The "Srebrenica video"
[ Davvero impressionante la campagna di stampa scatenata negli ultimi
giorni all'unisono dai media occidentali, in seguito alla proiezione,
nell'aula del "tribunale" dell'Aia, di un video che mostra l'uccisione
di sei giovani da parte di un gruppo di uomini armati, indicati come
membri della unità paramilitare serba degli "Scorpioni".
Si noti bene:
* le esecuzioni mostrate nel video sarebbero state effettuate a
Srebrenica nel luglio 1995 - ma di questo non c'è alcuna certezza;
* il video mostrerebbe sei esecuzioni su circa ottomila che si dice
sarebbero state effettuate in quella occasione: delle altre
settemilanovecentonovantatre non c'è alcuna documentazione;
* ben strano è il comportamento di questi criminali che riprendono se
stessi nell'atto di compiere il crimine; per di più, per rafforzare lo
scandalo, i video contengono anche riprese di un pope ortodosso che
benedice gli assassini;
* i responsabili delle esecuzioni sarebbero uomini di un corpo
paramilitare detto "gli Scorpioni", formato in Slavonia e del quale si
sa che partecipò volontariamente alla guerra in Kosovo nel 1999
(quattro anni dopo "Srebrenica"), effettivamente commettendo dei
crimini per i quali furono allontanati dal Kosovo e poi denunciati e
processati; tuttavia, nel 1995 non c'era alcun rapporto tra questi
Scorpioni e la Repubblica di Serbia o la Federazione jugoslava;
* i media e gli accusatori dell'Aia alludono ad una relazione tra
questi criminali e Milosevic ovvero la sua "catena di comando", benchè
non esista alcuna relazione evidente o argomento utilizzabile per questo.
Riportiamo alcune analisi dettagliate delle udienze dell'Aia in cui è
stato mostrato il video, tratte dal sito
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/ che segue il "processo"
costantemente e con lo spirito critico del quale i giornalisti
nostrani sono perfettamente privi. (a cura di Italo Slavo)]
LINK: READ THE FORBIDDEN SREBRENICA REPORT
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm
---
STEVANOVIC DAY 9: MR. NICE SHOWS FALSIFIED DOCUMENTS AND AN ALLEGED
SREBRENICA VIDEO AT MILOSEVIC TRIAL
www.slobodan-milosevic.org – June 1, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice continued his cross-examination of Serbia's
former Assistant Interior Minister, Gen Obrad Stevanovic, on Wednesday
at the Hague Tribunal's trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
Mr. Nice focused the cross-examination on Srebrenica. The prosecutor
unsuccessfully tried to establish a link between the Serbian MUP and
the July 1995 events in Srebrenica.
Mr. Nice asserted that Stevanovic was entrusted with the task of
escorting the DUTCHBAT peacekeepers from the Serbian border at
Bratunac to the Serbian border with Croatia only because he could be
trusted to keep quiet the knowledge of massacres, a charge which the
witness vehemently denied. Gen. Stevanovic explained that he escorted
the DUTCHBAT soldiers through Serbia because they asked for a police
escort.
Mr. Nice spent a great deal of time reading documents allegedly seized
from facilities in Republika Srpska in 2004. These documents
identified a unit called "Skorpions" as being part of the Serbian MUP.
Stevanovic said that the Serbian MUP had no "Skorpions" unit, and had
no idea what the documents were all about.
According to the documents, these "Skorpions" were sent to the
Srebrenica area in the summer of 1995. Mr. Nice claimed that the
commander of the "Skorpions" was Slobodan Medic, and that the
Scorpions had been tasked with guarding the Djeletovci oil fields in
Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK). Gen. Stevanovic had no idea what Mr.
Nice was even talking about and consistently denied that the Serbian
MUP had a unit called "Skorpions."
The Milosevic trial has already heard evidence about the "Skorpions"
from the former Deputy Defense Minister of the RSK, Mr. Milan
Milanovic who testified as a prosecution witness.
Beginning on page 27492 of the 14 October 2003 transcript, Milanovic
testified that he personally recruited Slobodan Medic to establish the
"Skorpions" in order to guard oil fields in the RSK. Take a look at
the following excerpt from Milanovic's testimony:
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: Let's move on to the next topic. You testified
about a Skorpions unit which was led by Slobodan Medic. Where were
they from? Are they from your area? [i.e. the RSK]
MILAN MILANOVIC: Yes.
MILOSEVIC: Did you engage them?
MILANOVIC: Where?
MILOSEVIC: Did you engage them in your area?
MILANOVIC: As far as the area is concerned, I proposed, as is stated
in this text, in my statement, I proposed to the director of the oil
company that they secure the oil fields that were on the separation lines.
MILOSEVIC: Does that mean that you personally found them, rallied
them, organised them, and engaged them privately to protect the oil
fields?
MILANOVIC: That is not true.
MILOSEVIC: Well, who engaged them, then, to defend the oil fields in
your area?
MILANOVIC: I proposed Slobodan Medic as the person who should be in
charge of that security, and then they were under the director of the
oil company.
MILOSEVIC: So this was a security unit for the oil company, the head
of which you yourself proposed.
MILANOVIC: Correct.
MILOSEVIC: Why did it happen that you chose Medic to be at the head of
the security detail in the oil company in your area?
MILANOVIC: Having toured the area, I realised that the oil fields were
in jeopardy as they were along the very confrontation line. And it is
common knowledge that if a shell were to fall, this would cause an
ecological disaster. I toured the area. I met this young man for the
first time. He was proposed to me by several people. And I even
remember that I asked Badza even whether he had anything against this,
and he said he didn't.
This young man was about 22 or 23 years old at the time, and he
organised the task well and continued working at it until the end of 1996.
MILOSEVIC: But you also sent them to Bosnia and Herzegovina, didn't you?
MILANOVIC: I didn't send them. The command of the [VRSK] corps sent
them to accomplish various assignments, and most of those units that
went outside the area I would visit very frequently.
