serbs and this holds true especially of the towns and outskirts of towns where the population is a mixed and roughly on a 50-50 basis. Possible implementation of such a plan inevitably meant the expulsion of population from certain areas.
Then, according to the map as it was marked, we saw that theoretically it could happen in case of expulsion, as has already happened in some of the parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina under Serb control, then over 50,000 people would have to be settled in Kozarac and in Brdo which was impossible, which would mean that about 12 persons would have to be accommodated in a two roomed flat. That would roughly be the order of magnitude
Q. I asked you about the presence of the JNA in Prijedor. Did you know who the Commander of the JNA garrison in Prijedor was?
A. Yes.
Q. Who was that?
A. His name was Radomir Zeljaja. He was a Commander of the garrison, and after that when preparations for the war in Croatia had started, the Commander was Vladimir Arsic. I think he was a Lieutenant Colonel by rank. 1334
Q. Did Arsic involve himself in the political process in Prijedor?
A. Yes, yes, yes. Of lately, he was present regularly at the meeting of the Municipal Assembly. When the first time, he was there he was passive, he followed the discussion of the meeting, but after that he had started very often to participate in the discussions, although formerly he did not belong to the Municipal Assembly. At the same time his co-operation with the SDS became more intense.
Q. You spoke earlier about a nationalist movement which had emerged even prior to the 1990 elections. As the time grew closer to the takeover, was there an increase or intensification of information or propaganda related to Serb nationalism?
A. Yes, yes. More and more the Serb nationalist became more and more aggressive in the media. At first, it was only to support rallies in Serbia in 1988, then to express the support of the army and after that it became the propaganda, the only purpose of which was national homogenizing and the so-called awakening of the conscience of the Serb people. At the same time, probably it had been planned, memories and commemorations from the tragedy of the Second World War appeared, so graves were dug out at several locations and the TV always reported on that. Then the bones of some Serb saints were taken throughout the whole Serbia and then throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The most impressive example was the carrying of the bones of the Serbian Saint, the Talasa. It was all accompanied by some kind of popular festivals, both religious and lay, and nationalistic songs 1335 would always accompany that kind of event and the clothing that was worn, as the one worn about 100 years ago by the Serbs, was used as symbols. That was all to be seen on television. One could also hear national speeches that created fear in non-Serb people.
Q. Was there any effort by Serbs to increase broadcasts from Belgrade and reduce broadcasts from Sarajevo?
A. Yes. First of all, on the level of the republic, the MPs from the SDS claimed that Sarajevo TV was more partial towards Muslims, that it was Muslims, that it was not Serbian TV. They did not want the Yutel programme to be seen. At the same time they started to prepare for the occupation of TV transmitters, and they eventually did that in Prijedor. They took over the transmitter at Lisina after that at Vlasic.
Q. After the transmitters at Lisina and Vlasic were taken over, what programmes were available in Prijedor?
A. Exclusively the programmes by TV Belgrade, Croatian TV and after some time local Banja Luka television, because within a few days Serbs started to have a local TV programme that was presented by journalists from the Bosnia-Herzegovina radio that was sent to Banja Luka to do that job there. They stopped working for the Bosnian TV in Sarajevo. It was clear that there that that had been planned, but there were no means to combat that. People could see that when the Lisina transmitter was taken over a larger group of soldiers took part in that and part of those soldiers were members of special units of the JNA. 1336
Q. Did the broadcasts from Belgrade and other sources lead to an increase of ethnic tensions from opstina Prijedor among Serbs or between Serbs and Muslims and Croats?
A. Yes. Yes, but I have to say that we can speak about national tensions, ethnic tensions with a quotation marks, because when the transmitter was taken over, when we look at it chronologically in this period when we were nearing the war, at that time the JNA was fully with the Croatian people, and where the Serbs felt additional insecurity they were distributed and given weapons by the JNA. One could not speak about tensions. There was fear in the non-Serb population, and there was also an attempt by Serb authorities that, although they had armed the Serb people, tried to scare them additionally; that is what SDS tried to do. Because I suppose that one part of Serbs was against this arming.
Q. Were there any peace movements among Serbs against the war in Croatia?
A. No. No, larger movements, but Serbs did become members of the League for Peace organised in Prijedor by Dr. Eso Sadikovic who had later been killed. I took the initiative to organise the civic forum several months before the war, and in that that civic forum there were Serbs, Croats, there were some other nationalities in the forum as well. I remember Zltako Duric, a journalist, was there and in our everyday discussions he criticised severely the behaviour of those soldiers. He was against the war. I remember that he was not from Prijedor. He worked in Prijedor. He was originally from Serbia. 1337 From the SDS and the local municipal committee there was somebody who was a member of the civic forum, but as time passed by more and more pressure was put on those people from the SDS and they were not allowed to come to our meetings.
