Case No IT-95-14

³³⁴⁰ Monday, 10th November 1997

(10.00 am)

JUDGE JORDA: Please be seated. Turning to the Registrar, I would like the accused to be brought in, please.

(Accused brought in) Does everybody hear? Are the interpreters ready? Good morning, everybody. Good morning to the Prosecution, to the Defence. Good morning to Mr. Tihofil Blaskic. Does everybody hear? Given that, perhaps we can resume our hearing. Prosecutor, would you please recall where in the proceedings we were? I believe I see Mr. Kehoe standing. We are listening to you, Mr. Kehoe.

MR. KEHOE: Good morning, Mr. President, your Honours. I know it has been some time since we have been here. Just by way of recollection, the Prosecution team was putting in a series of witnesses concerning the events taking place in Ahmici and we would -- and the surrounding areas, but mainly Ahmici, and we would continue that beginning today, beginning with Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Watters of the 1 Cheshire Regiment, in the army of the United Kingdom.

Before we do bring Lieutenant Colonel Watters in, Mr. President, there are a couple of matters concerning individuals who do not want information disclosed for ³³⁴¹ which there have been prior motions. If just briefly we could go to private session and talk about those two issues, the Prosecution would be very grateful.

JUDGE JORDA: No objection from the Defence for a private session in order for us to take our positions. Mr. Hayman?

MR. HAYMAN: We do not know what it is about, your Honour, but we think the Prosecutor should have that opportunity.

JUDGE JORDA: All right, Registrar. Do you mean you want a closed session or a private session?

MR. KEHOE: Just a private session, Mr. President. There is no need to put the blinds down. Just when we talk about issues which have been the subject of motions, it is not heard out in the gallery.

JUDGE JORDA: All right, then we will now have a private session. Until I can find a good way to say "private session" in French, we are saying "session privée‚", but that is really not a good way to put it. The French judges -- we cannot talk about private sessions in English, so I am saying "privée‚", although I know that is not really the correct expression. In any case, we are going to have the private session. All right, are we ready?

(In closed session) ³³⁴²

(14 pages redacted) ³³⁵⁶

(13 lines redacted)

(In open session)

(Witness entered court)

JUDGE JORDA: Colonel Watters, do you hear me?

THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.

JUDGE JORDA: Will you please tell us your identity. Could you tell us exactly your name? You are Lieutenant Colonel Watters.

THE WITNESS: I am Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Watters and I currently command the 1st Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment.

JUDGE JORDA: Just a moment please. I just wanted to make sure of your identity. You will be now asked to read a ³³⁵⁷ solemn declaration, please, and remain standing while reading it. Please read it.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL WATTERS (sworn)

JUDGE JORDA: Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel. You may be seated. You have been invited by the Prosecution to testify as a witness of the Prosecution. You will first be examined by the Prosecutor and after by the Defence. It is now Mr. Kehoe.

Examined by MR. KEHOE

Q. Good morning, Mr. Watters?

A. Good morning, sir.

Q. Colonel Watters, what do you do for a living right now?

A. I command 1 Cheshire, which is a British infantry battalion, currently stationed in Northern Ireland.

Q. Briefly, can you give the Trial Chamber an idea of your experience in the British military?

A. I was initially commissioned in 1973 after a year at Sandhurst. I was then posted to 1 Cheshire as a platoon commander, having conducted my platoon commanders' course. Having spent two years as platoon commander, I was trained as an antitank officer of the battalion. After a few more normal regimental duty appointments, which involved operational tours in Northern Ireland and Rhodesia, I was then posted as the operations officer of an armoured brigade in Germany, what we would call the ³³⁵⁸ SO3 G3 operations, a grade 3 staff officer. After two years doing that, I returned to 1 Cheshire to command an infantry company, which I commanded in England and Belize in Central America.

From there I was posted to headquarters Northern Ireland, where I did a grade 2 staff job. After that, I was posted to Brunei and Borneo to command the Jungle Warfare School and from there I was posted as second in command 1 Cheshire, then stationed in Vitez. After that, and a few more appointments, I was posted back to 1 Cheshire to command it.

Q. Colonel Watters, when did you take command of the first battalion of the Cheshire Regiment?

A. I took command of 1 Cheshire just before we went to Northern Ireland last year.

Q. During your citation of your background, Colonel, you said that there was a period of time where you were second in command of 1 Cheshire in Bosnia stationed in Vitez, is that correct?

A. That is right, sir.

Q. What time-frame was the battalion of 1 Cheshire there and how long were you there?

A. The battalion was there from November 1992 until May 1993 and I was second in command from the beginning of February 1993 until May when we left. ³³⁵⁹

Q. So you were there for probably the last half of the tour, is that about right?

A. That is right, sir.

Q. Colonel Watters, can you tell the court exactly what was going on when you first got to Bosnia? What was the state of affairs between the warring factions, to the best of your recollection? Can you just give a description of that to the court in your own words?

A. I arrived in Bosnia on 6th February and spent the first couple of weeks taking over the job of second in command from Major Tim Park. At the time, the commanding officer, Colonel Stewart, was on his mid-tour leave and so between Major Park and myself we were command and second in command for that battalion for those two weeks.

My first impression was it was a very confusing environment, militarily, to understand. I spent quite a lot of time trying to put the three warring factions in perspective, understand what their military and political aspirations were, so we could understand what they might be doing -- because what they said they were doing was not always what we discovered they had been doing -- and also to be very clear on the current state of the war; where the front-line positions were, largely the Serb front-lines and what the current state of the ³³⁶⁰ Muslim Croat alliance was.

Also it was to get to know who the key military and political personalities were within our area of responsibility in Central Bosnia, and that is what I spent the first couple of weeks doing, and was assisted in that by Major Park, who took me round, and also by the attendance of a meeting at Kakanj on 13th February, where I met most of the key personalities within the Muslim and Croat armed forces.

Q. Did the British battalion have a particular area of responsibility in Central Bosnia?

A. Yes, we did. Our area of responsibility really was from Kiseljak up through Busovaca across to Zenica, along the Lasva Valley, incorporating Vitez where our base was, down to Travnik and then across to Jajce Maglaj. We also had areas of responsibility beyond the Serb lines, which we were not able to access, because the Serbs would not let us cross the lines.

Q. When you were trying to familiarise yourself with the area, did you have the opportunity to travel around your area of responsibility, or your AOR as you call it?

A. Yes, I did, I travelled extensively.

Q. The mission for the British battalion in Vitez was known as Operation Grapple, is that right?

A. Yes, that was the name given to it by the British ³³⁶¹ Ministry of Defence.

Q. What was the goals of the British battalion on Operation Grapple in Central Bosnia and did those goals change over a period of time?

A. The goals can best be expressed in our mission statement which the commanding officer articulated within a few weeks of us being in Bosnia. That was essentially -- our role was to facilitate the movement of humanitarian aid throughout our area of responsibility in order to prevent the starvation and general deprivation of the civilian population. That was our mission statement, so that was our goal, and at the beginning of our time there, once the Serb front-lines had stabilised and we were able to put in place what we would describe as our "scheme of manoeuvre", or how we would actually achieve our mission statement -- would you like me to explain that or go on to how the goals changed during the period?

Q. Just explain a little bit about how you manoeuvred, and then you can go into how those goals changed.

A. The scheme of manoeuvre essentially required -- you have to understand we had a blank sheet of paper. It was what we would call a, "fundamental estimate", an examination of how we might do it, and the plan that we came up with to achieve our mission statement is ³³⁶² articulated through this scheme of manoeuvre. What the scheme of manoeuvre required was for the identification within the battle group, BritBat, of a number of officers to perform the function of liaison officers. We identified six who were of the right calibre and personality. These captains were each given an area, a subarea of responsibility within the AOR, and their task was to get to know the personalities, both military and political, who controlled affairs within the Muslim, Croat and if possible Serb areas, and to establish a personal working relationship with these individuals to allow us first of all to understand what was going on, because it was very confusing, and secondly to establish personal relationships which in time of crisis we could call upon to resolve particular situations at the appropriate level. The establishing of these liaison officers became fundamental to our ability to prosecute our mission.

Having established the liaison officers, and they having established working relationships within their subareas of responsibility, simultaneously we began a patrolling exercise using the various armoured resources within BritBat, primarily our Warrior armoured vehicles of which we had 53, but also other armoured vehicles, to first of all establish the Serb front-line, and secondly ³³⁶³ then to produce throughout the area of responsibility a degree of confidence within the local population and the aid organisations, because we did not want to be tied down to specific junctions and be running specific aid convoys. We wanted to create a web, if you like, or a network of security and trust throughout which aid could move unhindered and we would patrol the area extensively and bring force to bear at particular areas of disagreement or conflict, and that was how we intended to do it. That essentially worked up until the middle of April.

Q. During the course of your efforts and the efforts of the British battalion to attempt to move aid through the Lasva Valley and the other portions of your area of responsibility, did you come in contact with Colonel Tihomir Blaskic?

A. Yes, I did. I first met Colonel Blaskic on 13th February at the Busovaca submission meeting in Kakanj, which I attended with Major Park. He was there to the best of my recollection with his immediate commander, General Petkovic. There were also members of the Bosnian Muslim military 3rd Corps.

Q. Is the individual that you identify as Colonel Blaskic in the courtroom?

A. Yes, that is Colonel Blaskic sitting over there. ³³⁶⁴

Q. Can you point to him, please?

A. (indicates).

MR. KEHOE: Let the record reflect, Mr. President, your Honours, that the witness is identifying the defendant.

Was that the first point at which you met him, on February 13th 1993?

A. That was the first time I had met him, yes.

Q. What role did Blaskic play in your area of responsibility?

A. Colonel Blaskic was the regional commander of the HVO. He had three subregions under him, each with their own commanders and subordinate commanders below that. If I can recall, the three areas were Kiseljak -- Kiseljak-Busovaca was the first operational area -- no, that was the second. The first area was

Vitez-Travnik -- the second operational area was Kiseljak-Busovaca and the third was Zepce, and they were his three subregions, if you like, and he commanded the overall region.

Q. Was there any doubt in your mind that he was the overall commander in the Central Bosnia Operative Zone?

A. No.

Q. Did Colonel Blaskic have what could be called the trappings of military power when you saw him in Central ³³⁶⁵ Bosnia?

A. It is quite difficult to understand trappings of power. He had the natural authority of the commander. He had the bodyguards that go with many of the commanders in Bosnia at the time. He had communications, and he reported directly to General Petkovic. I cannot think of another way to articulate the fact that it was quite clear he was the regional commander. He signed documents as the regional commander in my presence.

Q. Did Colonel Blaskic have headquarters in the area?

A. Yes. His main headquarters were in the Hotel Vitez during my period. I was aware he also had a headquarters he worked out at quite often in Kiseljak and I think he actually came from that part of Bosnia, which would explain why he was quite often in Kiseljak as well.

Q. Just going back to what we were talking about prior to the description of Colonel Blaskic, you were talking about the goals of the British battalion bringing humanitarian aid in there. Did those goals change at some point?

A. The goal of facilitating the description of humanitarian aid which was our mission did not change, the mission remained the same, we were just unable to achieve our mission due to the deterioration of the situation in ³³⁶⁶ Central Bosnia, with the collapse of the Muslim Croat alliance, and the degree of fighting and conflict within the area which we -- the idea of forcing humanitarian aid through pitched battles was just facile, and our -- the core area of our mission, why we were facilitating humanitarian aid, was to save people's lives, and the requirement to save people's lives switched from feeding them to actually taking them from the field of battle, which is what our main emphasis switched to in the period of late April.

Q. This is after the attack on the Vitez/Ahmici areas, is that right?

A. It was a slightly larger area than that, but it was after about the morning of 16th April our emphasis changed totally, and really by the time we left in mid May we still had not got back to our primary role of distribution of aid. We had switched to the saving of life in the micro concept in villages and at checkpoints. The running of cease-fire commissions became a major part of our work; facilitating the movement of senior Croat and Muslim commanders under UN protection to take the orders for cease-fires and the conditions of cease-fires to their soldiers; the recovery of bodies from the field of battle, burying of dead; they became the more important things to do at that ³³⁶⁷ time.

Q. Colonel Watters, turning if you will from the goals of the British battalion and Operation Grapple, did you have occasion to examine the goals of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the HVO in Central Bosnia?

A. Yes. As I explained at the beginning, it was fundamental to us to be able to conduct our mission to understand what the warring factions were trying to do. It became, as one studied it and accessed more information and more personal observation and discussion, it became obvious that there were essentially three structures operating within Central Bosnia in terms of the military situation, both within the Bosnia -- Croat and Bosnian Muslim. I would best describe those as the top level or strategic level, the operational level and the tactical level, and the strategic level was linked to the political aspirations of the Muslims and Croats, and their central governments and central military.

The operational level was the prosecution of the strategic objectives by the regional military commanders, and the tactical level was in really the villages or the brigade units within Bosnia, and they operated under the orders of the operational level. I could develop that more if you wish. ³³⁶⁸

Q. Let us talk about just individually for the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. What was their strategic goal at this point when you got to Central Bosnia in February 1993, and continuing through until April?

A. Do you mean the BiH?

Q. The BiH.

A. The first point I think about the BiH is they were quite traumatised by the success of the Serbs, especially in the areas like Banja Luka, and in the areas -- Srebrenica, which was a running problem during our time there. They really were consolidating and trying to defend the area that they had so far not lost to the Serbs and were very much keen to, from our perspective, maintain their alliance with the Croats, because they did not believe on their own they could actually hold out against any further Serb offences, so they were very much shoring up their eastern borders in the north with the Serbs and working with joint defensive lines, for example in Turbe, just outside Travnik, where they had joint operations with the Croats.

Q. Turning if you will to the strategic --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

MR. KEHOE: I am sorry. Turning if you will to the strategic goals of the HVO, did you also examine strategic goals of the HVO? ³³⁶⁹

A. Yes, in very much the same way, and the story was quite similar, but there were some differences. The major difference between the HVO and the BiH is really the BiH were an island, if you will. They could not be reinforced or supported from anywhere else, there was just the BiH, the Muslim community in Central Bosnia. There was no greater, pan-European Muslim community supporting them. They did have a sort of isolationist survival approach. The HVO and the Croat community were very different, because they had a -- the potential for a great deal of support from Croatia proper, also -- that gave them a confidence in their approach which the Muslims did not have, and certainly allowed them to appear to be running agendas that were well outside the concept of a Muslim Croat alliance, very much Croat agendas for a greater Croatia.

Q. Explain those agendas, Colonel?

A. It was quite obvious that the Croats were looking at the way in which the Serbs appeared to get away with what they got away with through force of arms. The Serbs take a piece of ground, the political community, the Vance-Owen Plan seemed to acquiesce and almost be seen to reward the efforts of the Serbs. It was our understanding, certainly my belief, that the Croats thought that this was quite a successful model to ³³⁷⁰ emulate. Certainly the proposed Vance-Owen cantons that we saw at the beginning of April, where canton 10 was a Croat canton, which embraced our area of responsibility, so we were particularly interested in it, appeared to provide a Croat heartland within the middle of Central Bosnia which included quite large Muslim minorities. That appeared to be a strategic goal of the Croats, to address this issue.

The second thing was the preoccupation with routes or access from the large centres of Croat population, Prozor and Tomislavgrad, leading down into main land Croatia, and a preoccupation with securing routes from Prozor up into Central Bosnia, because the Mostar route was totally controlled and dominating by the Serbs, and just unusable. The fighting in and around Prozor against the Muslim villages to the east, the fighting in Gornji Vakuf for control of a key junction on that route, and later the fighting in the Lasva Valley sort of reinforced the idea.

There is also a great historical precedent within the Balkans for the domination of routes. If you looked at the Serb gains and the routes the Serb front-lines took, they were very strange until you overlaid the main arterial routes of Bosnia and you saw that the Serb front-lines had actually accessed nearly all these main ³³⁷¹ routes and cut them, thus isolating Central Bosnia and preventing in many areas the reinforcements of pockets and fingers, and all these other terms people use for isolated resistance. That model of the preoccupation with the Balkans on the man that controls the valleys, or the man that controls the routes controls the country, is historically evident in the Second World War in Germany's operations within the Balkans. It was a blinding glimpse of the obvious that this route from Prozor up into --

JUDGE JORDA: Excuse me, I would like the witness to speak more directly to the Tribunal.

A. I am sorry. It was a blinding glimpse of the obvious that a great deal of the operations conducted by the Croats, even during the period of the cease-fire, was actually to maintain a degree of security on this route. Also, as the fighting developed on 16th April and beyond, a great deal of the effort of the Croat forces was to try and secure routes, not only strategic routes down to Prozor but also routes within Central Bosnia, to link up the main Croat centres of population such as Busovaca and Vitez, for example.

MR. KEHOE: You mention that as one agenda. Did the HVO and the Bosnian Croats have a parallel agenda in addition to securing these routes? ³³⁷²

A. That parallel agenda manifested itself, as I tried to explain earlier, with the development of canton 10 and the problem that having Muslim minorities within their canton would present them. It was quite obvious to us with the events of 16th April and beyond that the Croats intended to remove the Muslim minorities from the area of canton 10, and also to remove Muslims from any areas that would threaten the lines of communication or the main routes within Central Bosnia, and specifically the Lasva Valley area and the Kiseljak valley area.

MR. KEHOE: With the assistance of the usher, and if we could just move up to what has now been marked, Mr. President, as exhibit 29G, which is the map on the easel -- I am sorry, is this "G" or "J"?

THE REGISTRAR: 29J.

MR. KEHOE: 29J, Mr. President, I apologise. I ask you, Colonel Watters, if you could step up to the microphone and, taking the red marker to your left, could you outline, if you will, the strategic goals of the HVO, based on the routes that you just discussed.

