090504IT

Page 7450

1 THE ACCUSED PRALJAK: [Interpretation] Yes, Your Honour

2 Judge Antonetti, Mr. President, I will be telling the truth, nothing but

3 the truth.

4 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. Praljak.

5 Mr. Praljak, you may proceed for your opening statement under

6 Rule 84 bis.

7 [Praljak Defence Opening Statement]

8 THE ACCUSED PRALJAK: [Interpretation] Thank you very much.

9 I would like to greet everyone in the courtroom, the OTP, Defence

10 counsel, the honourable Judges, and all those doing their work.

11 I was living in the hope that I would be allowed three hours, but

12 that was then limited to one and a half hours. Therefore, I have

13 provided binders, and I will start with paragraph 15 in the binders.

14 The Croatian Army in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

15 The JNA attacked Croatia. The front was throughout the former

16 Yugoslavia. The rebelling Serbs, the army of the so-called Krajina,

17 together with the JNA, attacked Croatia. The front extended throughout

18 the former Yugoslavia. That was where the soldiers and the weapons were

19 coming from. The JNA, the Krajina soldiers, the Army of the Republic of

20 the Serbian Krajina, attacked Croatia. The front extended throughout

21 this entire territory, where attacks were occurring, the territory from

22 which the soldiers were coming who were involved in those attacks, the

23 territory in which the military equipment and weapons were being produced

24 that were used in those attacks, and all the territories and areas which

25 those weapons and equipment were transported. The JNA and all the other

Page 7451

1 armies did not simply attack Croatia alone. They attacked all the

2 territories and all the peoples living east of the

3 Karlobag-Karlovac-Virovitica line, which was the imagined border of

4 greater Serbia.

5 Throughout this area in which they were carrying out these

6 attacks which under the International Law of War is defined as a theatre

7 of war, Croatia had every right to use military force to respond if on it

8 had been able to. Bosnia and Herzegovina, both as a territory and as a

9 state, was attacking the Republic of Croatia under the provisions of the

10 international law. Croatia had every right to respond by dispatching its

11 troops to any sector of the theatre of war, if only it had been able to.

12 A referendum was held on the 19th of May, 1990, for an

13 independent Republic of Croatia. 93 percent of the voters backed this

14 issue. At the first multi-party election, held in the spring of 1990,

15 members of the Croatian Parliament were elected.

16 On the 25th of June, 1991, and there's an error here if that

17 could please be corrected, 1991, a constitutional decision was adopted on

18 the independence of the Republic of Croatia, as well as a declaration

19 proclaiming Croatia's independence and sovereignty. This was the legal

20 and constitutive act creating the Republic of Croatia.

21 International recognitions were an important and principal

22 declaration of support to this newly-created state. A state, however, is

23 created by the will of the people.

24 On the 30th of July, 1991, the Lithuanian Parliament passed a

25 resolution recognising the independence and sovereignty of the

Page 7452

1 Republic of Croatia. Next followed recognition by France, the United

2 States, England, and Germany; and this recognition had a greater

3 political significance. Nevertheless, the first recognition that came

4 from Lithuania, and then somewhat later from Iceland as well, had a

5 greater moral significance, incomparably so, in fact, than those that

6 followed when Croatia, despite predictions that it would soon be

7 defeated, stood its ground. Everyone, with the exception of Lithuania

8 and Iceland, first waited until those predictions came true.

9 Alija Izetbegovic, the president of the Presidency of the

10 Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, could or could not desire -- or

11 desired not to: A, prevent attacks on the Republic of Croatia from the

12 territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina; prevent the taking away of captured

13 Croatian soldiers from Croatia and Kostajnica to Serb camps in

14 Bosnia-Herzegovina; C, prevent the taking of Unista, VH territory, by

15 Martic's units; D, prevent the massacre that occurred in the village of

16 Ravno, or indeed he found this simply not to be their war, or as he said,

17 "This is not our war"; E, prevent attacks on Dubrovnik, Slavonski Brod,

18 Okucane and so on and so forth; F, prevent the recruitment of citizens of

19 Bosnia-Herzegovina into the JNA. The question is where was the Croatia

20 Army allowed to go. Under the provisions of the International Rule of

21 Law, this simply did not matter. The Croatian Army was allowed to go

22 into the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina simply because that territory

23 was used to carry out acts of aggression against Croatia. It was a

24 theatre of war, from where Croatia stood, as simple as that.

25 Mr. Alija Izetbegovic, nevertheless, refused to sign a military

Page 7453

1 agreement with Franjo Tudjman. In order to not cause Serbs to become

2 angry, he was not willing or wasn't able to protect Croatia from an

3 aggression carried out by a state which he headed. He couldn't -- was

4 not able to or willing to protect the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He

5 could not do that for the Muslims either. He, Alija Izetbegovic, has no

6 power over 70 percent of this country's territory, and yet he is the

7 president of the Presidency of this country. Nevertheless, he behaves as

8 the leader of that country. He signs at that agreement on friendship and

9 cooperation with the Republic of Croatia, allowing the Army of the

10 Republic of Croatia to carry out activities or intervene in the border

11 areas. At the same time, he's negotiating an historic deal or agreement

12 with the aggressor, himself.

13 The Croatia Army did not cross into BH territory, except when an

14 operation was launched to liberate Dubrovnik. The belt in which military

15 activity was underway was so narrow that there was no way around this.

16 The volunteers of the Croatian Army, and the Croatian Army included about

17 15.000 volunteers from Bosnia-Herzegovina, were on their way back to help

18 defend Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately, there were too few of

19 them. The figures never exceeded between 500, 600 volunteers who were

20 really involved in military activities, at least not before the 9th of

21 November, 1993, at which time -- or until which time I remained as the

22 commander of the Main Staff of the HVO.

23 The text now continues, and I've provided a list of law books

24 that I looked into, because it was my duty and because I wanted to look

25 into them, all the texts which I studied in order to be able to write

Page 7454

1 this.

2 "International Law Number 3," by Andrassy, Bakotic, Sersic, and

3 Vukas, is one of the books I used. Page 4 reads:

4 "Under International Law of War, any area in which the warring

5 parties can prepare for combat activities is considered a theatre of war.

6 Above all, it encompasses the territories of the warring states, their

7 land, their sea, their coast, and their aerial space, air-space.

8 Nevertheless, military actions can also occur in territories not covered

9 by the sovereignty of any of the warring states."

10 Therefore, according to International Law of War, a theatre of

11 war encompasses the open sea as well as no-man's land or "terra nullius."

12 The same thing that is stated here is repeated by Professor

13 Dr. Gavro Perazic, in his own book, who happens to be a Serb. This is

14 the same book. At page 7, it reads:

15 "A theatre of war can be in the territory of one of the warring

16 states, as well as any other territories not falling under the

17 sovereignty or control of any of the warring states, yet they may become

18 theaters of war under International Law of War in which combat operations

19 can be prepared or executed."

20 Therefore, there's a map, 3D03254, which I used -- which I found

21 in Salzburg's book, which I used to show how America in the Second World

22 War was dispatching too many countries in the form of loans, and this

23 continued from March 1941 and September 1946. The quantities varied.

24 Obviously, the value of the dollar is implied at the time, but back in

25 the time it was an enormous amount of money.

Page 7455

1 If you look at map 3D03254, it shows Europe after the Nazi

2 conquests. It clearly shows, for example, Norway. The moment the units

3 of Nazi Germany or, rather, the Wermacht seized Norway's territory,

4 Great Britain, of course, dispatched its own assault units, having

5 previously carried out no consultations with Norway's Kwistling [phoen]

6 government, and having not previously considered international law,

7 simply because these were important ports in which German shelters and

8 submarines took shelter and which they used to control the supply routes

9 across the North Atlantic. That's on the following map, and the one that

10 I'm tendering is 3D035234.

11 The famous combat in Northern Africa between the Wermacht, on the

12 one hand, under the command of Field Marshal Rommel, and at the outset,

13 British units, later also the American units under the command of

14 Field Marshal Montgomery. Therefore, they moved on towards Egypt, as the

15 Wermacht tried to take possession of areas in which the oil was

16 available, and then they also tried to cut across their supply route; but

17 neither Great Britain or the United States saw this as a hindrance in

18 terms of standing up to the enemy wherever the enemy happened to be.

19 Therefore, there was fighting going on for years. We have the battle at

20 Kasserine, the famous battle at Kasserine depicted here, and that's where

21 Rommel was at the time.

22 The next maps that we have there are marked as number 12. I'm

23 using these maps to show the honourable Judges, the Prosecutor and

24 everyone else in the courtroom to show the areas in which the SFRY

25 military forces were deployed pursuant to the Warsaw Agreement, also

Page 7456

1 known as Plan S-1, the Warsaw Pact. Obviously, it would take up too much

2 of my time to go into any great detail about this, but there are several

3 things that immediately become clear. There was an attack that was

4 expected to occur across Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and the strategic

5 reserves or, rather, the last-ditch defence line was meant to be in

6 Bosnia and Herzegovina, more specifically in Central Bosnia and

7 Herzegovina.

8 We can please move on to the next map, page 13, showing a

9 deployment, and that's why drills were carried out under Plan S-2, the

10 deployment of the armed forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, in the

11 eventuality of a NATO aggression, showing again the axes in relation to

12 Italy and Austria, and especially from the open sea, from the south and

13 from Otranto. The reserve here was moved further south and is now in

14 Serbia. These military drills were being carried out throughout. While

15 General Petkovic was still with the JNA in Slovenia, many times he had to

16 bring out his units in order to respond to a simulated attack from the

17 west.

18 Map number 14 shows the areas of the Serbs on rebelling in

19 Croatia. In the lower part of the map, we see a description of what

20 bears mentioning here. This covered about 25 percent of Croatia's

21 territory, 11 municipalities, predominantly Serb municipalities, where

22 144.344 Serbs lived, or rather a total of 29.4 percent of all Serbs in

23 Croatia. In the remaining 91 municipalities, there was 75 percent of the

24 total number of Serbs living in Croatia; and they were not subjected to

25 any sort of vengeance or harassment by the Croatia authorities, save for

Page 7457

1 a number of individual cases, which is something that always occurs.

2 Map 15 shows the initial idea of an aggression against Croatia

3 and Slovenia. Look at the key. Everything is described there. You can

4 see the deployment of all the corps there, the Guards Brigade and all the

5 rest. Should there be any questions about this, I will be happy to

6 provide additional explanations during my cross-examination.

7 If we move on to map number 16, we see the plan of the attack on

8 the Republic of Croatia following the withdrawal of the JNA from Slovenia

9 in July 1991. This is only a small addendum to the previous map.

10 Map number 17 shows the military and political situation in

11 Croatia between December 1991 on the cusp to January 1992, with the

12 occupied territories of the Republic of Croatia as well as the axes of

13 attack or, rather, in this case defence. This was the plan, for the most

14 part unsuccessful plan, by the Croatia Army.