Q. You indicated that the broadcast from Belgrade and other sources caused fear among the non-Serb community. What was it about those broadcasts that generated that feeling?
A. First of all, the population was able to watch what had been going on in Kosovo several years then, and it was well known that there is a large Albanian majority, that means a non-Serb majority, but on that majority terrible terror was exercised. At the same time on TV everything was presented in a different way. They would say that the Serbs were constantly threatened and more and more Serbs from Prijedor would become convinced, I do not know whether truly or just formally, about that. Then the events started to happen in the Knin Krajina in the Republic of Croatia. The Serb population from Prijedor was mobilized by political means and it fully supported the threatened "brothers" in Croatia. In all these programmes and those speeches there was no other nation presented in a positive context; only the Serb nation was presented positively. When something like that lasts for months and when at the same time the Yugoslav People's Army, which was powerful, sides with the only people that is supported by television and by all the media, you do feel threatened because very often there was a thesis expressed saying that for the Serbs the Second World War has not ended. One could hear it on 1338 dozens of rallies or else it was said that the Serbs always win wars and lose in peace time. That was repeated many times. At first on TV one could hear such words only from Seselj or from some others like Arkan or some others, some radicals, Serb politicians or leaders. But as time went by and as more and more the JNA was put into the function of achieving the objectives of a greater Serbia, one could hear it from official politicians as well.
Q. Did the SDA or the Muslim community of Prijedor take steps to indicate to the SDS and to the Serbian community that it did not want any conflict and wanted no provocations to occur?
A. Yes. We undertook some steps, although very little success, but we did have some success to start with. The following occurred in some local communes where a Bosniak Muslim population bordered with Serb population, and where there could have been reasons for fear by either the Serb or non-Serb population. We proposed that some common groups be organised, some patrols, among neighbours and that they should be on duty overnight, so to ensure that nothing unpredicted would happen. I noticed in many occasions when I contacted people from Serb villages that they were saying, and they were convinced, that only somebody could come from elsewhere, that means somebody unknown coming from far away, and cause an incident, because they among neighbours had been living for very many years and they agree and they would not do anything like that.
For example, in my local commune where I live and where I have spent most of the time, the local Serbs and Bosniak Muslims came to 1339 an accord very easily. They formed common patrols and common guards and they did it for some time like that in places where there were boundaries among villages. They would sit until the morning together. They would eat dinner, drink coffee and talk, but that lasted for a short period of time because they were ordered to quit such duties.
Q. Who ordered to quit such duties?
A. The SDS ordered that, that is the structures that the SDS controlled. I know that they explained to us on one occasion, they said: "We will not be on duty together any more." When we asked them "Why?" they said there was no need for it, each should keep its own. We did not know exactly what that meant, but we noticed some events that indicated something unpredicted could happen.
Q. What happened in Prijedor on April 30th 1992?
A. Before I answer your question, I would like to say that before 30th April and after we abandoned these common patrols, we noticed the evacuation of Serb population during the night from some parts. We noticed that in the town of Prijedor where from some skyscrapers dozens of families would in groups, late in the evening, they would go into other parts of town, the whole families with children, and the same thing would happen in the local commune of the Trnopolje, a population from Sajak Radonjici and some other hamlets, that means women, children and elderly people, they would go to spend the night somewhere else, more into the Serb territory. We did not know why and nobody explained that to us although we did ask. 1340 Eventually, if I can answer your question, on 30th April, in fact in the morning, an hour somewhere around 3 o'clock in the morning, a military coup took place in Prijedor. All the facilities were taken over and the whole town was under the control of people in uniforms and they were deployed on military points, checkpoints.
Q. So the evacuation of certain portions of the Serbian neighbourhoods had preceded the takeover?
A. Yes. Yes, but those people would come back in the mornings. For example, from the neighbourhood of Pecani, that is from Puharska, they would go to Pecani. They would spend the night there and in the morning they would go back to their houses and flats.
Q. Was the coup accomplished without a battle or bullets flying?
A. No, no. No, there were not even indications that something like that could happen. At the same time the position of Bosniak Muslims and the position of the Party of Democratic Action and the whole non-Serb population was objectively such that they were not able to plan any kind of armed actions, no kind of such actions. All our work was in trying to avoid a possible conflict. That is why we very often undertook sometimes even senseless steps. I will give you one example. For example, some Serb houses in Bosniak Muslim villages, around those houses, those houses would always be guarded by Bosniak Muslims or also with mounted guards around the orthodox church in Kozarac, so that nobody would come to the idea to damage it. Very many guarded that church so that nobody would sabotage it, and later on the Bosniak Muslims would be accused that that they want a war and 1341 that such things would not cause a war. On these things we spent quite a lot of effort and time. That means that we did not provoke the action committed by SDS.