If I may, Mr. President, may I approach?

A. If I begin by marking the routes and the towns, shall I do the routes in yellow and the towns in red?

Q. That is fine. ³³⁷³

A. (Witness marks map). They are the main -- I have just highlighted in red the main towns. I will just now highlight the routes I talked about.

Q. Just talking about the main towns. Can you mention them, going down from the left-hand corner?

A. Prozor, Gornji Vakuf, what we used to describe as Novi Travnik --

Q. Which is Pucarevo on the map.

A. Vitez, Kaonik, Zenica, Fojnica and Kiseljak. There are two small towns I am just trying to find which are significant. Bilalovac is one of them, Kacuni, that was the other one. I am sorry, sir, my memory does not run four years that well on the detail of some of these towns. The route we are talking about --

Q. Which route is this?

A. What we are going to do is link up first of all the main Croat centres of population, and the routes that they would be required to maintain to support political or military operations. That is from Kiseljak up what we described as the Kiseljak valley to Busovaca, which was very important to the Bosnian Croats and was also the regional seat of their main political influence, where Mr. Dario Kordic lived. Across to Vitez, up past Stari Bila, where our own place was just there, I will just mark that, up to this key junction here, down past ³³⁷⁴ Pucarevo, down to Gornji Vakuf, and then a road controlled also by the Croats down to Prozor, and Prozor linking directly down to Tomislavgrad and down into Croatia.

In addition, there was a good deal of fighting in early April just to the east of Prozor, which we could not understand at first until we began to apply this overlay or logic of routes. One of the big problems with Gornji Vakuf was the large Muslim element there, which was continuously fighting with the Croats. They really could never guarantee that this key junction on this arterial route could be safe. We were getting a lot of reports of heavy artillery fire and attacks out to the east of Prozor, and if you looked there were a series of Muslim villages which went on routes, and it is quite a plethora of routes and alternatives you could take. You could move across to Fojnica, and there was also fighting above Gornji Vakuf, which we put down to an aspiration to push a second route across to Busovaca. Of course, if you got to Fojnica you had a straightforward route over to Kiseljak and there was a route up to Busovaca.

So this matrix here overlays the importance of the routes and how if you plotted the routes on the map and you looked where the main areas of fighting were going ³³⁷⁵ on between the Croats and the Muslims, or where the major Croat offensives were, you could see that they were actually following routes and the logic of it was stark.

Q. This particular matrix that you put together with the routes, is this something that would be planned at a local level, at a local brigade level, or was this a strategic endeavour taken by HVO headquarters, in your opinion, as a military person?

A. To answer your question, it was a strategic plan, because the pattern of it and the co-ordination of it had to be done at the very minimum at region level or the operational level. It certainly was not the tactical level, because the co-ordination required for each of these brigade areas was far too great for it to be some sort of spontaneous tactical plan. It had to be co-ordinated and planned at least at regional level, probably actually at strategic level, or the resources given to the regional commander at strategic level to prosecute his regional battle.

Q. The route that you mentioned here goes through Vitez, Kaonik, Busovaca, down through Kacuni and Bilalovac and down to Kiseljak. In the area of Kacuni and Bilalovac, when you got there in February 1993, was there a portion or all that road between Bilalovac and Kacuni controlled ³³⁷⁶ by the Bosnian Muslims, the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina?

A. Yes, there was, there were actually checkpoints and they became quite contentious, especially the checkpoint in Kacuni. If I draw here approximately, the green line will show the area of this route that was actually controlled by the BiH. They had BiH checkpoints at the beginning and end of them. You knew as you drove down the road that you had gone from a Croat controlled area, south of Busovaca at Kacuni, into a BiH controlled area, which you left south of Bilalovac, leading down to Kiseljak, although there were odd areas just to the north of Kiseljak as well that had areas of conflict between Croats and Muslims.

Q. Would it be essential to accomplish those strategic goals to ensure that this entire road from Kiseljak all the way down to Prozor was open?

A. Certainly, because it allowed you to bring military reinforcements in, plus normal civilian supplies, and also in times of conflict it allowed you to take your casualties out, and no soldiers want to fight a war if they do not think that when wounded they can be evacuated.

JUDGE JORDA: We are going to interrupt the testimony and we will resume again at 11.45.

(11.20 am) ³³⁷⁷

(A short break)

(11.40 am)

JUDGE JORDA: The hearing is resumed, please bring the accused.

Colonel, please take a seat and we can resume work.

(Accused brought in)

MR. KEHOE: Colonel Watters, just turning back briefly to Exhibit 29J, the area that you have outlined in yellow are the routes which you termed as strategic goals of the HVO, is that correct, sir?

A. Yes.

Q. That area goes from Prozor to Gornji Vakuf, up through Novi Travnik and bends down through the Lasva Valley?

A. Yes, it does.

Q. Onwards from Busovaca down to Kiseljak?

JUDGE JORDA: Please, I know it is a question of transcript, could you please avoid repeating things that the witness has already said? The witness has already said it. If it is for the transcript, I understand, but if it is not for the transcript, there is no point. The witness has just said that, so please go ahead.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, you mentioned during the time that you were writing on the particular map at Busovaca that that was where Dario Kordic was headquartered, is that right? ³³⁷⁸

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. Had you met Dario Kordic?

A. I had met him a couple of times.

Q. Under what circumstances did you meet Dario Kordic?

A. On both occasions in Busovaca in his headquarters, to resolve issues of stolen vehicles in transit and checkpoints in the Busovaca, where we were normally referred to Dario Kordic in the immediate area of Busovaca if we had not been able to deal with the problem on the authority of Colonel Blaskic.

Q. Was there -- what was the role of Dario Kordic politically, if you know, in the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna?

A. He was certainly the political focus in that part of Bosnia-Herzegovina and we really did not have a great deal to do with him because we dealt mostly at the military level, but the liaison officer responsible for that part of the area had had the task of getting to know Dario Kordic as well as he could and bring influence to bear with him when we did have problems. We had a few problems that Dario Kordic was able to sort out for us and we had not been able to sort them out quoting the authority of Colonel Blaskic.

Q. During your time there, Colonel, did you detect some tension between Kordic and Blaskic? ³³⁷⁹

A. Yes. It is quite difficult to articulate exactly why, but there did seem to be contradictions from the two, mostly Dario Kordic contradicting what Colonel Blaskic had said and trying, to our liaison officers, to override the authority of Colonel Blaskic, but it mostly applied to Busovaca and its close environs. It did not seem to stretch much beyond that, in terms of the particular problems that we had.

Q. So in your analysis of the problem, would any such conflict affect this strategic plan that you have outlined in 29J on the map?

A. No, other than the central focus being Busovaca, which was very much Dario Kordic's view.

Q. Let us turn to April, Colonel, April 1993. Can you tell the court what is going on in Central Bosnia and in Bosnia in general in April 1993, and I am talking about places like Srebrenica, as well as visits by Bosnian Croat political officials et cetera. This is prior to the outbreak of hostilities on 16th April.

A. At the beginning of April, our eyes were very much focused on Tuzla, where we had a company, and we were involved in negotiating a route from Tuzla to Srebrenica, and I went up to Tuzla between 6th and 8th April, and we had the double problem of having lost some of our military vehicles on a mission to a place ³³⁸⁰ called Konjevic Polje. The Serbs had opened fire and damaged two of our vehicles which we had had to abandon there and the soldiers had to withdraw under tank fire. I led a team back to try to recover those vehicles from the Serbs. We went to Zvornik to negotiate with the Serbs. So the early part of April we were very preoccupied with the situation, generally Tuzla and Srebrenica.

I returned on 8th April back down to Vitez, where I was informed that Marte Boban had visited Travnik and this had caused considerable problems. One of our liaison officers, Captain Forgrave, had witnessed this in Travnik. It had also caused considerable consternation among some of our interpreters from the Muslim community. They certainly did not believe that we understood, as BritBat, the significance of this particular character's visit. We did not, in their view, understand the significance of a visit of a man of this political stature. He certainly whipped up emotions within Travnik and made comments such as, "there are not enough Croat flags flying in Travnik". After his visit, there were several people killed in Travnik -- initially a lot of Croat flags went up after his visit and Muslim young men were killed or shot taking down these flags and it caused an enormous amount of tension in Travnik. ³³⁸¹ For the period 8th April to about 15th or 14th, Travnik was the main area of concern, because we thought there was a problem likely to ignite in Travnik. We had not at that point connected it with anything on a larger scale.

Q. Colonel, who did you understand Mate Boban to be?

A. I must admit, I have to confess a degree of ignorance. I was not quite sure on 8th April who he was, although I had read his name. I later understood that he was a central political figure in the Croat Herceg-Bosna aspiration, if you like.

Q. As we move ahead after this Mate Boban visit, did other things happen going up until the evening of the 15th and 16th to give you some indication that something was about to erupt?

A. I am just trying to get the chronology clear in my mind. It is quite a long time ago. There was an incident on 15th I think of April, or that area, where the Croat commander in Zenica, Totic, was allegedly kidnapped, probably kidnapped. Four of his bodyguards were killed and a Muslim civilian was killed in Zenica. The commanding officer in fact on that day, on the 15th, went up to Zenica, because this was causing major problems. There was a dictat from the HVO, and I cannot remember whether it was a regional command or strategic ³³⁸² command, that if Totic was not returned within 48 hours then the Croat population of Zenica would be moved out of Zenica, and the implications of that, on the 14th and 15th, were exercising our minds considerably. We just had a feeling that events were running away and we were not at that time keeping up with what was going on.

Q. What happened after that, Colonel?

A. In the early hours of 16th April, some members of the press arrived in our base in Vitez, I cannot remember the exact time, it was midnight or 1.00 in the morning, in a state of considerable shock. They had been staying in a bed and breakfast based on a garage on the way to Vitez, we knew it because there was a bear in a cage in the garden of this garage, and they said that they had been -- that the door had been kicked open and masked men, men with balaclavas and guns had burst into their room and told them to leave. There did not appear to be anyone else in the house and they left all their belongings and got in their car and driven down. We at first thought this was a criminal situation, because there was a great deal of crime going on throughout the whole area, it overarched everything we had been dealing doing, because dealing with criminal activity, thefts of vehicles, robberies and so on. At first we thought this was another example of it, but we were rather startled ³³⁸³ at the closeness of it to where we were operating. At about 5.00 or 6.00 in the morning, we then got reports of shelling in the town of Vitez, which certainly was very unusual.

Q. Let me stop you right there. You said shelling was unusual. Why was it unusual?

A. Because there had not been reports of heavy shelling in the town of Vitez since we had been there, that was why it was unusual.

Q. Is there something unique about the control of weapons, be they artillery weapons or mortar weapons? Is there something unique about them that is different from light arms fire that would cause some added precautions to be taken by someone in command?

A. Artillery and mortars, certainly in Bosnia and in our own army, are not controlled at the tactical level. Mortars and artillery are controlled at either the regional level or the strategic level, so the firing of these weapons was a combat indicator, that whatever operation was being prosecuted by whichever side -- it is very difficult to tell where artillery is being fired from, you can really only analyse the intent from where the rounds are falling, so small arms fire really was a constant and did not excite us terribly much. But the use of heavy weapons, of mortars or artillery, was a ³³⁸⁴ common indicator that there was something going on at a higher level than a battle between a couple of villages over some incident.

Q. So based on hearing and finding out that artillery was being used, did you draw certain conclusions about who authorised the use of that artillery?

A. At that time, because we did not know who was firing it, at 6.00 in the morning the only thing we could conclude was that there was something happening that was on a larger scale than we had seen before and we certainly were not expecting it. We were taken very much by surprise, which is why we sent out patrols to ascertain, if they could, where the artillery was firing from and certainly where the artillery was falling and what was going on. It was a period of considerable confusion. We were getting reports from a Dutch transport base which was nearer to Vitez than we were about this artillery falling. We pushed our patrols at about 6.30 in the morning up through Vitez and beyond to establish what was happening and the reports that were coming back were very alarming, because it seemed to be on a scale we had not seen before in this part of Bosnia.

Q. From the reports that came back, who was doing the firing of artillery that morning?

A. To the best of our judgement, because the rounds were ³³⁸⁵ falling in Muslim areas, we drew the natural conclusion that the artilleries were fired by Croats. We then were able to target known artillery pieces owned by the HVO. There was one in a quarry, for example. There were several artillery pieces that over the months we had tracked, we had kept an eye on where they were, using all the resources at our disposal, and were able to go and look at some of those artillery pieces and they indeed were firing. We knew them to be HVO artillery.

Q. On a regional level, who was in charge of those artillery pieces that were firing on the morning of the 16th?

A. The regional commander, Colonel Blaskic.

Q. The defendant?

A. Yes.

Q. You said this artillery fire began at about 6.00 am on the morning of 16th April 1993. What happened after that, Colonel?

A. We pushed patrols out that reported mortar and artillery assaults, followed by infantry assaults, in the town of Vitez and up the entire stretch of the Lasva Valley, on both sides of the valley, and all the smaller villages all the way up to Dubravica, especially those as you look at the map on the north of the road. At this point, Colonel Stewart was still in Zenica ³³⁸⁶ where he had gone the day before to discuss with 3rd Corps what on earth was going on and why they had kidnapped Commander Totic, so I was on my own in Vitez that morning. Having got reports from my patrols as to the scope of the situation, I then took my own Warrior out and went to visit Vitez up as far as Dubravica and then, having validated and confirmed the reports I had received from my subordinates, I decided that we ought to talk to somebody and I called in to the Vitez commander. I tried to talk to Colonel Blaskic, but he was not available. I am pretty sure -- I went to the cinema building in Vitez, which was the Vitez brigade commander, Mario Cerkez, and I then went down to visit the Bosnian Muslim commander, Sefkija, I cannot remember his surname.

Q. Sefkija Djidic?

A. Yes, and left the liaison officer, Captain Dundas Whatley, having got the agreement from the two tactical commanders, because I could not at that time access the regional level of command. The most severe fighting was taking place in and around Vitez, so I asked for representatives of the Croat and Muslim military forces to come to Vitez school at 12.30 for a conference to try to find out what on earth was going on.

Captain Dundas Whatley, the LO, then facilitated ³³⁸⁷ the movement of those people, and the Muslim commander came, but Cerkez did not come, he sent two people who I think came from the -- I know they came from the Hotel Vitez.

Q. Colonel, before we go into that meeting, let me just ask you a few questions about your ride in through Vitez. When you rode into Vitez about 8.00 in the morning on 16th April, what did you see? What did you observe?

A. As I approached the town, I could see columns of smoke. There were no actual flashes of mortar or artillery fire, but there were several very large black columns of smoke coming out of the town. I came in from the south, through the Muslim quarter, and there was considerable collateral damage to the houses left and right of the road and there were a number of bodies, either in a macabre way -- one of them was actually hanging out of the window with blood down the house, others were lying in the street, and the first impression I got was that none of them appeared to be soldiers, they were all civilians. They were dressed as civilians, they were men, they were women.

I then went through -- we came into quite a lot of sniper fire as we approached beyond the mosque where the Croat and Muslim front-lines, as we came to know them, were, and we pushed through the front-lines into the ³³⁸⁸ Croat areas. The Croat areas had no destruction and were -- I will not say they looked normal, there was nobody around which was abnormal, but there was no actual destruction of property in the Croat half of Vitez, which further confirmed our initial view that it was a Croat offensive against the Muslim forces or the Muslim town area of Vitez.

Q. The bodies that you saw on the right- and left-hand side of the road as you were going into Vitez, the only bodies that you saw that morning as you were driving around?

A. I did see some more bodies. When I got to the top of Vitez and turned right to go up to Dubravica, on the left just as you go down a hill, there were three or four bodies, I think male and female, literally lying by the road. It just looked strange, they were just neatly laid out in a line in front of a house.

I came back from Dubravica back through Vitez and I did not go up any of the side roads. I stayed on the central road, because I was acutely aware that the longer I spent out of my headquarters the less I would understand about what was unfolding around me. That was why I went back quite quickly.

Q. You mentioned earlier that you tried to see Blaskic during this ride through Vitez and you were unable to ³³⁸⁹ contact him. During this time-frame, did you see or meet Blaskic at any point?

A. Again, it is difficult that long ago. I have a memory of seeing Colonel Blaskic with his helmet on, which was unusual, and he had a very distinctive American helmet. I have a memory of seeing him with other Croat commanders not in Vitez school but in the environs of the town of Vitez somewhere, but I am afraid I could not give a time and date.

Q. Let us turn, if you will, Colonel, back to the meeting at BritBat that commenced at about noon time or 12.30. Can you tell the judges what happened during this meeting?

A. There were two representatives of the HVO and one representative of the BiH, who was the Vitez town commander. He certainly seemed in a state of shock as to what was going on and the fact he was actually losing a battle and was very keen to arrange a cease-fire, as indeed were the Croat commanders. We still at 12.30, and more was unfolding on reports which I was not privy to at that time, still had not realised that it was very much bigger than Vitez and the environs. The use of artillery was the factor that kept confusing us, because as you drove through Vitez, it was just the two commanders, Croat and Muslim, who were fighting, and yet ³³⁹⁰ there was artillery and the effects of artillery. A great deal of damage by RPG-7 rockets on the houses, very distinctive marks they make as they hit the houses, and I could not ascertain in this meeting what the scale of the fighting was and why on earth the fighting was going on in the first place.

There seemed to be a willingness on the part of all sides to stop the fighting and declarations were made and a piece of paper was signed to institute a cease-fire and exchange of prisoners, recovery of bodies and so on, and they left the headquarters at that point and it made absolutely no difference at all to the scale of fighting.