15 3D03173, 3D03173, what follows, are maps that I've already used

16 in this courtroom, the deployment of the JNA, its military structure in

17 January of 1985. And then a significant change which occurred is

18 reflected in the following map, 3D03175. Within the framework of the

19 conceptually complete military and political aspirations of Serbia, in

20 terms of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which was already in progress,

21 there was a major restructuring effort within the JNA, and this coincided

22 with the political positions stated in the memorandum, as well as

23 Milosevic's desires which might be summed up as follows: Slovenia, all

24 right, if it wishes to leave, it may as well do so, but if Croatia

25 decides to leave, only anything that remains north of the

Page 7458

1 Karlobag-Karlovac-Virovitica line they might keep. 3D00859 is another

2 exhibit in this case, showing the --

3 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Excuse me, Mr. Praljak. I just want to make you

4 aware of a little problem that you may not be aware of.

5 You mention numbers of the e-court, like 3D00859, but I do not

6 find this number on any of the maps. You have indicated numbers of maps.

7 I do not find those numbers on the maps. You have indicated pages. I

8 have found that you spoke of maps which had another page number. So

9 perhaps it would be helpful if you grave us -- the maps have a title.

10 For instance, the last one we had was, I think, "12: Military-political

11 situation in Croatia, December of 1991 to January 1992." If you give us

12 this full title, then it's easier for us to follow.

13 The next map you want to talk about, if I am not mistaken, has as

14 title on the top left side simply the number "1985." I don't know

15 whether I am correct, but to help you keep up the connection with the

16 Chamber, I think it's useful that you're made aware of this.

17 MS. PINTER: [Interpretation] Your Honour, by way of explanation,

18 the general has received a list of documents in e-court for a simple

19 reason; so that the documents and maps could be shown on the screen. And

20 the general is taking things in turn, and he's taking maps as they are in

21 the binder. In your binders, you will not find e-court numbers because

22 you have been provided with a hard copy. And just for the e-court,

23 numbers have been provided to the general so that he could read them and

24 so that the Judges could put them on e-court as the general mentions

25 them.

Page 7459

1 THE ACCUSED PRALJAK: [Interpretation] And now we are looking at

2 map number 18, and we are talking about the year 1985. This is the

3 deployment or the organisation of the Yugoslav People's Army, and it was

4 as it is depicted here, the 1st Army, the 2nd Army, the 3rd Army, the 5th

5 Army around Zagreb, as you can see it. This is especially important for

6 the fact that on the following map, which depicts the situation as it was

7 in 1987, there was a reorganisation of the Yugoslav People's Army in

8 keeping with the political aspirations of the Yugoslav People's Army and

9 the Serbian leadership. This was already explained in the memorandum of

10 the Serbian Academy of Sciences.

11 The explanation was this: As Yugoslavia breaks up, Slovenia can

12 leave Yugoslavia, and as for the rest of the former Yugoslavia and its

13 other parts, the only area that can leave Yugoslavia was the area that is

14 delineated by the line which leads from Virovitica to Karlobag north of

15 Zagreb. It's a minute part of Croatia. And as for the rest, this was in

16 line with the thinking of the group that was preparing the war. They

17 believed that the rest of Croatia belonged to the Serbian national

18 entity.

19 The following map, and the title is "The Operational Development

20 of the Armed Forces of the SFRY," and depicts the situation as it was in

21 1992, and I believe that the map is already an exhibit as 3D00859. This

22 map depicts the deployment of the units of the JNA after having left the

23 Republic of Slovenia. You can see that the 13th Corps went in the

24 direction of Montenegro, and that's the same corps that would later on go

25 on to attack Mostar and the area around there. The 10th Corps moved from

Page 7460

1 Knin to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 9th as well, and so on and so forth.

2 The following map depicts the distribution of JNA forces in

3 Bosnia and Herzegovina on the 20th of March, 1992, and this shows in

4 great detail what the distribution of the forces was and how many corps

5 there were, the 10th, the 9th, the 5th, how many soldiers each of them

6 had and how many volunteers. That map, as far as I can see, has been

7 admitted into evidence as 3D00859.

8 And finally, for your information, I handed up a little table

9 depicting the number of killed and wounded children in Slavonski Brod as

10 a result of the artillery fire from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have

11 nothing further to add to this document.

12 I'm now moving on to the topic under number 16, which is possible

13 methodological errors in understanding. In contrast -- which changed

14 their political system. In contrast which along with the change in the

15 political system emerged, or come into being, or constitute themselves,

16 in contrast which along with the change of the political system and a

17 simultaneous come into being must wage a war against an aggressor, in

18 such countries neither the president of the state of Croatia, nor the

19 Presidency or the president of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina,

20 nor the government, nor the ministers, nor the army, which by its

21 voluntary nature enables the creation and existence of such a state, nor

22 the commanders of the army, nor the military police, or any other

23 structure of society, represent what these names mean in countries from

24 which the honourable Judges and the Prosecutors come from. This is a

25 very frequent mistake of distorted nominalism, to include into the

Page 7461

1 content of a notion meaning of a state/culture/civilian which the

2 observer comes from.

3 In such a way, we come to a communication error, an error in

4 understanding. The same word is used to denote quite different contents,

5 and the interpretation of the system can be largely or even completely

6 erroneous. I've seen and heard a lot of this from all the observers

7 which were hanging around our areas during the war, too little knowledge

8 about the country they were coming to and too many cultural,

9 civilizational and political patterns that are valid in the countries

10 from which the moderators of the crisis come from; for example, the

11 pattern or matrix about the army in a structured system, which includes

12 the training, law, troop tradition, finances, social aspects, positive

13 selection, education, such psychological support, sufficient redundancy

14 of human and material resources continues, control and checking of every

15 segment, communication and so on and so forth.

16 There is another matrix, the one about a democratic society which

17 starts functioning with the act of the passing of the law on free

18 elections. The following is the matrix about the rule of law which

19 appears when good laws are passed, the matrix about the police, which do

20 their job well, when a group of citizens puts on uniforms and is provided

21 with badges. Things are not as simple as that. To be more precise,

22 things are much more complicated and harder, and usually take decades to

23 take place, but I could go on for hours talking about all that.

24 Since sociology is a demanding science, and everybody who is

25 anybody dealing with society, and everybody usually knows all about it,

Page 7462

1 the most frequent mistakes that arise from that are as follows:

2 reduction of a system to the level of one's own ignorance and, secondly,

3 the introduction of wrong assumptions whenever we need an explanation for

4 a certain phenomenon. I don't want anybody to think that this means that

5 those who do not have that, they don't have organised systems, that they

6 have the right to commit any kind of crimes. Certainly not. I'm not

7 saying that. However, a lack of order in any social system necessarily

8 leads to an increased number of those who, with time, for a number of

9 reasons, cross the threshold of what is permissible. This, of course,

10 depends also on the effort, work, behaviour of those who lead such

11 systems in the making.

12 I therefore think that only an all-encompassing and thorough

13 analysis of individual cases can provide an answer to the question

14 whether acts of crimes were incited, enabled through lack of punishment,

15 keeping secrets, tacit approval, or whether they fall into the usual

16 statistical distribution of adverse phenomena which every war and every

17 chaotic social situation bring with them.

18 For all those in the courtroom who might be interested, I have

19 prepared short excerpts from a book by Len Deighton under the title

20 "Blitzkreig," describing the Second World War. I have emphasised the

21 part which explains the underlying causes behind the troops of Wermacht

22 of the Nazi Germany, commanded by Generals Rommel, Manstein and Guderian,

23 not far from the place where we are at the moment -- when I say "not

24 from," I mean Belgium and the Ardeni range, in a certain way -- in a very

25 simple way, broker French divisions and the English division corps.

Page 7463

1 And now I would read just one thing from page 4. One thing was

2 clear. Whatever they did, whatever game they chose to play, the Allies

3 would have a bad time and would find themselves in a quagmire only due to

4 an obstinate refusal on the part of the Belgians to cooperate in their

5 own defence. This attitude of the Belgians was finally confirmed when

6 the Belgian ambassador in London, several hours after the intrusion of

7 Germans into his country, visited the British minister of foreign affairs

8 and handed an official protest note of his government, sent because the

9 British Army crossed the French-Belgian border to fighter against the

10 aggressor without an official Belgian invitation.

11 On the following page, page 5, I have also emphasised an excerpt

12 to demonstrate how organised and trained troops might look when they are

13 exhausted and facing the chaos of war.

14 This is what a British inspector wrote about a unit of the

15 vitally-important 9th Army, and we're talking about the 9th Army of the

16 French military:

17 "Rarely does one have the opportunity to see such a disorderly,

18 dirty, and shabby unit. Almost all of its soldiers were unshaven, their

19 horses un-groomed. On the faces of the soldiers, you could not see a

20 trace of pride with oneself or the unit to which they belong. Still,

21 what upset me most was the expression on their faces; solemn, frowning,

22 dissatisfied, disobeying. Although an order had been given 'Salute to

23 the left,' they passed beside us with hardly any one of them making an

24 effort to salute."

25 Further on, it says in this paragraph about the lack of effort, a

Page 7464

1 lot of propaganda, a lot of alcohol, and about a French state railway

2 that had to set apart special rooms in all the major stations for the

3 sobering of the dead-drunk soldiers. There is also reference to the

4 courage of French soldiers and some splendid units, and then on page 7 a

5 reference is made to the Supreme Command.

6 Very often, the Judges in this courtroom asked about

7 communications in the army, who's contacting whom, how quickly one can

8 react in situations like that, and so on and so forth. Look at the state

9 of disorder that reigned in the relationship between the command of the

10 French forces and the units of British forces subordinated to them, and

11 then within the command of the French Army, and you will all see that on

12 pages 7, 8 and 9. Since the British Expedition Force was small, there

13 was no point in setting up a joint allied command, and that's why the

14 British soldiers were subordinated to the local French commanders, they

15 were subordinated to them.

16 It says later on that the structure of the French command system

17 was so rigid that one could not convey any commands necessary for rapid

18 reaction through such a rigid system. It says further on that the

19 officers could not bypass this system of bad command. It says also that

20 the Brigade General Charles de Gaulle did not receive almost any support

21 when he tried to continue fighting the Germans with the man who had lost

22 the war on the 21st of June and struck a deal and signed a peace accord

23 with the Germans. French General Gamelin, if I am pronouncing his name

24 correctly, create the French strategy. He appointed unit commanders. He

25 issued orders not only to the French forces facing the Germans, but also

Page 7465

1 the French forces on the Alps facing Italy and also the French forces in

2 Syria and North Africa. Interestingly enough, he did not have a general

3 staff.

