1 Kosta ^AVO[KI CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ... - Peter Robinson

Translation
Kosta ^AVO[KI
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF ROBERT J. DONIA AND PATRICK
J. TREANOR AND SECESSION WITHIN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Report prepared for the trial of
RADOVAN KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18)
10 December 2012
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF R. DONIA
I
II
III
IV
V
Introduction
Evident Mistakes
Hiding and Withholding Relevant Facts
Erroneous, Biased and Malevolent Characterisation
Conclusion
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF PATRICK J. TREANOR
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Introduction
Sources
Deliberate Avoidance of Obvious Analogies
Avoidance of Relevant Facts
Avoidance of Appropriate Characterisation and Mischaracterisation
Ignoring Issues of Constitutionality
Conclusion
SECESSION OF MEMBER STATES WITHIN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, IN
PARTICULAR OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
CURRICULUM VITAE
PUBLISHED WORKS
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CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF ROBERT J. DONIA
I
INTRODUCTION
In this paper we shall subject to comparative critical analysis the following reports
by Robert. J. Donia:
1. “Bosnian Serb Leadership and the Siege of Sarajevo, 1990-1995”. Statement of
Expert Witness in Case IT-95-5/18-1, the Prosecutor v. Radovan Karad`i} under Rule
94bis, May 2009;
2. “The Origins of Republika Srpska, 1990-1992, A Background Report”. Statement
of Expert Witness Presented to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia under Rule 94bis, submitted on 30 July 2002;
3. “Bosnian Krajina in the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. Statement of
Expert Witness Presented to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
under Rule 94bis;
4. “Excerpts from Speeches in the Assembly of Republika Srpska, 1991-1996 by
Subject”. Statement of Expert Witness Presented to the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia under Rule 94bis, Case IT 03-69, The Prosecutor v. Jovica Stani{i}
and Franko Simatovi}, submitted on 17 March 2008;
5. Cross-examination of Robert Donia by the defence in previous cases;
6. Sarajevo: A Biography, Sarajevo, History Institute, 2006, p. 462.
Robert Donia’s answers when cross-examined by the defence in Case IT-95-5/18-1,
The Prosecutor v. Radovan Karad`i} were also studied.
Robert Donia wrote all these papers, including four analyses, as an expert witness
before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague in the
capacity of a historian. In point of fact, it can be concluded from his curriculum vitae that
he devoted the best years of his life (from 1981 to 2000) to the world of big business,
working for the famous Merrill Lynch Company. And even when he did apply himself to
studies of history, he mainly focused on just one limited subject – Bosnia and Herzegovina
and its Muslims, which is attested to by his three books (one of them co-authored), and
perhaps some fifteen articles.
It was his almost exclusive commitment to the Muslims of Bosnia and
Herzegovinathat probably prompted him to establish a foundation which by its very name
pointed to Muslims as its beneficiaries. That was the Donia Vakuf Foundation, which
donated smaller grants to educational institutions, archives and libraries in the United States
of America and South-East Europe. Granted that Americans, as the potential recipients of
these gifts, actually did not know what the meaning of the word “vakuf” was, Serbs, Croats
and other erstwhile Yugoslavs knew it very well. The term “vakuf” is a word of Turkish
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origin which among Muslims denotes a foundation for general religious and humanitarian
purposes, its objective being to erect and maintain mosques, schools, public libraries,
hospitals, orphanages, water supply systems, etc. Actually, that term was superfluous, since
“vakuf” means exactly “foundation”. But, Robert Donia deliberately used the word
“vakuf”, in addition to the word “foundation”, so that it would be quite clear in advance
who his foundation was intended for.
It is, of course, nothing out of the ordinary for one to harbour inclinations or
intolerances. “For a good man” - says the renowned Greek historian Polybius – “should
love his friends and his country, he should share the hatreds and attachments of his friends.
But, he who assumes the character of a historian must ignore everything of the sort, and
often, if their actions demand this, speak good of his enemies and honour them with the
highest praises while criticizing and even reproaching roundly his closest friends, should
the errors of their conduct impose this duty on him. For just as a living creature which has
lost its eyesight is wholly incapacitated, so if History is stripped of her truth all that is left is
but an idle tale.” 1 An immortal exemplar of such truthfulness was the author of the History
of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, who said that his political opponent Pericles was
mighty, renowned and reasonable and that he received no gifts in money. And, in respect of
Athenian democracy under Pericles, he concluded that it had been a people’s government in
name only, and in actual fact the government of its first citizen. 2
As a historian, Robert Donia was unable to suppress his own sympathies and
antipathies, and in particular the knowledge who exactly in past and recent history had been
the enemy of the Turks i.e. Muslims in Bosnia detracted from his impartiality and
truthfulness. That is why he did not heed Polybius’s advice that “we should therefore not
shrink from accusing our friends or praising our enemies; nor need we be shy of sometimes
praising and sometimes blaming the same people, since it is neither possible that men in the
actual business of life should always be in the right, nor is it probable that they should
always be mistaken”. 3 Conversely, Donia’s narrative about the circumstances and people
in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time of the inauguration of party pluralism, the ensuing
secession of this federal unit and the civil and religious war which it caused, is painted in
exclusively black and white, without any nuances and a well-measured judgement of its
actors. And he accomplished this by withholding certain relevant facts, misrepresenting
others and giving a biased characterisation of yet other facts, as will be demonstrated later.
It thus turns out that Alija IZETBEGOVI] is absolutely blameless, although it was
announced only after his death that the Hague Office of the Prosecutor had been conducting
an investigation against him, just as Carla del Ponte let it slip after Franjo TU\MAN’s death
that she would probably have indicted him had he lived. On the other hand, there is not a
single bit of information that is in favour of Dr Radovan KARAD@I] or a favourable
judgement of him as a politician and statesman, as if Donia had not written his reports as a
historian but as a police investigator, one keenly interested in the outcome of the criminal
proceedings that he was writing for.
1 Polybius, The Histories, I, 14.
2 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II, 65.
3 Polybius, The Histories, I, 14.
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In addition to this, Donia’s “historical” writings feature another weakness – the
absence of explanations of what had led to specific tragic events and what their causes had
been. To clarify the importance of identifying the causes of specific historical events,
Polybius taught his readership craving for knowledge thus: “A physician can do no good to
the sick who does not know the causes of their ailments; nor can a statesman do any good
who is unable to conceive the manner, cause and source of the events with which he has
from time to time to deal. Surely the former could not be expected to institute a suitable
system of treatment for the body; nor the latter to grapple with the exigencies of the
situation, without possessing this knowledge of its elements. There is nothing, therefore,
which we ought to be more alive to, and to seek for, than the causes of every event which
occurs. For the most important results are often produced by trifles; and it is invariably
easier to apply remedial measures at the beginning, before things have got beyond the stage
of conception and intention.” 4
In his papers Robert Donia was also confronted with the dismemberment of SFR
/Socialist Federative Republic/ Yugoslavia and with the secession and then also break-up of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. One would have expected that he would also have addressed the
causes of these fateful, and in terms of their consequences also tragic developments. He,
however, did not do so, because he would have been compelled to raise the issue of the
responsibility of both some internal protagonists, for whom he has a leaning for reasons
specific to him, as well as of powerful foreign factors he recoils from. And, by all
indications, he sensed in advance and it seems quite correctly, what the Hague Office of the
Prosecutor expected of him, because, as he himself says 5 , he appeared before The Hague
Tribunal in the capacity of an expert witness as many as sixteen times.
Donia, thus, lost sight of the fact that “For, indeed, the most important parts of
history are those which treat the events that follow or accompany a certain course of
conduct, and pre-eminently so those which treat of causes”. 6 For, “if you take from history
all explanation of cause, principle and motive, and of the adaptation of the means to the
end, what is left is a mere panorama without being instructive; and, though it may please
for the moment, has no abiding value”. 7 Donia in fact failed to do what according to
Polybius is the most important in studying and representing history: to establish the causes
of why something happened.
Finally, with the excuse that he is not an expert on constitutional law and issues of
constitutionality and legality, Donia systematically avoided to characterise the actions of
the various protagonists in the Yugoslav and Bosnian-Herzegovinian drama, and thus also
broach the issue of their legal, political and historic responsibility for what they did and
produced. Recently a history TV channel presented an impressive portrayal of the decisive
battle at Gettysburg in November 1863 in the American civil war of secession. The
scriptwriter of this programme denoted the South as rebels, making it clear that the
withdrawal of eleven member states (South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana,
4 Polybius, The Histories, III, 31.
5 Cross-examination, Robert Donia, 1 June 2010, page 3152.
6 Polybius, The Histories, III, 32.
7 The Histories, III, 31.
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Virginia, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee) from the Union
was not only contrary to the 1787 Constitution but also illegitimate, having been carried out
for the purpose of defending the infamous and iniquitous institution of slavery. The
scriptwriter could have invoked John Taylor, who considered the right of member states to
withdraw from the federation unquestionable, or John C. Calhoun, who asserted that the
right to secession was the constitutional right of the member states, whereby he introduced
a great novelty because up to that point the right to secession had been mainly perceived as
a revolutionary right. Instead of that, the afore-mentioned scriptwriter knew full well, as
does Robert Donia, despite not being an expert on constitutional law, who in 1861 did the
right and constitutional thing and who acted incorrectly and unconstitutionally and should
therefore be characterised as a rebel. It would have sufficed, that is, for Robert Donia to
have drawn an analogy between the 1861-1865 American secessionist war and the 1991-
1995 secessionist and civil war on the soil of the former Yugoslavia to immediately
understand whose actions in this latter war were correct and constitutional and whose
incorrect and unconstitutional, but, even though he knew and could have done so, he chose
not to.
In our further account we shall substantiate these general evaluations on the nature
of Donia’s “historical” documents made on the instructions of the Hague Tribunal (except
for the monograph Sarajevo: A Biography) by the most obvious examples in support of our
judgement.
II EVIDENT MISTAKES
1. Bosnian Serb Leadership and the Siege of Sarajevo
p. 52
“On 31 March in Ilija{, MUP officers of Serb nationality, dressed in blue uniforms
then known to be the attire of Serb policemen, surrounded their police station and
prevented civilians from entering.” (source: “The SAO-ization of the Police” (Saoiziranje
milicije), Oslobo|enje, 1 April 1992, p. 5).
In this account, which he only partially takes over from the Sarajevo Oslobo|enje,
Donia quotes an obvious lie, that the blue uniform had been the attire of Serb policemen.
All policemen in the former Yugoslavia, from Jesenice to \ev|elija, wore blue uniforms.
Donia could certainly have noticed that in the street during his study leaves in Sarajevo
prior to the outbreak of war in 1992, because all policemen, be they Serbs, Muslims or
Croats, wore the same blue uniform.
The author of this newspaper report, who was evidently biased and on whom Donia
as a likely historian solely relies, obviously does not know what the task of the police is.
Can anywhere in the world, including in the United States of America, an unruly mob enter
at will a police station housing archives, card files and other registers and documents on the
basis of which citizens exercise their rights and criminal and misdemeanour proceedings
are conducted? And is preventing the mob from entering the police station an offence and
an attempt by a rioting mob to do so is not?
p. 61
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“On 27 April 1992, Milo{evi} backers reorganized the Yugoslav Federation to
consist only of the republics of Montenegro and Serbia, along with its formerly
autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina and adopted a new constitution.”
In 1992, when the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was adopted,
Kosovo and Metohija and Vojvodina continued to be autonomous provinces within Serbia.
Therefore Donia’s assertion that in 1992 Kosovo and Vojvodina were former autonomous
provinces /sentence unfinished/. Had he by any chance ever read the 28 September 1990
Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, he would have known that. That Constitution only
considerably reduced provincial competences relative to those laid down by the 1974
Constitutions of SR /Socialist Republic/ Serbia and SFR Yugoslavia and confined them to
the scope stipulated by the 1946 and 1963 Constitutions.
p. 79
“The SDS did not represent all Serbs, as Karad`i} himself acknowledged. The
presence of these Serbs annoyed SDS leaders and confounded the party’s strategic
objective of dividing Sarajevo into Serb and Muslim parts. Rizo Selmanagi}, a Serb veteran
of the Second World War, saw this as a repudiation of SDS leadership: “The real beginning
of Karad`i}’s political defeat lies in the fact that all Serbs did not leave the city in a body,
the moment the attack started. Karad`i} counted on their leaving Sarajevo”.” (Quoted in
Mirko Pejanovi}, Through Bosnian Eyes: The Political Memoirs of a Bosnian Serb, trans.
Marina Bowder, Purdue University Press, 2001, p. 130).
By his first and last name there is no way Rizo SELMANAGI] could be a Serb,
except if he declared himself as a Serb at censuses, like Alija IZETBEGOVI] did at the first
census after the Second World War, when muslims were given the advice to declare
themselves as either Serbs or Croats or as undecided, and were able only in 1971 to declare
themselves as Muslims (with a capital M, denoting that in question was a nationality and
not religious affiliation).
Robert Donia is using an inexactitude from the work of another author – Mirko
PEJANOVI], demonstrating once and for all that he, as a professional historian does not
verify for correctness data that he takes over from other publicistic sources.
Even if Rizo SELMANAGI] had really and consistently declared himself a Serb,
such a statement on his part should be taken cum grano salis, for it was a statement of a
Serb of the Mohammedan faith, who set greater store in this political matter by his religion
than by his ethnicity.
2. Bosnian Krajina in the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
p. 3
“Yugoslavia’s first post-war constitution of 1946 specified that Serbia would
consist of three elements, Serbia proper, the autonomous province of Vojvodina and the
autonomous region called Kosovo-Metohija.”
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This assertion by Donia is not correct, that being the consequence of the fact that he
had never read the Constitution of FNR /Federative People’s Republic/ Yugoslavia of 31
January 1946, Article 2, paragraph 2 of which reads:
“The People’s Republic of Serbia shall comprise the Autonomous province of
Vojvodina and the Autonomous Region of Kosovo-Metohija.”
No reference is made at all in this provision to Serbia proper as a constituent part of
Serbia, so that by his testimony Donia misled the Trial Chamber.
p. 3
“In the 1974 constitution, Kosovo/Kosova and Vojvodina acquired further
autonomy and additionally received the right to be represented in the collective presidency.
In 1990 the government of Serbian President Slobodan Milo{evi} enacted constitutional
changes that stripped both areas of their autonomy.”
Not having read the Constitutions that had been adopted in the former Yugoslavia,
Robert Donia does not make a distinction between the federal Constitution and the
Constitution of the Republic of Serbia. In 1990, namely when the new Constitution of the
Republic of Serbia was adopted on 28 September 1990, Slobodan MILO[EVI] could not
abolish all that the autonomous provinces had additionally received in the 1974
Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia, nor did he do so. It was only in 1992, after SFR
Yugoslavia had been broken apart by foreign interference and internal secession that not
only the autonomous provinces but also the republics, as member states, were no longer
represented in the collective federal Presidency which was no longer.
p. 22
“A much more determined resistance movement was mounted under the leadership
of Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. This movement eventually won
the support of the British, over the objections of the Royal Government in exile. Its success
lay partly in its readiness to fight aggressively even after German forces retaliated for
attacks by killing Yugoslav civilians.”
Donia’s statement that German forces retaliated in the Second World War by killing
Yugoslav civilians is a blatant lie, which Donia deliberately put in this report. In retaliation
for killed German soldiers, particularly in Serbia, the German army did not kill Yugoslavs,
namely Slovenes, Croats and muslims, but only Serbs and that in a ratio of one hundred
Serbs for one killed German soldier and fifty for a wounded one. They even killed in excess
of that proportion, as in Kragujevac, when among others, all the senior pupils of the
Kragujevac high school were executed.
Tito’s partisans attacked the Germans despite threats of such retaliation, because
just like the British government they were not overly concerned for the Serbs, while for the
Yugoslav Army in the homeland led by General Dragoljub MIHAILOVI], that was the
reason to refrain from attacking the German occupying armed forces.
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Robert Donia is perfectly aware of all these facts, but he deliberately said Yugoslav
instead of Serbian civilians as the victims of German retaliation, hoping that no one would
notice.
pp. 25-26
“Milo{evi} orchestrated mass protest meetings to force the resignation of leaders in
the autonomous regions of Vojvodina and Kosovo and the Republic of Montenegro.
(source: Cohen, Serpent in the Bosom, pp. 74 -77). Between 1988 and 1990, Milo{evi}
allies were appointed in each of these areas, and in 1990 government-sponsored
constitutional changes were implemented to abolish the autonomy that Vojvodina and
Kosovo had previously enjoyed.”(source: Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos
and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington: The Brooking Institution, 1995, pp. 120-
21).
In the first sentence it is contended that Slobodan MILO[EVI] orchestrated mass
protests which led to the resignation of the leaders of Vojvodina and Montenegro. Even if
that were true, it is certain that MILO[EVI] would not have succeeded in doing that had not
the mentioned leaders been in disfavour with their own people. And as, additionally, they
had well-trained police units at their disposal, they certainly would not have stepped down
had they assessed that by using force they would have been able to hold on to power.
In the second sentence the already exposed mistake is repeated: that in 1990 the
autonomy that Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija had previously enjoyed was abolished.
The Constitution of Serbia of 28 September 1990 did not abolish provincial autonomy but
restricted it and confined it to the ambit laid down in the 1946 and 1963 Constitutions. In
this instance too, Donia failed to look at the Constitution of Serbia of 28 September 1990,
in particular its Articles 108-112, but took over second-hand alleged facts without checking
them for veracity and reliability.
p. 27
“Initially, much of the Greater Serbian campaign focused on the alleged persecution
of Serbs in Kosovo (source: Julie A. Mertus, Kosovo, How Myths and Truths Started a
War, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 17-226), but it soon encompassed
the grievances of Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia.”
As Donia speaks about the alleged persecutions of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, it
gives the impression that those were invented and not real persecutions. In the process, he
makes it known that he personally did not study this persecution of Serbs, as he relies on
second-hand data while he did not at all see fit to check it for veracity and credibility.
pp. 27-28
/”/The Bosnian Muslims were targeted in the Belgrade-based Greater Serbian
campaign. Intellectuals, journalists and politicians characterized the Bosnian Muslims as an
inferior group and belittled their claim to constitute a nation. (source: Cigar, Genocide, pp.
64-73). /”/
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In this instance as well, Donia, the historian, did not do his own research nor did he
study and quote Belgrade papers and agency news. Instead, he cites as his unverified source
an obscure author whose alleged facts he did not check.
Donia would have been much less remiss had he, absent the necessary critical
review, adopted the assertion of some Serbian historians and intellectuals according to
which the Muslims in the then Yugoslavia, and therefore also in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
were originally Serbs who renounced their Christianity over centuries of enslavement under
Turkish rule and became Mohammedans in order to preserve their lives and their property.
But then one could hardly say that someone who is of Serbian extraction is now inferior.
p. 28
“Cigar, Genocide, pp.6-73, chronicles this campaign in some detail. “Well before
the actual break-up of Yugoslavia, influential figures in Serbia had begun to shape a
stereotypical image of Muslims as alien, inferior, and a threat to all that the Serbs held
dear. This perception was Orientalism taken in a broad sense and writ large”.”
In this quotation, taken without any checking, from a book by an obscure author, he
says that influential figures had begun to shape a stereotypical image of Muslims as alien
and inferior and a threat to all that the Serbs held dear. Had Donia been a serious historian
in this matter he would have listed by name and surname at least three noted and influential
Serbian intellectuals who belittled Muslims in that way and their judgements pronounced
on Muslims, as well as their works or statements containing such disparaging
pronouncements. At the same time, he overlooked the vast efforts of the Serb side for the
Muslims and an integral Bosnia and Herzegovina to remain with the Serbs in Yugoslavia.
p. 28
Footnote 73: “Political scientists Paul Shoup and Steven Burg date the beginning of
the anti-Muslim campaign somewhat earlier: “The Muslims’ struggle for political and
social equality was jeopardized by a campaign against Islamic fundamentalism, launched
by Belgrade, which culminated in the trial of a number of Muslim intellectuals (including
Alija Izetbegovi}) in 1983.” (Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-
Herzegovina (source: A monk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989), p. 44.
The campaign against Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia, which culminated in the
arrest and conviction of Alija IZETBEGOVI] and other Muslim intellectuals, was not
launched by Belgrade, if Belgrade is taken to mean eminent Serbs in Belgrade, but was
initiated and brought to the trial stage by the Muslims Hamdija POZDERAC and Raif
DIZDAREVI] and the Croat Branko MIKULI], the most prominent power brokers in
Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time. Compelling proof that this trial was not instigated and
initiated by Belgrade, certainly not by Serbian intellectual circles, is the communiqué of the
Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Thought and Expression of 6 June 1986, which
starts with the following words:
“From 18 July to 19 August 1983, twelve Muslim intellectuals were on trial in
Sarajevo. This trial shall go down in the history of the contemporary Yugoslav judiciary as
the archetype of exemplary punishment for the words and thoughts of others. The court of
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first instance handed down Draconian sentences for the crime of verbal commission,
unusual even for our circumstances: three of the accused were sentenced to five years of
imprisonment, two to six years, one to six years and six months, one to seven years, two to
ten years each, one to fourteen, and one to fifteen years of imprisonment. The Supreme
Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina pronounced slightly lesser sentences, ranging between
three years and six months to twelve years, and the Federal Court, further restricting the
incrimination, meted out sentences ranging between two years and eight months to nine
years.”
And ends with the following proposal:
“The facts that we have adduced in order to illustrate the fate of D`emaludin LATI],
cast an ineffaceable shadow on the entire Sarajevo trial and call into very serious question
the justifiability of punishing all the accused. That is why we propose that you pardon all
those convicted in Sarajevo and thus make it possible for all those who are still serving
their prison sentences to be released.”
The members of the Committee were:
Member of the Academy Matija BE]KOVI]
Member of the Academy Prof. Dr. Dimitrije BOGDANOVI]
Dr. Kosta ^AVO[KI
Member of the Academy Dobrica ]OSI]
Prof. Dr. Andrija GAMS
Dr. Ivan JANKOVI]
Prof. Dr. Neca JOVANOV
Member of the Academy Prof. Dr. Mihailo MARKOVI]
Member of the Academy Dragoslav MIHAILOVI]
Borislav MIHAJLOVI] Mihiz
Member of the Academy Prof. Dr. Nikola MILO[EVI]
Tanasije MLADENOVI]
Member of the Academy Gojko NIKOLI[
Member of the Academy Prof. Dr. Predrag PALAVESTRA
Member of the Academy Mi}a POPOVI]
Member of the Academy Prof. Dr. Radovan SAMARD@I]
Member of the Academy Mladen SRBINOVI]
Member of the Academy Prof. Dr. Ljubomir TADI]
As this Committee was exceptionally well-known in the then Yugoslavia, and also
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Robert Donia must have known about it. Therefore he could
have concluded that the most eminent Serbian intellectuals were the only ones who stood
up for the convicted and incarcerated Muslim intellectuals, including Alija IZETBEGOVI],
something that no one else in Sarajevo, Zagreb or Ljubljana dared or tried to do. Instead of
that, he deliberately cites the wrong source (accounts by Steven L. Burg and Paul S.
Shoup), hoping that no one would notice. There, that is the sort of “historian” Robert Donia
is. This begs the question how could he have consciously deceived the Trial Chamber,
having declared that he would write and tell the truth.
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p. 29
“Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1999), p. 19. In Verdery’s words, “Demoting the corpses and statues of
the ’visibles’ of socialism does the reverse.”(pp. 19-20) Her analysis aptly accounts for the
posthumous fate of Josip Broz Tito. In October 1991 the body of the socialist-era Yugoslav
leader was removed from its place of honor in the “House of Flowers” in Belgrade and
reburied in more modest quarters. Partisan veterans and others protested his demotion as “a
spreading of the ideology of fascism and its practice in the territory of Yugoslavia”.
Oslobo|enje, 3 October, 1991, p. 4.
Without bothering to check, Robert Donia believed the blatant lie that the mortal
remains of Josip Broz Tito had been exhumed from his “Flower House” tomb and moved to
a more modest place. The remains are, thank God, still in the same grave, meaning that
Serbs respect the dead and do not move their mortal remains to another place even if they
have not been buried in a cemetery. We would actually like to suggest that Donia travel to
Belgrade at the expense of this court and visit the “Flower House” and see for himself that
the mortal remains of Josip Broz Tito are still there. Only, we are not sure that he will be
allowed to lift the lid of the sarcophagus to see with his own eyes that Josip Broz Tito still
rests in peace and tranquillity.
2. The Origins of Republika Srpska, 1990/1992. A Background Report
pp. 1-2
“Raif Dizdarevi}, president of the Presidency of the SFRY from May 1988 to May
1989, characterized the national movements as either “Separatist” or “Hegemonic” in
relation to the SFRY, and he viewed both with foreboding. The separatists wanted to
weaken or abolish the links between their respective republics and the SFRY; the
hegemonists wanted a more centralized federation…Hegemonism referred principally to
Serbian nationalists, led by Serbian President Slobodan Milo{evi}. Perversely (from the
viewpoint of those seeking to preserve the institutions of the communist federal state), the
two types of nationalism nourished one another…”
Even though unversed in constitutional law and forms of state order (simple and
composite state, regional state, federation, confederation, personal and real union), on the
basis of his knowledge of American history, Donia ought to have been able to at least make
a distinction between a federation and a confederation. According to the 1974 Constitution,
Yugoslavia was basically transformed into a confederation, because the most important
central decisions were taken unanimously by the representatives of all the republics and
provinces, while in the US Congress, pursuant to the Articles of Confederation – 1777, the
consent of nine of the thirteen member states was sufficient for the most important
decisions to be adopted. Therefore, efforts for the establishment of a genuine Yugoslav
federation cannot be characterised as hegemonism, except if Donia is inclined to
characterise as hegemonists the participants of the 1777 Philadelphia Convention, who
transformed the US confederation into a federation. And, in fact, Abraham Lincoln, could,
according to Donia, also be a hegemonist, because he prevented the break-up of the
American federation by war.
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p. 2
“Six months later, Milo{evi} was elected President of the League of Communists of
Serbia…”
Slobodan MILO[EVI] was not elected President of the League of Communists of
Serbia, for such a post had never existed. He was only the president of the Central
Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia. It is expected from a professional
historian, that Robert Donia purports to be, to precisely quote the designations of political
and state offices.
p. 3
“Although the demonstration’s ostensible purpose was to inform the public of the
plight of Kosovo’s Serbs, Federal Presidency members recognized that its true objective
was to force the resignation of the Vojvodina state and party leadership, which had been
critical of Milo{evi} for exploiting Serbian nationalism.”(source: DIZDAREVI], Od smrti
Tita /Since Tito’s Death/, p. 192.
Vojvodina had never had a state leadership, as it had never been a member state of
the Yugoslav federation. This time also, Donia covers up his mistake by invoking an
unreliable source.
p. 5
“On 28 March, the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia voted to enact constitutional
amendments that eliminated most of Kosovo’s autonomy within the republic.” (source:
Cohen: Serpent in the Bosom, pp. 78 -79).
In this instance as well, Robert Donia invokes an unreliable source, without
considering it necessary to at least read for himself the amendments adopted by the
Assembly of SR Serbia on 28 March 1989. On that occasion as many as 40 amendments
were adopted (from IX to XLIX), 19 of which regulated the subject matters of associated
labour, self-management, economic activity, property and the protection of the selfmanagement
and other rights of the employed and citizens. Particularly important were
Amendments XXII and XXIII which specified areas regulated uniformly for the entire
Republic by republican organs, whereby the purview of the autonomous provinces was
somewhat reduced. The most important was Amendment XLVII, paragraph 1, which laid
down that amending the Constitution of SR Serbia would be decided by the Assembly of
Serbia, without the prior consent of the assemblies of the autonomous provinces. Paragraph
2 of this amendment also prescribed that “amendments to the Constitution of SR Serbia
may not change the position, rights and duties of the autonomous provinces specified by the
SFRY Constitution”. Donia verified none of this by personally perusing the text of the
amendments, but believed as true the quote of a publicist who had probably heard or read
somewhere what he wrote.
p. 9
“The new constitution gave additional powers to the President of the Republic,
including the power to command the armed forces in peace and war (Article 83). It assured
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the centralization of the Serbian republic by eliminating the autonomy formerly enjoyed by
Kosovo and Vojvodina.”
In this case as well, Robert Donia pronounces a mistaken judgment, without ever
having held in his hands the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia of 28 September 1989,
let alone read it. Had he done so, he would have seen for himself that this Constitution did
not eliminate the autonomy of Kosovo and Metohija and Vojvodina, but only restricted it to
the confines of autonomy according to the 1946 and 1963 Constitutions.
p. 10
“SDS Party President Ra{kovi}, despite the inflammatory nationalist rhetoric in his
public speeches, in fact limited his demands to cultural autonomy for the Serbs of Croatia
and resolutely opposed territorial separatism.”
And to confirm this conclusion of his, Robert Donia quotes in footnote 45e the
following RA[KOVI]’s words: “We won’t create another Serbian state on Croatian
territory”, Ra{kovi} said at a rally on 25 July 1990. “We want only the autonomy of a free
and sovereign Serbian existence”. This last word in quotation marks ,“existence”, is a
mistranslation of the Serbian word “bi}e”. In English it is “being”, in German “Sein” and in
Greek “nous”.
What RA[KOVI] demanded on behalf of the Serbs in Croatia was much more than
cultural and educational autonomy. He demanded “the sovereignty of the Serbian national
being” and that means at least political if not also state sovereignty. The trouble was that
Donia does not know what the word sovereignty, which was coined by Jean Bodin, means
in political theory, which is why he misinterpreted the meaning of RA[KOVI]’ words.
p. 14
“When the Croatian MUP unit arrived to reinforce local policemen, they were
ambushed by Serbian paramilitary forces under Vojislav [e{elj. Twelve Croatian police
officers were killed and many more wounded.”
It is not true that those were Vojislav [E[ELJ’s men. Those armed Serbs in Borovo
Selo were led by Vuka{in [O[KO]ANIN, who later lost his life in a boat on the Danube
under suspicious circumstances.
p. 16
“Large-scale combat began to wind down in Eastern Slavonia in November after
Serbian forces /?had/ largely destroyed and then conquered the city of Vukovar. The JNA
siege of Dubrovnik continued however, and the city was subjected to heavy artillery
barrages in December 1991.”
Vukovar was not conquered by Serbian forces but by the Yugoslav People’s Army
(JNA), which at the time was the constitutional defensive force of the still existing SFR
Yugoslavia. Although he knows that, Donia deliberately misnames this army calling it
Serbian in order to blame only the Serbs for the destruction of Vukovar. As a matter of fact,
some of the commanders in that Vukovar detachment were later commanders of units of the
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so-called Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time the JNA Podgorica Corps
was laying siege to Dubrovnik. But, in order not to accuse the Montenegrins for their
smaller-scale destruction and looting of the general area of Dubrovnik, like he accused only
the Serbs in the case of Vukovar, Donia in this case speaks about the continued siege of
Dubrovnik by the JNA, because in 2002, when he submitted this report, it was no longer
politically expedient to charge Montenegrins in the same way as Serbs.
p. 37
“The Second World War, in the view of the Bosnian Serb leaders, had been a time
of great Serbian sacrifices that had put them at a disadvantage ever since. This viewpoint
was spelled out at the Congress of Serbian Intellectuals held in Sarajevo on 28 March 1992,
just days before BH independence was to be recognized by the EC.”
Although a historian, it appears that Robert Donia does not distinguish between an
indubitable historical fact and an insufficiently grounded opinion on it. In this account of
his it is not sufficiently clear whether great Serbian sacrifices in the Second World War, in
particular the genocide perpetrated against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, are an
indisputable historical fact, because that to him is a matter of opinion, so that Serbian
intellectuals hold one opinion about it, Croatian political leaders another one and the
leaders of the Muslim people yet another one.
A cause of concern in this statement of Donia’s is his conversion of factual truth
into a mere viewpoint which is practically a matter of free choice. To better understand the
nature of this alteration, we shall use a recent example from CNN. The noted American
tycoon and billionaire Donald Trump recently stated that Barack Obama could not be the
US president because he was not born in the USA but in Indonesia. When the CNN
journalist then showed him a facsimile of Barack Obama’s birth certificate which explicitly
said that he was born in Hawaii, and then also a facsimile of the handwriting of the registrar
who had made the entry, Trump replied that, like many Americans, he had a different
opinion on that fact. Likewise, for Donia, what actually happened during the Second World
War does not matter, because there can exist different opinions on it, whose
epistemological status is identical.
p. 38
„Estimates of Yugoslav victims in the Second World War have been employed for
political advantage ever since the conflict ended. Shortly after the war, Tito’s government
provided a figure of 1.7 million victims. This estimate was submitted as part of reparations
claims against Germany and Italy before lists were compiled to substantiate it. It remained
the standard and widely accepted figure for most of socialist rule: In the book History of
Yugoslavia, of which Ekmečić himself was one of four co-authors, Vladimir Dedijer states
that „over 1,700,000 Yugoslavs had lost their lives” in the Second World War. Franjo
Tudjman, a dissident former Partisan general in the 1979’s, challenged the figure as
excessive and offered a figure of 700,000 – 800,000 Yugoslav victims. In the 1980’s two
demographers, Vladimir Žerjavić, a Croat, and Bogoljub Kočević, a Serb, concluded
independently that Second World War deaths were just over 1,000,000 for all of
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Yugoslavia. Since these surprisingly similar findings were published, they have been
widely cited by scholars who reject the politically-motivated estimates of both Croatian
and Serbian nationalists.”
