Radowan Karadzic Opening Statement to International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia

Page 805

1 Monday, 1 March 2010

2 [Open session]

3 [Defence Opening Statement]

4 [The accused entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.00 a.m.

6 JUDGE KWON: Good morning, everyone. Will the Court Officer

7 please call the case.

8 THE REGISTRAR: Thank you and good morning, Your Honours. This

9 is case number IT-95-5/18-T, the Prosecutor versus Radovan Karadzic.

10 JUDGE KWON: Thank you. Today we are continuing the trial

11 proceedings with the Defence opening statement, which has been scheduled

12 for the full morning today and continuing tomorrow morning. Before we

13 proceed, I would like to have the appearances. For the Prosecution,

14 please.

15 MR. TIEGER: Good morning, Mr. President, Your Honours.

16 Alan Tieger, Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff, and Iain Reid appear for the

17 Prosecution.

18 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Tieger.

19 Mr. Karadzic, would you introduce the members of your team

20 present in the courtroom.

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Good morning, Excellencies. With

22 me are my legal advisors, Mr. Peter Robinson, and Mr. Marko Sladojevic.

23 JUDGE KWON: Thank you. I also note that Mr. Richard Harvey is

24 present here upon the instruction of the Trial Chamber. His role in the

25 trial is yet to be determined and we will do so after Mr. Karadzic's

Page 806

1 opening statement and when the hearing of evidence begins.

2 Mr. Harvey, I wonder if you could introduce the other members of

3 your team who accompany you today.

4 MR. HARVEY: Good morning, Mr. President and Your Honours. I'm

5 accompanied by Ms. Mirjana Vukajlovic today.

6 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Harvey.

7 MR. HARVEY: Thank you.

8 JUDGE KWON: Before I give the floor to Mr. Karadzic for his

9 opening statement, I would like to note that this opening statement is

10 being given pursuant to Rule 84 of the Tribunal's Rules of Procedure and

11 Evidence rather than Rule 84 bis.

12 Mr. Karadzic, you will have the opportunity at a later stage,

13 should you so choose, to make a Rule 84 bis statement, in which case the

14 provisions of that Rule shall apply and the Chamber can decide what

15 probative value, if any, to ascribe to your statement.

16 There is one further matter to raise for purpose of the planning

17 of the -- today's or tomorrow's hearing. The Trial Chamber denied the

18 accused's motion for the further postponement of the trial last Friday,

19 26th of February. In that decision, the Trial Chamber set the dead-line

20 for the accused to make a request for certification to appeal the

21 decision, if he so wishes, by today, and I was told just now that the

22 accused filed a request for certification to appeal the decision. Can I

23 get the confirmation?

24 I see nodding. We need some voice for the purpose of transcript.

25 Is it Mr. Robinson or Mr. Karadzic?

Page 807

1 MR. ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. President. If I can take the indulgence

2 of Mr. Karadzic to answer your question, I would say that yes, we have

3 filed that this morning.

4 JUDGE KWON: Thank you. I welcome you again.

5 In that case, Mr. Tieger, I wonder whether we -- the Chamber can

6 have your response by the end of today or you wish to respond orally

7 first thing tomorrow morning?

8 MR. TIEGER: That's -- that's fine, Your Honour. I can probably

9 respond first thing tomorrow morning or shortly before the conclusion of

10 these proceedings. It should be no problem.

11 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Tieger.

12 Then I now give the floor to you, Mr. Karadzic, for your opening

13 statement. Please bear in mind that we will need to break at

14 approximately 10.20 for 20 minutes' break for the first break, and at

15 12.00 noon for half an hour for the second break. This regime will apply

16 in the future hearings that will take place in the morning session.

17 Yes, Mr. Tieger.

18 MR. TIEGER: Thank you, Mr. President. Just briefly, I wanted to

19 mention the Prosecution's motion of February 23rd regarding a cautionary

20 measure, and I don't know if the Trial Chamber's remarks to date reflect

21 its conclusions in that regard or if that was -- if that slipped off the

22 agenda, but I wanted to point out that the Prosecution does have that

23 motion pending, and would hope that could be addressed before the accused

24 commenced.

25 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, Mr. Tieger, for your reminder. I dealt

Page 808

1 with only part of it, and the remainder will be dealt with after the

2 opening statement.

3 Mr. Karadzic.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I would first like to greet all the

5 active and passive participants of this session. I stand here before you

6 not to defend the mere mortal that I am but to defend the greatness of a

7 small nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina which, for 500 years, has had to

8 suffer and has demonstrated a great deal of modesty and perseverance to

9 survive in freedom. I don't want to defend myself by saying that I

10 wasn't important or that I didn't occupy an important post while I was

11 serving my people, nor will I shift the blame to someone else. I will

12 defend that nation of ours and their cause, which is just and holy, and

13 in that way I shall be able to defend myself, too, and my nation, because

14 we have a good case. We have good evidence and proof, and if I'm given

15 sufficient time and resources to prepare my Defence, I shall be able to

16 do so and it will be to our advantage.

17 Therefore, the only thing that I expect here is to be given the

18 opportunity to have a well-prepared defence and to present my case here

19 in a proper manner, to show you the substance and crux of this matter and

20 everything that hasn't been uncovered yet and hasn't been realised.

21 I will start by describing a situation in my country. At the

22 elections in 1990, and they were the first democratic elections at which

23 many dissidents appeared because before that it wasn't a multi-party

24 system. In the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, we had seven members,

25 two Serbs, two Croats, two Muslims, and a representative for the

Page 809

1 minorities. My Serbian Democratic Party was in this seventh place, and

2 the nomination there was the president of the Jewish community in

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina, who was not a member of the SDS, but we did however

4 consider that he represents, in the best sense of the word, the rest, the

5 others. And apart from that, the community is very significant in

6 Sarajevo because after the persecution in Spain, the Jews came to

7 Sarajevo and have significant traces there and have contributed to

8 Sarajevo's development.

9 The Party of Democratic Action has put lamb's clothing on a wolf,

10 a wolf in lamb's clothing on Mr. Ganic, called him a Yugoslav for this

11 opportunity, and of course he was elected to this post which belonged to

12 the minorities or the others. And that is the well-known gentleman who

13 became famous when he slaughtered innocent soldiers who were withdrawing

14 from -- in Sarajevo in Dobrovoljacka Street, and the well-known order he

15 gave over the radio, As soon as Alija gets out of his car, kill them all.

16 So that is how the SDA and the Muslim community in Bosnia -- in

17 Bosnia-Herzegovina achieved supremacy in a body where parity was supposed

18 to prevail.

19 The Serbs had an even better candidate which they could have once

20 again put in lamb's clothing, and somebody who declared himself as a

21 Yugoslav, but we consider that that wasn't done in proper society because

22 it wasn't democracy and it wasn't an honest and sound basis for life

23 together and progress in general. And it was almost an innocent child's

24 game in comparison to what the state organs, the joint state organs, did

25 for the war policy of the Party of Democratic Action that was geared

Page 810

1 towards gaining as much advantage to their own community and inflicting

2 detriment on the Christian majority, that is to say, the Serbs and the

3 Croats.

4 Now, why did the leaders of the Party of Democratic Action do

5 this in the first place? Not only because it was the basic model of the

6 fundamentalist way of thinking and acting, that is to say, domination,

7 supremacy, privileges, 100 per cent power, just as it was in the days of

8 the Ottoman Empire, but first and foremost, again one more vote in the

9 Presidency in order to achieve the Islamist goal, that is to say, a state

10 of the kind that they had envisaged, that is to say, 50 years ago the

11 people and the actors of our drama, their image of that.

12 There were some very subtle games afoot in cadre terms and so on,

13 but that was nothing compared to this, because the goals of the

14 Communists were not such. They were ideological ones. However, these

15 were fundamental goals changing the destiny and appearance of a whole

16 region and the destiny of several nations and ethnic groups within it.

17 Therefore, secession of Bosnia-Herzegovina in this case was the goal, and

18 not only secession which could not be carried out in a legal way, but the

19 establishment of a system and a regime and a state structure which I'm

20 going to depict to you here and present my arguments to show you what it

21 was like. And on the basis of the proof and evidence you will be able to

22 see what they envisaged, what -- and so forth.

23 So this -- there was this need to have one more vote, one extra

24 vote, but not only that was enough, because the substance of the

25 requirements of the SDA was to have Bosnia 100 per cent for them, and

Page 811

1 that was the basic way in which they were thinking. Bosnia is ours. The

2 Serbs are guests here, and God knows the Croats, too, when they didn't

3 need them to leave Yugoslavia anymore, and so they have to obey. And

4 that was the attitude towards the Christian majority at that point in

5 time, and how would they behave if with political means -- if they

6 resorted to political means. Nobody minds the natural increase in the

7 population, but the settlement of the people of Sandzak and the Turks

8 coming in, that would have created quite a new situation, and they wrote

9 about this in their papers.

10 When the United States, in 1995, decided to end the war which

11 they had been waging in Bosnia-Herzegovina, their ambassadors, Holbrooke

12 and Bildt, write and say that Holbrooke told the Islamic leadership, they

13 said, What do you want us to negotiate for you? Do you want to have

14 100 per cent power in 30 per cent of Bosnia, or 30 per cent of power in

15 100 per cent Bosnia? You cannot have 100 per cent power in 100 per cent

16 Bosnia. And that is the crux of all our crisis and the war and the

17 crisis that is still ongoing today, and you can clearly see that it came

18 from the state department and Holbrooke. They understood the substance

19 of the matter, the crux of the matter. But not even their mightiest

20 ally, and especially what they wanted to achieve in 1914 and also in

21 1941, now and different conditions and constellations and different

22 actors, they want Islamic fundamentalism, and they had been wanting that

23 from 1991. They wanted from 1991 to 1995, and they'll continue to want

24 that until the borders have been precisely defined, the borders of the

25 entities. For as long as people in Bosnia or a group in Bosnia has the

Page 812

1 chance of seizing a hundred per cent of Bosnia or 18 per cent of Bosnia,

2 you will not have peace in Bosnia.

3 Now let's make this quite clear. I'm not speaking about all the

4 Muslims, nor am I speaking about the whole of the Party of Democratic

5 Action. What I'm referring to is a core that is plotting and conniving

6 and which was responsible for all this. I'm not making a plea for the

7 fact that Muslims should be Serbs, but many of us do consider them to be

8 Serbs and some of their great men, Mehmet-Pasa Sokolovic, Osman Dzikic,

9 Hasan Rebcic [phoen], Mesa Selimovic, were and remain Serbs and within

10 the Serb culture and they have become great men, great writers, great

11 minds as Serbs. But you're entitled to your opinions.

12 Not even a whole of the SDA party is responsible for what was

13 happening and what is happening. Within the SDA there is a conspiracy

14 core which has been identified by the leaders of the Muslim Bosniak

15 organisation, other Muslim parties, Mr. Zulfikarpasic and

16 Professor Filipovic have identified them, and they left the SDA when they

17 saw what was afoot and what was going on. And a Muslim intellectual,

18 before the elections, wrote Izetbegovic a letter, when he left the SDA,

19 he said, "Do you think that the Serbs are fools that and they don't see

20 what you're doing?" Therefore, that was the reason for him distancing

21 himself from the party, because he was a man of vision and saw what was

22 going to happen ultimately.

23 Now what was this conspiracy core within the SDA? They were the

24 young Muslims. And it is these young Muslims that were formed as an

25 affiliation or a reflection of the Muslim brothers in Egypt, for example,

Page 813

1 who, as you know, killed Sadat and did goodness knows what else. Now the

2 Prosecution can say that's tu quoque, that's not important, they're not

3 being tried. But why aren't they being tried? Why aren't these

4 perpetrators of enormous major crimes, with blood up to their shoulders,

5 not being tried here? Probably because the indictments weren't what they

6 were supposed to be and it wasn't -- it was easy to have them liberated,

7 acquitted. So it's not due tu quoque; it's a fact that cannot be

8 bypassed. Their conduct gave rise to our conduct, and that is

9 100 per cent true.

10 I am surprised and concerned as well to see how the Prosecution

11 is acting in various situations. They would like to have a trial without

12 any corpus delecti. They would like us to say, All right, let's just get

13 together and agree to prosecute and find people guilty. But this Defence

14 has much criticism to make of that stance and will not allow it to go

15 forward, to proceed in that way because it would appear -- and it would

16 appear that the Prosecution has struck an agreement with our enemies in

17 war, or as we like to say, without joking, that the Prosecutor is trying

18 to turn this Tribunal into a disciplinary commission of NATO. And to say

19 that this is not an exaggeration, you will hear from the high-ranking

20 officers of this Tribunal itself to the effect that everybody who -- that

21 NATO planned to liquidate Karadzic, and everybody who went against the

22 grain of NATO had to be taken to trial.

23 [Audiotape played]

24 "I want to speak you -- I want to speak with you about Karadzic.

25 SFOR, in particular the United States, they will try to locate Karadzic.

Page 814

1 Karadzic knows, he knows perfectly that he is in danger because if they

2 locate him, he will not be transferred to The Hague alive. It will be an

3 operation and after shot down Karadzic, they'd say, 'Yes, he was armed,

4 and it was reacting.' [Indiscernible] and why I'm saying that, because I

5 am investigating about the agreement between Karadzic and Holbrooke. I

6 am investigating and I am getting some good -- some good evidence that

7 it's true. But if it is true, as it seems in my -- in my investigation,

8 it is more element to fear that they will kill Karadzic.

9 "The substance is that surrender is better than murder.

10 "Yes, yes. There's no parliament anymore, no government

11 anymore. It's no more federation. It's just Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's

12 not existing anymore Republika Srpska. It's finished. It's finished

13 Republika Srpska. Now it's only Bosnia."

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It seems to me that I even had

15 friends in the OTP, because this is a better version than having me

16 liquidated, isn't it? However, I believe that today this can only make

17 us realise what was going on.

18 The OTP is trying to link up this accused person and the chaos

19 and tragedy of civil war, and may I remind you that not a single war in

20 our part of the world did not also become a civil war. The aggressor

21 always managed to turn people against each other, and that's the way it's

22 been since time immemorial but particularly in modern times, in the

23 19th and 20th century. So the OTP is trying to link up this accused

24 person with the chaotic, tragic developments of a civil war that could be

25 expected and that were even envisaged. They're trying to accuse me of

Page 815

1 planning, aiding, abetting, instigating, and whatever else you have, the

2 removal of Muslims and Croats from the territories in Bosnia-Herzegovina

3 that Serbs lay a claim to. They are claiming their own territories, as

4 you will see, and that is not a crime, and I don't think that the OTP

5 treats it as such. The Prosecution is behaving as if this were a crime.

6 We're going to hear that often enough here, and that just shows how false

7 this entire situation is, what a fabrication all of this is.

8 The Prosecution crosses this bridge, as it were, very quickly,

9 and they're saying that laying claim to one's own territory and

10 establishing a political party, and taking part in elections, and

11 political defence from political attacks, and armed defence from armed

12 attacks, and self-defence and self-organisation in a condition when a

13 state organism falls apart, and everything that was the Serb democratic

14 response to attacks from either side, and everything that Serbs did as

15 part of their own legitimate defence, all of that is being treated as a

16 crime, and they quickly move on to chaotic developments which happen in

17 civil wars. After all, everyone knew that that would happen. That is

18 what was envisaged.

19 Now, this fine bridge between the accused and everything that

20 happened is something that the Defence considers to be very important.

21 We want to go back to that bridge because there is that intention that is

22 referred, to remove non-Serbs from territories that Serbs in Bosnia

23 claimed. The Defence doesn't want to deal with this in minute detail as

24 to who killed who, how the first, the second, the third, or fourth party

25 behaved, because we will see during these proceedings that there were

Page 816

1 four parties at war in this situation. The Prosecution has to prove this

2 basic thesis of theirs. Without proving that they cannot prove joint

3 criminal enterprise or any responsibility on the part of Republika Srpska

4 and its government, its organs, its police, army, et cetera.

5 A few things to begin with. First of all, Republika Srpska was

6 not the political objective of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

7 Their objective was Yugoslavia.

8 Secondly, Republika Srpska was created out of necessity and as a

9 very painful compromise of the Serbs in order to agree to leave

10 Yugoslavia. I am going to enumerate Serb priorities. The first was the

11 preservation of Yugoslavia as big as possible, if possible consisting of

12 all of its six republics, and that was the superior prime objective. If

13 the Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina do not wish to remain in

14 Yugoslavia, the Serb objective -- the secondary Serb objective was that

15 they remain in Yugoslavia, just like West Virginia remained with the

16 north, with the American Federation, whereas the majority of Virginia did

17 join the Confederacy. Western Virginia exists to this day because

18 Lincoln, a great president, agreed to that and recognised it. So we

19 haven't got an East Virginia, there's only a West Virginia; right? Now

20 are we to regret that these are not times of great presidents, so that we

21 could not see a proper solution to the Serb issue and to the situation in

22 the Balkans in general.

23 In the same way, Northern Ireland continues to exist. Most of

24 Ireland gained independence. However, part of Ireland did not. It

25 remained within the United Kingdom. This variant with Northern Ireland,

Page 817

1 that is to say, Serbs with the Serb territories, genuine Serb

2 territories, as you will see, the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina are the

3 oldest population there because most of the population were Serbs in the

4 first place.