4 The operative command of the large Allied forces in North-East

5 France was the task of General George, whose title a very old and poorly

6 defined title was made general of the army. Even the chief of George's

7 staff once admitted that his officer was not absolutely sure where

8 Gamelin's responsibility stopped and where his own started, and so on and

9 so forth. And finally, when they lost the war, when he answered the

10 question of how quickly he could send orders to the battle-field, he said

11 that usually it took any order 48 hours to get to the battle-field. In a

12 clash with the German units, the three generals who were close to the

13 front were facing the army with good communications, and that army -- the

14 French division simply did not stand a chance against the Germans.

15 And further on I would like to say something about fear, fear

16 from tanks, even when Guderian's tasks could not break the line of the

17 5th Division, and how the 5th created havoc within a whole division that

18 was deployed from Chaumont to Marfais [phoen] Hill.

19 And then it says on page 10 the command position of the 55th

20 Infantry Division -- let me start a bit before.

21 Interestingly enough, the stone which will turn into an avalanche

22 of catastrophe did not start rolling in that creek. Actually, the

23 avalanche was launched around 1830 hours on that beautiful day by the

24 commander of a French artillery battery deployed near the village of

25 Chaumont, when he sent a report saying the German tanks had penetrated

Page 7466

1 all the way to the hills of Marfais.

2 The report was completely incorrect. However, to every French

3 commander who was tempted to throw it away as the fruit of sheer hysteria

4 caused by fear, it gave the motive to change his mind when, a bit later,

5 an artillery colonel from [indiscernible], south of Chaumont, sent to his

6 corps commander another report, also premature, in which he claimed that

7 the battle got dangerously close to his command post, so he had to either

8 withdraw or reconcile himself to the fact that his unit would be

9 surrounded, and so on and so forth. The text goes on to talk about the

10 refugees, about the courage and morale of the French 213th Infantry

11 Regiment which unfortunately failed in its attempt, despite the fact that

12 the troops marched for hundreds of kilometres in order to join the fight.

13 This is just an illustrate of what illustrates something that escapes our

14 attention because of the nature of the work in this courtroom, and this

15 is the war conditions of chaos, death, and blood.

16 And now I'm going to move on to my Chapter 17, "Wishes,

17 Intentions, Action and Power."

18 If we were to interview people and ask them if they wanted the

19 problems of hunger, disease caused by poverty, wars, killings, to

20 disappear, the answer would certainly be "yes." How come we then do not

21 manage to solve such problems? Why did it take Baroness Statures [phoen]

22 several years to successfully solve the problem of the rampage of English

23 football fans. Why did it take the French Minister of Interior Sarcozy

24 several months to sell the problem of rampage of French citizens, the

25 arson, killings, the malison of shops and cars in the suburbs of French

Page 7467

1 cities. And it happened only recently as we all remember. How come

2 responsible people in France cannot prevent the burning of cars every new

3 year? Last year, there were 1200, and in the last 10 years the number of

4 burned cars has been over 30.000. How come that the Greek government

5 cannot stop the deluvial violence of its citizens in Athens which has

6 been going on for months? How come that the US Army cannot stop the

7 killing of several hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, a country

8 from which 4 million Iraqis have fled or have been forced to leave?

9 Would this be ethnic cleansing? Would this be expulsion or flight to

10 save dear life? Who is responsible, and how can these things be

11 prevented? Why did Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland fight

12 for decades in a civilised corner of the world? Are we not hurt by the

13 fact that over 20 years ago China destroyed one whole civilization and

14 culture in Tibet and that they continue to do so; and by doing that they

15 have brought a whole people to the very edge of survival? What is it

16 that we can do, and why is there nothing that we can do there? It would

17 be pointless to go on enumerating such examples. It would just take us

18 too much time.

19 And, finally, when, in this huge sea of evil of atrocities which

20 floods this world of ours, we find out about some events, how often and

21 in which way do we get to know who the villain or the perpetrator is?

22 Isn't it a hard way between the realisation that something has happened

23 and finding out who the person behind the atrocities actually is? What

24 do we need to have, in technological and organisational terms, and what

25 do we have to do in order to uncover the perpetrators in such situations?

Page 7468

1 The impotence to do something to prevent or to uncover a crime is

2 a terribly wretched feeling, but this is not a crime. This terribly

3 wretched feeling is not a crime.

4 Chapter 18, the joint criminal undertaking or enterprise.

5 Voluminous literature is in existence about social groups, large and

6 small, professional, closed or open, more or less structured,

7 heterogenous, homogeneous, etiological, et cetera, what is the logic

8 behind the choice of this accused group? The Prosecutor says all members

9 of the HDZ, all members of the HVO and the like, and then he says "except

10 for some." Whoever has studied logic to any extent, which is the basic

11 of all human reasoning presuming we do not include pure fantasy, the mere

12 chemical-neural activity of the frontal lobe will never write all and

13 then add "except for some," because if all are involved in something,

14 then those who are not all cannot exist. And if they are not all, then

15 who are and who are not the members of the group of the joint criminal

16 enterprise, and why only four deceased persons and six currently alive?

17 What is the criteria on which the choice was made?

18 The question relating to the phenomenon of the society and war

19 and the cause or meaning of this phenomenon is even more complex. Any

20 phenomenon which appears as a riddle, either in natural sciences or in

21 social sciences, is complex, and all these parts of a whole are

22 interconnected by causal relations. Everything interacts with everything

23 else. Thousands -- hundreds of thousands of variables interact, creating

24 complex differential equations, but there are no final solutions, no

25 final results.

Page 7469

1 Two major theories in the 20th century are important for the

2 understand of the world, the first one being the theory of determined

3 chaos which teaches us that small changes on the input side of a system,

4 if we iterate them, which means repeat them slightly, repeat the slight

5 input values, we can cause large and unpredictable changes in the system.

6 This appears to me especially important in relation to the

7 situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, because initial small things, when they

8 were iterated, that is repeated, brought us to a single point of no

9 return, a point from which on there was no control. Then the other

10 theory is the QED by Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dirac, Planck, which

11 introduced the principle of indeterminability as an essential part of

12 reality, then the laws of probability as a logical form of understanding,

13 and the principle of complementarity, which says no truly basic natural

14 phenomenon can be determined by the words of everyday speech.

15 Determination requires at least two mutually complementary notions.

16 Niels Bohr states as examples life, a quantum object, the physical

17 system, and the understanding of nature. And then they go on to say

18 there is no science without art, there is no beauty without ugliness,

19 there is no evil without good, and sunlight passing -- having passed

20 through a prism is a rainbow, whereas having passed through a lens burns.

21 Why is especially the principle of complementarity important for our

22 case? I will try to show so by introducing documents which have not been

23 tendered before to establish the total factual truth.

24 We know about 10 to 15.000 wars in human history, the number

25 depending on the definition of war. Since the Second World War, there

Page 7470

1 have been over 500 wars. There have been over 200 military interventions

2 of a great or a smaller scope of intensity of the USA after the Second

3 World War. There is the unfinished war between Japan and Russia, the

4 unfinished war between North and South Korea, China and Taiwan or

5 Formosa, China and India or Pakistan, then there are the Tamil Tiger, the

6 Middle East, the Basques, Northern Ireland, Africa. I could go on

7 enumerating at infinitum. The number of military conflicts of greater or

8 lesser intensity never falls below 25 to 30 at any given moment. In the

9 last 300 years, Germany and France have waged war against each other 25

10 times.

11 Then there is hunger and diseases. Millions of children die of

12 hunger every year. Communism killed millions of people, et cetera.

13 Twenty-five girls get pregnant due to rape every year in the USA. So

14 once they get pregnant, of course they are no longer girls but become

15 women.

16 And what about justice, judges and prosecutor agency since

17 Socrates was convicted 2300 years ago because he misled the youth, what

18 is there in the administration of justice that has been moral. The

19 trials in Rome, where slaves were considered lower in rank and value than

20 a thing, trials in the name of the church or the king, communist Nazi,

21 racial class trials in the 20th century. As late as 1962, America

22 banished racial segregation in schools, aided with the weapons of federal

23 troops.

24 Isn't it whole history of mankind just one joint criminal

25 enterprise. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not judging, or I'm not

Page 7471

1 preaching morals, but please don't speak about justice and the obscure

2 concept of the international community with so much pathos. If I'm

3 pronounced guilty of anything, I will answer to the victims because I

4 respect them.

5 On the following pages, unusual as it may seem that I deal with

6 these things, I even wrote a critique of the doctrine of the joint

7 criminal enterprise. I studied the works of Professor Marijan Damaska,

8 who retired recently, but until his retirement taught at Yale University

9 in the USA, and at page 4, he mentions some things. I'll skip them over.

10 It's all here in writing. I don't wish to appear as thinking I'm the

11 smartest guy around, but it's for the Judges to decide. But of course

12 everybody is free to study law and think about these issues, and I did

13 study ethics for 40 or 50 years, and so I also had to deal with the

14 relationship between law and morality.

15 So among other things, here it says that on the objective side,

16 there must be a joint plan, design, or intent. It should be determined

17 that the accused person committed an act, et cetera. We'll skip that.

18 After that, at page 5 he mentions the fogginess which accompanies

19 a notion of a common intent. I'll read -- I'll just read out the

20 following at page 6, how the international community behaved. It's from

21 the book written by Florence Hartmann about the protected areas which,

22 based on the decision of the permanent members of the UN

23 Security Council, were declared protected areas, where people had the

24 right to survive, et cetera. It says here:

25 "Paris, London, and Washington failed in 1995 to undertake all

Page 7472

1 the necessary measures to prevent genocide which was step by step

2 prepared in front of our eyes."

3 As early as 1993, the intuitive international representatives

4 called the tightening of the ring surrounding the besieged enclave a slow

5 genocide or a gradual genocide.

6 Throughout the entire last offensive against Srebrenica from the

7 6th until the 11th of July, 1995, the major powers didn't stop claiming

8 that the Serbian forces, in spite of their advances, have no intention of

9 taking the enclave. Feigning surprise and without lifting a finger, they

10 let Mladic enter the town on the 11th of July, 1995. Then I'm skipping a

11 bit. Jacques Chirac let this be known and tried to convince his partners

12 to intervene.

13 On the 11th of July, the French president proposes to

14 Great Britain, the USA and Germany that they reclaim this enclave by

15 force. The next day, France addresses the Security Council and again

16 states that it is willing to put its forces at disposal for any military

17 operation which will be judged as useful and feasible.

18 On the 13th of July, Chirac persists and calls Bill Clinton and

19 tells him in Srebrenica they separated men, which are old enough to be

20 able to carry arms, from the women, there's a danger of they're being

21 slaughtered. The civilised nations must confront fascism and conduct a

22 decisive and limited military operation, et cetera. Disinclined to

23 engage American troops on Bosnian soil, Clinton refuses. Kofi Annan,

24 still the commander of peacekeeping operations at the UN, assesses the

25 French proposal as unrealistic and unfeasible, and we know what happened.

Page 7473

1 It goes on to say that Carla Del Ponte is aware of the joint

2 responsibility of international forces for the crime committed in

3 Srebrenica. She confirmed in her own words, saying:

4 "International forces knew that in Srebrenica a slaughter of

5 massive proportions will take place. They were speaking about it and did

6 nothing to prevent it."