Q. What did Prijedor town look like on the morning of the coup?
A. In the morning hours from Trnopolje where I lived I went to Prijedor to work. Very normally I took the bus and went towards Prijedor. After only two kilometres in the first Serb village the bus was stopped, soldiers came in and they asked all the passengers for their IDs. At the same time I saw machine gun nest with sacks of sand which was not there the previous day. Later on, on the way to Prijedor I saw various points like that. At the very bus station in the town and also on at the railway station there was a great number of soldiers, very many machine gun nests or, as the soldiers called them, fire points. All the junctions, all the major junctions had either a couple of soldiers there without a machine gun nest in a shelter or else a machine gun nest with sand bags. In the centre of the town in front of the building of the SUP and also in front of the town hall, in front of the public auditing office, there were also machine gun nests. In many places one could see Serb women carrying, taking coffee and sweets to those soldiers. All the civilians were controlled for their ID every 100 metres.
Q. Did you attempt to get into the municipal building?
A. First of all, I went to the offices of the party and during that journey I was asked for my ID on several occasions. In the party offices some party members had already been there and they tried to 1342 contact the SDS, but it was impossible to contact them. At the same time the people who held office in the Municipal Assembly gathered there, because they had been prevented to go to the organisations where they worked. Not a single Bosniak Muslim was able to go to his office in the municipality, neither a civil servant nor somebody a simple employee. The same thing was true for all the institutions of the municipality in Prijedor. Then we learned that in the police station during the night while they were on duty all the non-Serb policemen were disarmed and that they were dismissed. Only Serb policemen remained.
Q. Over the next few days did you learn who the new authorities of Prijedor were?
A. Yes, yes. Yes, Radio Prijedor started to broadcast its announcements straightaway that morning, saying that SDS undertook some measures in order to "deblock authority in Prijedor". The SDS members appeared on broadcasts very often during the day. They were saying how Prijedor was free eventually, at last, and on the radio one could hear nationalistic music. At the start of all the programmes there was the music to March on the River Drina. This is a song from Serb, history music from Serb history used in some moments, not very pleasant for other nationalities during the Second and the First World Wars.
Q. You indicated that after the takeover Muslims were terminated from their jobs and could not go to their places of employment. Were other restrictions imposed on the Muslim community? 1343
A. Yes. After a couple of days the Muslims could not in a single institution controlled at that time by Serbs, they could not receive any kind of a document. They were not able to go to work. Very soon Bosniak Muslims that were teachers in school, they were sent away from there. After some 10 days not even Bosniak Muslim children were allowed to go to school, neither to primary nor to secondary schools, where the Serbs controlled the territory. At the same time they prevented all travel out of the municipality of Prijedor to all Bosniak Muslims women, children and elderly people included, that means to people of all ages. We during some talks asked for explanations, but we never received any. But we could hear on the radio accusations against Bosniak Muslims. After an incident from the area of Omarska three buses were returned with women and children that were to go towards Croatia. After that, on the radio there was an accusation against Bosniak Muslims stating they were preparing to wage war against Serbs and that for that reason they were trying to send women, children and elderly people to more secure areas in order to wage war more easily against the Serbs. That was completely without any sense.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: It is 5.30 and we normally adjourn at 5.30. Mr. Semenovic, you may be excused until tomorrow at 10 a.m. I would like counsel to remain just for a short moment so that we may discuss a matter. You are excused until tomorrow at 10 a.m. Thank you. (The witness withdrew).
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: A few days ago we discussed the trial schedule in a 1344 closed session and discussed two options, one option being to extend the hours during which the Trial Chamber would receive testimony and also meet on some Mondays. The other option was to maintain the status quo. The hours we meet are from 10 to 1 and from 2.30 to 5.30. As we indicated, on many Mondays we would not meet because of the need for this Trial Chamber to conduct other matters and because of the need of the other Trial Chamber to conduct other matters. We heard in camera from counsel for the Defence regarding their preference. Of course, the Office of the Prosecutor presented the first option and then an analysis of the status quo. Under an option that would extend the time for receiving evidence and hear evidence on some Mondays, I believe the Prosecutor had indicated that it would complete its case in-chief (that of course does not include cross-examination because you could not estimate how much time would be needed tore cross-examination) by July 30th. Of course, if we kept with the status quo then we would complete or the Prosecutor would complete its case in-chief by August 30th. Again, that does not include any estimate for cross-examination.