5 So anyway, this was Mr. Izetbegovic's idea. He even signed this

6 in the agreement he concluded -- or, rather, this declaration he signed

7 with Mr. Krajisnik on the 16th of September, 1993. Serb -- the third

8 Serb priority was the independence of a Serb constituent state in

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina which Mr. Izetbegovic did not challenge either.

10 The fourth, very painful option was that all of Bosnia leaves

11 Yugoslavia on the condition that the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina have

12 their constituent unit of their own in some kind of a confederation of an

13 alliance of Bosnian states. That variant, but less favourable in terms

14 of integration in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was offered to us by the

15 European Community within Lord Carrington's conference.

16 Ambassador Cutileiro was in charge of Bosnia within the scope of that

17 conference. That is the well-known Cutileiro Plan.

18 Rest assured that this was the list of Serb priorities. Every

19 one of these variants ensured the preservation of peace and the

20 achievement of Croat and Muslim optimal objectives through Serb lenience.

21 These were minimum objectives as far as the Serbs were concerned, far

22 from maximum. What joint criminal enterprise can stand in the face of

23 this fact? What I'm going to present here is marble truth, and this is

24 one of the truths that I am referring to. How can there be a joint

25 criminal enterprise? What is it that Serbs could do if all Serb

Page 818

1 compromises had been agreed to?

2 Thirdly, the Prosecution constructs this alleged intention of

3 ours to expel Muslim and Croats from their own home on this false

4 presumption that we consider Republika Srpska to be our home at the time.

5 At that time, the home of the Serbs was Yugoslavia, not

6 Bosnia-Herzegovina, let alone Republika Srpska that hadn't even been

7 created yet. We are going to prove that there never was any intention,

8 any idea, let alone plan, to expel Muslims and Croats from

9 Republika Srpska. This is what another Chamber of this Tribunal says in

10 the first instance judgement to -- of Mr. Krajisnik.

11 It has to do with the words of Radovan Karadzic on the

12 14th of February, 1992, just before the war, and the Trial Chamber

13 concludes that Karadzic, at a party meeting, a Plenary meeting of the

14 party, said that they should take care that there should be no flights.

15 People should not start fleeing from our areas. So that is the most

16 painful variant for the Serbs, that there will be three Bosnias. That

17 had already been achieved, and Karadzic says, before 200 people that are

18 responsible for life on the ground, as it were, to be careful, that there

19 would be no fleeing from our areas, quote/unquote. This Trial Chamber

20 admits that and says that Karadzic, even on the 14th of February, 1992,

21 bore in mind the interest of others. All the way up to the

22 14th of February, 1992, that's the way it was. Everybody was there.

23 Until then there was no joint criminal enterprise.

24 We have to identify now what is the moment of birth of this joint

25 criminal enterprise that is called the expulsion of Croats and Muslims

Page 819

1 from Republika Srpska. That is part of the words of caution of

2 Radovan Karadzic.

3 Now, the next reference. We have to realise that on the

4 14th of February, 1992, there was no joint criminal enterprise. That was

5 not its moment of birth. It wasn't the 18th of March, 1992, either,

6 because there was the Lisbon Agreement.

7 Now we go to the 27th of March, and Karadzic is speaking at the

8 Assembly of the Serbian people, and you see:

9 "A war in Bosnia and Herzegovina will not solve anything. We

10 must study the situation regarding the saving of lives, property and

11 territory. We have no other plans."

12 That is Karadzic's response to a question put by one of the

13 assemblymen. The only plan of the Serbs at the time was to protect

14 people, property, and territory, and wait.

15 We also have to look at the time involved. We have to look at

16 the time-line as such for the joint criminal enterprise.

17 On the 12th of April, when the war had already broken out, with

18 Ambassador Cutileiro we signed a cease-fire, all three parties. On the

19 12th of March we signed a cease-fire, and on the evening of the

20 12th of March, the Muslim side, the SDA, sent -- Hasan Efendic sent this

21 well-known order, instruction to launch an all-out attack against the JNA

22 and Serbs throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. So on the Serb side, even

23 on the 12th of April there is no joint criminal enterprise.

24 On the 22nd of April, Karadzic presents a plan for the cessation

25 of hostilities and bringing the crisis to an end. I have to note that on

Page 820

1 the 12th of April, within that cease-fire, what was concluded was to work

2 even faster on the maps involved in the Cutileiro Plan. So on the

3 22nd of April, there is no joint criminal enterprise either.

4 Then you're going to see August, for instance. Karadzic is

5 fighting for having Muslims and Croats elected to positions in the

6 judiciary and in government. Up until then, members of the Presidency

7 could make appointments, and I appointed 18 Muslims and Croats to

8 positions in the judiciary, in courts of law. Afterwards these powers

9 were returned to the Assembly.

10 It says here, as we said yesterday, we should see whether it is

11 the right person involved rather than that person's ethnic background.

12 And Karadzic says, As for others, you have to be aware of the fact that

13 they will always have proportionate participation in the government. The

14 war had already started. There was a lot of bloodshed. There were a lot

15 of clashes, conflicts. There is some restraint and there are some

16 reservations in terms of appointing Croats and Muslims. However,

17 Karadzic and Popovic and others who asked for the Judges to be appointed

18 quickly asked that ethnic background not being taken into account, only

19 the personal eligibility of all candidates and that there should be

20 proportionate representation of all the ethnic communities there.

21 I have to remind you what this looked like on the 18th of March.

22 You will see that all of 1991 was burdened with inter-ethnic tensions and

23 the Serbs gave way, whenever possible, just in order to ensure peace in

24 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

25 On the 18th of March, we agreed that there would be three

Page 821

1 Bosnia-Herzegovinas within one Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is to say, to

2 carry out a Switzerlandisation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and that it will be

3 outside Yugoslavia. That is the most painful compromise that the Serbs

4 had to make. At that point in time, we all three parties accepted this

5 and expressed our great pleasure.

6 All three parties then concluded that they all had maps, although

7 the SDA claimed that they did not have maps, and we came to the

8 conclusion that 80 per cent were not controversial. Serbs agreed to

9 80 per cent of the maps, and the Muslims and the Croats agreed up to

10 80 per cent as to what the others would have, et cetera.

11 The Muslim fared the best, and this is what this gentleman,

12 Mr. Irfan Ajanovic is saying. He said that 82 per cent of the population

13 will live in their own ethnic unit and that the Serb people make up

14 50 per cent of the population, the Serb unit, and no one ever mentions

15 any population exchanges or any kind of population movement, except for

16 voluntary migrations, if people simply want to move. Mr. Izetbegovic,

17 while working with me and very good relations -- well, we enjoyed very

18 good relations and I repeated that at that meeting or, rather, he

19 repeated at that meeting that I do not stick to municipal borders. If a

20 particular village, a Serb or a Muslim village, wishes to join a

21 neighbouring municipality, it's not going to be a Berlin Wall, so let a

22 particular village join one municipality or the other. And his position

23 was that there should be the smallest possible number of them with us and

24 us with them. That was his position. So that most people should live

25 within their own constituent unit. No one ever referred to any exchange

Page 822

1 of population.

2 Even Karadzic said that openly, on the 3rd of May, upon his

3 return from Brussels. Asked by a journalist about what was going to

4 happen with the population, whether there was going to be any exchange,

5 somebody mentioned the case of India and Pakistan, I said this is not in

6 our plans and this is not what we recommend. They are going to be a

7 minority and they will have their rights protected on a reciprocal basis.

8 There will be no problem.

9 Now, faced with this marble solid truth, which kind of criminal

10 joint enterprise was on the minds of the Serbs? The Serbs had never

11 dishonoured any agreement reached by that time, not even the agreements

12 on truce. There were 12 agreements on cease-fire in Sarajevo, 11 of them

13 were breached by the army of -- by the Muslim party. All of this was

14 happening before the 18th of March, and one can or could assume, at least

15 on the Serbian side, that that was going to be the solution. So based on

16 that, can we draw an inference about the intentions of the Serbs towards

17 eliminating the Muslims and the others from the parts of Bosnia that were

18 to belong to Serbia. However, my learned friends from the Prosecution

19 are reluctant to put this in the context of the events in the former

20 Yugoslavia and Bosnia in particular because that would then reveal who

21 did what and who was responsible for what. It would become clear that

22 the Serbs were the party that made concessions for the sake of preserving

23 peace and they were never in favour of a war solution for which some

24 other party was.

25 Again, I have to say that this system is devastating and unusual.

Page 823

1 In the absence of objective judicial investigation, the Prosecution has

2 endless resources to compile the indictment and provide supporting

3 documents. Now, you have a Serb or any person from the Balkan has to

4 appear here and defend himself from some invisible forces, because there

5 is no way for him to carry on his own investigation.

6 The Prosecution has put in sequential order the events that took

7 place in the Balkans, and this order will demonstrate the true essence of

8 the whole event. As it is, it turns out, according to the Prosecution,

9 that the war broke out because the accused here set up the Serbian

10 Democratic Party in July 1990 with the intention of getting rid of

11 non-Serbs from the territories that the Serbs in the future, in the

12 uncertain future, would claim, whereas at that point in time Bosnia did

13 not display any secessionist intentions. Well, I can tell you that this

14 was done with a lot of flexibility, creative interpretation and fantasy.

15 This is mentioned in another indictment. In my indictment it

16 says that this was caused by my setting up my party. And in the other

17 indictment it says that the secession of Slovenia in 1991 was the cause

18 of war. I agree. Croatia declared its independence on the 21st of June,

19 1995, which led to clashes between the Croatian military forces on the

20 one hand and the JNA, paramilitary and the Army of Republika Srpska

21 Krajina. I don't agree with these paramilitary units.

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence on the 6th of March, 1992,

23 which, after 6th of April, 1992, brought about a widespread war. Why did

24 they gave up on this - true in my particular case - and opted for another

25 cause for the war?

Page 824

1 Now, let us hear what a very prominent figure, Professor Cassese,

2 who worked in this Tribunal, says:

3 "It is well known that in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, just

4 like in a few former socialist republics, secession revived old hatreds

5 and brought about terrible bloodshed."

6 Therefore, in my case, according to the OTP, the war was not

7 caused by secession and hatred but rather it was done by Karadzic alone

8 with his impoverished and destitute 1.5 million Serbs in Bosnia, having

9 no allies except God and a few non-influential friendly country. He rose

10 to fight immeasurable forces in a war that was contrary to all Serbian

11 interests, even those interests and objectives, criminal objectives that

12 have been ascribed to us. Not even these objectives could have been

13 achieved through war.

14 Why would the Serbs need war in order to achieve something it

15 already had and wished, and that was to live in Yugoslavia along with all

16 the Muslims, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, et cetera? Why did the Serbs

17 need war? They already had what they -- what they wished and that was

18 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that can only be preserved in peace.

19 Why would they be against that because this state can only be preserved

20 in peace and will disappear in war. I don't see any reasonable conduct

21 in this context, and I don't see any reason why the Serbs would have done

22 it.

23 Yugoslavia could only have been broken up in war, and this is

24 what is going to be shown here. This is another solid truth that

25 hasn't -- cannot be undermined by anything else.

Page 825

1 Unlike the Serbs who wanted to preserve Yugoslavia, there were

2 those republics who wanted independence and they could only achieve that

3 through war. There is no doubt about it. Germany not only encouraged

4 that, but they said, "If you continue with the conflicts, we are going to

5 recognise you." But this was also confirmed by our direct war opponents

6 such as President Tudjman, who said that:

7 "There wouldn't have been any war had Croatia didn't want one."

8 And this is what he said at a public rally on a square in

9 May 1991 --

10 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction: May 1992.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] -- when the war in Bosnia was

12 already in full flare.

13 I am grateful to Mr. Tudjman and others for what they said and

14 what is going to be useful for my case and I am also grateful for -- to

15 the Prosecution for stretching my responsibility to Croatia as well

16 because that will give me an opportunity to show how all of that looked

17 like and how in 1992 -- 1 and even 1992, column after column of Serbs

18 were arriving who had to flee helter-skelter from those areas because

19 they were being killed there. And on this picture you can see how Bosnia

20 is burning along its edges, but, of course, indeed in the interior part

21 as well.

22 So after the refugees we are seeing shells coming in and the

23 citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina became casualties.

24 Let us see who were the people who were killed before the

25 6th of April. I have been charged for that by the OTP. Those who were

Page 826

1 casualties before the 1st April were only Serbs, but I'm also grateful to

2 Mr. Izetbegovic for his candour and honesty because he directly relieved

3 me of responsibility when he said in February 1993:

4 "The price we paid is high but it had to be paid. If I'm to be

5 blamed for it, then Karadzic should not. We could have avoided this

6 conflict had we remind united as Yugoslavia but we wanted independence.

7 Towards the end of 1991 we established the Patriotic League in order to

8 prepare war."

9 Apparently the Prosecution doesn't want to acknowledge this

10 chivalrous attitude of Mr. Izetbegovic. They would rather like to see

11 that as cunning deceit because they obviously didn't regard all these

12 processes.

13 The Patriotic League was not established toward the end of 1991

14 but, rather, the 31st of March, 1991. During my statement you will see

15 that it was set up two months after we formed a joint government. And a

16 few corrections, but one of them is the most crucial one. The remaining

17 of Bosnia within Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Muslims as well would secure

18 peace. The Lisbon Agreement and the Cutileiro Plan, which envisaged for

19 us, the Serbs, only a small portion of what the Muslims and Croats

20 already had in the former Yugoslavia, and in that event also the war

21 could have been avoided. The Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina would then go

22 to a referendum and give it legitimacy. Peace could have been preserved

23 in this way as well.

24 On the eve of the referendum for independence, Radovan Karadzic

25 and Muhamed Cengic, the deputy chairman of the SDA, in the full view of

Page 827

1 all deputies, reached an agreement for the government of

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina to urgently regionalise the country, that the Serbs go

3 to the referendum to give it legitimacy, but someone from the

4 backbenchers asked Cengic, Who asked you and who authorised you to do

5 this? And you can clearly see Cengic saying, It was Alija Izetbegovic,

6 if you really want to know.

7 So it was Alija Izetbegovic who authorised Muhamed Cengic to

8 offer a solution to the Serbs that would salvage both Bosnia and peace.

9 The Serbs accepted it unconditionally, and in 15 days, an agreement on

10 regionalisation would be adopted. However, some demon forces were at

11 work there that for a hundred times forced Mr. Izetbegovic go back on

12 what he had promised, and after a break, this agreement between Karadzic

13 and Cengic was annulled in front of the whole parliament.

14 Now, another correction relating to Mr. Izetbegovic. Thanks to

15 Serbs' flexibility and numerous concessions that they made, there were

16 several solutions that could have provided the avoidance of war and the

17 price for war. However, there was only one solution that inevitably led

18 to war. The Muslim leadership strictly stuck to this solution which

19 could only lead to war, and this solution was sovereign and independent

20 Bosnia, 100 per cent ours. This is the 100 per cent of Bosnia that they

21 actually wanted. This is what they wanted. Then this is what they want

22 now, and this will remain until we have the borders between the entities

23 in Bosnia and if we manage to part in a peaceful way.

24 There are some forces that are pressing them and asking them to

25 provide a kind of bridgehead for the interests in Europe. What kind of

Page 828

1 Serbian joint criminal enterprise could have come into force and be

2 implemented had Mr. Izetbegovic accepted a proposal that was on the table

3 throughout the whole war and which was brought by Mr. Holbrooke in 1995?

4 All these proposals were brought by Stoltenberg and Lord Owen and all

5 other groups. The Serbs accepted all these proposals.

6 Your Excellencies, we had five conferences and five peace plans.

7 I, as the accused, agreed to four of them. So what kind of joint

8 criminal enterprise would be possible had any of the other parties

9 accepted one of the four? And how could the Prosecution come up with the

10 idea at all that the moment we handed over our crisis to the

11 international community to solve it, from then on, there was not a single

12 day without a conference. There was no chance to achieve fait accompli.

13 The solution should have been a political one. Therefore, why

14 would Serbs grab any territories that they cannot verify at any of the

15 conferences and accept it at any of the conferences, and why would the

16 Serbs do anything that then would have to be restored to the previous

17 status? Therefore, how is it possible for the Prosecution not to see

18 that the Serbs accepted everything save for 100 per cent of Bosnia, which

19 would brought us back to the Turkish times when we were a docile people,

20 suffering and trying to preserve their culture through 500 years of

21 unbearable conditions, and I bow to their destiny, and they all deserve

22 that we serve them, because this is something inconceivable.

23 Of course, I have to tell you the Serbs did convert to Islam, but

24 most often based on an agreement between brothers. Then their

25 grandchildren would become enemies. Those who were the first to convert

Page 829

1 to Islam were not happy about that, but that's how it happened. The

2 brother who did not convert to Islam had to suffer, had to endure

3 pressures and to preserve that, and now it seems that he has to be

4 betrayed by someone and brought back to where he was before.

5 I would like to draw to your attention all the appeals that were

6 sent by prominent Bosniaks to Mr. Izetbegovic for him to change his

7 policy and his behaviour. Let's start with the Muslim circle, but also

8 the president of the Socialist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That was

9 a multi-ethnic party, and it was not oriented nationalist. She wrote

10 Izetbegovic at the beginning of war and she said:

11 "You refused to set up a council of nations. You refused the

12 historic agreement with Serbian people. You refused the Belgrade

13 initiative. Even during Communism we asked for the Council of Nations

14 that could have prevented any war. You rejected an historic agreement

15 with the Serbian people. You refused the Belgrade initiative, and after

16 the summons for the army, on the 4th of April, you started a bloody war."

