2594
Tuesday, 9 April 2002
[Closed session] Pages 2594 to 2631 - redacted -closed session.
2632
--- Luncheon recess taken at 12.03 p.m.
--- On resuming at 1.33 p.m.
[Open session]
JUDGE MAY: One preliminary matter and it's this: The Trial Chamber today heard an application in closed session in relation to the evidence of a particular witness. The application was for the evidence to be heard in closed session. The Trial Chamber rejected the application, the nature of the evidence not being such that, when weighed against the need for a public trial, that such an order was warranted. The transcript of the ruling will be released in due course.
Yes. We'll hear the next witness.
MS. ROMANO: Mr. Andras Riedlmayer. Your Honours, the Chamber as well as the amici and the accused, they have the report that is entitled "The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Kosovo 1998, 1999." The report's composed by an executive summary and although the survey contains a database of approximately hundreds of sites, the Prosecution has just disclosed extracts related to the sites alleged in the indictment. In arriving at The Hague, Mr. Riedlmayer, he brought with him blown-up photos and photos with a better quality of the indictment sites as well as some additional photos. They are the same photos that we have already disclosed but they are in a better quality. And the Prosecution produced this booklet containing the summary report and all the photos separated in order by the indictment sites, and so we propose to introduce this as an exhibit. And that will be used by Mr. Riedlmayer during his testimony. 2633
JUDGE MAY: Very well. Ms. Romano, you can take this evidence fairly shortly since we have the report.
MS. ROMANO: Yes. I just would like to make it easy for the Court to be able to understand and later on to use the report --
JUDGE MAY: Yes.
MS. ROMANO: -- more efficiently.
JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the witness take the declaration.
THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
JUDGE MAY: Yes. If you'd like to take a seat.
WITNESS: ANDRAS RIEDLMAYER
MS. ROMANO: Can I give you the copies? And, Your Honours, I also don't think the Chamber has Mr. Riedlmayer's curriculum vitae, what I would propose to introduce as an exhibit, and instead of going through it in detail and just ask a few questions about his experience and education.
THE REGISTRAR: Prosecution Exhibit 88.
MS. ROMANO: Thank you. And I have here the curriculum and copies.
Examined by Ms. Romano:
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you please state your full name to the Court.
A. Andras Janos Riedlmayer.
Q. You're currently the bibliographer for the Documentation Center for Islamic Architecture, Aga Khan Program, Fine Arts Library at Harvard University? 2634
A. That is correct.
Q. And according to your CV, you have university degree, more specifically, two masters --
THE INTERPRETER: Could the speakers please pause between answer and question. Thank you.
MS. ROMANO:
Q. -- and in library --
JUDGE MAY: You're being asked to slow down, Ms. Romano.
MS. ROMANO: Oh.
Q. And from Princeton, and in Library and Information Science from Simmons College of Boston?
A. That is correct.
Q. For several years, you have been focused on the study of documentation of destruction of cultural heritage. That's correct?
A. Correct.
Q. And as an art documentation specialist, when and how did you get involved in the research and study of destruction of cultural heritage, and particularly in the Balkans region?
A. Yes. I've been working as an art documentation specialist for more than 15 years. I've been working on the study of the history and culture of the Balkans for some 30 years now. In the late 1980s, I was working on a project on the protection of cultural property in armed conflict and compiling a bibliography on it. When the conflict in the Balkans broke out, I immediately saw reports of the destruction of cultural property and I started collecting information with a view towards 2635 studying it.
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, can you just briefly describe any prior works that you have done in this field --
A. Yes.
Q. -- before the Kosovo project.
A. During the war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, I did a series of studies on the destruction of libraries and archives and the destruction of historical architecture. Some of these were published, others were presented as documentary films. And I also testified before the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe on cultural destruction in Bosnia.
Q. And the articles and the lectures are all listed in your curriculum --
A. That's right.
Q. That's correct? Mr. Riedlmayer, I would like to just go into the background of the survey, the background of the report. As you said, in the course of your work in 1998, you became aware of the fact that in Kosova, various sites of cultural heritage were possibly being damaged or destroyed. From that time, you started to collect the information. Can you just tell the Court what kind of information?
A. When the conflict began in 1998, there were reports in the media, starting in the summer of 1998, that suggested that cultural heritage may have been targeted by either side. There were also various allegations coming from various governmental and unofficial sources. At the time, I was simply at the level of collecting this information. When the war 2636 broke out in March with the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia, the allegations multiplied while the sources of information narrowed considerably because of the absence of independent observers in Kosovo.
Q. Thank you. And the sources that you are referring to, they are listed in Appendix 3 of your report, in pages 23 to 24; that's correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. They are the reports by Yugoslav governmental and professional institutions, and reports by Kosovar refugees, and media accounts; that's correct?
A. That's correct.
Q. When and how the idea of a Kosovo cultural heritage project came about?
A. At the end of hostilities in June of 1999, it was clear to me that someone would have to establish what had happened with regard to cultural heritage in Kosovo. Reporters were flooding back into Kosovo, and while they rarely covered cultural heritage as such, they mentioned the destruction and there were lots of pictures broadcast. I made inquiries with UNESCO to see whether they were pursuing any systematic study, and the answer was no. I put out an Internet appeal, and Mr. Andrew Herscher, an architect whom I had known professionally, approached me with the idea that we should do a study together.
Q. So this was when? June?
A. This was the end of June/beginning of July 1999.
Q. And so you and Mr. Andrew Herscher undertook the project?
A. That's correct. 2637
Q. And can you just give also to the Court the qualifications of Mr. Herscher?
A. Yes. Mr. Herscher is a trained architect. He has degrees in architecture from Princeton University and Harvard University and is completing a doctorate in architectural history, theory, and criticism. He has also worked in the Balkans for the past ten years, including assessment of war damage in Mostar after the war in Bosnia.
Q. And how did you and Mr. Herscher, how did you obtain funding for the project?
A. We first approached Harvard's Centre for Middle Eastern Studies to ask if they would act as our institutional sponsors for such a project. After they indicated that they would be agreeable, we approached the Packard Humanities Institute, an American-registered charity that supports conservation of archeological sites and cultural heritage, and they agreed to provide funding for the expenses of our project.
Q. Thank you. What were the goals of the Kosovo project?
A. Our project had three basic goals. One was to establish the fact of what had happened, the second was to provide a basis for post-war reconstruction, and the third was to provide material that could be useful to the ICTY in its work.