7 And so on. Ms. Carla Del Ponte, in her book, says at page 9 of

8 my text: One of the prosecutors of the Tribunal, a Canadian, well known

9 in his circle for his wit and his anecdotes, had an aphorism that did a

10 good job capturing the difference between the Serbs and the Croats who

11 attempted to obstruct the work of the Tribunal. "The Serbs are

12 bastards," he used to say. In contrast, "The Croats are perfidious

13 bastards."

14 Through my attorney, I contacted dozens of relevant addresses,

15 sending them this letter you have in front of you, claiming that

16 Del Ponte used the phrase "he used to say," which means to say that this

17 was not a singular witty remark, but the habitual chauvinist and racist

18 characterisation of all Croats as perfidious bastards. And, secondly,

19 Carla Del Ponte repeats the words of that prosecutor with no

20 restrictions, which means that she completely agrees with such an

21 opinion, which is in line with the formulation of that statement.

22 If I, Slobodan Praljak, had uttered such a statement, or in any

23 form about any people or any group during the war in ex-Yugoslavia, I

24 would have been sentenced to five years on account of that only.

25 Tab 19, quid pro quo or tutu quo, as said here in this Tribunal,

Page 7474

1 the attack of the JNA on Croatian BiH, helped by the organised and armed

2 formations of local Serbs, sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing

3 from burning villages; concentration camps, the killing of civilians,

4 destruction, rape, were all part of that aggression.

5 As in social relations, there is nothing but a law of causal

6 relationship, that is, the law of action and reaction. When individuals

7 or smaller organised groups outside of the control of the already weak

8 government at all levels, the pain and despair makes them cross the

9 threshold of what is legally permissible, revenge occurs. This is true

10 of both attacked peoples, the Muslims and Croats alike. It was like that

11 in every war, or has been like that in every war, to a greater or lesser

12 degree. With the passing of time and due to the mixed population, the

13 war in BiH began, by the course of its own logic, to assume the

14 characteristics of a civil war. The Muslims, pushed to the brink of

15 extinction by Serbian conquest, expulsion and other acts, along with the

16 international denial of the right to defence by the introduction of the

17 embargo on the import of weapons, accepted the help of the fighters from

18 the Islamic world, the Mujahedin. The Mujahedin introduced into that war

19 chaotic elements of a religious war and substantially contributed to the

20 idea of attacking the Croats.

21 It is understood that a commander at any level, including others

22 who hold any kind of office in that chaos, cannot take decisions contrary

23 to International Law of War. That is not disputable. What is

24 disputable, however, is the thesis of the Prosecutor, and I fear the

25 honourable Judges might reduce the entire system in a similar war, that

Page 7475

1 the impossibility of managing all the parts of that chaos is guilt. That

2 idea sprang in the heads of many who called themselves -- call themselves

3 intellectuals and humanists.

4 One of them says that in 1992 he came to Mostar to help, but when

5 he saw the chaos, he returned home. Most of that spurious

6 intellectualism and humanism in people with such a mindset is then

7 reflected in retelling these stories in lounges, stories about the people

8 who remained, and if there is something they don't like in the

9 phenomenology of war, they will put the blame on them. I personally

10 despise the role of war theatre audiences and observers, and irrespective

11 of acts which must be sanctioned. Here is what I say about 98 percent of

12 the boys and girls I commanded: Glory be to those who decided to defend

13 the Thermopylae, which is a quotation from the Greek poet Kavafis. I

14 respect their death, their wounds, courage, their freezing in the

15 trenches, their poor clothes and boots, poor food, the despair that

16 filled them when they thought about what would happen to their parents if

17 they get killed, the poor armaments and very often unclear aim and point

18 of this struggle, which had too many unprincipled and immoral conductors.

19 The unprincipled proposals of the international community in

20 wartime BiH bereaved those deaths from the only possible sense too often.

21 States are created by peoples, and not the other way around.

22 Finally, for the sake of truth, we should mention that even the

23 International Law of War in some cases accepts the quid pro quo logic.

24 This is what I found in the literature to which I had access; namely, the

25 book by Professor Gavro Perazic from Belgrade about the International Law

Page 7476

1 of War; both that book and other books which I read during the war about

2 the International Law of War, some Swiss books or books of other origin

3 translated; and they say that in certain cases, when the enemy violates

4 International Humanitarian Law constantly, there is the right to

5 retaliation. However, "retaliation" may be too harsh a word, because it

6 points toward the biblical principal of an eye for an eye, so that

7 nowadays "reprisals" is the more common word nowadays, and the definition

8 of "reprisals" is: Reprisals represent a breach of war law as a response

9 to the breach of this law on the part of the enemy whose purpose is the

10 cessation of this breach.

11 Honourable Judge Prandler, it was not my idea for a moment that

12 tu quoque could be a form of law. I always spoke only about the

13 following: that in society, it can't always be avoided that in a chaotic

14 state and bearing in mind a causal response, the role of those who should

15 prevent and uncover, et cetera, becomes exponentially more difficult as

16 the wartime chaos grows worse, especially as this war went on for quite a

17 time.

18 How much time have I left, Your Honours?

19 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] The Trial Chamber's legal

20 officer told me five minutes, so that you've used so far one hour and

21 thirteen minutes. You must have 15 minutes left so we could get to 4.00.

22 You've got the clock here in the courtroom here. Make sure you finish at

23 4.00.

24 THE ACCUSED PRALJAK: [Interpretation] Tab 20, war crime, crime in

25 war.

Page 7477

1 When, in the Croatia language, we transform the noun "war" into

2 an adjective, we get an assembly consisting of a non-flexible adjective

3 and a noun, "war crime." A non-inflexible adjective, "ratni," the term

4 is the essence of the concept of the noun "rat" or "war" in front of

5 which it is placed. Likewise, Croatian orthography, Croatian literature,

6 French wine, Swiss watches, in this manner a special meaning is given to

7 a subset of orthography of wine and watches. Likewise, to any crime in a

8 war, a special cognitive content is given. It is extracted from the

9 individual and transferred and directed to the structural part of war,

10 the political and military commanding set. I do not agree with this.

11 Why would a crime in a war be different from a crime in peacetime? A war

12 crime is a crime which stems from a foundation, in the words of Hazel,

13 i.e., a political idea which is realised by war, by ways and means which

14 include crime, a political idea that can be realised only by crime. This

15 is, for example, the idea of the Nazi German political thought. This is

16 the idea of the Communist Stalinist in Poland and the killing of Polish

17 forces in the Katyn forest, and many other similar examples. I will not

18 here expound on the Serbian political thought which led to the aggression

19 in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, or indeed on whether what

20 happened in that war confirms the war crime as founded. I will also not

21 dwell on the Islamic declaration, nor will I explore whether goals

22 contained in that documents can be realised without war and war crimes.

23 One thing I do know beyond any reasonable doubt is that Croatia's

24 political and military structures in Croatia, and Croatian political and

25 military structures in Bosnia-Herzegovina, never had as their goal

Page 7478

1 anywhere anything that could be realised only by one form or another of

2 war crime.

3 War itself favours an increasing in criminal acts by contrast to

4 a social state of peace for a number of reasons, too many in fact to be

5 listed here. I will dwell on some aspects of social psychology at a

6 later stage, though.

7 As Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina can contemplate with this

8 aggression, how to create their states and change their political

9 systems, they were partly occupied with their utility, economic and

10 social structure in tatters, Bosnia-Herzegovina more so than Croatia.

11 The number of problems and difficulties in such a situation is difficult

12 to even imagine for those who have never experienced such a thing. That

13 is why the crimes committed by the members of the Croatia people in

14 Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are crimes beyond any doubt at all, but

15 also it is beyond any doubt that these crimes are crimes in a war. They

16 did not happen due to their foundation in an idea or a political desire,

17 inclination, aspiration, by those who managed and commanded, but in spite

18 of the foundation, desire, inclination, intention and action. Just as we

19 do not use the phrase "Parisian crimes" for crimes that occur in Paris or

20 American crimes in relation to any criminal offences committed in the

21 course of a year in America or generally civilian crimes in relation to

22 everything that goes on in the civilised societies in peacetime, much in

23 the same way I think it is necessary to distinguish the meanings of

24 crimes committed in war before we go on to classify them as war crimes

25 or, alternatively, crimes committed in a war.

Page 7479

1 On the contrary, taking into account the number of criminal

2 offences, we could easily be attempted to accuse of joint criminal

3 enterprise the governments, police, ministers, and mayors of many Western

4 countries because they do succeed, in spite of all their resources at

5 their disposal, in reducing the number of such offences below a certain

6 not even very low limit, and the number of those they manage to bring to

7 face justice is not really satisfactory, either. In relation to certain

8 forms of serious crime, the figure falls under 15 percent of the total

9 number of incidents.

10 Just in order to save time, let's move on to tab 24. If there's

11 time left, I would like to return to 21. Now let us try to move on to

12 24, please.

13 Indictment. Since the year 1102, the Croats have always been

14 fighting four their statehood and survival against all the states which

15 besieged them, conquered them, and occupied their territory. Ever since

16 1102, all there was for the Croats was the fight for survival against the

17 Ottoman intrusion, against Venice and Italy, against Austria and Hungary,

18 against Serbia, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the unitary communist Tito

19 creation. Likewise, in 1971, within the student movement and then within

20 the Communist League of Croatia, with a huge popular support, Croatia

21 tried to gain a greater political, cultural and economic autonomy and

22 decentralisation of the SFRY. In other words, it sought to reduce Serb

23 domination and obtain greater democratic and autonomous rights. The

24 counter blow was strong and merciless. Hundreds of people ended up in

25 jails. Thousands upon thousands were left without a job. Thousands of

Page 7480

1 others fled the country. The majority of the best Croatian intellectuals

2 ended up in jails, without work, or outside the country. Many of these

3 distinguished emigrants were killed abroad by Yugoslav Secret Police.

4 Let me just mention the killing of Bruno Busic in Paris. Vlado Gotovac,

5 a distinguished Croatian intellectual, poet and writer, was brought

6 before a judge as an indictment was read to him, verbal offence and

7 attempt to overthrow the socialist self-management order. Asked to enter

8 a plea, he answered, "The indictment is absurd. Therefore, it is

9 irrefutable." He sat five to six years together with the common

10 criminals.

11 When I entered a plea about the indictment against me, I said

12 that I understood it verbally; that is, I understood the words of the

13 language in which I read it. Its logical, cognitive and legal essence,

14 however, escaped me. The indictment is absurd. When, during the trial,

15 I read the books of Florence Hartmann, Carla Del Ponte, and I confirmed

16 all my suspicions about political games going on around and in the

17 Prosecution, and I understood what way of reasoning predominated there,

18 my skepticism became fully grounded. The virtual world of political

19 interests, stories, and repetition of the message about the good guys and

20 bad guys, partiality instead of wholeness, all of that demolished the

21 factual truth.

