THE BBC SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION

BBC documentary ‘Storyville: Milosevic on Trial’ – A Review.

This two-part documentary broadcast on the 12th and 14th February 2007, follows other BBC programmes on Yugoslavia such as the BBC Correspondent programme ‘Mass Killings in Kosovo’ 2002, ‘The Fall of Milosevic’ in 2003, ‘The Real Slobodan Milosevic’ shown in 2004, and the airing of the risible, made for TV movie ‘The Hunt for Justice – the Louise Arbour Story’ made in 2005. Not forgetting the infamous ‘Death of Yugoslavia’, a BBC documentary heavily relied on by the Prosecution at The Hague Tribunal, which was eventually exposed by Milosevic as having incorrect subtitles.

Despite these numerous documentaries all have a consistent thread running through them, all take an anti-Milosevic, anti-Serb and anti-Yugoslavia approach. And most importantly, all fall in line with British government propaganda.

This should come as no surprise to those conversant with the workings of the British media, and the BBC in particular.

There is an infamous incident involving the BBC that took place during the miners’ strike of 1984/85. The main BBC television news showed footage of miners’ pickets charging at the police, yet in reality the police, batons raised, had charged into the miners, the BBC had simply reversed the film. At a later date, when the propaganda damage to the miners had been done, the BBC apologised and blamed the error on a ‘technical problem.’

More recently of course is the example of Iraq’s non-existent ‘weapons of mass destruction’ whereby the BBC uncritically relayed government press releases as if they were independently verified facts, precipitating the unlawful invasion and occupation of a sovereign country at a cost of many thousands of lives, British, American and Iraqi.

Such a role as the propaganda arm, and at times actual partner, of the British government has been performed by the BBC since its inception.

"In August 1953, a coup covertly organised by MI6 and the CIA overthrew Iran’s popular, nationalist government under Mohamed Musaddiq, and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture to institute a dictatorship. The signal for the coup scenario to begin had been arranged with the BBC; the latter agreed to begin its Persian language news broadcast not with the usual ‘it is now midnight in London’, but instead with ‘it is now exactly midnight’." (Web of Deceit’ Mark Curtis Vintage 2003).

In his book ‘Web of Deceit’ author Mark Curtis touches on the role of the media and in particular the BBC, and his comments are worth noting:

"The framing of discussion on issues is critical in setting the boundaries of debate. The (BBC) programme ‘Question Time’ is a microcosm of how the media works here,,,(I)t is acceptable for ‘Question Time’ panellists to criticise each other from within the elite consensus but not for anyone to criticise all of them from outside that consensus.

‘Question Time’ highlights that a major aspect of the ideological system is restricting debate to the best way of managing the existing system and excluding – or marginalising – the possibility of alternatives…….In foreign policy, the choice has simply been presented as whether Labour or Conservative should manage the same set of policies within the single ideology………..The evidence is overwhelming that BBC and commercial television news report on Britain’s foreign policy in ways that resemble straightforward state propaganda organs."

Domestically the credibility status of the BBC is such that when the broadcasting giant gives, for instance, a figure for the numbers in attendance at an anti-war demonstration, people as a rule just double the BBC figure to come up with a more accurate assessment.

Similarly in industrial disputes, the people fighting for their jobs or a living wage know from bitter experience how the BBC will report their dispute.

It comes as no surprise therefore to find that the BBC’s latest offering on the Balkans, a documentary in the Storyville series ‘Milosevic on Trial’ follows the same bias as their previous output.

The documentary boasts from the start that it has 2000 hours of court footage from the Milosevic trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, together with extensive behind the scenes footage. To the observant viewer this should immediately be cause for concern.

If the ICTY was allowing a film crew such access then it must have been doubly sure that the end result was assured, that it would not raise difficult questions, such as the ICTYs dubious legality, and would cast the Tribunal in a favourable light, otherwise they would not dare risk such an intrusion into the workings of this western funded court.

In Nick Fraser, the Storyville series commissioning editor, they had indeed no reason to worry. Fraser had already commissioned the 2002 documentary, the quaintly titled ‘Milosevic: How to be a Dictator’ (which is a strange title for a person who has won three undisputed elections), and had commissioned Team Production of Denmark and its director Michael Christoffersen for this new task.