JUDGE KWON: Mr. Riedlmayer, could you kindly put a pause between the question and answer. Bear in mind the translation.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
MS. ROMANO: Please, Mr. Riedlmayer, can you just wait after I make my question until you answer, otherwise it won't be possible for 2638 BLANK PAGE 2639 translation.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MS. ROMANO:
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, the study focused on damage to architectural heritage from the three major religious communities: Islamic, Roman Catholic and Serb Orthodox, as well as damage to the historical civil architecture; that's correct?
A. That's correct.
Q. And how did you and Mr. Herscher -- sorry. No. First, can you give us a brief overview what constitutes an Islamic, Roman Catholic, or Serbian Orthodox site?
A. Those are the three principal religious communities in Kosovo. Each of them has houses of worship. In addition to houses of worship, there are also other buildings. In the case of Islamic, the house of worship would be a mosque or a dervish lodge or a tekke or Koran schools and other educational institutions, also religious libraries and archives. In the case of the two Christian communities, the Catholic and the Serbian Orthodox, we are dealing primarily with churches and monasteries, but the Serbian Orthodox Church also has a seminary in Prizren.
Q. Among all the sites that are listed in Kosovo, how did you and Mr. Herscher select the ones to be included in the survey?
A. We based our work on several categories. First we surveyed the published literature on heritage in Kosovo, the publications of the Monuments Protection authorities, and the scientific literature. From 2640 that we compiled a list, as well as any published pre-war documentation on these sites.
Our second category was sites about which there had been allegations of damage. These are the allegations listed in Appendix number 3.
Q. Approximately how many sites in total the survey contain?
A. The survey has 560 sites, which actually covers a larger number of buildings because some sites have more than one building.
Q. And that includes religious sites and also civil architecture?
A. That's correct.
Q. After the sites were selected, the database was developed, the information was gathered, you start the research, and you went to Kosovo?
A. That's correct.
Q. When was that?
A. We did our first fieldwork in Kosovo during the month of October 1999.
Q. Was it at that time that you also had contact with the Office of the Prosecutor?
A. Yes. We stopped at The Hague on our way to Kosovo, and we had a meeting with the Office of the Prosecutor.
Q. What was the nature of the meeting and the conversations that you had with representatives of the office?
A. We first asked them -- asked the Office of the Prosecutor whether they would be interested in the kind of information that we were collecting. They answered in the affirmative. They also told us that we 2641 would not be acting as agents of the Tribunal. They also indicated some of the kinds of things that would be useful for their work, things that we might not have thought of on our own. For example, the importance of obtaining recent pre-destruction photos, if possible, of damaged sites. They also indicated that in the event we should encounter eyewitnesses to the destruction, we were to take basic information and names and contact but that we were not to conduct extended witness interviews, that the Tribunal would take care of that. Our main task was to document the damage to the architecture.
Q. Thank you. In total, how long it took to develop your project and how many times, how many trips did you make to Kosovo?
A. The project took approximately two years to complete, in the course of which we made three trips to Kosovo of roughly three weeks each. Our first trip was in October of 1999, and there were follow-up trips in October of 2000 and March of 2001. The survey was finished in the summer of 2001.
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, I'm going to ask you to briefly describe first the methodology used and the sources used in your report, and second, I will ask you to explain the categories used to assess the damage and destruction recorded. So first, the methodology and the sources.
A. As I indicated, our first step was to do research, before heading into the field, to see what documentation existed of the pre-war condition of these buildings. We took this along to Kosovo, and as we visited each site, there would be a series of steps that we would then take. The first step would be to go to a location and identify and 2642 verify the site. This was done by interviewing locals but also by comparing our pre-war documentation. In the case of a building that was totally destroyed, if we had plans, you could trace the foundations. If one had pre-war photographs, surrounding buildings would still offer identification of the site.
Once we had done this, we would then take several photographs to document the site, and Mr. Herscher and I would consult with each other and agree on the description and categorical assessment of the damage.
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, before we go to the categories, I think that in Appendix 2 of your report, pages 17 to 22, apart from the field assessment made by you and Mr. Herscher that you have just described, there is also a description, that of other sources, of various other sources that you used for the sites that you have not visited. So can you just explain that for the Court?
A. Yes.
Q. If you -- if you need to use the report, with the assistance of the usher, maybe we can put the report on the --
JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the witness -- let the witness have his report.
THE WITNESS: I have a copy.
JUDGE MAY: Put it on the ELMO, then, if that's the idea. Have we got a spare copy so that the witness can have one? One for the ELMO. That's right. And then the witness can have his.
THE WITNESS: So in order of presentation, the first one was our field investigations which I have described. 2643
MS. ROMANO:
Q. And how many -- how many sites did you and Mr. Herscher visit in person?
A. We visited approximately 144 sites in person. The second largest group of sites are those documented by the International Management Group, an intergovernmental organisation which was commissioned by the European Union to conduct an assessment of damage to buildings and infrastructure in Kosovo. Their work was completed in the spring of 2000, and we were able to obtain a copy of their database during our second visit to Kosovo.
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, you can go very briefly on the sources. Just mention the name and a brief, a short, short explanation.
A. The other two -- the other three main sources were the three religious communities; the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate, with which we exchanged documentation - they also have published a great deal of their documentation - the Roman Catholic Diocese, we had interviews with clergy; and the Islamic community, which had a very large archive of photographs collected by Professor Sabri Bajgora, who is the assistant mufti of Kosovo. We also had information from the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Kosovo, the local institute in Djakovica, UNMIK's Department of Urban Planning in Pec, and a number of private individuals who are named in that appendix.
Finally, we also took account of media accounts. We never included any sites on the sole authority of media accounts, but where first-hand media reports were available, we included them and identified them as such. 2644 As Your Honours will note, in many cases these sources were cross-corroborated with each other, and in all cases, we included only sites for which photographic documentation was available.
Q. Thank you. So we passed through the methodology and the sources. Can you right now please walk us through the categories of assessment of damages --
A. Yes.
Q. -- established.
A. Initially we had in mind using UNHCR's categories. However, we found that they were designed for housing and not necessarily appropriate for historical monuments, especially since we were doing the survey in part with establishing the feasibility of reconstruction in mind. Category 1 is self-explanatory. It's "undamaged buildings." "Lightly damaged" is a rather large category, and we were extremely conservative in assigning it in the sense that it covers any damage that does not impair the main structure of the building. This means that it includes everything from vandalism and small fires set in the building to shell holes in the wall to even a minaret or a steeple blown up but the main structure remaining intact. Part of the roof could be smashed, but if the roof as a whole was still okay and the perimeter walls were standing, we called it lightly damaged.