MILOSEVIC: Well, as deputy defence minister, I assume you had a
decisive say. As you appointed Medic yourself, you would decide where
you would send him.
MILANOVIC: As you know yourself, according to the law on defence, the
ministry does not have the right to order the engagement of the army.
This is a right vested in the government and the command.
MILOSEVIC: Very well. So the government [of the RSK] sent them.
MILANOVIC: Yes, the [RSK] government and the [RSK] army command.
/// END TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ///
As you can see from the transcript of Milanovic's testimony, the
"Skorpions" were not a unit of the Serbian MUP, they were a unit of
the Army of Republika Srpska Krajina (VRSK). Milanovic, as deputy
Defense Minister of the RSK, would certainly know which units the RSK
had under its command. Milanovic, as the Deputy Defense Minister of
the RSK, personally appointed Slobodan Medic to lead the unit, the
Serbian MUP had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The fact that Mr. Nice had so many different documents containing the
same wrong information suggests that somebody is forging documents in
order to bolster the prosecution's case.
At any rate, the whole thing confused the witness, he couldn't figure
out why the documents referred to the "Skorpions" as being a unit of
the Serbian MUP. He asked for permission to call the MUP headquarters
in Belgrade to see if there any records about the "Skorpions" there.
He received permission from the Trial Chamber, and he will tell what
he found out during his testimony on Thursday.
Following Mr. Nice's exhibition of the falsified documents, he played
a video that he claimed showed the "Skorpions" executing six
Srebrenica Muslims. Of course, if the video comes from the same source
as the documents, it's liable to be nothing more than actors playing
out a scene for the camera.
The tape shows men in various types of uniforms; some with Serbian
flags on their caps, shooting prisoners whose hands are tied behind
their backs and who appear to have been beaten.
In one scene, a group of prisoners is lying on the floor. One of the
uniformed men kicks a prisoner in the head and curses at him.
A voice could be heard telling the prisoners, "when you were killing
Serbs you didn't wait." This would seem to indicate that the men being
executed were identified as Muslim war criminals who had previously
massacred Serbs in Srebrenica, and in the surrounding villages.
Next is the execution scene, the prisoners are lined-up and shot.
After three men are shot, a man's voice is heard complaining that the
battery in the camera is dying.
The varying types of uniforms coupled with the lack of insignia on the
uniforms suggest that this is some sort of paramilitary group. Nothing
on the tape indicates that the men seen shooting the prisoners are
actually members of the "Skorpions" unit. For his part, Gen.
Stevanovic did not recognize a single man on the tape.
Mr. Nice did nothing to authenticate the tape. He did not say who had
shot it, whose possession it has been in for the last ten years, or
where he got it.
After the prosecutor dealt with Srebrenica, he briefly questioned Gen.
Stevanovic about events at the Dubrava Prison.
Mr. Nice is expected to complete his cross-examination tomorrow. Since
most of Mr. Nice's cross-examination has had nothing to do with
evidence raised during the examination-in-chief it is logical to
assume that re-examination will take quite a while. Gen. Stevanovic
probably won't conclude his testimony until sometime next week.
---
STEVANOVIC DAY 10: THE CROSS-EXAMINATION CONTINUES
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - June 2, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Serbia's former assistant interior minister, Gen. Obrad Stevanovic,
began his tenth day of testimony at the Hague Tribunal's trial of
Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday.
Mr. Nice cross-examined Stevanovic about events at the Dubrava Prison,
and about notes written in his diary.
As far as the Dubrava Prison was concerned, Mr. Nice relied on a
statement that a deputy warden gave to Serbian investigators shortly
after the incident.
The deputy warden claimed that a special MUP unit arrived at the
prison at 5 AM on May 22, 1999. Mr. Nice claims that the MUP unit came
to the prison to massacre prisoners, although there is nothing in the
deputy warden's statement that says anybody was massacred.
Gen. Stevanovic was not at the prison, and did not know what a special
MUP unit would have been doing there. He told Mr. Nice to ask the Pec
SUP for information about that. It is possible that the MUP came to
the prison to stop the jailbreak that Col. Paponjak testified about,
but Gen. Stevanovic has already testified that he doesn't know
anything about that.
The deputy warden's statement is vague. He spoke about the evacuation
of the prisoners, but did not mention where they were taken. He only
says they were "taken in an unknown direction." His statement also
failed to mention all of the occasions when NATO bombed the prison,
which led Mr. Nice to claim that the prison had not been bombed.
Mr. Nice claims that any mention of NATO bombing after May 21st is "a
cynical attempt to blame NATO for the atrocities committed by the
Serbian MUP at the Dubrava Prison." Mr. Nice is barking-up the wrong
tree, the Milosevic trial has already seen videotape evidence proving
that the prison was bombed after May 21st. Col. Paponjak brought a
videotape proving that the prison had been bombed on the 24th of May
1999. Furthermore, there have been prosecution witnesses, such as
Jackie Rowland, who testified that the prison was indeed bombed by
NATO after May 21st.
The prosecutor also cross-examined Stevanovic about the contents of
his diary. Stevanovic wrote the diary for his own purposes, so the
wording was rather vague in places. It contained sentence fragments
and short notes that he jotted down for his own use.
In one passage the diary read: "They work perfidiously on that issue.
-- They will justify the aggression with evidence of crimes --
Clean-up -- Simultaneous clean up of the territory -- We will find it
harder (illegible) once the mission arrives -- The clean-up of the
terrain is the most important."
Mr. Nice claimed that this passage was a reference to a conspiracy to
hide evidence of crimes committed by the army and police.
Gen. Stevanovic claimed that this was a reference to the activities of
the KLA. He said that the terrain needed to be cleaned-up so that the
KLA could not create mass-graves and stage atrocities out of their war
casualties, and then palm them off as evidence of mass killings that
would serve to justify the NATO aggression.
The KLA has a history of staging its war dead to create the false
impression of a massacre. A case in point is Racak, and Gen.
Stevanovic said they did the same thing at Pusto Selo and Izbica.
Obviously Stevanovic was not referring to the police's activity.