Q. Sir, as time went on, on the 16th, did you and other members of BritBat receive continuous information that gave you a better view as to the scale of the fighting that was going on in the Lasva Valley and elsewhere, beginning on the morning of the 16th?

A. Yes, we did. We pushed patrols out and also received reports from the aid agencies, from their various areas, because they obviously could not move, and they were ringing through to us or getting messages through to us about what they were also seeing. It was obvious that there was fighting in the Kiseljak valley, the Lasva Valley, and there was also a lot of fighting east ³³⁹¹ of Prozor. It was quite obvious, given the scale of this fighting, the amount of heavy calibre artillery that one could hear firing, even if you could not always see the effects, and there was a large HVO controlled artillery piece, which I think was called "Nora", in a quarry not far away from us that just seemed to fire continuously.

It was obvious that it was a major Croat offensive, it was obvious that the BiH had been caught unaware and were very much in the defensive, with the HVO on the offensive. We witnessed that in many areas.

MR. KEHOE: Mr. President, if I can once again ask the Colonel to go up to 29J, and we just want to mark some of these locations with a marker. If I can approach as well?

JUDGE JORDA: Yes, please, Colonel, you can go up to the map. Mr. Kehoe can approach and also the Defence, if they wish to.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, once again can I ask you to speak into the microphone? Once you make a mark, if you could turn to the judges and tell them exactly what you are marking.

When you had a chance to assess, Colonel, exactly what was going on, where did you learn the fighting was taking place at the same time?

A. Could you explain that again? ³³⁹²

Q. When you began to receive information during the course of the 16th, what were the locations that you learned there was fighting at, and what were the conclusions that you made in conjunction with this strategic plan? What did you conclude was going on?

A. One of the things we were trying to do on the morning of the 16th was produce a logic for what was unfolding in front of us, because it certainly was not a series of tactical battles just happening in a spontaneous way.

Q. You say tactical battles --

A. Village, the tactical level, village level; it certainly was not that and we were used to that. It seemed to have far more form and substance about it. Obviously the first fighting we knew about was in Vitez, where the Croat end of the village here (indicates) was attacking the Muslim end of the village here. There was also fighting happening in Kruscica up here. There was fighting happening all the way down the Lasva Valley, through Nadioci, Ahmici, Santici.

Croats had reinforced their checkpoints, and the growth of checkpoints was actually quite a phenomenon in itself. They had a serious checkpoint at Kaonik, a very serious checkpoint at this junction here (indicates). There was also fighting in and around Stari Bila, where the Muslim people around here were being attacked by HVO ³³⁹³ forces but were actually holding their own. There was a little war happening around our base which at the time was deflecting us slightly for a few hours. There was fighting around Kacuni and Bilalovac. There was a little fighting north of Kiseljak, to the point where the UN headquarters in Kiseljak actually packed up and was preparing to evacuate. There was fighting in what we knew as Novi Travnik and there was serious fighting just north of Prozor and a lot of artillery on these villages up here. Gornji Vakuf was actually moderately quiet, there were lots of reports of aircraft over there, but not a great deal of fighting. When you looked at it actually at that time the HVO forces had more control over the route through Gornji Vakuf than they had in the past, and the Muslims were not threatening. In the view of the company commander we had down there, the Croats were reasonably in control at that point. That I think is as much as I remember.

Q. You had a chance, Colonel, to take a look at this and to plot out the fighting that was going on. Was it clear to you that this fighting taking place in Vitez was an intricate part of this overall strategic plan?

A. Yes, it was. In fact there was another route here (indicates), because we could not quite understand why ³³⁹⁴ Kruscica was quite so important until we realised that there was a back road from Kruscica to Vitez. Kruscica -- in fact, the main route and through here and these roads began to move down as well, and you can see that there is the possibility of a link up on the roads in the centre here up through Vitez and through Kruscica (indicates), so Kruscica, as well as being a -- having a BiH headquarters in it and a Muslim population, also controlled or dominated routes in the area. The substance of the fighting did not appear to be conducted against military targets, the substance of the fighting seemed in the main to be conducted against civilian populations, ethnic cleansing. The logic for it, we thought, was a sort of twin-track approach, or twin-track reason. One was the securing of the routes and the strategic route out of Central Bosnia, and the other one, in the light of about I think the early part of April when the actual canton map for the Vance-Owen Peace Plan showed canton 10, which was this area (indicates) as a Croat canton, it appeared that the Croats were seizing the strategic opportunity to remove the Muslim people from the proposed Croat canton whilst securing their routes.

The window of opportunity they had chosen was strategically very clever, with hindsight, because the ³³⁹⁵ situation up in to the east where the Serbs were attacking Srebrenica and the villages below Srebrenica, the Bosnian Muslim BiH was concentrating looking east, BritBat was concentrating in the north and east, and the world's media were all in Tuzla filming the first evacuations from Srebrenica, so if as a military commander you wanted to seize a strategic opportunity, that was there, and the tactical plan made huge sense in terms -- sorry, the operational plan in the region made huge sense in that you were securing your routes, fundamentally important, and there was a horrible and icy logic to the removal of the Muslim minorities within the proposed canton 10.

Q. The operational commander for the area that was on your doorstep was Colonel Blaskic?

A. Yes.

MR. KEHOE: If I can go back, Mr. President, and ask Colonel Watters to take his seat again?

Colonel Watters, as we moved on from the 16th, did you have occasion to go back out into the Vitez area later on that afternoon or early evening?

A. Yes, I did. One of the major concerns of the BiH were casualties in Kruscica. Essentially, if we wanted co-operation from the BiH then they asked that we went into Kruscica and took these wounded women, as they were ³³⁹⁶ described, out of the village. I gained clearance through Colonel Blaskic's headquarters for this, what was largely a humanitarian mission to go and remove wounded civilians from the field of battle, and took a patrol myself from Vitez up to Kruscica at about 5.30. As we set off it was daylight. As we were moving into Kruscica, it was getting dark, so it was that time of the day.

At the time, Kruscica was under concentrated artillery, mortar and rocket launcher fire, and it really did look -- it is a bowl, and as you went up the road out of Vitez, you crest a hill and the village is in a bowl below you. It just looked like a caldron of fire, it was absolutely startling. We went into the village, went to the BiH headquarters. We received a guide who took us down to the house where these people were. I had got some armoured ambulances with me and we put the women and some men into the armoured ambulances and we took them to Travnik hospital.

Q. Colonel, there was a BiH Army headquarters in the Kruscica area, is that correct?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Did it appear to you, Colonel, when you went up there in the late afternoon and early evening of the 16th , that the artillery and mortar fire was directed towards a ³³⁹⁷ military target, or did you conclude that something else was taking place?

A. In the course of the day, we had already formed the view that the HVO offensive in the Lasva Valley was not aimed at attacking BiH positions because (a) there were very few of them and (b) they were very under strength, because most of the BiH effort, according to our sources, was directed further east.

Q. Against the Serbs?

A. Against the Serbs. So when I went into Kruscica I knew there was a BiH headquarters there, the headquarters was there and functioning. I did not see many BiH soldiers. The target for the artillery was the village itself. The fact that the village was holding out obviously meant it was being defended. I believed that the model that we had seen in the other villages in the Lasva Valley was being applied to Kruscica, and that was to ethnically cleanse it, but it was obviously being able to defend itself far better than other than people had, because it was more of a defended locality. I cannot say that the specific civilian houses were being targeted, other than military positions, because those civilian houses may well have been military positions, but we did not believe there was any other reason for attacking it other than the reasons they had ³³⁹⁸ attacked the other villages in the Lasva Valley, which was to remove the population.

MR. KEHOE: With the permission of the usher, if we can just flip this map over, or take 29J down. There is another map that is underneath which I believe is 56E. Again if I could ask Mr. President, your Honours, with the court's permission, if Colonel Watters can step up and go over the map.

Colonel, using the orange marker, can you just mark the path that you travelled on the morning of the 16th when you went out at approximately 8.00 or 8.30?

A. I went up past our bulk fuel installation, which was here (witness marks map).

Q. You are marking that in the colour orange, is that right?

A. Yes, past our echelon location, which was here (witness marks map).

Q. That is marked with the letter "K", is that right?

A. Yes, it is. That was our logistic base that supported operations for the whole of our area of responsibility. Then we went up through and past the mosque, which I think is here, shown with an "F". I specifically remember this bridge here, because there were some anti-tank mines on it that we had to negotiate (indicates). Then I went up here to the junction, ³³⁹⁹ I think it is just beyond there actually -- I went off that way and then came back the same route and linked up with the liaison officer, visited Mario Cerkez here, I think, shown with a "B", and then went back down through Vitez and to the Muslim headquarters. We could not get our Warriors there, so we had to dismount and go through small roads. I cannot exactly remember where it is, but I think it is somewhere in this area here. Then back in my Warrior, leaving Captain Dundas Whatley to negotiate a meeting with the two tactical commanders and then return back down this way to our base in Stari Bila (indicates).

Q. You also mentioned later on, on the 16th there was artillery fire going into the village of Kruscica. Can you give with the red the location of the HVO artillery fire and also mark with green the location of the houses that were being hit?

A. As we could understand it, from where the rocket launchers were being fired, the rocket launchers -- we could not work out what it was, either low small calibre airburst artillery, or the RPG7 rocket launcher has a specific range, and when it reaches its terminal range the warhead self-destructs and we thought that is what it might be as well, and they were being fired and you could see the streaks from them as they fired them, they ³⁴⁰⁰ were being fired from the high ground round here into the village, and they were impacting throughout the village, all over the place (witness marks map). As we came up this road here and got to about this position, we could see houses in this area here and in the centre literally just erupting. I do not know whether when the artillery rounds hit the house, I do not know whether they had gas cylinders in them or what, but there was these phenomenal explosions. As I say, I described it as a caldron, because it just appeared to be burning all over the place. We were specifically careful when we went in to avoid going too far to the right, because our own vehicles could be vulnerable to the fire from the rocket launchers.

Q. Going back again to the orange, could you go up the road to Kruscica and show us where you went?

A. We went into Kruscica -- when I got to this junction here, we met up with a guide. I have a vague memory that the BiH headquarters may have been in this area on the junction, but I cannot swear to it, I am afraid. Also because a lot of the houses had collapsed on the roads, the route we took to the house in the cellar of which were these casualties was also quite difficult, because we were closed down and just following the vehicle that was our guide. I have a feeling it was in ³⁴⁰¹ the back end of the village up here somewhere (indicates), and we certainly drove quite a way to get to it.

Q. The houses that you saw being shelled, did they appear to be military installations or civilian houses?

A. They were civilian houses. Whether they were military installations I cannot say.

Q. Did you ever have any information they were military installations?

A. No, but I did not have information that they were not, either.

Q. Thank you, sir, you can take a seat. Colonel, let us move ahead to 17th April 1993, the next day. Did the fighting in fact continue that day?

A. Yes, it did. By that stage the commanding officer was back from Zenica and he chaired a meeting on the morning of the 17th. I did not attend that meeting so I cannot remember who was at it, but it essentially went through the same ground we had gone through on the lunch-time of the 16th, and everyone signed up to a package of peace proposals that were totally ignored for the rest of the day.

Q. In and around that day, were you asked by Muslim authorities to make a search for any Muslim doctors in the Vitez area? ³⁴⁰²

A. What had happened is when we had -- the night before when we had been in Kruscica, the military commander in Kruscica had said that there were reports that two doctors who worked in the clinic in Vitez who came from Kruscica could not be found and they had no means of treating their casualties in Kruscica because these two doctors were isolated within the clinic in Vitez, and would we go and get them, and also said there were rumours that they had been killed, but would we try and get these doctors, because without doctors he could see the problems they were having and they could not treat their wounded and people were dying and so on.

Q. So did the British battalion make a search for these doctors?

A. Yes, I, in fact, did it myself. We took the Warriors into Vitez and dismounted and conducted a foot patrol in the area of the clinic. We came under sniper fire a couple of times, so we were not actually going to hang around. I saw in the clinic through a window two dead people dressed in white coats. They had been dead a while from the colour of their faces and the colour of the blood, and I presumed them to be the two missing doctors and took my patrol back to our Warriors and reported that to headquarters in Kiseljak.

Q. Colonel, let us turn our attention to the next day, ³⁴⁰³ 18th April 1993. What happened on that day, sir? Did a truck bomb go off in Stari Vitez?

A. Sorry, I was starting at the beginning of the day. In the evening, there was a report, again from the Dutch battalion's transport base, of a large explosion, also reported to us shortly afterwards by our own logistic base, coming from the centre of Vitez, or the mosque area of Vitez. I despatched Major Thomas, who was commanding A Company, the Vitez company, to go and investigate, and he reported back that from the appearance of a large crater and parts of an automobile in the crater, it appeared to be a large lorry-borne explosion, a lorry bomb.

In our own experience in Northern Ireland, where that type of device is one of the main weapons of the IRA, we were able to identify exactly what it was, a vehicle-borne explosive device. It had been placed near the mosque in the Muslim area of the city. It had caused total devastation. There were a lot of dead and wounded and a lot of people trapped in the rubble. At the same time, Major Thomas's people were under fire from the Croat end of the village while they were investigating it.

Q. After Major Thomas and the other members of Company A went to Stari Vitez, did they attempt to evacuate ³⁴⁰⁴ anybody out of there?

A. Yes, they did. The first thing we did was remove wounded people in need of hospital treatment and we took them to initially our own mobile surgical team and then on to Travnik. We also evacuated some of the homeless whose houses had just disappeared, and they were taken to Travnik as well, and we picketed the area for the remainder of the night, because there was not a great deal we could do with lights. We waited until the morning when we brought our Royal Engineer assets in to begin doing a careful search of the houses for survivors and removing the bodies.

Q. You mentioned previously in your testimony, Colonel, that you had done several tours with the Cheshire Regiment in Northern Ireland, is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. You also mentioned you are familiar with truck bombs of this nature because of your experience with the IRA in Northern Ireland, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you draw certain conclusions, based on the use of this truck bomb in Stari Vitez on 18th April 1993, on what its purpose was and what it was designed to do?

A. My personal view is that it was an act of terrorism, and certainly it was not a legitimate act of war in pursuit ³⁴⁰⁵ of military objectives. The design of terror weapons or terrorist weapons is to terrorise, and it certainly worked. The people 6 Stari Vitez were absolutely terrorised by it. Very many of them wanted to leave their homes and later on, the following day, up to 400 of them left and moved down to our echelon location. The device was designed to break the will of the people through an act of terror and it achieved its objective.

Q. Did it work?

A. Yes, it did.

Q. Did anything else take place other than this particular use of the truck bomb on 18th April 1993 that you can recall?

A. It is difficult to get it sequential. I can remember things on the 19th. I would have to refer to our incident reports, I am afraid. I have gone blank.

Q. If I may, did it appear to you that by the 18th the HVO had accomplished its territorial goals in the area?

A. Yes, I do remember. On the 18th, there was a report that Izetbegovic and Boban had signed a peace document, and we received notification of this through Colonel Blaskic's headquarters. The document was designed to stop the war at that point, and the HVO level of command were very content with this, and the BiH were very unhappy about it, because the net gain, if ³⁴⁰⁶ such a cease-fire had been applied on the 18th, would be the HVO, who had taken considerable ground and ethnically cleansed a number of small Muslim villages, and if the lines of fighting were to be frozen at that point, they would have indeed achieved their strategic aim of ethnically cleansing canton 10, virtually, with the exception of Travnik.

Q. In response to this, Colonel --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone please.

MR. KEHOE: I am sorry. In response to the fighting, did other members of the British battalion begin to see, on approximately 18th April, a military response by the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina?

A. Yes, we began to get reports of artillery and mortars again being fired by the HVO and reports of tanks moving out of Zenica down the mountain road towards Dubravica. It certainly appeared -- the tanks certainly were a combat indicator that two or three days after the initial assault by the HVO that the BiH were actually counter attacking. During the period of the 18th and into the 19th, we saw more and more evidence of a very large scale and successful counter attack by the BiH forces against the HVO and essentially a change of the tide and the HVO going on the defensive, having been on the offensive. ³⁴⁰⁷

MR. KEHOE: Mr. President and your Honours, once again with the court's position, if we could turn back to 29J and have that map flipped back over, if I could ask Colonel Watters to outline in green pen the various areas of the Bosnian Muslim offensive beginning on 18th April 1993?

A. What we discovered was that elements of 3rd Corps which had been deployed out of Zenica towards Kakanj had been withdrawn and had re-organised themselves and mounted a series of counterattacks. One counterattack which was led by, I think it was three tanks came down the mountain road and into Dubravica and cut the road just east of Vitez. A second attack came down through the well defended Croat village of Jelinak and down to Kaonik and cut the junction from Busovaca up to Vitez. We also understood that the Muslims had moved forces down here (indicates) and had reinforced the area between Kacuni and Bilalovac, and indeed pushed forces down as well, just north of Kiseljak here. They also moved forces around, bypassing Busovaca and reinforcing Kruscica, and so by approximately 18th, 19th and 20th April, the BiH had in essence rolled back all the HVO victories and had essentially pocketed the HVO within Busovaca and Vitez, and had cut off all communication in and out of those two areas, and were in a position to now launch attacks, on about the ³⁴⁰⁸ 21st, into Busovaca and into Vitez. I cannot remember what was going on over here actually, I do not think very much, I think they were just holding out.

Q. When you say "over here", you are talking about Novi Travnik?

A. Yes. There might have been some movement across here to Novi Travnik, I cannot remember, but certainly the 3rd Corps had come back and recaptured what used to be theirs and pushed their front-lines down on to the main Lasva Valley road and cut it at several strategic points, thus isolating the HVO military forces.

Q. You may have a seat again, thank you. So Colonel, by 19th April 1993 did you observe that this offensive by the Muslims was underway?