17 She said:

18 "Immobilise your connections in the Islamic world as well as in

19 Germany and Vatican so they would diplomatically recognise something that

20 was erected by using a political violence. We warn you, Mr. Izetbegovic,

21 that BH independence will be bloody and tragic."

22 In this area there were two municipalities and you will see why

23 this was -- this was possible. This civilised lady, from this

24 multi-ethnic party, correctly perceived the situation and correctly

25 perceived what the solution would be. In similar situations, this was

Page 830

1 also uttered by Muhamed Filipovic, Nijaz Durakovic, and many others, even

2 some Serbs like Pejanovic, who represents 1.5 Serbs who were in favour of

3 Bosnia without entities.

4 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, you will be hearing this very often.

5 Please slow down for the benefit of the interpreters. Proceed.

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. I will.

7 This recollection of the agreement in Bratunac and Vlasenica will

8 initiate the Party of Democratic Action to cancel those meetings. Now,

9 what happened next in Bratunac and Srebrenica, for instance -- I mean,

10 Vlasenica? You're going to hear about that. Srebrenica was, of course,

11 the neighbouring municipality, but you'll hear about Bratunac, then

12 Vlasenica, during this trial, but we could have avoided all that if what

13 Ms. Subic identified as an agreement in those municipalities were

14 respected. And in municipalities throughout Bosnia, negotiations were

15 taking place for the reorganisation of the municipalities and thus avoid

16 tensions, and everybody could see to their own affairs.

17 Now, which Serbian joint criminal enterprise could have been

18 possible at that point in time, if you look at everything that had

19 happened until the letter that the woman wrote to Izetbegovic and what

20 was on the table generally.

21 Now, the Prosecution says that Yugoslavia disintegrated. It fell

22 apart. And that what was needed now -- well, should we actually

23 acknowledge that or was it broken up? Did it disintegrate of itself or

24 was it broken up? Now, the forces that wanted to see the fall of

25 Yugoslavia couldn't have brought it about if there hadn't been influence

Page 831

1 from outside, and a prime influence, decisive influence. And let's see

2 who said what, what was said by prominent people in the international

3 community about this general matter.

4 "I witnessed at first-hand how Western diplomatic ineptitude and

5 clumsiness hastened the break-up of Yugoslavia and contributed to the

6 dreadful violence and bloodshed that followed the disintegration of the

7 country. Here are a few examples. The premature recognition of Croatia

8 before any guarantees of civil and human rights were given to the Serbian

9 population in Croatia which, because of the horrendous events that

10 occurred there during the Second World War, made civil war inevitable.

11 "The encouragement of Alija Izetbegovic to withdraw his signature

12 from the so-called Lisbon Agreement and proceed with a referendum on

13 independence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which everyone knew would lead to the

14 death and displacement of thousands of people."

15 James Bissett, the Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia said that.

16 "The greatest -- biggest mistake was recognising all these little

17 countries when they started to decide they were independent. The Serbs

18 had very good reason to be worried about being in a Muslim-dominated

19 country. It wasn't just paranoia." That was said by Colin Powell,

20 American General.

21 "EC's premature recognition had destroyed the possibility of

22 preventing a global negotiated position for Yugoslavia and contributed to

23 the civil war in Bosnia. The responsibility of Germany and the Vatican

24 for the escalation of the crisis was enormous." That was Ronald Dumas,

25 French foreign minister.

Page 832

1 "I'm deeply worried that any early selective recognition could

2 widen the present conflict and fuel an explosive situation, especially in

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina." That was Perez de Cuellar.

4 "The prize promised by Genscher had its effect. The Croat

5 separatists intensified their armed activities, blockaded the JNA

6 barracks, their access to water and electricity. The bloodshed went on,

7 and at the year's end, Germany pushed through the recognition of Croatia.

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina, the wonderful small-scale Yugoslavia, was driven into

9 a disastrous civil war lasting several years." Said Ralf Hartmann, the

10 German ambassador to Yugoslavia.

11 "We said if Yugoslavia does not break up peacefully, there's

12 going to be one hell of a civil war. The real problem was that there was

13 a unilateral declaration of independence and a use of force to gain that

14 independence rather than a peaceful negotiation of independence, which is

15 the way it should have happened." Said James Baker, the then US

16 Secretary of State.

17 "The premature recognition of Slovenia and Croat was a guarantee

18 that the break-up of Yugoslavia would not be resolved by peaceful means.

19 Once again, Western intervention had exacerbated and complicated a

20 serious Balkan problem. Again, the German intervention had little to do

21 with the actual problem faced on the ground in Yugoslavia."

22 Said James Bissett, another ambassador, US ambassador.

23 "My view has always been that to have stuck unyieldingly to the

24 internal boundaries of the six republics within the former Yugoslavia

25 before there was any question of any recognition of these republics as

Page 833

1 being the boundaries for independent states, was a folly far greater than

2 that of premature recognition itself." David Owen, Balkan envoy

3 mediator.

4 "Zimmermann told Izetbegovic the following: Look, why don't you

5 wait and see what the US can do for you, meaning we will recognise you

6 and then help you out, so don't go ahead with the Lisbon Agreement, don't

7 accept the Cutileiro Plan and just hold out for some kind of unitary

8 Bosnian state. So this is a major turning point in our diplomatic

9 efforts." Said George Kenney, an official of the US State Department

10 working on these affairs.

11 Now, I don't know whether to read all these statements or perhaps

12 you can read them on your screens. We have two or three more to go.

13 "Anyway, this kind of American intervention guaranteed civil war

14 in Bosnia and the death of thousands of people, and it acted as if the US

15 had decided to implement a policy which would prevent a solution to the

16 conflict in a way which would not be violent." James Bissett, Canadian

17 ambassador.

18 "The premature recognition of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia by the

19 EC and US brought about the war that is going on now." Said Cyrus Vance,

20 US UN envoy.

21 "The German government was pushing for recognition against the

22 resistance of other European countries and the result was a catastrophe."

23 Our host, Ruud Lubbers, the Dutch prime minister.

24 Once when Izetbegovic returned from Germany, he was very sad and

25 said to Professor Koljevic and to myself, that he had received an offer

Page 834

1 that he couldn't refuse and that he had to move towards independence.

2 Although heavy-hearted, I accused those governments here, of which some

3 were friendly to boot, which set the flames of the third fire in the

4 Balkans in the 20th century. And proof and evidence will show that some

5 of those governments, principally Germany, even while Josip Broz Tito was

6 still alive, had foreseen the outbreak of war and the brutality of that

7 war. The outcome of the war that were advantageous to them, but also

8 not, so they were clairvoyants in a way. And one form of that

9 clairvoyance was one I mentioned, that never was there a war in our

10 country without the civil war component. If you're going to have a war

11 in the Balkans, you're going to have civil war and you'll have brother

12 killing brother. How then can the Prosecution place the responsibilities

13 for the outbreak of a civil war, in the very throes of a civil war which

14 the Western governments and Western services envisaged in this almost

15 clairvoyant way, far before they had ever heard of Karadzic and the

16 Serbian Democratic Party, how can they link it to this accused here and

17 burden him and accuse him for -- of being responsible for all that?

18 The second form of clairvoyance as far as these governments were

19 concerned was that they knew exactly how Yugoslavias came into being and

20 disappeared. This was not the first Yugoslavia nor was it the first

21 disappearance of a Yugoslavia. And if we have time, we'll address that

22 matter in due course, but what I want to tell you is that Yugoslavia was

23 formed and disbanded exclusively following the Western countries'

24 interests when, after World War I, for instance, Serbia as the winning

25 power could decide what Serbia was going to look like, then the Croats

Page 835

1 and the Slovenes asked to rush into that Serbia and unite. And the West

2 saw a chance for them to get one up on Germany and have Croatia and

3 Slovenia form part of Yugoslavia and reject the Germans from the scene.

4 Now when this was no longer necessary Yugoslavia -- was disintegrated

5 when Germany attacked. When the allies won out, Yugoslavia was

6 reinstated. And when Germany became stronger than the Western powers in

7 1991, the Yugoslavia disintegrated again and was disbanded, but now, as

8 opposed to 1941, the actors of those Germans' intention were our allies

9 from World War II. And that makes a German victory complete and

10 definite, that their adversaries from World War II were doing -- were

11 doing its work for them. What Germany didn't succeed during World War II

12 when it was defeated, the allies have succeeded now. So those countries

13 are the responsible people. Yugoslavia was just an indicator of the mood

14 and state in Europe and the relationship between Germany and other

15 European countries. It wasn't the intrinsic need of these nations, and

16 let me remind you that before the Croats for their interests pushed into

17 Yugoslavia in 1980, and the Serbs and Croats weren't enemies. There was

18 no reason for them to be enemies at that time.

19 Now let's see what somebody else has to say about the situation

20 or, rather, those forecasts were made during Tito's era. Let's see what

21 Lord Carrington says about the interference of the European Community at

22 that point in time.

23 [Video-clip played]

24 "[Indiscernible] Americans had not intervened in Yugoslavia,

25 there would have been far fewer people killed. There would have been far

Page 836

1 less ethnic cleansing. There would have been some extremely unhappy and

2 dissatisfied people who felt that they had been done out of their country

3 or their livelihood or whatever it might be, but there was going to be a

4 very large number of dissatisfied and unhappy people at the end of all

5 this. And perhaps the moral of the goal is that you should think very

6 carefully before you intervene in a civil war."

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Truth and intelligence always wins

8 in the end, and small nations can only wish to win at the beginning and

9 not later on because later on it's too late.

10 Now I'd like to remind you of this interference of the Western

11 countries not only in influencing the outbreak of the war but also its

12 course, and this was confirmed recently by Richard Holbrooke, Ambassador

13 Richard Holbrooke. And all I can say to him which Njegos, the great poet

14 would have said, thank you very much for that recognition.

15 It will prove correct that certain governments even destroyed all

16 chances for agreements to be reached between the ethnic groups.

17 Now I'd like to skip the part relating to the Assembly.

18 The interpreters have asked me to speak slower.

19 Now, Mr. Tieger, my respected adversary, in his opening statement

20 says even at first glance at the documents from the October session, for

21 example, the Assembly session on the 15th of October which was a crucial

22 Assembly and a crucial decision taken about the future of

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina, that even a cursory glance at the transcript of the

24 Assembly meeting proves Serb responsibility and Serb culpability, but I

25 think that this cursory glance is our problem here. The Defence is

Page 837

1 opposed to having any superficial view of this question, and it will do

2 everything in its power to avoid this superficiality but go into the

3 substance.

4 Now, the text that you see on your screen is a session at which

5 the SDA party finally managed, in an unconstitutional and illegal way, to

6 pass the declaration on sovereignty without any Serb Assembly members and

7 parliamentary representatives present, and they convened a new meeting

8 without the right to do so. So all the barriers in avoiding

9 constitutionality and legality were broken down. I delivered a speech at

10 the Assembly which is the most exploited speech ever by the Prosecution.

11 And I think that's the worst thing that they can say of me and hold

12 against me, whereas, Your Excellencies, that speech is an antiwar speech,

13 very much so, in which the Serb side -- or, rather, I am entreating that

14 we opt for variants for peace and I'm offering all manner of concessions.

15 Now, if the Defence is given the opportunity of presenting all

16 the relevant data and evidence, you will be able to see that what

17 happened on the ground, in the chaos of civil war, to that was added mass

18 killing of one's own population, mass crimes in the centre of Sarajevo,

19 the bread line at Vasa Miskin, the crime at the stadium, Markale 1 and 2.

20 These are all amazing examples and twists and innovations of slyness

21 applied in war, and the actors thereof are proud of that.

22 Now, if we reject what Mr. Tieger says, a cursory glance,

23 superficial glance of the material we have concerning the Markale

24 incident, we can see what actually happened.

25 [Video-clip played]

Page 838

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This is a normal market day at

2 Markale, when there are a lot of sellers, a lot of goods at the market to

3 be sold. Now, this is another picture before the alleged explosion of

4 the Serb mine. It is the 5th of February, 1994, in the afternoon. This

5 is a leg, artificial limb, which allegedly was blown off by a Serb mine

6 from somebody, but it's a prosthetic. There are no people in the

7 marketplace, no fruit and vegetables being sold, whereas 3 or 400 people

8 are supposed to have been there and many of them hit by shells allegedly.

9 And here we have that same artificial limb as having been blown

10 off by a Serb shell.

11 Now, look at the tables. There's nothing on them. No goods are

12 being sold. It's a dark, winter's afternoon, an unpleasant place.

13 Nobody there, and 3 or 400 people suddenly appeared there. What were

14 they doing there?

15 How does the Prosecutor expect experienced Judges to accept this

16 plot or planting of evidence?

17 We will see in the courtroom -- here you have the corpses of the

18 killed -- of killed fighters who they scattered around for their

19 purposes. This killed soldier was brought in a plastic foil and then

20 taken away in this state, rigor mortis had already set in.

21 You see that there are no goods on the stalls. Let us hear what

22 he has to say.

23 "[Previous translation continues] ... Chief of Staff, Sector

24 Sarajevo. I want explain any details of investigations which was

25 provided UN, so-called UN expertise. As a professional man, I cannot

Page 839

1 agree with argument of UN specialist about reasons and sources of this

2 shelling. This is a material -- maybe one portion of whole material of

3 UN specialist about the shelling, but it was very strange conclusion,

4 include idea about the shelling was from Serbian side. Small picture

5 which explained angle. This is a direction of fire. This is place of

6 explosion, and in accordance with investigation, direction of fire was

7 176 degrees.

8 "Today, personally, with my special -- not special, very small

9 investigation group including [indiscernible] officers, we was to this

10 place, this place, this, this and this, rarely buy my food and I can

11 affirm absolutely without -- beyond any doubts this is place unacceptable

12 or unsuitable for firing position mortar shell.

13 "For conclusion of material of investigation was wrong. Now I

14 said only about terrain where is located Serbian troops. They

15 investigate only angles and directions and automatically thinking about

16 Serbian so-called aggressions against civil population in Sarajevo, but I

17 think it's -- it's not correct.

18 "Let's stop them, stop false and falsehood and lie about Serbian

19 aggressions in this area, please. Or investigate it absolutely correctly

20 with full argumentation or stop it."

21 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, whenever you find it convenient.

22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] If you allow me, I would just like

23 to state my views on this particular matter.

24 This is a war trick, a display of cunning in war which led to the

25 punishment of the Serbs as a warring party. They say that all is fair in

Page 840

1 love and war. I don't think that all is fair either in love or in war,

2 but it is certain that in war these kind of things happen, but is this

3 permissible in a courtroom, in a court of law? How does the Prosecution

4 dare to proffer this to you as if it were the truth? And there is not a

5 single element, there is not a single marksman who can shoot this way,

6 who can hit that market in this way. There are no people there. There

7 are no goods in the market, and all of a sudden hundreds appear, and

8 about a hundred do get wounded. At least the stalls, the market stalls,

9 protected -- or would have protected people.

10 I think that this is the supreme injustice that happened in that

11 court of law. It is the supreme injustice because it's against truth and

12 justice. However, the Prosecution is continuing this war trickery and

13 they bring this in to convict a general to life in prison. This was the

14 trial of General Galic. And now they are trying to convict me of the

15 same thing as his supreme commander for something that we never did.

16 The -- one Trial Chamber already passed this kind of judgement.

17 However, the OTP convinced five Appeals Judges that this was a crime

18 committed by the Serbs. What is an even greater crime is to convince the

19 Muslim masses that this is what the Serbs had done to them. How can one

20 hope for reconciliation between the Serbs and Muslims if the Muslims are

21 to believe that the Serbs did this to them? And we are going to prove

22 that the Serbs never did this to the Muslims. We are going to prove in

23 this courtroom that Serbs never did this.

24 Excellencies, I believe that that will do as far as the opening

25 statement is concerned with regard to this particular incident, but I do

Page 841

1 have to draw your attention to these war tricks, that the OTP simply took

2 over and continues along those lines as if the war were not over. In

3 this way, the OTP becomes a participant in the war, and they are trying

4 to draw this Chamber and this Tribunal into a war that seems to be

5 ongoing in that way.

6 If this is convenient, we can take the break now.

7 JUDGE KWON: We'll break for 20 minutes.

8 MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, excuse me, but if I could raise one

9 potential point of clarification before you break very quickly. My

10 earlier request in connection with a cautionary measure, that is the

11 motion filed on February 13th, I believe, was not about a warning -

12 excuse me - to the accused concerning the continuance of trial, which was

13 the earlier subject, but instead to the motion for an instruction

14 regarding admissibility of submissions. It may well have been understood

15 but I wanted to clarify that because the Court's reference to previous

16 discussion caused me some concern that the Bench may have been thinking I

17 was referring to the possibility of a warning about continuance rather

18 than the motion for an instruction regarding the admissibility of

19 statements.

20 JUDGE KWON: Admissibility of submissions.

21 MR. TIEGER: Of submissions instead, Your Honour, yes. And that

22 was a motion filed on February 23rd. I believe the Defence responded by

23 indicating they had no position on that.