22 Hagel was once told by some people that some facts did not agree

23 with his philosophical postulates. He answered coldly, So much worse for

24 the facts.

25 Number 24, "Statement." Never, nowhere, not in a single meeting,

Page 7481

1 conference or rally, in Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war,

2 between 1991 and 1995, did I hear anyone plan, incite, tolerate cover up,

3 or in any other way foster or advocate any misdeed or any act punishable

4 by any positive law, nor indeed did I do this myself. As for members of

5 my own people, on various occasions I would swear and yell over and above

6 any civilised norm of behaviour. Sometimes I would even hit a person. I

7 falsely signed my -- signed documents as a general, although I was never

8 a general of the HVO. I exercised command over certain operations,

9 although I did not have formal authority to do that. I made threats. I

10 threatened Croats, of course, with acts and powers that had no legal

11 foundation, and the like. Obviously, I am prepared to answer any

12 questions regarding that during the cross-examination. I'll explain what

13 motives led me to do that and what the meaning of all these actions was.

14 We were brought up to not speak about ourselves, particularly not

15 speak favorably and positively about ourselves. It is not a polite thing

16 to do and, therefore, must not be done. In numerous interviews and

17 conversations during and after the war, I never said a single word about

18 the good that I did or, indeed, about my behaviour in the war. Then lies

19 started mounting, false constructions, false witnesses and false truths.

20 Eventually, I was brought to face a court as a criminal. I have had

21 enough now. I now switch back to first person singular free from any

22 consideration visibly the so-called civic politeness and that I claim

23 that there exists the Archimedes-Praljak law which says: Praljak,

24 immersed into war, will reduce the quantity of evil in that war by the

25 unit of one Praljak. This unit consists of energy, daily quantity of

Page 7482

1 hours in which this energy is active. As far as I was concerned, this

2 amounted to about 20 hours per day; C, passion or the speed of burning

3 this energy; D, courage; E, knowledge; F, intelligence quotient. Of

4 course, all of these belong to Slobodan Praljak.

5 As far as some of the above elements are concerned, some people

6 may have stronger qualities than me, such as knowledge and intelligence,

7 but those are few and far between, and the differences cannot be that

8 significant. This might be qualified as arrogance. Nevertheless, in

9 relation to each and every one of these claims, I am prepared to be

10 examined by a psychologist. They can study my IQ, and they can determine

11 the extent of my knowledge.

12 One thing I do not admit is that anyone at the time had the

13 qualities which, added up, would give more -- would yield more than one

14 Praljak, the unit defined by the Archimedes-Praljak law. To achieve more

15 in those times and in that position, one should have had the attributes

16 of a god.

17 My time is up. I regret the fact that I have not been able to

18 complete this, but I will try to do my best to finish this while I'm

19 being examined by Mr. Kovacic.

20 I thank the Judges for lending me their ears. I thank the OTP

21 for listening to my statement.

22 Thank you.

23 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Very well. It's time for a

24 break. We will now break for 20 minutes. We'll resume after the break.

25 Mr. Praljak will go to the witness box, and he will answer questions put

Page 7487

1 to respond to any such situation that may occur, and we should find it

2 easy enough to adapt and take everything in our stride. I don't think it

3 will cause any major disruptions to our examination plan.

4 The same thing, of course, applies to the cross-examination, but

5 that is too distant now and we shall cross that bridge when we come to

6 it.

7 With your leave, Your Honours, I would like to commence.

8 Examination by Mr. Kovacic:

9 Q. [Interpretation] Good afternoon, Mr. Praljak.

10 A. Good afternoon.

11 Q. You've mentioned all these things, but I would like to ask you,

12 nevertheless, your date of birth, the 2nd of January, 1945. You stated

13 that for the transcript. Why am I saying that? Because the indictment

14 does not state that. We filed something in writing to that effect, but

15 that was never included in the indictment. So the 2nd of January, 1945;

16 right?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Place of birth, Capljina; right?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. General Praljak, given the fact that you were born in Bosnia and

21 Herzegovina, specifically in Capljina, and that you spent a large portion

22 of your life and most of your life in Croatia, which citizenship do you

23 hold?

24 A. I am a citizen of Croatia or, rather, I'm a citizen of both

25 states.

Page 7488

1 Q. Dual citizenship, then?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. Is that perfectly in keeping with the laws of both these

4 countries?

5 A. I don't know, Mr. Kovacic. But if citizenship was granted, those

6 making the call probably knew what the law said on the matter.

7 Q. Very well. Thank you very much.

8 The transcript does not record this with any degree of clarity,

9 but it is clear that we're talking about two countries, the following two

10 countries: Croatia, on the one hand, and Bosnia-Herzegovina on the

11 other. I think the question that followed made this abundantly clear.

12 General, your subjective view on this objective fact, the

13 existence of dual citizenship, in a formal sense, why do you feel or see

14 yourself as a citizen of both these countries?

15 A. Because I spent time living in both these countries and working

16 in both these countries. I was born in one of them. I went to school

17 there until I turned 18 -- or, rather, 17 and a half was how old I

18 actually was when I left. My parents continued to live there, as was my

19 sister, her husband, her two children, in Sarajevo, the parents in

20 Mostar. Even when I was in Zagreb already, I still had Mostar for a long

21 time stated as my formal place of residence. I was in Zagreb on a

22 temporary basis, and that situation continued for a long time.

23 We all have our native areas, formally speaking, but human beings

24 tend to behave as plants when it comes to their native surroundings,

25 unlike other animals. How I perceive myself is as a person from

Page 7489

1 Herzegovina, that's where I feel I belong, is the joy that I feel when I

2 go there; it's this feeling of being pleased to see the native stones of

3 my native area. Obviously, I have a great time whenever I go to Paris, I

4 like visiting museums and all that, but this is how I feel about this

5 subject.

6 I lived and worked in Croatia, but then there is Bosnia and

7 Herzegovina too. These two countries, I am a citizen of both these

8 countries, which is not the most unusual thing that, well, one might come

9 across, surely.

10 Q. General, sir, what was the reason that as early as 1992, in those

11 difficult times, you decided to leave and go to Bosnia and Herzegovina?

12 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Mr. Kovacic, you have so kindly invited us to

13 ask questions to clarify.

14 Mr. Praljak, do you have two passports?

15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, yes.

16 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Thank you.

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, no, Your Honour. I have

18 documents from both countries, but I don't have the BH passport. I never

19 applied for it, the simple reason being the restrictions in travel for

20 holders of that passport are far greater than those applying to holders

21 of Croatian passports. That is why I don't have both, but I have all the

22 on the personal documents, such as the ID card and all the rest.

23 JUDGE TRECHSEL: [No interpretation]

24 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation]

25 Q. Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to answer the question I

Page 7490

1 asked you previously. What was your motive? Why did you go to

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, as early as that; your own personal,

3 subjective motives?

4 A. It was with a very high degree of certainty and precision, or to

5 the extent that it's possible in the setting of a social science, or any

6 social science which always, by nature, is probabilistic, that I knew

7 what the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina would be like, what sort of war would

8 be waged.

9 If the Chamber so wishes, or anyone else, for that matter, I can

10 bring a whole lot of people here who can tell you that I had predicted

11 the war in Yugoslavia 15 years before it even began.

12 My interest in the social sciences and my professional

13 inclinations, the amount of information I had available to me, was

14 telling me one thing. The Yugoslav crisis could not be resolved in a

15 peaceful way. The only way for it to be resolved in a peaceful way was

16 for someone from abroad to intervene in this crisis, what we refer to as

17 the international community or the great powers. Everything that, in a

18 political and social sense in Yugoslavia, kept growing, kept

19 accumulating, ever since the 1970s; the movement that we refer to as the

20 Croatian spring, pointed to one thing. The Serbian thought in a social

21 sense was developing in one direction. They would never be willing to

22 allow for a peaceful disintegration of Yugoslavia by allowing the

23 republics who, under the 1974 Constitution, had state-like powers, and

24 this in turn was something that had been implanted in the first

25 Constitution in Jajce for Yugoslavia back during the war, and then

Page 7491

1 particularly it was the power of the ZAVNOH, Croatia's partisan movement,

2 at its meeting in Toposko, and it was then that Croatia was defined as a

3 state and, as such, would form part of the Federative People's Republic

4 of Yugoslavia.

5 Needless to say, I could go on enumerating people who know about

6 that, well-respected intellectuals and writers. I harped on and on about

7 this for years, knowing what would happen. I also knew, when I was

8 involved in the war in Croatia in Sunja, I told Pesa and a lot of other

9 witnesses about this as well. Besides, I was well familiar with the

10 plans being hatched by the JNA. Those plans, as we are about to see,

11 based on books produced by JNA generals, envisaged, as one of their most

12 important objectives, to advance towards the sea through the Neretva

13 River valley from Kupres, the Kupres Plateau, having taken the Kupres

14 Plateau and Livno.

15 As someone who clearly and unequivocally made himself available

16 when Croatia was created as a state and as someone who is willing to

17 contribute to the resistance against the aggressor, my departure for

18 Herzegovina was nothing if not a logical conclusion of my moral views,

19 above all.

20 Q. Thank you very much. If I may just go back to some details. In

21 the indictment, your nickname is stated as well. Can you please tell the

22 Court if you have a nickname and what that nickname would be?

23 A. I've had quite a number of nicknames throughout my life,

24 Zeleni -- when I went to school in Mostar, they called me "Zeleni," which

25 means the green one. I used to wear a green shirt, which is why they

Page 7492

1 called me "Green" or "Zeleni." At university, they called me "George"

2 for a while. Back at Sunja, they called me "Hemingway." In Siroki

3 Brijeg, because I have a serious injury to my right leg and therefore I

4 limped, therefore they called me "Limpy Sljakota." And then they called

5 me "The Beard," "Brada," during the war. This is a perfectly common

6 nickname for someone who supports a beard.

7 Q. What about this last name, "Brada" or "The Beard," is that a

8 much-used nickname? What about your close associates and friends, do

9 they call you "Brada"?

10 A. No.

11 Q. Is that therefore something, a nickname that one only comes

12 across very seldom?

13 A. I don't really know. The nickname may have been used every now

14 and again. It wasn't one that I liked or accepted, for that matter, but

15 people can do what they like. I didn't really put up a fight when they

16 called me that. They called me "Caca," "Sefer," "Stari," simply because

17 I was older than most of the lads there; therefore they called me

18 "Stari," which means "Oldie."

19 Q. General, the Trial Chamber should maybe hear something about your

20 education, where it started, where it finished, about your degrees, what

21 you did as a student, and then we will move on to what you did after you

22 graduated. Maybe you can start with your education, for everybody's

23 benefit.