Q. Thank you.
A. "Heavily damaged" is any structure that has suffered significant structural damage to its main elements. Typically, it would be a building that was completely burnt out, often with roof collapsed, major blast 2645 damage, damage to perimeter walls.
"Almost destroyed" is the next-to-last category. This would be a building which was missing some of its principal parts, like one or more of the perimeter walls, which would require complete reconstruction but which still had some elements standing.
"Completely destroyed" is again self-explanatory. It's a building which had no reusable parts left standing above ground.
Q. Thank you. So as a result of your research, you and Mr. Herscher prepared this joint report entitled "The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Kosovo." And as I explained to the Court before, the report is comprised by a summary of the findings and a database containing all the sites, and with specific and detailed information. It also contains the maps.
I would ask you, Mr. Riedlmayer, by using the report that is on the ELMO, if you can briefly walk us through the findings for the destruction of the religious cultural sites: Islamic, Roman Catholic, and Serbian Orthodox. It's pages 7 and 10 of the report.
A. Just a second. Okay. I've already outlined what constitutes the religious heritage, so I will skip that part. In the case of Islamic architectural heritage, the primary category of buildings that suffered damage was mosques. We are fortunate that we have a published figure for the number of mosques in Kosovo on the eve of the war, and as of 1993, according to the Islamic community, there were 607 mosques in Kosovo. Our documentation showed that more than one-third of these were either destroyed or damaged, and the evidence suggests that this happened in 2646 1998/1999.
Q. What was the evidence that you had that it happened in 1998/1999?
A. There are three kinds of factors that would indicate this. One is the nature of the damage. If the damage is fire, you can often tell if it's recent from things like smell. If the building is burnt out, by the growth of vegetation or otherwise inside. Blast damage certainly indicates that this occurred during some kind of conflict. And vandalism indicates that it was not an accidental event.
The second kind of indication is the statements of eyewitnesses, which usually corroborated the evidence of the material evidence. Thirdly, the existence of recent pre-war photographs of the buildings in their undamaged condition suggests that the destruction was in the last few years. Many of our pre-destruction photos come from 1997, so it makes very clear that the destruction happened subsequent to that.
Q. In your report, you give us an approximate figure how many mosques were damaged in 1998, 1999. Can you give us this figure?
A. Yes. Roughly 225.
Q. The next one would be the Roman Catholic.
A. Okay. There was much less information available concerning Roman Catholic sites, mainly because, first of all, there were fewer of them - the Roman Catholic community is the smallest of the three communities in Kosovo - but also because there appeared to be a great deal less damage to Catholic sites. In many places where housing and Islamic monuments had been destroyed in large proportion, Catholic monuments remained intact. 2647
Q. And the Serbian Orthodox?
A. Kosovo is known as the site of many of the most important monuments of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and these are probably the best-published monuments of any of the communities in Kosovo, both in terms of pre-war documentation and also in terms of documentation of damage to the monuments. What we tried to do is visit as many of these as possible, concentrating our efforts on monuments that were not well documented already by sources such as the Serbian Orthodox Church. Subsequent to our first visit, we engaged in an exchange of photos and other information with the eparchy of Raske and Prizren. Our findings were, first of all, that the Serbian Orthodox monuments that were alleged to have been destroyed or damaged by NATO, we found no sign of damage that could be attributed to air attacks. We did, however, find that a great many of these monuments, as many as 80 or more, had been damaged after the war, presumably in attacks by returning Albanians.
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, in your research you also came across several sites claimed by Yugoslav authorities to have either been destroyed or serious damage by the NATO airstrikes, and among them some of the Orthodox churches. In arriving at The Hague, you brought us a photo that I have here with me of the Orthodox church in Dreznic [phoen] -- Dreznic?
A. Drsnik.
Q. Drsnik. That was claimed to be bombed by NATO, and I have copies of the photos. Can you give us an explanation of what that constitutes? There are two photos. I just have one colour copy, and the others are, unfortunately, black and white for the moment. 2648
A. This is for the ELMO.
THE REGISTRAR: The curriculum vitae will be numbered Prosecution Exhibit 89, and the first picture, Prosecution Exhibit 90.
A. We made a point of taking all allegations seriously, and that is why we visited almost all of the sites for which damage was claimed by various Yugoslav official bodies during the war. This is a church, the church of St. Paraskeva, in the village of Drsnik, municipality of Klina. According to the Institute for Protection of Monuments of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Information, during the war, according to them, in April of 1999, this church suffered serious damage from NATO bombs. We went to the village and found the church with its roof intact, its modern metal belfry intact. However, clearly a fire had been set inside the building. You can see the smudge marks above the door and the initials "UCK," KLA, scrawled into the soot.
Could I have the next picture, please. In the interior of the church, a fire had been set, causing damage to mural paintings on the walls, and in addition, someone had gone there and defaced the murals, again with the initials "UCK," with Xs across the faces of the saints and kings.
So we included this in our database, but it's very clear that the damage was not done by bombs but by human beings, from the ground up. According to the Serbian Orthodox Church and news reports, the Serb inhabitants of the village left in the second half of June, so it stands to reason that the damage occurred subsequent to that.
MS. ROMANO: 2649
Q. That Serbian Orthodox Church is mentioned -- is the one mentioned in your report on page 9; is it correct?
A. Let me see.
Q. At the bottom of page 9.
A. Yes.
THE REGISTRAR: The last photograph will be numbered Prosecution Exhibit 91.
MS. ROMANO:
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, also to illustrate the damage to religious sites, after arriving here in The Hague, you produced this chart with one of our investigators, and that will be helpful to illustrate the damage of all three religious sites. If you can give us a brief explanation of the chart.
THE REGISTRAR: Prosecution Exhibit 92.
A. This is a breakdown by the number of buildings in each category. The red columns represent Roman Catholic sites; the yellow columns, Serbian Orthodox sites; and the blue columns, Islamic sites. As you can see, the largest number of damaged sites is definitely Islamic. The "undamaged" columns do not represent by any means the total corpus; we included undamaged buildings only if there had been allegations or if we happened to cross them. But the "damaged" categories are fairly representative of the facts on the ground.
