Bosnian Mujahideen and foreign fighters.

[Magda Hassan]

Hidden in the bowels of the ICTY. Un-named just a number. You'd never fiond it if you didn't know where to look. Tons of good information though. No wonder he died in his cell.

[QUOTE] [FONT=Courier New][size=12] Page 32157
1 Tuesday, 31 August 2004
2 [Defence Opening Statement]
3 [Open session]
4 [The accused entered court]
5 --- Upon commencing at 9.02 a.m.
6 JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, you may proceed with your opening
7 statement.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, for my opening
9 statement, I would need tomorrow as well. I would like to note that the
10 other side had three days, so I expect you to be so kind as to make this
11 day and the following day available to me as well.
12 May I start now?
13 JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, this is your third bite at the
14 proverbial cherry. In response to the Prosecution's opening on the Kosovo
15 part of the case, you were allowed eight hours, two days. And in response
16 to the Prosecution's opening on the Bosnia and Croatian part of the case,
17 you were allowed three and a half hours. This is your third bite.
18 Please proceed.
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, you personally, you
20 yourself, said that I have the right to a statement and to opening
21 arguments. What I made were statements. This is an opening argument. I
22 think that you should bear that in mind. I think that you should look at
23 this request that I've just put forth and I think that you should give me
24 additional time.
25 JUDGE ROBINSON: Please proceed, Mr. Milosevic.
Page 32158
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. Robinson.
2 In the international public, for a long time and with clear
3 political intentions an untruthful, distorted picture was being created in
4 terms of what happened in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
5 Accusations levelled against me are an unscrupulous lie and also a
6 tireless distortion of history. Everything has been presented in a
7 lopsided manner so -- in order to protect from responsibility those who
8 are truly responsible and to draw the wrong conclusions about what
9 happened and also in terms of the background of the war against
10 Yugoslavia.
11 There is a fundamental historical fact that one should proceed
12 from when seeking to understand what happened and which led to everything
13 that happened in the territory of Yugoslavia from 1991 until the present
14 day, and that is the violent destruction of a European state, Yugoslavia,
15 which was derived from the statehood of Serbia, the only ally of the
16 democratic world in that part of the world over the past two centuries.
17 There is no doubt that this fundamental historic fact is going to leave an
18 imprint on European history in the times to come.
19 A multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-confessional state was
20 destroyed, a state that had its historic and international legal
21 legitimacy. In its territory, according to the dictat of Germany and
22 Vatican, assisted by the United States and the European Community, pure
23 nation states, miniature nation states, were established. The state that
24 was destroyed was a member of all international organisations starting
25 with the first postal union from 1884 through the League of Nations, the
Page 32159
1 International Label Organisation, the United Nations, the World Bank, the
2 International Monetary Fund, and all other specialised agencies of the
3 United Nations all the way up to the Organisation for Security and
4 Cooperation in Europe.
5 Whose merit was this that this sovereign state was destroyed?
6 According to the Nuremberg principles, this constitutes the gravest
7 international crime, a crime against peace. Whose merit was it that a war
8 happened in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, hundreds of
9 thousands of people wounded and maimed? Thousands of people lost their
10 homes and fled from their homes, mostly Serbs, and also there are millions
11 of damage in terms of property. The -- this is -- not speak of the
12 ecological disaster involved.
13 The international community will have to face up to all of this.
14 It is not only that a state was destroyed. The United Nations system was
15 destroyed. Also the corpus of principles upon which the world
16 civilisation was based has been destroyed. In addition to that, never in
17 history has a state disappeared by sheer coincidence. There was a great
18 deal of rhetoric involved in the destruction of Yugoslavia. When the
19 crisis first broke out, all the way up to the present day, everything that
20 has been said, including what this so-called Prosecution said, is wrong.
21 Yugoslavia did not simply disappear into thin air, as Mr. Robert Badinter
22 tried to explain, and in this way he resorted to some kind of legal
23 metaphysics. This country was destroyed through a plan, violently, and
24 through a war which continues to be waged, and a series of war crimes were
25 committed in this war.
Page 32160
1 An American theoretician, a prominent one, Stephen John Steedman,
2 noted, rightly so, in 1993 in the periodical Foreign Affairs that at the
3 beginning of the war, and I am quoting: "Slovenia or some other state did
4 not exist. There was only one state; Yugoslavia." So it is logical to
5 take that as a point of departure in any kind of legal analysis.
6 Yugoslavia, which was headed at this most critical time by a
7 member of the Presidency from Croatia, Stjepan Mesic, the Prime Minister
8 of the country at the time was also from Croatia; Ante Markovic. The
9 Foreign Minister was also from Croatia; Budimir Loncar.
10 As for the top echelons of the military, and we heard about that
11 here, among the 16 top generals, there were only two Serbs. The majority
12 were Croats, Slovenes, and people with other ethnic backgrounds.
13 This state had a strong armed force that was in a position to keep
14 the conflict under control and to prevent it from happening altogether.
15 However, this government let paramilitary formations, arms smugglers, have
16 their way, even the narco Mafia, when we look at the end of this process
17 in Kosovo. However, this government acted in concert with the European
18 Community, notably Germany and the Vatican.
19 As early as the end of June 1991, the European Community asked for
20 the legitimate army to remain within barracks and in this way to turn the
21 army voluntarily into detainees within their own country, which is only
22 logical -- and it is only logical that this led to secession and to the
23 creation of paramilitary formations. The secession of Slovenia happened
24 in 1991, and it was accompanied by armed action.
25 In June 1991, the Slovenian military formations without any cause
Page 32161
1 killed in cold blood JNA soldiers who were securing the border towards
2 Austria and Italy and took over border posts. From the point of view of
3 the UN charter, from the point of view of general legal principles
4 recognised by civilised nations, this is a classical example of an armed
5 rebellion against a state. Therefore the state is duty-bound to take all
6 necessary measures in order to restore law and order.
7 We know that when acting on orders given by the federal Prime
8 Minister, Ante Markovic, the commander of the 5th army, a Slovenian,
9 General Konrad Kolsek, informed the government of Slovenia that the
10 Yugoslav People's Army will regain control over the border and that this
11 task would be carried out.