Nobody ever classifies their own activity as "perfidious" or uses the
word "they" to refer to themselves.
Mr. Nice was simply exploiting vaguely worded notes that Stevanovic
jotted down in his diary to concoct elaborate conspiracy theories
about the Serbian police; conspiracy theories, which the witness
ripped apart.
Frustrated at his lack of success, the prosecutor resorted to insults
and claimed that the witness was "ready to lie in order to protect
this accused." The witness naturally denied this claim.
At the end of the hearing Stevanovic was reminded to make inquiries
about the "Skorpions" with the MUP headquarters in Belgrade over the
adjournment. Gen. Stevanovic will continue his testimony when the
trial resumes next Monday.
---
WHO ARE THE SKORPIONS: SERBIAN VOLUNTEERS OR NATO AGENTS?
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - June 5, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
A videotape depicting the execution of prisoners of war was played at
the trial of Slobodan Milosevic last Wednesday. The prosecution claims
the victims were Muslims from Srebrenica, and the executioners were a
unit of the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) known as the Skorpions.
I have been getting a lot of e-mail asking me about this Skorpion
group. The short answer is that the Skorpions were not a unit of the
MUP of Serbia in 1995, which is when the videotape was said to have
been filmed.
Natasa Kandic, the director of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law
Center, told the June 3rd edition of Belgrade's Politika newspaper
that she is the one who provided the ICTY prosecution with the copy of
the videotape.
The Skorpions were a volunteer unit from in Djeletovci in Eastern
Slavonia. Their leader was a man named Slobodan Medic aka "Boca." The
Skorpions were established on the initiative of Milan Milanovic, the
Deputy Defense Minister of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK).
Milanovic, who testified as a prosecution witness at the Milosevic
trial on October 14, 2003, claims that he proposed to the director of
the Krajina Petroleum Industries oil company that Medic should
establish a security force to guard the Djeletovci oil fields, and
that is how the Skorpions were established in May of 1992.
The Skorpions also participated in other operations. The Skorpions
were essentially a mercenary group. They went to the Bihac area, and
while they were in Bihac they were subordinated to the command of the
Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, according to Milanovic's
testimony.
Milanovic testified that the Skorpions went to the area of Trnovo in
Bosnia-Herzigovina in 1994. While they were there, he said, they were
subordinated to the MUP of Republika Srpska.
On May 14, 1996 the Skorpions were forced to vacate their base at
Djeletovci by UNTAES forces. According to statements given by Slobodan
Medic the Skorpions were disbanded at this point.
By all accounts, the Skorpions were inactive until NATO attacked
Yugoslavia in 1999. When NATO began bombing and a state of war was
declared in Yugoslavia, a mobilization order was issued. The
government sought volunteers to help with the war effort, and this is
when the Skorpions reconstituted themselves and allegedly became
involved with the Serbian Interior Ministry – four years after
Srebrenica (although nobody had any idea that they had anything to do
with Srebrenica until the videotape surfaced).
According to Milan Milanovic's testimony, when NATO attacked
Yugoslavia, the Chief of the Public Security Department (RJB) Gen.
Vlastimir Djordjevic, called him asking if he could get any volunteers
to help out in Kosovo.
Milanovic says that Slobodan Medic also called him asking if he could
arrange for the Skorpions to go to Kosovo as volunteers. Medic
specifically said that he wanted the Skorpions to go as part of the
MUP, and not as part of the Yugoslav Army (VJ).
Milan Milanovic testified that he proposed Medic and the Skorpions to
Gen. Djordjevic. The Skorpions went to Kosovo right after the bombing
began.
According to the February 14, 2003 testimony of prosecution witness
Gen. Aleksandar Vasiljevic, who served as the former head of military
security in the Yugoslav Army, the Skorpions were affiliated in some
way with the SAJ (anti-terrorist unit of the MUP). Slobodan Medic has
also given statements claiming that the Skorpions were used as a
reserve unit of the SAJ.
For its part, the SAJ denies that it used the Skorpions as a reserve
unit, or that it even had a reserve unit.
Unfortunately, some members of the Skorpions committed serious crimes
against Albanian civilians in Kosovo. In May 1999 the Serbian
authorities launched an investigation against two members of the
Skorpions, Dejan Demirovic and Sasa Cvjetan, on the suspicion that
they had massacred 19 Albanian women and children in the village of
Podujevo. The investigation was led by Dusko Klikovac, a homicide
detective at the Nis SUP. Klikovac brought Demirovic and Cvjetan in
for questioning, but he did not have enough evidence to hold them.
At that point Gen. Djordjevic ordered Medic and the Skorpions out of
Kosovo, but Slobodan Medic is rumored to have returned to Kosovo later
on, according to Milanovic's testimony.
The district court in Prokuplje filed formal criminal charges against
Demirovic and Cvjetan in 2002 when Goran Stoparic, a former member of
the Skorpions, agreed to testify that he had witnessed the men
perpetrate the killings.
On March 17, 2004 Sasa Cvjetan was convicted of war crimes and
sentenced to 20 years in prison. Dejan Demirovic is currently living
in Windsor, Ontario. The Canadian government is refusing to honor the
Serbian Government's requests for his extradition.
Demirovic is not a Canadian citizen, and the Canadian government says
he entered Canada illegally. It is strange that the Canadian
government is so keen on protecting him. One wonders if Demirovic
isn't some sort of spy.
It is unlikely that Demirovic would have gone to Canada unless he was
sure that the Canadian government would give him protection. He has
family in Canada, so Canada is the first place that somebody would
come looking for him. It would have been more logical for him to go to
some corrupt little Central American country where he could bribe the
police to ignore the Interpol warrants that are out for his arrest.
If Gen. Vasiljevic is right, and the Skorpions were in some way
connected to the SAJ, then maybe it was them who took those bodies to
the SAJ base in Batajnica.
NATO bombed every SAJ base in Serbia except for the SAJ base in
Batajnica. The regular SAJ members evacuated the Batajnica base
thinking that it would be bombed too.