24 JUDGE KWON: We'll take a look over the break. Twenty minutes.

25 --- Recess taken at 10.29 a.m.

Page 842

1 --- On resuming at 10.53 a.m.

2 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Tieger, we looked at the motion you referred to,

3 and the Chamber found it sufficient to note that this stage that it is

4 pursuant to Rule 84 that the accused is making his statement, and then

5 the remainder will be taken care of after his statement.

6 MR. TIEGER: I understand, Your Honour, and I wasn't disputing

7 the Court in any way. I just was concerned about the possibility of some

8 confusion. Thank you.

9 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

10 Mr. Karadzic, please continue.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I would now like us to have a look

12 at what Lord Owen says, who was a mediator in the search for peace. Let

13 us see what he says about Markale.

14 [Video-clip played]

15 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] On the evening of the 12th of

16 February, they received reports, which we've made a photocopy of,

17 specifically paragraph 7 which is related to the Sarajevo assassination

18 on the 5th of February. Lord Owen wrote, I quote: 'The position from

19 which this shell was launched is located one and a half kilometre deep

20 into the Muslim-held territory, measured from the demarcation line which

21 separates this territory from the Army of Republika Srpska.'"

22 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] You will see, Excellencies, in this

23 courtroom, a multitude of similar things that the other side did to their

24 own people, that were stage managed.

25 Now I'd like to draw your attention to yet another trick of this

Page 843

1 sort that caused serious damage to us there and now the Prosecution is

2 trying to benefit from it even further.

3 [Video-clip played]

4 "Anybody pretending that there are innocents in this business,

5 and that there is one side that is pure white, the victims, and other

6 side pure-on black, the aggressors. That is not the case.

7 "Lord David Owen came to Bosnia-Herzegovina in August of 1992 to

8 replace Lord Carrington as mediator for the European Community and with a

9 reputation as a hard-line critic of the Bosnian Serbs. But Owen quickly

10 learned that Muslim forces routinely staged incidents to turn world

11 opinion against the Serbs. Media reports, for instance, had accused the

12 Serbs of targeting Kosevo Hospital in Sarajevo.

13 "The UN monitors actually saw a mortar bomb, a mortar crew come

14 into the hospital in Bosnian government military forces uniform and fire

15 over the Kosevo Hospital into an area, presumably Serb. And all of it

16 was packed up very quickly. A television crew arrived, set up on the

17 grounds of the hospital. A few minutes later, retaliatory fire from the

18 place where the mortar came and, of course, landed on the hospital, all

19 filmed on television.

20 "Owen learned a strongly worded letter had been sent to the

21 government of Alija Izetbegovic by the UN commander in Sarajevo,

22 General Filip Morillon, stating: 'I now have concrete evidence from

23 witnesses of this disreputable and cowardly act. I must point out to you

24 the harm that such blatant disregard for the Geneva Convention does to

25 your cause.'

Page 844

1 "When I said to General Morillon, who is, I think, an

2 exceptionally able soldier in every way, Why don't you make this public?

3 He shrugged his shoulder in a sort of Gallic way and he said, You have to

4 look at it."

5 "Lord Owen and UN mediator Cyrus Vance found that their efforts

6 to negotiate a compromise to end the conflict were undermined by the

7 propaganda war that targeted US public opinion.

8 "In America they have a press and a television presentation that

9 is still cowboys and Indians, good and bad. They like to see things in

10 simple terms. There's no doubt about that, and it's been helped by some

11 very strongly motivated propaganda. It's a propaganda war as well as an

12 actual physical war."

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes. What His Lordship said was a

14 propaganda war, as he had put it, and this propaganda war could not have

15 been waged and all of this cunning could not have been something that the

16 Serbs would be blamed for if there weren't for the assistance of all of

17 those who were there on behalf of the international community. You will

18 see in this courtroom, in due course, to what a low level humanitarian

19 organisations stooped, even some who had a perfectly good name until

20 then. There were some that were without borders indeed before, but they

21 destroyed the very essence of the idea of being humanitarian. They were

22 spying for one of the warring parties. They lied in press releases.

23 They smuggled arms and ammunition, and they also crossed our lines,

24 pretending to belong to these organisations and protected vehicles, and

25 later when our soldiers became suspicious and started checking them, then

Page 845

1 we are criticised for being unpleasant to these organisations. They

2 smuggled weapons. They smuggled enemy combatants. In a word, they were

3 a warring party. They were a warring party.

4 When our troops legitimately started defending themselves from

5 these sabotage actions, these unlawful actions launched by certain

6 organisations, humanitarian organisations that were doing this either on

7 their own or were simply handing their vehicles, their protected vehicles

8 over to others, we had this dirty war waged against us. And also there

9 was the war in the media, as Lord Owen said, that could not have happened

10 if it weren't for the media.

11 You will see during this period of time -- or, rather, during

12 these proceedings, that false journalists ruined the idea of journalism,

13 of impartial journalism, how these false journalists led to the death of

14 true journalists in many theatres of war throughout the world because

15 they destroyed the very idea of the impartiality of journalism, and they

16 abused this sacred duty or this sacred position of being impartial and of

17 not being a warring party and that thereby they should have open access

18 everywhere, just as we did for them.

19 For example, there was a British TV crew that we brought on our

20 own plane after the London conference. We brought them there, and we

21 allowed them to go wherever they wanted to go. And then there was this

22 other Markale in 1992, from Trnopolje. You will see that footage and you

23 will prove -- and we will prove that Trnopolje was not a camp. Rather,

24 it was a collection centre that was run by the refugees themselves.

25 This is how that picture with barbed wire appeared and was

Page 846

1 broadcast all over the world.

2 [Video-clip played]

3 "[Previous translation continues] ... centre was mainly used by

4 people in transit. They were trying to get away from the fighting and

5 needed a place to stay during their travels."

6 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] I had to come here. Those that

7 did not fight came here.

8 "We have nothing to fight for. I came with children, young

9 children, here down the field. Nobody harassed us. Nobody laid a finger

10 on us. I stayed in the village.

11 "[Previous translation continues] [In English] ... centre of

12 Trnopolje included a medical facility. The Yugoslav and ITN crews

13 interviewed Dr. Mestrinic Idriz [phoen], a Muslim doctor there.

14 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] We have been here from the very

15 first day. People came here of their own free will, probably because of

16 food shortages."

17 "[In English] Ms. Marshall chose not to set up her cameras and

18 film in this open area. Instead, she and her crew manoeuvred into a

19 partly enclosed space used as a storage area for wheelbarrows and the

20 like. The dilapidated fence had chicken wire on the bottom, a few

21 strands of barbed wire on top to discourage theft. Our crew filmed the

22 ITN people as they manoeuvred into this area through a hole in the

23 broken-down fence. Someone in front of the crowd of refugees said, Here,

24 this one speaks English, pointing to Mr. Mehmet [phoen].

25 "I think it's very [indiscernible] nothing wrong here.

Page 847

1 "Do you feel safe here?

2 "I think it's very safe but it's very hard.

3 "Here's a little diagram showing the position of the two crews.

4 The ITN people are the blue circle on the left; we are the red circle on

5 the right.

6 "This man is very thin.

7 "Penny Marshall had set up her cameras behind barbed wire. She

8 was in position. Now she searched the crowd for that perfect look. She

9 wanted a star for her story. The story she would sell the world."

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Your Excellencies, we will prove by

11 way of evidence that the Prosecution has been trying to use against us,

12 through that we are going to prove what we are trying to say.

13 This was a collection centre. This was a transit point for

14 persons who had nowhere to go because of the combat going on around them.

15 This will tellingly be proved by the evidence that the Prosecution is

16 trying to use against us, but we are going to use it in our own defence.

17 The team that you saw went into the tool shed, and there's barbed

18 wire around it. So they were surrounded by barbed wire, but they were

19 filming free people, and we suffered gravely on account of the fact that

20 this image went all over the world. We were harshly punished for that

21 imagery. I wonder how Ms. Penny Marshall sleeps after all the harm she

22 inflicted on us by sending these images around the world, but to have

23 this brought into court and to have this war cunning be used in a court

24 of law and to create a picture of the Serbs on that basis and to condemn

25 the Serbs on that basis, that is a different matter.

Page 848

1 I have said that we had done everything possible to achieve peace

2 and avoid war. Let me remind you that in 1991 there was a lot of

3 tension. There was war in Croatia. There were misunderstandings. Then

4 this junior MBO, Muslim party led by Zulfikarpasic and Filipovic, came to

5 see us and said, This is bad, what's going on is not good. Are you going

6 to give up on the idea of regionalisation of Serb autonomous provinces

7 and all other measures that we undertook exclusively as a response to the

8 measures undertaken against us by the SDA and we did accept, and this is

9 what one of their leaders testified about this.

10 They designed and proposed an historic Serb-Muslim agreement with

11 a view to avoiding war, and the whole idea was to have the Muslims and

12 the Serbs living alongside each other. If that had happened, we would

13 know how many of them would still have been alive and how many of them

14 would not have been living in poverty had this agreement been accepted.

15 And as I said, all the measures that we have employed in response to

16 illegal measures undertaken by the Muslim and the Croat side were based

17 in law and international covenants. However, we abandoned all that once

18 Zulfikarpasic and Filipovic came up with this idea.

19 Now is a good time to point to an illusion that the Prosecution

20 wants to create, because this -- without this kind of illusion and trick

21 they cannot indict me. They claim that Serbs do not wish to live with

22 the Muslims. On the other hand, we were doing everything possible to

23 keep Muslims in Yugoslavia. The Serbs wanted to live with Muslims, but

24 they didn't want to live under the Muslims, and this is our right. We

25 shall never live under this kind of regime that would deprive us of our

Page 849

1 fundamental rights.

2 So once we have established that the Serbs did everything to keep

3 the Muslims in Yugoslavia and to live with them, the indictment should

4 fall. What would the Muslims have in this kind of Yugoslavia? They

5 would enjoy the protection as a people, and they would enjoy the

6 protection in their own republic. If the Muslims said, "We want to leave

7 Yugoslavia," we would just tell them, "Give us what you have in

8 Yugoslavia and we can leave." As I said, 100 per cent of power in

9 100 per cent of Bosnia was never an option.

10 Now, if you take only one sentence from one speech, and I'm

11 talking about my speech that was very much exploited, I would like to

12 draw to your attention to this speech and this -- I would like to assess

13 it. It was delivered on the 15th of October, and it relates to a

14 definitive and forcible adoption of the declaration on independence.

15 [Video-clip played]

16 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] In the federal parliament I'm not

17 sure even of that, but it can be in the federal parliament and other

18 federal institutions. Many plans get mixed here. You referred to the

19 constitution and the laws when it suits you; and when it doesn't suit

20 you, you come out political proclamations. Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina

21 can prevent Croats and Muslims, if necessary, from getting out of

22 Yugoslavia, but we will not prevent you. We will not do that because we

23 are a sovereign people. Gentleman, I did not come here as a god of war,

24 which is how somebody from the Croatian Democratic Party named me, but I

25 want to repeat, for the hundredth time, that the Serbian Democratic Party

Page 850

1 does not create the will of the Serbian people. It interprets it. We

2 would lie to you if we said that you can adopt this and that you can do

3 something with this in Europe.

4 "Gentlemen from the SDA, for the last three months we've been

5 talking about other rights. We are talking freely and openly about a

6 different way of organising Bosnia and Herzegovina, where some kind of a

7 three-tier approach will enable Bosnia to stay united and Serbs, Muslims

8 and Croats to stay in Yugoslavia for as long as they want to. This is a

9 three-tier solution where the sovereignty of the peoples, as Mr. Bjelobrk

10 correctly said, would be exercised not only at the level of the republic

11 and the federal state but also in autonomous provinces. If you don't

12 want this, we could agree with you leaving Yugoslavia by means of a

13 plebiscite, but we shall use the same mechanism to prevent you from

14 taking us out of Yugoslavia. We do not mind if you submit an initiative

15 to change the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But you cannot do it

16 this way. It has to be done through the constitutional commission, civil

17 council of citizens which is where we would then vote.

18 "I'm trying to tell you, in the calmest way possible, the Serbian

19 people know what they want. You want to tell the people in The Hague

20 that this is a third or fourth republic that does not want to live in

21 Yugoslavia, but you cannot do that because we want to live in Yugoslavia.

22 You can say that in your name. All the sovereign people in Bosnia can

23 only speak for themselves. They cannot speak for other peoples. We have

24 reached that conclusion in this parliament. Before the national and

25 international public, we will prevent you from committing violence,

Page 851

1 constitutional violence against Serbs because the constitutional violence

2 breeds all other kinds of violence. We will not be in control anymore.

3 This has been repeated here a hundred times. We will no longer be in

4 control if we get into a situation where Croatia and Slovenia are,

5 especially Croatia. The hell would be a thousand times worse in

6 Bosnia-Herzegovina. There would be no way to stop it.

7 "I ask you once again, I am not threatening, I am pleading that

8 you take seriously the political will of the Serbian people represented

9 here today, the Serbian Democratic Party, the Serbian Renewal Movement

10 and some Serbs from the other parties represent. I plead with you to

11 fully understand that what you are doing is not good. The road that you

12 are choosing for Bosnia and Herzegovina is the same highway to hell and

13 suffering that Slovenia and Croatia have already taken. Do not think

14 that you will not take Bosnia and Herzegovina to hell and the Muslim

15 people maybe into extinction, because if there is a war, the Muslim

16 people will not be able to defend themselves.

17 "Please, these are big statements, but serious situations demand

18 big statements. How are you going to prevent people in Bosnia and

19 Herzegovina from killing each other? How can the war in Croatia be

20 prevented, especially in areas where Serbs and Croats live together and

21 where their political wills have clashed without adhering to the legal

22 framework which is the only way to resolve."

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I also said we have to prevent

24 chaos from setting in. We can introduce order. We have it in our hands.

25 But we cannot manage chaos.

Page 852

1 So taking this all into consideration and having heard what

2 exceptional authorities worldwide said about the recognition and other

3 issues, we have to ask ourselves what this small community of Serbs in

4 Bosnia-Herzegovina could do except surrender and annihilate themselves.

5 Therefore, we have an opportunity here to make a distinction between

6 whether this was lawful conduct on the part of the HDZ and the SDA and

7 the Serbs were violating their rights, or whether it was vice versa.

8 They were in breach and the Serbs tried to defend them receives by making

9 endless concessions.

10 You saw that the constitution was violated when and if necessary,

11 and then this kind of brokered constitution is being revoked, which is

12 impossible.

13 Now, the Croatian writer Krleza said that this crisis developed

14 by making a comparison with this picture: You turn off the light in the

15 Balkan tavern, and after everything is over, you turn the lights back on.

16 The Serbs couldn't allow that to happen. Let me remind you that the

17 division and the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina came from outside,

18 and that was primarily the idea of Mr. Izetbegovic. This will be

19 confirmed by all the intercepts that you are going to hear. He was only

20 interested in having Bosnia-Herzegovina, albeit a small one, but with

21 Arab and Muslim influence in it.

22 Can we now please listen to this conversation between Karadzic

23 and Milosevic, which is not intended for the public to hear, where they

24 speak to each other very candidly and authentically.

25 [Audiotape played]

Page 853

1 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] Karadzic: They surprised us the

2 day before yesterday, after that lunch. They completely took us by

3 surprise. Izetbegovic talked about the division of Bosnia, explicitly

4 and openly, he'd never been more explicit. We were shocked. We hadn't

5 thought about that. I don't think he (Izetbegovic) wants to unite with

6 Croatia. He wants to use Croatia to leave Yugoslavia, because what he'd

7 like is to have some Islamic enclave in the valley of the River Bosna,

8 which I think he needs for the Arab world. We still believe that it

9 would be a pity if Bosnia were to fall apart. That is our basic stand.

10 "Milosevic: Not all Muslims will do what Alija Izetbegovic is

11 doing. I am sure.

12 "Karadzic: He is very cunning. He doesn't speak what those

13 ultimate moves are. Those last moves of his, the last intentions of an

14 Islamic republic, and he is hiding behind the state and citizens."

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Now, having had insight into all of

16 this, the Prosecution is trying to characterise me as a leader who

17 formulated and implemented this criminal plan of creating a separate

18 entity comprising large territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This did not

19 happen until we were forced to take what was offered to us just to save

20 our lives.

21 They said Karadzic was the ultimate leader. If they knew the

22 Serbian people properly, they would have said that Karadzic was the

23 ultimate servant of his people, and this is what you can find in -- in

24 the Gospels.

25 The second part of the sentence is not only disputable but it's

Page 854

1 also untrue, and it's similar to the one in -- proffered by the

2 Prosecution in paragraph 11, where it says:

3 "As Yugoslavia disintegrated, republics moved toward

4 independence."

5 This is very cunning. I have to give them credit for that. The

6 republics moved toward independence because Yugoslavia was

7 disintegrating. I would like to recommend to all of you, as a kind of

8 entertainment, everything that the Prosecution says against me just turn

9 it around. You will see it's more correct and true and it's very

10 entertainment.

11 We have to reverse this upside logic. In that case, this

12 paragraph would sound as follows: When the republics moved towards

13 independence, that is when Yugoslavia started disintegrated. And this is

14 what the truth is, not what the OTP is saying. The first step was for

15 the republics who proclaimed unilateral secessions, and we heard it from

16 a very prominent expert. However, the OTP here is trying to convince you

17 this took place the other way around, and, of course, in that context you

18 can't speak about the Serbs' blame. However, if it is clear that the

19 independence of republics caused the disintegration, then everything

20 becomes clear, let alone the fact that Yugoslavia did not break up, did

21 not disintegrate, but it was broken up from the outside. Bosnia was

22 fragmented, and Yugoslavia was broken up.