12 The Slovenian leadership, instead of making it possible to carry
13 these decisions out peacefully, these decisions taken by the federal
14 authorities, said that they are taking this challenge and that they would
15 resort to force in order to oppose it, and that's what they did. Their
16 paramilitary forces, which then included 36.000 persons illegally armed,
17 were used by Slovenia to launch an armed offensive. All of them knew full
18 well that the Yugoslav army, educated in the spirit of brotherhood and
19 unity, would not shoot at Slovenians who they considered to be their own
20 citizens. So actually the killing of JNA soldiers was a mere premeditated
21 crime. It was no war.
22 Grave war crimes were committed. Not even military medical
23 institutions were spared. The troika of the European Community toured the
24 area and described the dramatic situation. There is a long list of crimes
25 and there is also film material documenting the crimes of the Slovenian
Page 32162
1 paramilitary forces, and this footage was shot by an Austrian TV company.
2 Due to the time constraints that you have imposed upon me, I do not have
3 the possibility of playing these tapes now, but I am going to call certain
4 witnesses and show them then.
5 On the 10th of July, 1991, the European parliament passed a
6 resolution condemning not the rebels, not the secessionists, but the legal
7 force, the Yugoslav People's Army. And inversion was carried out between
8 the victim and the executioner, and in this way the European Community and
9 the United States fuelled the war.
10 I am pointing this out because it has been said time and again
11 ever since that this is what happened in the former Yugoslavia, and this
12 is a formula that was resorted to all the time. In Croatia, crimes
13 against the Serbs started even earlier, even before secession was
14 declared. The same methods in the same areas where the genocide against
15 the Serb people started in 1941 by the Ustasha formations in the so-called
16 Independent State of Croatia.
17 World experts who studied genocide, the genocide that occurred in
18 different places and at different times, for example, Leo Cooper, Peter
19 Drost, Ted Gertz, Louis Horowitz, George Cram, and others came to the
20 conclusion that genocide over a people can occur only once. Any further
21 attempt would turn into civil war. And this thesis was confirmed in
22 Croatia.
23 The genocide over the Serbs in Croatia in 1941 started by making
24 lists and calling upon groups and giving -- in order to ostensibly give
25 them information. However, they were not given information. Serbs were
Page 32163
1 killed and sent off to concentration camps.
2 This time, when similar things were done, the Serbs resisted, and
3 they felt seriously manipulated by politicians who had defended ideals of
4 fraternity and unity and then called upon the people in a different way.
5 Old Ustasha formulas and old Ustasha symbols were resorted to. Laws were
6 passed along the fast track and the Serbs lost their status of a
7 constituent people. Without the army isolated in barracks, the Serbs in
8 Krajina were prepared to die, but they were not to submit themselves yet
9 to another genocide.
10 A long time before the secession of 1991 in Croatia, armed groups
11 functioned there. The so-called voluntary peoples protection forces;
12 Zebra, Black Wolves, the Wolves from Vukovar, et cetera. In Zagreb on the
13 28th of May, a military parade was organised a month before secession
14 where arms were shown, arms that particularly came from Germany. These
15 were only preparations for what would happen later. Groups of
16 paramilitaries were transferred from Croatia to Bosnia at that time
17 because President Tudjman had announced a change of borders and that the
18 borders of Croatia would be moved to the Drina.
19 In July 1991, the armed paramilitaries in Croatia started a
20 frontal war. From the 20th of July until the 4th of August, there were 75
21 attacks against the JNA.
22 THE INTERPRETER: Could the speaker please be asked to slow down.
23 It is impossible for the interpreters to follow any longer.
24 JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, the interpreters are asking you to
25 speak slowly, more slowly.
Page 32164
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] They could have said that to me. I
2 didn't hear them.
3 JUDGE ROBINSON: They did.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.
5 Serb houses were set on fire and individual crimes against Serbs
6 were transformed into mass liquidations. In the cornfield near the
7 village of Jankovci, 65 Serbs were slaughtered. All of them have been
8 identified. In the village of Svinjarevo 25 were killed, and so on and so
9 forth. Entire villages in the area of Papuk and Slunj were razed to the
10 ground. The most widespread form of terror over the Serbian people were
11 forcible evictions, and this was the strongest link between the years 1941
12 and 1991.
13 These activities began in Western Slovenia immediately after the
14 HDZ won the elections. A psychosis was created so that people would be
15 encouraged to move out. Various methods were used. Serbian children were
16 mocked in school. The people were brought into police stations. Serbs
17 were dismissed from work on a large scale, their houses were bombed. The
18 Crisis Staff in Slavonska Pozega on the 28th of October, 1991, issued an
19 order on the eviction of Serbs from 24 villages; Oblakovac, Orijaca,
20 Slatina, and so on, within a 24-hour period. This order was broadcast on
21 the radio and published in the press. Those who refused to comply were
22 taken to concentration camps. A large scale exodus of Serbs in the areas
23 of Podravska Slatina, and Daruvar took place.
24 From July to August 1991 to the -- 1992, many Serbian villages
25 were ethnically cleansed. Documents on all this were submitted to the
Page 32165
1 European Community.
2 War activities were then taken to the territory of Bosnia and
3 Herzegovina. The ideological foundations were laid in 1970 with the
4 Islamic declaration of Alija Izetbegovic. This was a secret platform.
5 Later on, in 1984, a book by the same author was published on Islam and
6 the West, and then the Islamic declaration was published again in 1990.
7 It is well known that it states that there can be no peace and
8 co-existence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic faiths. This is
9 repeated many times in all these books and publications.
10 At the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Assembly session on the 21st of
11 December 1991, Izetbegovic said he was willing to sacrifice peace for a
12 sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina. There was mass mobilisation and civil
13 war started with abundant financial help arriving from Saudi Arabia, Iran,
14 and other Islamic countries. After this, many Mujahedin arrived.