If the Skorpions were working with NATO, and if they had infiltrated
the SAJ, then they would have had access to the base in Batajnica, and
they would be secure in the knowledge that NATO would not attack the base.
The idea that regular policemen could dig-up bodies in Kosovo and
transport them to Batajnica without being noticed and subsequently
attacked by the KLA, or getting bombed by NATO, defies belief. If NATO
and the KLA were in on this, then everything becomes much more plausible.
The KLA could supply the bodies and the freezer trucks. The Skorpions
would then take the bodies to the Batajnica base and bury them. They
would not have to worry about being attacked by the KLA or NATO, and
their SAJ credentials would get them past regular Serbian police. If
the need arose, NATO could send jets to fly over an area so that any
Serbian forces who might be around would seek shelter.
NATO would know that the bodies were buried at the base, and they
could reveal this "incriminating evidence" whenever they needed to. As
it happens they chose to reveal this when the Serbian government
needed political justification to illegally hand Milosevic over to the
Hague Tribunal in 2001. Nobody said a single word about bodies being
taken from Kosovo and buried in Serbia-proper before that.
According to the testimony of protected witness B-071, who testified
against Milosevic on April 2, 2003, the Skorpions wore camouflage NATO
uniforms when he saw them in Bosnia during the war.
Of course the idea that the Skorpions were a fifth column working for
NATO to generate "evidence" of Serbian crimes to justify the
aggression is speculation on my part. Only a full and transparent
investigation will reveal who brought those bodies from Kosovo to
Batajnica, but I would not be surprised if that investigation led to
the Skorpions.
Something similar can be said about the videotape. It is strange that
somebody would make a videotape of themselves executing of prisoners
of war. Only an exceptionally stupid criminal would film himself
committing such a horrific crime. It is difficult to believe that
nobody who took part in the killings depicted on that tape would
object to the video being made, unless the whole idea was to make a
tape. On the tape the cameraman is heard complaining that the battery
in the camera is dying and telling the other men to carry on with the
executions anyway – why would he think the camera going dead would
cause the men to stop the killing?
---
STEVANOVIC DAY 11: SKORPIONS, RACAK, AND THE CORPSES FROM IZBICA
www.slobodan-milosevic.org – June 6, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
The marathon testimony of Gen. Obrad Stevanovic entered its 11th day
as the trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed on Monday.
Stevanovic, who is Serbia's former Assistant Interior Minister,
testified for almost seven days in chief, and has been cross-examined
by the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice for more than four days now.
Over the course of the cross-examination, a videotape was played
depicting the killing of six men who Mr. Nice claims are Muslims from
Srebrenica. Mr. Nice claims that the men carrying out the executions
were members of a group known as the Skorpions.
In spite of massive evidence to the contrary, Mr. Nice persisted in
the lie that the Skorpions were a unit of the Interior Ministry of
Serbia at the time of the killings.
Gen. Stevanovic strongly denied that the Skorpions were a unit of the
Serbian Interior Ministry. The testimonies of prosecution witnesses,
such as Milan Milanovic, corroborate Stevanovic's claim that the
Skorpions were not a unit of the Serbian Interior Ministry. The
Skorpions are not even from Serbia; they're all men from Eastern Slavonia.
Stevanovic says that the Skorpions were never a unit of the Serbian
Interior Ministry, although he does claim that several members of the
Skorpions served as volunteers in a reserve unit of the SAJ during the
1999 NATO bombing. Stevanovic denied that the Skorpions had been
accepted by the SAJ as a whole unit.
Stevanovic also pointed out that the SAJ unit that some members of the
Skorpions belonged to was expelled from Kosovo after two of its
members were implicated in the massacre of 19 Albanian civilians in
Podujevo.
In an apparent effort to mislead the court and the public, Mr. Nice
misrepresented the evidence of Milan Milanovic. Mr. Nice wrongly
claimed that Milanovic had testified that General Djordjevic invited
the Skorpions back to Kosovo after initially expelling them.
Milanovic never said any such thing. Milanovic said that the Skorpions
were expelled by Djordjevic and that only Slobodan Medic came back. He
certainly did not say that Djordjevic invited the Skorpions, or even
Medic, to return. All he said was that Medic went back after the
Skorpions were expelled, not that anybody invited him back, or that
anybody other than Medic went back.
The prosecutor continued his cross-examination asking Gen. Stevanovic
questions about Racak. Mr. Nice claimed that the fact that police
found no weapons on the bodies in Racak meant that they could not have
died in combat.
Stevanovic had to repeat, until he was blue in the face, that the
police did not have access to the bodies until after the villagers
moved them to the mosque. There was never a chance to directly
investigate the actual scene to see if weapons there. All the police
could do was go by the fact that somebody was shooting at them, that
they shot back, and that gunpowder was on the hands of these corpses.
Mr. Nice wasted a lot of time asking the witness questions that he
knew could not be answered. For example, he showed the witness a paper
that Natasa Kandic wrote, and then asked him to find the police report
proving that an investigation had been conducted regarding the crime
alleged by Ms. Kandic.
It is impossible that anybody could know about each and every police
report filed at the Serbian Interior Ministry. The witness is the
former assistant interior minister; he's not Rainman.
Mr. Nice did bring-up something interesting regarding the transport of
bodies from Izbica to graves in central Serbia. One of the corpses
exhumed at Izbica was found at Petrovo Selo. The Serbian authorities
have a written record of exhuming the corpse in order to perform a
post mortem; they even issued a death certificate, all of this
information is in the public record.
The fact that the body of this person was taken to Petrovo Selo and
re-buried is really incredible. There is no reason on Earth for Serbia
to hide the body after they performed an autopsy, took pictures of the
corpse, and issued a death certificate, and then put all of the
information in the public records for anybody to find it.
There can't be any motive to hide a body after you put it in the
public record that the person was killed. This example shows that the
motive to bury bodies in central Serbia was to incriminate Serbia, not
to hide evidence of killings.
Mr. Nice will continue with the cross-examination when Gen. Stevanovic
continues his testimony tomorrow.