23 How could Bosnia embark on the road towards -- towards

24 independence without the Serbs? If you look at the maps and the areas

25 where the Serbs have been living for ages, you will understand that we're

Page 855

1 going to prove here that the SDA didn't need the Bosnian Serbs but they,

2 rather, needed their territories, the two-third territories of Bosnia.

3 The OTP said that the Serbs constituted one-third of the population, but

4 we shall come to that, how it happened that the Serbs who had always been

5 majority became only one-third, but that one-third of population lived on

6 two-thirds of the territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

7 If the SDA had wanted the Serbian territories, it could have been

8 available to the OTP in the form of one very strong proof thanks to

9 Mr. Tudjman with whom I had a lot of conversations. Let us now listen to

10 an intercept between Tudjman and a high delegation from the US in which

11 he said, Muslims told me once that they were going to exterminate them

12 all. I asked them, How are you going to expel one and a half million

13 Serbs out of Bosnia? And then Tudjman says, Although the Muslim

14 leadership is not unified, they cannot count on a war that will end with

15 the expulsion of the Serbs but they, rather, have to rely on Croatia, and

16 sooner or later the Serbs would leave Bosnia.

17 I have been accused here of wanting the Muslims to leave

18 Republika Srpska. The Muslims that they are referring to, the SDA

19 Muslims, the young Muslims, the fundamentalists, wanted all the Serbs to

20 leave Bosnia. And now we see just how sincere Mr. Izetbegovic was, the

21 president of the SDA, and his moves, when he said, If I am to be accused

22 of that, then you don't have to accuse Karadzic. And at one point in

23 time I take it upon myself, liberating me of all responsibility.

24 Now, President Tudjman protected Mr. Izetbegovic during the war.

25 We didn't want his defeat, but we did want to see his political defeat

Page 856

1 and his political idea of having 100 per cent power and 100 per cent

2 Bosnia. So this is a completely authentic piece of evidence.

3 The Prosecution then moves on and follows the same erroneous path

4 when it says in one of its paragraphs that Karadzic prepared organs and

5 conditions for the forcible ethnic separation and creation of a Serb

6 state carved out from Bosnia and Herzegovina similar to a process that

7 had started in Croatia. What kind of joint state when the joint state

8 already existed, I ask you.

9 Now, further on in another paragraph, the Prosecution goes on to

10 say that the Serbs in Croatia, because they're now linking us up, have

11 this earmarked territories considered Serb, created separate Serb

12 institutions to resist Croatian authority, declared autonomy and then

13 independence, and forcibly took control of approximately one-third of

14 Croatian territory.

15 Well, this is how it was. We saw that the Croatian secession was

16 illegal, unlawful, and this illegality the Serbs resisted, and that is

17 legitimate. But as far as the Prosecution is concerned, it's not

18 legitimate. Now, because of things of this kind, the Prosecution seems

19 to be a porte-parole rather than a Prosecution in this Tribunal. No

20 legal instance or scholarly or scientific forum ever established that

21 Croatia acted lawfully and that the Serbs did not have the right to put

22 up a resistance to that illegality.

23 Let me remind you what happened to the Serbs in Croatia. The

24 Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina are the oldest population there. All the

25 territory was theirs. The Serbs came to Croatia 300 or 350 years ago and

Page 857

1 they were given Krajina not from Croatia but from Austro-Hungary.

2 Austria, in fact, and they were fighters there and they were given

3 privileges as such, autonomous rights were accorded to them. They were

4 given the territory. And it had, in 1918, the Serbs in Krajina be told

5 that one day they would have to leave this joint state and be in Croatia,

6 live in Croatia. Krajina would not be in Croatia, but Croatia might have

7 been in Yugoslavia still. Or if in 1945, the population in Krajina were

8 told that the Croatia that they were entering would one day be taken away

9 from them and that they would been expelled, Krajina would not be in

10 Croatia at all.

11 So the people of Krajina were tricked. They were given Krajina

12 from Austria because they earned it by fighting and defending the whole

13 of Europe from the Turkish onslaught and invasion and then they entered

14 then Croatia, when in 1945 they entered Croatia and took in the dowry

15 that Croatia was. Then it said in the constitution that Croatia was

16 two-nation state, a state of Croats and Serbs; whereas in 1991, the first

17 thing that the HDZ did in Croatia was to throw the Serbs out of the

18 constitution and turn them into a national minority so that they could

19 then seize Krajina away from them.

20 Now we can see what Professor Antonio Cassese, whom you all know

21 well, says about these unlawful steps taken by Croatia for which the

22 Prosecution maintains that the Serbs cannot resist in Krajina, as if it

23 was law.

24 The Prosecution is accusing me of ethnocentrism of some kind, and

25 it says that we were ethnically motivated in wishing to create our own

Page 858

1 territories both in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Please,

2 exclusively ethnic motives were on the side of the Slovenes, Croats and

3 Muslims to step down from Yugoslavia. They weren't political motives or

4 economic ones or racial or religious ones. They were purely ethnic

5 motives that led them to do that. Whereas the Serbs are being denied

6 their right at the onslaught of other interests to protect their own

7 interests. So ethnic -- all possible crises after World War II were

8 ethnically motivated, especially from 1968 to 1971 in Croatia, when Tito

9 replaced the whole Croatian leadership ethnically. Karadzic, after 1968,

10 no longer delved in politics. He took part in the student movement and

11 then was a sort of dissident and worked in his profession and not in

12 politics.

13 So ethnic nationalism in 1990 and 1991 brought about everything

14 that happened later on, whereas the Serbs are held responsible.

15 Let me remind you that in Croatia the Serbs did not vote for the

16 Serbian Democratic Party in the majority but for a multi-ethnic party of

17 Ivica Racan, of the Communists of Ivica Racan. Croatia had many parties

18 and many secessionist parties at that, but the Croats voted for the HDZ,

19 the most ethnically coloured one; whereas the Serbs voted for the least

20 ethnically coloured party that cannot be considered Serb at all, and

21 those Serbs in Croatia are then accused in the package and all of us

22 together with them by the Prosecution that we were ethnocentric or

23 goodness knows what else.

24 Now, if we have time, I would like to show you what it is that

25 the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, because Bosnia-Herzegovina

Page 859

1 during World War II was joined to Croatia, what they could expect. We're

2 going to see something about Jasenovac, which is just across the Sava

3 River from us, and this is what the Wiesenthal Centre says. The Ustashas

4 founded in 1930, according to the centre, killed 500.000 Serbs, expelled

5 250.000 and the others were converted. So that's Mile Budak's theory of

6 the three thirds, a Croatian writer and ideologue. We're going to expel

7 a third, kill a third and convert a third. And when a Serb in

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina says this as an allegory, as tit for tat, the

9 Prosecutor says and places in the indictment that this is the Serb

10 position. But it's common knowledge that there will be three thirds.

11 However, the Prosecutor does not have good advisors on the ground so that

12 they can be told and explained what a reported speech actually means.

13 Now, this is what the German -- is this still Wiesenthal on our

14 screens? Let's see what a German intelligence officer says. And I'd

15 like to draw Your Excellencies 'attention to the fact that up until the

16 17th of February, 1942, there was a very precise estimation made by a

17 German intelligence officer, according to which up until then

18 300.000 Orthodox Serbs had already been killed, butchered, using --

19 applying sadistic methods. Now this figure could not have decreased. It

20 could only have increased. It only began to decrease when the Communists

21 came into power. It became smaller and smaller until they reached a

22 figure of 80.000, as if 80.000 were a small figure. But the -- Croatia

23 was ready to acknowledge the 80.000, but it is certain that there were

24 more than 500.000 because if in one year it was 300.000, then the number

25 could have only increased with each passing year. And the Wiesenthal

Page 860

1 Centre claims that about a million Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia were in

2 fact killed.

3 Now, what I'm being accused of by the Prosecution in their false

4 indictment I would like to turn round and create into a truthful

5 indictment, where everything stays the same but the actors change.

6 Instead of the Serb leaders, the Croatian and Muslim leaders would stand

7 accused, and the places would be reversed too. And let's see what that

8 would look like.

9 Genuine indictment. As if Tudjman or Izetbegovic in -- from 1990

10 to 1995, led the formulation and implementation of a criminal plan to

11 create an ethnic entity on large portions of the FRY of Yugoslavia. Or

12 Tudjman, Izetbegovic, engaged in negotiations to secure a common state,

13 and they did indeed, while simultaneously preparing the organs, entities

14 and conditions for the forcible ethnic separation and creation of a Croat

15 Muslim state carved out from Yugoslavia similar to a process that had

16 started in Slovenia -- or, rather, in Croatia vis-a-vis

17 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

18 Furthermore, paragraph 13, everything is the same -- remains the

19 same but we changed the actors. Croats, Muslims earmarked territories

20 considered Croat Muslim, created separate Croat or Muslim institutions to

21 resist Yugoslav authority, declared independence and forcibly took

22 control of a large part of Yugoslav territory, and the Yugoslav

23 population did not accept those decisions on that territory.

24 Now, Your Excellencies in the Trial Chamber and gentlemen in the

25 various governments and the Prosecution that supports this process of

Page 861

1 taking the Serbs to trial, my variations of these paragraphs in the

2 pre-trial brief of the Prosecution is far more believable and far more

3 exact than the Prosecutor's. To this paragraphs we should add that these

4 leaders of the Croats and Muslims, and they can't accuse us of that, that

5 they worked to set up secret republican armies, services, armed

6 themselves, violated United Nations Resolutions, had plans to revive the

7 empire Croatia, and the Western Europe countries would like to reinstate

8 the Habsburg Monarchy. And you will see how the Muslim population in

9 Turkey would like to see Turkey return to the Balkans, which allegedly

10 during the Turkish occupation of 500 years, flourished and was stable.

11 Yes, it was stable, just like a cemetery is stable. Nobody does anything

12 there. There is no movement at all in a cemetery. But Serbian culture

13 which until the arrival of the Turks was the leading culture in real

14 Europe, and Stefan Lazarevic was the leader, leading figure, he was a

15 poet, he was a hero, well liked by his friends in Europe, all this

16 stopped when Turkey arrived.

17 Now Turkey wants to come back again from the most responsible

18 individuals. They -- and a Turkish statement. We hear these ideas from

19 the 1990s, that Minister Turgut -- that Bosnia was Turkish and Turkey was

20 Bosnian. We are one and we will come back again because it is in our

21 interest to revive the Ottoman Empire. That is something that the Serbs

22 do not accept.

23 If I had more time, I would produce a series of evidence to show

24 that the rhythm of the terrible changes in Croatia immediately after the

25 elections, what happened. Every month there was a new shocking measure

Page 862

1 against the Serbs. First of all, the amendment throwing them out of the

2 constitution. Then the constitution itself in which they were reduced to

3 a national minority. Then you had other measures that were taken.

4 Arming secretly. Then next we had expulsions, killings in towns and in

5 Serbian territories where the Serbs were in the majority, and so then we

6 had -- already had columns of refugees. People were sacked from their

7 jobs. And the Prosecution knows this full well and they have uttered it

8 in -- we have heard testimony about that from witnesses in these various

9 courtrooms. I was personally able to see what those refugees looked like

10 in those columns.

11 President Tudjman rehabilitated the NDH, Independent State of

12 Croatia. He was not a Ustasha. He was a partisan. But the Ustashas

13 took power, they occupied leading positions in the land, and everything

14 resulted, already in 1991, with a vast number of refugees whom we took in

15 in Bosanska Krajina and Banja Luka. Now the Prosecution wants to say

16 that that had no effect and influence on the state of consciousness of

17 the Bosnian Serbs, that they could see the richest hosts in Europe lying

18 on the floor of a sports hall with nothing left, no villages, no past, no

19 present, no future.

20 And one of those measures was to introduce Ustasha symbols

21 straight away, Ustasha insignias taken over from the previous Ustasha

22 state, and the Prosecution thinks that that is of no importance. And

23 let's see what Lord Owen has to say on the subject, just how important

24 that was.

25 "It was extremely provocative," he says, "for the Serbs in

Page 863

1 Croatia that Tudjman's government had adopted the independent Croatian

2 NDH flag with the same symbol used by Pavelic, the red and white

3 chequer-board. And it is under these insignias that the million Serbs

4 suffered and fell as fatalities in World War II." That is what His

5 Lordship says. It wasn't provocative only, it was terrifying, both for

6 the Serbs and for the Jews. And it corresponds to the title of a book

7 written by Goldstein, a Croatian Jew in -- he says 1941, the year that is

8 returning.

9 But the Prosecution says, Don't pay any attention to any

10 insignias. It is just a gesture, nothing stands behind it. Let's see

11 precisely what stands behind it, and for that, let us see what the

12 minister says, Ministers Spegelj and Boljkovac say on subject, the

13 minister of defence and the minister of the interior.

14 [Video-clip played]

15 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] There are 9.000 JNA officers and

16 18.000 JNA soldiers on the whole territory of Slovenia, Croatia and part

17 of Bosnia. We have now 80.000 people armed with Kalashnikovs. We will

18 resolve Knin in the way that we will butcher them. We have the

19 international community, especially now when this whore has won in

20 Serbia. Milosevic? Yes. Now, two days after he had won, the Americans

21 offered to help us, and up until then they had only speculated they

22 would -- they said, Now it will be like this, 1.000 armoured vehicles,

23 cars, who knows what else. They will provide weapons and equipment for

24 100.000 soldiers, all free of charge."

25 JUDGE KWON: Are we hearing interpretation? Can you stop the

Page 864

1 video.

2 THE ACCUSED: Why it is not translated?

3 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters note that they don't have the

4 transcript and what is being now --

5 THE ACCUSED: That should be live translation.

6 THE INTERPRETER: -- said has already been translated --

7 THE ACCUSED: Those words --

8 THE INTERPRETER: -- before.

9 THE ACCUSED: Those words of Minister Spegelj are repeated here

10 clearly and should be translated live, simultaneously.

11 JUDGE KWON: I take it that what we heard is the interpretation

12 of what just heard now. Let's proceed.

13 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] Free of charge. The army has no

14 business there. They will be massacred. Everybody will be massacred

15 already in their homes. To kill on the spot, on the street, in the army

16 barracks compound, anywhere. Just take a pistol and shoot in the

17 stomach. This will not be a conventional war. It will be a civil war

18 with no consideration towards anyone. Not even towards women or not

19 children. The bombs simply need to be thrown into family apartments.

20 "Physical liquidation. Somebody enters the apartment, the

21 courier, he appears in front of the door, bang, bang, bang, and returns

22 downstairs. Let them call the police to establish who was that. Then

23 down the stairs he goes to the other and kills him at the same time.

24 Don't mind the women or the children. It does not matter.

25 "We will use all means. We will also weapons. Serbs will never

Page 865

1 again be in Croatia as long as we are here."

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Please believe me, Your

3 Excellencies, that they did all this and worse. Everything they

4 announced at the end of 1990, when they were deep in Yugoslavia still,

5 they were within Yugoslavia. Whereas they had prepared part of their

6 population, the Serb population, they had prepared massacres for them and

7 they carried that out ultimately. And what was promised at the time just

8 as, for example, at the inception of Dalibor Brozovic of the democratic

9 party said that Croatia would defend itself along the Drina River, as was

10 the case in World War II. Or some independent person of Serb origin or

11 Croatian extremist said that on a Serb mountain the chequer-board flag

12 would be hoisted in five years' time. Well, we didn't believe that that

13 would happen but in five years' time, yes, indeed, there was a complete

14 repetition of what happened during World War II and the columns of

15 persons who were expelled, and you saw those columns leaving and fleeing

16 Croatia.

17 All of that is accessible to the Office of the Prosecutor and to

18 the entire world. Everyone knows when this happened, how it ended, and

19 what the authentic story is. However, the Prosecution claims that it is

20 I who watched what was happening to the Serbs in Croatia, and that on

21 that basis, I warned the Bosnian Serbs, mobilised them, told them to

22 defend themselves and so on.

23 So it is without reason, without foundation that I disturbed the

24 Krajina Serbs and taught the Bosnian Serbs, as their leader, what could

25 happen to them and what they should do in order to prevent that from

Page 866

1 happening to them. The OTP says that that's what it was, but really,

2 this pre-trial brief against me would have to be better or there should

3 have been no indictment against me in the first place.

4 If grenades, shrapnel, streams of refugees and promises from the

5 minister of defence and the minister of the interior in Croatia are not a

6 danger for Serbs in Croatia and Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, that means

7 that we should have been in a deep state of anaesthesia and that we

8 should have waited to be butchered like the Serbs before us. This is how

9 the OTP qualifies this.

10 Now, if we were to turn it the other way round just by switching

11 names and protagonists, this is the genuine indictment. Karadzic and the

12 Bosnian Serb leadership were aware of the nature and purpose of Croat

13 arming campaign, the creation of an illegal army through creating an

14 illegal army and an enormous police force, dismissals of Serbs from work

15 on ethnic grounds, killing of Serbs in towns, illegal degradation of

16 Serbs constitutional status. They knew that Croatian Serbs were living

17 in fear because of the return of Ustasha emigres and their appointment to

18 official positions.

