C. Wiebes - Intelligence en de oorlog in Bosnië 1992-1995. De rol van de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten - Engels

263commander of the Bosnian-Serb Drina Corps, General Radislav Krstic, issues orders to kill the ABiHsoldiers. A British expert, Dr Peter French, testified to the Tribunal that he had not been able todefinitively identify the voice as that of Krstic. According to the prosecution, the intercepts showedthat Krstic had issued the order to kill the Muslim prisoners. The prosecution claimed that this was atape of a conversation, which took place on 2 August 1995 between Krstic and Major Obrenovic, Chiefof Staff of the Zvornik Brigade of the VRS. At that moment, the Zvornik Brigade was busy combingan area searching for ABiH soldiers from the column. One voice on the tape said that Muslims werestill being captured. The other voice, presumably belonging to Krstic, responded with ‘kill them all;don’t leave anyone alive’. At the trial Krstic and his lawyers maintained that the intercept was acomplete and utter fake. French, an expert in the analysis of speech and language, said that therecording was ‘inconclusive’. He claimed that the poor quality and the brevity of the conversation madeit impossible to determine whether the voice did indeed belong to Krstic. But an American witnesstestified that it was a conversation between ‘speakers of ethnic Serb background’ which according tothis expert would be difficult for Muslims to imitate.As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the prosecution had a trump card up its sleeve:the same intercept, but registered from another Bosnian interception station. Since the ABiHintercepted VRS communication from two different stations, Okresanica and Golija, on 2 August bothstations had listened in to the conversation. The intercepting operators recorded it in their logbooks. Itwas typed out later and sent to the Army command for further analysis. 1388All things considered, there are enough grounds for assuming that the Muslims had, since 1992,indeed been capable of intercepting important political and military communication traffic of theBosnian Serbs. This took place from Srebrenica, Tuzla, Konjuh, Okresanica and perhaps at otherstations as well and by other ABiH units. The evidence that the ABiH was actually capable of this waspresented in the form of intercept texts to the NIOD, the Yugoslavia Tribunal and journalists. But thequestion still remains as to whether this was real-time intelligence. In other words, were the interceptsalso directly available to the recipient of the intelligence or did it take days, or even weeks, before thecontents were known?4. Was the ABiH Signals Intelligence real-time?Despite the emphatic claims by Bosnian military that they did have real-time Comint, there is still roomfor doubt. First, the ABiH was incapable of following most of the encrypted messages of the VRS. Thisis suggested by a message on 9 July 1995 from the 2 nd Corps of the ABiH to the commander of the 28 thDivision in Srebrenica, which said that the codes could not be cracked. 1389 There may well have beenintercepts which showed that VRS soldiers were incidentally ordered to kill ABiH soldiers, but nomessages have been found in which Mladic or others ordered a mass execution. 1390As neither the Bosnian Army not the political leaders ever shared intercepts with UNPROFORor the UN in New York, it is vital to establish whether these intercepts were real-time or near-real-time.If they were real-time, then the military of the Electronic Warfare Unit of the ABiH must have listened‘live’ to orders to kill their Muslim brothers without taking any action. An US intelligence officialcommented that these VHF intercepts were ‘authentic, genuine intercepts communications of SerbVHF communications and phone communications at tactical, operational and command levels’. Heestimated that some 15,000 hours must have been spent on interception between 15 June and 15 July1995. The Electronic Warfare Units in Konjuh, Okresanica and Tuzla reported to the 2 nd Corps as well1388 ‘srebrenica Trial - Expert witness assesses key radio intercept evidence’, IWPR’s TRIBUNAL UPDATE 214, March 19-24, 2001.1389 NIOD, Coll. CD-Roms. ABiH Komanda 2 nd Corps to 28 th Division, no. 02-/8-1132, 09/07/95.1390 Interview with S. Arnautovic, 05/11/99.