A. Yes, we did, and there was a reaction on the 19th by, we believed, the HVO, and that was the shelling of Zenica, and that was reported to us by an aid agency. I think about seven or so rounds, there may have been more, I cannot remember the exact detail, I have to again look at our reports, but a number of heavy calibre artillery rounds had landed in the middle of Zenica and approximately 13 people, I think, were reported killed. This we considered on the same proportion as the vehicle bomb in Vitez, as to be totally indefensible from a Geneva Convention and the Articles of War point of view. ³⁴⁰⁹

Q. Why?

A. Because shelling Zenica was going to achieve no tactical advantage to the forces in retreat into Vitez and Busovaca, HVO forces, against the onslaught of the BiH, and we could only assume that the HVO had fired their artillery into Zenica as a warning to the Muslim forces to stop attacking and embrace the previous peace proposal that we had heard about on the 18th. It did actually the reverse and merely strengthened the resolve, we were told later, of the BiH, who were already highly motivated following what they understood to be massacres in the Lasva Valley, the detail of which at this stage we did not know.

Q. Did you conclude that the HVO was trying to threaten the Bosnian Muslims as a result of the shelling of Zenica on 19th April?

A. Colonel Blaskic was confronted with that exact statement by Colonel Stewart. At the time, Colonel Blaskic's reply was that he thought it was being done by the Serbs, which we, of course, did not totally discount, because there was a twisted logic that the Serbs might enjoy continuing to see the conflict of the Croat and Muslims, because it would weaken their position in Central Bosnia to oppose them, but we checked our sources and the following day confronted the Serbs and ³⁴¹⁰ the Serb regional commander for the Blasik mountain area as to this accusation.

It was patently obvious from our own royal artillery experts that the position of his heavy range artillery was not in range of Zenica. It was in range of us in Vitez, but it was not in range of Zenica, so we deducted from that that it was indeed Croat artillery that had fired.

I think if one cross-referenced the material, you might find reports of large calibre, known Croat artillery firing during that time, but I could not put my hand on my heart and say it. That was our belief.

Q. Colonel, did you conclude that that was a threat by the HVO to the Bosnian Muslim forces?

A. It was indeed a threat. It was "stop attacking us or we will flatten your city" type of threat.

Q. During the same period of time, did Blaskic begin to complain about how the British battalion was responding to all the activities in the Lasva Valley?

A. Yes, it was interesting. We began to be inundated with telephone calls and faxes, which in itself was interesting because all our phones had been cut off, but whenever the HVO wanted to communicate with us our phones came on again and we would receive phone calls and faxes, alleging a string of misdeeds, ranging from ³⁴¹¹ wanton firing of our canons in the town centre of Vitez, to desecration of the church in Vitez by driving our Warriors over the graveyard and accusations of moving Muslims soldiers and materiel around the battlefield. It was taken quite to heart by Colonel Stewart, because he, despite what was going on, had had a personal understanding with Colonel Blaskic and found these accusations from Colonel Blaskic flying in the face of the blunt neutrality that we had been exercising throughout our entire time there and found it rather disappointing that Colonel Blaskic should resort to such crude propaganda to try and somehow devalue or discredit the reports that we were sending.

Q. Let us stay with the 19th, Colonel. On the 19th, did the HVO continue to ethnically cleanse the Lasva Valley area?

A. Yes. If you like, it was probably described as mopping-up operations. I was returning from Zenica with a member of an aid agency, and I was approaching just short of the Busovaca junction, I think. There was a military camp there that was rather isolated from others, a sort of HOS-type HVO, I think called Holiday Cottages or something like that. As we drove towards it -- it was a place we knew well, we had seen the soldiers zeroing their rifles in the fields and so on. ³⁴¹² There were a group of Muslim old men, young boys, women and young girls, children, old men and women, lying in the road and blocking the movement of my aid agency and Warriors down the road. We got out to ask them what the problem was, and it had happened the day before with Croat women and children up near Zenica to Colonel Stewart, so it is not the first time it had happened to us.

I got out and negotiated, with an interpreter, with the people to ask them what was wrong and essentially, there was some HVO soldiers who were clearing them out of their houses and ordering them to go to Zenica, but they would not let them take the men with them and that was essentially the problem. The women refused to leave because the HVO soldiers would not let the men go with the women and the women did not want to leave the men because they believed they would be killed.

We took about an hour and a half to negotiate with the HVO that we would be allowed to take the women in our vehicles away, and we would stay there long enough for the men to make their own way towards Zenica.

Q. Colonel, did you discuss this matter with the HVO commander that was there?

A. Yes, I did. ³⁴¹³

Q. What did he tell you he had been ordered to do?

A. He had been ordered to clear these people out because the Croat people needed their houses.

Q. What did you understand him to mean by that?

A. He said that they were just told to leave, the people said they had been told that if they did not leave they had been killed. What I had seen in the Lasva Valley over the last couple of days left me under no illusion at all that if these people did not leave, they would be killed, and that is why we decided we would stay there until these people left, because we would take them with us and make sure they were not killed.

MR. KEHOE: Mr. President, again with your Honours' permission, if we could turn to the third overhead on the easel. It should be marked as 53B, is that correct, Mr. Dubuisson?

THE REGISTRAR: If you allow me, I am waiting for the interpretation. Yes, that is 53B.

MR. KEHOE: If I can again, Mr. President, with your Honours' permission, have Colonel Watters step up to the easel and if I could go over there as well.

JUDGE JORDA: Yes, that is fine, if you want to approach, approach. The Defence as well, if you wish to approach.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, if you will could you mark with the ³⁴¹⁴ green the Muslim houses where these people were trying to be evacuated from?

A. (Witness marks map). That is as my memory serves, that sort of area there. The actual people themselves were approximately here, and the camp I was talking about --

Q. Mark that with the red.

A. It was in this sort of area here. I remember this large lay-by, and the people, during our conversation, I think, if my memory serves me, we moved down here and did most of the negotiations in this sort of area here (indicates).

Q. Thank you, Colonel. Just by way of clarification, Colonel, you marked the area where the houses were in green on Exhibit 53B and the place where the camp was in red, is that right?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Let us move ahead, Colonel, to the 20th. If I could, with the assistance of the usher, if we could just flip one down and move back to 56E. Colonel, when we were talking about Exhibit 56E previously, and that is the overhead that is on the easel, you mentioned that you had driven past the echelon garage, is that right?

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. I believe it is marked there as -- is that "F"?

A. "K". ³⁴¹⁵

Q. I am sorry. I was close. What is the echelon garage?

A. The echelon garage was the administrative logistic base for BritBat, and it had headquarters company and the logistic elements of BritBat that supplied the stores, resources, fuel, food, all what we would describe as "combat supplies".

Q. After the commencement of the battle on 16th April 1993, did it become a location for refugees to congregate, were Bosnian Muslims congregating there?

A. Yes, in the original siting of our base in Vitez it was presumed that the sharp end was between Vitez, Travnik, Turbe, and the quieter end was towards Vitez and that was why the echelon was sited where it was, behind the main base so the main base could protect it. But when the fighting started on the 16th, we found the situation reversed and the echelon was the front-line. What happened on the 20th were large numbers -- they started off on the 19th, the day after the lorry bomb in Vitez, groups of people began coming to seek sanctuary and refuge at the echelon location and on the 20th, there were approximately 400 or so refugees congregating at the echelon location.

These people were also being subjected to sniping attacks, and we positioned screens to shield them from sight. We could not actually bring them into our ³⁴¹⁶ echelon location for two reasons: one, we were not quite sure at what point we ceased being neutral if we started sheltering one community from the other, but we certainly wanted to protect them. Also the base itself was not very big and we did not want allegations that we were defending against the HVO.

We were in constant discussion with HVO regional headquarters about this issue, which we considered at the time to be paramount --

Q. When you say "HVO region headquarters", that is Blaskic?

A. Colonel Blaskic's headquarters, the Hotel Vitez -- to do something against these snipers who were actually shooting these people and people were actually, at the edge of the fence of our logistic base, were being killed by snipers, so we launched a series of attacks against the houses that these snipers were operating from and actually captured some of the snipers, which we handed over to the UN.

Q. Was Blaskic made aware that these 400 or more refugees were there in front of the echelon?

A. His headquarters were certainly aware. I do not have a recollection of talking personally to Colonel Blaskic about it. Colonel Stewart may have done. But his headquarters were, because my headquarters, the TacOps, was in contact with them, and we had also sent liaison ³⁴¹⁷ officers down to discuss with both the tactical commander, Mario Cerkez, and the region commander's headquarters, because this was just absolutely appalling.

Q. Colonel, you have been a military person for the better part of your life, is that correct, sir?

A. Yes.

Q. A headquarters works by information coming to the headquarters and moving up the chain of command to the person in charge?

A. Correct. The headquarters just facilitates the flow of information to the commander so he can make decisions and direct operations.

Q. When you as a military man contact Blaskic's headquarters and inform those headquarters about the plight of these 400 refugees, you would expect in due course for that information to filter up to Blaskic, do you not?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Did Blaskic do anything to attempt to protect these 400-plus refugees in front of the echelon?

A. No, and when in the end we contacted an aid agency and asked for their support in declaring these people refugees so we could move them without the accusation of contributing ourselves to ethnic cleansing, we sought ³⁴¹⁸ the support of Colonel Blaskic's headquarters to do this, because we would have to move them through his lines of contact if we were to get them to Zenica or Travnik, and we also wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings when we moved these people, and the requirement that came back from Colonel Blaskic's headquarters was that we could move these people, but we were to search them for weapons before they were moved. That was the only positive contribution over that incident that we had from his headquarters.

Q. Did you search these individuals?

A. Yes, we did. I cannot remember the exact detail, but we found a couple AK-47s, a pistol, and maybe a couple of hand grenades among them.

Q. Did you find that unusual?

A. No, not in Bosnia in April 1993. When you are talking 400 people and you are talking a couple of rifles, a pistol and a couple of grenades, that does not constitute a military force.

Q. Colonel, describe these people. What were they like?

A. They were wretched, essentially. They had been intimidated or bombed out of their homes in Vitez and the surrounding area. They were largely old men, women and children, which was often the case because the younger men were either fighting or prisoners, and they ³⁴¹⁹ had no food, they had no clothing against the weather, and the weather was pretty awful at that time. We, in an humanitarian act, were feeding them because we could not stand by and watch them die of cold and starvation. We also erected makeshift shelters for them as well.

MR. KEHOE: Mr. President, I am about to go into a relatively large area. I do not know if at this juncture you want to break off, but the next piece of testimony is going to be quite lengthy.

JUDGE JORDA: We have not finished from the French translation. All right then, we will take our break now. I would like to say, tell both the parties, that is, that the two coming weeks will be part of the new phase of the Tribunal, because new judges are arriving. Of course the same ones will be in this trial, but I just wanted to tell you our calendar is going to be changed. There are circumstances that are unfortunate, perhaps you are aware of them. One of our colleagues passed away, and on Wednesday morning and part of Wednesday afternoon there will be a funeral ceremony in his memory and then the cremation of our colleague Judge Li. Therefore there will be no hearings on Wednesday. A plenary session with its judges as they are today is supposed to take place on Wednesday, I do not know if we will be able to do all of that. Theoretically there ³⁴²⁰ will be no hearings on Wednesday.

I also want to take advantage of this moment in order to tell you next week on Monday there will be no hearing for the Blaskic trial, for the well known reason now, that is the new mandate of the judges. The new four year mandate begins on Monday and there is an official ceremony for taking the solemn declarations of our five new colleagues. During that week as well there will be scheduled changes which I will let you know about, because there will be meetings, plenary sessions with the new judges. This is information which I wanted to give you. We can now suspend our hearing and resume at 2.30.

(1.00 pm)

(Adjourned until 2.30 pm) ³⁴²¹

(2.30 pm)

JUDGE JORDA: We will resume our hearing now. Please have the accused brought in.

(Accused brought in)

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Kehoe, Colonel, the floor is yours.

MR. KEHOE: Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon, Colonel. Colonel, let us turn our attention to 21st April 1993. Later on in the day on 21st April, there was a meeting chaired by the Ambassador Thebault of ECMM in which you directly participated, is that correct?

A. Yes, I was the military advisor to that meeting.

Q. Prior to that meeting, Colonel, what did you do?

A. On the morning of the 21st I led a patrol around the ring road of Vitez, down to Dubravica and left up the mountain road towards Zenica to establish where the BiH front-lines were in their advance down on to the main Lasva Valley road. I went a short distance up the mountain road, where I then saw BiH forces and quite triumphant, waving green flags and generally getting out of their battle positions and waving at us. I turned round and went back down and as I was going down through Dubravica I saw a group of 30 prisoners. I presume they were Muslims because they were guarded by the HVO. They had their hands tied and were moving I think up the road ³⁴²² towards the Croat positions that were defending the bottom end of the mountain road.

Q. Were they carrying anything while they were walking?

A. I have to confess I did not notice. I do remember seeing their hands tied and I had the view they were going to dig trenches. I may have seen shovels in evidence, but I cannot exactly remember. When I came back, I was under the impression they had been going to dig trenches. I cannot remember why I was under that impression.

Q. Did you see anybody digging trenches around that area during that period of time?

A. Yes, we did. Periodically we saw people digging trenches, and on that day, through my gunsight, I had seen people digging trenches.

Q. Did you make certain conclusions, upon seeing that trench digging, after looking at who was guarding them as well as who was digging the trenches?

A. The positions I saw were HVO trenches that were being dug well behind their forward positions on the edge of Dubravica, and I assumed they were actually HVO trenches and there were HVO soldiers with weapons and there were people in civilian clothes digging trenches without weapons.

Q. After you finished this recce in the area, did you then ³⁴²³ go to this meeting?

A. Yes, I did. I was asked by the commanding officer if I would go and represent him at the meeting as the UN military advisor to Ambassador Thebault, who was the chairman of the meeting.

Q. What was the purpose of this meeting, Colonel?

A. The meeting had been organised at a high level involving General Morrillon, who was the military commander of UN forces in Central Bosnia, and the people we were told to expect at the meeting were the regional commanders of the BiH and HVO and the higher level or strategic commanders, General Petkovic and General Halilovic, HVO and BiH respectively.

Q. Let me stop and clarify that. The BiH commander was who?

A. The BiH commander at region level was Hadzihasanovic, and the strategic commander was Halilovic.

Q. So is Halilovic on top of Hadzihasanovic, and who was below him?

A. His deputy Merdan.

Q. Were all three of them at that meeting?

A. We were expecting Hadzihasanovic, but he did not arrive, and he was represented at the region level by his deputy Merdan, so the BiH team with a few advisors were essentially Halilovic and Merdan. ³⁴²⁴

Q. The HVO side, the strategic commander was whom?

A. Petkovic.

Q. And below him?

A. Below him the regional commander was Colonel Blaskic.

Q. And both of them were there?

A. They were.

JUDGE JORDA: Could you go a little more slowly, please, so that the interpretation is accurate. I mention this both to Mr. Kehoe and the witness.

MR. KEHOE: I am sorry, Mr. President, we will speak a little more slowly.

Colonel, if you will, can you describe exactly what you did at this meeting?

A. The meeting was eventually convened, there was a delay, General Halilovic was late and we adjourned to the ECMM house and had some coffee. During that period, I was in the presence of General Petkovic and Colonel Blaskic when there was quite a heated exchange. It looked to me like the superior officer was remonstrating with his subordinate officer. I do not speak Serbo-Croat, so I did not know what it was about, but I could see that Colonel Blaskic was on the receiving end of a stern talking from General Petkovic. An interpreter who was with me was quite shaken by the conversation that had taken place, and told me that -- ³⁴²⁵

MR. HAYMAN: Objection, your Honour, as to out of court statements. I object, and had specifically asked that that issue be raised with the court before the testimony be elicited.

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Kehoe?

MR. KEHOE: This particular issue has to deal with the comments of the interpreter at the scene to this particular witness. First of all, your Honour, with regard to the hearsay objection, there is no hearsay before this Tribunal and this court takes the evidence and weighs it. Even if there was a hearsay objection, under a common law system there are numerous exceptions that would permit such a testimony to come in. Nevertheless, your Honour, the court can balance exactly the weight of this evidence coming from this witness, as it does with every other piece of evidence that comes into this court.

JUDGE JORDA: I do not know whether my colleagues have anything to say. I am going to consult them. I have my own opinion. (Pause).

We reject this objection. You may continue, Mr. Kehoe.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, explain to the court exactly what transpired.

A. Having witnessed the exchange, I looked at the ³⁴²⁶ interpreter and said, "what was all that about?", and he took me outside the house and explained that General Petkovic had been angry -- this is more or less what he said -- with Colonel Blaskic over what had been happening over the preceding few days. He wanted to know, and the exact word he used was, "was it under control?", and Colonel Blaskic had told him it was under control and he was not to worry about it. That was the substance of the exchange, and we did not really know what was the situation that was or was not under control at that time, other than the general failure of the HVO offensive which was now a defence against the BiH attacks.

When the following day and the day after we began to discover the extent of some of the civilian deaths within specifically the village of Ahmici, we drew the conclusion that this may have been what the exchange was about, but I am unable to specifically say that. It was the personal view of the interpreter but it was not necessarily my personal view.

MR. HAYMAN: I object especially, your Honours, about statements of the opinion of this third party, not here before the court, not a witness, not subject to cross-examination. If anything should be subject to cross-examination, it is statements of opinion, ³⁴²⁷ your Honours.