Speaking about the number of Yugoslav victims in the Second World War, in this
interesting section, Robert Donia advances the thesis that both Serbian and Croatian
nationalists manipulated the figures of victims in the Second World War. He evidently
regards Milorad EKME^I] and Vladimir DEDIJER, who claimed that over 1,700,000
Yugoslavs had lost their lives, as Serbian nationalists, while Franjo TU\MAN, whom he
apparently considered a Croatian nationalist, offered a figure of between 700,000 and
800,000 victims. And then he gives as the most reliable figure the findings of Vladimir
@ERJAVI], a Croat, and Bogoljub KO^OVI], a Serb, who independently concluded that
there had been just over 1,000,000 victims. The problem lies in the fact that immediately
after the war Tito’s government claimed that there had been 1,700,000 victims. And as that
is the highest number of victims which Serbian nationalists Milorad EKME^I] and
Vladimir DEDIJER gave, it turns out that the Croat Josip Broz Tito was a fervent Serbian
nationalist. That is the kind of non-sensical conclusion that results from Donia’s sleight of
hand!
4. /?Excerpts/ from speeches in the Assembly of Republika Srpska, 1991–1996,
classified by topic, submitted on 17 March 2008.
p. 7
5. Second session, 21 November 1991, KRAJI[NIK:
In the text that follows the negation “not” was omitted, probably malevolently,
resulting in a meaning opposite to what Mom~ilo KRAJI[NIK had actually said. Donia
gives the following quotation:
“In whatever we do we should bear in mind the complex socio-political
circumstances in our country, and all offered solutions must be based on the constitution
and law and reflect the interests of the Serbian people, but to the detriment of the other
peoples in BH /Bosnia and Herzegovina/. Gentlemen, in respect of everything that we
discuss in institutional procedure and it affects the national interests of the Serbian people,
if we are outvoted – the will of the Serbian people will be expressed through decisions of
the Assembly of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The basic principle which,
I believe, we should honour in our activities – is not to impose the will of the Serbian
people on other peoples. We should respect the justified will of both the Muslim and the
Croat peoples, but we must not underestimate our advantages reflected in the realistic ratio
of political forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina and we must not cede our rights to others.”
BCS ERN SA01-2010 English 0093-0301.
It thus turns out that the Serbian leadership is realising the interests of the Serbian
people to the detriment of the other peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whereas exactly
the opposite is true, because this clause actually reads:
“… all offered solutions must … reflect the interests of the Serbian people, but not
to the detriment of the other peoples in BH.”
(See page 11 SAO2 4886).
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Translation
5. Cross-examination of Robert Donia by the defence in previous cases
Case No. IT-95-14-T
Monday, 21 July 1997
Page 20, lines 21-24
Asked by the Zagreb-based attorney-at-law Mr. NOBILO about the 6 th of January
1929 dictatorship, Robert Donia answered:
“The dictatorship was accompanied by a ban on the Communist Party and a ban on
parties with an ethnic or national or religious identity.”
Here Robert Donia committed an error of fact. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia
was banned in December 1920, by an act known as the Obznana /Proclamation/, and in
August 1921, the Law on the Protection of the State was passed whereunder any
communist activity was characterised as a crime.
Case No. IT-95-14-T
Monday, 21 July 1997
Page 626, line 24
Asked by attorney-at-law Mr. NOBILO from Zagreb about the organisers of the 27
March 1941 demonstrations in Belgrade, Robert Donia replied:
“The Communist Party played a major role.”
What Donia, regrettably, does not know, is the indisputable fact that the Yugoslav
communists, even had they wanted, were absolutely not allowed to support, let alone
organise these demonstrations. In 1939, before Germany attacked Poland, the Molotov –
Ribbentrop pact was concluded, establishing friendly relations between Germany and the
USSR at the expense of Poland and the three Baltic states. Тhe pact was binding on the
Third Communist International (Comintern) and all its branches, including the Communist
Party of Yugoslavia. It was therefore impossible for the KPJ /Communist Party of
Yugoslavia/ to have publicly demonstrated on 27 March 1941 against Hitler, Stalin’s great
ally at the time. The coup d’etat was, in point of fact, carried out by Air Force Major
General Bora MIRKOVI], at the instigation of the British Intelligence Service, while the
street demonstrations in Belgrade were more or less spontaneous. It appears that Donia
drew his information from the official history of the KPJ, i.e. the SKJ /League of
Communists of Yugoslavia/, which abounds in falsehoods.
Case No. IT- /?9/5-0-T
Tuesday, 11 September 2001
Page 1058, lines 13-20.
“Additionally, within Bosnia, within Herzegovina, actually, some of the victims in
World War II had been simply – bodies had simply been deposited in caves, about 30
different caves throughout Herzegovina. These remains were exhumed, brought to nearby
villages – typically municipal seats – and then brought together to Belgrade in a long
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Translation
ceremony and sort of major reburial, which is kind of a symbolic re-establishment of the
link between the World War II victims and Belgrade as the national centre.”
In these two sentences Donia makes a number of factual mistakes. The bodies of
killed Serbs were not deposited in caves, but they were dumped into pits and ravines, most
of them actually still alive. As throwing live and dead Serbs into pits can by no means be
considered a burial, the actual burial of their exhumed mortal remains may not be termed a
reburial, as Robert Donia does. And then, the decent funeral of and proper service for just
some of those bestially killed was not performed in Belgrade, as Donia states, but in
Prebilovci, where a modest memorial church was also erected. And, finally, as the funeral
took place in Prebilovci and not in Belgrade, there was no symbolic re-establishment of the
link between the World War II victims and Belgrade as the national centre, as Robert Donia
would spitefully have it.
Case No. IT-95-9-T
Tuesday, 11 September 2001
Page 1059, lines 8-10.
“The League of Communists was the name for the Communist Party of Yugoslavia,
which it received in 1953 after the split between Tito and Stalin.”
Yet again, Robert Donia makes a factual error. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia
did not get its new name, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, in 1953, but in 1958, at
its 7 th Congress, ten years after the conflict with Stalin.
p. 4
III
HIDING AND WITHHOLDING RELEVANT FACTS
1. Bosnian Serb Leadership and the Siege of Sarajevo
“In BiH, /?three/ nationalist parties swept to victory in elections in November 1990,
defeating dozens of other parties that had been founded and registered in the preceding
months.”
In this sentence, Robert Donia deliberately omitted to say that at these elections, the
until then ruling communists led by Nijaz DURAKOVI] had been defeated worse than all
others. Naturally, this begs the question why Donia failed to disclose this defeat in Bosnia
and Herzegovina after the fall of the Berlin wall.
p. 5
“Through „national awakenings” that took place from the late eighteenth to the
latter half of the twentieth centuries, members of each religious community adopted secular
national identities and developed political programs under secular leaders.”
Apparently, Robert Donia persistently sought fully to equalize the Muslims with the
Croats and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and therefore speaks of a “national
awakening” of muslims already in the late eighteenth century. In so doing, he withholds the
fact that until 1908, when Austria-Hungary as the occupying force annexed Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina had declared themselves as Turks,
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i.e. as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. After that, they saw themselves only as a distinct
religious group and that is the reason why individual muslims declared themselves to be
Serbs or Croats, and Alija IZETBEGOVI] in fact declared himself a Serb at a population
census. It was only in 1971 that muslims declared themselves at the population census as
Muslims, namely as members of a distinct nation, to be then recognised, by the 1974
Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia as the sixth Yugoslav nation.
Robert Donia also failed to say that the secularisation of Croats, Serbs and muslims
in Bosnia and Herzegovina had not been the consequence of free choice but of forcible
communist atheisation.
p. 5
“In the twentieth century, many members of each group abjured participation in
organized religion while retaining (and in some cases strengthening) their national
identity.”
In this statement, Robert Donia failed to say whether members of each religious
group voluntarily renounced their religion and participation in religious rites or were in
most instances forced to do so. The reason why he failed to do so is probably his
disinclination to criticise the then communist regime.
pp. 7-8
“A disproportionate percentage of Sarajevans (10.7% v. 5.5% in the republic) called
themselves “Yugoslav“… The Yugoslavs were a diverse category. Some identified
themselves as Yugoslavs out of primary loyalty to the federal state, but others, including in
mixed marriages or their offspring, wished to avoid identifying with any of the major
peoples. Serb national leaders, however, often counted Yugoslavs as Serbs to expand their
claims to land and persons that belonged to the “Serb people”.”
p. 9
“According to the 1991 census, these municipalities held relatively high percentages
of Yugoslavs: 16.4% in Centar, 15.9% in Novo Sarajevo, and 11.4% in Novi Grad.”
In these two sections, Robert Donia failed to adduce the real reasons why a
considerable number of citizens of the then Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia
declared themselves as “Yugoslavs”. In all fairness, he does say that many of them did so
out of loyalty to the federal state. But, he fails to say that only the Serbs were utterly loyal
to Yugoslavia, because they had brought their Serbia into that new joint state and thus
actually saw it too as their very own. They were even prepared to suppress their Serbian
identity and espouse the Yugoslav one, which to a certain extent detracted from their own
Serbian national self-awareness. In contrast to Serbs, in 1918, the Croats and the Slovenes
accepted the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes for two essential reasons: 1. to pass
from the defeated side to the Serbian victorious side, and 2. to preserve their national
territories from Italian claims. Hence their accounts that the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes are
three tribes of one nation. And, once they had accomplished these national objectives
through the establishment of a joint state, first the Croats and considerably later also the
Slovenes began to view that state as a transit stop towards the establishment of their
national independence. That is why there had practically been no Yugoslavs among them.
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As prior to the war there had been incomparably more Yugoslavs in Sarajevo than
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the question arises what became of them after the war and how
come that there are none of them today in allegedly multi-ethnic Sarajevo. Had he
addressed this question in earnest, Donia would certainly have concluded that in a vast
number of cases they had been Serbs, as they had always been. Therefore, had he really
wanted to establish the identity of “Yugoslavs”, Donia should have examined the trends of
this category over several past population censuses. In that case he would have observed
that in 1991, when preparations for the secession of first Slovenia and Croatia and then also
of Bosnia and Herzegovina were well under way, members of the Slovene, Croatian ad
Muslim peoples did not declare themselves as Yugoslavs, except for Ejup GANI] who
falsely represented himself as a Yugoslav in order to be elected the seventh member of the
Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the slate of the Party of Democratic Action,
because those who so opted surely were not secessionists.
p. 10
“… And SDA candidate Ejup Ganić won the seventh seat on the Presidency in the
category of „Other”.”
In this instance as well, Robert Donia omitted to say everything that is relevant for
the election of Ejup GANI] as the seventh member of the Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, who was to have represented “other citizens”, namely those who had not
declared themselves as Muslims, Croats or Serbs in the nomination and election stages. At
that time Ejup GANI] declared himself a Yugoslav and was elected to the Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina as such. It later turned out and Donia is perfectly aware of that,
that he was not an ordinary but a militant Muslim, so that at the beginning of the war as
well as later he held key positions in the Muslim leadership. He was even accused of grave
war crimes. The election of Ejup GANI] confirms that at the elections for the Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Party of Democratic Action resorted to deception passing off
as a Yugoslav a candidate who was and remained a Muslim. At the same time, Donia
intentionally failed to mention that the Serbian Democratic Party had nominated for that
office Ivica ^ERE[NJE[, the leader of the Jewish community, whose ancestors had fled
from Spain 450 years ago and had become an important factor in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
p. 10
“In December 1990, SDS member Momčilo Krajišnik was chosen as President of
the Assembly of BiH. Four key persons – Koljević, Plavšić, Krajišnik, and SDS Party
President Radovan Karadžić – emerged from the 1990 election to lead the SDS and the
civilian Serb nationalists of BiH for the period covered by this report.”
For Robert Donia, the Serbian Democratic Party and its leaders led Serbian
nationalists, namely not the Serbian people as such, but only Serbian nationalists. One
would have expected Donia to also refer, in this instance, to the leaders of Muslim and
Croat nationalists. He, however, did not do so, so that it turns out that he proceeded in the
manner of a police interrogator in this regard, rather than as a historian seeking to establish
all the pertinent facts at a given historical moment. Later we shall see that for him the
leaders of the Party of Democratic Action were never Muslim nationalists, while the leaders
of the Croatian Democratic Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina were that only when they
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Translation
were at war with the Muslims, or when they were negotiating with Serbian leaders and
dividing Bosnia and Herzegovina without the presence of Muslim representatives.
pp. 14-15
“After faring poorly in the election in spring 1990 among the approximately
600,000 Serbs living in Croatia, the SDS in Croatia led a movement in Serb-majority areas
to resist the jurisdiction of the Republic of Croatia. Led by former dissident Franjo
Tudjman, Croatian nationalists had won control of the republic’s central institutions in the
1990 elections, so the SDS-led movement pitted Serb nationalists against Croat nationalists
who wanted their republic to have greater autonomy or independence from the federal
polity. On 27 June 1990, Serbs in Croatia formed the “Community of Municipalities of
Northern Dalmatia and Lika”, one of several single-national local and regional associations
within which Serbs challenged the jurisdiction of the Croatian government. With the
political support of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević and the military participation of
the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA – Jugoslovenska narodna armija), Serb nationalists
took up arms to carve out Serb-inhabited territories from the Republic of Croatia, leading to
bloody war with Croatian security forces in the latter half of 1991.”
In this lengthy section, even though he knows them, Robert Donia failed to give the
reasons why the Serbs in Croatia in areas where they were in the majority challenged the
jurisdiction of the new Croatian authorities and sought to separate those areas from the
Republic of Croatia by arms. The reasons were as follows:
1) the new Constitution of the Republic of Croatia which abolished the status of the
Serbian people as a constituent (state-building) nation, which the Serbian people had had
in all theretofore Constitutions since 1946, with Croatia being the state of not only the
Croatian but also of the Serbian people;
2) reduction of the Serbian people to a national minority, like the small numbers of
Hungarians, Roma and others;
3) the almost certain possibility of Croatia’s secession from SFR Yugoslavia, thanks
to which the Serbs, as an unprotected national minority, would find themselves in Croatia,
in which during the Second World War they had been the victims of mass genocide.
As a historian who ought to present developments in their entirety, it was Donia’s
duty to also state these reasons in order for the circumstances which had led up to the war
in Croatia to be better understood.
As a police interrogator he did not have to do so. In contrast to Donia, individual
eminent representatives of the great powers admitted later that the recognition of the
breakaway republics before adopting documents on the protection of the rights of all had
been a mistake, and Lord David Owen confirmed in his book Balkan Odyssey, as well as
in a film on the collapse of Yugoslavia, that the Serbs in Croatia had valid reasons for
serious concern over their future status in a country whose leadership had resurrected
Ustasha symbols and rhetoric.
p. 17
“In the next six months, SDS leaders implemented the ideas advanced at the Party
Council meeting of 15 October. They created institutions at the republic level that
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Translation
prefigured formation of a separate Serb state, then proceeded to announce formation of that
state in early 1991. They undertook major state-building steps coincident with measures by
SDA and HDZ leaders toward greater sovereignty or independence for BiH. As Karadžić
later described it, “Each of our moves was caused by some move by Izetbegović… They do
something, then we do something”.”
In English, if we are not mistaken, the word “coincident” means
“contemporaneous”. If that word indeed means that, how could Robert Donia say that
Serbian leaders undertook state-building steps coincident with measures by the Party of
Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Union toward the establishment of the
sovereignty and independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, when KARAD@I] himself had
said, and Donia quotes him, “Each of our moves was caused by some move by
Izetbegović…” It seems that Donia does not know that cause always precedes
consequence, and that consequences can only arise thus. Be that as it may, Donia omitted to
say loud and clear that the Muslim and Croat leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina first
brought the final decision for Bosnia and Herzegovina to secede from SFR Yugoslavia in
an unconstitutional way, compelling the Serbian Democratic Party to respond in kind – by
the secession of Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
p. 18
“But before establishing a state in 1992, the Bosnian Serb Assembly voted at its
first session on 24 October 1991 to organize a plebiscite, held on 9 and 10 November 1991,
asking voters if they wished to remain in the SFRJ. Non-Serbs were given yellow ballots to
distinguish their votes from those of Bosnian Serbs. Few Bosnian Muslims or Bosnian
Croats voted in the November plebiscite, but Bosnian Serbs voted overwhelmingly to
remain in the SFRJ. On many occasions after the vote, SDS leaders cited the plebiscite
results as justification for establishing a separate Serb state.”
In this context, Robert Donia omitted to say that voting in favour of remaining part
of SFR Yugoslavia had been both constitutional and legitimate, which cannot be said of the
subsequent referendum (actually plebiscite) on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s secession from
SFR Yugoslavia. And as he said that leaders of the Serbian Democratic Party cited the 9
and 10 November 1991 plebiscite results as justification for establishing a separate Serb
state, though an expert on the American 1861-1865 civil war of secession, he omitted to
draw an analogy between West Virginia and Republika Srpska. When in 1861 Virginia and
ten other Southern member states seceded from the American Union, the Wheeling
Conventions repealed the ordinance of secession and constituted a new state in the western
part of Virginia, Kanawha, which later changed its name to West Virginia and was
subsequently, in 1863, while the war was still going on, admitted into the Union as a new
member state. So, if West Virginia could do it, why could Republika Srpska not do it,
except if Donia thinks that one set of rules applies to Americans and Virginians and another
to Yugoslavs and Serbs.
p. 26
“Vuksanović was one of many Sarajevans who rejected any national identity (if
anything, he took great pride in being a professional, non-party journalist) and bemoaned
the efforts of the nationalist parties to divide society along ethnic lines.”
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Translation
In connection with the Pale Diary of Yugoslav Mladen VUKSANOVI], Robert
Donia refers to the efforts of the nationalist parties to divide society along ethnic lines. As
this Diary speaks about the moving out of Muslims and Croats from Pale, according to him
there is no doubt whatsoever that the Serbian Democratic Party is a nationalist party. But he
failed to say what the other nationalist parties that are dividing society into separate ethnic
communities are. Those could be the Croatian Democratic Union and the Party of
Democratic Action. Robert Donia always characterises the Serbian Democratic Party as
nationalist, the Croatian Democratic Union only exceptionally, while never attributing such
an epithet to the Party of Democratic Action. In his standard manner in such instances,
Donia took for granted without any checking that the Muslims and Croats moved out of
Pale contrary to their will, although there exists sufficient authentic documentation showing
that they themselves sought a change of temporary residence and not of permanent
residence, which in our system is significantly different and implies that they will be
coming back.
p. 28
“To gain a majority of 26 votes in the assembly, he needed all six Serbs from the
Left Opposition to support the SDS initiative. In two separate votes in the municipal
assembly in late 1991, he failed to gain a majority for the proposition, but he tried a third
time on 14 December 1991. Before the vote, he expressed confidence that he would win on
the third try. “Everyone told me last night. I’ll show anyone who tries to con me,” Adžić
told Jovan Tintor, his counterpart in neighboring Vogošća, before the meeting on the 24th.
“They will vote, and I hope that some of them won’t change their minds, because I need all
26 to come.” That evening, realizing they would lose the vote, HDZ and SDA delegates
walked out of the assembly when the item was placed on the agenda. The 26 Serb delegates
from both the SDS and Left Opposition voted without opposition for Ilijaš municipality to
join SAO Romanija.”
This section speaks about the separation of Ilija{ from the Sarajevo community of
municipalities and its joining SAO Romanija. A majority of 26 votes in the Ilija{
municipal assembly was required for that. For that to be accomplished, Serbian
Democratic Party assemblymen needed to be joined by six Serb assemblymen from the socalled
Left Opposition, which was achieved only on 24 December 1991, on the third vote.
In that connection Robert Donia could have concluded that these six assemblymen joined
the “nationalist” Serbian Democratic Party out of a feeling of national jeopardy, and that
none of these 26 assemblymen voted as members of this or that party but all voted as Serbs.
However, Robert Donia did not do so.
p. 41
“The JNA was heir to Tito’s Second World War Partisans. It was constitutionally
mandated to defend the homeland and preserve the SFRJ, and many of its officers were
fiercely loyal to the concept of federal Yugoslavia… During the war in Croatia, the JNA
was transformed from a Yugoslav force to one dominated by Serbs and Montenegrins. The
transformation left the JNA drained of manpower as non-Serbs left the army and often
joined other forces in the SFRJ. Faced with manpower shortages stemming from these
defections, the JNA ordered reservists in BiH to active duty on 28 September 1991. The
next day, the Presidency of BiH denounced the JNA’s mobilizations order as illegal,
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thereby discouraging reservists in BiH from serving in the JNA’s Croatia Campaign.
Consequently most Croat and Muslim reservists stayed home.”
Robert Donia was, thus, perfectly aware of the fact that it had been the duty of the
Yugoslav People’s Army to defend and preserve the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. He
should therefore have pointed out that the decision of the Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina declaring the mobilisation of JNA reservists in Bosnia and Herzegovina
illegal, was unconstitutional and as such impermissible. However, he disregards this fact,
because the Muslims, the Croats and the “Yugoslav” Ejup GANI] voted in favour of this
decision in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, thereby once again demonstrating
his partiality.
He also failed to explain how from a Yugoslav army the JNA was transformed into
one of Serbs and Montenegrins. That was because only Serbs and Montenegrins responded
to the call-up, while Slovenes, Croats and Muslims unlawfully refused to do so. That was
first and foremost the doing of the nationalist and separatist parties, which sought to
weaken the JNA as far as possible and thus prevent it from defending and preserving the
territorial integrity of SFR Yugoslavia. The rump Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
also considerably contributed to the realisation of that unconstitutional objective by its
afore-mentioned unconstitutional decision.
p. 51
“Although both the SDS and SDA shunned these demonstrations, the opposition
Social Democrats and thousands of Sarajevans embraced the “Valter” movement, named
after the best-known hero of the city’s resistance to German occupation in the Second
World War.”
In this section, Robert Donia deliberately omitted to explain what the name “Valter”
meant and whose it was. It was the pseudonym of Vladimir PERI], a Serb and a famous
partisan commander in the Second World War, as actually written on page 222 in Donia’s
book Sarajevo, A Biography. There two reasons why this explanation was not given:
1. It would have shown that the commanders of partisan units in Bosnia and
Herzegovina had been exclusively Serbs, and
2. That Nijaz DURAKOVI], the leader of the Social-Democratic Party, had, as a
Muslim, taken a Serb – Vladimir PERI] Valter - as a paragon.
p. 54
“Croat nationalist leaders formed the HVO (Croatian Defence Council) on 8 April.
On 15 April 1992, the Presidency of BiH ordered armed units consolidated under the
republic’s TO command, the first step in creating a unified ARBiH (Army of the Republic
of Bosnia-Herzegovina) later that month.”
As Croat nationalist leaders formed the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) on 8
April 1992, and as on 15 April 1992 the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered that
all armed units be placed under the command of the republican territorial defence, the
question arises in what composition did this Presidency issue such an order and whether it
had been constitutional and lawful. As the two Croat representatives in the Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina were obviously not in favour of that order, and as by that time the
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two Serb representatives were no longer participating in its work, only the two Muslim
representatives and the “Yugoslav” Ejup GANI] could have voted in favour of the
mentioned order. What that actually means is that the mentioned decision was adopted by a
minority of 3 of a total of 7 votes and that it had in fact not been adopted at all. Robert
Donia, however, pretends not to know, taking for granted what the Muslims represent to
have been the decision of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and thus deceives the
Trial Chamber in the case Prosecutor vs. Karad`i}.
Yet again Donia withheld relevant facts. On 4 April 1992, the rump Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina called a general mobilisation, without the participation and
consent of its Serbian members. General VUKOSAVLJEVI], the commander of the
Territorial Defence, warned that this decision was out of order, only to be relieved of office
by the rump Presidency already on 6 April 1992. Two days later, on 8 April 1992, the
Muslims formed a new territorial defence, de facto excluding from it all Serbs, and
declared “an imminent state of war”. The Serbs were compelled to appropriately respond,
but did so only on 16 April 1992. Already on 22 April, Radovan KARAD@I] announced
his platform for a cessation of the conflicts proposing that territorial gains achieved by
force not be recognised, whereby the war would be rendered pointless.
It should be noted that Croatian leaders formed the HVO (Croatian Defence
Council), so that the so-called Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina could have been
established only by the Muslims. It is also interesting that, according to Donia, in this
context the Croatian leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina are nationalist. The reason is
simple. This time they acted in the Croatian and not in the Muslim national interest.
p. 62
“After intensive negotiations, the JNA agreed to release Izetbegović in exchange for
General Kukanjac and hundreds of officers and soldiers then in the large headquarters of
the 2 nd Military District in the city center. Izetbegović and Kukanjac rode together in the
same armored personnel carrier to coordinate the release on 3 May, but ARBiH soldiers
fired on the convoy, killing at least six persons, five of them JNA soldiers.”
In the attack on the JNA convoy participated soldiers of the Army of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which had evolved from the Territorial Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina
and an enormously increased reserve police complement, replenished by non-professionals,
many of them inveterate criminals. Yet again, Robert Donia failed to state a crucial fact –
who had commanded this attack. It was Ejup GANI], in the capacity of Commander of the
Territorial Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was probably discomfiting for him to
say that the “Yugoslav” Ejup GANI] had ordered an attack on the JNA as a Yugoslav army.
As a matter of fact, thanks to Radovan KARAD@I], the number of victims of that attack on
a peaceful column, which was withdrawing from the city in accordance with an agreement,
was greatly reduced.
pp. 64-65
“UN observers likewise kept track of the hours and areas of town in which the
shells fell, recording separately the number of shells that hit government – and Serb-held
territory. The number of impacts set a record of sorts on 22 July 1993, when 3,777 shells
fell on Bosnian government-controlled areas. Routinely, more shells struck governmentcontrolled
areas than landed in Serb-controlled territory, according to the UN observers
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count, and on no single day did the observers record more shells hitting Serb-controlled
territory than struck government-controlled central city.”
According to this account of Donia’s, UN observers kept track of the number of
shells landing in Sarajevo coming from the Serb side and the number of Muslim shells
landing on the Serb side. Although both figures were available, he deliberately withheld the
number of shells that had struck the Serb side from the Muslim side.
Apart from that, without specifying the number of Muslim shells, he notes that,
according to UN observers, more shells had hit the central part of Sarajevo than the Serbian
part of Sarajevo. He is namely saying that the principle of proportionality should have been
observed in the shelling. That being so, he could have compared this to how the American
armed forces respected the principle of proportionality in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
He, however, did not do so.
Although he provides information on the alleged disproportionality in the shelling,
Donia does not cite the international legal document making such proportionality binding
in a war in which a land offensive is being prepared by artillery attacks. Proportionality is
customary in incidents and smaller-scale armed conflicts when it is necessary to establish
which side wants war, or in punitive actions where the punishment should not exceed the
offence. In a real war, like the one in Bosnia and Herzegovina was, responsibility always
attaches to the side which started the shelling, and the attacked side is authorised to strike
back as long as it takes to destroy the weapons which shelled it.
However, in respect of the number of shells and proportionality, the truth was
“elegantly” circumvented. UNPROFOR generals, primarily General Rose, established that
the findings of the military observers were not always correct, and also that the observers
themselves had been useless. If, nonetheless, UNMO reports are accepted without any
verification, then at least the reservations expressed in respect of those reports by
UNPROFOR commanders should be noted. Examination of those reports reveals that there
is no data on the source of at least 50% of the shells. Those reports also indicate that more
shells had been fired from the Muslim section of the city than had landed in Serb territory,
without an explanation of where they actually landed, so that it is probable that they landed
in the Muslim section of the city and were added to the number of Serbian shells. As, in
addition, over 3,000 shells fell daily on the “central city area”, they should have reduced to
rubble that part of the city in just one day. That not being the case, reporters should have
said that they fell on the hills, on the lines of conflict and not on the city.
p. 81
“An unknown number of Serbs, probably in the hundreds, were imprisoned, beaten,
or killed in various “wild” prisons of paramilitary groups within Sarajevo despite repeated
interventions by Nenad Kecmanović and Mirko Pejanović, two Serb members of the BiH
Presidency who had replaced Koljević and Plavšić after their resignations in April 1992.”
Not only during the war, but also after it, in particular in the trials in The Hague, the
number was always given of Sarajevans who had been the victims of shelling or sniper fire
from the Serb side. Oddly enough, the number of killed, incarcerated and tortured Serbs in
the Muslim section of Sarajevo was never established and Donia never saw fit to ask
himself why that had not been done. Obviously he was not in the least concerned about
Serb victims, because someone from the Muslim leadership would have to be held
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criminally responsible for them. It is interesting that Donia, as a historian who noted the
disproportion between the number of shells that landed on the Muslim from the Serb side
and vice versa, failed to observe the evident disproportion between the number of accused
and convicted Muslims and Serbs for crimes in both parts of Sarajevo. Apart from
professional conscience and impartiality, he did not need any legal training for that.
p. 81
“Several Sarajevo Serbs emerged as leaders to represent Serb interests while
remaining loyal to the government of BiH. After Koljević and Plavšić resigned in April
1992, the remaining Presidency members appointed to the vacant posts the next two highest
Serb vote-getters in the 1990 election, Mirko Pejanović (Social Democrat) and Nenad
Kecmanović (Reformist).”
In this section Robert Donia gave information he definitely knew was not true.
Firstly, the question arises how could the remaining Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
have appointed as its members without any elections Mirko PEJANOVI] and Nenad
KECMANOVI] instead of the elected Nikola KOLJEVI] and Biljana PLAV[I], when the
former had lost in the November 1990 elections for the Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Of course that appointment was unconstitutional, which Robert Donia
omitted to mention. As apart from Nikola KOLJEVI] and Biljana PLAV[I] the two elected
Croats also stopped attending the sessions of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it
consisted of only the Muslims Alija IZETBEGOVI] and Fikret ABDI] and the “Yugoslav”
Ejup GANI], namely three of the total of seven members. That only means that the
Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina had ceased to exist and that Bosnia and
Herzegovina had fallen apart as a state. 8 Finally, Robert Donia, as a historian, who should,
inter alia, draw analogies, should have asked himself how come that the European
Community and the USA stopped recognising the Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia once its
membership had fallen from eight to four, while continuing to recognise the Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina despite the fact that their number had dropped from seven to three.
Donia, however, knew that by asking such questions and giving answers to them he would
not have lived up to the expectations of his employer. Apart from that, Donia failed to
observe that Alija IZETBEGOVI]’s term of office as the president of the Presidency had
expired already in the first year of the war but that he continued to be received as such, and
even as the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, although such a position had never
existed.
pp. 81-82
“In October 1993 MUP officers brought an end /to/ the major criminal gangs
responsible for much of the Serbs’ mistreatment, but in the meantime more Serbs fled the
city, either in dread of the continued Serb natiоnalist bombardment and sniping or violence
by Сroat and Muslim gangs and paramilitaries. Still, tens of thousands of Serbs remained in
the besieged city (p. 81)… SDS leaders did not dispute that tens of thousands of Ѕerbs
remained in Sarajevo, but they portrayed them as being held against their will. “The Serb
side… was and still is deeply disturbed by the situation that now prevails in Sarajevo,”
Karadžić wrote in an open letter to UN Secretary General. Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
8 With much less reason the Badinter Commission had established that SFR Yugoslavia also “no longer
existed”.
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“Between 40,000 to 50,000 Serbs are held as ethnic hostages and constant daily attacks on
Serbian municipalities Ilidža, Lukavica, Ilijaš, and Vogošća take place.” (p. 82)
The truth is that those were not “major criminal gangs” but regular units of the
Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina: the 9 th and 10 th Mountain /Brigades/. And their
commanders, once notorious criminals, were Mu{an TOPALOVI] Caco, Ismet DELALI]
]elo (the murderer of the Serb wedding party member) and others, while Jusuf Juka
PRAZINA was even a general and a member of the Supreme Command of the Army of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Actually, they were not removed because of their mistreatment of
Serbs, as Robert Donia defines the throwing of hundreds of Serbs into the Kazani pit, but
fifteen months later because of a clash with the authorities, the murder of the Minister of
the Interior Avdo HEBI] and their intention to take over command of the 1 st Corps of the
Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Robert Donia then says that tens of thousands of Serbs remained in the besieged
city of Sarajevo, while KARAD@I] says that there had been between 40,000 and 50,000 of
them. On this occasion Donia was faced with the question whether those Serbs had been
forced to remain in besieged Sarajevo as hostages of sorts or had done so of their own free
will. Although he knew for a fact that the Muslim leaders forbade everyone, Serbs in
particular, to leave Sarajevo, Donia would not say it. He had good reasons for that, just like
he could not explain how formerly multiethnic Sarajevo remained without almost all its
Serbs and a large majority of its Croats once it had become possible for everyone freely to
leave the city after the signing of the Dayton Accords.
p. 83
“Kecmanović, under the pretext of negotiating with nationalist Serbs in Pale, left
Sarajevo and never returned. He took up residence in Belgrade and wrote an
autobiographical account of his time in Sarajevo.”