19 Karadzic supported the efforts by Krajina Serbs to protect their

20 existence and cited them as an example to the Bosnian Serbs in case

21 Bosnia chooses the same path as Croatia. And the new Croatian authority

22 believed that the most important business they had to do was to change

23 the constitutional position of Serbs. Karadzic supported the Krajina

24 Serbs in their efforts to ensure their safe future and quoted them as an

25 example if Bosnia were to take the path as Croatia did.

Page 867

1 That is the proper and genuine indictment that should have been

2 signed by the OTP, but they are accusing me because I was in this

3 position of high responsibility.

4 Now, that was paragraphs 15 and 16.

5 You see what Croatia looks like according to the new

6 constitution. The Republic of Croatia establishes itself as the national

7 state of the Croatian people and the state of the members of autonomous

8 national minorities, the Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians,

9 et cetera. And the Serbs joined together in Krajina, which they got from

10 Austro-Hungary, not from Croatia, which was theirs in the first place.

11 Minister Boljkovac, whom you heard at the very beginning of the crisis in

12 January 1991, now takes a position that is one of moral high ground and a

13 repenting person. He says Croatia attacked the Serbs and Yugoslavia, not

14 the other way round, and in order for you to see what that looked like,

15 Saso Gersovski, a Macedonian, a conscript who was doing his army service

16 in Split in May 1991.

17 [Video-clip played]

18 "[Previous translation continues] ... attacks, their families are

19 being exposed to all sorts of pressures to compel them to move out of

20 Slovenia and Croatia. You remember the first attacks on army members was

21 the assault of the infuriated civilians, nationalists, on the soldiers

22 who did their military service in Split. On that occasion soldier Sasa

23 Gersovski was killed. Here are only some of the atrocities committed on

24 officers in Zadar by the Ustasha Black Legions."

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Bjelovar, Split, an army in its own

Page 868

1 country, and this is how they lose their lives. These are somebody's

2 children. Sasa Gersovski has parents. He has a family in Macedonia.

3 And now let us have a look at what Warren Zimmermann says, who

4 was not pro-Serb at all. Let us see what he says in this situation. The

5 JNA was in its own country, a legitimate force. And the Prosecutor is

6 charging me with supporting response to mobilisation and the departure of

7 recruits who went into the only legitimate army, and he finds a

8 connection between the Serb Democratic Party and the army.

9 I shall tell you, Excellencies, since the SDS was a non-Communist

10 Party and they, the army, viewed us the same way as they viewed the SDA

11 and the HDZ. It's only when they realised that they could not spend a

12 single night into -- in areas that were under HDZ and SDA control, that

13 they realised that we were something different. The OTP is going to say

14 that they were doing something -- something for the Serbs. No, these

15 were Communist generals who did not like us but they realised that they

16 didn't even dare spend the night in areas that were under HDZ and SDA

17 control, and they even couldn't keep their equipment there. And for an

18 entire year Croats and Muslims did not go into the army. They withdrew

19 their own officers as well and created their own armies. The OTP is

20 going to tell you that the JNA turned into the Army of Republika Srpska.

21 All the armies in all parts of the former Yugoslavia came into existence

22 on the basis of the JNA, except that the others were created later

23 because they created their own armed formations over a long period of

24 time; whereas the Serbs refused to create their own armed formations

25 until the order was given for the Army of Yugoslavia, the army of their

Page 869

1 homeland, to withdraw from Bosnia. Of course these people, these

2 individuals joined their own people, their own nation then.

3 Now, let us see how Germany in 1991, just like in 1941,

4 congratulated Croatia, its ally. I have to say to our Western allies

5 from the First and Second World Wars that perhaps we should envy the

6 Croats for their allies. Germany proved to be a far more reliable ally

7 than our allies from the First and Second World Wars, who turned against

8 the Serbs and who caused us great pain.

9 That shows that the German victory in 1991 was full and definite.

10 Now, let us see what the OTP is charging me with. They say

11 that -- that our basic sin was the fact that we wanted to have a policy

12 of our own, a continuity of the SDA and state structures. So the

13 establishment of a political party among the Serbs is a crime.

14 May I remind you that the Serbs were the last to set up a

15 political party on ethnic grounds in Bosnia-Herzegovina, four months

16 before the elections. All others formed their own parties before that,

17 and they showed what their political programmes were of these political

18 parties, and this caused great concern among the Serbs who then wanted to

19 establish a political party of their own. Everything that the Serbs did,

20 establish a party, establish an Assembly, take part in the elections,

21 they did all of that, according to the OTP, in order to create a state of

22 their own in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to expel from that state Muslims and

23 Croats. Instead of isolating a particular crime that was committed by

24 this accused person, instead of the OTP doing something like that, they

25 are accusing Serbs for any activity they engaged in. They claim that

Page 870

1 that is joint criminal enterprise.

2 They behaved not the way they wanted to. Serbs were not engaged

3 in action. They were engaged in reaction. The Prosecution omits to say

4 that, and they do not say what would have happened had there have been no

5 action. What if there have been any reaction by the Serbs?

6 The Army of Republika Srpska legitimately reacted to Srebrenica

7 and Zepa. How could crimes be committed had this action not be

8 legitimate, had there not been for provocations? The Serb Democratic

9 Party, it is stated here, was created in order to do something that never

10 crossed their minds. No one thought that that kind of thing could

11 happen. On the basis of the efforts made by the OTP, excellent people

12 were convicted here. Mr. Krajisnik, 20 years in prison, as if he led a

13 gang of criminals. He was sentenced according to mafia laws and he

14 headed a democratic Assembly. Wonderful men. Certain generals were

15 indicted and convicted as if they were attacking an innocent population,

16 not an army that was three times stronger than their own and that was

17 committing such bestial acts.

18 Here you are. You know the name of this young man whose head is

19 being held here. That is what happened in Bosnia. That is the army that

20 my generals fought against in their very own territory, just defending

21 these territories against combatants of this kind, who were prepared to

22 do this kind of thing and have their picture taken at that.

23 But the OTP behaves as if the Serbs were doing something

24 different. They were dealing with a raging bull, but the OTP claim that

25 they were dealing with lambs and causing lambs irreparable harm.

Page 871

1 The basic problem of the OTP was the existence of the Serb

2 Democratic Party. They say it was a centralist party. They say that the

3 leader was a very fierce one, an autocrat, and so on and so forth.

4 First of all, without an army and police you cannot do much among

5 the Serbs and you cannot be an autocrat least of all. Serbs like to

6 protest. It is hard to keep Serbs under control. And let us see what

7 this leader advocated.

8 The need of the OTP to present me as a monster is due to the fact

9 that they don't have any evidence, and it's going to be easier for them

10 to prove their case if they portray the accused as a monster rather than

11 if they portray him as a real live person.

12 It is very important that the OTP admitted that I personally did

13 not commit any crimes. However, I think that that is very risky from the

14 point of view of the Prosecution interests. If I did not commit a single

15 crime, if it was, rather, committed by those who shared the same values

16 with me, then the question has to be raised as to why they did that.

17 According to the position of the OTP, they did that in order to attain

18 certain objectives. However, it is totally absurd and paradoxical to

19 have behaviour that is in total contravention of these interests ascribed

20 to the Serbs. None of the Serbs' objectives can be attained in those

21 ways, not even those criminal ones that the OTP ascribes to the Serbs.

22 Ethnic cleansing. The Serb Democratic Party and Radovan Karadzic

23 and the Serb people in Bosnia-Herzegovina did their utmost, everything

24 that could have been done, in order to avoid a war.

25 Excellencies, now we're going to put things in their right place.

Page 872

1 We are going to look at the chronology of what happened, what was cause

2 and what was effect, and what stemmed from all of this. Then we are

3 going to see that this kind of chronological analysis is going to prove

4 causality, sequence of events, the options at one's disposal. Let's see

5 whether the Serbs could have done anything else.

6 Then genuine, not false consequence. Just five seconds,

7 Your Excellency, please.

8 Then we're going to see that this indictment should not have been

9 issued in the first place, because it is the crisis itself, the war

10 itself that show what the reasons were, and there is no Serb

11 responsibility for this. However, all of this is vague due to the

12 position taken by the Prosecution, and this Prosecutor managed to -- or,

13 rather, the Office of the Prosecutor managed to convince some Judges that

14 things stand the way they portray them.

15 JUDGE KWON: We will break for half an hour.

16 --- Recess taken at 12.02 p.m.

17 --- On resuming at 12.33 p.m.

18 JUDGE KWON: Yes, Mr. Karadzic.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Excellency.

20 We visited Croatia for a while because it was the OTP who

21 introduced Croatia. I have nothing against that, because it involves one

22 people and one single crisis.

23 Let me just remind you a little how this whole picture was

24 created, starting from the beginning. In 1990, the League of Communists

25 started to disintegrate because they failed to conclude their

Page 873

1 14th convention. They disintegrated into ethnic and nationalist Leagues

2 of Communists of various republics. At that point, Karadzic had been a

3 dissident since 1968. I was living with my family. I had my friends and

4 I was working, and I didn't believe that the Communists will ever leave

5 power. However, that is what happened, and a multi-party system was

6 created.

7 On the 27th of March, 1990, a group of young Muslims known for

8 having served lengthy prison sentences in various trials announced that

9 they were going to form a Muslim party with Muslim objectives. This

10 didn't concern the Serbs because in their programme they said they will

11 not talk even to the parties who were not favouring Yugoslavia. However,

12 very soon thereafter graffiti targeting Serbs were seen on the buildings,

13 and this party was created and their enemies were going to be the JNA and

14 the Serbs.

15 On the 15th of May, 1990, the forum for the protection of

16 individual and traditional rights of Muslims was established. The

17 Croatian elections took place on the 22nd of April. The HDZ, which was

18 the most powerful party, had very successfully assimilated the Ustasha

19 policies and they won the elections.

20 So all of this was happening during that period. And then on the

21 26th of May, the Party of Democratic Action had its founding Assembly.

22 It had been announced on the 27th of March. The Serbs, at that period,

23 do not even have any plans for setting up their own party.

24 We saw that this founding Assembly, Dalibor Brozovic said that

25 Croatia was going to be defended on the River Drina although nobody had

Page 874

1 had attacked it, and that was only a month after the elections in

2 Croatia. It was only on the 28th of June that the Serbs in Sarajevo and

3 Bosnia, a strong community, renewed the operation of the cultural society

4 called Prosvjeta, that the been banned both during World War II and

5 immediately after World War II, and unfortunately I have to say that when

6 it came to the Serbian questions, the Communists very often were acting

7 in unison with the Ustasha and the German Nazis. They shared opinions on

8 that issue.

9 The Serbian Democratic Party was formed on the 12th of July by

10 the Serbian intellectual and political elite under the pressure of the

11 people, because they didn't know who to vote for. The HDZ already

12 spilled over into the -- into Bosnia. They were seeing the banners of

13 the HDZ and SDA being tied together in rallies, whereas the Serbs had

14 nothing. Therefore, the Serbian intelligentsia was asked to establish

15 the Serbian Democratic Party. Izetbegovic came to the rally, greeted us,

16 and he said that he had expected this to happen sooner. Somebody from

17 the audience asked him what were his views about Yugoslavia, and he said,

18 "I'm in favour of a reasonable federation," and by that, Izetbegovic lay

19 down the foundations for our coalition, possible coalition, by convincing

20 us that there were no major differences between our political platforms.

21 The Prosecution omitted, although they were searching for the

22 elements of mens rea and the characters of those involved, the main

23 players of the Serbian Democratic Party, but they omitted to say who

24 founded the Serbian Democratic Party, whether those were extremists,

25 losers, scum, or were they university professors, authors of many books,

Page 875

1 scientists, et cetera, who subsequently, by living for four years on the

2 mountains and in deserted lands, became a party that had so many

3 intellectuals amongst its ranks like no other party in Europe. They

4 could boast very high level of expertise and knowledge, and they led a

5 very small community in very hard times.

6 This does not suit the Prosecution, and that is why they

7 disregarded this.

8 In their search for mens rea, Mr. Tieger went back into the past

9 as far as Czar Dusan. He claims that I wanted to have what Czar Dusan

10 had, and that was the ethnic-clean state. The Serbian state during his

11 reign, in the 14th century, was a multi-ethnic state incorporating Serbs,

12 Albanians, and other ethnic communities. Even today Serbia has probably

13 the largest number of various ethnic communities. They haven't been

14 assimilated, and their identity is being protected and preserved.

15 Therefore, you cannot take Czar Dusan as an example for an ethnically

16 clean state.

17 When the crisis was on the horizon and disintegration was on the

18 horizon, this accused proposed a so-called Scandinavisation. He realised

19 that Bosna would be in the forefront of all these processes. The

20 countries of Scandinavia, in 1905, agreed to part peacefully. They had

21 six months to decide in which country they wanted to live, and even today

22 all these countries live happily, in prosperity next to one another.

23 This accused was against the split-up of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

24 However, when the secession started, he was in favour of turning Bosnia

25 into a country made according to the model of southern Switzerland. It

Page 876

1 would be divided into cantons, and it was only important for everyone to

2 do their job and administer the country without any internal clashes and

3 permanent attempts to dominate.

4 I have to say that the issue of cantonisation was for the first

5 time mentioned in a newspaper in Zagreb, but we accepted it immediately

6 as a very good solution for saving Bosnia.

7 While searching for mens rea and the intentions of the Serbian

8 Democratic Party and when the OTP wants to prove that the SDS was, in

9 fact, formed in order to start the war and form a Serbian state and expel

10 others in the process, they do not invoke anything else other than things

11 that happened only according to the logic of a civil war. Just like

12 other nationalist parties, the SDS won around 98 per cent of votes. This

13 implied a huge responsibility. We won that on a democratic programme,

14 and the Prosecution was unable to show a single element of our

15 responsibility that would have been instrumental in creating the events

16 that followed. They couldn't find a single such thing, a single such

17 cause in our documents.

18 The OTP should not look what a deputy said if angered or

19 something like that. They should just focus on the party platform and

20 programme.

21 We divided power in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and we created a

22 coalition that was possible at the time. The Serbian Democratic Party,

23 on behalf of the Serbian people that it represented, accept the post of

24 the speaker. This is not in the executive branch. The Muslims had the

25 president of the Presidency, and the Croats had the prime minister.

Page 877

1 Although they only constituted 17 per cent, but that didn't matter. We

2 didn't seek neither the Ministry of the Interior nor the Ministry of

3 Defence. The Serbs wanted to be allocated the Ministry of Agriculture,

4 because if you look at the map, these blue areas are the areas where the

5 Serbs constitute majority nowadays and that was the case before the war

6 as well. That is why we were looking for the Ministry of Agriculture.

7 I would like to remind the Chamber and the Prosecution of the

8 fact that one cannot say that these people who have been a constituent

9 people in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that you cannot circumvent them when to

10 making serious decisions, even when there are conditions for a democratic

11 decision, these people have to swallow that and that to accept the

12 dictate of the other two parties. That was not an option for us. We got

13 the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Information. In short, there

14 was not a single ministry in our hands that would serve war efforts.

15 Immediately after the elections, this accused, due to tensions,

16 made a proposal for creating an expert government. Those were people who

17 had been dissidents for a long time and they were not popular among the

18 Communists. For that we proposed that the party people should not be in

19 the government but, rather, people who are professionals. The other two

20 parties didn't accept that, but the SDS stood by its position.

21 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's note: The accused is kindly

22 asked to slow down for the benefit of the interpretation and the record.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So how is it possible for the

24 Prosecution to overlook these efforts on the part of the Serbian

25 Democratic Party, and how can the intentions to wage war, that go back to

Page 878

1 the 12th of July, how can they reconcile that with the fact that they had

2 the ministries in their hands that I mentioned they had and that they

3 were willing to give power to professionals? This is probably a trap

4 that the Prosecution fell into due to their lack of knowledge of the

5 language.

6 On the eve of the war and the most serious crisis, when we got

7 the right to have our constituent unit, to have the police, the

8 National Guard and the government, the words of this accused were:

9 "This is what we agreed. Go out into the field. Take power into

10 your hands and act responsibly."

11 This is being translated by the OTP "Take over." And one of the

12 main things in this indictment is the claim that the Serbs took over

13 power in municipalities. But, Excellencies, if you look at this map,

14 there was no need for Serbs to take over power but just to administer

15 power that they won in the elections. Why would they take it over? From

16 whom? They were already in power there, and you can see that from this

17 map.

18 Why would we take over power from someone in Bijeljina? And

19 Bijeljina features here as a municipality that was taken over by force.

20 But this lack of knowledge of language, when you take over something that

21 used to belong to you, but if you take something, you're taking somebody

22 else's possession. So this is a drastic difference between these two

23 terms, and this is why it was incorporated in the indictment.

24 Not only didn't we take the Ministry of the Interior, but we

25 didn't even have our own people at any of the lower levels in that

Page 879

1 ministry. All the people who were there had already been in the police.

2 We didn't bring any criminals.

3 I would draw your attention to the intercept of the conversation

4 between the accused and the deputy minister, which is a confirmation that

5 this deputy minister was not a member of the SDS.

6 [Audiotape played]

7 THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] I want to ask them if it's in the

8 interest of the Muslim people to appoint only criminals at the MUP.