Christtoffersen already had on his CV the film ‘Genocide: The Judgement’ made in 1999 at the ICTYs sister tribunal in Rwanda from which he apparently obtained glowing references and is currently working on a film about the trial of Saddam Hussein, again with the apparent support of the occupying regime.

Fraser’s comments on the Storyville website really give the game away as to the complete lack of objectivity in the making of the ‘Milosevic on Trial’ documentary. He states:

"On one side Slobodan Milosevic- nationalist, communist politician, thug; on the other side suave British QC Geoffrey Nice."

"The best thing to do for him (Milosevic) is to die before the judgement can be passed….and that is exactly what he does.’

In regard to the first sentence above, a very astute blog contributor suggested that an alternative description (and a more accurate one) would be:

"On one side Milosevic- statesman, pragmatic politician, man of principle; on the other side personal injuries specialist-sometimes referred to as ambulance chasing- British QC Sir Geoffrey Nice who left the Hague under a cloud following allegations of sexual harassment.’

(The above description of Mr Nice is obviously inspired by the news reports that surrounded his departure from the ICTY in April 2006 and his subsequent knighthood from the British government in January this year).

.

In regard to Fraser’s shameful second sentence, any further comment would be superfluous.

As to the contents of the documentary itself, they prove to be merely regurgitation of old and much discredited western propaganda. Such is the media’s contempt for the truth however, that stories long since exposed as having no foundation in reality, are aired once again as if they had never been refuted nor challenged in the intervening years. It is very tempting therefore to simply dismiss the contents of this documentary out of hand. However we have a responsibility to the historical record to once again tackle this insidious propaganda.

The BBC documentary approached the difficult problem of presenting damning evidence against Mr Milosevic in a rather unsubtle manner. Their strategy was to show selective snippets of witness testimony and then via narration, more often than not from Prosecution QC Geoffrey Nice, explain the significance of it to the viewer. This approach has the effect of shaping the viewers perception of events and particularly of never showing the whole story, rather like the dial-up connection to the Internet when the picture slowly downloads and as you see part of it it can appear different than when you see the picture fully downloaded. In essence the documentary’s task was to prevent the disclosure of the full picture.

The snippet shown from the testimony of Rade Markovic is a case in point.

RADE MARKOVIC.

‘Milosevic on Trial’ showed excerpts from the testimony of Rade Markovic, former head of the Department of State Security of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior. Mr Markovic was a prosecution witness and the excerpts pertained to the command structures existent in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Prosecution was apparently trying to establish if any orders had come down the chain of command that could assist with the indictment against Mr Milosevic. After a brief extract of testimony was shown, the narration intimated that it was satisfactory evidence for the Prosecution. Yet here are brief excerpts from the actual trial transcripts of the cross-examination of Mr Markovic on 26th July 2002, which is unambiguous:

Page 8726

16 Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

17 Q. [Interpretation] Radomir, you read countless reports which, along

18 a variety of lines, were submitted by members of the state security sector

19 and which, through respective administrations, were all funneled to the

20 central headquarters; is that correct?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Since heads of state security services of every country are

23 usually the best-informed people in that country, and especially in view

24 of all those reports, did you ever get any kind of report or have you ever

25 heard of an order to forcibly expel Albanians from Kosovo?

Page 8727

1 A. I never got such a report, nor I --

2 JUDGE MAY: I'm going to interrupt you, for this reason: That both

3 you and the accused speak the same language. Everything has got to be

4 interpreted. So would you pause between his question and your answer.

5 And Mr. Milosevic, will you remember to do the same, kindly.

6 Yes. If you'd give your answer.

7 A. No, I never heard of such an order, nor have I seen such an order,

8 nor was it contained in the reports I received. Nobody, therefore, ever

9 ordered for Albanians from Kosovo to be expelled.

10 Q. Did you receive any information which would point to such a thing,

11 to the existence of an order, a plan, a decision, a suggestion, or a de

12 facto influence that Albanians from Kosovo were to be expelled?

13 A. No, I never heard of such a suggestion. I know of no plan or

14 design or instruction to expel Albanians from Kosovo.