24 A. If I provided thorough information, it would take too long. I

25 completed the first four years of elementary education in Rama and

Page 7493

1 Prozor, where my father was a civil servant in the Communist Yugoslavia.

2 He had been a partisan, both him and my mother, and then he went on

3 working in the State Security Services. We moved a lot, so the first

4 four years I completed in Rama, and then the next six years in

5 Siroki Brijeg. That was the time when I acquired my first friends, when

6 I forged my first friendships, and when I found my footing in a town

7 where I lived. I went to school with Gojko Susak, who would then go on

8 to become a minister in the Republic of Croatia, a defence minister, and

9 for three or four years we shared the same bench. We were very good

10 friends, and I believe that they separated us because we were

11 mischievous. They moved me forward to the front bench.

12 After that, I completed two years of grammar school in Mostar.

13 After that, I went to Zagreb, like a lot of students then because there

14 was no higher education in Mostar at the time, and all of my friends from

15 Siroki Brijeg went to university in Zagreb. I enrolled at the School of

16 Electrical Engineering, and I graduated from that school with a GP --

17 grade point average of 4, and my graduate thesis was about the correction

18 of chromatic image in the main of an electrical signal, which belongs in

19 the area of telecommunications, and especially television work.

20 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Mr. Praljak, it would be helpful if you would

21 tell us 4 out of how much is for the maximum, or is 5 the maximum, or 1,

22 or 6?

23 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Well, that's why I'm saying that my

24 life has been rather rich and complicated. Your Honour Judge Trechsel,

25 the study of electrical engineering lasts eight semesters, and the ninth

Page 7494

1 semester is graduate semester. It took me three years to complete

2 three years to complete three -- the first -- the third and the fourth

3 year, and then one to complete the second year. In the second year of my

4 studies, for very clear reasons --

5 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Excuse me, please. I seem to have badly

6 expressed myself. The question --

7 MR. KOVACIC: Your Honour, it wasn't your fault, it was the

8 translation.

9 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Anyway, I'm not -- the important thing is I'm

10 not blaming Mr. Praljak.

11 The only question was: You said "Grade 4." Your notes, your

12 result, was number 4. Now, number 4 only has a content if one knows what

13 the scale was, 1 to 100, or 1 to 10, or 1 to 5.

14 1 to 5, you show with a show of hands. Thank you.

15 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation] The misunderstanding was due to

16 interpretation.

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Maximum, excellent, was 5. My

18 graduate thesis was graded with grade 5 and my grade point average was 4.

19 In 1966, I enrolled in the School of Philosophy, because in the

20 second year of my electrical engineering studies, I realised that I

21 didn't want to be an electrical engineer all my life, and for many other

22 reasons I had fallen apart. If you ask me, you Judges or somebody else,

23 why that happened, I can say that my education and knowledge that I

24 picked up in my parents' home was diametrically contrary to what I later

25 on learned in Zagreb. The objective reality and the perception of

Page 7495

1 Communism that I received in my parents' home was completely contrary to

2 everything that I encountered later on in my life. There were some other

3 reasons, but for those reasons I had fallen apart. It lasted for two

4 years, and for the two years I did not go to lectures. And then I

5 started studying again in 1966, when I enrolled in the School of

6 Philosophy, studying philosophy and sociology; and that was a

7 precondition for enrolling in the Academy of Theatre Studies that I

8 wanted to study. The necessary precondition was for one to have

9 completed four years of studying at the School of Philosophy in Zagreb,

10 and only then could you become a student at the Academy.

11 In 1968, when I was in the second or the third year of the School

12 of Philosophy, there was a reform of education and the curriculum of the

13 Academy was from then on lasting four years. And as of that year, 1968,

14 over 125 students who applied for three places at the Academy, I was one

15 who had -- who was admitted.

16 In the meantime, I worked, I drank a lot of the time, I went to

17 Sweden to work there for three or four months, I washed dishes, and I

18 worked in the Akla [phoen] company in the street that the interpreter

19 cannot repeat the name of. So in any case, my life was a typical student

20 life. I worked, I worked hard, and I was rather confused at the time.

21 I graduated from the School of Electrical Engineering at the

22 beginning of 1970. I graduated from the School of Philosophy in 1971,

23 and then I graduated from the film Academy in 1972 with a grade of 5. My

24 graduate thesis at the School of Philosophy was the possibility of

25 establishing ethics within the philosophy of Karl Marx. That was the

Page 7496

1 essential question as to whether a system that perceived history only as

2 a necessary evil for the development of production forces, would it be

3 possible to establish any ethnic issue in such a system, and such issues

4 obviously implied the issue of choice. And the issues of the possible

5 establishment of morality and the philosophical branch deals in morality,

6 i.e., ethics, is something I've been interested in ever since with more

7 or less success. However, this would take me too far.

8 Upon the graduation from the School of Electrical Engineering, I

9 had to find employment, so first I started teaching at a technical

10 school, and I was the head of the laboratory for electronics there, and

11 that's how I earned a living.

12 In 1972, upon graduating from the Film Academy, I became a film

13 director. I resigned from that school, and then I became a professional

14 artist without permanent employment. I was a freelance film director. I

15 directed some 20 theatre plays. I also directed two television films,

16 one television series, one feature movie that was presented at several

17 film festivals, one of them being in Mannheim, where I was invited to

18 present my film.

19 Towards the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, when

20 the crisis in Yugoslavia was rampant and there was no money to be had, I

21 again started working at a school for adult education. The education at

22 that school lasted for four semesters, and it was for adults who were in

23 permanent employment but still wanted to continue their education. I was

24 teaching three subjects, the basics of electrotechnics, the theory of

25 electrotechnics, and the theory of automatic regulation, and I also

Page 7497

1 taught a sociology subject with was the theory of communication.

2 Of the theatre plays that you might be familiar with that deal

3 with social issues, I directed Brecht's play, "A Man is a Man," which

4 concerns the transformation of a peasant into a soldier. I also directed

5 a play by Jean-Paul Romber [phoen], "The Dreyfus Affair." The text of

6 that drama was rewarded as the best drama text in Europe that year, and I

7 had seen it in Komaspiel [phoen] and Munich before that with Ronald Pekni

8 [phoen] in the main role, a very brilliant actor. I also adapted two

9 novels for theatre. One was "The Clockwork Orange," which served the

10 English director, a greater English director, to direct the movie. I'm

11 trying to -- Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick. However, Stanley Kubrick put a

12 ban on showing that movie in the States with the reign of Communism.

13 However, the author of the novel, Anthony Burgess, gave me the copyright,

14 and I used that to make my play in Zagreb.

15 I also directed a play by somebody who escaped Russia in the

16 1930s, and in that play he brilliantly described the functioning of the

17 Communist system, the expulsions, and the acceptance of people to accuse

18 their closest -- their dearest friends of the gravest of crimes without

19 any physical force because they believed that that would contribute to

20 the improving of the world by way of the Communist idea.

21 After that, political preparations started in Croatia. I got

22 involved in the political life, fully aware of what lie ahead of us and

23 fully aware of the fact that my moral obligation was to join all that, or

24 the truth be told, I had never had any political ambitions before that,

25 nor did I think that in times like that politics should be discussed in

Page 7498

1 the same way one discusses politics in organised societies.

2 I call these pre-political times, because political times are the

3 times when governments are dealing with agriculture, taxes, and things

4 like that. When a state is created, this is not politics. It's a moral

5 obligation of every human being. These were the times that the Croatian

6 people had gambled several times before that, and according to all of our

7 analyses that was one of our last chances, if not the last chances, for

8 Croatians, as a people, to gain their state in which everybody would be

9 feeling as any other citizens of the civilised part of the world.

10 Q. Thank you very much. I would not dwell upon your

11 curriculum vitae too long, although there is a lot there that could be

12 discussed. However, I would like to use the time to say a few things

13 about some general topics.

14 First of all, your time for the opening statement was cut short,

15 and you wanted to say some other things. That's why I would like to use

16 my time to give you the floor and say something about the topics that are

17 close to your heart, the topics that you witnessed, and the topics that

18 you know a lot about.

19 First of all, let me ask you about the drinking water in Mostar

20 in 1992 and 1993, and especially after the 30th of June, 1993. The

21 question that I'm putting to you directly arises from the indictment,

22 because there is a claim in the indictment that the HVO used drinking

23 water, i.e., the supply of drinking water for the east of Mostar, as a

24 means of coercion or inhuman coercion against Mostar. Could you please

25 say something about that? We've already heard a lot about that in this

Page 7499

1 courtroom, but I believe that you're in a position to fill in some gaps.

2 A. I asked to complete my former answer. While I was studying, I

3 worked as a waiter in Germany for five summers in a row. I took all of

4 my exams very early in April, and then I would go to Schwiesel, close to

5 Swiss and French border in Germany, and I would work there as a waiter,

6 and that's how I was able to finance my studies. I would earn quite a

7 lot of money. And after that, I got an official certificate from that

8 hotel, and that certificate entitles me to the position of a waiter; not

9 a bad one, I believe.

10 And now on to the question. The Prosecutor says that from 30th

11 of June, 1993, there was no drinking water in the mains and accuses the

12 HVO for that. Who was it, in 1992, who damaged the source of Radoje in

13 Mostar and Studenac in Rastani? The sources that served to supply the

14 city of Mostar with drinking water. Who controlled the source in Rastani

15 and up to then? It was the BiH Army after the 24th of August, 1993. Who

16 was it who destroyed bridges in Mostar? Who destroyed the pipes in

17 Mostar that connected the sources of drinking water on the right bank of

18 the Neretva with the eastern part of the city, who and where and how they

19 did it, how they damaged the water supply network, how old that network

20 was, and what was the technical condition of the water supply network?

21 All these are things that the Prosecutor doesn't mention at all.

22 What was the loss of water? Because of the poor state of repair of all

23 the pipes before the artillery attacks of the JNA on Mostar in 1992.

24 What was the quantity of water in those two sources in the summer, and

25 especially in the very hot summer of 1993? What was the pressure of the

Page 7500

1 water in all those pipes, and why there had to be pumps to pump waters up

2 to the highest floors of the buildings? Who and when and to what purpose

3 took a generator pump that should have pumped water to the high -- higher

4 levels of buildings on the eastern side of Mostar? Why is it that during

5 the time between June 1992, when the railroad bridge was destroyed and

6 the northern entrance of Mostar, and thus the main pipe for the supply of

7 water to Mostar from the source in Rastani was interrupted, and August

8 1993, why that pipe was not replaced via a dam that was not far from

9 there?

10 How come that the authorities in East Mostar, after the attack of

11 the BiH Army on the 9th of May, 1993, and the cease-fire that was agreed

12 after that, did not ask to inspect the main pipes on the boulevard and

13 the main valves there? Why didn't they amend the pipes across the Old

14 Bridge? After the attack of the BiH Army and the treason of the HVO on

15 the part of the Muslim members of the HVO on the 30th of June, 1993, why

16 didn't the authorities in East Mostar engage the UNPROFOR and present to

17 them the problem of water, like they did the problem of the wounded, and

18 the latter was then resolved? How come they did not ask for the

19 procurement of a dozen of pumps? With the help of fire-fighting hoses

20 and pipes, they would have been able to bring water to the sufficient

21 number of places. I'm talking about the water from the River Neretva,

22 which was good enough to drink at the time.