15 On the 6th summit of the organisation of the Islamic Conference
16 held on the 9th of December, 1991, before the war was fully developed and
17 before Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognised, support was given to their
18 brothers in faith, support for the creation of the first Islamic state in
19 Europe. Even today Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a majority Muslim
20 population. Not only was there substantial financial help, but Alija
21 Izetbegovic was feted and honoured at the Islamic Conference held in Djeda
22 on the -- from the 1st to the 2nd of December 1991. They also extended
23 their concern to two areas in Serbia; to Kosovo and the area of Raska, or
24 as they called it, Sandzak.
25 The first holy warriors, the Mujahedin, arrived from Afghanistan,
Page 32166
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Page 32167
1 Lebanon, Morocco and Pakistan, armed with weapons sent by the CIA to the
2 rebels in Afghanistan. A group of 400 members of Hezbollah arrived in
3 Sarajevo as military instructors. Following the tradition from World War
4 II of a joint action under the auspices of Nazi Germany against the
5 democratic coalition to which the then Yugoslavia belonged, Tudjman and
6 Izetbegovic, the two leaders of the rebels, signed an agreement stating
7 that the armed forces of the Croatian Defence Council would be part of the
8 unified armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was followed by the
9 expulsion of Serbs from areas under the control of Muslim forces. Tens of
10 thousands of people were expelled from Mostar, 2.000 from Gorazde, and so
11 on.
12 As happened in Croatia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina allegedly
13 retired American officers were sent to be instructors of the Muslim army.
14 Combat operations developed and moved from the north toward the south, and
15 they were finally transferred to the territory of Serbia, that is to
16 Kosovo. The pattern along which the destruction of Yugoslavia was
17 planned, Kosovo being the last phase, is very simple: Reliance was placed
18 on paramilitary rebel forces, criminals, and on Kosovo, the narco Mafia,
19 as well as terrorist forces.
20 During the time of Croatia and Serbia, the legitimate force was
21 the JNA, and later on the army of Yugoslavia. There was open aggression
22 on the remainder of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro. Tens of thousands
23 of bombs were dropped and various projectiles with depleted uranium and
24 five to six times more poison was dropped than was the case in Hiroshima.
25 All this happened in the aggression against Yugoslavia by the NATO pact.
Page 32168
1 The involvement of the West, primarily the Vatican and Germany,
2 was evident from the very beginning. Donald Horowitz, the well-known
3 American theoretician, presented arguments in his study on ethnic and
4 national conflicts, that they take on their worst form, war, when they
5 gain international support. And this is precisely what happened on the
6 territory of Yugoslavia.
7 The war on this territory was a synchronised activity by
8 secessionist forces and external forces who, in preparing the bloodshed
9 and fuelling the bloodshed, implanted into Yugoslavia Ustasha extremists
10 and Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists and Albanian terrorists whose role was
11 to be the detonator for the outbreak of the conflict. The external forces
12 in the initial phases acted behind the scenes, supplying the secessionists
13 with arms and money and infiltrating mercenaries into the country. The
14 final destruction of Yugoslavia was perpetrated through institutional
15 deceptions.
16 In the final act from -- the final document from Helsinki, the USA
17 and other countries promised to respect the integrity of all the countries
18 in the area, all the states, and said that they would refrain from any
19 activities against the territorial integrity and unity and independence of
20 every signatory country. This was signed in Paris in 1990. Only a year
21 after this, the international community acted openly on the political
22 scene as the main force for the destruction of Yugoslavia.
23 On Brioni on the 7th of July, 1991, a declaration was signed on
24 the peaceful resolution of the conflict in the SFRY. Relying on these
25 documents which I have mentioned, the European Community promised to seek
Page 32169
1 a peaceful solution and to respect the territorial integrity of
2 Yugoslavia, which was the only legally protected entity, which actually
3 gave it the mandate to mediate in this conflict. The whole process
4 started from several -- there were several possible solutions that were
5 proposed, and concessions were proposed that could be relied on.
6 Instead of all this, Lord Carrington, at a meeting on the 18th of
7 October 1991, set out an ultimatum, and there was no alternative to the
8 disappearance of Yugoslavia. This was the model applied by Hitler in
9 1941. Nazi values won the day. The right to the destruction of a state
10 to secession was given priority over preserving a state and the right to
11 preserve a state, a member of the UN.
12 The paradox is that the right that was given to the secessionists
13 of Yugoslavia is denied, for example, to the Irish by the British, and so
14 on. Let us remember that there was a time when Serbian fighters fought
15 together with the allies in World War II and that then the troops of the
16 so-called Independent State of Croatia, as well as some forces from
17 Bosnia, also then within the Independent State of Croatia, fought on the
18 side of the Nazi forces. At that time the well-known Handzar Division
19 from Bosnia was sent to France as part of the convicts unit, and there
20 they committed unprecedented crimes.
21 Let us go back to Carrington's document, which was the first blow
22 against the sovereignty of Yugoslavia. This is an evident deception.
23 This is something that transformed further negotiations into a farce.
24 After this, the secessionist republics were recognised under strong
25 pressure from Germany and the Vatican, against the elementary principles
Page 32170
1 of international law, the practice of the United Nations, and the practice
2 of a leading power, the USA.
3 Very well. On the basis of Smithson's declaration from the 7th of
4 January 1932, the United Nations -- United States promised not to
5 recognise countries arising from violent changes. This principle first
6 became the regional rule of the USA and then entered the universal rules
7 of international law. This time America trampled on its own law.
8 In July 1991, before the war started, the Minister of Foreign
9 Affairs of Germany, Genscher, advocated that Croatia and Slovenia be
10 recognised right away. A parallel action was waged by the Vatican. The
11 ambassador with the Holy See, Thomas Patrick Milady, in mid-1991, the
12 Vatican initiated an unprecedented action and led the forces lobbying for
13 the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia.
14 In August 1991, Pope John Paul II sent Archbishop Torano to
15 Yugoslavia. On his return, he submitted a report stating that Serbia was
16 indisputably the aggressor. This was another shameless lie. This was
17 hypocrisy on the part of a spiritual leader. Aggression on one's own
18 country is something that only be conceived of maliciously. However, this
19 was accepted by the press and there was perfect coordination between the
20 Vatican and Germany. In December 1991, Genscher visited the Vatican. On
21 his return on the 19th of December, he announced that Germany would
22 recognise Croatia and Slovenia regardless of the positions of other
23 countries. And this was carried out on the 23rd of December. The Vatican
24 did this on the 13th of January 1992.