On page 81, Robert Donia refers to Nenad KECMANOVI] as being loyal to the
Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It follows from this section that his loyalty had
been feigned and that all he did was wait for a break and escape from besieged Sarajevo by
deception. This opens up several questions: who filled his position in the Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and how was that done? Donia should have also asked himself
this: if Nenad KECMANOVI], a Serb holding the highest state office, only bided his time
till the opportunity posed itself for him to flee from besieged Sarajevo, how badly other
Serbs who, unlike KECMANOVI], were exposed to constant maltreatment and starvation
must have wanted it? Although well-versed and well informed, Donia failed to reply to any
of these questions.
p. 84
“The Bosnian Serb nationalists wanted to maintain their own territorial contiguity
while denying it to the ARBiH.”
By this statement Robert Donia actually criticises Serb nationalists for wanting
territorial contiguity for their state while denying it to the other side. Later it turned out,
however, that the Muslims demanded the same thing when in Dayton they succeeded in
getting a corridor between Gora`de and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And,
what is even worse, not only did they manage to get it, but, by problematising the status of
Br~ko and the subsequent establishment of the Br~ko District, they cut Republika Srpska
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into two parts. We, naturally, still expect Donia to criticise Muslim nationalists before this
Tribunal for wanting the territorial integrity of the Muslim-Croat Federation while denying
the same to Republika Srpska. As well, Donia failed to adduce the important fact that prior
to the outbreak of the war the Serb side had accepted that cantons need not be territorially
linked, as it was on Cutilheiro’s map, and that the need for contiguity arose only after the
outbreak of war, which is in itself understandable.
p. 85
In footnote number 270, Robert Donia cites as his source the book by Murat
KAHROVI] Kako smo branili Sarajevo: Prva sand`a~ka brigada /How We Defended
Sarajevo: The 1 st Sand`ak Brigade/. That was an opportunity to explain to the judges of The
Hague Tribunal who exactly were the soldiers that belonged to this brigade and where they
had come from. They were volunteers from the Novi Pazar Sand`ak, which is part of Serbia
and of Montenegro. Had he written that, it would have been clear to the judges that all
armed units in Bosnia and Herzegovina had volunteers from outside: /?Croatian ones/ from
Croatia, Serbian ones from Serbia, and Muslim ones not only from Sand`ak but also
mujahidin from Muslim countries. However, Donia did not consider it necessary to clarify
that, as he would then have portrayed in a negative light the side that is dear and close to
him.
pp. 90-91
“The Sarajevo-Romanija Corps failed to retake Žuč Hill in Operation “Lukavac 93”,
but it did conquer Mt. Bjelasnica, a victory which General Mladić hoped would “prevent
maneuvers by the Muslim force toward and away from Sarajevo”. (Soon thereafter, under
international pressure, the VRS agreed to “hand over its important positions on the
mountains Bjelasnica and Igman to UNPROFOR in order to prevent their use for military
purposes by any side.”)”
Robert Donia intentionally omitted to say what the epilogue of the fighting on Mt.
Bjela{nica and Mt. Igman was. Although the Serb side handed over occupied positions on
Mt. Igman to UNPROFOR, it did so on condition that no side use Mt. Igman for its
objectives. UNPROFOR did not honour this requirement but allowed the Muslims to pull
considerable military forces into Sarajevo via Mt. Igman. Donia refrained from mentioning
this, for it would turn out that UNPROFOR does not keep its word and that Muslims do not
honour concluded agreements.
pp. 95-96
“At the fifth round of talks in Sarajevo on 18 March 1992 (before war began), the
three parties agreed to key principles of the Cutiliero Plan (as it became known) as a basis
for further negotiations, but they did not sign the agreement. Using results of the /?1991/
census, one study concluded that the plan would leave 60% of Croats, 18% of Muslims,
and 50% of Serbs living in areas dominated by another nation. Within a week,
representatives of all three groups – the Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Bosnians
Serbs – distanced themselves from the plan. Cutiliero conducted further talks into July
1992 but failed to secure a breakthrough to end the war.”
In the spirit of his standard practice, Robert Donia failed to give all the facts in this
case as well. The Cutilheiro Plan was not signed but it was initialled. The principles upon
which the triune federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina would reside had already been
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agreed and there was no need for further negotiations in that respect. What remained was to
delineate the disputed territories, because the premature signing of the agreement prior to
such delineation would have caused dilemmas and perhaps unrest in some areas. And,
when it looked as if the sticking points would also be resolved, Alija IZETBEGOVI], after
talking in Sarajevo with the US Ambassador in Belgrade Warren Zimmerman, withdrew
his general consent and discontinued further negotiations. Warren Zimmerman later denied
that he had in any way talked Alija IZETBEGOVI] into this, but there was no way anyone
in the know believed him. Be that as it may, IZETBEGOVI]’s abandoning of the Cutilheiro
plan was the casus belli.
p. 98
“Even after international observers were deployed, they did little more than monitor
the number of shells the VRS was firing into the city below.”
In this sentence it is not clear whether the radars of the international observers
detected only shells coming from the Serb side and landing in the Muslim part of Sarajevo
or also those fired from the Muslim part of Sarajevo on the Serb sections of the city. As far
as we know, the international observers were required to monitor both. But Donia is so
much living the part of the police investigator investigating Serb crimes that it completely
slipped off his mind that the Muslims too fired cannon and mortar shells from their section
of the city and from Mt. Igman on the Serbian parts of Sarajevo.
p. 105
“Bosnian Serb leaders used their military and geographic advantages to shell
Sarajevo intermittently, to damage and destroy its cultural and religious monuments, and to
deprive its civilian population of food, water, electricity, gas, and transportation.”
In this sentence Robert Donia states that religious monuments were damaged and
destroyed without however naming any mosque or church that was damaged or
demolished. He probably feels that his word can be taken for it. He also says that civilians
in the Muslim section of Sarajevo were deprived of food, water, electricity and
transportation without noting that the Serbs were also deprived of all that in their parts of
Sarajevo. As far as we know, Serbs in Ilid`a went without electricity and transportation for
months without Donia so much as noting it. He apparently was only affected by the
suffering of the Muslim people but not that of the Serbs.
In point of fact, pronouncing such judgments and “verdicts” renders the actual trial
proceedings in the courtroom superfluous. For, Donia’s statements only lack reference to
appropriate documents and testimony to be a real verdict. Had Donia at all been impartial
and objective, he would have said that the Serbs had never deprived the Muslim section of
the city of water, which could reach it by free fall from several wellsprings under Serb
control, just as he should have recognised the efforts of the Serb side for water and power
supply installations to be repaired, without which there would have been no water from the
main spring at Ba~evo in Ilid`a. And when mosques are in question, defence witness Savo
SIMI], artillery colonel of the Army of Republika Srpska, testified that he had had in plain
sight over 200 mosques, which were always, and especially on Fridays, full of people, and
that he had never targeted let alone hit a single one.
2. Bosnian Krajina in the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
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p. 41
“Regionalization” was the term used in public discussions and private deliberations
for the SDS’s campaign to secure one-party and single-nationality control in all areas of BH
where Serbs lived.”
Here again Robert Donia withholds the essential reason why the Serb leadership
implemented what is referred to as regionalisation. They did not do so in order to establish
monoparty rule and the domination of just one people, but as a legitimate response to the
announced unconstitutional secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina from SFR Yugoslavia.
As an expert on US history, Donia naturally knows very well, although he is not a jurist,
that in 1861 eleven southern states unconstitutionally seceded from the American Union
and that it was the casus belli. He, however, will not draw an analogy and pretends not to
know that the secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina from SFR Yugoslavia was
unconstitutional. He thus only finds fault with the Serbs for allegedly securing monoparty
and mononationality control by so-called regionalisation, whereas he does not blame the
Muslims and the Croats for having caused a civil and religious war by the secession of
Bosnia and Herzegovina from SFR Yugoslavia.
p. 4
3. The Origins of Republika Srpska, 1990–1992. A Background Report
“In October 1988, demonstrators again rallied in Novi Sad to challenge the
Vojvodina leadership. On the evening of 6 October, the crowd succeeded. Party leaders
submitted their resignations to the Central Committee and were replaced by appointees
loyal to Milošević. The resignations had been Milošević’s condition for calling off the
demonstrations.”
In this section Robert Donia avoided mentioning who had led the demonstrators. It
was the Hungarian Mihailj KERTES, and the first demonstrators had set out from Ba~ka
Palanka. As well, the fact that the Vojvodina leadership was easily toppled then in the socalled
yogurt revolution (the demonstrators threw yogurt cups on the building of the
Provincial Committee of the League of Communists) only confirms that it did not have any
real popular support, which Donia omitted to mention.
p. 7
“The Yugoslav SK collapsed as a democratic revolution was sweeping Eastern
Europe and the demand for free multiparty elections was rising throughout the region. In
each Yugoslav Republic socialist assemblies passed legislation providing for multiparty
elections. The enabling legislation for each of these elections was different in each republic,
and each republican assembly selected a different date.”
This is also an example of how Donia avoids to state an exceptionally important
fact. In connection with the collapse of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia as a
democratic revolution was sweeping Eastern Europe, Robert Donia correctly informs that
all communist assemblies of the federal units passed new electoral legislation making the
holding of the first multiparty elections possible. But those selfsame communists in the
federal units prevented the adoption of a new federal election law in the Assembly of SFR
Yugoslavia which would have made possible the holding of the first federal multiparty
elections. And instead of having such federal multiparty elections first, not only were they
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never held, but, despite their renewal, the terms of office of the federal MPs expired and the
federal institutions were extinguished as such. Therefore, the so-called democratic
revolution in the Yugoslav federal units was in essence a nationalistic revolution (western
analysts called a similar revolution, which led to the disintegration of the USSR, the spring
of nations) which first threatened and then destroyed SFR Yugoslavia. Therefore, Donia, as
an analyst, should have detected already in those first multiparty elections in the Yugoslav
federal units, without prior or at least simultaneous federal multiparty elections, visible
indications of subsequent secessionist policies. He, however, did not do so, whether
deliberately or due to a lack of insight, we do not know.
p. 19
“The Alliance of Reformist Forces of Yugoslavia (SRSJ – Savez reformskih snaga
Jugoslavije), founded by federal prime minister Ante Marković, held its founding rally in
northwestern BH at the famed Partisan monument on Mt. Kozara near Prijedor. The
location emphasized the party’s allegiance to Partisan values and its leaders’ hopes to
capitalize on public antipathy to national divisiveness.”
In this section, Robert Donia failed to say that Ante MARKOVI] first waited for
Franjo TU\MAN, the leader of the Croatian, i.e. Republican Party, to win the elections in
Croatia, and only then formed a federal party which ran at the elections in Serbia and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, but not also in his native Croatia. In other words, Ante
MARKOVI] did not want to run against TU\MAN’s Croatian Democratic Union at
elections, but tried, although a Croat, to gain the support of Serbs for his party at the
founding gathering of the Alliance of Reformist Forces held on Mt. Kozara, that Serb
Golgotha. Robert Donia knew all this but deliberately omitted to mention it.
p. 20
“At the SDS meeting, Karadžić had kind words for the Muslims:
“Our goal is to repair relatiоns between the nationalities and to establish equality,
reciprocity, and civil peace… I believe in the great potential of the Muslim nation, I believe
in its simple human good”.”
Robert Donia did not quote KARAD@I]’s conciliatory words later in the report
Bosnian Serb Leadership and the Siege of Sarajevo, 1990–1995, prepared for the trial in
the Case The Prosecutor vs. Karad`i}. As on that occasion KARAD@I] expressed great
respect for the Muslims as a nation, Donia most probably concluded that quoting these
words would be counterproductive at KARAD@I]’s trial. Thereby he demonstrated yet
once again that in his report prepared for KARAD@I]’s trial he proceeded exclusively like
a police investigator and that he deliberately left out everything that could be in
KARAD@I]’s favour, whereby he sought to mislead the Trial Chamber and have them
make the wrong decision, which borders on suppression of evidence.
pp. 21-22
“Shortly thereafter, on 2 November 1990, the Constitutional Court of SRBH ruled
that the Serbian National Council was an illegal formation that usurped the constitutional
authority of the republican government.”
When cross-examined by Radovan KARAD@I], Robert Donia repeatedly
explained that he was not versed in constitutional law and could not therefore assess this or
that document for constitutionality or legality. Despite that, in this instance he cites the
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decision of the Constitutional Court of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina ruling that the
establishment of the Serbian National Council was unconstitutional, and characterises that
act as usurping the constitutional authority of the republican government. Let us take it that
Donia cited this decision of the Constitutional Court of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina only as
a fact, without any intention to give his judgment on the decision as a layman. But then the
question arises why did he not in appropriate instances when he spoke about the declaration
of independence of Slovenia and Croatia cite the scores of decisions of the Constitutional
Court of SFR Yugoslavia declaring specific amendments, laws, rules and regulations
unconstitutional, in particular as he could have simply referred to those decisions as facts
without making any judgements on them. Need one say that Donia has a selective approach
to issues of constitutionality and legality.
Interestingly enough, the establishment of national councils is today a constitutional
and legal obligation in all the republics of the former Yugoslavia, which Donia, although he
knows it, did not say.
p. 22
“Additionally, SDA candidate Ejup Ganić won the seventh seat on the Presidency
by garnering the most votes in the category of “Other”.”
In this instance as well Robert Donia withheld a relevant fact: that the Muslim Ejup
GANI] had falsely represented himself at the presidential elections as a “Yugoslav” in
order to secure three places for his Muslims in the seven-member Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and then set about breaking up Yugoslavia. Thus withholding relevant facts
became a habit with Donia as a historian, and habit is second nature.
p. 30
“The change was gradual and took place in BH later than in Croatia, but by spring
1992 the JNA in BH had become a major armed protagonist of Serbian national aims.”
Again Robert Donia keeps silent about essential facts: that the JNA had issued an
order for mobilisation because of the war that was being fought on the soil of Croatia, that
the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina unconstitutionally declared this order illegal,
and that conscripts of Croat and Muslim ethnicity refused in large numbers to respond to
the call-up, while Serb conscripts complied with the federal Constitution and law. All this
confirms that Donia withheld relevant facts calculatedly and systematically.
p. 34
“After the session had been adjourned for the day by Assembly President Momčilo
Krajišnik and Serbian delegates had departed, HDZ and SDA delegates reconvened without
them and passed a “Declaration of Sovereignty”, a measure bitterly opposed by SDS
delegates, that moved BH a step closer to independence.”
As on page 21 of this report Robert Donia stated that the Constitutional Court of
Bosnia and Herzegovina had declared the establishment of the Serbian National Council
unconstitutional, although in the introduction on the first page he said that he would not go
into the question of constitutionality, it was logical for Donia to have asked himself in this
context whether the declaration of the sovereignty and thus independence of Bosnia and
Herzegovina had been in conformity with both the Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia and the
Constitution of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, while failing to address the question
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of the constitutionality of this declaration, Donia had no difficulty pointing to the
unconstitutionality of the Serbian National Council.
p. 35
“On 17 December 1991 the EC foreign ministers approved a procedure for
Yugoslavia’s republics to apply for independence and created a commission to assess such
applications. The EC’s Badinter Arbitration Commission thereafter invited applications
from republics seeking independence from Yugoslavia so that it could evaluate their
applications based on adherence to certain guidelines such as legal provisions for respecting
individual and minority rights.”
Although in the introduction to this report Robert Donia said that he would not go
into questions of constitutionality and legality from the standpoint of international law, he
anyway cited the decision of the Constitutional Court of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina
declaring the establishment of the Serbian National Council unconstitutional. As what we
had here was interference of external factors (the European Community) in the internal
affairs of an independent state with a view to breaking it up into a number of new states, it
would be interesting if Donia, as an expert on American and history in general, had
examined whether there had been any precedents in this matter and whether it had ever
happened that a group of associated states offered international recognition in advance to
parts of another state which still existed and was a UN member. And what would his
reaction be if a foreign power offered Puerto Rico, a commonwealth, to secede from the
United States of America in order to obtain international recognition as an independent
state? If nothing else, analogies are customary in both law and history, and Donia knows
that well.
However, since he addressed this issue and mentioned the Badinter Commission, it
would not have detracted from the truth had he also cited Opinion no. 4 of this
Commission, which determined that Bosnia and Herzegovina did not fulfil the
requirements for being recognised independence, and had he stated that the lacking
requirements were never met. In point of fact, he should have stated that without fail.
p. 39
“In other contexts outside the Congress of Serbian Intellectuals, the fear of a
recurrence of genocide was cited as justification for Serbian military action, both in Croatia
and in BH.”
As genocide of the Serbs is mentioned in this paragraph, Robert Donia should have
said when that genocide had taken place, who had perpetrated it and on what a scale, so that
this Tribunal and other readers could ascertain whether the fears of Serbian intellectuals in
1991 of a repeated genocide were indeed justified or not. He did not need any legal training
for that either. For, if he can judge whether the Turkish authorities carried out a genocide
against Armenians at the beginning of the 20 th century, and the Nazis of the Jews during the
Second World War, he is also obviously competent to judge whether in the Second World
War the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia did or did not perpetrate genocide,
by killing above pits and in camps hundreds of thousands of men, women and children of
Serbian ethnicity and of the Orthodox faith. Not to mention the fact that today even
ordinary American citizens, who unlike Donia have not had the benefit of history studies,
rightly conclude that the white settlers and their authorities had perpetrated genocide
against the native Indians. Despite everything, professional historian Robert Donia did not
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venture to assess whether from 1941 to 1945 the Croatian Ustashas had perpetrated
genocide against the Serbs and what its proportions had been.
p. 222
4. Sarajevo: A Biography
“To undertake that task, regional leaders turned to Vladimir PERI], known by the
code name ’Valter’. Born in the Serbian town of Prijepolje in 1919, he worked in a bank in
Belgrade from 1938 to 1940.”
So, Robert Donia knew full well that Valter was a Serb and where he was born and
that he worked in Belgrade. Well, if he knew all that, why did he conceal these relevant
facts in the report prepared for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I]? Most probably to avoid
it turning out that the Muslim Nijaz DURAKOVI] and his followers organised
demonstrations under the name of a Serb (Vladimir PERI] Valter) against the Serbian
Democratic Party.
p. 288
“The huge final SDA rally filled the Zetra Sports Center to overflowing and was
addressed by the party’s three candidates for the seven-person collective presidency: Alija
IZETBEGOVI], Fikret ABDI] (both in the category of “Muslim”) and Ejup GANI] (in the
category “Other”).”
In this book also, which was not written for the Hague Tribunal, Robert Donia
withholds the fact that Ejup GANI] had declared himself a “Yugoslav”. He could of course
have said that he was a Jew, Roma, Czech or Turk, but he did not do that because
Yugoslavs were the most numerous after Muslims, Serbs and Croats. And as soon as war
broke out he became what he had always been – a Muslim, and today probably is a
Bosniak. Withholding relevant facts was with Donia a matter of a well thought-out and
systematic policy, which can be practiced for propaganda purposes, but not before courts.
p. 310
“April 6, 1992 was a Monday, the third day of a three-day holiday honoring
Sarajevo’s liberation from German and Ustasha rule in 1945, and the date that the European
Community’s recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s independence took effect. SDA leaders
eagerly awaited recognition, hoping that the European Community’s endorsement would
preserve an integral Bosnia-Herzegovina. SDS leaders just as passionately dreaded it,
believing that Bosnia’s independence negated their right to be part of Yugoslavia.”
Although he knew well that the recognition of BH by the European Community as
an independent state had been preceded by Alija IZETBEGOVI]’s renouncing of the
Cutilheiro Plan and that this is an unavoidable historical fact, Robert Donia deliberately
failed to state it. He had probably concluded that it would not be to the liking of his
publishers and in particular of the readership that he was addressing. This is yet more proof
that Donia systematically avoided mentioning anything that could cast a shadow on the
actions and decisions of the Muslim leadership during the war.
Moreover, even though he knew that at the time the Serbs were still committed to
the Cutilheiro Plan, agreed on 18 March 1992, under which the Serbs consented to not
being in Yugoslavia if they had their own entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Donia
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nevertheless attributes “Yugoslavism” to them. Actually, both Lord Carrington and Lord
Owen, as mediators and most eminent western politicians, who pointed to the premature
recognition of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as the cause of the war, stated that the
problem lay in unresolved minority issues and not in “remaining in Yugoslavia”, which the
Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina had renounced under the conditions offered in the Lisbon
agreement.
p. 316
“SDS leaders aimed to create a separate, ethnically pure Serbian state, carved from
the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In public statements and by their actions they
implied that goal as early as the fall of 1991, but they most clearly stated their intentions by
proclaiming, in a resolution of the Bosnian Serb Assembly on May 12, 1992 that
’establishing a state boundary separating (us) from the two other national communities’ was
the first among six ’strategic goals - that is priorities - of the Serbian people in Bosnia and
Herzegovina’.”
In contrast to his steadfast good will towards the Muslims and their leaders, Robert
Donia was often malevolent towards the Serbs and their leadership, as confirmed by the
foregoing paragraph. In it he states that it was the strategic objective of the Serbs “to
establish state boundaries separating the Serbian people from the other two national
communities”. He, however, did not say that that had been the main objective of the
Cutilheiro Plan and that all three sides, including Alija IZETBEGOVI] had at first agreed
that Bosnia and Herzegovina be delineated into three ethnic federal units and that all that
had remained was for delineation arrangements to be made for a number of disputed
municipalities. In other words, in terms of manner and consent to the Cutilheiro Plan, the
strategic objective of not only the Serb but also of the Muslim and Croat leaderships, was
establishing state boundaries separating them from the other two ethnic communities.
Robert Donia of course knows this well but deliberately failed to say so in this place.
By the way, Donia’s incidental claim that the leaders of the Serbian Democratic
Party intended to establish an ”ethnically pure” state is a most malicious insinuation. Donia
did not and could not refer to a shred of valid evidence in support of that claim. On the
contrary, the existence of ethnic minorities and the protection of their rights and interests in
each entity had been provided for in all documents. Donia himself, in his report Bosnian
Serb Leadership and the Siege of Sarajevo 1990–1995. (p. 95) gives the percentages of
members of all three ethnic communities which would remain outside their majority
entities, the most satisfied with which on 19 March 1992 were the Muslims, because only
18% of their population would have remained outside the Muslim entity.
p. 319
“Refusing to concede that Serbs had chosen to remain in their homes rather than
join the national separatists, SDS leaders portrayed the stay-behind Serbs as hostages of
“Muslim” overlords, forced to stay in the cities against their will. One delegate to the
Bosnian Serb Assembly charged Bosnian Government officials with “manipulation of that
part of the Serb people held as ethnic hostages in cities under ₣Muslimğ control”. Imbued
with the notion that Sarajevo was a collective hostage, Bosnian Serb nationalists wanted
government-controlled Sarajevo to be free of Serbs so that the city could be thrashed at
will.”
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In this instance Robert Donia utters the blatant lie that the Serbs in besieged
Sarajevo decided of their own free will not to join the “national separatists”, namely their
compatriots outside the besieged city. On top of that, he says that SDS leaders maliciously
depicted their fellow-citizens as hostages of their “Muslim” overlords. Actually, it was
quite the opposite. As he was probably finishing his manuscript towards the end of 2005,
Donia should have explained how and why upon the conclusion of the peace agreement in
Dayton Serbs left Sarajevo without any coercion, not only the theretofore besieged parts but
also parts of Sarajevo outside the siege which according to the peace accord were to go to
the Muslim-Croat Federation. Apart from that, he should have explained how come that
today there are only a couple of thousand Serbs in the section of Sarajevo under the control
of the Federation and that Muslims for the most part left that Sarajevo.
p. 332
UN Commission on Human Rights rapporteur, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, whose words
Donia quotes, says, inter alia, the following:
“Snipers shoot innocent civilians. The mission visited the hospital, and was able to
see many civilian victims.”
There is no doubt whatsoever that here Mazowiecki had in mind only Serb snipers
shooting at besieged Sarajevo. Donia, however, must have known that the Muslims also
had their snipers who opened fire from the tallest buildings at Serbs in suburbs outside the
siege. The author of this paper saw for himself that in Grbavica and Ilid`a Serbs spread
wide sheets, rugs and board panels in an attempt to prevent Muslim sharpshooters from
pinpointing potential victims. As well, drivers in a street in Grbavica, which was exposed
to sniper fire the most, drove at great speed and without turning their headlights on at night,
in order to avoid sniper fire. Donia deliberately omits all these facts, namely that sniper fire
had been mutual.
There, however, remains a fact that neither Mazowiecki nor Donia had wanted to or
could have established by themselves. Instead of arranging for a proper investigation to
establish which wounds had been the consequence of sniper fire, they took what their
Muslim hosts told them at face value. Neither was able to explain how they distinguished
between wounds inflicted by sniper from those inflicted by an ordinary rifle, and that
against the backdrop of daily skirmishes involving both sides in street fighting.
p. 340
/“/Burdened but undaunted by the lack of arms, ARBiH units launched dozens of
offensives during the war with the aim of breaking the siege or driving VRS forces away
from the city’s most vulnerable areas. They never broke the siege, but they captured key
high points in the city and expanded the territory under their control, particularly in the
western suburbs. /”/
In this paragraph, Robert Donia proudly stresses that the Army of Bosnia and
Herzegovina launched scores of offensives in besieged Sarajevo, that it took key elevations
in the city and expanded the territory under its control. All that is correct, but it was a good
cue for Donia to note that the artillery of the Army of Republika Srpska during those
offensives surely targeted legitimate military targets also. And as the offensives of the
Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina were frequent, the Serb artillery also had the war right to
frequently shell the military units of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its
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equipment and artillery. And as those units were positioned in civilian buildings or directly
next to them, Donia could have concluded that hitting civilian facilities and the casualties in
them had been collateral damage, just like NATO leaders explained that all civilian
casualties during their 1999 aggression on FR Yugoslavia had been collateral damage.
Donia, however, was not inclined to such conclusions, although he had been confronted
with similar experiences in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan wars. Finally, witness Asim
D@AMBASOVI], Chief of Staff of the 1 st Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina
in Sarajevo, during his testimony at Radovan KARAD@I]’s trial, unequivocally admitted
that they had not had enough space to move away their artillery pieces from civilians. As
well, Donia failed to say that the Serb side was constantly offering that Sarajevo be
demilitarised and put under United Nations administration, whereby many tragedies would
have been avoided, as well as the fact that the Muslim side had persistently and steadfastly
opposed such a plan.
pp. 340-341
“For months, ARBiH operatives hid gunpowder in UN-transported oxygen
containers ostensibly bound for city hospitals. This operation, which could not have
succeeded without the tacit support of low-ranking UNPROFOR personnel, came to an end
when suspicious VRS soldiers stopped and weighed one of the shipments and found the
containers were too heavy to contain only compressed gas. UNPROFOR also reported
clandestine drops of arms from Iranian aircraft and other Islamic countries, but the extent of
such operations is difficult to assess, and they likely did not add substantially to the
ARBiH’s arsenals.”
Hiding gunpowder in oxygen containers intended for hospitals constitutes a grave
crime in war time, which Donia must have known. The participation of UNPROFOR
personnel in that operation also constitutes impermissible abuse of the mandate entrusted it
by the Security Council as well as a violation of impartiality – that vital condition under
which the Serb side in Bosnia and Herzegovina accepted the presence of UNPROFOR. All
these were reasons fully entitling the Army of Republika Srpska to halt UN convoys,
including those transporting food, medicaments and medical supplies, in order to carry out
a detailed inspection looking for smuggled weapons. Apart from that, the allegedly secret
dumping of weapons from aircraft from Iran and other Islamic countries was not at all
secret, because such aircraft were easily identifiable by NATO radars, meaning that Iran
and other Islamic countries supplied the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina with weapons
and ammunition with the tacit and possibly explicit approval of the USA and other western
powers. Donia failed to disclose all these important facts, mentioned in this book, in his
report prepared for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I]. What that means, obviously, is that in
this report he only gave facts which incriminate the Serb side, while deliberately avoiding
to impart any facts incriminating the Muslim side in this war.
pp. 345-346
“At around 10:00 a.m. on May 27, 1992, the VRS sent three mortar shells into
hundreds of Sarajevans waiting in a line to buy bread at a shop on Vaso Miskin Street, only
a few metres from the Catholic cathedral. The mortars killed sixteen and injured over a
hundred. Serb gunners then opened fire on ambulances attempting to reach the wounded,
leaving victims crying for help. Television cameras captured their agony.”
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Leaving aside in this instance the question on the basis of what investigation Robert
Donia ascertained that this had been the Serbs’ doing, the question immediately arises why
this alleged firing of three mortar shells on Vase Miskina Street was not mentioned in
Donia’s report prepared for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I], and why that incident was
excluded from the indictment against him. It is possible that in the meanwhile Donia
assured himself that there did not exist sufficient valid evidence in support of that claim,
but that begs the question how he could have said that at all in his 2006 book, when no
reliable evidence to that effect existed then either. Finally, as he did mention it in his book,
how come he did not find it unusual that television cameras should have been in Vase
Miskina Street at the exact moment when three mortar shells allegedly flew in from the
Serb side. As far as we are concerned, we cannot but conclude that the television crew and
those who had dispatched them were endowed with the faculty of precognition.
Since Donia stated all this in his book, he was duty-bound also to state it in the
report for Radovan KARAD@I]’s trial, so that the judges could appraise for themselves
whether it had been a model example of a Serb crime or of Muslim trickery and a staged
massacre of their own people. The truth is, however, that there had been only one explosion
and not three. As well, his claim that the Serbs shot at the ambulance driving away the
wounded is untrue. No one serious ever mentioned or described that, let alone accused
Serbs of it. Donia of course knew that, but he probably assumed that this odious lie would
appeal to his readers.
p. 352
“In the months after the siege began, many other Serbs left the city as shelling and
sniping attacks intensified, and as some of them were brutalized or killed by Croat and
Bosniak irregulars operating within the city. In the battle for Pofali}i in May 1992
paramilitary forces under the command of the ARBiH killed, detained or beat some Serbs.”
In this paragraph Robert Donia says that units under the command of the Army of
Bosnia and Herzegovina killed, imprisoned and beat up some Serbs. If Donia is really a
serious historian the question arises why did he not take the trouble to ascertain how many
Serbs had been killed in the Muslim section of Sarajevo and how many had been
unlawfully deprived of liberty and abused. As Donia, even though not a jurist, nonetheless
knows that killing, incarceration and abuse of civilians is a war crime, how come he never
wondered why nobody was indicted and convicted in Sarajevo or The Hague for this joint
criminal enterprise, starting with the direct perpetrators up to the very top leadership in
Sarajevo.
And since he already mentioned this early massacre of helpless civilians in
surrounded Pofali}i, in the city proper, was it not logical for him to also say how that crime
had affected spirits in Bosnia and Herzegovina? Apart from that, it was his duty to explain
how the individual military units which committed this crime could be characterised as
paramilitaries when they were under the command of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina
and acted on its orders.
p. 353
“Pejanovi} writes of a meeting in late spring 1992 in which prominent Serbs
pleaded with President Izetbegovi} to halt mass detention of Serbs at the Ko{evo Stadium.”
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In connection with this statement of Donia’s several questions arise. How could a
historian so widely learned in recent history not have noticed that it in fact was a
concentration camp for Serbs and that someone should have been held criminally
accountable for that? And why did he not mention this important historical fact in his report
prepared for Radovan KARAD@I]’s trial? Unless Donia later explains why he acted in this
way, it seems to us that in this report he deliberately avoided everything that might
incriminate the Muslims and their leaders. Not to mention how failure to state these facts
affected spirits in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Donia’s persistent attempt to thus conceal
the arbitrary approach to prosecuting crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
p. 353
“The exact number of Serb civilian deaths in government-held Sarajevo may never
be known, but victims are estimated by officials of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
to have numbered at least 150.”
Regardless of whether this number of killed Serb civilians is correct or much
higher, what is greatly surprising is Donia’s reluctance to ask the following question: if
organs of the Federation established that at least 150 Serb civilians had been killed, and not
in some remote backwater or in the wilderness but in the capital city before the very eyes of
the central authorities of the Muslim-Croat entity, did they not also establish on that
occasion who exactly had committed all these crimes? And if the perpetrators had been
identified, was it not logical for them to have been convicted, either in Sarajevo or in The
Hague? Is it the case that Donia thought it sufficient to establish the number of killed Serb
civilians, without it being at all necessary to investigate who had killed them, as if
establishing the number of killed Serbs was for him a statistical and not a criminal law
procedure. And as if the victims were not members of the Serbian elite in Sarajevo –
university professors, doctors of science, eminent citizens of Sarajevo.
p. 359
“US diplomats also succeeded in bringing together the recalcitrant rival presidents
of the Republics of Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina, Tu|man and Izetbegovi}, to end the
fighting between Bosniak and Croat forces in central Bosnia that had begun in April 1993.”