And:

Page 8729

14 Q. Is it true that whenever there was a suspicion or it was obvious

15 that a member of the police or the army had committed any sort of criminal

16 offence, there was no discussion at all? Legal measures were taken

17 immediately, in accordance with the law, criminal reports were filed and

18 went through the due process?

19 A. I believe that over 200 such criminal reports were actually filed

20 against members of the service, and they were prosecuted. It is also

21 known from reports of the army of Yugoslavia that they did the same thing,

22 and the number of their own criminal reports was close to ours, if not

23 higher.

The above two extracts, from a witness for the prosecution, is testimony to the fact that not only was there no policy to expel civilians from Kosovo but on the contrary, any police or army personnel responsible for committing any sort of criminal offence were prosecuted accordingly. You would never have gathered this from the BBC documentary though.

However this was not the most revealing thing about the testimony of Mr Markovic. Again the extracts below are taken from actual trial transcripts.

Page 8762

7 Q. Let me just take a look here at my notes.

8 First of all, I would like to continue along the following lines:

9 I mentioned your interview with two committees of the parliament of

10 Yugoslavia, the assembly of Yugoslavia. Is it correct that you were

11 arrested only so that by exerting pressure against you, they could accuse

12 me?

13 A. Yes. That's why they arrested me.

14 Q. Here, when you talked to two committees of the parliament of

15 Yugoslavia, you say: "They asked me to accuse Slobodan Milosevic and to

16 admit to criminal acts and to say that I was instructed by Slobodan

17 Milosevic thereof."

18 Is that correct?

19 A. That's correct. I was told that in that case I would not be the

20 one who would be held accountable but that I could choose a country where

21 I would live and that I could get a new identity and that it was

22 indispensable to accuse you so that you would be tried in the country.

And:

Page 8763

15 After having spent four months in detention, I was taken out, and

16 that's when I had this meeting with the head of state security, Goran

17 Petrovic, and Zoran Mijatovic, his deputy, and the Ministry of the

18 Interior of the Republic of Serbia, Mr. Mihajlovic. They did say that in

19 court, and you have a record of that. They accepted that we did talk

20 outside the prison premises. They claimed that that was at my request.

21 Q. Was it at your request?

22 A. Had it been at my request, then they certainly would have had a

23 proper order from the investigating judge and then they would not have

24 taken me out for dinner.

25 Q. Is it true that they offered on that occasion to you certain

Page 8765

1 protective measures? They told you you would be in prison for six months

2 and would be tried if you don't agree to charge me falsely, to level false

3 allegations against me? Is that true or not?

4 A. They spoke to me about the difficult position I was in. They

5 warned me against the possible consequences and offered me an option in

6 the form of accusing Milosevic, as the person who issued orders for those

7 criminal offences, which would relieve me of liability before a criminal

8 court.

9 Q. Is it true that they offered you a new identity, money, and

10 sustenance for you and your family only so that you would falsely accuse

11 me? Is that correct?

12 A. Yes, that's correct.

13 Q. Do you know that in 1998 -- sorry. 1988, the General Assembly of

14 the United Nations adopted by consensus a declaration against torture, and

15 that such treatment that you were subjected to is explicitly forbidden by

16 this declaration, as well as forcing --

17 MR. NICE: Your Honour -- [Previous translation continues]

18 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

19 Q. -- statements from detainees, extortion and such things?

20 JUDGE MAY: This doesn't appear to have any relevance to the

21 evidence the witness has given here, none at all. He's been agreeing with

22 you, he's been agreeing to the matters you've put to him, and we're not

23 certainly going to litigate here what happened in Yugoslavia when he was

24 arrested. What we're concerned with, as you know, is events in Kosovo.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, the conduct of a puppet

Page 8766

1 regime in Belgrade is completely identical to the false indictment --

2 JUDGE MAY: Precisely the sort of point which we're not going to

3 consider. Now, have you got any more relevant questions for this witness?

4 Or we'll move on.

It would seem from the above that Judge May deemed it irrelevant that a witness had been tortured in jail, bribed and offered a new life in a foreign country if he would give false testimony against President Milosevic. And the BBC documentary crew had all this testimony on film yet decided the torturing of witnesses in the ‘trial of the century’ was not worth a single second of commentary in their ‘objective’ documentary. So much for crusading journalism and the fearless search for truth and justice.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GENERAL OBRAD STEVANOVIC.