MS. ROMANO:
Q. Thank you. As I mentioned before, in your database it contains hundreds of sites. 2650
A. Yes.
Q. But we have just used the ones that are alleged -- that were mentioned and listed in the indictment. They are organised in the order of the indictment. Can you please walk us through at least two of the sites, the one that you have visited in person and the one that you rely on some other information, and show the Court where can we find the information: the category of the damage, who did it, and the information. So if we can get the report and maybe go for the first site, that is, Celine. It's not numbered, but maybe --
A. It's right after the text.
Q. -- the number can be helpful. It's K0209346.
A. All right. What you see there -- if you could try to get the whole page in.
Okay. What you see is a sample page from our database. It's a very simple entry and very typical of the large number of entries where we had very basic kind of information. First all, notice at the bottom the surveyors. In this case, the information comes from -- is corroborated by two third-party sources, the IMG database and Professor Sabri Bajgora of the Islamic community.
The second thing, a photograph. We included, as you were told, no information unless we had corroborating photographs. This is an example of a completely destroyed building. As you see, there is very little left of the original structure.
The type of information we recorded were the names, if known, the village, the date of construction, the period, whether it had officially 2651 protected status, type, setting, building condition and the state of adjacent buildings. You can see adjacent buildings with old roof tiles, so it makes it more likely this structure was singled out rather than hit along with other types.
Q. Maybe you can use the blown-up photo.
A. Yes. If you go to the next page there.
Q. The second -- the next page.
A. Yes. You can see here the -- this, which is either a fragment of an arch or maybe the minaret's broken, it's hard to tell. But you can tell this building next to it has old roof tiles, clearly not a recent repair. So this was an example of the kind of site where we were working with second hand information.
For examples of sites that we visited first hand, I would suggest that you go to K029370.
Q. That's Djakovica.
A. That's the Djakovica market. This was under official legal protection. You can see that it had a number of different names it was known by. You can see that the damage report is quite detailed, and we have photos from a variety of sources. One example here of a number of photos we have of the bazaar taken right before the war, one taken during the destruction, by a resident of Gjakove, and on the next page two further photos, one pre-war photo and one after. This is also an example of an informant's statement. Again we merely summarised what we heard, and when we had the opportunity, we obtained contact information. 2652 The next page. The next page lists some of our background research under "Bibliography" under pre-war photos as well as media accounts.
I'm now turning to two photos past. Yes, this one. This is a photo that we took after the war. You can see the burnt-out shops of the bazaar with the walls in between the burnt-out shops still standing. In the background is the Hadum Mosque. You can see the top of the minaret's been shot off, and there's a hole in the minaret halfway down, from impact of some kind of projectile.
The next page. The next page is our entry for the Hadum Mosque itself. It's a rather elaborate complex and seems to have been damaged in more than one phase. The front part of the mosque has been burnt, as was the library next to it. And then again, according to what we found and the statements of eyewitnesses, the top of the minaret, when it was shot off, landed on the library and collapsed the rear wall. Go to the next page. You will see a close-up of the burnt front of the mosque, the charred base of the minaret, and the burnt-out facade of the library, as well as a pre-war photo that shows the extended portico that was burnt down.
Then if you go two pages further, you can see the remains of the burnt portico. Again it's clear that this is fire-charred remains. The portico extension was built in the eighteenth century, made largely of wood.
And finally, there's an entry for the mosque library which we covered not only as a building but as a cultural institution, and that was 2653 BLANK PAGE 2654 first burnt, and then if you look at the next photo, you can see the collapsed rear wall. We dug around in the rubble and found the remains of the top of the minaret, including most of the fragments of the minaret's carved balcony. So it's very clear that what collapsed the rear here was the toppling of the upper portion of the minaret. So that gives you an idea of the type of documentation we have.
Q. And the same type of -- the format is all over the database? You can find the same type of information all --
A. Right.
Q. -- with all the sites?
A. Yes, whether it's mosques, churches, or civil sites.
Q. And all the sites listed in the indictment, they have been object of assessment --
A. Yes.
Q. -- by you and Mr. Herscher?
A. Or by third-party sources such as the IMG database and/the Islamic community.
Q. Thank you, Mr. Riedlmayer.
MS. ROMANO: I don't have further questions.
JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the exhibit be brought back. Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, for the accused. Microphone.
Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:
Q. [Interpretation] You travelled to Kosovo via The Hague, did you? 2655
A. Yes.
Q. And you expressed the wish here to work for the purposes of the Tribunal; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. And they told you that you wouldn't be working as their agent.
A. That's correct.
Q. But that they are very interested in your activity.
A. Yes.
Q. Does that mean that they would like to use your activity as the result of the work of an objective analysis which they have no influence over?
A. I cannot speak of their intentions, but they gave us no directions as to what our findings should be.
Q. Did they give you any instructions at all?
A. The kind I outlined, namely what would be -- make useful evidence; photographs. They also told us not to depose witnesses but merely to take basic information and contact information. Basically, they told us to record the facts as we find them, which was also our intention.
Q. But a moment ago you said that you looked into all the places that were mentioned in the indictment.
A. We -- the -- if you look at the indictment, the places which are mentioned and which are represented by photographs here are represented in the amended indictment, which was produced after we had supplied the Tribunal with our report.
Q. But that report of yours coincides with the indictment. You 2656 concluded your report in 2001, as you said.
A. Yes. And we submitted it to the Tribunal in the summer of 2001. The amended indictment, as far as I know, was produced in October of 2001.
Q. As far as I know, the indictment was published in May 1999, when the war was still ongoing.
JUDGE MAY: What is the date of the amended indictment? We'll be reminded.
THE WITNESS: 29 October.
JUDGE MAY: October '99 [sic]. So what you're saying, Mr. Riedlmayer, is that you produced your report, then there was the amended indictment. It's right that what is in your report is reflected in that amended indictment.
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
JUDGE MAY: But not in the original.
THE WITNESS: Not in the original. The original mentions cultural heritage in generic terms but mentions no specific sites.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Well, all right, but I think that this relationship between your work and the indictment has been established.
But you said, before giving us that explanation, that when you went to Kosovo via The Hague, that you raised the question of how much your work will be beneficial and useful to the Tribunal and its needs.
A. We would have gone to Kosovo regardless but we approached the Tribunal because we felt that the kind of work that we were doing might 2657 assist them in their work. It does not reflect in any way as to the conclusions of the report.
JUDGE ROBINSON: Who paid you for the -- were you paid for this work?
THE WITNESS: We were not paid for the work. Our expenses were paid by the grant.
JUDGE ROBINSON: From the foundation.
THE WITNESS: From the foundation, yes.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Did you give thought to the findings for the requirements of the Tribunal and the fact as to whether the -- this Tribunal was trying those who committed the bombing and destroyed cultural monuments in Kosovo during the NATO airstrike, the NATO aggression?