This is perhaps the only place in this book where reference is made to ending the
war between Muslims and Croats. Donia, however, did not talk about this war or the
consequences it had for relations between Muslims and Croats in besieged Sarajevo,
although it is not very likely that Croats were not exposed to at least discrimination if not
abuse. Robert Donia kept silent about all this in order not to /?mar/ the idyllic picture of the
brotherhood and unity between Croats and Muslims in Sarajevo.
pp. 372 and 377
Having, on page 372, referred to “the international community’s hope to restore the
city’s multiethnic composition”, on page 377, he gives this ethnic composition of Sarajevo:
“From 1991 to 1998 the Bosniak population had grown from 252,000 to about 304,000,
while the number of Serbs had dropped from 157,193 to about 18,000. The number of
Croats declined by 40% from 35,000 to 21,000, and the number of “others” (consisting
primarily of those who had identified themselves as Yugoslavs before the war, and some
Jews and Roma) fell from 75,000 to 7,000.”
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While the war was going on, Robert Donia claimed that the majority of Serbs had
remained in besieged Sarajevo of their own free will, so that they could not be said to have
been hostages, as maliciously claimed by the nationalist leadership of the Serbian
Democratic Party. If that was really so, how could it have happened that after the lifting of
the siege the number of Serbs in the federal part of Sarajevo fell to 11.45%, the number of
Croats to 60%, and the number of Yugoslavs (with some Roma and Jews) to 9.33%. Not to
mention the fact that now there are only several thousand Serbs living in federal Sarajevo.
Donia, however, failed to clarify what had induced so many Serbs, Croats and Yugoslavs
after the establishment of peace and freedom to forever leave the multiethnic Sarajevo that
they had so yearned for while it was under siege.
IV ERRONEOUS, BIASED AND MALEVOLENT CHARACTERISATION
p. 5
1. Bosnian Serb Leadership and the Siege of Sarajevo
“Members of each group hold to religious tradition as a key element that
distinguishes them from other groups: Serbs look to the Serbian Orthodox faith, Croats to
Catholicism, and Bosnian Muslims to Islam.”
Serbian Orthodox faith as such does not exist, no more than the Greek or Russian
Orthodox faith. It seems that Robert Donia does not know the difference between faith and
autocephaly in Eastern Orthodoxy. As within Islam there exist at least two different
interpretations, as an expert on Bosnia-Herzegovina Muslims, he could have also added that
they are Sunnites. Apart from that, he neglected the fact that there are Serbs who are
Catholics, as well as that some Muslims declare themselves as Serbs.
pp. 10, 27, 55, 62, 68, 74, 84, 86 and 96
Donia’s malevolence is, inter alia, reflected in the fact that he characterises only the
Serbs and their leaders as nationalists. Thus “Serb nationalists” are mentioned on pages 10,
55, 68, 84, 86 and 96, “Serb nationalist leaders” on pages 27 and 74, and “Serb nationalist
effort” on page 62. And his obvious bias is reflected in the fact that he never denoted the
Muslims and their national leaders or the Croats as nationalists. The sole exception appears
on page 68 where he says that the “Croat nationalists of the HDZ” with the “Serb
nationalists of the SDS” shared the same principle on the division of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which was confirmed on 6 May 1992, when Radovan KARAD@I] and Mate
BOBAN signed an agreement on the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Graz. In other
words, the Croats cannot be nationalists either, except if they are dividing Bosnia and
Herzegovina in Graz with the Serbs and bypassing the Muslims
pp. 15-16
“The name “Romanija” bears symbolic significance, evoking the legacy of banditry
(bsc “hajdu{tvo”) and past rural insurgencies against foreign occupiers in the rugged terrain
around Sarajevo.”
Donia’s equalising of Serbian hajduks with bandits is evidently malevolent, because
the hajduks were freedom fighters against foreign occupiers and have been sung as such in
Serbian folk lore. It would be equally ill-meant if one called bandits the Spanish guerrillos
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(paramilitary units of Spanish peasants and shepherds who fought against Napoleon’s
occupying army) and members of the French Resistance under German occupation during
the Second World War. As a matter of fact, epic poetry on hajduks was appreciated by the
greatest cultural authorities of Europe, such as Goethe, the Brothers Grimm and others, and
only the Turkish occupiers called them bandits.
p. 16
“In October 1991, Izetbegović led SDA and HDZ delegates in promoting a
“Platform of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of BiH” and a “Declaration of
Sovereignty” in the Assembly of BiH, reviving a fruitless quest for passing a similar
resolution in February 1991.”
In referring to this “Declaration of Sovereignty”, Robert Donia was obviously
partial, for he failed to characterise it as unconstitutional. Although he did not engage in
constitutional law, as a historian he knows well whether from the standpoint of the 1787
Constitution, eleven Southern states could have declared themselves sovereign in order to
secede from the American Union, just as he knows that declaring New Mexico sovereign in
order for it to be returned to Mexico’s fold would be unconstitutional. A particular question
is the right of constituent peoples to consensus, which according to the Constitution of
Bosnia and Herzegovina should have been exercised through the Council for Establishing
Equality of the Nations and Nationalities, as a consolation substitute for the Serbian
demand for the establishment of a Chamber of Nations. But the Party of Democratic Action
precluded the formation of this Council.
p. 20
“Local SDS leaders were instructed to form an “assembly of the Serb people” and a
“crisis staff of the Serb people”, which was to be headed by a “commander”.
Robert Donia malevolently inserted the word “commander” in this sentence,
although it is not in the original text in the Serbian language in footnote “j” on page 106,
which reads: “a crisis staff of the Serb people”; “to convene and proclaim an assembly of
the Serb people”. He probably did so in order to represent the “crisis staff” as a military
staff which always has a commander.
On the basis of what he wrote here it would seem that only the Serbian Democratic
Party issued instructions for the setting up of “crisis staffs”. However, in his book
Sarajevo: A Biography, on page 285, Donia says the following:
“The nationalist parties, while adopting socialist era structures and conduct,
departed from Communist precedent in frequently convening ad hoc bodies to make and
execute decisions in emergencies. The most common emergency body was called a “crisis
staff”, convened by party and government officials in dozens of situations and at various
party and governmental levels. In existence from a few days to many months, crisis staffs
usurped and often exceeded the powers of governmental units and party organs.”
If we understood correctly, that means that all the parties – the Party of Democratic
Action, the Serbian Democratic Party and the Croatian Democratic Union – and not only
the Serbian Democratic Party established “crisis staffs”. Therefore the statement in the
report prepared for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I] that only the Serbian Democratic
Party occasionally set up crisis staffs is partial and malevolent. Had he been a bit less
biased, Donia would certainly have noted and stated that a year before the war in Bosnia
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and Herzegovina broke out Croatia had set up crisis staffs in all municipalities, that the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe had set up a crisis staff to monitor the
Yugoslav crisis, and that very well known is the disputed crisis staff of the Presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, established in mid-September 1991, by which Ejup GANI] bypassed
Serb members and usurped the powers of the Presidency, and which was dismantled
only after the ultimatum of the Serb side during the barricades in the beginning of March
1992.
p. 25
“A reporter visiting in late January recounted being stopped by the police twice on
the road into the village Pale. Upon arrival he observed a large sign with “Serbia” written in
red letters.”
The question which immediately comes to mind is why is the sign “Serbia” so
objectionable and would there be any objection if there was a sign saying “Turkey” at
Ba{~ar{ija. Donia is unable to suppress and conceal his ill will towards Serbs and Serbia
even in respect of such minor details.
p. 28
“Muslims and Croats of the SDA and HDZ then formed their own separate
assembly, leaving it to the municipality’s executive organs to try to harmonize decisions of
the two parallel, ethnically separate assemblies.”
In this sentence Robert Donia admits that Muslims and Croats did the same thing as
Serbs: endeavoured to preserve the integrity of municipalities if they had a majority in the
municipal assembly, and formed their own separate municipalities if their assemblymen
were in the minority. The question therefore is why only Serbs are charged with the
separation of Serbian municipalities, the so-called regionalisation and separatism, while
Muslims and Croats, vis-à-vis whom he is partial, are not so charged.
p. 40
“In 1991 and early 1992, the three nationalist parties took measures to prepare
militarily for war. Bosnian Muslim leaders of the SDA sponsored the creation of two
paramilitary groups, the Patriotic League and the Green Berets. SDA members took the
initiative to organize the Patriotic League in March 1991, and on 10 June 1991 some 356
Muslim representatives selected by the SDA gathered and formed the “Council for National
Defence of the Muslim Nation” with the Patriotic League as its military arm. On 15 April
1992, both the Patriotic League and the Green Berets were subordinated to the command of
the TO of BiH; on 20 May 1992, that organization was transformed into the Army of
Bosnia-Herzegovina (ARBiH), the name by which it will be known in the following pages.
Two Croatian paramilitary groups at one time or another conducted operations in BiH
(Hrvatske obrambene snage - “Croatian Defence Force”), loyal to the Croatian Party of
Rights headed by Dobroslav Paraga; and the Croatia ZNG (Zbor narodne garde) “Muster
of the National Guard”), associated with the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of
Croatia and the Croatian HDZ.”
As apparently only in rare instances Robert Donia considers all the three national
parties, the Party of Democratic Action, the Serbian Democratic Party and the Croatian
Democratic Union nationalist, the crucial question is which one of these nationalist parties
started to form armed units, i.e. paramilitary groups first. The answer to this question is
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exceptionally important, for it shows which nationalist party was the first to start preparing
for war. Donia gives the exact date (March 1991) only for the Party of Democratic Action,
while failing to do so for the Croatian Democratic Union, the Croatian Party of Rights of
Dobroslav PARAGA and the Serbian Democratic Party. Naturally, he avoided that
intentionally because of his partiality to the Party of Democratic Action, which first formed
armed units and the “Council for National Defence of the Muslim Nation” as the first and
farthest-reaching parallel institution in the common Bosnia and Herzegovina, and therefore
bore the greatest responsibility for starting the war.
p. 40
“The Croatian Council of Defence (HVO; Hrvatsko vijeće obrane) was established
on 8 April 1992 by the presidency of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna.”
Robert Donia, in all fairness, does mention Herceg-Bosna in this sentence, but he
deliberately omits an explanation of what it is. It was a state of the Croatian people, created
at almost the same time as Republika Srpska. Only he does not find fault with the Croats
for doing what the Serbs did. As, however, Serbs and Croats were in the majority in Bosnia
and Herzegovina and created their own national states, that only means that all the nations
in Bosnia and Herzegovina had the right to do so. The Muslims, however, did not do so
because they laid claim to the entire Bosnia and Herzegovina. And, instead of condemning
these Muslim claims as exaggerated and hegemonistic in relation to the Christian majority,
Robert Donia, given his bias towards Muslims, failed to do so.
It should be noted that Donia does not refer to any names of paramilitary units of
the Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for he would actually have to say
that there had been none.
p. 41
“The JNA was heir to Tito’s Second World War Partisans. It was constitutionally
mandated to defend the homeland and preserve the SFRJ, and many of its officers were
fiercely loyal to the concept of federal Yugoslavia.”
Robert Donia is evidently malevolent when he says that many officers of the
Yugoslav People’s Army were fiercely loyal to the concept of federal Yugoslavia, as if the
American army were not fiercely loyal to the Union as a federation of fifty member states.
And then why belittle the loyalty of the army to the integrity of its state? Although he knew
what the role of the army is in any, including in a federal state, Donia failed to explicitly
say that the Yugoslav People’s Army had the constitutional obligation and legitimate right
to use armed force against separatists aiming to break up the federal state.
p. 42
“In July and again in September 1991, Milošević personally directed Karadžić to
make sure the SDS helped the JNA fullfill its quotas for reservists in BiH.”
By this sentence Robert Donia represented the recruitment of reservists of the
Yugoslav People’s Army as if it were MILO[EVI]’s personal business and the particular
interest of Serbia only, although he was perfectly aware of the fact that the Yugoslav
People’s Army had the obligation to defend and preserve the whole state. To boot, he
malevolently omitted to say that MILO[EVI]’s request was in perfect compliance with the
Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia. Actually, the shortage of soldiers in the Yugoslav
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People’s Army was due to sabotage by the separatist leaders, who prevented their young
men from serving the army and their conscripts from responding to mobilisation call-ups.
p. 42
“Citing concerns about the security of weapons under TO control, the JNA in May
1990 ordered that weapons be removed from the control of local TO units and moved to its
own armories. Most units complied with this order, but many TO units in BiH either
retained some arms or acquired new ones over the course of 1991 and early 1992.”
Although he more or less knew which units of the Territorial Defence in Bosnia and
Herzegovina had retained arms which they should have handed over to the Yugoslav
People’s Army, or had acquired new ones, Robert Donia did not name them. He did not do
so because these were mainly Territorial Defence units in municipalities in which Muslims
were in the majority or at least the Territorial Defence commander was Muslim, which is
more proof of his partiality. Had he been at all fair, Donia would have added that the
concern of the SFRY Presidency over the possible abuse of territorial defence weapons was
not in any way caused by actions of the Serbian Democratic Party, which did not even exist
at the time.
pp. 44-45
“In December 1991 the Yugoslav Federal Presidency (by then boycotted by Slovene
and Croat representatives) decreed that the JNA and TO could be “augmented with
volunteers, who after joining the military unit and institutions of the Yugoslav Armed
Forces are equated with Army personnel and draftees.” SDS leaders in BiH rallied Serbs to
fight for the JNA in Croatia and subsequently claimed credit for contributing to JNA
victories there.”
Robert Donia first mentions as an important fact that in December 1991 Slovene
and Croat representatives boycotted Federal Presidency sessions. If that is an important
historical fact, an even more important fact was that the Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina was first left by its two Serb representatives, then the two Croat
representatives, and finally also Fikret ABDI], as a Muslim representative, steadily stayed
away from sessions, because, opposing the war policy of the Party of Democratic Action,
he remained in the Cazin Krajina, so that the seven-member Presidency of Bosnia and
Herzegovina /was reduced/ to the Muslim Alija IZETBEGOVI] and the “Yugoslav” Ejup
GANI]. Robert Donia, however, does not mention that at all, because he would have to say
that the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina no longer existed. He of course “wisely”
passes over that important historical fact, because for him wisdom and scholarly scruples
are that which benefits the side that he favours.
When referring to volunteers who joined the Yugoslav People’s Army, he failed to
characterise that act. In war the regular army may legitimately recruit volunteers. As at the
beginning of the First World War Great Britain had a small standing army, the defence
secretary called upon young Britons to join the army, and a million volunteers responded to
the call.
p. 48
“The republics of Slovenia and Croatia were far ahead of BiH in seeking to become
independent states. On 25 June 1991 the assemblies of both republics simultaneously
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declared independence. The JNA contested these moves and attempted to take control of
security installations on Slovenia’s borders, but its forces were surprisingly ineffective and
unsuccessful.”
In this instance Robert Donia also failed to say whether the secession of Slovenia
and Croatia had been in accordance with or contrary to the Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia.
As well, he did not say, which was very important, that the Constitutional Court of SFR
Yugoslavia had ruled this and many other secessionist acts unconstitutional by the majority
of its members. Donia, however, deliberately omits to say that, so that it would turn out that
only the JNA, as an armed force, challenged the secession, which was obviously illintended.
And the JNA had to do so, because it was mandated under the Constitution to
preserve the territorial integrity of the country.
p. 48
“On 20 December, the Presidency of BiH, over the dissenting voices of its two SDS
members, voted to apply to the Badinter Commission for BiH to be recognized as
independent.“
Although the Muslims and the Croats outvoted the two Serb representatives when
the decision was taken for Bosnia and Herzegovina to apply to the European Community to
be recognised independence, Robert Donia in no way raised the question of the
constitutionality of such a decision. Moreover, as this fact was stated as unquestionable one
might conclude that the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina could indeed apply for the
recognition of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina over the dissenting voices of
its two Serb members, which means, according to Donia, that Muslim and Croat leaders
could always reach agreements to the detriment of the Serbs. When, however, the opposite
situation happened in Graz, with Radovan KARAD@I] and Mate BOBAN agreeing
/?about/ Bosnia without Muslim representatives, Donia without fail advanced the position
that something like that was impermissible. In actual fact, he consistently upheld the
interests of the Muslims, took account of the Croats’ interests only if and when they were
the Muslims’ allies, while steadily and deliberately belittling the vital interests of the Serbs.
Although he is not a jurist, Donia could have considered the reasons why the Serb
side was opposed to the outvoting. The first one is that any amendments to the Constitution
required the consent of all the three constituent peoples. The second one is that the decision
on that was brought by the government alone rather than by a two-thirds majority in the
Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The third one was that there had been no consent of
all the republics and provinces, as required under the SFRY Constitution for changing
borders.
p. 53
“In mid-afternoon of 6 April, gunfire erupted from the roof of the Holiday Inn,
which for some weeks had been the headquarters for the SDS party leadership. Six
demonstrators were killed, and the other demonstrations scattered in fear for their lives.
BiH police arrived and captured six gunmen in the Holiday Inn, but Karadžić, his
entourage, and other gunmen had already left the hotel.”
The way Robert Donia described this event, it turns out that Radovan KARAD@I]
was at the Holiday Inn at the exact moment when gunfire erupted from the roof of the hotel.
And he wrote it like that, without at all knowing whether Radovan KARAD@I] had left it
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Translation
before, during or after the gunfire. When, however, he wrote the report Bosnian Krajina in
the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on page 70 he also mentioned the same gunfire in
the Holiday Inn never saying that Radovan KARAD@I] had been at that hotel on that
occasion and had left it. The question therefore is whether he was not aware of it at all at
that time or whether he considered it irrelevant. In point of fact, the very mentioning of
Radovan KARAD@I] which leaves the impression that he could have been in the hotel at
the exact moment when the gunfire started, is evidently ill-meant.
Had he taken the trouble, Donia would have found out that the facts were
significantly different. It has been definitely established that the gunfire had not come from
the Holiday Inn at all. Juka PRAZINA, a criminal, was shooting from another place, as
attested to by a photograph. As well, not six gunmen were arrested but two real policemen
who were guarding the headquarters of the Serbian Democratic Party, and a lower-ranking
staff member.
p. 60
“In a meeting with Croatian President Tudjman and his advisers in Zagreb, Koljevi}
advocated “humane population transfers” to assure the separation of the peoples of BiH.
Tudjman responded affirmativelу, noting that “historу has shown the need for resettlements
from time to time”.”
By adducing this discrediting fact about Franjo TU\MAN, Robert Donia confirmed
that in writing this report he abided by the principle that it was all right to say something
untoward about TU\MAN now and then, but that nothing unpleasant should ever be
attributed to Alija IZETBEGOVI]. Donia should be reminded of the fact that after the First
World War, when the borders were being drawn between Yugoslavia and the neighbouring
states, the right of option was established, which presupposed the mutual resettlement of
citizens whom the drawing of borders had left outside their parent states.
p. 61
“The conflict in Sarajevo intensified both politically and militarily on 2 May 1992.
JNA and allied Serb forces launched an armored assault on the city as ARBiH forces began
surrounding JNA military installations.”
Robert Donia on purpose described the start of the armed hostilities in Sarajevo in
such a way that it is impossible to conclude who did it first: had the Yugoslav People’s
Army opened fire first and then its barracks were surrounded by Muslim armed units or had
it been vice-versa? Of course Donia knew who had started it. It was the Muslim units that
surrounded the barracks, installations and Command of the Yugoslav People’s Army,
which was then compelled to defend itself with arms to prevent men and officers from
being captured and heavy weapons from falling into enemy hands. He did not write that
because it would be to the detriment of the Muslims and their leadership.
p. 63
“SDS leaders linked each of these actions to the strategic objective of creating a
separate Bosnian Serb state.”
This sentence is a glaring example of Donia’s ill will towards Serbs and his
benevolence towards Croats. Although the Lisbon Agreement envisaged the formation of
three constituent states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and another state was established at
almost the same time within seceded Bosnia and Herzegovina, Donia mentions only
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Republika Srpska. Not a trace of Herceg-Bosna, the state of the Croat people. In point of
fact, the Croats had set up their armed units, without which a state is inconceivable,
considerably before the Serbs, but Donia did not devote any attention to speak of to that
fact.
p. 65
“The Sarajevo Radio and Television Center was hit repeatedly, while SDS officials
denounced the alleged bias of Sarajevo TV and demanded that it be split into three parts,
each controlled by one of the three nationalist parties.”
This is yet another example of Donia’s biased depiction of an event in besieged
Sarajevo and of his ill-will towards Serbs. It is true that the Serb leadership demanded that
the state television of Bosnia and Herzegovina should have three news programmes, whose
editors would be a Muslim, a Croat and a Serb, with more or less equal airing time allotted
to each one, which was actually the practice in Serbia in TV Novi Sad and TV Pri{tina not
only for the news but also for cultural programmes. It is also indisputable that Serb
artillery shells fell on this television building. For Robert Donia that was not only
impermissible but liable to prosecution, for why else would he have said precisely that in
his report prepared for Radovan KARAD@I]’s trial. What had slipped his mind, however,
is the undeniable fact that the NATO Command during its 1999 aggression on FR
Yugoslavia also put an ultimatum to the Yugoslav and Serbian governments demanding
that the programme of Radio-Television Serbia be divided into two equal parts, with one
broadcasting the programme of the Atlantic Alliance and the other the programme of the
government of Serbia. As the then Yugoslav and Serbian governments would not agree to
that, the American military power launched a cruising missile which demolished the RTS
building airing the programme for foreign countries, killing 16 journalists and technicians.
Were Robert Donia an impartial historian and a man of broad horizons, he would
have concluded thus: if the Atlantic Alliance could have done this as an aggressor and a
foreign power, the more so could the Serbs do it in their state in which they financed their
television with their subscription fees. The latter even more so given the fact that members
of the Green Berets were also in that building with weapons from which they fired at
Serbs. Need we say that this bitter irony was resorted to here in order to expose the double
yardsticks applied to the distinguished gentlemen from the NATO Alliance and the
blameworthy Balkan aborigines.
pp. 68-69
“The Bosnian Serb nationalists of the SDS found that the Croat nationalists of the
HDZ (after February 1992) shared with them the principle of separation. Though the
leaders of the two parties often disagreed on what territory belonged to whom, and even
warred against one another, they were able to reach an agreement in principle once the war
in BiH began. On 6 May 1992, Karadžić and Bosnian Croat nationalist leader Mate Boban
of the HDZ met in Graz, Austria, and signed an agreement to divide BiH. The document
did not mention the Republic of BiH, the Bosnian Muslims, or Sarajevo. However, the
import of the agreement for the government of BiH was clear in the press release of the
public affairs consultant representing Karadžić.”
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“The agreement overturns the mandate of the Bosnian independence referendum for
self-determination for a Bosnian state. Instead the mandate will be reversed, Bosnia will be
divided and in its place three separate states will be formed.”
The Graz Agreement invoked the principles of the on-going talks sponsored by the
EC Conference on Yugoslavia, stating that the two parties “are agreed to respect the agreed
standards for defining the national territories, in all disputed points, with the arbitration of
the EC.” But the convener of those EC talks had not been informed in advance of these
bilateral Serb-Croat discussions. After learning that BiH government representatives had
not been a party to the talks, the EC denounced the agreement and emphasised that it
“completely and unreservedly rejects any form of territorial division and agreement that
does not enjoy the support of all three sides in the negotiations”.
The way these negotiations between Radovan KARAD@I] and Mate BOBAN in
Graz are shown is further proof of Donia’s disinclination to coherent reasoning and to
drawing identical conclusions in more or less identical cases. When Muslim and Croat
representatives in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contrary to the position of the
Serb representatives, called a referendum (actually a plebiscite), at which the decision was
brought by a majority of votes on the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its
secession from SFR Yugoslavia, that for Robert Donia was totally correct, it did not at all
occur to him to raise the question of not only constitutionality, but also of the rightfulness
of two constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina deciding the fate of Bosnia and
Herzegovina without the consent of the third constituent people. In addition to that he
stated that the European Community had not only accepted such a deficient referendum
decision, but had also recognised the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
When, however, representatives of the Croats and Serbs in Graz, without the
participation and consent of the Muslim representatives, decided to revoke the decision
adopted at the said referendum and proceed with dividing Bosnia into three ethnic
communities, Donia not only cited the opposition of the European Community but also its
position that Bosnia could not be divided without the consent of all three sides – Muslims,
Croats and Serbs. Had Donia reasoned at all consistently (not to mention intellectual
honesty), he would have asked himself: how come that in the first instance a decision could
have been brought by representatives of two constituent peoples without the consent of the
third, and that in the latter instance that had been neither possible nor permissible? In
point of fact, both the European Community and Robert Donia actually considered that no
crucial decision in Bosnia and Herzegovina could be taken without the consent of the
Muslims. In other words, Muslims and Croats could decide without the consent of the
Serbs, like Serbs and Muslims could decide without the consent of the Croats. But, but
Croats and Serbs could take no decision without the consent of the Muslims. Donia
demonstrated his consistent and unconditional bias towards the Muslims also by
characterising on this occasion the Croat representative Mate BOBAN as a nationalist
leader, meaning that Croat leaders were nationalists only when they were acting against
Muslim interests.
Actually, Radovan KARAD@I] and Mate BOBAN met in the follow-up to the
conference only to decide that war should not be waged over a small number of disputed
territorial issues between the two ethnic communities. Donia must have known that the
deadline for determining the territories of the three sides had been mid-May 1992, and
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while these two communities, which constituted the Christian majority, remained faithful to
the constitutional principles of 18 March 1992, the Muslim side, true to form, sabotaged the
putting of this agreement into practice.
Apart from that, Donia made a number of mistakes. Firstly, consent to transform
Bosnia and Herzegovina into three constituent states was reached for the first time between
the three sides already on 13 February 1992, in the presence of participants in Lord
Carrington’s Conference on Yugoslavia. Тhat consent was developed over a number of
subsequent rounds of negotiations, leading to the 18 March 1992 agreement on
constitutional principles for the future independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, the
representatives of the Serbs and Croats in Graz did not reach any new agreement, but
reaffirmed their commitment to the already achieved Lisbon Agreement, the basis of which
was the Cutilheiro Plan. Thirdly, and what is worst, Donia denotes only the Muslim side as
“BiH government representatives“, as if the representatives of the Serbs and the Croats did
not account for two thirds of that government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but were some
rebels, while only the Muslim third were the legitimate authorities.
p. 104
“The civilian leaders of the SDS – principally Karadžić, Koljević, and Krajišnik –
were driven by an ideology of national separatism.”
If we understood Robert Donia well, Radovan KARAD@I], Nikola KOLJEVI] and
Mom~ilo KRAJI[NIK (Biljana PLAV[I] was left out, presumably because she had repented
in The Hague) are advocates of national separatism because they tried to separate
Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina. A fitting question to Robert Donia
therefore is: Why did he not characterise Franjo TU\MAN and Alija IZETBEGOVI], who
had pulled out Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina respectively from SFR Yugoslavia as
advocates of the ideology of national separatism? And is he so much biased as to sincerely
believe that what some (TU\MAN and IZETBEGOVI]) may do, others (KARAD@I],
KOLJEVI] and KRAJI[NIK) may not?
It is even worse that Donia failed to notice that the alleged Serb separatists asked for
and got much less than what Milan KU^AN, Franjo TU\MAN and Alija IZETBEGOVI]
had aspired after and achieved. The latter unconstitutionally seceded from Yugoslavia and
established independent states, while the Serbs remained without the single state in which
they had all been together, on condition that that they would have a sort of autonomy in the
framework of independent Bosnia and Herzegovina.
p. 20
2. Bosnian Krajina in the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
“Under German direction, the Ustasha systematically exterminated most of the Jews
in their territory. They forcibly converted hundreds of thousands of Serbian Orthodox to
catholicism. They committed atrocities against Serbs in villages and sent many to their
deaths in concentration camps. Many killings took place at the infamous camp at
Jasenovac, where tens of thousands perished, including Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, and Croats
who were deemed to be opponents to the regime.”
In all fairness, Robert Donia does say that the Ustashas conducted a policy of
systematically exterminating all Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, which could not
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Translation
have been anything else but genocide. But he deliberately does not say that the same policy
of systematic extermination was also pursued against Serbs. Is it really possible that Donia
does not know that the Ustasha deputy leader Mile BUDAK stated that a third of the Serbs
should be killed, a third converted to Catholicism, and a third expelled, and that, even
according to the reports of German officials, hundreds of thousands of Serbs – men, women
and children, had been killed in the Independent State of Croatia? He does refer to
Jasenovac, but says that most of the killed were Jews, followed by Serbs, while it had been
the opposite. In point of fact, considering the total number of Jews in the Independent State
of Croatia, they perished in considerably larger numbers, as almost all of them were killed.
But the number of killed Jews amounted to tens of thousands, while the number of killed
Serbs, according to the report to Berlin by Gleise von Horstenau, had by November 1941
alone reached over 300,000, while Hermann Neubacher, Adolf Hitler’s special envoy for
the Balkans, left the following testimony: “When the leaders of the Ustasha movement state
that they have exterminated a million Serbs, including also infants, women, the elderly and
children, I think that they are boasting. According to the reports that I have received, I
estimate that the number of defenceless persons who have been killed does not exceed three
quarters of a million.” We need hardly say that the reason for liquidating such a large
number of Serbs, Jews and Roma was hatred upon ethnic, religious and in fact racial
grounds. All those were features of the greatest crime of all - genocide. However, Robert
Donia deliberately avoids to characterise these crimes as genocide, in order not to run afoul
of firstly the Croats and secondly of the Muslims who, led by D`afer KULENOVI], as the
flower of the Croat nation, were a factor in the criminal Ustasha rule. It is therefore
tantamount to sacrilege to say that all the Serbs, Jews and Roma were killed because they
were assumed to be opponents to the Ustasha regime, instead of emphasising that it was a
magnum crimen on religious and racial grounds, namely genocide.
p. 28
“In late 1990’s Greater Serbian propaganda activities intensified in all areas of
Yugoslavia where Serbs lived in substantial numbers. In 1987 the earthly remains of Prince
Lazar, Serbian hero of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, were removed from the Serbian
Orthodox Patriarchate Church in Belgrade and taken on a tour of Serbian Orthodox
monasteries in Serbia, Croatia, and Kosovo “as Serbs again flocked in pilgrimage to pray
before him.” His body was then interred in the Ravanica Monastery in Kosovo.”
As Robert Donia inserted as a term of endearment the Turkish word “vakuf” in the
name of his foundation, we shall proceed from the contestable assumption that he perhaps
is actually not a Christian and does not know what saintly relics which are kept in a
reliquary (Greek: kivot) are; they are not mere earthly remains as Donia puts it, but a relic
which is attributed special, including healing, properties. That is why they are looked after
with the greatest of care and are only exceptionally taken out of the church or monastery in
which they have been deposited for safekeeping. Some of these relics are of particular
symbolic significance for all Orthodox people, and for Serbs they were the holy relics of
Saint Sava which Sinan Pasha burned in 1594 at Vra~ar where a monumental cathedral
church stands tall now. Of somewhat lesser symbolic value for Serbs are the holy relics of
Prince Lazar, who, like all Kosovo heroes, gave his life as the bard says “for the honourable
cross and golden freedom”.
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Translation
It might seem to Donia, as well as to anthropologist Katherine Verdery whose
comment will follow below, that there is nothing sacred but only profane in the taking of
Prince Lazar’s holy relics on a tour and that it had been only a prearranged propaganda
action to mark the boundaries of so-called Greater Serbia. Of course, Donia can think about
it what he likes, but it would be interesting to hear his view on the taking on a tour of major
cities all over the United States of the earthly remains of Ronald Regan, although he has not
as yet been beatified or canonized as a saint, in contrast to Prince Lazar, who is one.
All that is left for us to do is to ask whether Robert Donia would have been inclined
to detect American nationalism in the tour of Ronald Reagan’s earthly remains throughout
the USA like he saw Serb nationalism in the tour of the holy relics of St. Prince Lazar.
As during his study leaves in Yugoslavia Robert Donia talked to Serbian historians
among others, he had the opportunity to inquire about the meaning of this religious
procession. Naturally, he did not do so, but interpreted it himself, in a way offensive and
deprecatory to Serbs.
p. 62
“The next day, 21 December 1991, the self-styled Serbian Assembly met and
approved “preparations for the formation of a Serbian Republic”.”
Robert Donia expresses his ill will towards the Serbs also by the choice of
derogatory characterisations. He thus says that the Assembly of Serbian deputies is “selfstyled”.