[ Davvero impressionante la campagna di stampa scatenata negli ultimi
giorni all'unisono dai media occidentali, in seguito alla proiezione,
nell'aula del "tribunale" dell'Aia, di un video che mostra l'uccisione
di sei giovani da parte di un gruppo di uomini armati, indicati come
membri della unità paramilitare serba degli "Scorpioni".
Si noti bene:
* le esecuzioni mostrate nel video sarebbero state effettuate a
Srebrenica nel luglio 1995 - ma di questo non c'è alcuna certezza;
* il video mostrerebbe sei esecuzioni su circa ottomila che si dice
sarebbero state effettuate in quella occasione: delle altre
settemilanovecentonovantatre non c'è alcuna documentazione;
* ben strano è il comportamento di questi criminali che riprendono se
stessi nell'atto di compiere il crimine; per di più, per rafforzare lo
scandalo, i video contengono anche riprese di un pope ortodosso che
benedice gli assassini;
* i responsabili delle esecuzioni sarebbero uomini di un corpo
paramilitare detto "gli Scorpioni", formato in Slavonia e del quale si
sa che partecipò volontariamente alla guerra in Kosovo nel 1999
(quattro anni dopo "Srebrenica"), effettivamente commettendo dei
crimini per i quali furono allontanati dal Kosovo e poi denunciati e
processati; tuttavia, nel 1995 non c'era alcun rapporto tra questi
Scorpioni e la Repubblica di Serbia o la Federazione jugoslava;
* i media e gli accusatori dell'Aia alludono ad una relazione tra
questi criminali e Milosevic ovvero la sua "catena di comando", benchè
non esista alcuna relazione evidente o argomento utilizzabile per questo.
Riportiamo alcune analisi dettagliate delle udienze dell'Aia in cui è
stato mostrato il video, tratte dal sito
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/ che segue il "processo"
costantemente e con lo spirito critico del quale i giornalisti
nostrani sono perfettamente privi. (a cura di Italo Slavo)]
LINK: READ THE FORBIDDEN SREBRENICA REPORT
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm
---
STEVANOVIC DAY 9: MR. NICE SHOWS FALSIFIED DOCUMENTS AND AN ALLEGED
SREBRENICA VIDEO AT MILOSEVIC TRIAL
www.slobodan-milosevic.org – June 1, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice continued his cross-examination of Serbia's
former Assistant Interior Minister, Gen Obrad Stevanovic, on Wednesday
at the Hague Tribunal's trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
Mr. Nice focused the cross-examination on Srebrenica. The prosecutor
unsuccessfully tried to establish a link between the Serbian MUP and
the July 1995 events in Srebrenica.
Mr. Nice asserted that Stevanovic was entrusted with the task of
escorting the DUTCHBAT peacekeepers from the Serbian border at
Bratunac to the Serbian border with Croatia only because he could be
trusted to keep quiet the knowledge of massacres, a charge which the
witness vehemently denied. Gen. Stevanovic explained that he escorted
the DUTCHBAT soldiers through Serbia because they asked for a police
escort.
Mr. Nice spent a great deal of time reading documents allegedly seized
from facilities in Republika Srpska in 2004. These documents
identified a unit called "Skorpions" as being part of the Serbian MUP.
Stevanovic said that the Serbian MUP had no "Skorpions" unit, and had
no idea what the documents were all about.
According to the documents, these "Skorpions" were sent to the
Srebrenica area in the summer of 1995. Mr. Nice claimed that the
commander of the "Skorpions" was Slobodan Medic, and that the
Scorpions had been tasked with guarding the Djeletovci oil fields in
Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK). Gen. Stevanovic had no idea what Mr.
Nice was even talking about and consistently denied that the Serbian
MUP had a unit called "Skorpions."
The Milosevic trial has already heard evidence about the "Skorpions"
from the former Deputy Defense Minister of the RSK, Mr. Milan
Milanovic who testified as a prosecution witness.
Beginning on page 27492 of the 14 October 2003 transcript, Milanovic
testified that he personally recruited Slobodan Medic to establish the
"Skorpions" in order to guard oil fields in the RSK. Take a look at
the following excerpt from Milanovic's testimony:
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: Let's move on to the next topic. You testified
about a Skorpions unit which was led by Slobodan Medic. Where were
they from? Are they from your area? [i.e. the RSK]
MILAN MILANOVIC: Yes.
MILOSEVIC: Did you engage them?
MILANOVIC: Where?
MILOSEVIC: Did you engage them in your area?
MILANOVIC: As far as the area is concerned, I proposed, as is stated
in this text, in my statement, I proposed to the director of the oil
company that they secure the oil fields that were on the separation lines.
MILOSEVIC: Does that mean that you personally found them, rallied
them, organised them, and engaged them privately to protect the oil
fields?
MILANOVIC: That is not true.
MILOSEVIC: Well, who engaged them, then, to defend the oil fields in
your area?
MILANOVIC: I proposed Slobodan Medic as the person who should be in
charge of that security, and then they were under the director of the
oil company.
MILOSEVIC: So this was a security unit for the oil company, the head
of which you yourself proposed.
MILANOVIC: Correct.
MILOSEVIC: Why did it happen that you chose Medic to be at the head of
the security detail in the oil company in your area?
MILANOVIC: Having toured the area, I realised that the oil fields were
in jeopardy as they were along the very confrontation line. And it is
common knowledge that if a shell were to fall, this would cause an
ecological disaster. I toured the area. I met this young man for the
first time. He was proposed to me by several people. And I even
remember that I asked Badza even whether he had anything against this,
and he said he didn't.
This young man was about 22 or 23 years old at the time, and he
organised the task well and continued working at it until the end of 1996.
MILOSEVIC: But you also sent them to Bosnia and Herzegovina, didn't you?
MILANOVIC: I didn't send them. The command of the [VRSK] corps sent
them to accomplish various assignments, and most of those units that
went outside the area I would visit very frequently.