JUDGE JORDA: Judge Riad? (Pause). The Tribunal believes that the witness can give his opinion and the Tribunal will weigh that statement. Of course one should not take advantage of this, but the witness is not here, of course, only for opinions but is here to say what he witnessed. The essential thing is that the Tribunal must be informed exactly about what happened. Let us not multiply the objections. The Colonel may continue. Mr. Hayman, do you want to go back to that point because we have already settled that.

MR. HAYMAN: I do not object to his opinion, I object to him recounting the opinion of someone else. It is stated in the record and I ask that that be stricken, this witness's statement of someone else's opinion on the subject being discussed.

JUDGE JORDA: That is out of the question, Mr. Hayman. One can state opinions. If the Colonel heard a third party saying something -- he is under oath after all, do not forget that, Mr. Hayman. He is under oath.

MR. HAYMAN: I understand, but it is not his opinion. I have no objection to his opinion, but he is repeating someone else's opinion. That was what my objection was.

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Hayman, the problem here at the international court is not to bring -- make any changes ³⁴²⁸ from one legal system to another. This Tribunal must have all the information in order to come to an interpretation as to guilt. Please do not make us waste time this way. Are you taking the floor again, because this is the third time you are objecting on the same point. This is the last time. Go ahead.

MR. HAYMAN: We ask for a subpoena issue for the testimony in the Defence case of the individual whose opinion has been recounted by this witness for this Tribunal. I think it is a reasonable request. I ask that it is issued as soon as possible.

JUDGE JORDA: We do not accept that request. You may continue, Mr. Kehoe. The Colonel must testify in complete freedom. He is under oath, and the Tribunal must be informed exactly about what happened at that meeting. We are overruling the objection and overruling that request. You may continue, Mr. Kehoe, along with the witness.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, was the interpreter in fear at that time?

A. Yes, the interpreter was.

Q. Why?

A. Because the interpreter felt that what had been overheard and that he had overheard it might prejudice his own safety. ³⁴²⁹

Q. Why?

A. Because he was a nervous individual anyway and generally by this stage of the fighting quite in fear of his own life, acting as an interpreter for us, in that we were incurring the wrath of all parties in Central Bosnia by our independent and unbiased stand.

Q. Would Blaskic have known that this was an interpreter working for you, if he had never met this individual before?

A. At the time, I think Colonel Blaskic had his back to him on the stairs, and General Petkovic was looking in his direction. General Petkovic would not have known that he was not an UN soldier, because as an UN employee he was dressed in UN uniform. Colonel Blaskic would have known he was not one of our soldiers.

Q. You said the interpreter said that Blaskic said things were under control. Did he make any other comment about his men being involved in any way, shape or form?

A. I cannot actually say I remember it that clearly. It was a heated, short, sharp exchange that quite shocked the interpreter. The interpreter then relayed to me, when I asked him, and he was visibly shaking, what had taken place, and I am paraphrasing, but he basically said, "What I have heard could get me killed". I told him to tell me what had taken place and he said that ³⁴³⁰ General Petkovic had asked Colonel Blaskic if he had things under control, and Colonel Blaskic said he had things under control. That is as far as I remember.

Q. In light of the events that you learned thereafter in Ahmici and these other villages, what did you conclude, Colonel?

A. Later on when I ran that conversation back through my mind, I believed that not only was General Petkovic talking about the actual failure of the Croat offensive, but he was also talking about the possible backlash which manifested itself once the United Nations had found the extent of the ethnic cleansing and the bodies in the village of Ahmici.

Q. Let us continue on in this meeting. Did there come a time when General Halilovic showed up and the meeting began?

A. Yes, there did. The meeting chaired by Ambassador Thebault was conducted in a very proper and diplomatic way, and eventually the diplomatic way forward had gone as far as it would go and Ambassador Thebault asked myself and the other military commanders from the BiH and HVO if we would now take it forward in terms of having now established the principle that everybody around the table wanted a cease-fire, would the military men now go away and work out the mechanics of how there ³⁴³¹ would be a cease-fire. At this stage, although in principle the BiH agreed that a cease-fire was a sensible thing, it certainly when we adjourned was not something that General Halilovic was totally disposed to.

Q. Why?

A. To put in context, we asked the BiH and HVO representatives to go into two separate rooms into which we had put up maps and we asked them to mark up on the maps the extent of their current front-line and any other information that would be relevant to establishing the conditions for a cease-fire, the stepping back of forces, the production of a buffer zone et cetera. In this, I moved between the two rooms discussing the situations with the HVO and BiH and I had a long discussion with General Halilovic over the principles of why he must accept a cease-fire, even though at that time, in his own view and indeed any other military man's view, he actually was winning, and it is much more difficult for an army that is winning a particular battle to agree to stop the battle and withdraw over ground that is already fought and won.

That was the challenge, to convince General Halilovic and Mr. Merdan that it was in the interests of the BiH and the Muslim people in Central Bosnia to agree ³⁴³² to this cease-fire, even though they were going to be the ones that had to do all the withdrawing from the lines of conflict, as the HVO forces really had gone back as far as they could go into the environs of Busovaca and Vitez.

Q. What did you say to General Halilovic to convince him to tell his troops to withdraw?

A. I told him that as the current battle stood, in the eyes of the BritBat and UNPROFOR generally, the BiH forces had acted in defence in this battle since 16th April against HVO aggression. Their current position, although in the short-term tactical situation they might well be able to destroy HVO forces in Busovaca and Vitez, there were several components to the situation that he should address or think about.

The first one was the HVO capability to fire long range artillery into Zenica, which they had already demonstrated they had the intent to do, and while pushing forward the battle to capture Busovaca and Vitez, his own people in Zenica would pay a very heavy price.

The second point was that what we had seen and would be prepared to stand witness to at this time there were no incidents of massacre committed by the BiH forces since 16th April that at that time we were aware ³⁴³³ of. One or two situations did come to light later, but at that stage, we were unaware of any and certainly in our view, and I was at the meeting representing UNPROFOR, and I told General Halilovic that in the view of UNPROFOR, the BiH forces at that time had the moral high ground, as well as the tactical high ground. If he had sufficient generalship to understand that to prosecute any further what was a legitimate counterattack would be difficult to justify, because he had already taken back the land he had lost and any further gains would be into Busovaca and Vitez and cause the deaths of many innocent people.

Also, from the strategic point of view, the situation that we had was that there were considerable Croat reinforcements moving up from Tomislavgrad into Prozor. The Croats had the capacity, or the HVO, as a well structured and well organised military force, had the capacity to reinforce Central Bosnia up through Gornji Vakuf and the route was sufficiently capable now for them to move certainly strong forces up it, and the ability of the HVO to reinforce their position in Central Bosnia was completely opposite to General Halilovic's present situation, where he was under tremendous pressure and 2nd Corps in Tuzla were under tremendous pressure from the Serbs and the situation ³⁴³⁴ with the Serbs was not going to go away and he was not going to be able to sustain two fronts and it would not be long before the Serbs would take advantage of the situation in Central Bosnia, where the BiH were totally overstretched.

So in essence, you had a situation that was strategically unsustainable, although tactically quite advantageous at that time to the BiH.

Q. In the other room is General Petkovic and the defendant Blaskic. When you went to talk to them, who was the one that discussed with you where the HVO positions were on the map? Was it Petkovic or Blaskic?

A. There was a slight difference initially in that Halilovic seemed to have a reasonable feel for where the lines of conflict were and the disposition of the BiH forces and I suspected that one of the reasons he was late is he had been briefed by Hadzihasanovic in 3rd Corps, because he did have quite a feel for what was going on. I do not know what contact Colonel Blaskic had had with General Petkovic, but Colonel Blaskic was explaining in great detail on the map to

General Petkovic where the dispositions were of his own forces and, as he knew them, the Muslim forces. I had given my word that I would not give any advantage to either party by explaining to the opposite party any ³⁴³⁵ information I should gain on troop dispositions, which I did not.

The situation with the HVO was very different because they were on the defensive and unsure as to how long the HVO would be able to resist the quite overwhelming success of the BiH in the preceding couple of days. They were more amenable to a cease-fire very quickly and they were not arguing or debating over the principle and concept of a cease-fire, it was really the mechanics of the lines to which parties should withdraw; specifically, how far away the BiH should withdraw.

Q. Was it clear during that meeting on the 21st that Blaskic knew the positions of all his troops, as well as where the BiH troops were?

A. Yes, of course.

Q. That position of the HVO troops, was that the approximate area where people were digging trenches as well?

A. Yes, it was. Sorry, in one specific area it was. I learnt more at that meeting about where everybody was. A lot of what we knew was confirmed and other smaller areas that we did not know as to detailed dispositions which Colonel Blaskic had explained to General Petkovic.

Q. Colonel, you set up what you might describe as a ³⁴³⁶ demilitarised zone to which both lines should withdraw, is that correct?

A. Yes, that is correct, in a phased process.

Q. How was that phase supposed to take place?

A. By first light the Croat positions would remain firm and the BiH Muslim troops were to withdraw to a line I think we called "alpha" on the map. Within 48 hours, the BiH were to withdraw back to Zenica and the HVO were to withdraw south of the main Lasva Valley road, and later on in the process General Halilovic asked for an additional 24 hours to pull his people back to line "alpha", because people just were refusing to move back.

MR. KEHOE: Mr. President, with the court's permission, Colonel, could you go back up to Exhibit 29C and using the blue pen to your left, could you sketch out the approximate two lines of the areas to which the BiH Army were to retreat and to which the HVO was to retreat.

JUDGE JORDA: Could you please try to speak more slowly, Mr. Kehoe? You are asking questions very quickly. The interpreters are doing their best, but frequently I only have the translation of your following question later, so if you could slow down a bit it would help us.

MR. KEHOE: Yes, Mr. President. I apologise.

JUDGE JORDA: I will ask the interpreter to reinterpret the ³⁴³⁷ last question asked by the Prosecutor, even though I have it in front of me on the transcript. Thank you.

MR. KEHOE: Using the microphone, Colonel, could you explain what you have drawn on the map?

A. The essential line of conflict was where the pen is, essentially on the road. The BiH had captured the northern area of the road and actually controlled the road between Dubravica and --

JUDGE JORDA: Excuse me, we cannot see. The witness is in front of the map. I know it is not easy. That is better. Go ahead, that is fine, thank you very much.

A. The line is the position of the front-lines, with the BiH having captured strategic points along the main Lasva Valley road between Dubravica and Kaonik, specifically the junction where the road comes up from Busovaca. The first requirement within 28 hours was for the Muslim forces to withdraw behind line "alpha" and produce the first buffer zone from the front-line here up to line "alpha" (indicates). That was the line where General Halilovic asked for an additional 24 hours to enable his troops to move to.

Within 48 hours, the BiH were to have moved back to a line just south of Zenica and the HVO were to have moved to a line approximately a kilometre or so behind their current positions. This would create a neutral ³⁴³⁸ zone here which UNPROFOR and BritBat would patrol and guarantee the neutrality of that zone. That was the concept, sir.

MR. KEHOE: The top line is the line you have marked "A", which is "alpha", is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. You can take a seat again. Colonel, in an effort to begin to monitor this withdrawal, did BritBat patrol the area?

A. Yes, the first patrol went out in the early hours of 22nd April, the day after, because by first light the BiH forces had said they would be north of the line "alpha". The reality was they were not, and there were still quite strong BiH forces specifically in the village of Jelinak, which is just north of the road but south of line "alpha". That patrol was conducted by Colonel Stewart and it was whilst remonstrating himself with the BiH forces for not having obeyed the orders of their commanding general and withdrawn beyond line "alpha" that he was told that part of the reason why -- the reason they would not leave these particular hills was because of the atrocities and murders that had taken place in the village of Ahmici, which was the first time that BritBat had had that accusation made.

Q. Prior to that time on the 16th, some BritBat units had ³⁴³⁹ been in and out of Ahmici, is that right?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Were you aware of the level of atrocities at that time?

A. No, we were not. We were aware of the level of destruction, which seemed excessive compared to other places, but the soldiers -- because each time we went into the village of Ahmici the vehicles literally had snipers' bullets pinging off them, so it was not very safe to dismount, and the soldiers therefore had not gone into the houses and checked. All they had seen was dead animals and destroyed houses. That was very similar throughout the length of the Lasva Valley.

Q. Stay with that. You are saying the destruction of houses and livestock was similar throughout the Lasva Valley?

A. Yes.

Q. What did you think about that, what did you conclude when you saw these houses burnt and the cattle killed?

A. That it filled the definition of ethnic cleansing and that was that there was just nothing left for the people to return to.

Q. Let us continue on with the events of the 22nd. What happened, Colonel?

A. After Colonel Stewart's patrol returned, as was quite usual, he would then continue to plan and work and write ³⁴⁴⁰ orders and I then took a patrol out to check the village of Jelinak and I also went into the village of Ahmici.

Q. What did you observe when you went in?

A. Ahmici was actually bigger than I had thought. It pushed much further up into a valley. I had always imagined, looking at the map and the name on the map, because I had not been to the village before, that Ahmici was centred around the mosque, which was 50 metres or so away from the main road. In fact, the village pushed much further up into the valley behind the main road.

The first thing I noticed was that the mosque had been destroyed, the minaret, which I could not remember noticing before. Although we had had reports of it, it was the first time I had seen it. I then moved further up the valley and went past the second mosque, up to the houses towards the northern end of the village. There was a little bit of sniper fire, we positioned some Warriors to cover that and then I dismounted some of my crew and we went and foot-patrolled through the village. I went to several houses that Colonel Stewart had shown me on a map where he had found evidence of people having been killed.

Q. Before we go into that, Colonel, did you take a look during your walk around and see expended cartridges at ³⁴⁴¹ certain locations and see various locations being shot up and, based on those examinations, did you, as a military officer, draw certain conclusions as to how this operation had been conducted?

A. We had had reports from our patrols on the day of the 16th that they had seen groups of Croat soldiers in fire positions around Ahmici and these soldiers had engaged them with fire when they had gone towards the village. When we looked at the village itself, we came across positions on the southern side, the lower side towards the road, towards the village, where we found empty cases and from positions that had not been reported that we had been fired upon from.

It looked to me to have all the makings of what we would call a "cordon and search", or a "cordon and destroy operation", if you will. In other words, that before you commit your forces to the actual area you wish to attack, if you do not want the enemy to be able to withdraw, you would place cut-offs sited over likely lines of withdrawal from the village so that you could shoot any of the enemy who were leaving the objective if you did not want them to escape. We found these sort of positions with the grass damped down and a number of 7.62 long cartridges, the type used in Draganoff sniper rifles, not the 7.62 short used in AK-47s, the normal ³⁴⁴² assault rifles.

Q. Continuing your search --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Mr. Kehoe.

MR. KEHOE: Continuing your examination of the village, did you continue or did you look and examine the locations pointed out to you by Colonel Stewart?

A. Yes, I did. They were not that easy to find. There was an awful lot of destruction in the village. Two things struck; one is almost surreal, and that was the total destruction and devastation of one part of the village and in the southern part of the village, as if a line was drawn in the sand, there were a whole series of houses that did not have a scratch on them. There were people in those houses who came out and shouted things at us and went in, but would not come and talk to us. We tried knocking on the doors to ask them what had happened and they would not talk to us.

We then went further into the destroyed part of the village and came across evidence in three houses that had been pointed out to me. One had a skull in the debris, another one had part of a charred corpse and a human ribcage and in the third house, which was the most shocking, there were two bodies in the entrance to the house and then in the cellar there was a line of bodies. But it is quite difficult to work out exactly ³⁴⁴³ what they were -- in terms of whether they were male, female, adults or children -- because they had been burnt. There was evidence of a petrol can in this cellar. There were also bullet hole marks along the walls and blood splashes on the back of the walls and so the scene looked like people had been put down in a cellar, shot and then set fire to. A lot of the bodies were twisted in grotesque ways, presumably from the heat that would have been generated.

We tried, without disturbing the forensic evidence, to count them and I think we worked out there were about six. Quite a few of the skeletons were small.

Q. Which indicated to you what?

A. They were children.

MR. KEHOE: If I can turn, Mr. President, your Honours, to Prosecutor's Exhibit 111, which is before the court. It is a series of photographs. If I could just put them on the ELMO with the assistance of the usher? If I may, Mr. President, I think we might want to advise the viewing audience that these photographs are very graphic.

JUDGE JORDA: I think you have just said so, Mr. Prosecutor, so there is no need for me to repeat it. You know them well, the Tribunal can say indeed, following what you ³⁴⁴⁴ said, that they are very shocking, there is nothing more to be said. This is an open public hearing, so will you please continue.

MR. KEHOE: Yes. Colonel, we are going to backtrack for one moment on some of these photographs before we go back to Ahmici, but if we can take them in sequence. If we go to the first photograph, which is 111/1.

JUDGE JORDA: Have you had them identified, Mr. Prosecutor? Have they been marked?

MR. KEHOE: Yes, they have.

JUDGE JORDA: You have not mentioned the numbers. I did not hear it, at least. How were they identified and admitted, under what conditions?

MR. KEHOE: These photographs are identified as Exhibit 111/1 sequentially.

JUDGE JORDA: But you have not told us under what conditions they were taken.

MR. KEHOE: Yes, your Honour. The photographs, the first two photographs were taken by Colonel Watters himself, that is the photograph driving into Stari Vitez and the photograph of the bodies on the ground. The next photograph -- the next four photographs were taken by the British battalion. The photograph following that of the soldiers beginning to take the bodies out of the house is a clip taken from a media source, and it merely ³⁴⁴⁵ is a view of -- further back view of the house, that is again taken by the British battalion in the next photograph. In the following photographs, they are taken by the British battalion, until the last photograph on that package, which was taken by Colonel Watters.

JUDGE JORDA: Thank you.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, let us go through these photographs one by one. As I said, we are going to backtrack a little bit and talk about the events on the 16th. Do you recognise this photograph?