25 Germany and the Vatican were led by their historical geostrategic
Page 32171
1 interests. For years they worked on the destruction of Yugoslavia. This
2 was stated by Helmut Kohl in the magazine Politics International, issue
3 66. He said that the creation -- that the decisive period started when
4 Kinkel became head of the security service of Germany, and he established
5 close links with the Ustasha emigres. These were forces which worked on
6 the break-up of Yugoslavia, according to the writings of the well-known
7 American analyst Eric Schmidt-Birnbaum. These were Josip Balovic [phoen],
8 Josip Boljkovac, Franjo Tudjman, and Stjepan Mesic, the present Croatian
9 president. Mesic confirmed his role on Slovenian television by stating
10 that the idea on the break-up of Yugoslavia was something he wanted to
11 transmit to those who had the strongest influence on its fate, Genscher
12 and the Pope.
13 "I met Genscher three times. He made it possible for me to contact
14 the Holy See. The Pope and Genscher agreed to the total break-up of
15 Yugoslavia." End of quotation.
16 After this, recognition followed by other members of the European
17 Community in January 1992. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this
18 happened on the 6th of April of the same year. On the very date of
19 Hitler's attack on Yugoslavia in 1941; the 6th of April.
20 The federal entities were recognised, and in there, as it is
21 stated, "internationally recognised borders." However, never in any
22 international document were the administrative borders recognised. There
23 was not even an internal document about these borders. What is most
24 important in all this, recognition is a one-sided political act, whereas
25 the establishing of borders is a process, an internal process. The units
Page 32172
1 that were recognised did not meet the elementary prerequisites to be
2 recognised as states. For a state to be recognised, it needs to have a
3 legitimate state apparatus, stable political structures, there must be a
4 monopoly of power within the territory, full control over the use of
5 power, and, what is most important, a state has to express its strength
6 and its ability to provide security on the international and internal
7 levels. None of this was complied with. There was a bloody civil war
8 which will be recorded as something unique in modern history but in a very
9 negative way.
10 In legal circles throughout the world, the recognition of the
11 rebel forces caused great astonishment and was condemned. Cedric
12 Thornberry, the leader of the UNPROFOR, stated, I quote: "When Ambassador
13 Cutileiro notified us of the decision to recognise, General Morillon and I
14 were astonished." The French newspaper Figaro called this legal
15 hypocrisy. General MacKenzie, in his memoirs, states, "Although we were
16 not diplomats, all of us in uniform were sure that fighting would break
17 out all around us as soon as recognition is announced."
18 Special envoy of the UN, Cyrus Vance, stated that recognition of
19 Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina by the European Community and
20 the United States, I quote: "Led to the war that is being waged on the
21 territory of Yugoslavia." He said this in September 1992.
22 The recognition of fictitious states in a civil war represents an
23 indirect form of aggression against the Socialist Federative Republic of
24 Yugoslavia. Along with a powerful media campaign and a -- deluding the
25 international community by violation of international law and the laws of
Page 32173
1 the United Nations, the secessionist states were recognised as members of
2 the UN. The rest of the Yugoslavia, the core part of Yugoslavia, were
3 imposed with sanctions in May 1992, and the country was isolated, and in
4 July of the same year they were excluded or expelled from the United
5 Nations only because we did not accept, by a stroke of the pen, to have
6 the existing state deleted, the state in which we were living.
7 In this legal chaos and this moral decline of the leading powers
8 in the post-Cold War period and of the Vatican, the way was opened for
9 craziness and lawlessness from the borders in the south to Kosovo -- in
10 the north to Kosovo in the south. This ad hoc Tribunal was formed also
11 with the one and only objective of covering up the piled-up mistakes of a
12 Western policy and to justify the crimes, the destruction of a state, and
13 the highly technological barbarism committed by NATO countries in their
14 three-month bombing of Yugoslavia. Mass crimes were committed against its
15 citizens, medieval heritage of the Serbian people in Kosovo was destroyed,
16 and so on and so forth.
17 By instrumentalising extremely complex events in the territory of
18 Yugoslavia and by placing the responsibility on Yugoslavia and myself
19 personally as aggressors, a very obvious tactic was used to close the
20 circle and prevent logical thinking based on empirical principles.
21 Senseless, vulgar theories about bad guys and rough state cannot serve to
22 explain historical facts and provide the historical responsibility for the
23 destruction of a state. The joint criminal intent existed but it didn't
24 proceed from Belgrade, however, nor did it exist in Belgrade at all.
25 Quite the contrary. It existed through the joint forces of the
Page 32174
1 secessionists, Germany and the Vatican, and also the rest of the countries
2 of the European Community and the United States.
3 During my first appearance in this place and then on several
4 occasions after that, I questioned the legality of this so-called
5 Tribunal. During the trial, you have provided me with a lot of arguments
6 in support of my position. I will not dwell on the lack of the legal
7 basis for the establishment of this Tribunal. I would just like to recall
8 that the source of judicial power can only come from international
9 treaties and not resolutions, as stated by the UN Secretary-General
10 himself in a statement to the Security Council on May 3rd, 1993. However,
11 you owe a response to the international community of where does the right
12 of the Security Council come to suspend legal treaties? We have the legal
13 -- the Geneva Conventions from 1949 as well as Additional Protocols to
14 punish war crimes which place the responsibility for a trial of such cases
15 on national courts. An international court can have authority only if it
16 was created by a lege artis act and if it is of a general nature. This
17 Tribunal lacks both elements. The act of the establishment of this
18 Tribunal is of an individual nature. It's a political nature. The
19 elementary legal principle is equality. So then we have the question why
20 were not courts formed for all the wars that are being waged throughout
21 the world and that had been waged at least in the past decade of the 20th
22 century. Although there are no principled reasons for not doing something
23 like that and to apply to everybody if such a thing were legal.
24 In other words, this Tribunal represents the most serious form of
25 discrimination against one country, and it is a violation of the
Page 32175
1 protection against all forms of discrimination.