MILOSEVIC: Well, as deputy defence minister, I assume you had a
decisive say. As you appointed Medic yourself, you would decide where
you would send him.
MILANOVIC: As you know yourself, according to the law on defence, the
ministry does not have the right to order the engagement of the army.
This is a right vested in the government and the command.
MILOSEVIC: Very well. So the government [of the RSK] sent them.
MILANOVIC: Yes, the [RSK] government and the [RSK] army command.
/// END TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ///
As you can see from the transcript of Milanovic's testimony, the
"Skorpions" were not a unit of the Serbian MUP, they were a unit of
the Army of Republika Srpska Krajina (VRSK). Milanovic, as deputy
Defense Minister of the RSK, would certainly know which units the RSK
had under its command. Milanovic, as the Deputy Defense Minister of
the RSK, personally appointed Slobodan Medic to lead the unit, the
Serbian MUP had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The fact that Mr. Nice had so many different documents containing the
same wrong information suggests that somebody is forging documents in
order to bolster the prosecution's case.
At any rate, the whole thing confused the witness, he couldn't figure
out why the documents referred to the "Skorpions" as being a unit of
the Serbian MUP. He asked for permission to call the MUP headquarters
in Belgrade to see if there any records about the "Skorpions" there.
He received permission from the Trial Chamber, and he will tell what
he found out during his testimony on Thursday.
Following Mr. Nice's exhibition of the falsified documents, he played
a video that he claimed showed the "Skorpions" executing six
Srebrenica Muslims. Of course, if the video comes from the same source
as the documents, it's liable to be nothing more than actors playing
out a scene for the camera.
The tape shows men in various types of uniforms; some with Serbian
flags on their caps, shooting prisoners whose hands are tied behind
their backs and who appear to have been beaten.
In one scene, a group of prisoners is lying on the floor. One of the
uniformed men kicks a prisoner in the head and curses at him.
A voice could be heard telling the prisoners, "when you were killing
Serbs you didn't wait." This would seem to indicate that the men being
executed were identified as Muslim war criminals who had previously
massacred Serbs in Srebrenica, and in the surrounding villages.
Next is the execution scene, the prisoners are lined-up and shot.
After three men are shot, a man's voice is heard complaining that the
battery in the camera is dying.
The varying types of uniforms coupled with the lack of insignia on the
uniforms suggest that this is some sort of paramilitary group. Nothing
on the tape indicates that the men seen shooting the prisoners are
actually members of the "Skorpions" unit. For his part, Gen.
Stevanovic did not recognize a single man on the tape.
Mr. Nice did nothing to authenticate the tape. He did not say who had
shot it, whose possession it has been in for the last ten years, or
where he got it.
After the prosecutor dealt with Srebrenica, he briefly questioned Gen.
Stevanovic about events at the Dubrava Prison.
Mr. Nice is expected to complete his cross-examination tomorrow. Since
most of Mr. Nice's cross-examination has had nothing to do with
evidence raised during the examination-in-chief it is logical to
assume that re-examination will take quite a while. Gen. Stevanovic
probably won't conclude his testimony until sometime next week.
---
STEVANOVIC DAY 10: THE CROSS-EXAMINATION CONTINUES
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - June 2, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Serbia's former assistant interior minister, Gen. Obrad Stevanovic,
began his tenth day of testimony at the Hague Tribunal's trial of
Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday.
Mr. Nice cross-examined Stevanovic about events at the Dubrava Prison,
and about notes written in his diary.
As far as the Dubrava Prison was concerned, Mr. Nice relied on a
statement that a deputy warden gave to Serbian investigators shortly
after the incident.
The deputy warden claimed that a special MUP unit arrived at the
prison at 5 AM on May 22, 1999. Mr. Nice claims that the MUP unit came
to the prison to massacre prisoners, although there is nothing in the
deputy warden's statement that says anybody was massacred.
Gen. Stevanovic was not at the prison, and did not know what a special
MUP unit would have been doing there. He told Mr. Nice to ask the Pec
SUP for information about that. It is possible that the MUP came to
the prison to stop the jailbreak that Col. Paponjak testified about,
but Gen. Stevanovic has already testified that he doesn't know
anything about that.
The deputy warden's statement is vague. He spoke about the evacuation
of the prisoners, but did not mention where they were taken. He only
says they were "taken in an unknown direction." His statement also
failed to mention all of the occasions when NATO bombed the prison,
which led Mr. Nice to claim that the prison had not been bombed.
Mr. Nice claims that any mention of NATO bombing after May 21st is "a
cynical attempt to blame NATO for the atrocities committed by the
Serbian MUP at the Dubrava Prison." Mr. Nice is barking-up the wrong
tree, the Milosevic trial has already seen videotape evidence proving
that the prison was bombed after May 21st. Col. Paponjak brought a
videotape proving that the prison had been bombed on the 24th of May
1999. Furthermore, there have been prosecution witnesses, such as
Jackie Rowland, who testified that the prison was indeed bombed by
NATO after May 21st.
The prosecutor also cross-examined Stevanovic about the contents of
his diary. Stevanovic wrote the diary for his own purposes, so the
wording was rather vague in places. It contained sentence fragments
and short notes that he jotted down for his own use.
In one passage the diary read: "They work perfidiously on that issue.
-- They will justify the aggression with evidence of crimes --
Clean-up -- Simultaneous clean up of the territory -- We will find it
harder (illegible) once the mission arrives -- The clean-up of the
terrain is the most important."
Mr. Nice claimed that this passage was a reference to a conspiracy to
hide evidence of crimes committed by the army and police.
Gen. Stevanovic claimed that this was a reference to the activities of
the KLA. He said that the terrain needed to be cleaned-up so that the
KLA could not create mass-graves and stage atrocities out of their war
casualties, and then palm them off as evidence of mass killings that
would serve to justify the NATO aggression.
The KLA has a history of staging its war dead to create the false
impression of a massacre. A case in point is Racak, and Gen.
Stevanovic said they did the same thing at Pusto Selo and Izbica.
Obviously Stevanovic was not referring to the police's activity.