If he were at all consistent, Donia would have to have said that the assembly of
Croatian deputies which formed Herceg-Bosna was also “self-styled”, that the Presidency
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after its Serb and Croat members left it had also become “selfstyled”,
and that Alija IZETEBEGOVI] had been the “self-styled” President of the
Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as that Presidency no longer existed, and his term
of office as President expired already back in 1992. Donia, of course, knows all that, but
avoids disparaging characterisations in the case of the Croats and Muslims and their
institutions. In the process, he fails to note that the decision of the Assembly of Serbian
deputies had been a conditional one. Like on every other occasion, the Serbs were willing
to withdraw it if the coalition of the Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian
Democratic Union withdrew its unconstitutional decisions demanding the independence of
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
3. The Origins of Republika Srpska, 1990-1992
p. 5
“Serbian nationalism prevailed in the official governing bodies of the republics of
Serbia and Montenegro by spring 1989, and the nationalist message continued to be
delivered to Serbs outside those two republics as well.”
This is an example of Donia’s subscribing to the assessments and estimates of those
foreign, Croatian and Muslim, analysts who were in 1992 disinclined towards the Serbs.
For, the claim that in the spring of 1989, Serb nationalists prevailed in Montenegro, among
other means that Montenegro was predominantly inhabited by Serbs. After the declaration
of independence of Montenegro in 2006 and its recognition of the independence of the selfstyled
state of the Kosmet Albanians in 2008, foreign, Croat and Muslim analysts became
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very much inclined towards Montenegrins and their rule, and it no longer crossed their
minds even to mention the Serbs in Montenegro, let alone condemn the obliteration of the
Serb national identity. Precisely this is the reason that the cautious Donia in his 2009 report,
prepared for the Radovan KARAD@I] trial, no longer mentions the prevalence of Serb
nationalism in Montenegro in the spring of 1989. This is, at the same time, an example of
Donia’s updating history in line with changed political circumstances.
p. 6
“BH again became a destination for demonstrators supporting Milo{evi} and the
Serbian nationalist cause. On 13 August 1989, buses filled with Serbs arrived in Kne`ina
near Sarajevo, ostensibly for the consecration of a Serbian Orthodox monastery. Despite a
ban by BH authorities on the display of Serbian symbols, the gathering took on political
overtones with pictures of Milo{evi} and other nationalist signs.”
Here Robert Donia mentions that on 13 August 1989, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian
authorities prohibited the display of Serbian national symbols. This is only proof that
already then the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina were an oppressed people, which was
reason enough for them to self-organise and for the awakening of national awareness.
Instead of presenting this ban in this way, Donia condemns the Serbs for turning the
consecration of an Orthodox monastery into a nationalist gathering. And, in addition, he
seems not to know that every Orthodox monastery in Bosnia and Herzegovina is Serbian,
and that this attribute is superfluous. Finally, Donia should be reminded that even the
hardest-core communist regime allowed the display of the national flag with a cross in the
middle at religious festivals.
p. 7
“Serbian nationalists also reburied thousands of anonymous corpses removed from
caves in Herzegovina. In many instances local Serbs knew of these bodies and recalled that
they were Serbian victims of Ustasha slaughter in the Second World War. Local Serbs
organized to give them a proper burial in their home villages. But in summer 1991 all the
exhumed remains were transported to Belgrade and reburied in a common grave, even
though it was unclear that all the victims were Serbs.”
This is an express example of Robert Donia’s obvious ill-will towards the Serbs.
First he characterises the exhuming of mortal remains from pits, and not caves, in which the
Ustashas threw both live and dead Serbs and their burial, with a funeral service and other
elements of the religious rite, as reburial, so that it turns out that, according to him,
throwing /someone/ in a pit is the proper burial rite. What he also does not know or does
not want to know is the fact that the Ustashas killed entire families and their entire villages,
so that no next of kin survived who could establish the identity of those who had been
killed. That too is a reason why the mortal remains were placed in a common grave. The
most loathsome of all is Donia’s claim that it was unclear if all the buried victims were
Serbs. Is it possible that Donia does not know that the Ustashas threw only Serbs into pits
and did not do so with either Jews or Roma.
Finally, Robert Donia utters the greatest lie: that in the summer of 1991 all the
exhumed mortal remains were transported to Belgrade and reburied in a common grave,
which Radio Belgrade allegedly termed a massive political event. This shameless lie came
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from the pen of Robert M. Hayden, whom Donia quotes here, although he could have
known, if he had read the daily papers, that this burial took place in Prebilovci where a
memorial church was also erected. It seems that among the obscure authors he refers to and
quotes, Donia picks precisely those capable of fabricating the most malicious lies.
p. 8
“The first multiparty elections took place in Slovenia and Croatia in April 1990…
Regardless of party affiliation, the victors in Slovenia favoured autonomy and/or
independence from the SFRY, and in a major step towards independence, the Assembly of
Slovenia adopted a resolution in July 1990 declaring Slovenia’s sovereignty.”
This is also an example of Donia’s partiality. When the actions of Serbs and their
parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina are in question, he does not shirk from qualifying such
actions as separatism, and the Serb leadership as nationalist. In the case of Slovenia he acts
quite differently. Although the then Slovenian policy was evidently separatist vis-à-vis
SFR Yugoslavia, he avoids such a characterisation, probably in the belief that the Slovenes
were then legitimately exercising the right of nations to self-determination up to secession,
which incidentally, he does not recognise to the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When
the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina established the Serbian National Council, Donia
immediately quoted the decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
declaring this Serb institution unconstitutional, although he repeatedly points out that he is
not an expert on constitutional law. When, on the other hand, in July 1990, the Assembly of
Slovenia adopted a resolution on the sovereignty of Slovenia, Donia failed to mention,
although he must have been aware of it, that the Constitutional Court of SFR Yugoslavia
declared unconstitutional not only this resolution but also some amendments to the
Constitution of Slovenia and some laws, rules and regulations. In so doing, he apparently
followed the rule quod licet Iovi (Slovenes) non licet bovi (Serbs).
p. 9
“A few days after the joint Slovene-Croat declaration, the JNA ordered that arms of
Territorial Defense units throughout Yugoslavia be turned over to JNA arsenals, a measure
intended principally to deprive the Slovenian and Croatian republican authorities of the
potential to create their own armed forces.”
Donia represents the turning over of territorial defence arms under JNA control as a
measure depriving Slovene and Croat authorities of the right to create their own armed
forces. This gross mistake occurred due to Donia’s profound ignorance of the 1974 SFRY
Constitution, which allowed the existence of only federal armed forces, which is confirmed
by Article 240, paragraphs 2 and 3, which read:
“The armed forces of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia shall make a
unified whole and shall consist of the Yugoslav People’s Army as the common armed force
of all the nations and nationalities and of all the working people and citizens, and of
territorial defence, as the broadest form of organised total national armed resistance.
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Any citizen who with arms or in some other way takes part in resistance against an
aggressor shall be a member of the Armed Forces of the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.”
p. 10
“… HDZ leaders offered SDS Party President Jovan Ra{kovi} a position as Vice
President in the new Croatian government. He declined this offer. Croatia’s HDZ leaders
then excluded the SDS from the governing coalition they assembled after election.”
This account is neither complete nor correct. Franjo TU\MAN offered Jovan
RA[KOVI] a position as Vice President of the Croatian government at a moment when the
drafting of a new Constitution divesting the Serbs of the status of a constituent people and
turning them into a national minority was well under way. Had Donia said that it would
have been clear why RA[KOVI] declined the offer. This way it turns out that he was a
defiant hothead, which is far from the truth.
p. 19
“Muslim activists led by Alija Izetbegovi} formed the Party of Democratic Action
(SDA Stranka demokratske akcije) as the leading party of Bosnia’s Muslims.”
While he almost invariably characterised Serbs and their leaders as nationalists,
Croats and their leaders only occasionally when for instance in Graz they were dividing
Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Serbs without the presence and participation of the
Muslims, Robert Donia never said a critical or belittling word about the Muslims and their
leaders. But in this sentence with the greatest respect he refers to Muslim activists¸ God
forbid nationalists and separatists. And as a man’s gesture or word reveals his character, in
Donia’s case the word “activists” instead of “nationalists” reveals his unwavering bias
towards the Muslims.
p. 29
“In the opening days of the peace conference, the participants promptly reached an
agreement in principle to grant independence to Croatia provided its Serbian citizens were
guaranteed their civil rights. In practice this formulation meant the recognition of a
separate, Serb-dominated territorial unit within Croatia.”
In connection with this statement Robert Donia should have asked the question: If
all the participants in the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia had agreed
that Croatia would be granted independence only if it recognised a separate Serb territorial
unit within Croatia, did it not seem both appropriate and logical not to grant Bosnia and
Herzegovina independence until it recognised a separate Serb entity in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, particularly as there were many more Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina than
in Croatia?However, because of his partiality towards the Muslims and his spleen towards
the Serbs, he carefully avoids such analogies and the asking of such questions.
p. 34
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“Serb steps toward forming a separate state were followed by similar measures by
HDZ leaders in municipalities with substantial Croatian populations. The Croatian
Community of Herceg-Bosna (HZ H-B – Hrvatska zajednica – Herceg-Bosna) was formed
in Grude on 18 November 1991 as the “political, cultural, economic, and territorial union”
of the Croats of BH as a “concrete response to the formation of Serbian autonomous
regions,” Mate Boban was selected as its first president. Boban declared that the HZ H-B
restored in territory made part of Croatia by the 1939 Cvetkovi} – Ma~ek Agreement, and
he stated that Croat support for the BH government was conditional.”
This section dealing with Croatian separatism and the establishment of Herceg-
Bosna, a Croatian state construct within Bosnia and Herzegovina, contains not only ill-will
towards the Serbs but is also proof of Donia’s serious ignorance of the history of
Yugoslavia between the two world wars. If the Croats established their separate state
construct as a “concrete response” to the formation of Serbian autonomous regions, why
did the Muslims not do that? They did not do so because they laid claim to the entire
Bosnia and Herzegovina intending to be the hegemons of that independent state. Therefore,
the reasons for the establishment of the Croatian Herceg-Bosna are the same ones the Serbs
would be guided by seven weeks later when they formed their Republika Srpska – fear of
Muslim hegemony in an independent and unitary Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Since Mate BOBAN established Herceg-Bosna on the territory on which, pursuant
to the 1939 Cvetkovi} – Ma~ek Agreement, Croats as Catholics were in the majority, the
question arises if the Muslims would also agree to that. The 1939 Banovina of Croatia
encompassed, within the historical borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the districts of
Br~ko, Grada~ac, Travnik, Fojnica, Bugojno, Livno, Prozor, Konjic, Mostar, Ljubu{ko and
Duvno, i.e. a large part of Herzegovina and Central Bosnia. In the process the borders
between the Banovina of Croatia and Serb lands in BH were drawn so that the Croats got
those districts in which Catholics were a majority (at the previous population census the
citizens of Yugoslavia did not declare their national but only their religious affiliation, so
that when the Banovina of Croatia was formed all Catholics were considered to be Croats
and all Orthodox Christians Serbs). Thus it happened that districts with large Muslim
populations fell to the Banovina of Croatia and thereby also to Herceg-Bosna. The
Muslims were against the forming of Herceg-Bosna primarily for this reason, and then also
because they wanted Bosnia and Herzegovina to be unitary so that they would be its
masters. All this shortly led them to take up arms against Herceg-Bosna.
4. Sarajevo. A Biography
p. 224
“In mid-February 1945 Pavelic dispatched Colonel Vjekoslav Maks Luburic to
Sarajevo with instructions to destroy the resistance movement. A sadistically creative
specialist in police terror, Luburic announced his intentions in a dinner speech to over one
hundred local officials on February 24, 1945. On March 6 he threatened with death anyone
who failed to report members of the resistance. He then established the "Criminal War
Court of Commander Colonel Luburic" and brought eighty-five persons before the court
during March 1945. Thirty-one were condemned to be hanged and the rest were given
prison sentences. But the arbitrary killings went beyond those brought before the court. As
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Partisan forces were closing in on the city, fifty-five persons were hanged from trees in
Marindvor on March 27-8 with placards hung around their necks reading, ’Long Live the
Poglavnik’. Many others were tortured and brutally murdered in a villa near the site of the
hangings. The postwar commission on war crimes identified 323 victims of Luburic's
regime of terror in Sarajevo. The results of his brutality were witnessed by Landrum
Bolling, a young American journalist who arrived in the city on April 7 after its liberation
by Partisan forces. He was shown a room containing bodies ’stacked like cordwood on top
of one another. We were told these were Serbs whom the Ustasha had hanged by barbed
wire from lamp posts in Sarajevo’. Still, Luburi}’s violence was not ethnically motivated,
but its victims were members of all nationalities.”
Although it is well known that in February 1945 in Sarajevo, LUBURI]’s victims
could have been only Serbs and the aforementioned American journalist was told so when
he saw the corpses stacked like cordwood on top of one another, Robert Donia claims that
LUBURI]’s violence had not been ethnically motivated. Had a single Muslim or Croat been
killed on that occasion, he would have certainly stated that. Therefore, Donia’s statement is
a shameless lie.
p. 276
“Aggressive Serb nationalism in the Republics of Serbia and Montenegro after 1987
and Croat nationalism in the Republic of Croatia after 1989 made it unlikely that Sarajevo
could make the transition to pluralist democracy unscathed by intervention from its
neighbours.”
In this sentence Robert Donia first makes a distinction between Serbian nationalism
which is aggressive and Croatian which is not. He then mentions aggressive Serbian
nationalism in Montenegro since at the time he wrote this book this republic was still not
independent or he would have, most probably, adapted his assessments and estimates to the
new state of affairs. And finally, at the time he was finishing the manuscript he still
confused the introduction of multiparty political democracy with the external and internal
dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the resolving of the national question on its ruins. Had
by any chance the federal Yugoslavia remained, even with distinct confederal elements,
political pluralism would have been introduced in both Sarajevo and Bosnia and
Herzegovina without any more serious disputes and conflicts, or even without any foreign
interference. The problem, however, lay in the fact that those who were ostensibly in favour
of political pluralism in Slovenia and Croatia only and not also for such pluralism when
federal government bodies were elected, were at the same time in favour of the sovereignty,
i.e. the secession of Slovenia and Croatia. Regrettably, the Muslims of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were not willing to defend the survival and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.
And when it seemed to them that they could obtain the independence of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, they were surprised that the Croats in Croatia and the Serbs in Serbia were
looking after their compatriots in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was in no way
whatsoever associated with political pluralism.
p. 281
“Propagandists derided Bosnian Muslims as Serbs of the Islamic faith who had
betrayed the Serb nation and who were conspiring to create an Islamic state with Sarajevo
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as its capital. In these assaults, Bosnian Muslims were portrayed as subhuman, sexually
depraved and morally craven. Sarajevo was characterized as a “dark vilayet” (vilayet was
an Ottoman administrative unit), suggesting that the city was tainted by vestiges of
Ottoman rule and repression of the Serb people and the Serbian Orthodox Church. Serbian
populizers revived the memory of the brutal fate of many Serbs in the Second World War
and blamed the Bosnian Muslims who had collaborated with the Ustasha regime.”
In this paragraph, brimming with strong language at the expense of the Serbs,
Robert Donia was not capable of citing a single reliable source establishing that Serb
nationalists represented Muslims in BH as subhuman, sexually depraved and morally
craven. As he has not done so, his words are a heinous lie. In addition, without noticing it,
Donia advances two mutually incompatible Serbian positions: that Muslims are Serbs and
that they are subhuman. And with regard to the statement that Sarajevo is a dark vilayet,
those are the words of the great author Ivo Andri} who was awarded the Nobel Prize
precisely for that. Incidentally, blaming Muslims for awful crimes against the Serbs during
the Second World War is definitely grounded, for the Muslims, as the flower of the Croat
nation, led by D`afer KULENOVI], actively participated in the Ustasha government of the
Independent State of Croatia. After all, Donia himself confirmed this when he cited on page
21 of his report “The Bosnian Krajina in the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina” that
members of the 13 th Muslim SS division (better known as the Hand`ar Division), had
committed crimes against Serbs who lived in eastern Bosnia.
p. 319
“Refusing to concede that Serbs had chosen to remain in their homes rather than
join the national separatists, SDS leaders portrayed the stay-behind Serbs as hostages of
“Muslim” overlords, forced to stay in the cities against their will. One delegate to the
Bosnian Serb Assembly charged Bosnian Government officials with “manipulation of that
part of the Serb people held as ethnic hostages in cities under ₣Muslimğ control”. Imbued
with the notion that Sarajevo was a collective hostage, Bosnian Serb nationalists wanted
government-controlled Sarajevo to be free of Serbs so that the city could be thrashed at
will.”
In this instance, Robert Donia persistently points out that during the siege of the
central part of Sarajevo the Serbs of their own free will decided to remain in their homes
instead of joining their compatriot nationalists outside the siege. The best proof that this is a
bare-faced lie is the fact that almost all the Serbs left Sarajevo the moment when, after the
Dayton Peace Agreement, they could do so freely, and that today in Sarajevo, under the
government of the Muslim-Croat Federation there are only several thousand of them.
p. 351
“Nonetheless, during years of deprivation and daily threats to their lives, Sarajevans
found affirmation in being the vanguard of a struggle against savagery.”
This sentence, which Robert Donia did not write just inadvertently is compelling
proof not only of his ill-will towards the Serbs, but in fact of his hatred of them. As,
according to him, the citizens of Sarajevo fought against savagery during the siege, this
only means that the Serbs in the encirclement were savages. And this he says of Sarajevan
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Serbs of all educational backgrounds and professions and who were the autochthonous
population of Sarajevo.
p. 382
“The Bosniak Institute was created by Adil Zulfikarpa{i} in Zurich during the
1970’s and in the late 1990’s he moved most of its holdings to Sarajevo. The Institute’s
Sarajevo home, an edifice that incorporates the Ottoman-era public bath facility near the
Catholic cathedral, was formally opened in 2001. The building embodies the blend of
secular, religious, Western and Eastern values characteristic of Bosniak national thought.”
Almost at the end of his book Robert Donia finally reveals his point of departure
and what is dear to his heart. That is the Bosnian national thought. Namely, the main
problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state is that it does not have its
authentic cultural and historical and thereby also national identity. Leading Muslims, such
as Muhamed FILIPOVI], noticed this long ago and tried to make up for it by the syntagm,
the “spirit of Bosnia”. This spirit, naturally, can be neither Serbian, nor Croatian, nor
Orthodox, nor Catholic, for that would negate the justifiability of the existence of an
independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. From the Muslim point of view, it can only be a
Bosnian spirit on which, as Donia puts it, Bosnian national thought would rest. And the
fount of that spirit are Bosniak national values. In other words, according to both Donia and
Muslim leaders, Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot in terms of its authentic identity be
anything else but Bosnian, and in fact Bosniak.
V CONCLUSION
In the introductory part of this paper we referred to Polybius who says “If History is
stripped of her truth what is left is only an idle tale.” 9 This is precisely what can be said of
the report Robert Donia wrote for some trials before the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia, including his report for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I]. The first
thing historians will notice in his reports are the doubtful and unreliable sources he refers to
when he needs to corroborate the veracity of his words. Namely, whenever he mentions any
doubtful fact, and even a notorious lie, he does it by quoting what someone else says about
that fact as if it were credible and truthful, although in most cases he knows it is not so.
And when what he says is exposed as a notorious lie, before this Tribunal and in public, he
will defend himself by stating that it was not his but someone else’s lie, i.e. that he cited an
author correctly and that he allegedly did not know that this author was falsifying the truth
and lying. For example - and there are a multitude of such examples in his reports – he
cites the claim of Katherine Verdery 10 that the mortal remains of Josip Broz Tito were
removed from the place of honour in the “House of Flowers” and reburied at a more
modest spot. 11 We personally believe that Robert Donia knew this to be a bare-faced lie but
that he feigned ignorance and unawareness, so as to create in the public and this Tribunal
the impression that the Serbs are such a loathsome people that they are capable of
9 Polybius, The Histories, I. 14.
10 Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, p. 18.
11 Bosnian Krajina in the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, p. 29.
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disturbing the eternal rest of the deceased, just like English Monarchists, after the
Restoration, exhumed the body of Oliver Cromwell and hanged him as a punishment.
This naturally does not mean that second-hand sources may not be used, but that
can only be reason more for a historian to assure himself of the credibility of someone
else’s words by inspecting the authentic document. It seems that Robert Donia never does
that. A convincing example confirming this are the conversations between Franjo TU\MAN
and Slobodan MILO[EVI] in Kara|or|evo about the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina
between Croatia and Serbia. This is doubtlessly an important historic fact which deserves
mention. And how does Robert Donia do this? 12 He refers to the book of Milo{ MILI] 13
which gives a summary of numerous interpretations and speculations about what happened
at this meeting. In other words, Milo{ MILI] did not publish a stenogram of this meeting,
which is the only authentic document, but an abstract of various accounts of what happened
at this meeting. As it is hardly likely that a large number of officials from both sides were
present on that occasion, the first information was imparted by Slobodan MILO[EVI] who
informed several of his closest associates of the deal he had struck with TU\MAN and they
in turn retold it and spread it further, while we do not know what TU\MAN did. Even the
author of this paper personally heard from the former vice premier of FR Yugoslavia that
Serbs and Serbia would be compensated in Bosnia and Herzegovina for what they lost in
Croatia. All this is, regrettably, unreliable and hearsay, i.e. not a second-hand but a fifthhand
source. For Robert Donia, however, this source was sufficiently reliable to cite in his
report, although he never saw or read the authentic stenogram or heard the audio recording
of this meeting. And for a serious, not to say a true historian, that is absolutely
impermissible.
Another factor which makes the sources Donia used disputable is their arbitrary
selection. If we carefully examine the footnotes in his reports to the Tribunal, we can see
that, in addition to a large number of journalistic and most often biased authorial works, he
used papers and documents made available to him by the Office of the Prosecutor in The
Hague. We personally do not doubt the authenticity of these papers and documents, but
question their completeness. When Robert Donia wrote a book about the Muslims of
Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1878 to 1914, the Sarajevan and some other archives made
available to him the complete archival records, and after inspecting all the papers and
documents, he himself selected the sources on the basis of which to write his monograph.
When he wrote reports for The Hague Tribunal, the Prosecutor’s Office made available to
him only those documents that it concluded could be disclosed to persons outside the
Tribunal. Therefore, these were not all the papers and documents about an event, but only
those which fell into Donia’s hands following a double arbitrary selection. First
investigators of the Hague Tribunal, pursuant to their own assessment of what was relevant,
selected from the seized documentation individual papers and documents and then, having
carefully inspected them, selected from that batch only those incriminating the accused and
made only that available to Donia. As a passable historian Donia nevertheless knew that the
12 The Origins of Republika Srpska, 1990-1992. A Background Report, p. 14. Bosnian Krajina in the History
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, p. 58.
13 Milo{ MILI], Dogovori u Kara|or|evu o podeli Bosne i Herzegovina /Plans in Kara|or|evo to Divide Bosnia
and Herzegovina/, Sarajevo: Rabi}, 1998.
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Hague Tribunal was not a historical archives but a criminal tribunal and that integral and
impartial historical monographs could not be written on the basis of its documentation, but
only criminal reports and indictments, which, to the best of our knowledge, is not the job of
historians.
Arbitrariness in the selection of documents is particularly obvious when he cites
what are referred to as intercepted conversations. A number of these intercepted
conversations were submitted to Donia, exclusively those conducted by telephone by Serb
officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and Serbia. The issue arose in that
connection of the legality of such interception, i.e. the bugging and recording of telephone
conversations. Although he is not a jurist, as an American citizen and a viewer of police
serials on television, Donia must have known that the police may record telephone
conversations only with the previous approval of the court if it wishes to use them as
evidence in criminal proceedings, while recording without a court order is a grave criminal
offence. If he knew that, how come he did not ask himself if perhaps the same ban on
unauthorised recording of telephone conversations also existed in the former SFR
Yugoslavia and the states created on its ruins? As that had been prohibited not only in the
USA but also in the Balkans, how was it not embarrassing for him to cite and analyse
intercepted conversations if they had been intercepted unlawfully?
From Donia’s sources of these intercepted conversations cited in the footnotes it is
impossible to find out who had wiretapped and taped these conversations – whether it had
been a domestic or a foreign intelligence service or a private agency. It is interesting that
this did not interest Donia as a historian nor did the Prosecutor’s Office deem it necessary
to tell him that. As from the content of the telephone conversations it is not possible to
conclude when they were conducted, and the unidentified person who taped them mentions
their exact date, it could have been expected that Donia would request to be informed of the
identity of the service which had taped them so as to assure himself of the correctness of
the mentioned date. Regrettably, he did not do that either. He could have gone a step further
and demanded that the Hague Tribunal which is authorised to issue sub poenaes to obtain
the confidential reports which were activated in the CIA and the MI6 – the American and
the British intelligence services – which would have been invaluable to him in writing his
reports. He could not muster up the courage to do that either.
Finally, Donia did not find it all strange that among the intercepted conversations
made available to him, there was not a single conversation by Muslim and Croatian leaders.
Had he by any chance given that any thought, three explanations were available:
1) that the Muslim and Croat leaders, as opposed to the incautious Serbs, did not talk
on the telephone at all but used carrier pigeons;
2) that the intelligence service taped the telephone conversations of the Serbs and
Muslims and Croats alike, but that it made available to the Prosecutor’s Office in
The Hague only the conversations of Serb officials, requiring them to withhold the
identity of the service that did that;
3) that the Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague received all the taped conversations, but
submitted to Donia only those incriminating Serb officials.
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If Donia as a historian had the appropriate professional conscience he would first
have to question such selectivity in the provision of intercepts and then refuse to quote and
discuss something made available to him in that way. However, he did not do that.
We know that Donia will immediately ask why he could not do what the
Prosecutor’s Office had already done, namely selectively cite and analyse data
incriminating only Serbs. The trouble lies in that fact that these two jobs – the study of
historic sources and the writing of historic treatises, on the one hand, and the collection of
evidence and the bringing of indictments, on the other – rest on substantially different
moral principles. A historian must strive only to discover and clarify the factual truth and
explain what actually happened and find data for his research and reasoning only in sources
which are in principle accessible to all, so that other historians too can verify the accuracy
of his findings and conclusions. For a police investigator and a prosecutor the uncovering
of the factual truth is not the ultimate objective but just the means to charge the suspected
perpetrators, condemn and punish them and thereby have justice done as the ultimate
objective of criminal proceedings.
No wonder then that, as opposed to genuine and honourable historians, some
investigators and prosecutors, overly eager to find and bring all offenders to justice, start
being guided by the principle that the end justifies the means. And when they give in to this
utilitarian, not to say Jesuit 14 principle, sooner or later in investigations they start
employing morally objectionable means as well, such as the unauthorised taping of
telephone conversations, blackmail and harassment of family members of accused at large
so as to have them surrender and the extortion of confessions and desired information by
torturing a captured or imprisoned person, including the latest technique of suffocation with
water, better known as water board. In the process, investigators and prosecutors assess the
ratio of the evil inflicted on the arrested or accused person and the innocent members of his
family, on the one, and the utilitarian value of the resulting effect, especially the utility and
usefulness of information obtained in that way, on the other hand. And if the obtained
benefit in criminal proceedings outweighs the evil inflicted in the process, the use of
morally objectionable means is, from their point of view, justified.
Donia, regrettably, did not see the substantial difference between utilitarian morale,
adhered to by overly ambitious investigators and prosecutors and deontological morale
upheld by scientists, including historians. And that is the reason that, when writing his
reports for the Hague Tribunal, he excessively puts himself into the position of a police
investigator and prosecutor, i.e. the employer who engaged him. That is why, as we have
convincingly shown, he makes evident mistakes, including the citing of notorious lies,
concealing and withholding relevant facts, and making biased and malevolent
characterisations. And, worst of all, we can say that he most often did this deliberately, and
much less frequently, at least when mistakes are in question, out of ignorance.
Naturally, it is not out of the question that Robert Donia, like simple folk without
any legal training, cherished an uncritical faith in law as such and that he thought that those
applying the law were acting properly and correctly, not to say justly, while overlooking the
14 Finis sanctificat media.
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fact that superior force in the final analysis produces true effectiveness and that those who
wield such force are sooner or later tempted to act outside and even in contravention of the
law, just like they may prescribe and apply unjust law.
In the hope that Robert Donia can still learn something about law and justice, we
shall remind him of Anacharsis’ words to Solon. Like Lycurgus, Solon too was faced with
the difficult task of devising how to weed out injustice and greed in Athenian citizens by
new laws. When his newly-acquired friend Anacharsis learned of his intention to suppress
human injustice and cupidity by the letter of the law, he was suspicious of the success of
such an attempt in advance. “Laws” - says he – “are like spiders’ webs; they hold the weak
and delicate who are caught in their meshes, but are torn to pieces by the rich and
powerful,” 15 . Solon replied that he was not adapting law to civic life so that everyone
would immediately realise how much better it was to act pursuant to laws than act
unlawfully. But, Plutarch concludes, Anacharsis’ predictions rather than Solon’s hopes
were borne out. It has, regrettably, been so since time immemorial and it will be so in the
foreseeable future.
Finally, although he is a historian, Robert Donia omitted to cite and explain the
causes and consequences of the events preceding the civil and religious war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina and the crimes stemming from them. It would have, however, sufficed to use
the analogy between the 1861 to 1864 American civil war of secession and our civil war on
the soil of the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1995. The primary cause of the American
civil war of secession was certainly the original division into states with and without slaves
along the Mason & Dixon Line, the “three-fifths” compromise specifying that in respect of
the distribution of deputy seats in the House of Representatives and the amount of direct
taxes, five slaves were to be counted as three free citizens (Article 1, paragraph 2, item 3 of
the 1787 Constitution) 16 and the compromise regarding the slave trade allowing the import
of slaves until 1808, with taxes not exceeding ten dollars per head (Article I, paragraph 8,
item 1). One of the first indications of what would happen in the USA in 1861 was South
Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification of 24 November 1832, by which this member state
appropriated the right to annul specific acts of the Congress of the United States, and the
direct cause preceding the war of secession was the decision of the Supreme Court of the
United States in the 1857 Dred Scott case, formulated by Chief Justice Taney, and which
already on 16 June 1858, Abraham Lincoln was among the first to challenge.
Robert Donia could have reasoned in the same way about the causes of the 1991 to
1995 civil war on the soil of the former Yugoslavia which was, in our opinion, also a
secessionist war. If we exclude the insufficient cognateness of the peoples who in 1918
united into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the key reason which in the long
run led to the break-up of Yugoslavia was its federalisation at the second session of the
Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia on 29 November 1943 and
the subsequent division of federal units along internal administrative borders which, due to
the ethnic mix, except in the case of Slovenia, could not ensure any passable measure of
national homogeneity of each individual federal unit. An additional and, most probably the
15 Plutarch, Solon, 5.
16 This compromise was abandoned on 28 July 1868, when amendment XIV was ratified.
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decisive reason for the subsequent break-up of Yugoslavia was its confederalisation by the
1974 Constitution. Finally, like the war of secession in the USA was directly caused by the
southern secessionists, so the Yugoslav secessionist war was caused by the Slovene and
Croat secessionists. In particular, the new Croatian leadership lit the powder keg by
promulgating their new Constitution abolishing the constituent status of the Serbian people
and reducing it thereby to an unprotected national minority.
Despite all this, war in Bosnia and Herzegovina could have nevertheless been
avoided had an appropriate compromise been accepted. The first was the deal between the
Muslims and the Serbs which Adil ZULFIKARPA[I] tried to broker, and the second one
was the Cutilheiro Plan which Alija IZETBEGOVI] in breach of faith walked away
from at the last moment, which was the casus belli in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Except for
the second AVNOJ session, the 1974 SFRY Constitution and the agreement between Adil
ZULFIKARPA[I] and Slobodan MILO[EVI], Robert Donia, in all fairness mentions all
these events, but omits to explain their role in the causal sequence of events which preceded
the secessionist war on the soil of the former Yugoslavia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina
itself. Had he done that, he would have had to open the unpleasant issue of the historic
responsibility of both domestic and foreign factors for the outbreak of this secessionist war.
Regrettably, he did not want that, and perhaps did not dare do so. All these are reasons
because of which these Donia’s “historic” documents, and in particular his reports for the
Radovan KARAD@I] trial, are worthless from the professional standpoint and, from the
criminal law aspect, a see-through and insufficiently credible addition to the already raised
indictment. It is not, however, up to us to give a legal characterisation of Donia’s distortion
of the truth to the detriment of the accused and the repeated misleading of the Trial
Chamber.