A. Yes, I took that from the turret of my Warrior on the morning of 16th April whilst driving into Vitez.

Q. Is there smoke coming up from a particular area?

A. Yes, in fact the photograph does not do the smoke justice. I remember it looking much darker than that, but you can see columns of smoke arising from the central area of Vitez into the Muslim quarter.

Q. In the Muslim quarter?

A. Yes. I knew it to be the Muslim quarter when I got there because the houses were all burning there.

Q. The next photograph, if you will, 111/2. Earlier in your testimony, you had talked about seeing several dead bodies in the road in and around Dubravica. Is that the photograph you were discussing? ³⁴⁴⁶

A. Yes, it was, the line of bodies. I vividly remember it.

Q. The next photograph, we move to Ahmici, the day you went there on 22nd April 1993, if you could put that down, Mr. Usher, what is that a shot of?

A. That is the view of the mosque and the downed minaret in Ahmici.

Q. Is that how it looked on the day you went in there?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. I believe that the next photograph, 111/4, is that just a close-up of the mosque?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Likewise the way it looked on the day you went in there on the 22nd?

A. That is correct.

Q. The next photograph, 111/5, what is the angle of that photograph?

A. That is taken from within the village, looking down towards the mosque as we then pushed further up into the village.

Q. If you were heading this way, you would be heading out to the main road?

A. Yes.

Q. The next photograph, 111/6, is that a close-up angle of that?

A. Yes, it is. ³⁴⁴⁷

Q. Colonel, let us turn to 111/7. Is that the house -- one of the houses that you went into on the afternoon of 22nd April 1993?

A. Yes, that photograph was not taken on that day, but that is that house. That photograph was taken a couple of days later when we did an operation to secure the town or the village and remove the bodies.

Q. Are those members of the British battalion removing those bodies?

A. Yes, they are members of the medical section and the band who acted as stretcher bearers.

Q. Let us turn our attention to 111/8. Tell us about that, Colonel. If you could, could you use the pointer and point to the items that you are describing in this photograph?

A. This is the entrance to the house, it is a set of stairs going to a slightly raised first floor landing. On the stairs here is a body that has been badly burned. It was a small body, it looked like it might have been a child. Behind that there was another burnt body which looked like it was an adult, because it was much larger.

Q. Let us move ahead to 111/9.

A. That is a close-up of the body on the stairs as you approach the house, the body that is probably a child.

Q. Can we go to the next photograph, 111/10. ³⁴⁴⁸

A. That is an adult's body just behind the child's body on the first floor of the building.

Q. Moving ahead to 111/11.

A. That is a picture in the cellar of the same house, and it is one of a line of burnt bodies.

Q. Next photograph, 111/12.

A. That is the same body taken from a slightly different angle as the one we have just seen.

Q. Can you see the skull in that photograph, sir?

A. Yes, it is there (indicates).

MR. KEHOE: The next photograph, 111/13. I mis-spoke before, Mr. President, with regard to this particular photograph. This particular photograph, 111/13, was taken by Colonel Watters also, is that correct, Colonel?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. What is this photograph?

A. This photograph is again the line of bodies that ran the full length of one side of the cellar. Behind the bodies here you can see the holes made by bullets as they hit the wall. In front of the holes, down the side of the wall, there was what was obviously blood.

Q. When you saw that, Colonel, what did you conclude had happened?

A. I concluded that the people in the house or people had been taken into the cellar of that house and they had ³⁴⁴⁹ been put into that part of the cellar and had then been shot. It looked like they had been shot with an automatic weapon, because of the grouping of the bullet holes on the wall.

Q. Do you recall approximately how many bodies were down in this basement?

A. I think about six or seven.

Q. Did they include any children?

A. They included small skeletons, which were probably children, yes.

Q. Let us turn our attention to the next photograph, 111/14:

A. That is the same cellar and it is another skull. The way we thought we knew the number of bodies was by counting the skulls, because the bodies themselves were contorted and burnt, but I think we counted six or seven skulls. You can see more blood against the back wall there.

Q. Let us turn to 111/15.

A. That is another skull here and another body.

Q. Thank you. Next photograph is 111/16.

A. It may be similar to the first photograph because this piece here looks similar, it is part of a sink or something, but it is a skull and part of a burnt body.

Q. Do we see the same body on a different angle in the next ³⁴⁵⁰ photograph, 111/17?

A. Yes.

Q. You found burnt remains in more than one location, is that right?

A. Yes, we did. There were two other locations, two other houses, one had a skull in the roof tiles because the roof had collapsed on top of the top floor and in another house, we found what was obviously a ribcage, again in a burnt house with a collapsed roof.

Q. Let us turn our attention to 111/18. Is that in the first or second house?

A. That is in the first house, in the cellar.

Q. This first cellar, is that the cellar where you saw the petrol can?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. A petrol can that is normally used for carrying some type of inflammable liquids?

A. It can carry water as well, but it is generally used for carrying petrol.

Q. Let us turn our attention to 111/19.

A. That is another body in the same cellar, you can see parts of the body, the ribs and so on.

Q. We move to another location at 111/20.

A. This is the house where we saw a body. You can see part of the ribcage showing there (indicates). The roof was ³⁴⁵¹ missing, the house had been burnt and the roof had collapsed on top of the house.

Q. 111/21, is that a different angle of the same location?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Let us turn to 111/22.

A. Yes, that is a different house. There you can see a skull coming through the tiles, because the roof had collapsed, been burnt, the house had been burnt and the roof had collapsed on this one as well. There was a skull in the wreckage.

Q. Was there any way for you to account exactly how many individuals were burnt at that time?

A. Other than the ones we had seen which were the eight or so in one house and the remains in the two houses you have just seen photographs of, the answer is no. What we thought as a worst-case scenario was that there were more bodies underneath the houses with the collapsed roofs, which was virtually every house in the Muslim part of the village. It would take a major operation to clear those houses, which we did not conduct.

Q. Colonel, you said previously in your testimony that the control of artillery weaponry, mortars and the like, would be controlled at the regional level and in Central Bosnia it would be Blaskic, is that correct?

A. Yes, that is correct. ³⁴⁵²

Q. Would that include any aircraft weapons, for instance?

A. Yes, it would.

Q. Let me show you the next photograph, 111/23. Was that a photograph that was taken by you?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. Was that also in the Lasva Valley area during this approximate time-frame?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. What is the licence plate for that particular weapon?

A. HVO.

Q. What type of weapon is mounted on that truck?

A. I think it is a four barrelled anti-aircraft weapon.

Q. The individual that is seated to the left with the weapon on his knee, do you see what is on his face?

A. Yes, he is wearing a balaclava.

Q. Or a mask?

A. Yes. That was not uncommon.

Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Usher.

JUDGE JORDA: This is exhibit number -- no objections?

THE REGISTRAR: 111.

MR. KEHOE: Your Honour, at this time I will also introduce 29J, 53B and 56E, the exhibits that are on the easel.

JUDGE JORDA: No objection on the part of the Defence? In that case, they have been admitted under those numbers.

MR. KEHOE: Colonel, after you had viewed these things in ³⁴⁵³ Ahmici on 22nd April 1993, what did you as a military officer conclude about the conduct of the operations in that area on 16th April 1993?

A. I returned to Vitez where Colonel Stewart and Ambassador Thebault were still in discussion over their reaction and view to what they had found. Ambassador Thebault was really shaken to the core of his being by what he had witnessed. My own view, first of all, in terms of BritBat, it was very important that we did not overreact to what we had seen on a personal level, and maintained our professionalism, and we did not draw initially any conclusions. We sat and thought about it a great deal without saying emotionally the first things that came into our heads, because nobody could visit that place without being very shocked.

My personal view was that it was an operation conducted efficiently and successfully to ethnically cleanse that village, and the significance of that village in the Central Bosnia area and in the psyche of the Bosnian Muslim and also in the view of the Bosnian Croat was interesting, because we discovered more about the village of Ahmici. It had a special place in the minds of the Muslim people because it had a reputation of producing as a village a disproportionately large number of holy men, of mullahs, so it had a special ³⁴⁵⁴ place. My view and that of many of my colleagues was that this might explain why it appeared to have been dealt with so savagely compared with other places in which we did not find dead bodies, frankly. There was no doubt in my mind that it was part of a co-ordinated attack on the early morning of 16th April, just as we had witnessed the attack going up the valley. We felt quite guilty, really, for not having understood the significance of Ahmici, and maybe afforded it some additional protection or observation, because we just had not up until then realised its significance. An equivalent emotional place in the minds of the Croat people would probably be Guca Gora, which is a monastery behind Travnik and Vitez. We did understand that and we did visit often to reassure the people there, but we were a bit late for Ahmici. I think that is really all I can say. We were shocked we had not done more to protect the village and we had not understood its significance and it was part of the ethnic cleansing operation that was conducted up the Lasva Valley over those couple of days.

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

MR. KEHOE: Sorry. Colonel Blaskic was in command of the HVO troops before Ahmici, was he not?

A. Yes, he was. ³⁴⁵⁵

Q. During Ahmici?

A. Yes.

Q. And after Ahmici?

A. Yes.

Q. As a military officer, where certain criminal activities and atrocities take place, what is the responsibility of the commander of that area?

A. When a commander plans an operation, one of the aspects he must take into account in his military planning is the safety of refugees, and it is required by the Geneva Convention. A commander who prosecutes an operation is responsible in law for the safety of the civilian population through the areas which he is attacking, and in his plan he is required under the Geneva Convention to pay due cognisance to those people and ameliorate the impact of his military operations upon them. That really did not seem to make a lot of sense in the Lasva Valley, because it appeared to us the actual target was the civilian population, which immediately contravened the Geneva Convention.

In strict answering to your questions, he was responsible for the safety and security of civilians in the area in which he was prosecuting military operations as the military demander.

Q. Did you see him take any steps to safeguard civilians in ³⁴⁵⁶ that area, to your knowledge?

A. No.

Q. After the events took place, what is a commander's responsibility when it is brought to his attention that criminal acts have taken place by his troops?

A. As a military commander, you are totally responsible for all the soldiers under your command, as I am today. If those soldiers under your command, which can happen, disobey the orders they have been given and contravene the Articles of War and the Geneva Convention, or even simply loot or steal, then it is the responsibility of their commanding officer and their brigade commander, regional commander, to hand those over to the appropriate military justice within their own chain of command, and to identify them, arrest them and court-martial them.

Q. To your knowledge, Colonel, were any such acts to investigate and prosecute the individuals involved in these atrocities done by the defendant?

A. I am aware that Colonel Blaskic endeavoured to find out the names of those he believed responsible and I understand that he passed those names up his chain of command.

Q. Did he do anything else?

A. We were very disappointed and quite appalled that ³⁴⁵⁷ Colonel Blaskic did not immediately arrest the people who had done it, if he knew who they were, and if they were, as they must have been, under his command, because they were operating on that operation.

Q. In summary, do you know of anybody that was arrested because of these activities at all?

A. To my personal knowledge, no.

Q. Was Blaskic himself arrested by his higher command as a result of this?

A. No.

Q. Did it appear to you that anybody was interested on behalf of the HVO to do an investigation in this area?

A. That was one of the more appalling things, that nobody did seem interested.

Q. What did you conclude, based on all of that information that you had at that time?

A. My personal opinion was that the Ahmici business had actually complicated and clouded the operation that HVO forces Central Bosnia had tried to conduct to ethnically cleanse the Muslim minorities from the future canton 10 and had brought the weight of media and world attention on to it, and it overshadowed for a short time the situation in Srebrenica, which in terms of scale is quite ridiculous, because there was a great deal more death and destruction going on in Srebrenica than the ³⁴⁵⁸ Lasva Valley. But so shocking were the media pictures of the dead, and in fact on the 24th I believe we buried 96 bodies of people killed in that fighting, and my view in discussions with the HVO establishment was it was more a regret as to the consequences rather than a regret as to the means and that is a rather subjective judgement, but it is my view.

Q. Were you shocked by that, sir?

A. Yes, I was.

MR. KEHOE: One moment, Mr. President. (Pause). Mr. President, I have no further questions of this witness.

JUDGE JORDA: Colonel Watters, as our procedure in this Tribunal requires, in fact as any Tribunal will require, you now will have cross-examination by the Defence. I think it will be Mr. Hayman who is going to do the cross-examining.

Mr. Hayman? Cross-examined by MR. HAYMAN.

MR. HAYMAN: Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon, Colonel Watters.

A. Good afternoon, sir.

Q. My name is Russell Hayman and together with my colleague, I represent General Blaskic.

Are you suggesting to this Tribunal that you spoke ³⁴⁵⁹ to General Blaskic and he said that he regretted the consequences but not the means or the actual deaths of civilians in Ahmici? Are you suggesting that?

A. No, I did not say that. I said it was my opinion, and it was an opinion that I gathered in discussion with a great many people within the HVO from the 16th to about 24th April.

Q. Did you discuss that subject with General Blaskic?

A. We skated round it on the 21st, but I did not -- not the actual Ahmici situation, because we did not know about it, but the concept of attacking the civilian population in these areas. I did not believe it worth making an issue of it in the cease-fire negotiations because the BiH were already incensed enough about it already and I did not see the point in prejudicing the concept of a cease-fire on the 21st by holding some sort of Tribunal within a cease-fire negotiation.

Q. Did you discuss it with him or not?

A. I would probably say I did not discuss it in straight terms, no, but I know Colonel Stewart did and Colonel Stewart related some of those conversations to me.

Q. You said you also learned that then Colonel Blaskic found out who was responsible for Ahmici, is that right?

A. I said I understood that Colonel Blaskic had sent a list of names up his chain of command of those he believed ³⁴⁶⁰ had conducted the massacre in Ahmici, yes.

Q. Did he send a list of names to the authorities that were responsible for instituting military prosecutions within the HVO?

A. I was told he had.

Q. Do you agree if that in fact occurred that is the proper procedure for a commander to take?

A. No, I do not think it is the proper procedure. I think the commander should have arrested the soldiers concerned and detained them.

Q. Is that regardless of the quantum of proof or the information in the commander's hands?

A. Yes.

Q. So regardless of the quantum of proof, the commanding officer must arrest and detain the individual suspected?

A. If he has reasonable grounds.

Q. So it does depend on the quantum of proof?

A. Yes, but there again, to actually put a list of names accusing people of doing something, you must have had a quantum of proof, otherwise why put a list of names?

Q. Because you have to have a trial, do you not? In a military system there is a military court, a military prosecutor. Someone is accused, they need to be tried and, if guilty, found guilty and punished?

A. You do not accuse people without a burden of proof in ³⁴⁶¹ the initial circumstance.

Q. What is that burden of proof?

A. I do not know, I am not Colonel Blaskic.

Q. You are suggesting that he acted wrongfully, you are informed that he passed a list of names to a military prosecutor?

A. No, I said his chain of command.

Q. The record will speak for itself, Colonel. You are suggesting that he acted wrongfully in not arresting one or more individuals, and yet you are not able to tell us what the quantum of proof would be for him even to refer the names to a military prosecutor?

A. The quantum of proof is that he obviously believed that the people he put down on that list had done those deeds in Ahmici, otherwise I cannot imagine why he would have written their names down on a list. If he knew the people who had done that, then he had a responsibility to remove those people from military operations.

Q. Tell us how you know this?

A. I was told that by Colonel Stewart.

Q. How did he know this?

A. He was told that by Colonel Blaskic.

Q. Were you present at this conversation?

A. No, I was not.

Q. Were you given any details of this alleged conversation? ³⁴⁶²

A. Yes, I was.

Q. What?

A. That Colonel Stewart wanted to know what Colonel Blaskic was doing about the massacre of Ahmici, because if he did nothing he would be implicating himself in it, and he must take some form of action. Colonel Stewart came back and said that having put this to Colonel Blaskic that Colonel Blaskic had said that he had actually identified those who had done it and passed a list of names up his military chain of command.

Q. When was this?

A. I cannot give you the exact date, I would suspect it was around the -- any time from the 24th until the end of April.

Q. In preparing for your testimony, did the Prosecutor's Office tell you they were going to elicit information which was not from you but you obtained it from Colonel Stewart?

A. The Prosecution did not tell me that at all. They asked me what I knew and I told them.

Q. Did you tell them this information was entirely derivative from Colonel Stewart?

A. Yes.

Q. But they did not reference that in their question to you, did they? ³⁴⁶³

A. I did not explain the detail of how I formed my opinions, you have just elicited that from me.

Q. Have you spoken to Colonel Stewart about whether he is going to come and testify to this court?

A. Yes, I have.

Q. Is he?

A. I do not know.

Q. You were asked about an incident in which certain individuals, some 400 of them, came to the British base and one or more snipers were firing at them, do you recall that?

A. Yes.

Q. Around I believe 20th April 1993, is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. You said that the facts of this situation were relayed to the HVO command at the Hotel Vitez?

A. Yes.

Q. Were they also relayed to the command of Mr. Cerkez?

A. Yes, they were.

Q. How do you know that, both of those?

A. Because I, as the chief of staff, was in the ops room and gave instructions that the liaison officers should go and visit the regional and tactical level of command of the HVO, and try to get them to stop their snipers from shooting at these people. ³⁴⁶⁴

Q. Who had the actual contact? I take it it was not you; you did not personally have any contact with any HVO headquarters about the issue of snipers attacking these 400 refugees, correct?

A. The actual detail of whether I spoke on the phone or whether I did it through the liaison officers I cannot remember, but I am quite clear that the liaison officers passed verbatim the instructions they were given, as they had done throughout the whole tour, and came back with the verbatim answers.