9 "Karadzic: Vito, we haven't appointed a single criminal.

10 "Zepinic: Yes, but I'm talking about that.

11 "Karadzic: Look, please. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We

12 have brought a single man who hasn't been at the MUP. Their interest is

13 to appoint people, these -- honest people, nothing to do with the party.

14 "Zepinic: I'm going to send an open letter to the SDA and

15 expressly ask them whether it's in the interests of the Muslim people to

16 appoint only criminals.

17 "Karadzic: We asked who was the most honest and the most

18 competent and we appointed them, and mind you, now we in a dead-end

19 street. They were appointing the most loyal people. We were appointing

20 the most competent people."

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So that was this -- this difference

22 in approach of the SDA and the Serb community and this core of the

23 fundamentalist SDA party -- SDS. The difference in moral approach. And

24 this led to the fact that the police in Bosnia-Herzegovina started to

25 massively abuse their state authority against the Serb people and for the

Page 880

1 SDA. The gentleman talking to me was appointed as deputy minister in the

2 Serb place. He wasn't a member of the SDA. We didn't do things like

3 that. But they changed the entire picture of the police force. They

4 brought in criminals and they started to arm the people and to arm the

5 Party of Democratic Action and the Patriotic League as well, which was

6 formed very early on, the 31st of March, two months after the joint

7 government had been set up.

8 So this is proof and evidence that we get from this intercept,

9 that the number two man in the MUP confirms that yes, they were bringing

10 in criminals, we were not, and that we still maintain that professionals

11 should be used, honest professionals, and not party people in the

12 distribution of power and authority and political posts.

13 Now, it would be very useful if we were to see and look at what

14 Mr. Izetbegovic says under these circumstances, faced with this

15 situation. On the 27th of February to the 15th of January, he was in

16 favour of Yugoslavia. However, on the 27th of February of that same

17 year, just one month after the coalition government was formed,

18 Izetbegovic says that he will give up peace for Bosnia's independence and

19 sovereignty but he would not be ready to sacrifice sovereign Bosnia for

20 peace. So it is his resolve to go to the very end regardless of whether

21 he has the right to do so, whether he is right or not, and whether the

22 people living on two-thirds of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina --

23 well, there's one-third of the population there who were Serbs, because

24 genocide reduced that group of the population.

25 Now, Muslims and Croats were exploiting the results of the

Page 881

1 genocide against the Serbs. They want to reap their own benefit because

2 now they're saying there's no more than a third of you, but we can see

3 where they were the majority when they were in the majority. They were

4 the majority on two-thirds -- in two-thirds of Bosnia, two-thirds of

5 Bosnian territory, and they were reduced because of the genocide during

6 World War II. Otherwise, they were always the majority population

7 before.

8 Now, who are these people with whom we entered into a coalition

9 government and who conditioned our behaviour fully? We're going to see

10 that. Let's see what the leading ideology was of this group of people.

11 Since the Prosecution is seeking mens rea for all of us, let's see who we

12 were dealing with. Were they docile lambs or were we up against

13 something to which we had to react and react in the way we did?

14 Mr. Izetbegovic, in 1970, for example, published -- or, rather,

15 wrote and distributed secretly, clandestinely, the Islamic Declaration.

16 Mr. Izetbegovic in 1941, 2, and 3, was a member of the young Muslims

17 organisation, and at the time, he opted for the introduction of a

18 fundamentalist Islamic regime everywhere on territory inhabited by the

19 Muslims, and the bases and foundations of that programme was the Islamic

20 Declaration which he wrote in 1970. Now after the war, after

21 World War II, he continued to propagate clandestinely and subversively

22 and he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment after World War II.

23 After he left prison, he was one of the individuals that you should take

24 your hat off to, actually, because of his perseverance and because he

25 didn't want to give way. He wanted to stick to his programme, and he

Page 882

1 never changed on that score.

2 During World War II, the brothers Behmen took in this man who is

3 on that picture there with Hitler. He is the Muftija Husseini who was in

4 Sarajevo several times, at least twice in fact, and he went to see Hitler

5 umpteen times. And every time he came to Bosnia, this resulted in the

6 establishment of the Waffen SS Division which was called the Handzar

7 Sword Division, which was the most brutal decision. You couldn't even

8 imagine how brutal they were and the brutalities they committed. It was

9 the most brutal unit ever. So that was Hitler's friend as you can see

10 and a guest with Behmen and Izetbegovic.

11 Therefore, after the war, Mr. Izetbegovic, as I said, was in

12 prison. He was given a prison sentence, and in 1970 he wrote the Islamic

13 Declaration which is, in fact, the programme of the Party of Democratic

14 Action. Of course, we hoped that it wasn't what it was, but it proved to

15 be exactly what we -- what it was and I saw sought ways and means, in

16 1990, to save Bosnia, and I wanted Izetbegovic to give up on the Islamic

17 Declaration and tell us that it wasn't the political programme of the

18 SDA. We know he never gave us those assurances. He remained firm.

19 Not only has the Prosecution not sought to find who our partners

20 were that conditioned our behaviour, but erroneously interprets our words

21 and says, when I'm speaking at a meeting, I think it was an Assembly

22 session or a party meeting, said that:

23 "We cannot control the Muslims in such a unitary state. We know

24 very well when fundamentalism turns up that we cannot live together.

25 There is no tolerance anymore."

Page 883

1 Now, what is this all about? What has the Prosecution done here?

2 It cut off part of my speech and made this sentence stand alone and

3 failed to print the main sentence, and this is something that is often

4 done. But actually what it was was that the West, and it proved to be

5 true, did not allow Republika Srpska to be established or the Serbs to

6 remain in Yugoslavia, perhaps because it did not want to enable the

7 Muslims to be an express -- a majority and to form an Islamic state in

8 Europe. The thesis is that the Serbs and Croats should remain in Bosnia

9 to control the Islamic factor to the advantage of Europe, as a tool for

10 Europe, and Radovan Karadzic says that's not a good thing. The Serbs

11 will not -- Karadzic won't allow the Serbs to be used as a controlling

12 factor of the Islamic group, and also it would be much more peace loving

13 if the Serbs would get away from this fundamentalist project rather than

14 having them oppose it. Why should the Serbs once again stand at the

15 gates of the -- stand at Europe's gates and preserve Europe and protect

16 it?

17 So here what the Prosecution is trying to do is to say that we,

18 in fact, wished to control the Muslims, whereas we're stating quite the

19 reverse. We say we don't want to do that. We don't want to lay down our

20 lives for that. Similarly, another Assembly deputy says that we were set

21 to be the executioners of the Muslims in Bosnia, and we said we don't

22 want to do that, but what the Prosecution says is that is precisely what

23 we chose to do, to be the executioners. And then he went on to say, an

24 institution 700 years old, probably thinking about the Vatican, has set

25 us the role of being executioners, whereas we refuse to be executioners.

Page 884

1 And this is being reversed by the Prosecutor. So if it wasn't a case of

2 word "executioners" being used, there wouldn't have been an indictment.

3 You have to read what the man actually said. It's not that we chose to

4 be executioners; they thought that we could perform the function of

5 executioners, but we refused to play that role.

6 Furthermore the Prosecution, in paragraph 23 of their pre-trial

7 brief, states that, without foundation, I told our people that we faced

8 the same plans, the same villains, and the same victims as in

9 World War II, and that I insisted that the Muslims sought an Islamic

10 state and were preparing laws to subjugate Serbs, and that Serbs were

11 unwilling to go back to slavery. And what if that's true, and that is

12 something the Prosecution should have established. The Prosecution's

13 position is that this wasn't true, but we will prove that it is true.

14 Why waste time and money by holding trials of this kind? Had an

15 investigating magistrate been in charge of this, he would have concluded

16 Karadzic was right, the Prosecution was wrong, because there's too much

17 evidence and proof to show that that is so. But let's see whether it is

18 true and what the situation is.

19 Mr. Izetbegovic was the creator of an organisation which has been

20 existence for 50 years, that is since 1939 onwards, which had an oath of

21 this kind. It says:

22 "I will sacrifice everything on God's path including my life, if

23 the interests of Islam require that. I will fight uncompromisingly

24 against everything non-Islamic. I will sacrifice everything on God's

25 path including my life, if the interests of Islam require that. I will

Page 885

1 also fight for the grandeur and fame of Islam. So may God give me the

2 power to do that on the road of jihad."

3 Yes. I'm being told to slow down so I have to do so. So this is

4 the oath, the oath taken by the Muslim youth.

5 Now let's look and see what Mr. Izetbegovic says in his

6 Islamic Declaration. What are Islam's tasks or the tasks of Muslims?

7 The Muslims must be a movement, and that movement can take over power and

8 authority as soon as it is morally and otherwise strong enough to topple

9 not only the powers that be but to build up an Islamic government. So

10 they don't have do wait 50 per cent because waiting 50 per cent means

11 waiting for a democracy of some kind, with some kind of voting. But as

12 soon as -- what he's saying is as soon as they feel strong enough, they

13 are duty-bound to topple everything non-Islamic.

14 After he came out of prison for the first time, Mr. Izetbegovic

15 wrote this Islamic Declaration and became a member of some important

16 institutions. That's something that the Prosecution doesn't know about

17 but the political committee in the US Senate does, the US Senate

18 Republican Policy Committee, the whole world knows about that. However,

19 the Prosecutor is trying to make me out to be a barbarian attacking a

20 good neighbour, a good and peaceful neighbour. This is what the US

21 Senate Republican Policy Committee says, what it said in 1998, about what

22 Mr. Izetbegovic said in 1983. He said that he strengthened efforts after

23 1978 to establish Islamic power in Bosnia and was gaoled by the

24 Communists in 1983. There were 65 witnesses appearing before a -- five

25 judges, all of them Muslims.

Page 886

1 Now, the judgement for Alija Izetbegovic, Omer Behmen,

2 Hasan Cengic, they were all alive and active in 1990, the judgement and

3 sentence says that they were taken over by the idea of Islamisation and

4 the Islamic revival, and that this began in 1974, that is to say, the

5 year of the promotion of the new Yugoslav constitution which laid the

6 foundations for the break-up of Yugoslavia in the first place, and that

7 they had accepted the Islamic revolution as being their own Iranian

8 revolution. He says -- he refers to this as the Islamic population, that

9 conditions should be created for Bosnia to become an Islamic republic

10 with Islamic laws, and that would refer to everybody living in Bosnia,

11 and he says the imams in Bosnia should be armed just like the Iranian

12 Shiite imams in Iran.

13 Now, in that same year, that is to say already in 1982,

14 Izetbegovic identifies the Serbs as the enemies. There's no Karadzic.

15 There's no Milosevic on the scene. There's no memorandum by the

16 Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, none of that. And all the

17 apparatuses that the Prosecution is aiming against the Serbs and takes to

18 be -- to prove that the Serbs are the culprits.

19 Kosovo and Vojvodina were provinces of Serbia. It was the only

20 republic that was not able to resolve its problems, and thanks to a

21 Macedonian, Lazar Kolisevski, we uncovered what was afoot. It was a --

22 the Communist slogan was, A weak Serbia will make a strong Yugoslavia.

23 The weaker Serbia, the stronger Yugoslavia. Well, that weak Serbia in

24 1982, according to Izetbegovic, was the enemy. It was the foe. His

25 associate Omer Behmen, with whom he co-operated during World War II as

Page 887

1 well and in whose house the mufti stayed when he visited, the Husseini

2 muftis of Jerusalem, he said that there was pressure being exerted on

3 Muslims. And the other man or the third man, Cengic, says that a Muslim

4 could not feed a Serb child, nurse a Serb child. Mr. Cengic at the time,

5 because Karadzic isn't there yet, we're dealing with 1984 and 1983, no

6 SDS, so he says what the goal of their revolution is, the revolution that

7 they were preparing.

8 So if you envisage the map of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Sandzak,

9 Kosovo, we call it the green transversal over there, you know. Now, the

10 Prosecutor doesn't agree with that. He considers that we shouldn't

11 even -- it should never enter our heads. Now, the minister of Turkey

12 comes and says that he's going to reinstate that green transversal. And

13 in 1990, Turgut Ozal said that Turkey would stretch from the Adriatic to

14 the Great Wall of China. Well, yes, maybe, but without the Serbs because

15 we're not going to take part in that kind of empire.

16 So here we have the green transversal plotted by a mighty man,

17 who is a clergyman as well, yes, a clergyman, and the American clergyman

18 who was publicly was sorry that Cengic wasn't killed on time seems to be

19 a lamb compared to this one, and he says you don't need a pretext for

20 that, and then in another place he says you should make a pretext. So we

21 saw Markale, for example, and the other pretexts that were created and

22 fabricated, and then based on that, they behaved towards the Serbs as if

23 it was the Serbs to blame.

24 Now, I wasn't surprised to see them doing it, but why is the

25 Prosecution following suit and why is it asking this Tribunal and the

Page 888

1 Trial Chamber to do the same, to accept war trickery and cunning? There

2 was a second incidence of Markale later on. They were technically better

3 prepared but the same technology was used and for the same reasons. And

4 this is an image of Izetbegovic's trial in 1983, and the second man is

5 Behmen. I don't remember who the others were but it's the Izetbegovic et

6 al trial.

7 Now, we see that the plans are the same, the victims are the

8 same, and the perpetrators are the same, just as they were in

9 World War II. The Prosecutor -- the Prosecutor, however, considers

10 otherwise, and this is what the judgement states, the judgement in 1983,

11 the Chamber of five, all Muslims, 62 Muslim witnesses, says:

12 "In all circumstances, advocating such an ideology would mean

13 returning to the state of civil war. It is indisputable that such an

14 ideology cannot be implemented in a community which is religiously and

15 politically so profoundly mixed" --

16 THE INTERPRETER: A little slower, please. Thank you.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It's on the screen, that's why I'm

18 hurrying.

19 A community which is religiously and politically so profoundly

20 mixed that the dominance or complete supremacy of any of the existing

21 national entities is simply inconceivable, unless based on terror or

22 possibly foreign intervention.

23 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Karadzic, slow down further, please.

24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Your Excellencies, let's look at

25 this and I'd like the Prosecution to look at it, too. Take a look at

Page 889

1 this.

2 Now seven years after this, after this judgement, we see the

3 realisation and implementation of that very ideology, but not with terror

4 or foreign intervention but both terror and foreign intervention. And

5 the Trial Chamber and the Judges here were very far-sighted because it

6 was terror and calls for foreign intervention. Markale were calls for

7 foreign intervention. It was montage and fabrication, the butchery of

8 our own people, and you will see that in the programme they had that,

9 too, the butchery of one's own people. That is written down. You'll

10 come to see that when we look at the programme.

11 And now the Prosecutor, in addition to everything that is at --

12 is at its disposal, says that Karadzic insisted on as much separation as

13 possible. Well, if our neighbours are preparing a programme of this kind

14 and life of this kind, of course we're going to separate from them. We

15 don't believe that that's what the Muslim masses wanted. So it wasn't

16 Izetbegovic but Abdic who won the elections. The Muslims cried out to

17 the Muslims and Serbs. They applauded them when there was this

18 historical agreement in the offing, in 1991, until Izetbegovic withdraw

19 it. They were all very happy and applauded because the Serbs and Muslims

20 managed to reach an agreement. However, that group chose to manipulate

21 the SDA and the entire Muslim community.

22 Now let us have a look at what things would be like if we were to

23 write a genuine indictment and if we were to just to change the names.

24 Izetbegovic insisted on the secession of all Bosnia despite Bosnia's

25 ethnically intermingled character. This meant making Serbs a national

Page 890

1 minority in his Islamic republic and taking them out of the country.

2 That is to say, that if Muslims and Serbs are intermingled in

3 Republika Srpska, then Republika Srpska cannot be established; but if the

4 Serbs are intermingled with the Muslims in all of Bosnia, then it can

5 happen. It seems that Muslims are more intermingled than Serbs and all

6 in the same place. However, they somehow manage to intermingle more.

7 You will see how figures are dealt with in very relative terms.

8 As the learned Mr. Tieger says, who likes cursory glances, he says, Let's

9 cast a cursory glance at this map. What about the Serbs in Bosnia? I

10 mean, when I say the Serbs own land, they own land in terms of private

11 ownership, but Serbs are a majority population in this area, and they

12 have the right to say, once they had attained the right to statehood and

13 lived in Yugoslavia, they had the right to say whether they are willing

14 to accept interventions of this kind, foreign interventions, ideologies

15 that hurt both Muslims and Serbs a great deal.

16 Does the Prosecution approve, say, the Prosecution says

17 30 per cent. Now, do they approve -- or actually, have a look at it.

18 This is what it would look like. We insisted upon separating from them,

19 but let's look at it this way: Izetbegovic insisted on secession of all

20 of Bosnia despite Bosnia's ethnically intermingled character. It would

21 mean that he can take a million and a half Serbs out, and the Prosecution

22 says that we sought the territories of Republika Srpska where there were

23 hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats. They seem to be more than a

24 million and a half Serbs for the Prosecution. That's something that we

25 don't understand. Except that these Muslims and Croats who would stay in

Page 891

1 Republika Srpska, they wouldn't leave their own state; they would just

2 live in a different entity but within their own country.

3 Again this was abused. We cannot control the Muslims, et cetera,

4 et cetera. That sentence has been brutalised, butchered, it is not for

5 the Judges to carry out investigations, but all of this was abused. They

6 just took parts of this sentence, cut it up. There are three sources,

7 three major sources of population growth rates, and that is not only the

8 birth rate.