Nobody ever classifies their own activity as "perfidious" or uses the
word "they" to refer to themselves.
Mr. Nice was simply exploiting vaguely worded notes that Stevanovic
jotted down in his diary to concoct elaborate conspiracy theories
about the Serbian police; conspiracy theories, which the witness
ripped apart.
Frustrated at his lack of success, the prosecutor resorted to insults
and claimed that the witness was "ready to lie in order to protect
this accused." The witness naturally denied this claim.
At the end of the hearing Stevanovic was reminded to make inquiries
about the "Skorpions" with the MUP headquarters in Belgrade over the
adjournment. Gen. Stevanovic will continue his testimony when the
trial resumes next Monday.
---
WHO ARE THE SKORPIONS: SERBIAN VOLUNTEERS OR NATO AGENTS?
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - June 5, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
A videotape depicting the execution of prisoners of war was played at
the trial of Slobodan Milosevic last Wednesday. The prosecution claims
the victims were Muslims from Srebrenica, and the executioners were a
unit of the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) known as the Skorpions.
I have been getting a lot of e-mail asking me about this Skorpion
group. The short answer is that the Skorpions were not a unit of the
MUP of Serbia in 1995, which is when the videotape was said to have
been filmed.
Natasa Kandic, the director of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law
Center, told the June 3rd edition of Belgrade's Politika newspaper
that she is the one who provided the ICTY prosecution with the copy of
the videotape.
The Skorpions were a volunteer unit from in Djeletovci in Eastern
Slavonia. Their leader was a man named Slobodan Medic aka "Boca." The
Skorpions were established on the initiative of Milan Milanovic, the
Deputy Defense Minister of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK).
Milanovic, who testified as a prosecution witness at the Milosevic
trial on October 14, 2003, claims that he proposed to the director of
the Krajina Petroleum Industries oil company that Medic should
establish a security force to guard the Djeletovci oil fields, and
that is how the Skorpions were established in May of 1992.
The Skorpions also participated in other operations. The Skorpions
were essentially a mercenary group. They went to the Bihac area, and
while they were in Bihac they were subordinated to the command of the
Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, according to Milanovic's
testimony.
Milanovic testified that the Skorpions went to the area of Trnovo in
Bosnia-Herzigovina in 1994. While they were there, he said, they were
subordinated to the MUP of Republika Srpska.
On May 14, 1996 the Skorpions were forced to vacate their base at
Djeletovci by UNTAES forces. According to statements given by Slobodan
Medic the Skorpions were disbanded at this point.
By all accounts, the Skorpions were inactive until NATO attacked
Yugoslavia in 1999. When NATO began bombing and a state of war was
declared in Yugoslavia, a mobilization order was issued. The
government sought volunteers to help with the war effort, and this is
when the Skorpions reconstituted themselves and allegedly became
involved with the Serbian Interior Ministry – four years after
Srebrenica (although nobody had any idea that they had anything to do
with Srebrenica until the videotape surfaced).
According to Milan Milanovic's testimony, when NATO attacked
Yugoslavia, the Chief of the Public Security Department (RJB) Gen.
Vlastimir Djordjevic, called him asking if he could get any volunteers
to help out in Kosovo.
Milanovic says that Slobodan Medic also called him asking if he could
arrange for the Skorpions to go to Kosovo as volunteers. Medic
specifically said that he wanted the Skorpions to go as part of the
MUP, and not as part of the Yugoslav Army (VJ).
Milan Milanovic testified that he proposed Medic and the Skorpions to
Gen. Djordjevic. The Skorpions went to Kosovo right after the bombing
began.
According to the February 14, 2003 testimony of prosecution witness
Gen. Aleksandar Vasiljevic, who served as the former head of military
security in the Yugoslav Army, the Skorpions were affiliated in some
way with the SAJ (anti-terrorist unit of the MUP). Slobodan Medic has
also given statements claiming that the Skorpions were used as a
reserve unit of the SAJ.
For its part, the SAJ denies that it used the Skorpions as a reserve
unit, or that it even had a reserve unit.
Unfortunately, some members of the Skorpions committed serious crimes
against Albanian civilians in Kosovo. In May 1999 the Serbian
authorities launched an investigation against two members of the
Skorpions, Dejan Demirovic and Sasa Cvjetan, on the suspicion that
they had massacred 19 Albanian women and children in the village of
Podujevo. The investigation was led by Dusko Klikovac, a homicide
detective at the Nis SUP. Klikovac brought Demirovic and Cvjetan in
for questioning, but he did not have enough evidence to hold them.
At that point Gen. Djordjevic ordered Medic and the Skorpions out of
Kosovo, but Slobodan Medic is rumored to have returned to Kosovo later
on, according to Milanovic's testimony.
The district court in Prokuplje filed formal criminal charges against
Demirovic and Cvjetan in 2002 when Goran Stoparic, a former member of
the Skorpions, agreed to testify that he had witnessed the men
perpetrate the killings.
On March 17, 2004 Sasa Cvjetan was convicted of war crimes and
sentenced to 20 years in prison. Dejan Demirovic is currently living
in Windsor, Ontario. The Canadian government is refusing to honor the
Serbian Government's requests for his extradition.
Demirovic is not a Canadian citizen, and the Canadian government says
he entered Canada illegally. It is strange that the Canadian
government is so keen on protecting him. One wonders if Demirovic
isn't some sort of spy.
It is unlikely that Demirovic would have gone to Canada unless he was
sure that the Canadian government would give him protection. He has
family in Canada, so Canada is the first place that somebody would
come looking for him. It would have been more logical for him to go to
some corrupt little Central American country where he could bribe the
police to ignore the Interpol warrants that are out for his arrest.
If Gen. Vasiljevic is right, and the Skorpions were in some way
connected to the SAJ, then maybe it was them who took those bodies to
the SAJ base in Batajnica.
NATO bombed every SAJ base in Serbia except for the SAJ base in
Batajnica. The regular SAJ members evacuated the Batajnica base
thinking that it would be bombed too.