Q. If you spoke to someone on the phone, would you have made a record or note of that?

A. Probably not, depending where the phone was. One of the problems was we really had all our phones cut off. There was only one in the whole building that was working, and it was not in the ops room, it was at the other end of the building, in what was the Royal Engineers' resources cell. If conversations were conducted in there, which they were, and I have a vivid memory of a conversation with Colonel Blaskic from that telephone, the notes would probably not have been taken on it.

Q. What liaison officers did you task with going to these two HVO headquarters to raise the subject of these refugees? ³⁴⁶⁵

A. Captain Dundas Whatley.

Q. You gave him the responsibility of going to both?

A. Yes, they were both beside each other.

Q. Did he go?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. Did he report back to you?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. What did he tell you?

A. Verbatim I cannot remember, just he said he had passed the message.

Q. Did he tell you that in the office or offices of Mr. Cerkez there was a locker of sniper rifles that had been locked up, do you recall that?

A. No.

Q. Did he relay to you a message that any persons sniping at these refugees should be killed by UNPROFOR and that was the position of the HVO?

A. Yes, we were aware that the HVO would condone our attacking those positions.

Q. So that message was passed to you?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. In connection with this incident, correct?

A. This "incident" took place over a number of days.

Q. But in connection with this incident --

A. At about halfway through, maybe the second day. ³⁴⁶⁶

Q. 21st April that?

A. Might have been the day, I cannot remember.

Q. You got a message -- the HVO's message to you, UNPROFOR, was, "if there are snipers attacking these 400 refugees, go find them, kill them and you have our blessing"?

A. Correct.

Q. Did you tell the Prosecutors that in preparation for your testimony here?

A. No.

Q. After getting that message, in fact an operation was undertaken, correct?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. To go find, capture or, if necessary, eliminate these snipers?

A. Correct.

Q. In fact some of them were captured?

A. Yes, they were.

Q. Were others shot at?

A. Others were shot at.

Q. Were any wounded or killed?

A. I do not know.

Q. All that happened with the blessing of Colonel Blaskic, correct?

A. Yes, that is correct, which was slightly odd since they were HVO soldiers, but there you go. ³⁴⁶⁷

Q. That does not sound like a normal army to you, does it?

A. What does not sound like a normal army?

Q. A commander telling another force on his terrain to go kill his own men because he was unhappy with their conduct and he condoned the killing of those men. Is that something you have ever heard happen in the British army?

A. Soldiers in the British army would not do that.

Q. That is my point.

A. I am clear on that.

Q. You arrived in Bosnia on February 6th?

A. Correct.

Q. And you left around May 8th?

A. Yes, I think it was something like that.

Q. Did you have any R and R period while you were in Bosnia?

A. No, I did not.

Q. So you were there about 90 days, correct?

A. I have not added them up, but 96 days, something like that.

Q. Three months, 6th February, March, April, May.

A. Yes.

Q. You mentioned that you learned there were three operative groups within the HVO underneath Colonel Blaskic, correct? ³⁴⁶⁸

A. Correct.

MR. HAYMAN: I will just recite them as a foundation for another question, Mr. President. First operative group, Vitez/Travnik, second Kiseljak/Busovaca and third Zepce?

A. Correct, as I remember it.

Q. Do you know who the commanders were within the HVO of those operative groups?

A. I did at the time and I could find out again by reading our logs. I cannot remember them all off the top of my head four years later.

JUDGE JORDA: Would you like us to take a break here, or do you have a question which is going to deal with the previous question that you have just asked? As you like.

MR. HAYMAN: At the court's pleasure, Mr. President.

JUDGE JORDA: If the following question is not directly related to the operation, we could suspend now and start again at 4.10. Thank you.

(3.50 pm)

(A short break)

(4.10 pm)

JUDGE JORDA: The hearing is resumed, please have the accused brought in.

(Accused brought in) Mr. Hayman. ³⁴⁶⁹

MR. HAYMAN: Thank you, Mr. President. Colonel Watters, you spoke earlier on the subject of whether Colonel Blaskic had a headquarters in Kiseljak; do you recall that subject?

A. Yes.

Q. When did you first visit him in Kiseljak at a location that you believed to be his headquarters?

A. I said I thought he had an alternative headquarters in Kiseljak. I never visited him there.

Q. When is the first time one of your liaison officers first visited Colonel Blaskic in a location that was reported to you as being Colonel Blaskic's headquarters in Kiseljak?

A. We were told when trying to contact Colonel Blaskic in Vitez, in the Hotel Vitez, that he was in Kiseljak. That was told to us a number of times and from that we deduced that he had another headquarters in Kiseljak, because he seemed to spend a lot of time there.

Q. Did you also learn that his parents lived outside of Kiseljak and that he would go visit them on weekends?

A. I did not know the detail, but I knew his family were from Kiseljak.

Q. So when you say you believed he had a headquarters in Kiseljak, you based that on the material you just stated, is that right? ³⁴⁷⁰

A. During the week -- several times when we wanted to talk with Colonel Blaskic we were told he was in Kiseljak. We assumed he had a headquarters in Kiseljak.

Q. Did you ever hear a report that he had a headquarters staff in Kiseljak?

A. No.

Q. You said you believed there were three levels within the HVO, or rather that the HVO could be analysed by identifying a strategic, an operational and a tactical level, do you recall that?

A. Yes.

Q. Where does political power fit in to this hierarchy you have set forth?

A. At the strategic level.

Q. At the strategic level, do you combine at that level both political power and military command?

A. I do not know the answer to that.

Q. So I take it your model does not specifically account for the exercise of political power within Central Bosnia, such as by the political -- Croat politicians?

A. No, I was talking about the structure of the military command.

Q. You said that you believed there was an agenda in Bosnia among Croats for a greater Croatia, is that right?

A. That is correct. ³⁴⁷¹

Q. Did you ever speak to Colonel Blaskic and hear him speak about a greater Croatia?

A. No.

MR. HAYMAN: With the court's permission, I would like to approach and invite the witness to join me before Exhibit 29J, over which we have placed a transparency, and would like to make certain markings on it. I also invite my colleagues and Mr. Nobilo. Keeping in mind that we not obstruct the view of the court, you have stated that historically, conflicts in Central Bosnia have centred largely on control of the major roads --

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Hayman, could you speak into the microphone, please? Everyone must have a microphone, everybody must be able to speak and hear and see. Fine, go ahead, please.

MR. HAYMAN: You have said that in your view military conflicts in Central Bosnia have centred largely, at least in modern times, on struggles for control of the major roads and access roads, routes, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. You need to speak into one of several microphones?

A. Yes, I said that, sir.

Q. You know that to be true during the World War II time period, for example?

A. I do not pretend to be an expert on it, but it was ³⁴⁷² certainly one of the things that we discussed and read about, the problems that the German army had subduing the Balkans during World War II.

Q. In part, this reality is due to the fact that Central Bosnia is an area of very high and highly defined mountains, correct?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Most of those mountains, you cannot go over the mountain, you must find a road or a path, for example, through a mountain pass in order to enter another part of Central Bosnia, correct?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And also the winters are quite severe, with snow and ice and so forth, further hindering transportation, correct?

A. Extremely severe.

Q. You have been so kind as to set forth at least some of the major roads or potential access routes into Central Bosnia from the south. I would like to ask you a few questions to round out that picture. First of all, you have noted in green that the stretch of road from Kacuni to Bilalovac was taken control of by the BiH Army, correct?

A. As far as we know, yes.

Q. Was that in roughly the second half of January 1993, to your knowledge? ³⁴⁷³

A. I was not there, but I think that is about right. It certainly was my experience when travelling that route that you went through BiH checkpoints in roughly those areas.

Q. By the time you arrived on February 6th that was the case?

A. As far as I remember, yes.

Q. Unless you disagree, I am going to put --

MR. KEHOE: Excuse me. Your Honour, if there is going to be drawing, I would ask that the witness do the drawing and not Mr. Hayman.

MR. HAYMAN: That is fine, your Honour. I would ask you to indicate again just the area of BiH control over this road, perhaps by tracing the road but also putting a right-angled line at either end so we have a record of that on the transparency.

A. I will, but it is four years after the event and my detail is not --

JUDGE JORDA: Yes, I see.

MR. HAYMAN: If you would also trace --

JUDGE JORDA: Would you please explain? The Tribunal cannot see anything. What colour is he using to make his markings on the transparency? If you could please reindicate what we are going to see, because we have not seen anything. ³⁴⁷⁴

MR. HAYMAN: With the court's permission I will mark over the witness markings, indicating a right angle cutting the road from Kacuni to Bilalovac in green, first at the Kacuni point and then at the Bilalovac point.

JUDGE JORDA: Very well, Mr. Hayman. Now we can see. Please continue.

MR. HAYMAN: Let me direct your attention, can you find a road on this map from roughly the Kacuni area to Fojnica?

A. Yes, I can. It is marked in yellow. There is one just there.

Q. In your experience, was that road held by the BiH Army throughout your tour in Central Bosnia?

A. I do not know, sir.

Q. The road from Kacuni to Zenica, do you see that road?

JUDGE JORDA: Could you please indicate to the Trial Chamber what it is, because we cannot see anything yet, the road from Kacuni to Zenica, please, as indicated by the witness?

MR. HAYMAN: I am withdrawing that question for the moment, your Honour.

JUDGE JORDA: Very well. But we have not seen anything for the moment, so next question, please.

MR. HAYMAN: Can we find a road, Colonel, from Fojnica to Sarajevo through Tarcin? ³⁴⁷⁵

A. I am not familiar with it.

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Hayman, could you tell us where you are heading? It would be simpler. Where do you want to get to, because we are now drawing routes on a map like a travel agency, so would you please -- I know that he is not listening. Mr. Hayman, what is the goal of these various questions that you are asking? Could you tell us that? You are dealing with judges. Because for the moment we are just drawing routes. What is the objective of your question, so that we can focus things a little bit, instead of just asking the Colonel to draw routes.

MR. HAYMAN: Of course, your Honour. The witness drew one section of road on the map that is Exhibit 29J proper as being controlled by the BiH Army, but only one section. In reality, it is at least the Defence's position that the vast majority of these roads came to be controlled by the BiH Army and in fact the witness has described a military action in April, I believe April 21st, 22nd 1993, which led to a cutting of the road from Vitez to Busovaca by the BiH Army. We wish to show the court that picture. If this was a struggle for roads, was it important only for the HVO or was this also a critical military issue for the BiH Army and if so, in what ways. ³⁴⁷⁶

JUDGE JORDA: You see, it is much simpler to explain and then to ask the witness to make the plan in accordance with your thesis. Very well then, let us hear the question.

MR. HAYMAN: I will ask the questions from there and ask my colleague Mr. Nobilo to assist the witness and perhaps we can proceed more quickly.

JUDGE JORDA: I think that would indeed be simpler.

MR. HAYMAN: Colonel, would you agree that the mountain road from Zenica to Travnik -- do you know that road, not to Vitez but to Travnik?

A. No, I do not.

Q. Perhaps Mr. Nobilo, can you point out the road for the witness from Zenica to Travnik. Did you become aware, Colonel, during your tour in Bosnia, that that road came to be under the control of the BiH during the period of April and May 1993?

A. I travelled that road during that period and it seemed to be rather muddled. There were Croat villages and BiH villages so there was not a clear route through it for either force.

Q. Were you in the theatre when Guca Gora was overrun by the BiH army?

A. No, I was not.

Q. Guca Gora is up in that area, correct? ³⁴⁷⁷

A. Yes, it is.

Q. You are unable to tell us anything about who controlled that road?

A. As I said, I travelled it during the period April/May and I do not think anyone actually controlled it. Various areas of the route were controlled depending on the ethnic majority of each village on the route. I remember going through a variety of different checkpoints and on several occasions being refused access by both BiH and HVO.

Q. So you recall it as being contested, or having multiple checkpoints on it?

A. Yes, I do, sir.

Q. When you arrived in the theatre, were you briefed on the fighting in Gornji Vakuf that had already occurred?

A. Yes, and I visited Gornji Vakuf on three or four occasions.

Q. In the course of the briefings you received, did you learn that the fighting in Gornji Vakuf began as early as June 1992?

A. I cannot recollect the exact dates, but I know it predated our arrival there as BritBat.

Q. At the time you arrived, what were you told, in terms of your briefings, in terms of who controlled Gornji Vakuf?

A. The battle ebbed and flowed and we were not sure ³⁴⁷⁸ actually who controlled it for the whole period. I would not be qualified to comment, as it was specifically looked after by one of our company commanders.

Q. Did you learn in the course of your tour who controlled Konjic?

A. Where is Konjic?

Q. I would ask Mr. Nobilo to assist and point out the city of Konjic.

A. I do not have a recollection, sir.

Q. Very well. How about the city of Bugojno?

A. I remember we had a liaison officer responsible for Bugojno. It was not a particular area I had studied.

Q. During your tour, do you know whether the BiH was able to travel from Zenica to Sarajevo?

A. I suspect they could.

Q. Do you know what route was possible for them?

A. No, I do not.

Q. Would you agree that being able to make that trip and have that access was of critical strategic importance to the BiH Army?

A. Yes, I would.

Q. In addition to having as much access to the roads that you have outlined on this exhibit as possible, correct?

A. I do not know how they did it and I have to confess, ³⁴⁷⁹ given the state of the conflict in Sarajevo, it was always a bit of a mystery, but certainly they did appear to come in and out of Sarajevo from Zenica.

Q. In addition to having that access, would you agree that it was of critical strategic importance to the BiH Army to be able to link up the different Corps, corpuses, that they had in the theatre, correct?

A. It certainly would be a strategic aim to do that.

Q. You knew, in the course of your tour, that the BiH first corpus was in the Sarajevo and Visoko area, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And the second corpus was in the Tuzla, Usera and Zepce area, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. The third corpus was in Zenica, correct?

A. Correct, sir.

Q. And the fourth corpus was in the Mostar, Jablanica and Konjic area?

A. I knew in theory, I had never been there.

Q. And the sixth corpus was based in the city of Konjic, were you aware of that?

A. I was not, actually.

Q. And the seventh corpus was located in Travnik, you were aware that they were headquartered in that city?

A. Yes, I was. I was not actually sure they were a Corps, ³⁴⁸⁰ I thought Travnik was subordinate to Zenica.

Q. You thought they were part of the 3rd Corps?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. In any event it would have very important --

JUDGE JORDA: Slowly, Mr. Hayman, please. Do not forget the interpreters.

MR. HAYMAN: My apologies.

JUDGE JORDA: And of course us. Think of us too. Continue.

MR. HAYMAN: We are always thinking of you, Mr. President and your Honours.

JUDGE JORDA: Thank you.

MR. HAYMAN: With respect to the third corpus and the BiH forces in Travnik, similarly road access between those two units would be of critical military significance to the BiH Army?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Would you agree in principle that control of these roads was of critical military significance to both the HVO and the BiH Army?

A. Yes, I would.

Q. Would you agree that in January 1993, or at least prior to your arrival, the BiH Army took steps to attain control over a portion of these roads, specifically the stretch between Kacuni and Bilalovac? ³⁴⁸¹

A. I cannot remember what went on before we arrived. Certainly during our tour, that stretch of road was contested by the HVO and BiH and to my memory was largely controlled by the BiH.

Q. You have described on 21st April 1993 how the junction at Kaonik had been overrun and taken control of by the BiH Army, correct?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Perhaps that could be indicated as well by a green cutting mark across the road in that location, please?

A. (Witness marks map).

Q. The effect of that act was to sever the road link between Vitez and Busovaca, correct?

A. Correct, sir.

Q. Would you agree that that was a further military strategic importance to the BiH Army because once the Vitez Busovaca enclave was severed, forces within the enclave could not be moved along the spinal road and massed at any one defensive point; would you agree with that, sir?

A. Yes, I would.

Q. Before we move away from this map, you have also discussed in your testimony the concept of canton 10 under the Vance-Owen Peace Plan.

A. Yes. ³⁴⁸²

Q. You said you believed that the conflict on 16th April and following days on the part of the HVO involved an attempt to purge canton 10 of its Muslim residents?

A. That was the only logic that we could think of.

Q. Let me ask you about certain towns and villages within canton 10 and tell me whether they were attacked by the HVO on the 16th.

A. I will do my best.

MR. HAYMAN: Mr. Nobilo, if you could point out the towns as I identify them. Sivrino Selo. Do you see that.

JUDGE JORDA: Is it necessary to show them? If I have understood you well, Mr. Hayman, that your strategy is to mention a number of villages within that canton that were not attacked, perhaps you can list them and see whether the witness can react to that. That would speed up things a little. It will not change anything in terms of the substance of your question, so please proceed.

MR. HAYMAN: I will and I can, although the location of the villages is also of interest.

Have you found Sivrino Selo?

A. It is here, sir (indicates).

Q. Do you know, was it attacked on the 16th?

A. I would have to check our records. It is not a name which immediately springs to mind. ³⁴⁸³

Q. Was it attacked on 17th April, if you know, 1993?

A. I do not know.

Q. Is Sivrino Selo on the spinal road between Vitez and Busovaca?

A. It is a kilometre north to it.

Q. Can you find the town or village of Krcevine? Mr. Nobilo, can you assist, please? Indicating to the north of Vitez?

A. Yes, I can see that.

Q. Do you know, was it attacked on 16th April 1993?

A. I do not, sir.

Q. Is it on the spinal road from Vitez to Busovaca?

A. A kilometre north of it.

Q. The town of Poculica, do you find that on the mountain road from Vitez to Zenica?

A. I certainly remember there was something at Poculica. It was quite heavily defended by the HVO, I remember that.

Q. By the HVO or by the BiH?

A. I could be wrong, I thought it was a HVO town. We tried to get access to it but we could not. I have a memory of HVO, I could be wrong. There are very many towns in that area.