Serbia’s former assistant interior minister General Obrad Stevanovic is the Defence witness who’s testimony, the documentary claimed, backfired on Mr Milosevic. The Prosecution stated that Gen Stevanovic’s books and documents, which the Defence handed over to them, included by mistake his personal diary which contained an entry regarding the ‘cleaning up of the terrain’, which the Prosecution insisted was a reference to a conspiracy to hide evidence of crimes committed by the police and army. The documentary made great play on this discovery and the mistake by the Defence, and again ensured that this small nugget of information was isolated from a fuller, more detailed picture.

It is perfectly in order for a documentary to bring attention to any significant Prosecution claims, and although it would of course be impossible to broadcast the entire witness statement, it is also beholden on the documentary makers to make known to their viewers the Defence response to any apparently significant evidence presented. Otherwise you are cherry picking and in fact distorting the reality of the trial testimony.

If the Storyville production team had allowed even a few minutes broadcast of the Defence response the viewers would have realised that contrary to the documentary’s assertion that the Defence had mistakenly handed over Gen Stevanovic’s personal diary, they would have found that the said notebook was actually seized by the Prosecution in 2000 when they investigated Gen. Stevanovic. Therefore the Defence knew that the diary was in the possession of the Prosecution and far from being surprised they were very confident that its contents would be a useful exhibit for Mr Milosevic. And that is how it turned out because it confirmed his case that the police acted lawfully, and it confirmed various points that he had made in his Defence case relating to particular events such as the NATO bombing of the Dubrava Prison.

Moreover as the notebook was a contemporaneous record written for the private use of the witness there could be no accusation that it was written for political purposes.

In regard to the passage in the diary focused on by Mr Nice the diary entry contained the following comments:

"They work perfidiously on that issue. -- They will justify the aggression with evidence of crimes -- Clean-up -- - -- The clean-up of the terrain is the most important" and this was the passage that the Prosecution claimed meant there was a conspiracy to hide evidence of crimes.
That is the part the documentary showed. The following is the response which they did not broadcast:
Gen. Stevanovic explained that the text had a more straightforward meaning and described how the passages the Prosecution had highlighted were references to the activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army (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.

Indeed the KLA has a history of ‘rearranging’ its war dead to create the false impression of a massacre. A notorious case in point is Racak, and Gen. Stevanovic added that they did the same thing at Pusto Selo and Izbica.

Obviously Stevanovic diary passage 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.

Furthermore, in connection with the notebook, Mr Milosevic presented a copy leaflet that the KLA distributed to Kosovo-Albanians during the war. The leaflet instructed the Albanian population to leave Kosovo and travel in large groups towards Macedonia and Albania. The witness had written the text of a similar leaflet into his notebook, and during the cross-examination Mr. Nice had tried to present that text as if the witness was concocting a plan to expel the Albanians from Kosovo.

(Synopsis of Stevanovic testimony on slobodan-milosevic.org).

Amusingly, as the documentary wrongly implied that the Defence team didn’t know what they had handed over to the Prosecution, it is interesting to note that on 25th November 2002 it was the Prosecution that had to admit to the Tribunal that they had not kept track of what it was submitting as evidence. Needless to say this fact didn’t make it into the documentary either.

FREEZER TRUCKS AND SNUFF VIDEOS.
The BBC film, ‘Milosevic on Trial’ regurgitated two already discredited stories. One was the Freezer Truck Story whereby Western propaganda had claimed that Mr Milosevic had ordered a cover-up of the alleged atrocities in Kosovo and was removing the evidence, but unfortunately for him a truck carrying Albanian bodies from Kosovo had crashed into the Danube. The second was the video shown at the ‘trial’ purporting to show, according to Prosecutor Nice, the execution of prisoners by forces under Milosevic’s control. We will briefly recap here our previous response to these two stories.

What links the freezer truck story and the video together, apart from their fictional qualities, is that both originate from a certain Natasa Kandic and her ‘Humanitarian Law Center.’