2 At the very beginning, I requested that this institution uses its
3 authority from Article 96 of the UN Charter and to ask the permission of
4 the General Assembly and to ask the International Court of Justice,
5 legally the highest judicial instance in the UN system which is authorised
6 to interpret the Charter and to provide its legal opinion on whether the
7 Resolutions of the Security Council establishing this Tribunal were in
8 accordance with the UN Charter or not. The fact that this Tribunal has
9 given it the right to decide for itself whether it was established in a
10 legally valid way and then concluded, as could be expected, that it was
11 done in a legal way does not mean that this conclusion is correct or that
12 it even had the right to reach such a conclusion. Namely, this so-called
13 Tribunal, just like any other Tribunal, is not authorised to bring
14 judgements on its own legality. That is why this decision is legally
15 invalid. Courts are authorised to decide on their own authority on
16 whether they are competent, on whether they are competent to decide on a
17 question or not. However, the question of the jurisdiction of a court and
18 the question of its legality are two separate issues. The question of
19 legality has precedence over the question of authority, because if a court
20 is not legal, then the question of its authority or jurisdiction is
21 pointless. As opposed to the question of its own authority, no court can
22 decide on its own legality, because by tradition it is not permissible to
23 judge in one's own matter.
24 Also, this illegal Tribunal does not have the right to deprive
25 persons before it from an answer of whether they are facing a legal or an
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Page 32177
1 illegal organ, particularly if there is a legally valid way to resolve
2 this question, because the person in question then is denied justice, deni
3 de justice, if this is not allowed to be answered.
4 However, I'm afraid that the people in authority in this
5 institution are aware that the International Court of Justice would be in
6 accordance with the view of their previous president, Mohamed Dejoui
7 [phoen], stated in his book The New World Order, and control of the
8 legality of the acts of the Security Council where, amongst the acts or
9 the laws that he mentions as controversial, both Resolutions referring to
10 this Tribunal are cited.
11 This Tribunal is not an International Tribunal and it is not an
12 independent organ, as you wish to present it. Amongst the public, there
13 has been an ideological fiction. The international community, which is
14 allegedly behind this Tribunal, is actually a deception. The ideal to
15 establish the Tribunal came from Kinkel after he succeeded Genscher, the
16 main criminal in the destruction of Yugoslavia. The idea was taken over
17 by Madeleine Albright, and the costs of the preliminary activities as well
18 as later activities were funded by the Soros Foundation who also founded a
19 coalition for international justice as an NGO in order to provide
20 "assistance" to the Tribunal. "Assistance" please I would like to place
21 in quotes, to these who are writing the transcript. These members and
22 other NGOs, some of whom today are working in this Tribunal today, were
23 engaged in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina to gather the evidence on
24 alleged crimes by Serbs.
25 Albright presented this before the US Congress, engaged different
Page 32178
1 lobbies and different media for the purpose of fabricating a certain image
2 which would influence the public. Sometimes they have called her the
3 mother of the Tribunal.
4 As for the authenticity of the evidence given by the NGOs, we can
5 use a scandal about the false documents presented by representatives of
6 those organisations in which I was allegedly accused for alleged crimes in
7 Kosovo. A journalist of the New York Times who wrote an article based on
8 this false information was forced to resign for professional and ethical
9 reasons.
10 I have that issue of the New York Times here but I don't have time
11 to present it.
12 The drafter of the Statute, Michael Scharf, of the Tribunal gave a
13 very precise assessment of the Tribunal in an interview to the Washington
14 Post on October 3rd, 1999. I quote: "The Tribunal is a useful political
15 channel which serves to diplomatically isolate rogue leaders and to
16 strength political will in the world, to apply sanctions and to enforce
17 power."
18 In other words, the Tribunal is an instrument of war and not of
19 justice. This was confirmed in Globe and Mail, a Canadian magazine, by
20 Marcus McGee, who stressed that the Tribunal, I quote: "Is a part of the
21 NATO war strategy."
22 So this is a private justice only known to them imposed by a war
23 coalition, and the intention is to return the judiciary to the medieval
24 era.
25 In the world this Tribunal is called a propaganda instrument of
Page 32179
1 NATO, so there can be no question of any independence at all. We also
2 need to add that since 1996 there has been a constant communication
3 between the NATO Secretary-General and your Chief Prosecutor. And on 9th
4 of May, 1996, a memorandum was signed by the Chief Prosecutor and the
5 Supreme Commander of NATO for Europe about the modalities of cooperation.
6 Therefore, NATO, and not the United Nations, have taken over the role of
7 the Tribunal policemen, and that is why this Tribunal cannot be considered
8 an international institution at all but an institution of NATO.
9 Another factor supporting this claim, your own Article 32 of the
10 Statutes provides that expenses for the Tribunal should be covered by the
11 regular budget of the United Nations, but in practice the money comes from
12 very morbid sources, dark sources like the Soros Foundation, different
13 other foundations, and also from Islamic countries. The bulk of the money
14 comes from NATO itself. According to NATO spokesman Shea, I quote: "NATO
15 is the biggest financial source for the Tribunal." He stated this on the
16 17th of May, 1999, in Brussels.
17 We also need to recall that Soros is also funding the liberation
18 army of Kosovo, the KLA, and their main propaganda newspaper, Koha Ditore.
19 During the signing on the 12th of September, 1990, in Moscow,
20 together with the foreign ministries of the Democratic Republic of Germany
21 at that time, also France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United
22 States, of the treaty on the definite order of Germany, Genscher stated,
23 "We do not want for anything else other than to live with all other
24 nations in freedom and democracy. State unity represents for us a greater
25 responsibility."
Page 32180
1 Very well, I will read more slowly.
2 "State unity represents for us a greater responsibility but it
3 does not at the same time represent our aspirations for having greater
4 power."