JUDGE MAY: Do you understand the question or not?
THE WITNESS: I think I do. If I understand the question correctly, I must say I pointed out that we took all allegations seriously, including the ones made about NATO damage to cultural heritage sites in Kosovo, and we took great care to investigate them. And if we had found that NATO had damaged these sites, we would have reported accordingly.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. But in your oral presentation now, it seems to spring into the first plan or -- like in the newspapers, the front line, what you are asserting, that is to say, that NATO did not damage Serb churches, Serbian churches. Is that your finding and conclusion? 2658
A. That was our finding, yes.
Q. So it is your finding that NATO did not damage Serbian churches. How were the Serbian churches damaged then?
A. The damage to Serbian churches that we found can be attributed to attacks after the war by Kosovar Albanians. This is not only our findings, but it is also the official finding of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raska in Prizren. If you look at their documentation in Raspeto [phoen] Kosovo, Krusevat [phoen] Kosovo, it makes it quite clear that these attacks occurred after the end of the war.
Q. Let's leave to one side for the time being the fact that I completely challenge the fact that NATO did not damage with its bombs the Serb cultural monuments, but the one you mentioned just now -- what you said just now is something that I would like to ask you. Whose troops throughout that time in Kosovo and Metohija, during the time that you said the Kosovars -- the Albanians destroyed the churches, whose troops were they?
A. Whose troops were what?
Q. I'm sorry. Whose troops were in Kosovo at the time? The NATO troops, were they in Kosovo and Metohija throughout the time that you consider the churches were destroyed in?
A. KFOR was there, which includes, of course, not only NATO but Russian and other forces.
Q. Well, you just mentioned this publication by the Serbian Church, which I see Mr. Wladimiroff holding in his hands just now. And they have flags, the flags of countries showing whose troops are responsible for the 2659 security of the territory in which those churches were destroyed. I didn't see any Russian ones, but I did see American, Italian, French, German flags, et cetera. Now, are those states responsible for the destruction of the cultural monuments in areas protected by their troops?
JUDGE MAY: That's not for the witness to say. He's here giving evidence about the damage, not about the responsibility or otherwise of KFOR, which is a different issue.
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] If it's a different issue, I don't think I can agree that that is not relevant, because Mr. Riedlmayer in his report speaks about the causes and ways in which the cultural monuments were destroyed and damaged.
JUDGE MAY: You can ask him if he found out while he was in Kosovo who was responsible for the security of the various churches and if he knows anything about how they came to be destroyed, despite that responsibility.
Now, can you help us to that, Mr. Riedlmayer?
THE WITNESS: Only to a degree. Our primary task was to assess the condition of the buildings rather than the security atmosphere. We did find that most Serbian Orthodox churches that we came across, such as the Pec Patriarchate or the churches in Prizren, and numerous churches in various areas such as in south-eastern Kosovo, in the Pomoravia [phoen], all had heavy NATO guard in front of them. On the other hand, a number of ruined churches in abandoned villages had no guards on them, and we brought up this issue in our conversation with UNMIK officials in Pristina and urged them to provide protection for all churches, whether they are 2660 intact or not and whether they are world-class sites or village sites. But that was the extent of our involvement.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. You, therefore, in preparing your work, had in mind the requirements of the Tribunal's indictment, on the one hand; and on the other, did you have any instructions? Did you receive any instructions by the financiers of your project? And you said that they were the -- it was the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, I believe, and the Packard Centre. And so was it Packard, Harvard, and the Tribunal?
A. We received instructions from none of these as to what we should look at. We did not perform the study in order to support any particular indictment. We hoped that the results of our investigations would help bring to justice whoever targeted cultural and religious heritage in Kosovo. As far as our sponsors and funders are concerned, they supported us, but they gave us no instructions whatever.
Q. And do you expect, in view of the fact that your report was financed and carried out, do you expect the subjects, that is to say, the countries -- or rather, the country that led the NATO aggression, including you too, can be accepted as being objective?
JUDGE MAY: That's not for the witness. You can ask him if -- you can ask him this:
What's suggested is that your evidence is not objective, Mr. Riedlmayer. It was, I guess, what's been alleged. Now, can you deal with that?
THE WITNESS: Yes. 2661
JUDGE MAY: Very well. Just deal with it.
THE WITNESS: I am an American national. However, if we had found evidence that NATO had destroyed heritage, we would have reported it all the same. We were not working for the government. Our conclusions are entirely our own and our own responsibility.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Did you use, in the course of your investigations and research, facts and figures and information by NATO but also by the Yugoslav authorities, Yugoslav state institutions, as to the dates and locations of the NATO airstrikes?
A. Absolutely. We took all available information into account.
Q. So you did have in mind the NATO information and the locations by NATO and the Yugoslav organs as to the dates and locations of the NATO airstrikes; is that correct? You had these?
A. We had the locations that were cited. The allegations primarily came from the Yugoslav sources, and so those had a heavier weight in our choice of sites. What NATO statements and photographs were published were largely in reaction to Yugoslav allegations.
Q. Very well. And do you know the percentage and share, as you conducted research and investigation, what the share and percentage was of Christian and how much of the Ottoman cultural heritage? What was the ratio in Kosovo and Metohija? Let me make myself clearer. I'm not talking about the absolute number of all churches and so on, but what comes under the term of "cultural heritage," Christian and Ottoman, in Kosovo and Metohija. 2662
A. Okay. As our report makes clear, it is very hard to come up with statistics. Serbian sources generally speak of a thousand or more Orthodox sites, but in fact many of these are archeological sites rather than standing buildings. And by the parameters of our survey, we concluded archeological sites. They're not as vulnerable to damage and they tend to be harder to document in terms of pre-war photographs. So we did not visit archeological sites, whether Stone Age or medieval. In terms of actual standing monuments, we went by a publication of the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of the Republic of Serbia, published in the spring of 1999, which lists approximately 210 Orthodox sites that were under protection. However, out of those, approximately 40 were twentieth-century buildings. So it's -- that's a rough number. In terms of the Ottoman heritage, it's also very complicated. The construction during the Ottoman period included some Christian monuments. For example, the Pec Patriarchate was enlarged several times under Ottoman rule. Out of the -- I assume you mean mosques, and if you mean mosques, out of the 600-odd mosques, roughly half or more were of the Ottoman period. There was very little construction after the fall of the Ottoman rule in Kosovo, of mosques, until the 1980s, when there was an increase of construction of houses of worship, both Christian and Muslim.