9 First of all, the promoted migration of Muslims from Sandzak.

10 Secondly, Muslims who had -- who had moved to Turkey a generation before

11 that were being returned, and then also the Muslim belief that a Muslim

12 woman should have five children so that one could be sacrificed for

13 Bosnia. We are against that kind of birth rate, yes. And when the

14 Prosecution says that I said that we would not allow them to make

15 settlements in Republika Srpska, I am saying to them what I'm saying to

16 Mr. Izetbegovic. I said, Mr. Izetbegovic, I know what your plan is, that

17 you want to bring in Muslims from Sandzak and Turks from Turkey.

18 However, don't fool yourselves that we are going to allow you to make

19 these settlements in Serb areas. Protestants or Catholics in

20 Northern Ireland would not allow that either. To have a conscious effort

21 made by way of political action in order to disrupt the ethnical balance,

22 that is a crime. We are not going to allow that to happen. That's what

23 I said before our Assembly or wherever, at some meeting. So I was just

24 interpreting what I had said to Izetbegovic. I had said that to them,

25 and he was just blinking and he said, "I understand."

Page 892

1 Now, let us see what this Islamic Declaration is. This is a

2 programme text. Regardless of whether the Communists were in power or

3 not, nothing has changed whatsoever. It says:

4 "We announce, to our friends and foes alike, that Muslims are

5 determined to take the fate of the Islamic world into their own hands,

6 and we are going to set up a world in accordance with our own precepts.

7 The struggle already knows of its shahids. These are the holy warriors

8 that die in such wars, martyrs. They're martyrs, actually. A shahid is

9 a martyr. A Muslim can die only with the name of Allah on his lips and

10 for the glory of Islam, or escape from the battle-field."

11 Let me stop at this point for a moment and say that we're going

12 to bring proof of this, Mr. Izetbegovic saying to his associates, For

13 tactical reasons we say that our soldiers are laying their lives for a

14 multi-ethnic Bosnia, but let us not fool ourselves, they are not dying

15 for a multi-ethnic Bosnia. That was a moment of frankness, sincerity, in

16 a narrow circle, but we have that evidence.

17 The first most important conclusion is that the Islamic religion

18 and non-Islamic social and political institutions cannot co-exist. There

19 can be neither peace nor co-existence between the Islamic religion and

20 non-Islamic social and political institutions. Whoever wishes our

21 community well will not spare a struggle, danger and misfortune. The

22 Islamic movement should and can start to take over power as soon as it is

23 morally and numerically strong enough to be able to do that in their own

24 territory.

25 So this is not a lay state. The state should support the moral

Page 893

1 precepts of religion. Islam is the first point and pan-Islamism is the

2 second point. Now, please have a look at this.

3 As we announce renewal, we are not announcing a period of safety

4 and peace but of unrest and challenges. There are many things that are

5 to be destroyed. People who are asleep can only be awakened by blows.

6 Who wishes our community well should not spare it of exertions, dangers,

7 and troubles. Islamic renewal can start without a political revolution,

8 but it cannot be brought to a successful end without a political

9 revolution. The movement has to take power as soon as it is strong

10 enough, numerically strong enough to be able to overturn not only the

11 existing non-Islamic government but also to build up a new Islamic one.

12 That is what is unequivocally stated, no dilemma whatsoever.

13 Unrest, challenges. It just looks like blood, sweat and tears, as

14 Churchill had put it, because it is the enemy that causes blood, sweat,

15 and tears among Churchill's people. Whereas here it is one's own

16 government that is going to cause blood, sweat and tears among their own

17 people.

18 Who wishes our community well should not spare them, should hit

19 them and in this waking them up. The blow, the hit was Markale. So that

20 the people could stand strong against the Serbs, they will try to prove

21 that it is the Serbs who did that at Markale, and you saw how

22 unconvincing that is. It is impossible to do that with a single shell,

23 especially kill that many people who are not there in the first place.

24 That is what happened in 1990, and that is the moment when the renewal is

25 being heralded and when there is going to be a period of unrest and

Page 894

1 challenges because many things are seeking their own destroyers. We did

2 not ask for any destroyers. These that will be destroyed and that were

3 begging for destruction were the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

4 secular government. There will be no compromise with secular states

5 here. Then the JNA, the Serb people in Bosnia-Herzegovina, life and

6 co-existence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, common roots. The Muslim speaks the

7 same language we do, the Serbian language. The fact that you accepted

8 this what you have here, that is wrong because this is heritage of the

9 Serb people. Australians do not speak the Australian language or an

10 Australian language, they speak English.

11 Then common past was destroyed but also the common present and

12 the common future. We didn't ask for that. They asked for that, or they

13 thought that they had the right to do that, although no one did call upon

14 them to do it.

15 Now, let us see what accusations levelled at the Serbs are like.

16 They have to cut up sentences and mutilate them; whereas here they have

17 prepared documents. They were held accountable before courts of law

18 because of these texts that were written, and they didn't want to give up

19 on them. They rather went to prison. The Serb Democratic Party, even

20 before 1990, asked for a chamber of nations to be introduced in the

21 Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and such a Chamber would decide on

22 important matters by way of consensus.

23 That proposal does not correspond to a joint criminal enterprise.

24 If that were the case, what could the Serbs do against the Muslims and

25 the Croats? Nothing. Everybody would have the right to veto. They

Page 895

1 responded by establishing this council for the equal rights of peoples

2 and nationalities. This is clumsy Communist language and jargon. It is

3 very long and clumsy.

4 So they would meet ad hoc. It's not a regular body. If we run

5 into some kind of trouble then it would meet. I mean, had that been

6 applied, then that would be some kind of guarantee that we would not be

7 brought into this position but the Serb -- it's not only the Serbs but

8 also the Muslims and the Croats who would not be brought into a difficult

9 position to accept something that was unacceptable.

10 In every particular case, the Serbs, the Serb Democratic Party

11 and this accused person proposed solutions that are directly contrary to

12 what they are being charged for. This is part of the constitution.

13 There was this declaration on sovereignty that was stopped twice through

14 this council, but it was never established because the SDA sabotaged its

15 establishment. So it was practically as if it had never been set up.

16 When I made that speech, on the 15th of October, they simply overrode

17 that. They said, We're not interested. Because even in March,

18 Mr. Izetbegovic said, in Split, when there was a conference of the

19 presidents of the Yugoslav republics, he said, We are going to adopt that

20 with or without the Serbs, that is to say, either with the Serbs or

21 against the Serbs.

22 Please, the OTP denies us the right to political life and

23 reciprocal measures. They even claim that we simply had to remain

24 silent, to bow to this and to agree to this sovereignty and independence

25 that were envisaged and that destroyed our rights to such an extent.

Page 896

1 Also, the legal system which was a backbone, as it is in any society, and

2 that stems from the Islamic Declaration as an act of destruction; whereas

3 the Prosecution claims that we were not supposed to do anything about it.

4 Everything that we did was a crime on our part. However, that is what

5 was written. We had the right to challenge this.

6 Mr. Izetbegovic says, We are completely aware that by declaring

7 the neutrality of Bosnia-Herzegovina in relation to the war in Croatia,

8 we may have violated certain laws, but at the moment everything is fluid.

9 There are laws and there are laws. That is to say, there are laws that

10 we're going to abide by if they suit us and there are laws, on the other

11 hand, that we are not going to observe if they benefit others. Now, that

12 is that fluid situation that Karadzic is going to speak of, where Serbs

13 cannot find their way in these unlawful situations. The Prosecution is

14 going to hold that against us as well. However, that was the basis for

15 chaos in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This existence of laws and other laws. It

16 can be done this way or that way.

17 Let us see how Bosnia and Herzegovina could have functioned.

18 They could not attain any kind of independence without Serb approval.

19 They had to decide by a two-third majority. There was no two-third

20 majority at the referendum, there would not have been a two-third

21 majority in parliament either because 83 Serbs were against it, 83 Serb

22 MPs, and they separated from the Bosnian parliament and they established

23 the Assembly of the Serb people. So there was no way for Bosnia and

24 Herzegovina to adopt this resolution on sovereignty unless they said

25 there are laws and again there are laws on the other hand. So if we did

Page 897

1 not agree to act unlawfully, there is nothing that they could do.

2 If someone were to say to us whether we, as Serbs, were denied

3 our right to defence, was our right to reciprocity taken away from us, to

4 a response to unlawful behaviour, to violations of our rights, to

5 breaches of the constitution. If that was not the case, then this

6 indictment is impossible, and it should have been rejected straight away.

7 It should be rejected now as well if we prove that we never intended to

8 throw Muslims and Croats out of their home. We did not consider Bosnia

9 or Republika Srpska to be our home. We thought that Yugoslavia was our

10 home. That was what we believed, and that is what we are going to prove

11 very soon.

12 The values of Bosnian society that were hoping to see its

13 destroyers, we didn't want to be any part of that. The Serbs, the Serb

14 people in Bosnia-Herzegovina at that point in time had the explicit

15 right, according to the constitution, but also historically viewed they

16 had the right to be a constituent people that were forming this joint

17 state and they were co-owners, as it were, of this Bosnia-Herzegovina,

18 just like the Serbs of Krajina were the co-owners of Croatia because they

19 had entered this joint venture.

20 Now, a change of the status, the constitutional legal status of

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina had to evolve in accordance with the law. Serbs were

22 more than one-third. If you were to take into account Serbs, and about

23 one-third or one-quarter of them were Serbs who were in favour of the

24 creation of a Yugoslav nation, there were more than one-third of Serbs in

25 the population and they are sufficient not only in terms of consensus but

Page 898

1 also through every other democratic process. They could have stopped

2 independence. It is peoples, not administrative territories that had the

3 right to independence and self-determination.

4 You know how the Serbs got into Yugoslavia? In 1918, a country

5 was established of Serb, Croats, and Slovenes from the newly liberated

6 territories of Austro-Hungary. There was not different republics that

7 were established. There was one single state that was established. So

8 the Serbs were sovereign in Ljubljana, and Slovenes were in Sarajevo.

9 Then that state asked the international community for permission to unite

10 with Serbia. They united with Serbia. Serbs joined that state as

11 co-owners of that state. That was what it was said that peoples had the

12 right to self-determination. President Wilson said that Serbia should be

13 given access to the sea, and the successors of President Wilson still owe

14 this to Serbia. He has made this pledge.

15 So we didn't have republics joining into Yugoslavia so that they

16 can disjoin later. And as Lord Owen said, then they drew the

17 administrative borders that suddenly became more important than the

18 external borders. This was done totally arbitrarily. Nobody can say on

19 what basis these administrative borders were drawn. Tito said it doesn't

20 matter. Now suddenly they have become more important and blood was

21 starting to be shed because of the borders, which is always the case when

22 you have Communist borders or Imperial borders. If you look at Croatia,

23 Croatia inherited Austro-Hungarian borders. The Serbs of Trebinje can

24 see the seashore but cannot have access to it.

25 This is what Hasan Cengic, a clergyman, says about the Patriotic

Page 899

1 League, formed on the 31st of March, 1991. I would like the Prosecution

2 to show me a single formation behind which the Serbian Democratic Party

3 or the Serbian people stood. However, what we have here, even before the

4 31st of March, a unit formed in Foca by the father of this Hasan Cengic,

5 whilst the SDS was organising and leading its fallings [as interpreted]

6 from March until the beginning of the war. So this is the chart of the

7 Patriotic League. The Commander-in-Chief is Alija Izetbegovic. The Main

8 Staff is led by Sefer Halilovic, who was, I think, acquitted here. Then

9 you had regional clergical [as interpreted] staff and regional military

10 staffs, and at the bottom municipal political staffs and municipal

11 military staffs. This organisation was very quickly manned and staffed

12 so that in January 1994 they already had around 100.000 troops. So this

13 is the role of the Patriotic League, of the Green Berets, and the other

14 organisations that existed at the time.

15 In these indictments against Serbs, the Prosecution is mainly

16 focused on Crisis Staffs. The Serbs had their Crisis Staffs. When

17 there's a shortage of gas, like it happened recently due to Ukrainian

18 cutting off gas supplies, you have to establish a Crisis Staff. The

19 situation is totally irregular, and you need a Crisis Staff to deal with

20 it. But I would like to draw your attention first to the fact that the

21 Crisis Staff of the Party of Democratic Action and the HDZ were present

22 everywhere, even in the smallest village, much before the war and before

23 of the inception of the SDS.

24 Here are some of the differences between the Crisis Staffs of the

25 SDA and the SDS. The SDA's Crisis Staff had been formed well before the

Page 900

1 war when there was no indication of the war breaking out in

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina. SDS staffs were public and were only formed on the

3 eve of the war, at the time when the SDA managed to bring the state

4 structure to collapse. And the war in Croatia produced terrible problems

5 and numerous refugees. We had armed formations, covert transportation of

6 armaments and overt transportation of armaments, et cetera. It was only

7 then that the Serbs established their Crisis Staff, and the tasks were

8 given commonly to the defence ministries, et cetera. However, the SDS

9 Crisis Staff's only function was to inform the Sarajevo headquarters as

10 quickly as possible.

11 On the 14th of February, 1992, Karadzic tells them explicitly:

12 "You are not an authority in power. You are there to help, to

13 monitor the transportation of weapons, to monitor what's going on, and to

14 let us know if there were any extraordinary situation."

15 I quoted the example of the British people where Britain -- every

16 Britain guards and protects his own country.

17 The republican Crisis Staff established at the Presidency, led by

18 Ejup Ganic, enabled Alija Izetbegovic to circumvent Biljana Plavsic and

19 Nikola Koljevic as representatives of the Serbian people. They didn't

20 have to adopt anything at their meetings. Once it's been decided by the

21 Crisis Staff, it will be implemented.

22 The SDS Crisis Staff existed for a short period of time before

23 the war, and once the war broke out they ceased to exist, and we had

24 municipal Crisis Staff as state organs. So these staffs were neither the

25 staffs of the SDS of the Serbs but, rather, the staffs of the

Page 901

1 authorities, and they were made up of the Muslims and Croats in the

2 municipalities where these ethnicities lived.

3 What the Prosecution says here is that -- by quoting a report

4 from Bijeljina says that the Crisis Staff of Bijeljina informs the SDS

5 headquarters what they decided. However, the Prosecution says that this

6 was decided by the SDS Main Staff, although it is quite clear what the

7 Crisis Staff of the municipality, which is a state organ, actually

8 decided. This only expedited the whole process, and there was no need

9 for the Assembly to convene, and these decisions were later on adopted at

10 regular assemblies.

11 Crisis Staffs in Republika Srpska operated openly and publicly.

12 They meticulously recorded every decision that they made, and they

13 submitted them for adoption to their respective assemblies. For example,

14 Kotor Varos had daily meetings of the Crisis Staffs, and this is an

15 illustration of how responsible authority operates, like the one in Kotor

16 Varos. But the OTP removed that example. However, I intend to bring it

17 back just to show you how a responsible body of authority operates.

18 Now, this is what they say about their achievements, that is to

19 say, the heads of the SDA and the Patriotic League. Every local commune

20 in municipality had several communes. In all 103 municipalities, the

21 leadership of Patriotic League had their units ranging from a squad to a

22 company. One of their tasks was to procure weapons.

23 If you look back and remember the map that I showed you before,

24 that means that in all these municipalities where the Serbs were living,

25 there were a total of 109, because they -- they couldn't do this in the

Page 902

1 Croatian municipalities. However, in all these municipalities where

2 Serbs lived they had their companies, and their Serbian neighbours were

3 able to see that. And Prosecution thinks that we should be banned from

4 observing and monitoring such activities. On the other hand, they

5 allowed them to have these kind of units in their local communes. And

6 they also criticise me for intimidating Serbs without any cause

7 whatsoever.

8 The entire preparations of -- were co-ordinated by the Patriotic

9 League and its staffs throughout the territory of Bosnia or Islamic

10 Bosnia, regardless of whether Serbs were living there or whether they

11 were willing to accept what the Patriotic League and the SDA wanted.

12 Mr. Izetbegovic met them. He gave his approval. He was their

13 Commander-in-Chief.

14 Now, look at this. We --

15 JUDGE KWON: We need to adjourn very soon.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could I have three more minutes,

17 please?

18 JUDGE KWON: No, one minute.

19 THE ACCUSED: One minute. Okay.

20 [Interpretation] Mr. Izetbegovic, by virtue of his position, was

21 the chairman of the National Defence Council, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In

22 February he forms a secret council for the defence of Muslims. So one

23 Izetbegovic should arrest the other Izetbegovic, because these two

24 occupied two different positions, and one of those positions was

25 undermining the republic of the other one. And that is what the Serbs

Page 903

1 couldn't withstand any longer.

2 JUDGE KWON: Thank you, that's for today.

3 Mr. Tieger, I'd like to make sure that we can hear you first

4 thing tomorrow morning.

5 MR. TIEGER: Your Honour, we expect to be filing something today,

6 and I can foreshadow that for the Court. I believe we'll be -- we won't

7 be opposing certification. We will be opposing a stay.

8 JUDGE KWON: Thank you. That would be helpful.

9 9.00 tomorrow morning.

10 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.45 p.m.,

11 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 2nd day

12 of March, 2010, at 9.00 a.m.

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