5 Chancellor Kohl, on the 3rd of October, on the day of the
6 reunification of Germany, sent a message to all world governments,
7 including the Yugoslav government, in which, amongst other things, he
8 said, "In future only peace will emanate from German territory. We are
9 aware that the inviolability of borders, the respect of territorial
10 integrity and sovereignty of all states in Europe are the basic condition
11 for peace, and we also have moral and legal obligations which arise from
12 German history."
13 Big words and big promises given to the rest of humanity and in
14 particular Europe at the point when the German nation finally was allowed
15 to remove the burden of its division which was imposed on it precisely as
16 a result of the darkest period of German history. Yes, this was a big
17 promise, but at the same time an empty promise, because how did the German
18 top leadership view the moral and legal obligations arising from German
19 history, which they cited, and what is their relation to the inviolability
20 of borders and respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all
21 states in Europe, as they said themselves as the main condition of peace.
22 You could practically at the same time see very well in Yugoslavia
23 how this was. In the territory of that state which German history -- at
24 that point of the 20th century inflicted the cost of 3 million lives,
25 1.247.000 victims in First World War, and 1.700.000 in World War II.
Page 32181
1 Precisely in that month of German reunification, security services of the
2 Yugoslav People's Army uncovered and managed to tape secretly activities
3 pertaining to the illegal import of weapons by Croatia aimed at
4 facilitating the armed secession of Croatia. So actually, we're talking
5 about the break-up of the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. This
6 import of weapons went through Hungary but also went through some units of
7 Germany, which made it ironical that Chancellor Kohl said in his message
8 that only peace would emanate from German territory.
9 The arming of the secessionists was not the only or the first kind
10 of involvement of Germany in the break-up of Yugoslavia and in the
11 creation of the Yugoslav crisis. The entire activities of Slovenia and
12 Croatia in their violent achievement of independence was not only aided by
13 Germany but to a considerable degree was encouraged by the top state
14 leaders.
15 Within the efforts to prevent the conflict or to stop the conflict
16 in the territory of Croatia as well as to stop attacks on the JNA, the
17 Presidency of Yugoslavia and the leaders of the Yugoslav republics
18 gathered in Belgrade at a meeting on the 20th and the 21st of August,
19 1991, and then adopted several decisions for the purpose of stabilising
20 the situation. A small programme of political and economic cooperation
21 was adopted. A commission was formed to develop agreements on the future
22 form of the multi-ethnic states, and there was an agreement also reached
23 between the leadership of Croatia and the officials of the JNA.
24 On the 20th of August, there was an extraordinary ministerial
25 session in which the foreign ministers of European Community member states
Page 32182
1 concluded that they welcomed the readiness of all parties to embark on
2 negotiations about the future of Yugoslavia and requested all the sides to
3 conduct the negotiations in goodwill amongst themselves.
4 On that very same day, Genscher held a consultative meeting with
5 the foreign ministers of Slovenia and Croatia. On the 24th of August,
6 1991, he called Boris Filic [phoen], the Yugoslav Ambassador to Bonn, who
7 happened to be a Slovene, which was a guarantee that the message directed
8 to the Yugoslav authorities would also be directed to Ljubljana and
9 Zagreb, and told him if the bloodshed continues and if the policy of
10 violence with the support of the JNA is not stopped immediately, the
11 federal government will seriously have to consider the recognition of
12 Slovenia and Croatia within the existing borders. It will also conduct
13 the review on these matters within the European Community.
14 The question is the following: Was more impetus needed, was a
15 greater impetus needed to those who had already proclaimed secession and
16 who had already resorted to weapons in order to carry this through? Was a
17 greater impetus needed in order to violate the cease-fire? Was any
18 greater impetus needed than this message that continued bloodshed will
19 lead to the recognition of those states? Unfortunately, that's what
20 happened. The message did yield the desired effect because the Croatian
21 paramilitary forces gave up on the cease-fire that had already been agreed
22 upon and the conflict escalated.
23 Finally, as Germany was ready to support Slovenia and Croatia in
24 this illegal secession, even at the cost of serious clashes with their
25 partners from the EC and the United States, Lord Owen speaks about this
Page 32183
1 too. You have admitted into evidence this -- his book here. He says: "I
2 remind you Genscher's letter to Perez de Cuellar, written in German,
3 invoked public statements that led to greater tensions in Yugoslavia and
4 invoked the Paris charter. But as Perez de Cuellar reminded him in his
5 reply, Genscher forgot to refer to the EC declaration adopted in Rome on
6 the 8th of November, 1991, which said that the prospects for recognising
7 the independence of those republics that so wished could only be looked
8 into within the overall environment."
9 I end the quote I referred to from Owen's book.
10 So, as I said, the European Community, on the 26th of March, 1991,
11 supported the unity of Yugoslavia but then the European Community, on the
12 8th of November, 1991, also called for a comprehensive solution in yet
13 another declaration that was adopted then.
14 Finally, the German position did prevail, and once Pandora's box
15 was opened, once the illegal secession was recognised, even at the cost of
16 human lives, it was difficult to stop the bloodstained process. Things
17 did not end, in the case of Slovenia and Croatia, irrespective of the
18 bloody consequences. A further step was made.
19 At the end of his book, on page 384, Lord Owen says -- I've been
20 asked to read quotations slower so I'll try to do that. "The mistake made
21 by the European Union regarding the recognition of Croatia could have been
22 redressed had the situation not been complicated by the recognition of
23 Bosnia-Herzegovina irrespective of consequences. The United States of
24 America that opposed the recognition of Croatia in December 1991 became a
25 very active advocate of the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992.
Page 32184
1 However, it was not logical and it was not unavoidable to recognise
2 Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Yugoslav republic that consisted of three large
3 constituent peoples with very different positions regarding independence."
4 So one mistake followed the other. One impudence followed the
5 other, and the cost was paid in human lives. And if human lives are the
6 price that had to be paid, then this is turned into a crime, a crime
7 against peace. And it is probably no accident that this illegal
8 institution does not have jurisdiction over that, crimes against peace.
9 Warren Christopher, the US secretary of state, in his interview to
10 US Today, which was also carried by Die Welt on the 18th of June, 1993,
11 Christopher said in this interview: "During the overall process of
12 independence, and especially the premature recognition of independence,
13 grave mistakes were made and particular responsibility in this respect is
14 borne by the Germans. Many experts believe that the problems that we
15 confront today stem from the recognition of Croatia and later on Bosnia."