Q. And did you observe and take note of the fact that in that respect, until the war began and the destruction began, there was no discrimination with respect to the construction both of Christian and Muslim religious buildings in Kosovo? Do you have any information about that? 2663
A. That wasn't part of our survey. We did observe the fact that as opposed to 210, approximately, Orthodox sites in Kosovo, only about 15 to 20 mosques were under official legal protection. So what discrimination there was was certainly in terms of the attention paid to these monuments by the official organs.
Q. In the form of attention or in the form of the actual state of affairs with respect to the buildings that make up the cultural heritage and their state?
A. What I mean is in terms of the amount of state monies for restoration and conservation, of which the majority went to officially listed sites, and since more of the officially listed sites were Orthodox, more of the money was spent on the Orthodox sites. Also in terms of the actual protection, in legal terms, a number of the listed monuments that were mosques had been badly altered by unauthorised repairs, it seemed, in recent decades, without apparently being stopped by the authorities, even though these were listed monuments. But that wasn't the principal focus of our study.
Q. Yes, but do you know that in professional assessments, which I assume are objective because they do not only refer to Yugoslav institutions, that the share of Christian in relation to Ottoman cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is somewhere between 75:25 -- the ratio is 75:25, that that is roughly the ratio? Are you aware of that ratio?
A. No.
Q. And apart from this latest publication, from which you quoted a moment ago and said that you used the 1999 institute for the Serbian 2664 cultural heritage, did you use any other Serbian publications, historical documents, books related to the history of art, and so on and so forth, which relate to the buildings that you investigated, the sites you investigated?
A. Yes, sir. If you will look at a number of these entries, which have extensive bibliographies, you will see that we covered all the available literature. We looked at Yugoslav art historical journals, the annuals of the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Kosovo, of Serbia, international publications. There's a recent monograph by Gojko Subotic which covers Serbian heritage in Kosovo encyclopedically. We invested a lot of preparation before ever going to Kosovo, and we continued to track publications that appeared after our initial field work, to the extent that we were able.
Q. And of these consultations and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Pristina and Prizren, did you include those too?
A. Yes, we did.
Q. Do you consider that it would be logical if an international expert team would have been set up to look into the state of affairs and to investigate and research the state of cultural and historical monuments in Kosovo which would be able to avoid a partial approach, or an approach under the shadows of this Tribunal, or the financing of it from countries which led the aggression against Yugoslavia? Did you ever give thought to that? Would that be of value? Would that have been beneficial, in view of the fact that one of the most interesting places on the continent of Europe was worthy of the attentions of an objective international expert 2665 team of professionals instead of the kind of approach that we have here?
JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, that seems to be making the same point again, that this witness's work is not objective, and he's answered that.
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Then I have a specific, concrete question.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Do you know about the letter from Slobodan Curcic, a respected art historian and professor, to your colleagues from Princeton, for example, which was published in the USA ECOMOS May/June 2000, and it assessed your report as one-sided because they said that it referred for the most part to Islamic cultural monuments?
A. I'm aware of it, yes. What Mr. Milosevic seems to be referring to was the publication of a preliminary version of our report in the newsletter of the US committee for ECOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites. In the subsequent issue, Professor Curcic wrote a letter to the editor in which he misconstrued our report quite dramatically, claimed that we had not covered any Serbian Orthodox sites, and made some allegations about our findings. I'm aware of it. I think it's completely mistaken on Professor Curcic's part.
Q. All right. Very well. You differ there, and that is allowed. A difference of opinion is allowed.
Have you heard of a pamphlet, a pamphlet this time, by the Islamic religious community in Kosovo, under the title of, "Serbian Barbarism Against Islamic Monuments in Kosovo," February 1988, published in Pristina in the year 2000? Did you happen to have this pamphlet in your hands? 2666
A. I've seen the book, yes.
Q. And the photographs, some of the photographs, or perhaps some of the findings from that pamphlet, which was compiled by Sabri Bajgora, whom you mentioned otherwise, did you take them over from that pamphlet of his?
A. We did not. We examined the photographs that the Islamic community had collected in October of 1999 and took originals of the photographs at that time. Subsequently, when the Islamic community published this actually small book, they used some of the same photographs.
Q. And do you know who Sabri Bajgora is?
A. Yes. He is the assistant mufti, second in the hierarchy of the Islamic religious community in Kosovo, and he's professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Pristina.
Q. So he specialises in Islamic faith.
A. Yes.
Q. And Sabri Bajgora, whom you consider to be a relevant source, is he scientifically qualified to assess the condition of cultural heritage in Kosovo? Do you consider him to be a qualified expert to assess the state of cultural heritage in Kosovo?
A. No. He's not a conservation professional, and we did not ask for his opinion on things. We simply asked him for photographs, concerning which we made our own conclusions.
JUDGE MAY: It is now in fact 3.00. It's time to adjourn for a short period. We'll adjourn for quarter of an hour. Mr. Riedlmayer, will you remember in this and any other 2667 adjournment not to speak to anybody about your evidence, including members of the Prosecution team, until it's over.
Yes. 3.15.
--- Recess taken at 3.00 p.m.
--- On resuming at 3.19 p.m.
JUDGE MAY: Yes.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. In the period between 1960 and 1981, the Albanian separatists plundered and destroyed the monasteries of Dejavici [phoen], Decani. And on the 16th of May, 1981, they attacked the Pec Patriarchate and set fire to it, and the monastery konak was burnt down, containing vast artistic works of great value. Are you aware of that?
A. That period was not part of our study, but yes, I've heard reports of that. I've also read that police at the time claimed that it -- the fire at the konak was accidental. But as I say, I am not in a position to speak about any of that from first hand information.
Q. And do you know, since I assume your report covers that period, that the terrorist KLA, on the 22nd of July, 1998, broke into the monastery of St. Kosme and Damjan near Orahovac and that they seriously damaged the walls of the monastery konak? Did you omit to mention that, or do you have any information about it as part of your research project?
A. I assume what you're referring to is the monastery at Zociste south of Orahovac. Yes, it is included in our database. Not only was the konak damaged, but subsequently the church next to the monastery was destroyed with explosives. My understanding is that it is now being 2668 BLANK PAGE 2669 rebuilt.
Q. And do you know that in the NATO airstrike on the 22nd of March, 1999 - that was the fifth day of the war - a rocket hit and destroyed the museum building of the Prizren League, which can be shown on this photograph.
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could it be please shown to the witness.
We can see that it was hit from above. This is the building of the Prizren League, so please show the witness both sides.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. As you see it, it could not have been destroyed from the ground, as you are claiming.
