The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Testimony at The Hague
ficulties in securing the testimony of a large number of witnesses. Many
witnesses cited fear as a prominent reason for not wishing to appear before
the Trial Chamber to give evidence. The Trial Chamber gained a
strong impression that the trial was being held in an atmosphere where
witnesses felt unsafe….The difficulty in obtaining evidence was a
prominent feature of this trial and a few witnesses who were expected
to give evidence on central aspects of the case were never heard.” 16 What
a shock! Curiously enough, following the acquittal, Geoffrey Nice wrote
a gleeful letter to the Kosovo newspaper, Koha Ditore, in which he disclosed
that three prosecution lawyers had advised Del Ponte against indicting
Haradinaj because his guilt could never be proven. According to
Nice, one omission of Del Ponte’s that her colleagues cited as dooming
the Haradinaj prosecution was her refusal to call as witness Yugoslav
General Bozidar Delic. 17
The Haradinaj judges followed the practice that is de rigueur whenever
defendants are not Serbs. They acknowledged that attacks against
civilians had taken place. However, invariably, such attacks never seem
to reach the intensity or frequency necessary to merit being called systematic.
The evidence, the judges complained, was “often insufficiently
precise to conclude who was or were responsible for the incidents and
whether they formed part of a larger attack against a civilian population.”
18 Unlike the Kosovo Albanians who left Kosovo because the Serbs
drove them out, the reason why Kosovo Serbs left their homes remains
shrouded in mystery. “[M]any Serbs left their homes out of fear,
grounded or not, of being deliberately attacked by the KLA but there
were also those who fled out of general fear of being caught up in the
armed conflict between Serbian forces and the KLA. This is further confirmed
by the fact that Kosovo Albanians fled from their homes during
the indictment period as well. The Trial Chamber can therefore not
draw any general conclusion with regard to the alleged attack against a
civilian population from the mere fact that many Serbian civilians left
their homes during this period.” 19 Such broadminded understanding is
of course never extended to the Serbs.
The Haradinaj judges concluded that civilians as such were not targeted;
only individuals were. After carefully sifting the evidence they
decided that the “the ill-treatment, forcible transfer, and killings of Serbian
and Roma civilians, as well as Kosovar Albanian civilians perceived
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