16 Roland de Mar [phoen], Christopher's French colleague, says in the
17 Deutsche Zeitung, on 21st of June, 1993, when he was criticising the
18 European Community for recognising Slovenia and Croatia, he says in a
19 hasty and precipitous manner, and this speeded up the break-up of
20 Yugoslavia. I quote: "The responsibility of Germany and the Vatican for
21 the escalation of the crisis is enormous, obviously."
22 Another participant in these events, the then Dutch Prime
23 Minister, Ruud Lubbers, said in 1997 that German Chancellor Kohl exerted
24 pressure on the European Community in order to have it change its position
25 that the independence of Croatia could not -- should not be recognised in
Page 32185
1 order not to fan a civil war. I quote: "Van den Broek and I could stand
2 on our heads. The other Europeans could only look around in astonishment.
3 The Germans did what they did, and that was a catastrophe." That is Au
4 Courant, the 21st of December, 1997.
5 When all this support to Slovenian and Croatian secessionists in
6 their efforts to carry out their plan is taken into consideration, then
7 those statements made by Stjepan Mesic should come as no surprise when he
8 spoke about the role of Genscher and Pope John Paul II. But Germany's
9 strong support to the break-up of Yugoslavia and the recognition of the
10 independence of its break-away republics is something that is general
11 knowledge now. However, the question remains in many people's minds what
12 are the motives of this kind of action and this kind of obstinacy and
13 persistence on the part of top leaders in the German state that had just
14 been reunified. This question is answered by one of the world's leading
15 geopolitical experts, General Pierre-Marie Gallois, a person who worked
16 closely with General de Gaulle. And he said in an interview on the 23rd
17 of July, 1993, the following: "The break-up of this country and the
18 linking of Croats and Slovenians to German industry led to the
19 emancipation of those peoples who used to be associated with the Empire in
20 the heart of Europe and then with the Third Reich. On the other hand,
21 that meant punishment of the Serbs, who, in both world wars, stood by the
22 allies. Thirdly, this led to the disappearance of the last remnants of
23 those treaties that punished Germany twice for their defeats."
24 Although many would not be willing to support these views of the
25 old French anti-fascist general, believing that the ambitions of Germany
Page 32186
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6
7
8
9
10
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12 Blank page inserted to ensure the pagination between the English and
13 French transcripts correspond
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15
16
17
18
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22
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24
25
Page 32187
1 are just a thing of the past and that the catharsis that the German state
2 went through would be a sufficient guarantee to believe the assurances
3 given by German politicians during these events that took place during the
4 reunification of Germany, it is sufficient to look at Klaus Kinkel's
5 article entitled German Foreign Policy in the World in the light of The
6 New World Order published on the 19th of March, 1993, in Frankfurter
7 Allgemeine Zeitung. In this article, the task of the German foreign
8 policy is expressed as follow: "Something has to be carried out now and
9 we failed in doing so twice in the past."
10 It is quite clear what this means. I believe there is no one in
11 the world who does not understand where it was that Germany failed twice
12 vis-a-vis the outside world.
13 So according to the foreign minister of Germany himself, the
14 foreign policy of this country was to use its potentials to achieve what
15 it did not achieve through two world wars, and the question remains
16 whether this will be resolved through new means or old means.
17 On the day of the recognition of Croatia's secession, Kohl himself
18 said in a TV programme, "There is a particularly intensive relationship
19 between Croats and Germans which has a great deal to do with history."
20 This historical vertical line that Kohl pointed to in Germany's foreign
21 policy, the one that was pointed out by Kinkel as well, and finally also
22 what their Croatian cronies did through their own policy is shown by many
23 things that were said during the two world wars and during the war against
24 Yugoslavia, the third war. So there were anti-Yugoslav pressures
25 constantly in all three wars. First there was bloodshed in order to
Page 32188
1 prevent the creation of the Yugoslav state, and later on every effort was
2 made to wipe it out altogether.
3 The red thread through all the rhetoric of the German bloc, that
4 is to say Austria, or rather Austro-Hungary, and Germany in the Balkans is
5 the thesis of a danger of creating some kind of Greater Serbia. This
6 danger, this key thesis took a central place in this false indictment
7 against me; a Greater Serbia. This thesis, this myth, was created by
8 Austro-Hungarian propaganda as far back as the second half of the 19th
9 century. It is an integral part of efforts made by a rotting empire to
10 keep its occupied Southern Slav territories.
11 As for this fear that the Southern Slav people still occupied by
12 the Austro-Hungarian empire and this was this broad wave of emancipation
13 in many European nations who wished to free themselves and also they
14 wished to integrate into one state, as was the case in Germany itself, the
15 fear that this might be carried out although there was a historical
16 legitimacy involved and a natural legitimacy involved as far as the
17 unification of the Southern Slavs was concerned.
18 Yet another German, Ambassador Ralf Hartman, in his book The
19 Honourable Mediators, on page 31 says as follows, and this illustrates the
20 depth of this fear and how far back it goes into the past. I quote:
21 "Already in 1876 when the Serb Prince Milos supported the rebellion of the
22 Christian population of Herzegovina and Bosnia against the Turkish rule
23 and declared war on Istanbul, the Russian Prince Gorchakov, German
24 Chancellor Bismarck, and the Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister Andraszy
25 exerted Habsburg pressure on the so-called memorandum that in case the
Page 32189
1 Serbs won" - this is his quotation - "the powers will not tolerate the
2 creation of a large Slav state. For Germans, Italians, Spaniards,
3 Russians and everybody else this was an understandable right, the right to
4 live in a single state. The Southern Slavs should be deprived of this
5 right forever. It was a heresy, that is what they declared it, and they
6 were not allowed to unite. The name of the heresy was a Greater Serbia.
7 So although the Serbian Kingdom, in spite of all its aspirations, was
8 small and weak compared to the European powers, and also the Serb
9 population never exceeded 10 million, for decades this remained in Vienna
10 and Berlin and this spectre continues to live until the present day."
11 This indictment is the best proof of how correct all of this is,
12 because it is spectres that are referred to here.