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF PATRICK J. TREANOR
I INTRODUCTION
The subject of comparative analysis of this paper shall be the following reports of
Patrick J. Treanor:
1. Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research Report
prepared for the case of Radovan Karad`i} (IT-95-5/18), 1 May /?2009/;
2. The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of
Kraji{nik & Plav{i} (IT-00-39&40), 30 July 2001;
3. The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1993-1995. Addendum to the Bosnian Serb
Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of Radovan Karad`i}
(IT-95-5/18), 1 May 2009
4. The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research
Report prepared for the case of Mom~ilo Peri{i} (IT-04-81), 11 October 2006.
5. Mi}o Stani{i} and the Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Addendum to the
Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of
Mi}o Stani{i} (IT-04-79), 21 February 2008.
Patrick J. Treanor wrote all these reports in the capacity of senior investigator and
team leader in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Tribunal for
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the Former Yugoslavia. However, as he has not been graduated from law school, which is
the educational background required of an investigating judge, or at least from a police
academy, without which one cannot be even a police investigator, the question naturally
arises of what then qualifies him to be senior investigator and team leader in the Office of
the Prosecutor in The Hague.
On the basis of his biography one could conclude that he was predestined for a
brilliant academic career. After being graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, at
which he studied Russian and graduated with honours, at Yale University Patrick J. Treanor
completed his post-graduate studies at the Department of Russian and East European
Studies. During his studies he attended summer courses in the USSR (1968 and 1969) and
in Yugoslavia (1969 and 1970), while he acquired the academic degree of master of arts
(M.A.) in 1970 with his master’s thesis “Bulgaro-Soviet Relations, 1917-1923”. He then
studied the Bulgarian language, history and foreign policy 1919-1923 as a part-time
student, attended summer language courses in Yugoslavia in 1971 and 1974, in Romania in
1974 and Greece in 1975, and did research in the Public Record Office of the USA, the
House of Lords Record Office, the British Library in London and the Bulgarian National
Library in Sofia. He acquired the academic degree of doctor of sciences relatively late
(1999) with the thesis “British Policy and Bulgaria, 1918-1919”.
If it is clear that he attended post-graduate studies at the State University in Sofia
and the Institute for Balkan Studies in Sofia in order to learn the Bulgarian language and
study Bulgarian history, it is not at all understandable why for three years he attended postgraduate
studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of
London, when he had completed these same studies at Yale. Nor is it clear what his source
of livelihood was after he completed his post-graduate studies in 1970, as until 1976, when
he started working as a free lance interpreter, he only got a grant from the International
Research and Exchanges Board, from October to November 1974. It is really unusual for
an American to start working and making a living only at the age of twenty-nine and until
then, without any scholarships or grants, pursue his studies, advanced studies and learn
foreign languages. And even if it is believable that Patrick J. Treanor was supported by his
parents until he completed his post-graduate studies in 1970, although that is not customary
in the United States of America, it is almost incredible that they supported him after that
too. All this leads us think that Patrick J. Treanor all the time worked for an American
agency which discharges its activity exclusively abroad and expressly prohibits its
employees from disclosing that. Several circumstances point to that.
During his studies and advanced studies abroad, Patrick J. Treanor learned four, for
Americans difficult languages – Russian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian. He
has an excellent command of Russian and Bulgarian and is fluent in speaking and writing
them. He has a good comprehension of Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian and reads these
languages. In addition, which is exceptionally rare for Americans, he also speaks German,
French and Dutch, a total of seven difficult and mutually different languages. As in
addition to that he has acquired the highest academic titles (M.A. and Ph.D.) and worked in
libraries and archives for years, all this indicated that he would achieve, as we have already
said, a brilliant academic career. To our great surprise, not a trace of it. Not only does he
not have a single bibliographical unit, but he has not even published his master’s or
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doctoral theses. What kind of a scholar with the highest academic titles is it who does not
aspire after immortality by leaving behind several books and tens of articles, which will
testify to his professional and scientific achievements. And even if no particular success is
achieved in this, a consummate scholar must at least feel the urge to do so.
Patrick J. Treanor is a great exception in this, which indicates that all this time he
pursued a different career. In all fairness he himself partly discloses that stating that from
1977 to 1980 he was an intelligence analyst and completed a course for intelligence
analysts at the Defence Intelligence School in Washington. In that capacity he researched
military, technical and general periodicals from several countries and, instead of expert and
scientific papers, wrote abstracts of the relevant material. To do this job he needed to know
Albanian, Bulgarian, German, Romanian, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, which indicates that
he worked for the American intelligence service which discharges its activity abroad. And
although from 1980 to 1994 he had the title of historian and senior historian, over those
fourteen years he did not write a single expert or scientific paper on history, but engaged in
research, the collection of evidence and the assessment of witness credibility and usability
in various investigations and court proceedings, and developed and maintained – according
to his own words – contacts with foreign and domestic officials and private persons.
Finally, despite his highest academic titles, his work for the OTP in The Hague was
not academic by nature. He engaged in research, planning and executing investigation
missions, not rarely under very difficult circumstances. He even, as a member or leader of
investigation teams, leafed through dusty documents in archives in institutions in Republika
Srpska and the Republic of Croatia, picked documents which could be of use in relevant
investigative and judicial proceedings and on the reverse side of their photocopies put code
and number marks, which a real professional historian would never do. He even established
that the authorities of Herceg-Bosna and of the Republic of Croatia massively concealed
appropriate documentation intending to thwart or at least make difficult investigations in
the case of some Croatian officials and military commanders.
As from 1978 /as printed/, he was a research officer and leader of a team of over
thirty employees, which was the focal point within the OTP in which all relevant evidence
is concentrated and the policy of prosecuting and indicting all participants in the war
conflict on the soil of the former Yugoslavia is developed, precisely at the time when most
indictments against suspects for war crimes were brought, this only means that Patrick J.
Treanor had an important if not crucial role in the selection of potential wrongdoers for
whom relevant evidence needed to be collected so that they would be indicted and brought
before the Hague Tribunal. As in addition, as he himself says – he engaged in the collection
and development of policy and contextual evidence relating to all parties to the conflicts in
the former Yugoslavia, there is no doubt that in most of the cases he made the prior
selection of who would and who would not be indicted.
This fact raises several interesting questions. We expect that we are not the first
ones to observe that an American national is at the helm of a team carrying out
investigative measures and collecting evidence, thereby practically decisively influencing
who will and who will not be indicted, as an indictment cannot be brought if there is not
enough evidence on the possible guilt of an accused. In discharging search orders Patrick J.
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Treanor spent the most time, according to the reports he submitted, in the institutions of
Republika Srpska, this leading to the conclusion that it was supposed in advance that most
of the indictees would be from the ranks of Serb officials and military commanders. Patrick
J. Treanor conducted such investigative acts from 7 to 14 December 1997 and from 1 to 14
February 1998. Although he then spent most of his time at Pale going through the archives
of a number of government institutions, he never once went down to the part of Sarajevo
belonging to the Muslimo-Croat Federation to conduct investigative actions in the
institutions of the former government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, although one can reach
Sarajevo from Pale in less than half an hour. In one of his reports he even mentions that on
6 February 1998 he went to the Field Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia in Sarajevo, which leads us to conclude that he in fact, every day, after
finishing work at Pale, went down to Sarajevo and spent the night there.
So when he spent so much time in Sarajevo, how come he never went to a
government institution to collect evidence and relevant documents there? Most probably
because he knew in advance that no Muslim officials or military commanders had
committed a single crime, so that, consequently, there was no need to waste time on
searching through the archives of the former government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We
are now surprised by the statement of former Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, made after the
death of Alija IZETBEGOVI], than an investigation had been conducted against him too,
but that, you see, he did not live.
Although he himself says that he was an intelligence analyst for only four years, and
in our assessment also for the next fourteen years (from 1980 to 1994) while he worked as
historian and senior historian for the Office of Special Investigations, it seems that Patrick
J. Treanor retained some of this intelligence agent instinct even after he came to the Office
of the Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal. This is indicated to us by the unexpected
discovery of his extensive engagement on a more or less irrelevant subject for this trial –
the coding of conversations and messages. To show what kind of a passion is in question,
we shall mention classical historians and their preoccupation with Hieron, the notorious
tyrant of Syracuse. Although a balanced and harmonious account of historic events,
depending on the importance of the subject at hand, demanded that only a couple of
paragraphs be devoted to Hieron’s crimes, there were historians who could not resist
extensively going into numerous irrelevant details, for Hieron was exceptionally
imaginative in abusing, torturing and killing his political adversaries. And by going into the
numerous details of Hieron’s crimes, before their readers they revealed their own
characters, like Suetonius revealed his bizarre taste when carried on at length about the
sexual depravities and perversities of individual Roman emperors.
Similarly, Patrick J. Treanor inadvertently exposed the drive of a true intelligence
officer. When establishing the composition of the so-called hard core of the Serbian
Democratic Party and the highest positions its members held, he particularly emphasised
that the early coding of messages reflected the de facto hierarchy in that core. According
to this code book, Radovan KARAD@I] was “01”, Mom~ilo KRAJI[NIK “02”, Nikola
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KOLJEVI] “03” and Biljana PLAV[I] “04”. 17 He then went into numerous details to show
that the Serb leadership in Bosnia and Herzegovina had already from September 1991
developed, on a conspiratorial basis, a system of inter-party communications and
intelligence work, as attested to by the “Instructions on the intelligence-security and selfdefence
system of the Serbian Democratic Party.” 18
In addition to these Instructions, Patrick J. Treanor examines other instructions and
code books, such as the “Instructions on the Organisation and Manner of Duty Service of
Officials and Executives in Republican State Organs and Coordination with the Duty
Service in the Serbian Democratic Party”, “The Code – System of Communications”, the
“List of Code Signs”, the “List of Code Signs - Vatra”, the “Key to the List of Code Signs”
and the “Secret Names for the List of Code Signs”. 19 One of these secret names was the
phrase “Lipa-126” which designated “Breza – chairman of the committee”. 20 Robert Donia
most probably also had access to these instructions and code books, but being a
professional historian, it never crossed his mind even to mention, let alone analyse them.
Patrick J. Treanor, however, could not resist the urge of a long-standing and experienced
intelligence agent.
But if in this matter Robert Donia better assessed the relevance of conspiracy and
encoding for the subject he was writing about, Patrick J. Treanor, although not a historian,
what he could have been, is visibly more cautious and scrupulous when citing data in
support of his claims. In contrast to Robert Donia, whose reports contain a considerable
number of serious mistakes, in the reports of Patrick J. Treanor, we have discovered only
three mistakes which are, in our judgment, unimportant.
The first is that according to the SFR Yugoslavia Constitution of 21 February 1974,
the Federal Assembly, in addition to the president, also elected the vice-president of the
Republic. 21 The position of vice-president of the republic was envisaged only under the
SFRY Constitution (Article 223) of 7 April 1963, but was abolished by Amendment V of
18 April 1967, after the fall of Aleksandar RANKOVI].
The second mistake is his statement that the meeting in Geneva was, among others,
attended by Alija IZETBEGOVI] and seven other members of the Presidency of the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 22 Initially, this Presidency had a total of seven
members, so that, in addition to Alija IZETBEGOVI], there were six other members. We
shall later show that most of these six had been unconstitutionally co-opted.
17 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of Kraji{nik & Plav{i}
(IT-00-39&40), para. 68.
18 Op. cit. paras 76 and 78.
19 Op. cit. para. 81.
20 Ibidem.
21 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 7.
22 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), 1 May 2009, para. 180.
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The third, in fact typographical, mistake is his claim that the General Framework
Agreement for Peace in BH was initialled by Slobodan MILO[EVI], Miroslav TU\MAN
and Alija IZETBEGOVI]. 23 “Franjo” should stand instead of “Miroslav”.
Such unimportant mistakes are, as a rule, hard to avoid, and it is not impossible that
the writer of this report has made a mistake of that kind.
We are surprised, however, at the use of rare legal expressions, such as the Latin
word desuetudo (Patrick J. Treanor mistakenly cites it as desuetude) which designates
desuetude. 24 However, the subject of our critical consideration will be the sources Patrick J.
Treanor used, his avoiding to mention analogous cases when appropriate, his failure to give
an appropriate characterisation, his erroneous characterisations and his disinclination to
raise the question of constitutionality or legality of a decision or act.
II SOURCES
Patrick J. Treanor’s readiness to repeatedly and systematically use what is known as
intercepted telephone conversations in describing the actions of Serb leaders in Belgrade,
Republika Srpska and the Republic of Serbian Krajina, which Robert Donia also did, but,
truth to tell, to a much lesser extent, gives rise to serious misgivings. Patrick J. Treanor
does this so offhandedly as to cite at least a hundred such conversations and on the basis of
their content derive corresponding conclusions.
The citing and examination of the contents of such conversations causes serious
misgivings and great dilemmas. The question first arises of the legality of interception, i.e.
of the unauthorised and unlawful wiretapping and taping of telephone conversations. As far
as we know, in the United States of America, internal telephone conversations may not be
taped and wiretapped without a previous court order, nor may conversations recorded in
this manner be used as evidence in court. As a consummate agent, Patrick J. Treanor knew
that well, since American intelligence services may wiretap and tape without previous court
permission only conversations outside the United States of America, including also
overseas conversations.
As a jurist I also know that in the former Yugoslavia and the new states which were
created on its ruins, it was also prohibited to wiretap and record telephone conversations
without a previous court order. Therefore, all the recordings of the telephone conversations
which Patrick J. Treanor so often cites and analyses, have been unlawfully obtained. Since
it is our duty, as a Serb citizen, to abide by the laws of the state we live in, we have no
intention of citing and analyzing evidence obtained in an unlawful manner, even if it would
be to the detriment of the accused who engaged us as an expert witness.
We are aware that unlawfully obtained recordings of telephone conversations can be
said to have some probative value. That is indubitably true, just like confessions and
23 Op. cit., para. 322, footnote 472.
24 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1993-1995. Research report prepared for the case of Radovan KARAD@I]
(IT-95-5/18), para. 60.
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information obtained by torture have even greater probative value. But, we have to know
where the use in court of evidence obtained in this way leads. This can be illustrated by the
well-known reasoning of the United States Supreme Court where the issue was raised of
the validity of evidence obtained by police raiding a flat without a previous court order.
Although a large quantity of drugs was found in that instance, the Court concluded that
admission of evidence obtained in this way could lead the police to repeatedly act
unlawfully. And when the police, which should prevent others from breaking the law, acts
unlawfully, then there is no remedy to thwart and prevent that. It is not, naturally, out of the
question that Patrick J. Treanor really thinks that what is prohibited in his state, can be
allowed in a banana state in the Balkans. Those who are better versed in the secrets of the
human soul may perhaps in this discover an imperial syndrome or some sort of a national
or racial prejudice.
Since Patrick J. Treanor by his education and the impressive results achieved in it,
primarily belongs to the academic world, he could have asked himself in which occasions
historians and other scientists may cite and use audio recordings. In the United States of
America this can be done only on condition that the audio recordings in question are in the
public domain, which is achieved by depositing them in an appropriate institution, a type of
public library or archives. As far as we know, the taped telephone conversations of Serb
leaders are still not in an institution of that kind and are not accessible to anyone except the
foreign intelligence service which taped them and the Office of the Prosecutor of the Hague
Tribunal which obtained them from that service.
What merits a special explanation is the fact that Patrick J. Treanor cites and
analyses only taped telephone conversations of Serb leaders, as if that intelligence service
did not also tape the telephone conversations conducted by Alija IZETBEGOVI], Franjo
TU\MAN, Mate BOBAN and numerous other Muslim and Croats leaders. If they were
taped and we are sure that they were, how come they were not made available to the Office
of the Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal. And if they were, why does Patrick J. Treanor not
cite and analyse them, as he repeatedly does with the taped conversations of Serb leaders?
Or are we perhaps to believe that Croat and Muslim leaders, in contrast to the naïve and
kindly Serbs, were so cautious that they did not talk on the telephone at all but used carrier
pigeons or were, through divine providence, endowed with telepathy.
The second disputable source used by Patrick J. Treanor were confidential messages
and notes from secret meetings which are inaccessible not only to the author of this report
but also to everyone else. For instance, in question is a confidential report by Cyrus Vance
and Lord David Owen on their visits to Belgrade and Zagreb on 6 January 1993, a memo of
a secret meeting between General Rupert Smith and Radovan KARAD@I] on 21 May
1995, coded telegrams of Yasushi Akashi to Kofi Annan, a coded telegram of Iouri
Miakotnykh to Kofi Annan and Mishel Moussali’s coded fax to Iouri Miakotnykh. Patrick
J. Treanor probably thought that these secret messages and reports were of essential
importance for the subject he is reporting on, so that he cited and analysed them. In
question are messages and reports of officials who in this or that way acted under the
auspices of the United Nations, so that their confidential and coded documents could be
obtained relatively easily in view of the fact that the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia was created by the United Nations Security Council.
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If, according to Patrick J. Treanor, such confidential reports and messages were of
great importance for the subject he is reporting on, even more important were the reports
and messages sent by high diplomatic representatives of the big powers to their
governments after their frequent missions in the Balkans. One of them was the American
diplomat Richard Holbrooke whose confidential missions led not only to the incursion of
the army of the Republic of Croatia into Western Slavonia on 1 May 1995 and the Knin
Krajina on 4 August 1995, which were United Nations safe zones, but also to the Dayton
peace negotiations in November 1995, not to mention his role in the reconciliation of the
Croats and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the creation of the so-called Federation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina (in fact the Muslimo-Croat Federation within Bosnia and
Herzegovina). All these decisive facts, which first led to the violation of the United Nations
Security Council Resolution by the Croatian Army and the annulment of the so-called
Vance Plan of 8 December 1991 and then also to forcing the leaders of Republika Srpska
to be represented in Dayton by Slobodan MILO[EVI], are inseparable from the role of
Richard Holbrooke.
Had he genuinely wanted his reports to be complete and without any gaps, Patrick J.
Treanor should have obtained without fail all Richard Holbrooke’s confidential messages
and reports. In order to achieve that, he only needed to have proposed to the Tribunal he
works for to request from the government of the United States of America all the
diplomatic messages and reports of Richard Holbrooke. Had the American government
been in two minds about whether to do that, he could have demanded that a sub poenae be
issued which would force it to comply. He failed to do that, perhaps because he really
believes that no one can force the American government to do anything. In any case, due to
the omission of Holbrooke’s diplomatic messages and reports, whose diplomatic missions
during 1995 were crucial, Treanor’s reports really leave much to be desired in the part
about the mediation which led to the Dayton peace agreement. We can only hope that in
future Patrick J. Treanor will not cite and analyse any confidential and coded message if he
is not capable of obtaining all such relevant messages.
The third disputable source used by Patrick J. Treanor are stenograms, minutes and
audio recordings from the meetings of the highest organs of SFR Yugoslavia and FR
Yugoslavia. First and foremost, the audio recording of an undated and unauthorised speech
of the Federal Secretary for National Defence, stenograms of meetings of the State Policy
Coordination Council, the State Council and the Supreme Defence Council of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia and notes from the meeting of the leaders of the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska in Dobanovci on 25 August 1995. All these notes are
in the Archives of Yugoslavia and will be accessible to the professional public for
examination and study only thirty years after the date they were made, pursuant to the law
on confidential archival records. Truth to tell, very interested persons, including the author
of this report may apply to the government of Serbia to examine archive materials under
embargo even before the expiry of this period. That would, however, mean that the
documents in question may not be published and that other experts, historians in particular,
could not verify the authenticity of such documents, neither of Patrick J. Treanor nor of the
author of this report.
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There does not, naturally, exist a serious historian or legal author who would agree
to such conditions, for their fulfillment would thwart inter-subjective verifiability without
which there is no science. It is really strange that Patrick J. Treanor, with his highest
academic titles, should agree to restrictions which are appropriate only for intelligence
agents and police investigators, as he knows that confidential documents, parts of which he
quotes, he may not publish as a whole, and that no one, including the writer of this report,
can check if these allegations are authentic.
In order better to understand what the absence of inter-subjective verifiability may
lead to, we shall mention Treanor’s report “Mom~ilo Peri{i} and the Supreme Defence
Council 1993-1998”, which is marked as confidential and it is precisely for that reason that
we will not quote or analyse it. After the introductory 49 paragraphs, Patrick J. Treanor
gives a summary of as many as 57 sessions of the Supreme Defence Council of FR
Yugoslavia. In so doing, after quoting the agenda of the session, in one or two sentences he
shows who said what on which page of the stenogram, focusing on what Mom~ilo PERI[I]
said.
One need not be very well versed in hermeneutics to understand that the meaning of
a word or syntagm is determined by its context, i.e. the co-location, and that the meaning of
a given word or syntagm is to a certain degree modified and even changed depending on
the context. As Patrick J. Treanor quotes one or two sentences which are to present
everything that Mom~ilo PERI[I] or Slobodan MILO[EVI] said at a session of the Supreme
Defence Council, we immediately have to ask if he did that scrupulously or arbitrarily and
if these one or two sentences credibly represent the essence of what was said. To establish
that we would have to examine the original stenograms in the Serbian language, which we
will be allowed to do, pursuant to the law in force, depending on the date of the session in
question, starting from 2023 to 2028 and afterwards. And then this Tribunal will no longer
exist, nor are we sure that we shall live to see that.
The fourth objection concerns the citing of credible sources for the claims that are
made. An example is the following statement Treanor made: “According to later reports,
by Lord CARRINGTON and Stipe MESI], in the second half of March 1991, MILOŠEVI]
and TU\MAN met secretly at Karadjordjevo in Vojvodina. At the meeting, they discussed
the partition of BH. MESI] said that he had organized the meeting and that MILO[EVI] and
TU\MAN met 48 times during the war./”/ 25
The only source corroborating this claim is an article in Na{a Borba of 11 August
1995, entitled “Lord Peter Carrington – Slobodan MILO[EVI] and Franjo TU\MAN
Agreed to Divide Bosnia” and Stipe MESI]’s statement in Monitor of 28 March 1997. As
far as we know, neither Lord Carrington nor Stipe MESI] attended the TU\MAN-
MILO[EVI] meeting in Kara|or|evo, and their statements are therefore second-hand
testimony. Particularly disputable is the statement of Stipe MESI], as he made it seven
25 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 22. Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995.
Research report prepared for the case of Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para. 38.
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Translation
years later, only after he had parted ways with TU\MAN and formed his own schismatic
political party.
It is indeed strange that Patrick J. Treanor, who obtained so many coded messages
and confidential stenograms under embargo, was not able to obtain the stenogram or at
least TU\MAN’s notes from the meeting in Kara|or|evo. 26 And when he did not manage to
do that, he should have been much more cautious when referring to hearsay and secondhand
testimony. All the more so as when mentioning less important meetings between
Radovan KARAD@I] and several lower-ranking officials of the Republic of Croatia on 14
and 19 October 1994 in Zalu`ani near Banja Luka, he refers to the transcript of the minutes
or stenogram from the meeting in the office of Franjo TU\MAN on 21 October 1994 in
Zagreb. 27
III DELIBERATE AVOIDANCE OF OBVIOUS ANALOGIES
As a highly educated American Patrick J. Treanor surely knows well that there
exists an essential difference between the external borders of the United States of America
towards neighbouring countries and the internal borders between the member states. All the
states of the world are obliged to respect the former and in the event of their violation, it is
legitimate to resort to armed force, while internal borders are exclusively the concern of the
Americans themselves and in principle they can be changed, as was done during the war for
secession when West Virginia was formed as a new federal unit by the secession of part of
the territory of theretofore Virginia.
It would be expected that Patrick J. Treanor would be consistent in his reasoning
and that he would conclude that what applied to the American federation should also be
applied to the former Yugoslav federation (SFRY). It appears, however, that he does not
suffer from this kind of consistence and that, according to him, one can treat the former
Yugoslavia in a manner that would be strongly condemned if one tried to treat the United
States of America in like manner. Treanor’s following account indicates that:
“On 27 August 1991 an EPC Extraordinary Ministerial Meeting adopted a
Declaration on Yugoslavia expressing the EC’s dismay /over/ the increasing violence in
Croatia. It reminded those responsible for the violence of the EC’s determination never to
recognize changes of frontiers which have not been brought about by peaceful means and
agreement.” 28
The European Community took an identical position also on 7 September 1991,
when it said:
26 It seems that Slobodan MILO[EVI] did not leave behind any personal diary or notes.
27 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1993-1995. Addendum to the Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research
Report prepared for the case of Radovan Karad`i} (IT-95-5/18), para.177, footnotes 357 and 358.
28 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para.126.
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Translation
“We are determined never to recognize changes of any borders which have not been
brought about by peaceful means and agreement…” 29
If we correctly understood these basically identical statements of the European
Community made in August and September 1991, it was resolutely against any changes of
the borders of Yugoslavia not brought about by agreement and peaceful means. That meant
observance of Article 5, paragraph 3 of the Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia, which lays
down that “A border of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia cannot be altered
without the concurrence of all republics and autonomous provinces”. It could also be
gathered that these statements of the European Community implied that in addition to the
external ones, the internal borders of the then Yugoslavia could not be changed either,
pursuant to Article 5, paragraph 2 of this Constitution, namely that the territory of a
republic, as a federal unit, cannot be altered without its consent.
When then in January 1992, all the member states of the European Community
recognised Slovenia and Croatia as independent and sovereign states, without the previous
unanimous consent of all the Yugoslav republics and provinces to the change of the borders
of SFR Yugoslavia, it turned out that the European Community considered inviolable only
the internal borders between the federal units and that the external borders of the then
Yugoslavia could be changed by all possible means, including unconstitutional secession
and force. It is really strange that such an experienced intelligence analyst missed such an
obvious inconsistency on the part of the European Community. It is as if a big power called
in question the external borders of the United States of America and incited individual
member states to secede in an unconstitutional way while at the same time claiming that the
borders of the seceded federal units were inviolable.
Patrick J. Treanor is similarly inconsistent when speaking about the Alija
IZETBEGOVI], Radovan KARAD@I] and Mate BOBAN agreement concluded on 30
January in Geneva in the presence of Cyrus Vance and David Owen. Pursuant to the fourth
point of this agreement, “all matters of vital concern to any constituent people would be
regulated in the Constitution, which as to these points could be amended only by consensus
of these constituent peoples… 30 Therefore, if the status of Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot
be changed in terms of constitutional and international law without the consensus of the
three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, how could have it at all happened that
on 15 October 1991, the Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina should, without the presence
of Serb deputies, by outvoting, pass a decision on the independence and sovereignty of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Were Patrick J. Treanor at all consistent, he would have surely
concluded that the unanimous consent of representatives of the three constituent peoples
had been required for changing the constitutional and international legal status of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and that outvoting on such a crucial matter was the casus belli.
29 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para. 122.
30 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 190.
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Translation
No less questionable is Treanor’s different assessment and characterisation of the
actions of various political parties and their leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thus, in
connection with the forming of the Serbian National Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
he characterises the actions of the Serbian Democratic Party as follows:
“Its first decision, signed by KARAD@I] as President of the Council, indicated the
SDS’s early willingness to resort to extra-legal means to achieve its ends. The Serbian
National Council declaration stated that the Serbian people in BH, based on their
determination to live in a united federal state, would accept no decision on altering the state
character of BH other than one approved by a referendum of the Serbian people. In keeping
with this platform, the Bosnian leadership considered ways of practically keeping BH in a
federal, Yugoslav structure and from a very early date planned for future eventualities in
which the republican (SRBiH) authorities would cease functioning.” 31
Already in the first sentence Patrick J. Treanor noticed the early willingness of the
Serbian Democratic Party to resort to unconstitutional means, without having noticed that
the Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Union had resorted to such
means before this party. And despite the obvious analogy in this instance, Patrick J.
Treanor chose to disregard it. That notwithstanding, he could have at least pointed to the
essential difference between the objective aspired after by the Serbian Democratic Party
and the purposes pursued by the Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic
Union. As he himself explains, the Serbian people, led by the Serbian Democratic Party,
expressed its firm determination to continue to live in a united federal state, i.e. in the then
Yugoslavia, but was not willing to accept any change of the constitutional and international
legal status of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Need we at all say that this objective was in
perfect harmony with the then valid Constitution of the SFRY and the Constitution of SR
/Socialist Republic/ of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And conversely, the efforts of the Muslims
and Croats, led by their respective parties, for the secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina
from FR Yugoslavia and the transformation of that federal unit into an independent and
sovereign state, were both unconstitutional and unlawful. Patrick J. Treanor must have
noticed that, but he did not write it.
Patrick J. Treanor demonstrated that he was disinclined to observe and point to an
obvious analogy in the following paragraph as well:
“As a result of its victory in the November elections, however, the SDS was able to
directly exploit for its own purposes the official positions in the SRBiH government now
occupied by its nominees… The SDS and its leadership fostered contacts with the JNA
with a view to military and logistical support for their plans to assert control over territory
they claimed and desired, because a corollary of the SDS strategy, in any eventuality, was
military preparation. In this connection, the SDS also armed and trained its followers
throughout the republic.” 32
31 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of Kraji{nik & Plav{i}
(IT-00-39&40), para. 77.
32 Op. cit. para. 82.
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Translation
In this observation, Patrick J. Treanor finds fault with the leadership of the Serbian
Democratic Party for having used its positions in the government of Bosnia and
Herzegovina to achieve its own purposes. If that is true, had not the leaderships of the
Party of Democratic Action and of the Croatian Democratic Union done the same? The
only difference was that the objective of the Serbian Democratic Party had been
constitutional and lawful – to preserve the territorial integrity of SFR Yugoslavia, while the
objectives of the Party of Democratic Action and of the Croatian Democratic Union had
been unconstitutional and unlawful – the dismemberment of SFR Yugoslavia and the
establishment of an independent and sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition,
Patrick J. Treanor holds it against the leadership of the Serbian Democratic Party that it
fostered cooperation with the Yugoslav People’s Army and armed and trained its followers.
However, disinclined to drawing analogies, he failed to mention that the leaderships of the
Party of Democratic Action and of the Croatian Democratic Union had formed, armed and
trained their paramilitary units much earlier.
In addition to his disinclination towards pointing out obvious analogies, Patrick J.
Treanor has convinced us that he is not using his own head even when simple matters are in
question. The following section is an unequivocal indication of that:
“On 5 October 1991 the EC and member states, in a Declaration Concerning the
SFRY Presidency, announced it was ’not prepared to acknowledge any decisions taken by a
body which can no longer pretend to speak for the whole of Yugoslavia’. They rejected
what they called a seizure of the Presidency by Montenegro and Serbia, which had already
been condemned by other republics of Yugoslavia, and condemned it as an illegal action
against the constitution of Yugoslavia and the Charter of Paris.” 33
Subscribing to this characterisation of the European Community, which was for
him, in addition to his own American government, an unassailable authority, Patrick J.
Treanor characterised the Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia as a “rump Presidency”. 34 There
were, of course reasons for such a chacterisation as, when representatives of Slovenia,
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia left it, the number of members of this
Presidency fell to four members, although one of its internal regulations allowed the
adoption of valid decisions in such a composition also in the event of a state of emergency.
Despite that, for Patrick J. Treanor, just like for the European Community, the “rump
Presidency” was no longer a constitutional organ of SFR Yugoslavia, and therefore, its
decisions were not to be acknowledged, nor it recognised in diplomatic communication.
As identical characterisations and conclusions in more or less identical cases are an
imperative requirement of any intellectual work, Patrick J. Treanor was expected to
characterise every constitutional collegiate organ the number of members of which falls
below that required for adopting valid decisions as a rump organ whose decisions are null
and void and which should therefore in no way be acknowledged, just like the European
Community did in the case of the rump Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia. Not a word about
33 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), 11 October 2006, para. 131.
34 Op. cit., paras. 134, 135, 137 and 148.
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Translation
that. The most convincing example revealing Patrick J. Treanor’s impermissible
inconsistency is the Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. When it was elected at the
first multi-party elections on 18 November 1990, it had seven members: the Muslims Fikret
ABDI] and Alija IZETBEGOVI], the Serb Mrs. Biljana PLAV[I] and the Serb Nikola
KOLJEVI], the Croats Stjepan KLJUJI] and Franjo BORAS, as well as Ejup GANI] from
the ranks of the “others”, which will be discussed later on. First both Serb representatives
stopped attending the sessions of this Presidency; when armed conflicts broke out between
the Muslims and the Croats, the Croat members also did that, and finally the rump and,
therefore, non-existent Assembly of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina unconstitutionally threw
out Fikret ABDI] from the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, so that it was left with
only two constitutionally elected members: Alija IZETBEGOVI] and Ejup GANI]. There
were, of course, attempts to co-opt new members into the Presidency of SR Bosnia and
Herzegovina without conducting elections, namely in an unconstitutional manner, but that
being unconstitutional, Patrick J. Treanor did not mention it.