The Trial Chamber has reviewed this option as well as the status quo and taken into consideration the position of the Defence. But we have also had to take into consideration the limitations under which the interpreters operate and we have been advised that there are time limitations, and that they can only perform their services for a certain specified time and we are at that limit now. 1345 So keeping that in mind, it is impossible for the Trial Chamber to extend the hours, that is start earlier and go later because of the situation with the interpreters. We have six
interpreters. If we changed the hours, extended the hours, that would require
another entire team at significant cost which it is just not available to us.
Then we need Mondays not only for this Trial Chamber to handle other matters, but also for the other Trial Chamber to handle other matters or matters of its own because we only have one courtroom, unfortunately.
So, we have no option except to maintain the status quo. I appreciate the Prosecutor's efforts to get us to focus on this, and I appreciate the position of the Defence. Your position is in line with the situation that we have operate under with the interpreters and the need for this courtroom for other purposes. So, is there anything else on that matter, Mr. Niemann, at this time?
MR. NIEMANN: No, your Honour, there is nothing else on that matter. There is another matter I would like to mention.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Is this anything regarding this matter, Mr. Wladimiroff?
MR. WLADIMIROFF: Not directly, your Honour, but indirectly. We have no matter on this issue, but we have a related matter. I take that Mr. Niemann is going to deal with that too. That is, we learned from the 1346 a press release that there will be a 61 hearing by the end of June and the beginning of July. A moment ago you indicated that there was only one courtroom, so it is very intriguing what is going to happen with this trial. Is there anything yet known what might be the consequences?
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: The matter came up because I suppose Mr. Niemann when we were discussing the trial schedule a couple of days ago mentioned something about a Rule 61 proceeding. I did not respond to that because, as far as I am concerned, nothing had been formally set. I too have seen that press release and I presume that there is a Rule 61 proceeding scheduled for the dates that are indicated. I believe it is to commence on June 27th?
MR. WLADIMIROFF: June 27th to July 5th.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: 27th June to commence. I really cannot comment on it because there are procedures under our Rules that have to be taken before a Rule 61 proceeding is set. I do not know whether the other Trial Chamber has accomplished all of those conditions precedent, I suppose, to the setting of the Rule 61. So what I know is what I have seen in the press release. If that is so, if that happens and all of the necessary procedures that are set forth in Rule 60 I think of our procedures are followed, then this courtroom will be used for that Rule 61 proceeding for that period of time.
MR. WLADIMIROFF: We would highly appreciate, your Honour, if we would know this in due time because we might use it also for completing our own discovery on location. Therefore, it would be highly appreciated 1347 if we were given notice about that.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Then that, in a sense, makes me feel better because I have been so concerned about the delays, the intrusions really, into the trial, but if I hear that maybe you can use that time ----
MR. WLADIMIROFF: That is the reason why I am bringing this up.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: --- it makes me feel as far as you are concerned. I do not know what the Prosecutor would say. Now the Prosecutor would say what? I should not feel better! In any case, do you have anything to say? Is that what you wanted to bring up, Mr. Niemann?
MR. NIEMANN: Your Honours, I have a different matter I wanted to raise. The break, if there is to be one, is not something that we are happy about, but it is something with which we will learn to live no doubt, your Honours. No, your Honours, the matter we wanted to mention is that this is an application that we would like to make, if we may, and I suggest if we could do it in the morning, regarding a witness and certain measures that we would ask your Honours to consider. To that end could we perhaps start off the proceedings tomorrow very shortly, it is a very short application, in relation to a witness that is due to give evidence shortly. If we could start off tomorrow morning.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: We will begin with that at 10 o'clock tomorrow?
MR. NIEMANN: If that would be convenient to your Honours.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Rather than continuing with the witness. That is acceptable.
MR. WLADIMIROFF: I take it that it is in camera? 1348
MR. NIEMANN: Yes.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: It is in camera. Thank you. There is no objection to that, Mr. Wladimiroff?
MR. WLADIMIROFF: No. We have been informed about that.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: Then we will meet in camera at 10. What I am referring, Mr. Wladimiroff, is Rule 61 requires that certain steps be taken and that orders be issued. I have not seen those orders, but as soon as I hear definitely and know that the conditions precedent to the Rule 61 have taken place, I will advise the lawyers, that is for sure.
MR. WLADIMIROFF: Thank you very much.
THE PRESIDING JUDGE: We will resume tomorrow at 10 o'clock in camera.
(5.40 p.m.) (The court adjourned until the following day).