23 Mr. Kovacic, the Prosecutor does --

24 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Excuse me. Mr. Praljak, I cannot help noticing

25 that for about two pages of transcript now, you have been asking one

Page 7501

1 question after another, all sentences which end with a question mark.

2 Actually, I thought you want to deposit here as a witness, and the

3 witness doesn't ask questions. The witness gives answers. He says what

4 he has actually seen or heard or witnessed. So I wonder whether it would

5 not be preferable and more germane to the phase of the proceedings if,

6 instead of this way of putting questions, you would actually behave like

7 a witness and speak like a witness.

8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Your Honour Judge Trechsel, there

9 are questions which are simply answers. I could answer all of my

10 questions by just saying that was that. These are grammatical questions,

11 but not the questions of logic. I am simply saying that all of my

12 questions are suggesting the answer, and the answer is this: They did

13 not ask for the procurement of some 10 pumps. They did not ask for the

14 problem of water to be resolved in the same way as the problem of the

15 wounded. They did not repair the main. They did not build a water work

16 across the dam. These are not questions in the sense I could put be

17 putting them to somebody else. These are claims shaped as questions.

18 All of these questions are actually claims, assertions. What I'm

19 saying is that the Prosecutor should have asked the same questions. They

20 should have asked the question how the water supplies filled were once

21 it's empty, what is the technical procedure, what is the health

22 procedure. We should have been provided an answer to the question as to

23 who from the HVO and when issued the decision for the eastern part of

24 Mostar to be cut off from the water supply. Who was it who implemented

25 the decision, how this was done in technical terms. None of that were we

Page 7502

1 able to hear from anybody. We only heard that the HVO was to blame,

2 either the military part or the civilian part, or the two together. And

3 if we don't manage to prove our innocence, that would be the fact.

4 We have never been faced with facts denying things. The Defence

5 counsel and myself were drawing a map and they were saying they had a

6 source in Rastani, they could talk to UNPROFOR, they had a possibility to

7 build a water main, to ask for financial aid, like they did for the

8 supply of electricity, the telephone lines, and so on and so forth. I

9 have used questions here to say one thing, a claim: East Mostar does not

10 have water, the HVO is to blame, and that claim caused hours upon hours

11 of trying to prove some technical details, who, where, what, who remained

12 the pump from the water supply to take it to the war hospital, which of

13 course was important and was a valid thing to do. However, it remains

14 unclear. Why did they not ask for some ten pumps to be able to pump the

15 water from the Neretva River by using simple firefighters' hoses?

16 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation] If I understood your additional

17 answer well -- Mr. Praljak, but I am not going to use the question form

18 any more. I am going to transform them into assertions or in direct

19 speech, if you so wish.

20 JUDGE TRECHSEL: Let me make it clear that the kind of answers

21 that a witness is expected to give are answers that can be true or

22 untrue. You bring forward allegations, arguments, accusations, which do

23 not quite respond to this. I just want to assist you to use your time in

24 the most effective possible way according to the rules of the procedure.

25 Thank you.

Page 7503

1 Mr. Kovacic, please continue.

2 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation] I believe that we will resolve one

3 thing, that is partly due to the interpretation and partly to an

4 incomplete sentence.

5 In his answer, General Praljak asked rhetorical questions that

6 contain assertions in themselves. This is what he was trying to tell us.

7 Partly, the answer was lost in translation, due to a misunderstanding.

8 However, I'm going to resolve the dilemma with just one question.

9 Q. General, we heard your evaluation of the whole problem and all

10 the possible problems that may have originated from that, and from that

11 somebody might have drawn erroneous conclusions. Let me just ask you one

12 thing. Did the HVO intentionally cut off East Mostar from water supply?

13 A. No.

14 Q. Well, that's the case, yes. Thank you very much.

15 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] One moment. General, let me

16 stray from what I promised to do earlier this afternoon. I have a

17 question on your curriculum vitae; nothing to do with the merits of the

18 indictment, as such.

19 Earlier on, you told us that you studied and then you studied

20 electrical engineering, and then you became an artist, and as such,

21 that's the thing that struck me, you said that you directed several

22 plays. You mention a "A Man is a Man" by Bertolt Brecht. As you know,

23 this play was written in 1925, but rewritten in 1938. It is the story of

24 a man who changed his life, is going to forget his wife, and then is

25 going to become a soldier in the British Army. Under special

Page 7504

1 circumstances, because there's a looting part in it, one does not want to

2 give himself up. And then Galigay [phoen], who is the central character

3 in the play, joins this rifle infantry unit. He changes his life. The

4 question is whether he's going to become a wise man or a monster.

5 When you decided to put this play on stage, did it prompt you to

6 join the army? Did you draw a lesson from that play or not?

7 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Your Honour, you were able to

8 identify my basic interest. This is exactly how I directed that play.

9 An English unit lost a soldier someplace, and they -- well, that can't

10 be, and then in a very short time they turn a simple fisherman into a

11 soldier, and that unit later on destroys everything, et cetera. I am not

12 a soldier, in the usual sense. I was a discharged from the Yugoslav Army

13 as unable to serve. I had problems with my leg and other problems. I

14 underwent several operations because of many accidents that happened to

15 me. I fell a number of times, et cetera. But certainly war is one of

16 the most severe shapes human society takes, and many interpretations by

17 many sociologists reject that as something a humanist mustn't deal with,

18 something vulgar. People are killed, and that isn't anything that we

19 should deal with, that isn't our problem. It escapes sociological

20 analysis, because sociology only can look at things until a war and after

21 war. War is a point of singularity where explosions are possible, and

22 things that happen like in the big bang, things cannot be forecast.

23 So at the individual level, that's something that some

24 sociologists deal with and describe it as an incident where a personality

25 is completely decompensated, and two things are very specially important

Page 7505

1 here. The Nobel Prize winner, Conrad de Laurent [phoen], who

2 participated in the First World War and studied that, says that there are

3 too variables; the moral firmness of a man and the duration of temptation

4 are two very different things, two very different notions, and therefore

5 what happens often is that people who initially we think that they have a

6 very firm moral integrity, at a certain moment simply break up, fall

7 apart, and other people, who didn't stand out by the force of their moral

8 conviction, live through a war and, at the most difficult moments, they

9 live up to the situation. Well, he goes into the detail and describes

10 how moral decomposition takes place, et cetera.

11 So Brecht's interpretation is something that I read about this

12 war. I read a lot about the Second World War, about the landing. I was

13 interested in why the French military that had two and a half million

14 armed men and had prepared for defence for a long time could have been

15 defeated by much smaller units, what the command system was like, the

16 command-and -control structure, communications, et cetera; and that

17 directed me to two great researchers of war from whom the sociology --

18 not only the sociology of war started, and that was from Von Scharnhorst

19 and Klauzevic; and the Napoleonic war, the lines made up of Prussia,

20 Austria, England, and Spain were losing their first dozen or so battles

21 to Napoleon, and so these two theoreticians asked the questions: How

22 come that these structured armies by functioning states can possibly lose

23 a war. They had -- it is possible to lose a battle because of an

24 incompetent commander, but losing battle after battle is something else.

25 A France that had been out of a revolution, that was at the peak

Page 7506

1 of its strength, but had a relatively untrained military staff, although

2 Napoleon produced generals and field marshals at a more rapid pace than

3 we did at the HVO, we had no choice but proceed that way. And if we look

4 at the Battle of Borodin against Kutuzov, both sides lost a total of

5 about 100 generals. That was a time when generals also got killed, and

6 still Napoleon was able to continue the war.

7 And war is a -- accompanies all of human history. At schools and

8 at universities, nobody has studied, except sporadically, how this

9 phenomenon comes about and why we abound in war the way we do.

10 When the war -- or, rather, since the war started in

11 Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to the information that we have, thousands

12 of people got killed all over the world, including Rwanda, et cetera.

13 I also studied Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the dropping of the

14 nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the ethical problem of

15 bombing Dresden and Nuremburg and Hamburg; and I read the transcripts

16 from the Nuremberg trials. I had a huge amount of energy. I read much

17 more than I do now, and most of what I read, I remembered.

18 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] Let me stop you here. You have

19 provided an explanation. Of course, it could be much longer, but you

20 have answered my question.

21 Please proceed, Mr. Kovacic.

22 JUDGE MINDUA: [Interpretation] Just one remark, please. I'm not

23 really speaking to Mr. Praljak, but to Mr. Kovacic.

24 Mr. Kovacic, you asked the witness to speak briefly about his

25 school background and professional background, as well as university

Page 7507

1 background, of course. He's here testifying. You did not ask him about

2 his military background because you wanted him to speak about the water

3 problems. There's something missing, because rightly there was a link

4 between the play that was mentioned and the very life of the witness.

5 But have you planned to ask him about his military background so that we

6 may learn a little bit more about his personality?

7 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour, for

8 pointing this out. I just wanted to go through the CV briefly and then

9 touch upon some issues, and then return to the CV. But given your

10 intervention and given the fact that there is a natural sequence here,

11 perhaps we should stick to the CV, all the more so that as

12 General Praljak, by his previous statement, has actually returned to

13 that.

14 Q. So, General, you said that you went to Bosnia-Herzegovina on your

15 own accord because it was your wish. Bearing in mind the indictment, the

16 points of the indictment, and let us now stick to 1992, and please

17 mention the times and functions that you had there, as you went there as

18 a volunteer.

19 A. Okay, let us finish this.

20 Then toward the end of 1988, many people in Croatia were aware

21 that some sort of disaster was nearing, and those who were in opposition

22 to the system started to meet and an underground political life sprang

23 into being. In groups of five to ten people, we started preparing for

24 what was to come. I was involved, and in February 1990 I was at the

25 constituting assembly of the HDZ, when a declaration was to be adopted

Page 7508

1 and when a course of action was to be determined. Those were very lively

2 meetings, but we'll hear more about that.

3 In the spring of 1992, I gave up all political office that I had

4 and I was the general secretary of a major political party, and I went to

5 Sunja as a soldier, as a private. I had my boots, and I was ready to

6 fight in the war. Let me be very clear about it. I would have fought

7 and I wouldn't have surrendered whether Croatia had organised itself or

8 not, I wouldn't have run. So in Sunja, after seven days I became a

9 commander, and I was there until early March 1992.

10 After that, I went down there. It is true that about strategy

11 and tactics and all the essential elements of warfare, I knew a lot due

12 to my extensive reading. Of course, I didn't know many technical details

13 about what a Zolja is, or an Osa. I knew about digging trenches, though,

14 from the First World War. You had to defend yourself against artillery

15 shells, what was very important for Croatian volunteers in the early

16 days, because they didn't have weapons to stand up against the enemy on

17 an equal footing.