A. This is a site that we went to document, and we have numerous photographs from before and, of course, the condition in 1989 when it was nothing but a levelled site. However, I would like to point out a number of things in this particular case.
What caused us to conclude that this was destroyed from the ground up was, first of all, if you look on either side here, the former Prizren League Museum was an early nineteenth century small, two-storey building surrounded on two sides by other historic buildings. The buildings here to the left and behind it are also part of the museum, and then the other buildings on this side.
What is particularly striking even about this photograph is that these buildings which are at a distance of, at most, five to ten metres from the site are completely undamaged, which speaks against any high 2670 explosive.
Secondly, the construction of the Prizren League Museum is what is known in the region as carpic [phoen]. It's a mud-brick building. It's wooden beams, and the interstices are filled with unfired brick. Typically, that kind of building cannot withstand either fire or explosives very well. It just falls apart.
If this building had been hit by something with a heavy explosive charge, you wouldn't see this much of it remaining. What I can see here is very typical of a number of other buildings we saw elsewhere in Kosovo which were clearly burned down, often in an even tighter urban context, with undamaged buildings less than two metres away. So I would rather doubt that this was hit. It's also a matter of logic. Why this building, the one monument in Prizren that is a monument to the Albanian national movement, would be the one monument in Prizren that was supposedly hit by a NATO airstrike as an intentional kind of act. It makes very little sense.
Could you show the other side, please. You can see here charred beams sticking up from the top and the ground storey still standing. I have numerous pre-destruction photos of the building. You can see there wasn't really that much more to it.
Finally, of course there were also a number of people we interviewed who claimed to have seen the destruction which they say was done by Serbian police firing hand-held incendiary devices. Finally, between the Prizren League Museum and the buildings immediately to the back of it were a series of life-sized statues of the 2671 founders of the League of Prizren. Those statues were subsequently, after the war, fished out of the river. Again that speaks to the probability that the destruction was malicious and from the ground up rather than that the statues were lifted up and taken into the river by some airstrike.
Q. Let us look at the other photograph, please.
A. The other side?
Q. Yes, yes. No the other side, please. As you can see, it was hit from above, and it could not have been hit by any hand-held rocket launcher. And on the 28th of March, 1999, it was hit directly by a rocket from a plane.
Is convincing proof what Albanian witnesses will tell you? Is your logic convincing? Why would NATO hit a cultural monument of the Albanians, if I ask you why did NATO strike a column of Albanian refugees where dozens of men, women, and children were killed? Why would NATO strike again a second column of Albanian refugees where again dozens of Albanians, men, women, and children, were killed? Why would NATO strike a bus --
JUDGE MAY: This is a speech.
Q. -- on the line from Kosovo to Pec?
JUDGE MAY: Have you got a question? The witness says -- the witness says -- just a moment. Just a moment.
What the witness says are from his conclusions this building was set fire to. Now, if you want to put something different to him, do, but you've heard what his conclusions are.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] 2672
Q. As you can see on this photograph - please put it on the ELMO --
A. It's there.
Q. -- there are no traces of fire there. It's clearly a photograph of a house hit from the air.
JUDGE MAY: Let the witness -- let the witness answer that.
THE WITNESS: The upper storey, which no longer exists on this, has three tall windows and a wood-timbered tile roof. What you see here is collapsed roof timbers. What is sticking up looks charred, and there's something that looks like smoke rising up from the building. That's all I can tell from the picture.
When we went to Prizren, the site had been completely levelled, and they were about to construct a replica of it. What I can tell is that the buildings next to it, upon our visit, were still in the same condition as you can see on this picture, with the tile roofs and the old windows still intact, the paint flaking. Obviously they had not been re-glazed. Any kind of explosion would at the very least have shattered the windows, and you would have been able to see that these are repaired windows. The distance is very small.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Mr. Riedlmayer, NATO hit my house with three rockets. Twelve metres from the house, not a single pane of a glass was broken, a building twelve metres away from the same garden. Are you a ballistics expert?
A. I do not claim to be. I'm simply stating what I saw.
Q. Very well. We can move on, then. Do you know that the area around the Pec Patriarchate, that was 2673 built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was hit by NATO planes on a number of occasions - on the 31st of March, the 1st of April, the 11th, the 12th and the 17th of May, 1999 - even though it is a monument in the first category, which UNESCO placed on the World Heritage list?
JUDGE MAY: Yes. It's put to you that it was hit three times, the Patriarchate. Would you deal with that, Mr. Riedlmayer.
A. Yes. We visited the Patriarchate, as did two independent conservation experts who checked the buildings and murals and found no sign of damage other than that from rising damp and long-term deferred maintenance. The two conservation experts were Tody Cezar, who is mentioned in our report, who was an independent consultant for UNMIK's Department of Culture in December of 2000 and January 2001. More recently, a team from the Italian Instituto Centrale Del Estero visited both the Patriarchate at Pec and the monastery in Decani, and in a published account in Giornali Del Arte, published last fall, they state that there was no war damage to be seen at either site.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. I cannot interrupt you. I didn't say that it was hit. I said that they bombed the area of the Pec Patriarchate on the 1st of March, the 1st of April, the 11th and 12th and 17th of May, 1999. And you said that the information about bombing was provided to you both by NATO and the Yugoslav authorities. So my question was: Did you know that the area of the Pec Patriarchate was targeted five times in 1999, regardless of your own findings?
Let me go on to my next question anyway. The area of the 2674 Gracanica monastery --
JUDGE MAY: Let the witness answer. It's suggested that the area was targeted, not the Patriarchate itself, but the area. Can you help us with that?
THE WITNESS: No. All I can say is: Yes, I read the allegation, which is why we looked at whether there was any damage to the building, and the suggestion is that there was none.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Very well. And the area around the Gracanica monastery. You know that that is one of the most beautiful buildings of world architecture. It dates back to the fourteenth century and it is protected as a world-class monument. That the area of the Gracanica monastery was bombed by NATO on the 28th, the 3rd of March, the 10th of April, the 1st, 14th, and 17th of May. The rockets fell close to the monastery. They didn't hit the monastery itself, but they did cause damage to the facade of the monastery and the fresco paintings. Did you establish that?