Q. Mr. Nobilo, if you could point out for the witness the town of Tolovici, again north of Vitez. ³⁴⁸⁴ Do you recall whether it was attacked on 16th or 17th April?

A. No, I do not.

Q. It is not on the spinal road, is it?

A. No, it is not.

Q. Mr. Nobilo, could you point out the town of Preocica to the witness, indicating again to the north of Vitez. This also would be in canton 10, correct?

A. I would have to overlay the boundary, but I suspect it is on the edge of it.

Q. Zenica was in canton 10, was it not?

A. I cannot remember the exact boundary of canton 10 on this map.

Q. Do you think the boundary fell between Vitez and Zenica?

A. I think it did.

Q. Thank you, you may sit down. When you arrived in the theatre in February, were you briefed on what the BiH Army was doing to strengthen its position and prepare for a conflict with Croats in Central Bosnia?

A. No, I was not, sir.

Q. Were you told that the BiH Army had undertaken a general mobilisation in the Vitez area in January 1993?

A. No, I was not. I do not quite know what a general mobilisation was. I think the whole of Central Bosnia was mobilised. ³⁴⁸⁵

MR. HAYMAN: If the usher could assist, your Honour, I have a document I would ask be placed before the witness, provided to your Honours and provided to Prosecution counsel. The first page, your Honour, is in English, the second page in BSC. We have not yet been able to have any translations undertaken, but with the court's leave we will place them on the ELMO. I can read at least the first page, perhaps Mr. Nobilo can read the second and undertake a translation for all and then I would like to ask the witness a few questions about the documents.

Perhaps if you could place it on the ELMO, Colonel Watters, I can read it, you can look at it.

JUDGE JORDA: Could we hear the number of this exhibit, please, Mr. Prosecutor? Any comments regarding this exhibit? Let us wait for the witness to identify it first.

MR. HAYMAN: Yes, your Honour. At the very top of the page -- I am sorry to burden the usher again, but if we could move the document down, at the top of the page is in hand-written form "Cheshire Mil Info 080 19th January 1993"; do you see that?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Do you know what "Cheshire Mil Info" would refer to?

A. It is a 1 Cheshire military information summary, ³⁴⁸⁶ probably serial number 080, dated 13th January 1993.

Q. 13th or 19th?

A. Sorry, maybe 19th. On the document it is 19th. It is difficult on the screen to say.

MR. HAYMAN: If I may read it? Your Honour, parts of this document have been redacted. It was provided to us by the Prosecutor's Office and hence the first paragraph begins with 2:

"2. Vitez. A local source reported that tensions in the area between Croats and Muslims were high. He stated that local Muslim civilians were being called up for duty with the local BiH forces. One particular example (call-up document attached) had never served with the BiH forces before. The document states that he was to report to the school in Preocica." Does "GR" refer to "grid reference"?

A. Yes.

Q. "GR 2497 on 15 January 93. The stamp on the document was that of the 325th Broska Brigade. Comment. The recruitment of civilians (i.e. people who have no involvement in the BiH/HVO forces) is a reflection of the assessed need by the BiH forces to strengthen themselves against the perceived increased threat from the HVO. A CS" -- is that a reference to "call sign"?

A. Yes, it is. ³⁴⁸⁷

Q. Would that be a Warrior vehicle?

A. It could be a Warrior, it could be an armoured personnel carrier, it could be a Scimitar, it could be a Scorpion. It could be anything.

Q. "A CS visited the predominantly Muslim village of Preocica. It was reported then that there were well prepared defensive positions around it and that the village was of military significance in the Vitez area." Comment ends. Now the second page.

MR. NOBILO: In the heading, we find the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Defence headquarters of Vitez. The heading is, "Call-up for service in the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina". In the form we first see surname, first name and father's name, but this has been redacted, crossed out. Year of birth 1967, resident of Kruscica:

"Should on 15th January 1993 immediately upon receiving this call-up paper to the unit of the BH Army T-9048, the location, the school at Preocica. Take with you your personal things, warm clothing and weapons. Commander of the Defence of Vitez, signed", his signature and the stamp of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 3rd Corps, 325th Mountain Brigade of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

MR. HAYMAN: Do you recall, Colonel Watters, whether you were ³⁴⁸⁸ briefed when you arrived in the theatre in February on the subject of mobilisation of forces?

A. Not specifically but generally it was believed that the entire Central Bosnia area was mobilised to form their joint union against the Serbs.

Q. By that, you mean that every able-bodied man had been mobilised either into the HVO or the BiH Army, correct?

A. I think every able-bodied man is probably an exaggeration, but a great majority.

Q. Do you recognise this document as being in the format of a Mil Info Summ generated by 1 Cheshire during their tour in Central Bosnia?

A. Yes, I do.

MR. HAYMAN: I offer the document, your Honour.

MR. KEHOE: No objection.

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Registrar?

THE REGISTRAR: It is going to be admitted into evidence as Defence Exhibit D59, that is the number.

JUDGE JORDA: Very well.

MR. HAYMAN: We spoke a moment ago about the third corpus headquartered in Zenica. Did you receive reports in your tour that they had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 90,000 men under their command?

A. I cannot remember the exact figures, but they were certainly a substantial force. ³⁴⁸⁹

Q. Over 70,000 or 80,000?

A. I cannot remember.

Q. Over 50,000?

A. A substantial force. I never remember fastening on to a specific figure. I would not actually have trusted it.

Q. Were you also told or briefed by your own personnel that the HVO within Central Bosnia had around 12,000 men at their disposal; does that sound accurate to you?

A. Again, I do not remember fastening on specific numbers. It could have been accurate, I really cannot remember.

Q. Do you recall being briefed generally as to the proportion of soldiers in the HVO in Central Bosnia and soldiers in the third corpus?

A. Yes, and in infantry the BiH outnumbered the HVO.

Q. By a large multiple?

A. Our assessment was by a considerable margin and the HVO outnumbered the BiH in terms of their access to direct fire tank weapons, artillery and mortars. That was our general assessment.

Q. When you say "direct fire tank weapons", what do you mean?

A. Anti-aircraft cannon mounted on the back of trucks, anti-tank weapons, tanks themselves and mortars and artillery for indirect fire.

Q. Did you see the HVO in Central Bosnia in possession of ³⁴⁹⁰ any tanks?

A. Only in Maglaj, personally.

Q. What about in the Lasva Valley, did you ever see any HVO tanks?

A. No, I did not.

Q. Did you see or learn of BiH Army tanks in the Lasva Valley or Zenica?

A. Yes, I personally saw one T-55 on the mountain road.

Q. Let me turn your attention to the cease-fire agreement of April 18th, do you recall that?

A. I am sorry, there were so many agreements, on 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th. I cannot remember a specific one. I remember the discussions on the 16th and I remember the discussions on the 21st. I am not sure I chaired them. I think Colonel Stewart might have done.

MR. HAYMAN: If I could ask for the usher's assistance, your Honour. (Pause). If a copy of this document, your Honour, could be provided to the witness as well as Prosecution counsel and each of your Honours. Again if it could be placed on the ELMO. (Handed). The first page of this document, Colonel Watters, bearing in hand-written form, "Cheshire Mil Info 170 18 April 1993." The first page reads, "Warrior CS reported a BiH CP"; would that be "checkpoint"?

A. Yes, it would. ³⁴⁹¹

Q. "Located at grid reference 134001. The call sign reported that the soldiers were unfriendly and told the call sign to leave immediately."

First let me ask, do you know how we would go about determining where this location is?

A. Yes, by plotting the grid reference on the map.

Q. Is that something we could do even on this map?

A. I would have to look carefully, I might be able to.

Q. Perhaps during the evening break we could attempt that and save time. If the second page of the exhibit could be displayed, this refers to the cease-fire matter I spoke of. In the upper right-hand corner, this reads: "Annex A to Mil Info 171 18 April 1993. Copy of cease-fire agreement between HVO and BiH, distributed by" --

JUDGE JORDA: Is that 70 or 71? I am sorry, 170. Maybe Mr. Hayman made an error and said 171. I think it is a zero. It is not English or French, so it is 170, "Mil Info 170". Please continue.

MR. HAYMAN: Thank you: "Copy of cease-fire agreement between HVO and BiH, distributed by", and only the letters "HV" are visible next to the margin, but it is unclear whether something may have been cut off on the margin, "Central Bosnia. "1. The following text is taken directly from a ³⁴⁹² copy of the cease-fire agreement signed by Tihomir Blaskic, commander HVO, Central Bosnia, on 18th April 1993.

"'On the basis of the orders given by the HVO head of staff, HZ Herceg-Bosna office number", then a list of numbers, "dated April 18th.

"A. All subordinate HVO combat units are to immediately stop all combat actions against units of the BiH.

"B. Exchange the detained soldiers and civilians at once.

"C. Take care of all the wounded, no matter what army they belong to.

"D. Collect all information about those involved in the conflict, details on murdering of soldiers and civilians'."

Colonel Watters, do you have a recollection of the process which gave rise to this apparent cease-fire agreement executed on April 18th?

A. I remember the cease-fire agreement, I remember it making no difference and I do not remember the -- I have no recollection of what the process was that produced it, other than the fact that it seemed to be ignored on the ground.

Q. Would there be a record in the archives of 1 Cheshire ³⁴⁹³ concerning that process, assuming 1 Cheshire was involved?

A. 1 Cheshire would not have been involved if it was Herceg-Bosna, the level that promulgated it. I have a recollection of this cease-fire agreement coming sort of slightly out of nowhere, and I was initially being extremely excited about it when it first arrived, thinking there had been a major break through, but as I said, it did not appear to make any difference on the ground.

Q. An actual cease-fire did not stick between the period of 18th April and at least 21st April?

A. No.

Q. It did not stick, correct?

A. Correct.

Q. Is this document in the format of a 1 Cheshire Mil Info Summ and as you would expect it to be in that regard?

A. Yes.

MR. HAYMAN: I offer the document, your Honour.

MR. KEHOE: We have no objection, Mr. President.

JUDGE JORDA: What is the number then?

THE REGISTRAR: Yes, this is D60.

MR. HAYMAN: You spoke in your testimony of the cease-fire meeting at the ECMM house on 21st April 1993.

A. Yes sir. ³⁴⁹⁴

Q. You have that in mind, that meeting?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Would you agree that at the time of this meeting, the Army of BiH had either taken the Kaonik junction or was advancing on the Kaonik junction from the direction of Kuber mountain?

A. Yes, sir, they had either taken it or were about to take it.

Q. Would you agree that the army of BiH, at the time of this meeting, 21st April, was either advancing from Poculica to Preocica and Dubravica, or had already taken those positions?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Would you also agree that as at the time of this meeting, the Army of BiH was advancing towards Vitez from the direction of Krcevine to the north of Vitez, north-north-west?

A. It was certainly advancing on Vitez from the north, yes.

MR. HAYMAN: One moment, your Honour. (Pause). To your knowledge, was the Army of BiH also advancing from Bilalovac in the direction of Kiseljak?

A. There was certainly fighting to the north of Kiseljak. I am not exactly sure where the forces were coming from.

Q. Did you receive reports on 21st April 1993 concerning how many Croat villages had been lost by the HVO to the ³⁴⁹⁵ Army of BiH on that date?

A. I would have to go and check the records. Ground had been lost by the HVO, which would have included villages. I cannot remember the exact list.

Q. Do you recall receiving a briefing that approximately five Croat villages had been lost or were in the process of being lost on 21st April 1993?

A. That is quite possible.

Q. In fact, your view is, is it not, that the cease-fire agreement reached on 21st April 1993 saved the HVO from a military defeat in Central Bosnia?

A. I would certainly say it saved them from possible defeat. I could not obviously say they would have actually been defeated. They might have held out and been reinforced from Prozor, I do not know, but they were certainly facing defeat.

Q. They had already lost or were about to lose the Kaonik junction; would you agree their backs were to the wall?

A. Yes, I would.

Q. Now let us turn to the meeting itself. Was the subject of the meeting on the 21st in essence Petkovic's request to the BiH to stop their offensive?

A. You could summarise it as that, yes, but the HVO also had conditions to do with any future cease-fire.

Q. That request and the conditions and the mechanics of a ³⁴⁹⁶ cease-fire and a withdrawal, that was the subject of the meeting?

A. The principles were the subject of the first part of the meeting, chaired by Mr. Thebault, and the mechanics of how the two commanders would agree to separate their forces and place a cease-fire was the subject of the protracted second military planning meeting.

Q. You attended both parts?

A. Yes, I did, sir.

Q. In either part, was there any discussion of a massacre in Ahmici or any other massacre of Muslim civilians?

A. No, sir.

Q. No mention whatsoever in that meeting, correct?

A. I have no recollection of it. I think there were a lot of accusations and counter-accusations of various things, but there were no specific accusations by the BiH of a massacre in Ahmici, I am sure of that. But there were lots of accusations and counter-accusations, and occasionally General Petkovic or General Halilovic would step in and stop the meeting descending into an argument between Mr. Merdan and Colonel Blaskic as to the prosecution of the conflict over the preceding few days. I have a clear recollection of that.

Q. In these meetings, allegations were constantly being raised and being brushed aside by the opposing party, ³⁴⁹⁷ correct?

A. Who is the opposing party?

Q. The enemy force. An allegation would be raised that something happened here or there, or the other side would say, "we do not know who did that", something to that effect, would try and brush it aside?

A. I would not describe it as "brushing aside". I would say the two strategic commanders were keen to reach a regional decision and did not want the process to get bogged down in accusations and counter-accusations which would only continue to inflame the situation, rather than bring the situation to an end. I have a clear recollection of them both being very General-like about it, rather than worrying about the tactical position on the ground vis-à-vis individual forces and villages.

Q. The result of this meeting was an agreement to establish a demilitarised area and in effect a withdrawal of troops, correct?

A. Correct, sir.

Q. Would you not agree, Colonel Watters, that when the enemy is pressing in and taking territory, and that is what is being discussed, and your commander asks you if you have the situation under control, the reference to "situation" in all probability means the losses you are sustaining at that very moment with respect to the ³⁴⁹⁸ territory under your command; would you not agree with that?

A. That is an interpretation. I was not sure at the time of my own interpretation. It appeared to be quite a vitriolic exchange between the two.

Q. If five Croat villages were lost on 21st April 1993, can you appreciate the level of intensity of

General Petkovic's feelings on that occasion?

A. I can. What I did not understand was the impact it had on the interpreter.

Q. Would you agree that the interpretation I set forth that referenced to "control the situation" most likely refers to the losses being sustained on the ground by the HVO; would you not agree that that is a reasonable interpretation of the exchange you described as occurring on 21st April 1993?

A. It is an interpretation, it was not altogether mine at the time.

Q. Do you agree it is a reasonable interpretation of the exchange that you described occurring on 21st April 1993?

A. It is an interpretation, I am saying it was not necessarily mine at the time.

Q. Do you agree it is a reasonable one? If you do not --

MR. KEHOE: Your Honour, please, the question was asked and ³⁴⁹⁹ I believe we are now on the third time the question was asked. The witness answered the question. Can I ask that question not be repeated because counsel is dissatisfied with the answer?

JUDGE JORDA: Yes, on this specific point, I have to sustain this objection. I can say to you, Mr. Hayman, with a smile on my face, that you yourself this morning objected to questions which assumed that they were going to extract from the witness a kind of interpretation that was being asked. I did not interrupt you at the present and I considered it was natural for you to try to give the invitation that you wanted, but this is three times you are asking the question and the witness has already answered, so please go ahead.

MR. HAYMAN: If you change your answer, let us know.

MR. KEHOE: Your Honour, I move to strike the comments of counsel on the record at this point and ask that the court direct counsel just to ask questions.

JUDGE JORDA: Yes, I do not like having things taken out of the transcript. We are experiencing something which is alive, that is what a trial is. Mr. Hayman made that comment, it is going to remain in the transcript then. It is not the best of his comments since the trial has begun, but it was said. All right, continue.

MR. HAYMAN: Could you understand yourself anything that was ³⁵⁰⁰ said between General Petkovic and Colonel Blaskic on 21st April 1993?

A. No, sir.

Q. Could you see them?

A. I could see the back of Colonel Blaskic and the face of General Petkovic.

Q. So you could not see Colonel Blaskic's facial response to this conversation?

A. No, I could not.

Q. Were you looking at them during this exchange, were you focusing on the back of Colonel Blaskic and the face of General Petkovic?

JUDGE JORDA: Mr. Hayman, please try to shorten what you are saying, we are not going to reconstruct a scene none of us witnessed. The witness is telling you what he saw and what he understood. Try to move to another question, please.

MR. HAYMAN: I will move on, your Honour. I think he said what he could see, and my question is, was he looking, was he focusing on it, or is it something he could see if he looked and turned in that direction, which are two different things, and if it is too detailed I will move on, but may I just see if the witness has anything else to add?

A. I could see that -- ³⁵⁰¹

JUDGE JORDA: Colonel, yes, go ahead.

A. I was focused on it because it was the first time I had seen a Croat military commander getting a roasting from another Croat military commander, so it was something very unusual and I focused on it.

MR. HAYMAN: Your Honour, if we are going to 5.30 today, this might be a convenient time to go into closed session, briefly, concerning the matter that has been brought to our attention at the beginning of the day.

MR. KEHOE: Yes, your Honour, I believe we will go into that issue. I believe it is private session.

MR. HAYMAN: Yes, just no public audio.

JUDGE JORDA: Private session then. I would just tell the people in the visitors' gallery, this is not a closed session, they will see people here speaking, but the sound will not come through. All right, we can now pass into the private session. It will take a few moments.

(In closed session)

(7 lines redacted) ³⁵⁰²

(9 pages redacted)

(5.30 pm)

(Hearing adjourned until 10.00 am the following day)