The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Testimony at The Hague
with the Trial Chamber in getting the kind of sentence that you’re hoping
and praying for?” Nikolic answered: “[I]t was my assessment that
everything that took place in Srebrenica, the crime that took place there,
that nobody, including myself, could avoid responsibility and their
guilt.” 97
Karnavas also referred to a report prepared by the OTP’s investigator
Bruce Bursik which states: “Nikolic states that he was at the Kravica
warehouse on the 13th July…and ordered the execution there….
[Ljubomir] Borovcanin arrived whilst the execution was underway, and
they spoke about what they should do about the bodies of those executed.”
98
During his cross-examination, Nikolic denied that this was what he
had told Bursik. Now he stated that Borovcanin knew about everything
that was going on. “I spoke about the reasons for the execution, why it
took place, and the other details that I learned about after everything
that had happened.” His alleged participation in and consequently his
possession of firsthand knowledge of executions was in fact only
hearsay—something that he learned from other persons much later.
Karnavas now asked: “Well, but you’re saying that…’Borovcanin did
nothing to stop the shooting while he was there’. You’ve included him
into your story through this line, that he was there with you, and he
did nothing to stop the execution. Right?”
Nikolic responded: “[A]part from my involvement, the rest is true.
He was there, and he did nothing. And I know that on the basis of information
I collected later, after the execution. So I know that he did
nothing to stop it.” 99
From Karnavas’ cross-examination of Nikolic, it appears that Nikolic
made up his story out of the whole cloth. A serious court of law, therefore,
would have disqualified Nikolic as a witness and thrown out his
plea agreement. Instead, the ICTY embraced Nikolic. From the Blagojevic-Jokic
case onward, whenever the ICTY has issued Srebrenica-related
judgments, each successive trial chamber has relied on
pick-and-choose combinations from both Nikolic’s plea agreement and
his courtroom testimonies. Although the January 2005 Judgment in the
Blagojevic-Jokic trial took note of problems associated with “discrepancies
between the evidence of various witnesses, or between the evidence
of a particular witness and a statement previously made by that wit-
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