If the Skorpions were working with NATO, and if they had infiltrated
the SAJ, then they would have had access to the base in Batajnica, and
they would be secure in the knowledge that NATO would not attack the base.
The idea that regular policemen could dig-up bodies in Kosovo and
transport them to Batajnica without being noticed and subsequently
attacked by the KLA, or getting bombed by NATO, defies belief. If NATO
and the KLA were in on this, then everything becomes much more plausible.
The KLA could supply the bodies and the freezer trucks. The Skorpions
would then take the bodies to the Batajnica base and bury them. They
would not have to worry about being attacked by the KLA or NATO, and
their SAJ credentials would get them past regular Serbian police. If
the need arose, NATO could send jets to fly over an area so that any
Serbian forces who might be around would seek shelter.
NATO would know that the bodies were buried at the base, and they
could reveal this "incriminating evidence" whenever they needed to. As
it happens they chose to reveal this when the Serbian government
needed political justification to illegally hand Milosevic over to the
Hague Tribunal in 2001. Nobody said a single word about bodies being
taken from Kosovo and buried in Serbia-proper before that.
According to the testimony of protected witness B-071, who testified
against Milosevic on April 2, 2003, the Skorpions wore camouflage NATO
uniforms when he saw them in Bosnia during the war.
Of course the idea that the Skorpions were a fifth column working for
NATO to generate "evidence" of Serbian crimes to justify the
aggression is speculation on my part. Only a full and transparent
investigation will reveal who brought those bodies from Kosovo to
Batajnica, but I would not be surprised if that investigation led to
the Skorpions.
Something similar can be said about the videotape. It is strange that
somebody would make a videotape of themselves executing of prisoners
of war. Only an exceptionally stupid criminal would film himself
committing such a horrific crime. It is difficult to believe that
nobody who took part in the killings depicted on that tape would
object to the video being made, unless the whole idea was to make a
tape. On the tape the cameraman is heard complaining that the battery
in the camera is dying and telling the other men to carry on with the
executions anyway – why would he think the camera going dead would
cause the men to stop the killing?
---
STEVANOVIC DAY 11: SKORPIONS, RACAK, AND THE CORPSES FROM IZBICA
www.slobodan-milosevic.org – June 6, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
The marathon testimony of Gen. Obrad Stevanovic entered its 11th day
as the trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed on Monday.
Stevanovic, who is Serbia's former Assistant Interior Minister,
testified for almost seven days in chief, and has been cross-examined
by the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice for more than four days now.
Over the course of the cross-examination, a videotape was played
depicting the killing of six men who Mr. Nice claims are Muslims from
Srebrenica. Mr. Nice claims that the men carrying out the executions
were members of a group known as the Skorpions.
In spite of massive evidence to the contrary, Mr. Nice persisted in
the lie that the Skorpions were a unit of the Interior Ministry of
Serbia at the time of the killings.
Gen. Stevanovic strongly denied that the Skorpions were a unit of the
Serbian Interior Ministry. The testimonies of prosecution witnesses,
such as Milan Milanovic, corroborate Stevanovic's claim that the
Skorpions were not a unit of the Serbian Interior Ministry. The
Skorpions are not even from Serbia; they're all men from Eastern Slavonia.
Stevanovic says that the Skorpions were never a unit of the Serbian
Interior Ministry, although he does claim that several members of the
Skorpions served as volunteers in a reserve unit of the SAJ during the
1999 NATO bombing. Stevanovic denied that the Skorpions had been
accepted by the SAJ as a whole unit.
Stevanovic also pointed out that the SAJ unit that some members of the
Skorpions belonged to was expelled from Kosovo after two of its
members were implicated in the massacre of 19 Albanian civilians in
Podujevo.
In an apparent effort to mislead the court and the public, Mr. Nice
misrepresented the evidence of Milan Milanovic. Mr. Nice wrongly
claimed that Milanovic had testified that General Djordjevic invited
the Skorpions back to Kosovo after initially expelling them.
Milanovic never said any such thing. Milanovic said that the Skorpions
were expelled by Djordjevic and that only Slobodan Medic came back. He
certainly did not say that Djordjevic invited the Skorpions, or even
Medic, to return. All he said was that Medic went back after the
Skorpions were expelled, not that anybody invited him back, or that
anybody other than Medic went back.
The prosecutor continued his cross-examination asking Gen. Stevanovic
questions about Racak. Mr. Nice claimed that the fact that police
found no weapons on the bodies in Racak meant that they could not have
died in combat.
Stevanovic had to repeat, until he was blue in the face, that the
police did not have access to the bodies until after the villagers
moved them to the mosque. There was never a chance to directly
investigate the actual scene to see if weapons there. All the police
could do was go by the fact that somebody was shooting at them, that
they shot back, and that gunpowder was on the hands of these corpses.
Mr. Nice wasted a lot of time asking the witness questions that he
knew could not be answered. For example, he showed the witness a paper
that Natasa Kandic wrote, and then asked him to find the police report
proving that an investigation had been conducted regarding the crime
alleged by Ms. Kandic.
It is impossible that anybody could know about each and every police
report filed at the Serbian Interior Ministry. The witness is the
former assistant interior minister; he's not Rainman.
Mr. Nice did bring-up something interesting regarding the transport of
bodies from Izbica to graves in central Serbia. One of the corpses
exhumed at Izbica was found at Petrovo Selo. The Serbian authorities
have a written record of exhuming the corpse in order to perform a
post mortem; they even issued a death certificate, all of this
information is in the public record.
The fact that the body of this person was taken to Petrovo Selo and
re-buried is really incredible. There is no reason on Earth for Serbia
to hide the body after they performed an autopsy, took pictures of the
corpse, and issued a death certificate, and then put all of the
information in the public records for anybody to find it.
There can't be any motive to hide a body after you put it in the
public record that the person was killed. This example shows that the
motive to bury bodies in central Serbia was to incriminate Serbia, not
to hide evidence of killings.
Mr. Nice will continue with the cross-examination when Gen. Stevanovic
continues his testimony tomorrow.