There is thus no doubt at all that Patrick J. Treanor knew well that the Presidency of
SR Bosnia and Herzegovina had become a rump one when Serbs and Croats stopped
attending the sessions, and certainly should have, like in the case of the rump Presidency of
SFR Yugoslavia, drawn special attention to that fact. Regrettably, he failed to do so. In
connection with the talks on Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2 do 4 January 1993, convened
by co-chairmen Cyrus Vance and David Owen, he says that Alija IZETBEGOVI]
represented the Bosnian government, Mate BOBAN the Bosnian Croats and Radovan
KARAD@I] the Bosnian Serbs. 35 As due to the radical reduction of the number of
members the Presidency, the Assembly and the Ministerial Council of Bosnia and
Herzegovina no longer existed, Alija IZETBEGOVI] could have represented only the
Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Although he knew that well, Patrick J. Treanor persistently claims that on 25 March
1993 in New York the delegation of the government of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina gave a
statement, which was signed by Alija IZETBEGOVI]. 36 He then goes on to add that on 1
and 2 May 1993, at the negotiations in Athens, Alija IZETBEGOVI] again led the
delegation of the Bosnian government. 37 And in connection with the talks in Geneva on 27
July 1993, he incorrectly informs that they were attended by Alija IZETBEGOVI] and
another seven members of the Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, 38 although he
knew that new members had been unconstitutionally co-opted instead of the originally
elected ones. He repeats the incorrect information that on 9 October 1993, co-chairmen
David Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg met with Alija IZETBEGOVI] and five other
members of the Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. 39
35 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para. 136
36 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), 11 October 2006, para. 193.
37 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para. 173.
38 Op .cit., para. 180.
39 Op. cit., para. 187.
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Translation
There is no doubt whatsoever that with regard to the facts the cases of the rump
Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia and the rump Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina are
identical. When the number of members of the Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia fell from
eight to four, the European Community, the US administration and Patrick J. Treanor
unanimously characterised it as rump, and denied it recognition as an unconstitutional
organ and no longer acknowledged its decisions. The number of members of the
Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina also decreased. First the two Serb
representatives left it, whereby its constitutionality was already challenged, and then also
the two Croatian ones, and finally Fikret ABDI] was also thrown out, so that only Alija
IZETBEGOVI] and Ejup GANI] remained. For Patrick J. Treanor that should have been
reason enough to characterise it as rump, declare it unconstitutional and its decisions null
and void.
However, he did not do that, so the question arises why not. Because the American
government and the European Community continued to recognise Alija IZETBEGOVI] as
the president of the constitutionally valid and not rump Presidency and the government of
Bosnia and Herzegovina as a government formed pursuant to the Constitution and not a
rump government with only Muslim ministers remaining in it. Regrettably, Patrick J.
Treanor thereby showed that he preferred to defer to a higher authority rather than be solely
guided by reasons which require that identical characterisations be made in identical cases.
IV
AVOIDANCE OF RELEVANT FACTS
Although different judgments may exist on which historical facts are important and
as such, have to be adduced, and which are unimportant and may therefore be left out, in
the context of the former SFR Yugoslavia one was unavoidable. That was the basic
orientation of the Croatian Democratic Union, which fundamentally called in question the
federal state and jeopardised not only the existing status but indeed the very survival of the
Serb people in Croatia. It was most convincingly expressed in Franjo TU\MAN’s statement
at a general convention of the Croatian Democratic Union held on 24 and 25 February 1990
in Zagreb: “The independent State of Croatia was not only a quisling construct and a fascist
crime but also the expression of the historic aspirations of the Croatian people.” Patrick J.
Treanor naturally knew about the horrendous genocide committed by the Independent State
of Croatia against the Serbs during the Second World War, just like he surely knew how the
“historic aspirations of the Croatian people” in TU\MAN’s new Croatia were realised at the
cost of ethically cleansing between 450,000 and 500,000 Serbs, so that their share in the
total number of inhabitants of Croatia fell from 12.7% to 2.16% at the last population
census. Despite all that, Patrick J. Treanor omitted to show the basic thrust of TU\MAN’s
Croatian Democratic Union.
History scholars know very well that when putting together a mosaic of known facts
which should represent a historic reality, one always selects given facts pursuant to the
adopted criterion and what is essential. Naturally, the criteria may differ and what is
important to one person may not be important to another and vice versa. Referring to just
some facts of more or less the same kind and of obviously equal significance while
omitting others is a reflection of ignorance or, which is much more frequent, deliberate bias
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Translation
and selectivity. The latter is one of Patrick J. Treanor’s shortcomings, as, for instance,
indicated by the following account of multi-party elections in the former Yugoslavia:
“On 8 and 22 April 1990 multi-party elections in Slovenia resulted in a severe
defeat for the League of Communists, which with its allies won only 92 seats out of 240 in
the three chambers of the republican assembly.
On 22 April and 6 May 1990 multi-party elections in Croatia produced similar
results with the Communists winning only 73 seats and other left parties 93 out of 356 seats
with 206 going to the nationalist Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) in the republic’s
assembly, the Sabor. On 30 May 1990 the Sabor elected Franjo TU\MAN, the leader of the
HDZ, President of the presidency of Croatia.” 40
In these paragraphs Patrick J. Treanor mentions the multi-party elections in
Slovenia and Croatia, which were indeed decisive for the wretched fate of the former
Yugoslavia, but does not mention the exceptionally important fact that federal multi-party
elections, which should have been simultaneously held in all the then federal units, were
not held at all. And that was the reason why, except for the Presidency of SFR Yugoslavia
whose members were elected by republican and provincial assemblies, the terms of office
expired of both the Assembly of SFR Yugoslavia, whose term of office was extended
twice, and of the Federal Executive Council, which had precisely been the intention of
those who opposed the calling of the first federal multi-party elections. In other words,
those who had allowed only republican and prevented federal multi-party elections did that
intending to implement the unconstitutional secession of their federal units. And precisely
Slovenia and Croatia, in which the first multi-party elections were held, were the first
secessionist federal units. As a consummate intelligence analyst Patrick J. Treanor naturally
knew that but deliberately failed to mention it.
In addition, Patrick J. Treanor without any valid reason differently characterisises
the newly elected Croatian and Slovene leaderships. Although both from their very
assumption of power implemented a secessionist policy, he designated only TU\MAN’s
Croatian Democratic Unity as nationalist¸ while omitting such a characterisation for the
Slovene DEMOS. It goes without saying that everyone will wonder why such a distinction.
Most probably because TU\MAN’s Croatian Democratic Union, owing to the large number
of Croats in Western Herzegovina and Central Bosnia, formed Herceg-Bosna, thereby
practically breaking up Bosnia and Herzegovina. It thus turns out that the dismemberment
of SFR Yugoslavia by secessionist republics is not nationalism, while the dismemberment
of a federal unit (Bosnia and Herzegovina) is dangerous nationalism which should be
characterised as such.
The following section in Treanor’s report for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I] is
even more questionable:
40 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), , paras. 13 and 14.
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Translation
“The SFRY state was a one-party state until the ruling League of Communists of
Yugoslavia effectively dissolved in January 1990. The dissolution of the federation itself
followed. This process featured multi-party elections and negotiations among republican
leaders but ultimately brought war in Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 and finally BH in April
1992. By this time, four of the six Yugoslav republics had received international
recognition as independent states (BH, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia).” 41
In this section, to confuse the issue even more, Patrick J. Treanor mentions multiparty
elections as such, without any explanation if they were also federal or only
republican elections in federal units. In all likelihood he deliberately omitted to say that no
federal elections were held at all, for he would have had to state the reasons they were not
called. He also mentions the war in Slovenia and Croatia, but does not explain what led to
that war. For, had he done so, he would have had to say that, like the secession of thirteen
southern states in 1861 led to the war of secession in the United States of America, so the
secession of Slovenia and Croatia led to war in those two federal units. He only added,
several paragraphs later: “Multi-party elections soon followed in Slovenia and Croatia,
resulting in severe defeats for the local Communists and their allies and victories for parties
favouring greater autonomy, or even independence for those republics.” 42 And although on
this occasion he referred to the aspiration of these federal units to secede, he did not see fit
to say that it was in contravention of the federal Constitution and that as such it in fact led
to the war in them.
Similarly, Treanor fails to mention essential facts when he says that at the 18
November 1990 elections, Ejup GANI] was elected member of the Presidency of SR
Bosnia and Herzegovina as a representative of “others”, 43 i.e. voters who were neither
Muslims nor Serbs nor Croats. Although prior to the elections Ejup GANI] had declared
himself a Yugoslav, Treanor did not mention this fact as he knew that it was a trick so that
the Muslims, led by the Party of Democratic Action, would get a third representative in the
Presidency of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. When it became evident that Ejup GANI], as an
alleged Yugoslav, was not defending Yugoslavia but upholding the secession of Bosnia and
Herzegovina from Yugoslavia and attacking the Yugoslav People’s Army with weapons in
Dobrovolja~ka St. in Sarajevo, Patrick J. Treanor is silent on this fact.
It seems that keeping silent about essential facts has become a habit with Patrick J.
Treanor, as attested to by the following account about the 22 December 1990 Constitution
of the Republic of Croatia: “The constitution dropped the reference in Croatia’s constitution
to the Serbs as one of the constituent peoples of the Republic, although it did guarantee
national equality in article 3.” 44 As in English the meaning is not quite clear of the phrase
constituent people, which the Serbs in Croatia had been under all Croatian constitutions
since 1946, Patrick J. Treanor should have used the expression state-building nation, in
41 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), 1 May 2009, para.2
42 Op. cit., para. 10.
43 Op. cit., para. 23.
44 Op. cit., para. 27.
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Translation
order to show that Croatia had until then been at the same time the state of the Croatian and
Serbian peoples. With the abolishing of that status, the Serbs, instead of a nation, became a
national minority.
As an American, Patrick J. Treanor seems not to know what the status of national
minorities is like, and he should be reminded that in his country the Spanish language is not
the official language in the administration and judiciary anywhere, although there are
several tens of millions of Hispanics, and that in administrative and judicial proceedings
sworn court interpreters are engaged, just like when a Serb who does not know English
appears before administrative organs or the court. That is exactly what it is like now in
Croatia, although the Serbs are allegedly guaranteed equal rights, as Patrick J. Treanor
assures us. Serbs are today in Croatia so equal in respect of rights with Croats that they
cannot even address the administration and the judiciary with documents written in their
Cyrillic script, as the Cyrillic alphabet is not an official script, and the state postal service
refuses to deliver letters and other consignments on which the address is in Cyrillic, as
postmen allegedly do not know that script. Had he been just a little less partial towards the
Croats and more benevolent towards the Serbs who suffered a horrendous genocide in the
Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945, Patrick J. Treanor would have
immediately understood why the abolishment of the state-building status of the Serbian
people had been the casus belli in Croatia.
Patrick J. Treanor’s disinclination to show the devastating violation of safe areas in
Croatia established pursuant to a United Nations Security Council resolution and protected
by international peace forces merits special attention. A summary account of the initial
status of these areas is given in the following paragraph:
“December 1991 a working paper (VANCE Plan) prepared by Cyrus VANCE and
Marrack GOULDING was presented to MILO[EVI], TUDJMAN and KADIJEVI]. This
concept for a UN Peace-Keeping Operation in Yugoslavia called for the concentration of
UN peacekeepers in those areas of Croatia in which Serbs constituted a majority or
substantial minority and where inter-communal tensions had led to armed conflict in /the/
recent past.” 45
After Franjo TU\MAN and Slobodan MILO[EVI] accepted the Vance Plan, the
United Nations Security Council passed a resolution establishing safe areas in the Knin
Krajina, Western Slavonia and Baranja, Vukovar and Western Srem, in which
UNPROFOR forces were deployed. Their task was to protect the Serbs in those areas from
attacks of the Croatian army and thereby preserve peace until an appropriate political
solution satisfactory for all conflicting parties was found.
As UNPROFOR was duty-bound pursuant to the United Nations Security Council
resolution to oppose with its armed force any armed attack and thereby ensure peace and
security in these three safe areas, the question arises of how Patrick J. Treanor presented the
45 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 141.
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attacks of the Croatian army on them on 1 May and 4 August 1995 and the shameful role
played by UNPROFOR on that occasion. He did that in the following sections:
“In fact, the next major military development was in Croatia. On 1 May 1995, the
day after the COHA expired in BH, the Croatian Army (HV), launched an offensive
(Operation FLASH) in Western Slavonia, ostensibly in response to the closing of the
highway through the area by the RSK, and quickly seized what had been known as Sector
West. In an intercepted telephone conversation with PERI[I] that morning MILO[EVI]
reportedly blamed KARAD@I] for this development because he had persuaded MARTI] to
keep closing the highway every day.
The same day, 1 May 1995, the UNSC, in a Statement by its President, demanded
that the Government of Croatia ’Put an immediate end to the military offensive launched by
its forces in the area of Western Slavonia known as Sector West which started on the
morning of 1 May 1995 in violation of the cease-fire agreement of 29 March 1994’.
At a meeting with his advisors on the evening of 2 May 1995, however, TU\MAN
declared the operation already successfully concluded. He also evaluated the operation as a
defeat for both MARTI] and KARAD@I].
The Serbian response to Operation FLASH was, in fact, feeble. The RSK launched
rockets at Zagreb on 2 May 1995 and KARAD@I] sent a letter on 3 May to UN Secretary-
General Boutros BOUTROS-GHALI demanding that the civilian population in Western
Slavonia be protected and that the UNSC instruct NATO to force Croatian troops to
withdraw. A few days later, meeting with AKASHI in Belgrade on 9 May, MILO[EVI]
said that he had tried to impress on MARTI] that there was no military solution to the
situation in Croatia and that the only option was to seek a peaceful solution through
negotiations. Although expressing concern about assuring the safety of Serbs still in
Western Slavonia, MILO[EVI] thought MARTI] was playing into Croatia’s hands by
seeking the evacuation of the remaining Serbs there.” 46
Treanor first says that the Croatian Army in Operation Flash attacked Sector West,
which designated Western Slavonia and took it, although it was a safe area which
UNPROFOR had to defend and preserve. And instead of showing not only that
UNPROFOR shamefully stood aside but also informed Croatian commanders of the
location of the Serb forces and their combat readiness, he cites an intercepted telephone
conversation between Mom~ilo PERI[I] and Slobodan MILO[EVI] in which MILO[EVI]
does not blame Franjo TU\MAN and UNPROFOR for the fall of Western Slavonia but
Radovan KARAD@I]. And Patrick J. Treanor does that although he knew about Slobodan
MILO[EVI]’s secret agreement with Richard Holbrooke, which will be discussed below.
Patrick J. Treanor also cites the Presidential Statement of the President of the
United Nations Security Council demanding an immediate stop to the offensive of the
Croatian forces, without noting that a presidential statement does not have the binding force
46 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5), paras.271-274.
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of a voted-in resolution of the Security Council, so that this statement was made without
any intention of having the Croatian army comply with it. All the more so as the President
of the Security Council did not in his statement threaten the Republic of Croatia with
sanctions if its army did not immediately withdraw from the territory of Sector West, i.e.
Western Slavonia. Although in fact everything had been agreed in advance through the
mediation of Richard Holbrooke in his confidential talks with Franjo TU\MAN and
Slobodan MILO[EVI], Patrick J. Treanor feigns ignorance and does not mention this
essential fact at all but says how Slobodan MILO[EVI] through MARTI] turned over
Western Slavonia to Croatia. At the end he adds that Slobodan MILO[EVI] requested the
“evacuation of the remaining Serbs there” as if their fleeing for fear of death and abuse was
MILO[EVI]’s own doing, with Franjo TU\MAN and the Croatian Army having nothing to
do with it, rather than forcible ethnic cleansing which is an essential element of genocide.
An anthological example of avoiding anything that is essential is Treanor’s
explanation of the fall of the Knin Krajina on 4 August 1995:
“The Croatians, however, launched their own Operation STORM first, on 4 August
1995, against Sectors North and South in Croatia, that is, most of the RSK, and quickly
seized them with Knin. The SVK, civil authorities and almost the whole population fled
from these Sectors, effectively liquidating the RSK.” 47
Patrick J. Treanor’s memory failed him completely when he was writing this
paragraph. He first lost sight of the fact that Sectors North and South were areas under
United Nations Protection and that UNPROFOR was in them, whose duty it was to protect
and defend the Serbs from attacks of the Croatian Army. Instead of that, which Treanor
again does not mention, UNPROFOR sided with the aggressor and notified him of the
positions of the Serb army and its combat readiness. Patrick J. Treanor also forgot that on
this occasion the United Nations Security Council did not respond even with a presidential
statement as if it had been gripped by collective amnesia and two United Nations safe areas
in the Republic of Croatia had been erased from its memory. Finally, Patrick J. Treanor
states that almost the entire population of Sectors North and South fled from their homes
and does not explain what led them to do that.
Had he jogged his memory at least a bit, he would have surely remembered the
incursion of the Croatian Army into the Medak pocket from 22 to 25 January 1993. In order
to impress on the Krajina Serbs what lay in store for them if UNPROFOR did not protect
them and they were forced to clash with the superior Croatian army, the scorched earth
tactics was applied to the Medak pocket, everything in sight was killed, including the
domestic animals, and all the houses were razed to the ground. This happened on 4 August
1995. The Croatian army attacked the Knin Krajina, without the United Nations Security
Council uttering a single word, or its UNPROFOR doing anything to prevent this attack
and protect the Serb people, but it even informed Croatian commanders of the movements
of the Serb army and people. Fearing that they would be killed, as had happened to their
compatriots in the Medak pocket, the Serb people of the Knin Krajina fled into exile en
masse, while the few who remained behind in their homes were killed without mercy. All
47 Op .cit., para. 307.
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in all, between 220,000 and 250,000 Serbs left their ancestral homes, while about 2,700
them who did not were killed. And instead of calling this pogrom by its true name –
genocide or at least ethnic cleansing and a war crime, Patrick J. Treanor cynically
concludes that the Serb people itself, fleeing from these sectors (North and South in
Croatia), “effectively liquidated the Republic of Serbian Krajina”.
Still, what can be admired in Treanor’s account of the fall of Western Slavonia and
the Knin Krajina and the exile of almost the entire Serb nation from those safe areas, is his
adroitness in apparently speaking about everything without at all mentioning the key figure
who orchestrated and prepared all this – high American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. With
the authority of the only world superpower he struck an oral agreement with Slobodan
MILO[EVI] to leave the Serb people in Western Slavonia and the Knin Krajina to their
miserable fate, to then cripple also Republika Srpska, which was done in Dayton, and that
when he had done this dirty job, the sanctions would be lifted off the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia and thereby also Serbia. And Slobodan MILO[EVI] agreed to all that, without
knowing that he would perish in The Hague.
A corresponding agreement was also hammered out with Franjo TU\MAN allowing
Croatia to wipe out by military force the Republic of Serbian Krajina without any
consequences and international sanctions, to conduct a methodical ethnic cleansing and
practically expel the entire Serbian people from their ancestral homes, and have all that
transpire with a pitiful and ineffectual statement of the President of the United Nations
Security Council of 1 May 1995, while on 4 August 1995, with not even that when the
Croatian army attacked the Knin Krajina. In addition, TU\MAN was promised that
Slobodan MILO[EVI] would prevent the Baranja Corps, which had 27 tanks, from
attacking and taking Osijek in retorsion when the Croatian Army attacked Western
Slavonia, i.e. the Knin Krajina. And exactly this guarantee, which only Holbrooke could
have given, led Croatian General Ivan TOLJ to state, at the moment when the Croatian
army had already penetrated deep into the Knin Krajina, that he did not expect the Baranja
Corps of the Republic of Serbian Krajina to attack Croatia, and that the Krajina Serbs had
always been used as a bargaining chip in deals between the Croatian leadership in Zagreb
and the Serbian leadership in Belgrade.
As such an agreement with TU\MAN could not have been concluded without a
reciprocal move, Croatia was forced to make its compatriots in Bosnia and Herzegovina
renounce Herceg-Bosna as their state, i.e. entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form
with the Muslims a Federation in which Muslims would have a dominant majority and
Croats the status of a minority which resulted in the Muslims with their votes electing the
Croatian representative in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Being a brilliant intelligence agent, Patrick J. Treanor knew all this better than the
author of this critical analysis and should have at least mentioned the unavoidable role of
Richard Holbrooke if he could not or did not dare go into the delicate particulars. If, on the
other hand, he was unclear on some aspects of this matter, he should have in the appropriate
way looked for all Holbrooke’s confidential dispatches and reports, which surely contain
many details which the general public will not be informed of for a long time to come.
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Regrettably, not only did he not do that but he did not even mention Richard Holbrooke, so
we ask ourselves why and for whom is he writing his reports at all.
In the context of the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs in Western Slavonia and the Knin
Krajina, the question arises if that crime is always punishable or selectivity is possible
when naming and condemning the perpetrators. And then also the question if in so serious a
matter Patrick J. Treanor is using his own head and pronouncing his own judgements or
just citing what an authority had said and condemned before him. Let us illustrate this by
his quoting of the Resolution of the United Nations Security Council of 16 April 1993,
which, among other, says “that any taking or acquisition of territory by the threat or use of
force, including through the practice of ’ethnic cleansing’ was unlawful and
unacceptable.” 48 This leads us to conclude that ethnic cleansing as such is both unlawful
and punishable.
Shortly thereafter, referring to Thorvald Stoltenberg’s fax to the Secretary-General
of the United Nations, Patrick J. Treanor states that during the comprehensive Muslim
offensive on Gornji Vakuf and Prozor there had been examples “of ethnic cleansing and
massacring of Croats by the Bosnian army in these locations.” 49 So, here also, an authority
– an official of the United Nations – first said that Muslims had ethnically cleansed and
massacred Croats in Gornji Vakuf and Prozor and then Patrick J. Treanor took that over and
repeated it. He only omitted to ask why the perpetrators of that crime were not subsumed
under the construction of a “joint criminal enterprise” which would include Alija
IZETBEGOVI] and other Muslim officials, like it was done in respect of ethnic cleansing
by individual Serbs, but only individual responsibility of individual perpetrators was
established.
The case of the ethnic cleansing of enormous proportions of the Serbs in Western
Slavonia and the Knin Krajina is essentially different for Patrick J. Treanor. As no authority
– neither the United Nations Security Council nor any high official of this organisation nor
anyone else who should, according to Treanor, be respected and cited – characterised the
expulsion of so many Serbs as ethnic cleansing, for Treanor it was in fact not ethnic
cleansing let alone a war crime. And why should Patrick J. Treanor use his head at all,
when someone else does that much better instead of him?
The fall of Western Slavonia and the Knin Krajina, and thereby the destruction of
the Republic of Serbian Krajina, was preceded by the historical Muslim-Croat agreement
on which Patrick J. Treanor reports as follows: “Major diplomatic developments, however,
were taking place elsewhere that resulted in the replacement of the recent Serbo-Croat
rapprochement with renewed Muslim-Croat cooperation. On 1 March 1994, representatives
of the HR H-B, the RBiH and the Republic of Croatia signed a Framework Agreement for
the Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation and an Outline of a Preliminary Agreement for a
Confederation between the Republic of Croatia and the Federation signed in Washington,
DC. Comprising the so-called Washington Agreement, these documents outlined a process
leading to the formation of /the/ Muslim-Croatian Federation of BH (FBH), military
48 Op. cit. para. 164.
49 Op. cit. para. 184.
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cooperation and mutual transit facilities. IZETBEGOVI] and TU\MAN endorsed the
agreement and also agreed to joint representation in all negotiations with the Serbs
concerning an overall settlement in BH.” 50
If we carefully analyse the sense and reaches of this Muslim-Croat agreement, we
shall arrive at the conclusion that it not only radically changed the status of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and of the three constituent nations in it, but that the borders of Bosnia and
Herzegovina were also changed. As Bosnia and Herzegovina has three constituent nations,
both the United States of America and the European Community held the principled
position that two constituent nations could not decide the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina to
the detriment of the third. That is why they most strongly condemned the negotiations
between Mate BOBAN and Radovan KARAD@I] in Graz on 6 May 1992, at which Bosnia
and Herzegovina was allegedly being divided to the detriment of the Muslims. But when
the Muslims and Croats in Washington agreed to form their Federation, without at all
asking the Serbs let alone talking with them, this agreement was perfectly correct because it
was concluded under the auspices of Washington, even if it was to the detriment of the
Serbs.
Even more misgivings are caused by the Preliminary Agreement for a
Confederation between the Republic of Croatia and the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which evidently changes the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Had by any
chance Republika Srpska concluded an agreement for a confederation with the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. with Serbia, it would have been absolutely impermissible for
the American government and the European Community and would have certainly been
condemned by the United Nations Security Council as well. Patrick J. Treanor naturally
knew that this Preliminary Agreement for a Confederation between Croatia and the
Muslim-Croat Federation was in contravention of the then policy of both the United States
of America and the European Community, which did not allow changes of the external
borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of its internal order without the consent of the three
nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, as this was done in Washington, under the
auspices of the American government, Patrick J. Treanor neither could nor dared in any
way call its authority in question. If he were asked how different yardsticks can be applied
to more or less identical cases his answer would be a diplomatic no comment.
Treanor’s avoidance of essential facts concerning responsibility for starting the war
in Bosnia and Herzegovina is particularly obvious in the more than terse account of Jose
Cutilheiro’s peace plan. In a report entitled The Bosnian Serb leadership, 1990-1992,
prepared for the case of Mom~ilo KRAJI[NIK and Biljana PLAV[I], but which will appear
at the trial of Radovan KARAD@I], there are only remote indications that such a plan had
existed, by mentioning KARAD@I]’s letter to Jose Cutilheiro (para. 66, footnote 192), the
negotiations in Lisbon (para.95) and KARAD@I]’s statement that the Serbian Democratic
Party had successfully advocated the trilateral partitition of Bosnia and Herzegovina along
ethnic lines (para. 97), which had been the essence of Cutilheiro’s plan. And in the report
Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995, prepared for the Karad`i} trial,
it is said:
50 Op. cit., para. 210.
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“On 23 February 1992, the Cutilheiro talks resulted in agreement on a statement of
principles during negotiations in Lisbon. These principles included the creation of a
separate constituent unit within BH for each of its three peoples.” 51
Deliberate avoidance to say more about this plan, and particularly about
responsibility for discarding it is confirmed by the following paragraph in the report The
Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995, which was not
presented at the trial of Radovan KARAD@I]:
“This agreement proved to be only temporary, and on 18 March continued talks in
Sarajevo produced a ’Statement of Principles for the new constitutional agreements
/?arrangements/ for BH’ with a map. This statement provided for a ’state composed of three
constituent units based on national principles and taking into account economic, geographic
and other criteria’. The state was to remain within the existing borders of, and ’neither the
government of BH nor the governments of the constituent units will encourage or support
claims to any part of its territory by neighbour states.’ A working group was to be
established to define the territories of the constituent units. Agreement on this statement,
which was to be the basis of further negotiations, likewise proved temporary.” 52
This paragraph which was omitted from the report for the trial of Radovan
KARAD@I], says that not only the principles for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina
into three constituent units were established, but also a working group to determine the
territory of each of these three ethnic units, which in fact resulted in the map on the first
provisional division. 53 What Patrick J. Treanor omitted to explain are the circumstances in
which Cutilheiro’s plan appeared. It was the last possibility to avoid the civil and religious
war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbian Democratic Party had made the ultimate
concession and agreed to the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on condition that it
be reorganised as a loose federation or confederation of the three national member states.
The Croats and the Muslims also agreed to that, as confirmed by the Statement of
Principles for the new constitutional /?arrangements/ for Bosnia and Herzegovina. A map
was even drawn of the initial delineation according to the 1991 population census. The only
thing left to do was delineation in municipalities in which none of the constituent nations
had an absolute but only a relative majority, seeking to link territorially as much as
possible, pursuant to geographic, economic and other criteria, the unconnected parts of the
three constituent units, on condition that each of the three nations made more or less
identical concessions.
When it seemed that the plan of Jose Cutilheiro, who was acting on behalf of the
European Community, had successfully been brought to completion, there was an
51 Op .cit., para. 111.
52 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 159.
53 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Report prepared for the case of Radovan
KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para. 111.
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unexpected about turn. After talking to American ambassador Warren Zimmerman in
Belgrade, Alija IZETBEGOVI] broke faith, walking out on the already initialled
agreement. He probably came to believe that he could get independence and sovereignty for
Bosnia and Herzegovina and reduce the Serbs in that country to a national minority. It
however, turned out that Alija IZETBEGOVI] had probably been greatly misled by
Warren Zimmerman to think so. War broke out and it ended only when the Serbs in Dayton
were granted recognition for their /?entity/ – Republika Srpska, while the Croats did not
succeed in doing that, primarily thanks to Franjo TU\MAN and his agreement with Alija
IZETBEGOVI] in Washington, establishing the Muslim-Croat Federation, because of
which they are unsatisfied to this day. To that extent it can be said that IZETBEGOVI]’s
going back on his word when he abandoned the Cutilheiro Plan was the casus belli in
Bosnia. Patrick J. Treanor knew that and that is why he deliberately omitted to explain why
the Cutilheiro Plan, if it had been so good and acceptable to all three constituent nations,
had not come to materialise. For had he done that, he would have had to explain the role
American ambassador Warren Zimmerman had played.
Having shown that Treanor omitted to explain why Cutilheiro’s plan was not
implemented, we shall give several other examples of such “resourcefulness” on his part. In
the report prepared for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I], Patrick J. Treanor says that the
peace agreement, proposed by the Serb Assembly, “could be concluded only after units of
the Army of the Republic of Croatia withdrew to the territory of Croatia in accordance with
UNSC Resolution 787 (1992).” 54 Treanor here confirms that the army of the Republic of
Croatia was on the soil of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but he does not say that it committed
aggression and when. There is no doubt that he omitted that deliberately for otherwise he
would have had to say that it was Croatia that first barged with its army into Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Further, only in the report prepared for the trial of Mom~ilo PERI[I], he merely
mentions but does not describe the armed conflict between the Croats and the Muslims in
central Bosnia, 55 while there is no mention of that in the report for the trial of Radovan
KARAD@I]. For, had he done that in this latter report as well and described this conflict in
detail, it would have been clear to everyone that in Bosnia and Herzegovina everyone
fought against everyone: Croats against Serbs and Muslims, Muslims against Croats and
Serbs and Serbs against both. And then it could not be said, as it stems from Patrick J.
Treanor’s report, that only the Serbs attacked while the Muslims and Croats only defended
themselves.
In addition, in the report prepared for the trial of Radovan
KARAD@I], Patrick J. Treanor repeatedly mentions Mate BOBAN as the representative of
the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but does not say anywhere that he was the leader of
Herceg-Bosna, the newly-created Croatian state on territory on which Croats constituted a
majority. For, had he done that it would have been clear to everyone that Bosnia and
Herzegovina no longer existed as a state as in its framework there were no longer either
54 Op. cit., para. 135.
55 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 184.
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Serbs or Croats who accounted for the majority of the population of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Finally, Patrick J. Treanor mentions the International Conference on the Former
Yugoslavia, held from 26 to 28 August 1992 in London, and concludes that this conference
(ICFY) “was empowered to remain in being until an overall settlement had been reached on
the problem in the former Yugoslavia.” 56 He only omitted to say who, i.e. which
international institution had empowered this Conference to continue to act. He did not do
that because he knew well that this Conference had empowered itself, i.e. that it had been
self-styled, without any international mandate.
V AVOIDANCE OF APPROPRIATE CHARACTERISATION AND
MISCHARACTERISATION
One of the means Patrick J. Treanor employs in order for his reports to conform to
the expectations of his employer are inappropriate characterisations and
mischaracterisations. He is primarily guided by the political standards of a higher authority,
which he as a rule embraces.
The first such example is the following account:
“On 17 July 1990, in his opening speech to the founding assembly of SDS in BH,
Radovan KARAD@I] decried what he saw as the unfavourable political position of the
Serbian people and recalled the ’genocide’ to which the Serbs had been subjected during
World War II.” 57
When you put the word genocide in quotation marks that means, as far as we know
English, that in question is alleged or so-called genocide, a crime which KARAD@I] in
fact qualifies as genocide but which does not have to mean that for someone who puts the
word in quotation marks. If that is really so, we should then ask if Patrick J. Treanor had
ever read the statement of Paveli}’s deputy Mile BUDAK, that of the Serbs in the
Independent State of Croatia, which covered Bosnia and Herzegovina as well, one part
were to be killed, one part converted to Catholicism and the third part expelled. And could
he at all have doubted that the Croatian Ustashas did not carry out their threats? Thus,
according to Patrick J. Treanor, it turns out that the killing of hundreds of thousands of
Orthodox Serb men, women and children, is not genocide but only alleged or so-called
genocide which KARAD@I] invokes to justify Serb claims to territories in which Serbs
were no longer a majority after the Second World War.
The second example of not only an incorrect but also a malevolent characterisation
is the following paragraph:
56 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para.130.
57 The Belgrade Leadership and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the
case of Mom~ilo PERI[I] (IT-04-81), para. 47.