13 What is particularly striking is that as far as back as in the
14 Austro-Hungarian propaganda, the freeing of the people from the
15 Austro-Hungarian yoke and the unification of the Southern Slavs, not only
16 the Serbs, was called the expansion of the Serbian state, or a Greater
17 Serbia. And this formulation means that there should be some kind of
18 expansionist tendencies, tendencies of conquest among the Serbs. It is a
19 fact that this would then mean that part of the Southern Slav peoples were
20 under foreign rule. However, that is not true. It is among the Croatian
21 people that the idea of a single state for a Southern Slavs was born. In
22 spite of that, when the Serbs espoused this in order to help their
23 enslaved brothers, their brothers who were enslaved under Austro-Hungary,
24 each remained as an idea of a Greater Serbia.
25 And there are two ideas that were always considered to be
Page 32190
1 identical and they are absolutely not identical, that is to say Yugoslavia
2 on the one hand, the joint state of the Southern Slav peoples, and on the
3 other hand some kind of Greater Serbia which is actually the product of
4 anti-Serb and anti-Yugoslav propaganda. So then and now, somebody's
5 tendency to dominate the territories populated by Southern Slavic peoples
6 and keeping them enslaved had to be kept under the guise of a propaganda
7 smokescreen that it was primarily the Serbs who had such intentions and
8 that they wanted to spread into territories that belonged to others. And
9 this is a sheer lie.
10 I have another quotation. This comes from German archives. The
11 German ambassador conveyed to his government what he talked about with the
12 Count, the foreign minister of Austro-Hungary. I'm quoting from the
13 archives. "The minister said that he considered it his obligation to
14 familiarise the German government with the position of the monarchy, the
15 Southern Slavic issue, and that is to say the unhindered keeping of
16 Southern Slav populated provinces is a vital issue for the monarchy, and
17 Serbian supremacy in the Balkans could not be allowed. If Serbia defeats
18 Bulgaria and extends its boundaries beyond the old Serbia, they would have
19 to intervene." When I asked how this would happen, the minister said that
20 a good psychological moment could be found. A pretext came soon, the
21 well-known assassination in Sarajevo, when Gavralo Princip, a member of
22 the organisation Young Bosnia, assassinated Franz Ferdinand, the
23 Austro-Hungarian archduke and heir. No one says what the truth was and
24 that is that about 20 young men were part of this conspiracy. That was
25 this Young Bosna. Ethnic Serbs and Croats and others alike. Although it
Page 32191
1 was never established that the government of Serbia was involved in the
2 assassination in any way, accusations were immediately levelled against
3 Serbia, the Serb people, the Serb government, and war happened.
4 In this mentioned book, Ambassador Hartman says: "In
5 Austro-Hungary and Germany, a fierce anti-Serb campaign was initiated and
6 the German ambassador in London, Lichnovsky, was charged with notifying
7 Gottlieb von Jagow that the entire Serbian nation as a people of
8 evil-doers and criminals has to be branded." And this is obviously
9 something that challenges the authorship of these accusations.
10 The meaning of this evil above all evils, Greater Serbia, is
11 something that nobody wanted to consider or go into. It has been used
12 here in a very facile manner, very arrogantly. Nobody has investigated
13 its origins. Had they done so, this entire propaganda exercise would have
14 burst like a soap bubble.
15 It is well known that on the 23rd of July, 1914, the Serbian
16 government was given an ultimatum by Austria Hungary after false
17 accusations of Serbia's involvement in this assassination and a number of
18 demands were made on Serbia which no sovereign country in the world could
19 have accepted. The failure to meet this ultimatum was expected, and the
20 only role of this ultimatum was to cause war, to be a pretext for war,
21 just as happened in Rambouillet. The British foreign minister, Sir Edward
22 Grey, described this text, and I quote Grey: "The most astonishing
23 document ever engendered by diplomacy." "The most astonishing document
24 ever engendered by diplomacy." Grey probably never even dreamt that in
25 that same century the Serbian people and the Serbian state would be
Page 32192
1 exposed to a number of similar and even more arrogant and amazing
2 ultimatums and that, together with Germany, Austria, and some other
3 Western countries, and even some Serbian allies from that time such as
4 France and a little later the USA, his own country, Great Britain, would
5 share the authorship of such new ultimatums just as it would share the
6 authorship and participation in the implementation of murderous assaults
7 on the Serbian people in the late 20th century carried out by means of
8 unscrupulous lies, and this will be shown very clearly here before the
9 public. There were merciless economic sanctions as well as bestial
10 attacks against people whose chief sin was that they tried to protect
11 their country and their people and preserve what they had acquired with
12 great difficulty with the help of allies in two world wars.
13 It is hard to imagine the shame Sir Edward Grey would have felt
14 had he known of the role his country would play in completing this crime
15 against the Serbian people at the end of the 20th century, and this is
16 taking place here before this institution with the flagrant violation of
17 international law because the resolution establishing this illegal
18 Tribunal is part of what Sir Edward Grey defined as the most astonishing
19 document ever engendered by diplomacy.
20 It is general knowledge how the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and
21 Slovenes was established, later renamed Yugoslavia, as the common state of
22 the Southern Slav peoples. The German bloc wanted to prevent this and
23 this state was to vanish from the face of the earth. However, the old
24 myth of Greater Serbia remained as a smokescreen to conceal their own
25 crimes and their own evil deeds. It is in this institution that the lie
Page 32193
1 of Greater Serbia found its natural foundation and grew into a monstrous
2 construction of unprecedented magnitude.
3 To make the irony and absurdity even greater and to make the lies
4 and injustice against the Serbian people even worse in contrast to their
5 Balkan neighbours, it is only the Serbian people who, although they had
6 ample opportunity and much greater opportunity than others, tried to
7 create their own extended state, because it is well known that in 1915,
8 the allies of Serbia, in the so-called London Treaty, offered Serbia,
9 after winning the war, an extension of its territory to Bosnia and
10 Herzegovina, parts of Dalmatia, parts of Slavonia, and so on and so forth.
11 There are documents to show all this. But Serbia did not do this. Serbia
12 instead embraced and espoused Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes alike from the
13 former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and this is how the
14 Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes was created, later on to be call...