In his article ‘The Fabrication and Dissemination of Deception’ from 2001 Gilles d’Aymery notes the following:

"Many news reports of atrocities and "genocide" allegedly committed by the Serbs and widely disseminated in the Western main media have originated with a little known NGO in Belgrade, Serbia, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC). The story of the refrigerated truck filled with corpses that was purportedly dumped in the [river] Danube in April 1999 is a good example.
The HLC was created in 1992 by Natasa Kandic, its present Executive Director. It has been funded by George Soros as well as the National Endowment for Democracy and this year the Ford Foundation provided HLC with a $80,000 grant.

For those not aware George Soros also contributes funds to the ICTY itself.

For those not aware the National Endowment for Democracy is a US government agency founded in 1983 to take over functions that were once the responsibility of the CIA.

Here are some details of Kandic’s record of reliability.

The New York Times of January 26, 2004 published a report commenting on the resignation of USA Today correspondent Jack Kelley over an article he had written in 1999.

The Times report commented:

"In the article, Mr. Kelley wrote about a Yugoslav Army notebook that had a typed order to "cleanse" a Kosovo village, although he did not identify the person who showed him the notebook. He added that United Nations investigators considered this "the strongest and most direct evidence linking the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo." 

Announcing Kelley’s resignation, the USA Today issue of 13th January 2004 stated that they had concluded a seven-month investigation into "whether Kelley might have embellished or fabricated stories."

According to the New York Times Kelley had claimed as his source for the story, "A human rights advocate" and confirmed that source as "The rights advocate, Natasa Kandic, the executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade"

On 30th April 2001, what later became known as ‘the freezer truck hoax’ broke in the western press through Associated Press who under the headline, "Rights Activist Says Yugoslav Army, Police Destroyed Evidence Of Kosovo Atrocities." stated:

"…[Natasa] Kandic [from the Humanitarian Law Center]…cited a report in a local magazine in the eastern Serbian Negotin region, describing how on the night of April 6, 1999, a refrigerated trailer truck was lifted out of the Danube near Kladovo, at the border with Romania"

The vehicle bore license plates from Pec, a western Kosovo city, and allegedly contained 50 bodies. According to Kandic’s center, the bodies were subsequently transferred to a truck with Belgrade plates and driven away."

And the piece continued:

"‘Our investigations produced witnesses who can testify that many people were killed, their bodies buried only to be dug up again and later moved to another place,’ said Natasa Kandic of the Humanitarian Law Center, a leading human rights watchdog organization in Yugoslavia"

The point of this story was to claim that Mr Milosevic had ordered a cover-up of the alleged atrocities in Kosovo and was removing the evidence, but unfortunately for him a truck carrying Albanian bodies from Kosovo had crashed into the Danube.

This story was very timely for Nato and the new Serbian government because at the time Nato was demanding the transfer of Mr Milosevic to the ICTY and as the Independent newspaper commented approvingly, "The bodies are the evidence the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague needs to prove its charge of crimes against humanity against Mr Milosevic."

The story was published worldwide and the BBC even presented a 45-minute documentary on it, on the 27th January 2002 as part of their holocaust memorial season.

However subsequent investigations into this story revealed the following:

The local magazine quoted in the AP article was Timocka Kriminala Revija (criminal review) owned by Dragan Vitomirovic.

Timocka published two articles about a refrigerator truck full of bodies.

The first article, dated 15th September 1999, stated that the truck contained dead Kurds and that the licence plates were Swiss.

However, the second story, published 1st May 2001 the one that Natasa Kandic presented to the world and the source of the allegations against Slobodan Milosevic, the dead Kurds had become the dead Albanians and the Swiss licence plates had become Kosovo license plates.

It further transpired that Dragan Vitomirovic had a brother with a record of smuggling illegal aliens across the Romanian border and moreover, had been encouraged to write the second article by Interior Minister Mihajlovic, a member of the newly installed Nato backed Serbian government.

In regard to Kandic’s claim that, "Our investigations produced witnesses who can testify that many people were killed, their bodies buried only to be dug up again and later moved to another place" it is important to note the following:

Police officer Captain Dragan Karleusa, who was appointed to investigate the allegations, appeared in July 2002 as a prosecution witness at The Hague against Mr Milosevic and admitted that not a single witness deposition had ever been taken. (Trial transcript).

Given that as of July 2002 the investigating officers had not taken a single witness deposition and had not a shred of evidence to substantiate the

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