18 But I had people skills. When I lectured the boys and later on,

19 and after being promoted commander, I became the assistant minister of

20 defence for psychological and information activity. This was called the

21 Political Department of the Ministry, which was an important department.

22 I had hundreds of people under me. I organised all activities. I had a

23 good team of psychologists, a number of people with doctorate degrees,

24 et cetera, because to my mind it was the most important thing to pick the

25 right people. If you have the right people, things will work out. And

Page 7509

1 if you only have a structure on paper, but the people you have cannot

2 work in accordance with those declarations and resolutions, then it will

3 amount to nothing.

4 So I was in Bosnia-Herzegovina from the 10th of April, 1992, in

5 the Operation Zone South-East Bosnia-Herzegovina, and then I returned and

6 lead the attack operations to liberate the right and then the left bank

7 of the Neretva. I left and came back. I went to pacify the situation in

8 Rama or in Uskoplje. I spent an hour and -- a month and a half

9 travelling from Travnik, Novi Sad [as interpreted], Travnik and Uskoplje,

10 Konjic, other places, but it will become more clear once we see the

11 documents.

12 Much work was involved in that. I could go on for hours speaking

13 about it, but without documents it wouldn't do, so let's not proceed that

14 way.

15 I made notes of certain things, because my mind isn't so supple

16 as it used to be, and there is this excellent book, "Eclipse at Noon" by

17 a Jewish author, Arthur Kestler. It's a book about the Stalinist system.

18 JUDGE PRANDLER: I'm going to correct one particular point here.

19 When you speak about Kestler, he was not a -- although he was Jewish, but

20 he was Hungarian. It is what I would like to note for the record. Thank

21 you.

22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I apologise. So then he was a

23 Hungarian Jew who escaped from Stalin's practices and wrote a brilliant

24 book. Thank you, Your Honour.

25 MR. KOVACIC: [Interpretation] Just a minor correction for the

Page 7510

1 sake of the transcript, to avoid any misunderstanding.

2 Q. General, at the beginning of your reply you mentioned that after

3 Sunja "I went down there," on page 60, line 20. What did you mean?

4 A. I said so. South-East Herzegovina, Mostar, Capljina.

5 Q. And then you mentioned the rest in Bosnia-Herzegovina?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. Although it's implied, let me ask another concrete question to

8 end with. You spoke about your departure to Bosnia-Herzegovina. In what

9 capacity did you go there? Did anyone send you? Did they tell you,

10 Mr. Praljak, go there and do that, or was it of your own accord?

11 A. It was of my own accord, it was my own will.

12 Q. In the transcript, page 61, line 21, it says "Novi Sad." It

13 should be "Novi Travnik."

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. Good. I would like to continue about the environment. I would

16 like to know some basic conditions, and we will now start tackling some

17 subjects and then move on to some details.

18 Let me hear about the telephones. Why are telephones important?

19 Who controlled them?

20 JUDGE TRECHSEL: I'm sorry, Mr. Praljak and Mr. Kovacic. I would

21 like to add a question on your departure for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

22 You had a position in Croatia. I suppose you could not simply

23 abandon that without telling anybody, so how was that done? Did you

24 resign, or did you ask for leave of absence, or what form was used?

25 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I will tell you

Page 7511

1 exactly how it was. This is what things looked like: I didn't apply for

2 discharge. I didn't ask for approval. I'll tell you how it was.

3 According to all information coming to the staff, and me

4 personally, it was clear that the JNA intended to cross the Neretva and

5 pierce through our positions around Mostar to get to Split, and down

6 there, there were embryonic units, units in Croatia. When speaking

7 officially to Gojko Susak, I would call him "minister," but unofficially

8 we were on a first-name basis. I called him "Gojko."

9 And about March the 20th, 1993, in the evening hours, when we had

10 time to sit down for a while, when there was less to do, I said to him,

11 Gojko, the situation down there is bad. They will pierce through our

12 position and get to Split. I don't see how it can be defended. Croatia

13 is narrow. And he answered, But somebody - I forget the name - was down

14 there and told me the situation isn't as bad. And then I got on the

15 phone, and I consulted my father, too, who had fought in the Second World

16 War for four years, and even after that war they were chasing some

17 remnants of the Ustasha regime down there, and I asked him, Dad, what are

18 things like down there? And he said to me, It's disastrous, things are

19 very bad. And on the following day, I said, Listen, Susak, your

20 information that things are good down there are contrary to the

21 information I got that things are bad. And it went to and fro three

22 times like this, and then I was asked to go down there and see for myself

23 what kind of chance Croatia stood against the plans of the development of

24 the JNA if they pierce the defence lines, and the situation down there

25 was not good.

Page 7512

1 When I got back, we had a meeting with Gojko Susak and with the

2 president, Franjo Tudjman, and I asked them to make it -- to allow to the

3 people who were born down there, and in accordance with this theory of

4 the theatre of war and the right to defence, to go down there to try to

5 organise a defence. In much the same way, it was concluded that as a

6 sort of assistance and also for liberating Dubrovnik, something be

7 organised that is called in the documents the southern front, consisting

8 of the HV, commanded by General Bobetko --

9 MR. STRINGER: Good afternoon, Mr. President. I apologise for

10 the interruption.

11 We're just looking at line 19, as it's about to move off the

12 page. There's a reference to March 20th, 1993, and I wonder whether the

13 general was intending to speak about 1992 or if there was an error in the

14 translation.

15 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, it was not an error. It was

16 around the 20th of March, 1993. No, sorry, it was 1992, yes, I'm sorry.

17 Right, and they were supposed to assist the Croats and Muslims

18 willing to fight. On the opposing side, there were General Torbica and

19 General Perisic and the Uzice Corps, and we heard all about that, and I

20 was sent to the area that I know best, the south-east of Herzegovina,

21 Mostar, Capljina, and General Roso, who was born there, went to Livno,

22 and General Crnjac, who was also born in Herzegovina, took the central

23 part. And I appeared there in that function on the 10th of April, 1992.

24 Four days later, General Petkovic arrived, who became the Chief

25 of General Staff, and we started structuring a completely chaotic

Page 7513

1 situation. And as you know, we managed to defend the Neretva Valley and

2 to cope with the treason in Mostar.

3 The commander of Mostar, until my arrival, was a certain

4 Mr. Perak, who at a certain moment, being a former officer of the JNA and

5 a commander of the HVO, or, rather, of the boys who still had no name for

6 themselves, at a certain moment he commanded that Mostar be evacuated by

7 both armed units and civilians, stating as an explanation that the JNA

8 was so strong that it would destroy the town, and he wanted to be seen as

9 the saviour of Mostar.

10 Fortunately, the commanders of the armies or militias of

11 individual suburbs refused that order because they were appalled, and

12 they stayed in Mostar. And Mr. Perak vanished into thin air, and he left

13 for Serbia, and it became clear that he was a member of the KOS, the

14 counter-intelligence service of the army. They were very influential and

15 very strong, and one of their operatives was this Mr. Perak. In simple

16 terms, he wanted to give up Mostar to the JNA, but they didn't obey him.

17 After such an event, people no longer trust the military command.

18 For months, the people trust no one except those who they, inside their

19 group, made commander, so that my command over that zone was not a

20 consequence of my having a military rank, but rather of the fact that I

21 had to show on the ground that I wasn't afraid, that I wasn't scared to

22 die, that I was willing to go into Mostar dozens of times, driving down a

23 road which was being shelled and shot at, and only if I survive all that,

24 I get the right to command. In such armies, you don't become commander

25 by being installed commander, but you become commander by your behaviour.

Page 7514

1 Even in professional armies, okay, you can have a commander you must

2 obey, but not everybody is held in high esteem by his troops. But in an

3 army such as ours, after Perak's treason, for 20 days on end you had to

4 be seen in highly dangerous places to gain the respect of your soldiers.

5 JUDGE ANTONETTI: [Interpretation] General, I'm not going to ask a

6 question on the JNA, who wanted to go to Split, through the Neretva, in

7 March of 1992 because I believe this will be one of the questions of

8 substance that I will put later after your testimony; but I would like to

9 come back to your resume, because the difference between the procedure

10 used in my country and the procedure used here is that in my country,

11 when somebody is being judged for crimes against humanity or crimes of

12 war, there is an investigation on their personality, we have a

13 psychologist and a psychiatrist, and we can really explore the entire

14 background of this person, the family background.

15 Earlier, you gave us a small detail that struck me, it's the

16 first time I heard about it, and I would like you to provide us with some

17 details on it before the break. You said that your father had some

18 knowledge of the army, some people in the army, and you said that after

19 World War II -- during World War II, I'm sure you'll tell us exactly when

20 it was, he had fought against Ustashas. This is -- you said remnants of

21 the Ustasha system. That's exactly the words you used. So what did your

22 father do, exactly, and did this have any influence on you?

23 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] After the Second World War ended,

24 and this is something that I prepared for the benefit of the Chamber for

25 this trial, the summary, historical summary, not about meetings of

Page 7515

1 governments, and kings, or anything like that, but about the victims in

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina before -- well, during World War II and after

3 World War II as well, if we don't have that framework in mind it's very

4 difficult to understand anything that is part of this trial. I went for

5 an overall simplification. I worked together with a historian to prepare

6 a summary for this trial.

7 As for individual destinies, my grandfather, the father of my

8 father, was in prison in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as a Croatian

9 nationalist. For that same reason, his son was rotting in jail in

10 Mostar, because he had been distributing leaflets and giving speeches,

11 stuff like that. And my father, through an organise called

12 Hrvatsko Gradise [phoen], which was then part of the greatest Croatia

13 political party, Stjepan Radic's party, he was sent to hone his skills

14 and learn a trade somewhere else, and then he joined the partisans later

15 on. After the war, there were horrible crimes happening all over

16 Yugoslavia; Blajburg, the road to Kalvari, and so on and so forth.

17 In Herzegovina and in Serbia, especially in Western Serbia,

18 around places such as Foca, there were many leftovers of what any

19 textbook would probably define as renegades. They were still fighting

20 these new Communists, and so on and so forth, killing their officials.

21 So my father, who at the time was an official of the State Security

22 Service, spent the next eight years, all the way up until 1953, fighting

23 those leftovers of the Chetnik regime in Serbia and the Ustasha regime in

24 Croatia, fighting the remaining renegades.

25 In 1953, a Chetnik duke called Bjelica was killed in Foca, and

Page 7516

1 that put an end to it because that man had been running riot in the area.

2 Then my father was retired.

3 In 1963, Aleksandar Rankovic was pursuing some very negative

4 policies, so he dismissed him, removed him from his post, because that

5 man, too, was too Croatian, in a manner of speaking, for his taste.

6 Nevertheless, I was 17 when I parted ways with my father, in

7 terms of our political views. My father and I did not share the same

8 political views. Deep in his heart, he was in favour of Yugoslavia