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“All of this occurred in a situation of increasing political tensions and indeed armed
conflict between Slovenia and Croatia, on the one hand, and the federal authorities and the
Serbian leadership in Belgrade on the other.” 58
If we are to believe Patrick J. Treanor, it turns out that Slovenia and Croatia, on the
one hand and the federal and Serbian authorities in Belgrade on the other were, in 1991 and
at the beginning of 1992, at war. The conflict in Slovenia broke out when the Slovene
police and army unconstitutionally occupied the border crossings with Austria and Italy,
after which the Federal Executive Council, presided over by the Croat Ante Markovi}
decided that the Yugoslav People’s Army would, without live ammunition and tank shells
regain control of these crossings. At that moment the minister of defence and the
commander of the Yugoslav People’s Army was General Veljko KADIJEVI] who, judging
by his last name could no way be a Serb. So where is the Serbian leadership there as one of
the conflicting parties to the war?
Even more malevolent is the characterisation of the conflicting parties in Croatia.
Armed conflict broke out primarily because the new Croatian Constitution deprived the
Serbian people of its state-building status, thereby reducing it to a national minority and
thus forcing the Serbs to request autonomous status within Croatia, which was denied them
by the new Croatian authorities. In addition, Croatian armed forces were besieging barracks
of the Yugoslav People’s Army intending, among other, to lay their hands on heavy
armaments, especially tanks. Thanks to that in Vara`din they managed to seize 41 tanks,
several self-propelled guns and about fifty artillery pieces. Not to mention the harassment
of the family members of officers of the Yugoslav People’s Army so as to force their
husbands and fathers to surrender in the barracks under siege. Patrick J. Treanor subsumes
all these Croatian misdeeds under “increasing political tensions and indeed armed conflict
between … Croatia, on the one hand, and the federal authorities and the Serbian leadership
in Belgrade on the other.”
The following paragraph is the third example of an incorrect characterisation:
“From October 1991 the Bosnian Serb leadership, in fact, began openly
undermining the joint state (BH) and setting the foundations for a separate Serbian entity –
both at the central and local levels – against the possibility of SRBiH’s secession from
SFRY along the Slovenian-Croatian model…” 59
Patrick J. Treanor first characterises Bosnia and Herzegovina as a joint state,
although already in October 1991 it was only a member state of the Yugoslav federation.
And then it turns out that the Serbian Democratic Party fought against the unconstitutional
secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e. for the survival of the joint federal state. Had he
been at least a bit fair, Patrick J. Treanor would have had to add that the efforts of the
Serbian Democratic Party for the preservation of SFR Yugoslavia had been in perfect
58 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of Kraji{nik & Plav{i}
(IT-00-39&40), para. E9.
59 Op. cit., para. 287.
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Translation
conformity with the federal Constitution and that the secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina
had been unconstitutional.
The fourth example of incorrect and malevolent characterisation is the following
account:
“The Bosnian Serb leadership orchestrated a political process with the stated goal of
remaining in SFRY… By the end of 1992, the Bosnian Serbs had forcibly seized 70% of
the territory of BH in an attempt to preserve their links with their fellow Serbs in SFRY,
and later FRY. The joint multi-ethnic republican system was ultimately replaced with an
ethnically defined and separately administered (if territorially still undetermined) Bosnian
Serb statelet.” 60
The question first arises of why at all should the Bosnian Serbs orchestrate their
remaining in SFR Yugoslavia, when it was sufficient for them only to abide by the federal
Constitution and law. And how would American Patrick J. Treanor take it if someone said
that the citizens of Michigan should orchestrate their remaining in the United States of
America? Or does he perhaps think that the United States of America, as ruled by the
United States Supreme Court in the famous case Texas v. White, 61 is a perpetual union of
indissoluble states, while SFR Yugoslavia is a fragile federation which can be broken up at
any moment, both from without and within.
Even more peculiar is Treanor’s contention that Bosnia was a “multi-ethnic
republican system” which was ultimately replaced “with an ethnically defined and
separately administered Bosnian Serb statelet”. For, if the multi-ethnicity of Bosnia had
been a value in itself, which was disrupted by the creation of a Serb ethnic state or the
remainder of a state (statelet), could we not also say that at the end of 1991, the multiethnic
Yugoslav federation was ultimately replaced with an ethnically defined and
separately administered Slovene statelet? For we cannot believe that Treanor really thinks
that what is permissible for the Slovenes is not permissible for the Serbs and that the
Yugoslav federation may be at any time and without any reproach and condemnation
broken up, while the territorial integrity of the member states, including Bosnia and
Herzegovina, may not be challenged and disrupted in any way.
The following paragraph is the fifth example of incorrect characterisation: “The
new Bosnian Serb power structures eventually displaced SRBiH authority through Serbclaimed
areas in 1992. These institutions came to exercise power in a self-declared,
’independent’ statelet or disconnected territorial sections thereof – on the territory of BH,
in opposition to the legitimate government.” 62
To his misfortune, Patrick J. Treanor here used the term legitimate government,
without knowing as a philologist, intelligence analyst and Tribunal investigator the
meaning of the term legitimacy, and was unable to discern the difference between
60 Op. cit., para. 288.
61 Wallace, 700 at 725; 1868.
62 Op. cit., para. 295.
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legality, i.e. constitutionality on the one, and legitimacy on the other hand. Legality, i.e.
constitutionality means mere conformity with the law, i.e. the constitution in force, so that
the then government of Bosnia and Herzegovina could, with certain reservations, be said to
have been constitutional. Legitimate, on the other hand, is only that state authority which is
consonant with appropriate ideas of justice, freedom and the common weal. Thus
understood legitimacy was portended already by Aristotle when as “proof that a state is
well-ordered” he says that the people of their own accord remain in that state order, and it is
free from “either rebellion worth speaking of or tyrants”. 63 “Legitimacy would, therefore,
be the validity of state authority, i.e. rectitude (moral and every other) in its acquisition and
exercise, instilling in subjects the duty (not only legal but also moral) to submit to such
authority.” 64 Legitimacy is however, dual – procedural and substantive. Procedural
legitimacy is understood to mean the correct manner of acquiring power, while substantive
legitimacy is the correct exercise of power.
As far as we can see, Patrick J. Treanor is not given to consistency in observation
and reasoning, so that, for instance, he did not inadvertently make, for instance, a statement
like the following one: Slovene power structures came to exercise power in a self-declared
“independent” statelet on the territory of Slovenia, in opposition to the legitimate Yugoslav
federal government. So it turns out that, according to Treanor, Slovenes may do what
Serbs may not, which confirms our observation that he does not suffer from consistency in
thinking and drawing conclusions, but that he perhaps suffers from chronic national
prejudices.
The sixth example of disputable characterisation is Treanor’s statement that on 6
October 1991 the European Community “…stated that reports on the JNA’s
disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force indicated that it was no longer neutral and
disciplined…” 65 The fact that Treanor cites such an assessment of the European
Community on the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force, leads us to think that
he, as an intelligence analyst, knows well what proportionate and discriminate use of
military force is. And as he probably analysed first the Persian Gulf War, then the attack on
Afghanistan and finally the aggression of the United States of America and Great Britain on
Iraq, he must certainly have gained reliable knowledge on what proportionate and
discriminate use of force is, as the American army has always abided by the laws of war
which prohibit the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of armed force. Bearing in mind
these American precedents we submit that in 1991 and later the Yugoslav People’s Army
acted in perfect conformity with the laws of war, and if there had been some minor
disproportion and indiscriminate use of armed force, it cannot be compared to what was
done in the mentioned three wars by the American armed force, which, according to Patrick
J. Treanor had surely acted quite correctly.
63 Aristotle, Politics, II, 1272b. __?
64 Kosta ^AVO[KI, Uvod u Pravo I. Osnovni pojmovi i dr`avni oblici, /Introduction to Law I, Basic Concepts
and State Forms/ Belgrade, Publishing Agency Dragani}, 1994, p. 121.
65 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), para. 74.
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The seventh example of incomplete and incorrect characterisation is the following
account:
“US President Bill CLINTON was meanwhile reportedly considering stronger
action against the Bosnian Serbs, including air strikes.” 66
Let me be permitted to say that when citing Clinton’s reasoning above, Patrick J.
Treanor excessively identified himself with an American intelligence analyst while
forgetting that he was, at least nominally, a high official of the United Nations, The Hague
Tribunal being an institution formed by the Security Council. It was therefore his duty to
ask what the legal grounds were of Clinton’s intention to take stronger action against the
Bosnian Serbs, including air strikes, since, as far as we know, any state may, except in selfdefence,
use armed force only if it is, with reference to Chapter VII of the United Nations
Charter, so explicitly authorised by the Security Council. It is indeed strange that Patrick
J. Treanor as a high United Nations official has still not yet studied the Charter of this
organisation.
force:
The eighth example is the following incorrect characterisation of the Muslim armed
“There were also representations of ethnic cleansing and massacring of Croats by
the Bosnian army in these locations.” 67
Although by August 1993 Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state had already long been
divided into three mutually warring sides, Patrick J. Treanor persistently designates its
former institutions as Bosnian and keeps on speaking of the Bosnian Assembly, the
Bosnian government and the Bosnian army. Thus, according to him, the Bosnian Army
massacred Croats in Gornji Vakuf and Prozor. And then he immediately refutes himself by
saying that in Geneva Mate BOBAN complained because of the “Muslim offences against
the Croats in Central Bosnia”. 68 And if for the Croat Mate BOBAN too, just like for all the
Serbs who together with the Croats constituted an absolute majority of the population of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, the so-called Bosnian army was no longer Bosnian but Muslim,
then it should also have been that for the evidently partial Patrick J. Treanor.
The ninth example of not only an incorrect but also a biased characterisation is the
following statement:
“In Sarajevo, the Assembly of the RBiH and the Assembly of the Federation met in
a joint session on 18 July 1994.” 69
It has already been said that after the forming of Herceg-Bosna and Republika
Srpska, and especially after the outbreak of war between the Croats and Muslims in Central
66 Op. cit. para. 171.
67 Op. cit., para. 184.
68 Op. cit., para. 190.
69 Op. cit., para. 218.
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Bosnia, not only all Serbian but also /all/ Croatian representatives left all the representative
and executive organs of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, so that they, from the standpoint of
the Constitution in force, ceased to exist. But, as Muslim representatives had remained in
them, these organs, even though they represented themselves as Bosnian, had in fact been
organs of the Muslim people. Only after the conclusion of the agreement between Alija
IZETBEGOVI] and Franjo TU\MAN on 1 March 1994 in Washington did Croatian
representatives again start attending sessions of the rump Assembly of Bosnia and
Herzegovina without Serbian representatives. This Assembly could have in fact held the
meeting on 18 July 1994, but the meeting of the Assembly of the Muslim-Croat Federation
could no way have been held as no elections could be held in war conditions. We therefore
ask where Patrick J. Treanor obtained information that a joint session was held of the
Assembly of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Assembly of the Muslim-Croat
Federation, when the latter did not exist at all.
The tenth example of misrepresentation is the following statement:
“One important opportunity to represent the RS in peace negotiations was denied to
KARAD@I]. On 29 August 1995, the meeting of Serbian leaders at Dobanovci referred to
above agreed that KARAD@I] would be one of the three RS members of a joint Serbian
delegation at forthcoming peace talks, the other two being KRAJI[NIK and MLADI]. After
objection from the international community to the participation in the negotiations of two
ICTY indictees, however, the 55 th session of the RS National Assembly on 22 and 23
October substituted KOLJEVI] and BUHA for MLADI] and KARAD@I].” 70
What, according to Patrick J. Treanor, led to Radovan KARAD@I]’s and Ratko
MLADI]’s exclusion from the delegation of Republika Srpska in Dayton was the objection
of the international community, and then in footnote no. 360 as an example of the objection
he cites the report of AP Agency of 3 September 1995 entitled “US Envoy Asked about
Negotiating with ’Accused War Criminals’”. 71 Thereby Patrick J. Treanor disclosed that the
objection of the American diplomat was at the same time the objection of the international
community as for him, the United States of America is, as a super power, practically, the
personification of the entire international community. Therefore, Patrick J. Treanor, as a
currently high official of the Tribunal of the United Nations, should be reminded that at this
moment only this Organisation and no one else is entitled to represent the entire
international community. And, as far as we know, in September 1995 neither the then
Secretary-General of the United Nations nor anyone else officially representing this
Organisation publicly objected because Radovan KARAD@I] and Ratko MLADI] were
included in the delegation of Republika Srpska.
In addition to a series of mischaracterisations, Patrick J. Treanor let slip the
following nonsense:
70 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1993-1995. Addendum to the Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research
Report prepared for the case of Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), 1 May 2009, para. 178.
71 Op. cit., para. 178.
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“Throughout 1991 the Bosnian Serb leadership pursued a policy of
’regionalisation’, which meant organising areas in which Serbs represented the relative
majority into distinct regions through the concept of ’communities of municipalities’. By
initiating the creation of regional bodies of authority through/out/ BH, the SDS thus began
preparations quite early for eventual de facto take-over of Serb-populated territories in BH.
Many of the preparations were conducted conspiratorially and in secret.” 72
If we are to believe Patrick J. Treanor, the Bosnian Serbs, pursuing a policy of
“regionalisation” de facto took-over territories in which they already as a majority held
power in their hands, which means that they took over power from themselves. That is what
happens when malevolence towards the Serbs dims common sense.
VI IGNORING ISSUES OF CONSTITUTIONALITY
When speaking about the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and its
consequences, the serious question of the constitutionality of the acts of this or that side in
the then ethnic conflicts can certainly not be avoided. Robert Donia did avoid it, his excuse
being that it was not his narrow speciality, while Patrick J. Treanor did not resort even to
this excuse, but simply kept silent on every issue of constitutionality as if it did not at all
arise. In this way, without any characterisation or explanation, he quoted the following
actions of the Republic of Croatia annulling the federal Constitution, laws and other
regulations:
“Croatia took a further step toward loosening its ties with the federation on 21
February 1991 when the Sabor adopted a Constitutional Law on Supplementing the
Constitutional Law for the Implementation of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia
and a Resolution on the Acceptance of a Procedure for the Dissolution of the SFRY and on
Possible Association in a Union of Sovereign Republics. The new constitutional law
excluded from application in Croatia any federal constitutional, statutory or other
provisions that were not in conformity with the Croatian Constitution or law. It also
prevented federal organs, without the previous approval of the Sabor or President of
Croatia, from introducing a state of emergency or ordering the use of the armed forces in
peacetime in Croatia. The resolution foresaw the dissolution of the SFRY into several
sovereign and independent states within the existing republican boundaries.” 73
In this paragraph Patrick J. Treanor cites the Croatian Constitutional Law on
Supplementing the Constitutional Law for the Implementation of the Constitution of the
Republic of Croatia and said that this law excluded from application in Croatia any federal
constitutional, statutory or other provisions that were not in conformity with the Croatian
Constitution or law and that moreover federal organs, without the previous approval of the
Sabor or President of Croatia, were prevented from introducing a state of emergency or
ordering the use of the armed forces in peacetime in Croatia. That was in fact a law on the
72 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of Kraji{nik & Plav{i}
(IT-00-39&40), para. E5.
73 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I} (IT-95-5/18), 1 May 2009, para. 29.
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Translation
nullification of all federal documents, which was, from the standpoint of the then valid
1974 Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia, absolutely impermissible and null and void. Patrick
J. Treanor naturally knew that, for he studied already in high school that from the 1830’s in
the United States of America there had been attempts not only to articulate the doctrine of
nullification but also to apply it in practice. All those attempts were, however, thwarted,
and Treanor could have easily concluded that what is not allowed in the American
federation should not be feasible in the Yugoslav federation either. Not only did he not
want to draw such a conclusion and characterise the mentioned Croatian law as
unconstitutional, but he never once called in question the secession of either Slovenia, or
Croatia or of Bosnia and Herzegovina from SFR Yugoslavia, while malevolently viewing
the secession of Serbs within Bosnia and Herzegovina. For when Serbs do that they are
opposing the legitimate Bosnian government, while the federal government, which the
Slovenes and Croats opposed did not, according to him, have any legitimacy.
The latter is confirmed by the following sentence:
“On 25 June 1991, both Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the
SFRY.” 74
Although this was a far-reaching historic fact, Patrick J. Treanor devoted but a
single sentence to it. He neither raised the question of the constitutionality of such a
declaration of independence nor was interested in what the response of the then federal
government should have been. And although he sporadically mentions the role of the
Yugoslav People’s Army, not by a word did he mention its constitutional obligation to
defend and preserve the territorial integrity of the then federal state. It is easy to discern the
reasons for Treanor’s failure to broach the issue of constitutionality. Had he done so he
would have had to characterise the activities of the then leaderships of Slovenia and Croatia
as unconstitutional and shift the blame to them for all the deleterious consequences
stemming from that, including the civil war which thereafter ensued. He, however, would
not do that because of his bias towards Slovene and Croat secessionists. It thus turns out
that for the American Patrick J. Treanor, who was well aware of the horrendous
consequences that the American 1861 to 1865 war for secession led to, secession is
something quite normal and usual when Yugoslavs are in question and which, as such, does
not merit mention longer than one sentence.
Patrick J. Treanor’s position towards Serb secessionists within Bosnia and
Herzegovina is substantially different. According to him, they are operating “behind the
scenes”, 75 carrying out “secession within a secession” 76 and in different ways seeking “to
set up a functional state-within-a-state”) 77 . And, most importantly, as already stated, in so
doing they are opposing the legitimate Bosnian government, which means that their actions
are both unconstitutional and unlawful.
74 Op. cit., para. 54.
75 The Bosnian Serb Leadership 1990-1992. Research Report prepared for the case of Kraji{nik & Plav{i}
(IT-00-39&40), para. E1.
76 Op. cit., para. E4.
77 Op. cit., para. E8.
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Translation
Finally, for Patrick J. Treanor, both the breaking up Yugoslavia and the struggle to
preserve it are actions of the same order. That is why he could say that the leaderships of
the Bosnian Muslims and Croats took steps leading to the independence of Bosnia and
Herzegovina while the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs opposed that, 78 without saying
which of these actions was constitutional and which unconstitutional. To boot, he attributes
only to the Serb leadership in Bosnia and Herzegovina a dual policy – one public, one
secret. Therefore, according to him, this Serbian leadership secretly “continued to plot to
undermine the joint republic from within and made preparations for conflict, in collusion
with Serbs in Croatia and institutions in Belgrade”. 79 It thus turns out that only the Serbs in
Bosnia secretly made preparations for armed conflict and that neither the Bosnian Muslims
nor Croats did so, not to even mention the leaderships of Slovenia and Croatia. Patrick J.
Treanor must then have been mightily surprised when he learned that tank columns of the
Yugoslav People’s Army, without live ammunition and shells, were attacked by Slovene
soldiers and the barracks of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Vara`din surrounded by the
Croatian armed force, when he did not have any information on the fact that a real army
was being secretly created and trained in both Slovenia and Croatia. Or he perhaps still
believes that only the Bosnian Serbs had been doing that when he does not mention the
other ones at all.
Particular proof of Treanor’s partiality is his systematic avoiding to mention
Herceg-Bosna and the armed units of the Bosnian Croats despite the fact that they did
practically the same as the Bosnian Serbs – created their armed units even before the Serbs
and Herceg-Bosna as their secessionist state within the secessionist Bosnia and
Herzegovina. He probably reckoned that stating that the Croats opposed the “legitimate”
Bosnian government in this way could sound like a reproach.
VII CONCLUSION
In the introductory part of this report prepared for the trial of Radovan KARAD@I]
Patrick J. Treanor explains the purpose of this submission to the Tribunal as follows:
“This report describes and documents only some of the events of particular
importance for the development of Serbian goals during the years 1990-1995 and
KARAD@I]’s role in them. It does not pretend to be a history of the whole or any part of
the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s. The focus is rather on the goals of
KARAD@I] and the other Bosnian Serb leaders and the extent to which they achieved
them. The facts recorded thus do not by any means represent the whole story of the
conflicts in the region, but they would be essential elements in any such telling.” 80
78 Op. cit., para. 82.
79 Ibidem.
80 Radovan Karad`i} and the Serbian Leadership 1990-1995. Research report prepared for the case of
Radovan KARAD@I] (IT-95-5/18), 1 May 2009, para. 4.
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Translation
Although warning that the report does not pretend to be a history of the whole or
any part of the former Yugoslavia during the early nineties and although he says that the
recorded facts do not by any means represent the whole story of the conflicts in the region,
he nevertheless believes them to be essential elements in any such telling. In our
judgement, Treanor’s report will not be that at all and already now, if it were accessible to
the public and inquisitive historians, it would meet with far-reaching objections and
criticism.
Its first unforgivable flaw are the sources he used. Intercepted telephone
conversations and coded diplomatic messages not made available to the public may,
naturally, be used in writing police reports, criminal charges and intelligence reports, but
cannot be an essential element of an account of crucial historical events. For, when
confidential sources accessible only to the writer of the report and to no one else are used,
then his statements evade inter-subjective verifiability, without which there can be no true
professionalism and science. In order to understand this better, we should note that Patrick
J. Treanor never cites complete intercepts or coded messages, but just a sentence or two out
of context. And how can a reader at all check if those sentences represent the essence of
what was said or if they have been randomly taken out of the general context if he does not
have access to the entire conversation or message?
Other shortcomings of Treanor’s report are revealed by the following:
“The primary purpose of such a description is to facilitate a realistic and accurate
understanding of the larger context in which it is alleged that KARAD@I] and other
members of the Bosnian Serb leadership were involved in massive violations of
international humanitarian law in BH.” 81
In this paragraph Patrick J. Treanor correctly concludes that the alleged large-scale
crimes attributed to Radovan KARAD@I] and the Bosnian Serb leadership can be really
and correctly understood only in a larger context. Regrettably, not only is there no such
larger context in his reports, but he also persistently strives to distort and misrepresent it.
To that end, he deliberately avoids obvious analogies, withholds essential facts without
which the larger context cannot be understood, avoids appropriate determinations, makes
wrong characterisations and is silent on issues of constitutionality even when they are
unavoidable. The reasons for such ingenuity on his part are transparent. He is in fact trying
to conceal the crucial fact of different treatment of more or less identical or similar cases.
The Prosecutor in this case will surely be satisfied with Treanor’s reports, penned
by an official actually holding a key position in the investigations department, but the
objections we have made will be judged only in the time to come which is Mother of Truth.
SECESSION OF MEMBER STATES WITHIN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, IN
PARTICULAR OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
81 Op. cit., para. 5.
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Translation
During the forcible break-up and subsequent dissolution of the former SFR
Yugoslavia, the question arose if constituent (state-building) nations and their republics
(member states) had the right to secede from the federal state. In constitutional and legal
terms this issue had been solved back in late 1945 and early 1946, when the 31 January
1946 FNRJ /Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia/ Constitution was drafted and
adopted. 82 The original draft of this Constitution laid down that “Yugoslavia is a federal
state formed on the basis of the free and voluntary unification of equal countries”, and that
they had the right to withdraw (secede), this laying emphasis on the contractual and
thereby also the confederal nature of the joint state, on the USSR model.
At the fourth session of the Constitutional Commission held on 21 September
1945, Leo GER[KOVI] proposed a new formulation for Article 1which emphasises “that
Yugoslavia is a federal state into which, on the basis of the right to self-determination, its
nations have voluntarily united at the second session of the Anti-fascist Council of the
People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia”, which actually says that Yugoslavia is a new state
created by contract on 29 November 1943. Fully in keeping with the contractual, i.e.
confederal nature of the new Yugoslavia, GER[KOVI] proposed the following provision
to be incorporated in Article 1 as paragraph number 3: “All republics comprised within the
federal state of Yugoslavia shall retain the right to withdraw from the federal state of
Yugoslavia and the right to unite with other nations.”
After extensive debate in the Constitutional Commission, a solution making the
right to secession contestable and practically non-existent was accepted in the final text of
the Constitution of FNR Yugoslavia which was adopted on 31 January 1945 by the
Constituent Assembly. It was article 1 which reads: “The Federative People’s Republic of
Yugoslavia is … a community of peoples equal in rights who, on the basis of the right to
self determination, including the right of separation, have expressed their will to live
together in a federative state.” Its linguistic meaning implies that when the new Yugoslavia
was created the Yugoslav peoples were vested with the right to self-determination, which
included the right to secession, but those rights, as professor Dr. Radomir LUKI] formerly
pointed out, were consummated by the creation of the new state, so that they no longer had
them. And even more importantly, this right to self-determination, including the right to
secession, was originally vested in the nations comprising Yugoslavia, and not in their then
formed federal units, namely the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians, and not
Croatia, Slovenia or Bosnia and Herzegovina as such.
In its Basic Principles, contained in the Preamble, the Constitution of SFR
Yugoslavia of 7 April 1963 defined the legal nature of Yugoslavia as a composite state as
follows: “The peoples of Yugoslavia, on the basis of the right of every people to selfdetermination,
including the right to secession, on the basis of their common struggle and
their will freely declared in the People’s Liberation War and Socialist Revolution and in
accord with their historical aspirations, aware that the further consolidation of their
82 See: Kosta ^AVO[KI, Ustav kao sredstvo agitacije I propagande, /The Constitution as a Means of
Agitation and Propaganda/, Belgrade, Institute for Contemporary History and Official Gazette, 2011., pp. 10-
16.
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Translation
brotherhood and unity is to their common interest, have united in a federal republic of free
and equal peoples and nationalities and have founded a socialist federal community of
working people, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…”
As in this instance as well the past tense (have united) was also used, it was
generally accepted that the right to secession had been consummated by uniting in
Yugoslavia.
The Basic Principles of the Constitution of SFR Yugoslavia of 21 February 1974
contain literally the same formulation on the creation of Yugoslavia, while article 1 which
is of a normative character, specifies:
“The Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia is a federal state /…/ community
of voluntarily united nations and their socialist republics, and of the Socialist Autonomous
Provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, which are constituent parts of the Socialist Republic
of Serbia…”
The normative part of this Constitution not only contains no trace of the right to
secession, but it was absolutely ruled out by the following provisions in Article 5 on the
inviolability of territorial integrity:
“The territory of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a single unified
whole and consists of the territories of the Socialist Republics. (…)
“The frontiers of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia may not be altered
without the consent of all Republics and Autonomous Provinces. (…)”
In other words, the secession of any federal unit, constituting a change of the
borders of the federal state, could be effected only on condition that all the federal units
within Yugoslavia and the autonomous provinces within Serbia expressly consented to that.
Finally, the Constitutional Court of Yugoslavia, as the supreme authority on interpreting
the Federal Constitution until 8 April 1992, declared unconstitutional and annulled dozens
of secessionist documents of Slovenia and Croatia which, among other, nullified the
Federal Constitution, laws and other regulations.
It is hardly necessary to say that jeopardising the territorial integrity of SFR
Yugoslavia by force was also a grave criminal offence.
As a federal unit, Bosnia and Herzegovina was designated either a state community
(by its 1963 Constitution) or a state (by its 1946 and 1974 Constitutions), and by
amendment LX to the 1974 Constitution also as a democratic sovereign state. In any case,
over the 1966 to 1992 period, Bosnia and Herzegovina was not a sovereign and
independent state in terms of international constitutional and public international law, but
only a federal unit of the federal state. And, already on 26 and 27 November 1943, by a
resolution of the Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, this federal unit was indirectly designated a multi-ethnic one, as item 1
speaks about the existence of the nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and item 5 about the
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Translation
full equality of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, as it says that Bosnia and Herzegovina is
“neither Serbian, nor Croatian, nor Muslim”, but is “both Serbian and Muslim and
Croatian”. 83
The 1946 Constitution recognised the existence of a number of nationalities,
specifying that the nationalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be equal “in all regards”,
while Article 22 specifies as unconstitutional and punishable any act which discriminates
against and grants citizens privileges and restricts their rights on grounds of nationality …
and religion. The authors of this Constitution, however, omitted to specify the individual
nationalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina the equality of which it guaranteed, most probably
because of the status of citizens of the Islamic faith. For, according to the then Marxist
concept of the national question, faith could not be the determinant of national identity.
In the 1963 Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs, Muslims and Croats are
mentioned already in the first paragraph of the Basic Principles, which was actually the first
specific recognition of the Muslims as a nation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Full recognition
was granted only in the 1974 Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina which in a number
of places, beginning with the Basic Principles, expressly lists Serbs, Muslims and Croats as
the nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 84 Section V of the Basic Principles specified the
principle of “the proportionate representation of the nations and nationalities in the
assemblies of socio-political communities”. An almost identical provision is repeated in the
normative part of the constitution also, more specifically in Article 3, para. 2, but at the
same time the equality is guaranteed of the nations and nationalities which at that time were
understood to mean national minorities.
Far-reaching changes were made in 1990 by amendments to the 1974 Constitution
of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. These were amendments LIX to LXXX, among which of
special significance are amendments LX and LXX. The former gives a new designation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and instead of the syntagm “socialist democratic state” contained
in Article 1 of the 1974 Constitution, Bosnia is defined as a “democratic sovereign state”.
The latter amendment establishes, within the Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina a
special council for establishing equality of the nations and nationalities. Although the
constitution-maker left it up to the subsequent legislator to determine the composition,
purview and manner of work of this body, the amendment itself specified that the members
of this working body of the Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina would be its deputies,
namely an equal number of Muslim, Serb and Croat deputies and a corresponding number
of deputies representing other nations and nationalities; that decisions would be brought by
consensus, i.e. the consent of deputies of all the nations and nationalities, that the purview
of this body would be regulated by a law adopted by a two-thirds majority of the total
number of deputies to the Assembly of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina and that it would
83 Cited according to: Branko PETRANOVI], Mom~ilo ZE^EVI], Jugoslovenski federalizam, Ideje i
stvarnost. Tematska zbirka dokumenata, /Yugoslav Federalism, Ideas and Reality, Thematic Collection of
Documents/, volume one 1914-1943, Belgrade, Prosveta, 1987, pp. 767 and 768.
84 On reasons for the repeated reference to the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina and their explicit
individualisation see book by Ga{o MIJANOVI], Specifi~nosti ustavnog ure|enja SR Bosne i Hercegovine
/Specificities of the Constitutional Order of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina/, Sarajevo, Faculty of Law, 1983, pp.
25 and 27.
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include the equality of languages and scripts, the functioning of cultural institutions and the
adoption of regulations ensuring the implementation of the constitutional provisions on the
equality of nations and nationalities; that issues of equality would be examined, as a rule,
when so moved by 20 deputies when they believed that a proposed regulation infringed
upon the equality of nations and nationalities; and that the Assembly would decide the
proposals of this Council according to a special procedure, which was to have been
specified by the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly, by a two-thirds majority of the total
number of deputies.
There is no doubt that this Council should have been the key body to ensure the full
equality of the constituent (state-building) nations and that no document of a constitutional
law nature concerning changes of the status of Bosnia and Herzegovina could have been
brought without the consent of representatives of each of these three nations. Regrettably,
the law which was to have specified in more detail the composition, purview and manner of
work of this Council was never passed. This was prevented by Muslim and Croat deputies,
who were already very much in favour of the unconstitutional secession of Bosnia and
Herzegovina from the then Yugoslavia. And precluding consensual decision-making on the
status of Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of constitutional and international law, and
excluding representatives of the Serbian people from negotiations on the manner of
changing this status, could not have been anything but a casus belli. Alija IZETBEGOVI]
must have been aware of this when at the 27 February 1991 session of the Assembly of
Bosnia and Herzegovina he stated: “If need be I shall sacrifice peace for the sovereignty of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, but I shall not sacrifice its sovereignty for peace.” And two years
later, on 15 February 1993, in an interview for TV Sarajevo, he said: “We have made our
choice and could have easily taken another path also. The price we paid is high but it had to
be paid. If I am to be blamed for that then KARAD@I] should not. We could have avoided
this conflict if we had remained united as Yugoslavia, but we wanted independence. At the
end of 1991 we formed the Patriotic League in order to prepare for war.”
This naturally does not mean that the secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina without
war had been completely ruled out. But, for it to be carried out, appropriate changes of both
the federal and the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina would have had to be made,
determining the conditions and procedure for bringing a decision on secession. As that was
not done, the secession as carried out was unconstitutional.
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CURRICULUM VITAE
Kosta ^AVO[KI was born on 26 October 1941 in Banatsko Novo Selo, district of Pan~evo.
He is a national of Serbia. Currently emeritus of the Faculty of Law of Belgrade University.
Education
Graduated from the Faculty of Law of Belgrade University in 1964.
Acquired a master’s degree at the same faculty in 1969, with the thesis “The Role of the
Supreme Court of the United States in the Development of American Federalism”.
Acquired a doctoral degree at the same faculty in 1973, with the thesis “The Idea of
Freedom and Democracy”.
Professional Background
1964-1967 – official of the Association of Students of Serbia and Yugoslavia
1970-1976 – assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade until dismissal on account
of a sentence of imprisonment of five months, suspended for two years, for verbal
commission
1976-1978 – unemployed
1978-1988 – research fellow, senior research fellow and science adviser of the Institute
for Administrative Law
1988-1990 – science adviser at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory
1991-2009 – full professor of the Faculty of Law of Belgrade University, subject
Introduction to Law (General Theory of State and Law)
Published Works
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