A. Again, I have no first-hand knowledge of the events during the war. Obviously I wasn't there. As far as the monastery goes, again we have the report of Ms. Tody Cezar, who visited the monastery and found that the frescos were endangered by rising damp caused by groundwater and by the failure of pointing, that is, mortar coming out from between the bricks, which is a result of lack of maintenance over the years. As far as any damage, we didn't see any, and the monks didn't tell us of any at the time. I'm aware that there are allegations that such damage existed. We didn't see it. 2675
Q. You were not on the spot, and I understand that, but are you familiar with the report by experts of the Republican Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia on the state of the fresco paintings in Gracanica, published by the Society of Conservators in Belgrade, 2000, by editor Marko Omcikus? Are you familiar with that report?
A. I'm familiar with the citation to the work. I was not able to get a hold of a copy of that particular journal. However, the report was summarised in an article by Professor Slobodan Curcic in the journal British Byzantine Studies. In this, he repeats the assertion by the conservators that the frescos had separated from the wall and were in danger of collapse. This does not match with the assessment that we have from the conservator Ms. Cezar. I don't claim to be an expert on mural paintings myself, so all I can state is that we have two reports by experts which seem to be at variance.
Q. You're mentioning the professor from Princeton?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know that NATO planes directly targeted the memorial complex Gazimestan? Let me remind you. It is a memorial complex of the Kosovo battle from 1389 on the 13th of April, the 22nd, 23rd of May, and the 1st of June, and that they damaged the Gazimestan memorial complex.
A. The Gazimestan complex, which is north of Pristina, in the municipality of Obilic, was one of the sites we visited precisely because of these allegations, which we were eager to check out. We looked very carefully all around the monument and we observed only one kind of 2676 damage. Surrounding the Gazimestan memorial are a number of concrete tubes which hold spotlights. These concrete tubes had cast-iron ornamentation put on it; a Serbian cross with the dates 1389 and 1989, commemorating the 600th anniversary. Somebody had apparently come and ripped off the cast-iron ornamentation. You could still see the dirt shadow where the cast-iron had been affixed to the concrete. The memorial itself looked completely undamaged, but we were told by a UN policeman on the site that the interior staircase had been damaged by an explosive placed inside after the war; however, there was no trace of it from the outside. We were not allowed access to the inside. In short, what damage we saw was not consistent with anything that could have been caused by an aerial attack.
Q. Do you know that on the 3rd of April, 1999, in the NATO airstrikes, St. Nicholas church was damaged in Djurakovac, built in the fourteenth century?
A. Djurakovac is another one of the sites that Ms. Tody Cezar visited. It looks in perfectly good condition. It has some nuns still staying in there, and they mentioned no damage. It is under the guard of Portuguese troops.
Q. The St. Nicholas church was damaged in Djurakovac, near Istok, fourteenth-century church. Do you know that on the night between the 14th and 15th of April, when attacking Klina, in the village of Drsnik, that NATO damaged the Paraskeva church and destroyed the belfry of the church? Of course, after Italian units of KFOR arrived, the Albanian terrorists, in June 1999, demolished the church and seriously damaged, by explosives, 2677 the same church, and they razed the village to the ground. Are you aware of this damage caused by NATO airstrikes?
A. Drsnik was the example that I showed photos of. The belfry was intact. It was a modern belfry of some age, with a metal structure. The building itself had walls and roof completely intact. The interior had had a fire set in it and the walls had been defaced, as I showed. Again, this is not something that I would believe could have been caused by airstrikes.
Q. Are we talking about the same site, the church of St. Paraskeva?
A. That's right. It's the two pictures I showed at the conclusion of my testimony.
Q. And are you aware that NATO air forces, on the 2nd, 4th, and 10th of May, 1999, targeted and damaged St. Gavrilo at Draganac, one of the most valuable monuments in Kosovo, near Gnjilane, and it is a protected site?
A. I'm not aware, no.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] Will you please show this map. It's a map of Kosovo, showing the churches, monasteries, and cultural heritage.
Q. Did you have in mind this distribution, and did you see anywhere in the world more densely scattered monasteries, churches, and monuments of cultural heritage as you see on this small area of Kosovo and Metohija?
A. I am familiar with the map. What the map does not show, which is seen in other versions of this map, such as in Gojko Subotic's book, is the fact that many of these sites are in fact archeological sites rather 2678 than standing churches. Nevertheless, I do agree that Kosovo is indeed a treasure house of architecture.
Q. Are you aware that on the 14th and 24th of May, NATO targeted and damaged the church of St. Archangel in Nerodimlje near Urosevac - it dates back to the fourteenth century - and Albanian terrorists, after the arrival of American KFOR troops, demolished, burnt, and blew up this church, as they did St. Nicholas, St. Stefan, and the Ascension of Mother Mary?
A. Yes. We have recorded all of these sites in our survey. If you look at the map of destroyed Serbian Orthodox heritage in our survey, you will find a cluster near Urosevac. It's hard to see on this black-and-white copy, but you can see -- you can see right here a cluster of dots, rather large ones, because they represent multiple buildings near Urosevac. Those are the churches at Nerodimlje. However, based on information we received from the Serbian Orthodox eparchy of Raske and Prizren, we recorded these churches as having been destroyed after the war, during the summer of 1999, by Albanians. Obviously, a place that had been blown up leaves no evidence of what may have happened to it before, but as far as I know, the Serbian Orthodox eparchy does not allege that they were destroyed during the war but after the war. But our database has pictures and assessments of each of these monuments.
Q. Did the Albanians perhaps raze it to the ground in order to destroy traces of NATO airstrikes?
A. I cannot speculate.
Q. There are documents about that. Are you aware that on the 1st, 2679 14th, and 16th of April, when the area of Kutlovac [phoen] was targeted, the old square, that NATO damaged the Zvecan medieval fortress, a medieval fortress near Kosovska Mitrovica from the twelfth century, a world-class monument? The walls of the fortress were seriously damaged during those airstrikes. Are you aware of that?
A. I paid a brief visit to Zvecan when I was in Mitrovica last March. It is a ruined fortress, and I didn't see any evidence of recent damage, but of course it's very hard to tell with an archeological ruin.
Q. Are you aware how many of these numerous mosques in Kosmat were built in the last ten-year period? But not ten years. Let's take the period from 1993 to 1999, that seven-year period prior to the war.
A. I did not do a statistical analysis in our database, but I could very easily. I'm aware that a large number of churches and mosques were built in Kosovo in the 1980s and 1990s, in part because with the easing of church/state relations after the decline of Communism, it became legally possible, and in part because it became financially possible. In the case of mosques, a number of Kosovars who worked in Western Europe sent home money. In the case of churches, there were a number of well-to-do Kosovar Serbs who expended their money by building churches, such as the Karic brothers. These new mosques and churches were often targeted when -- and then they were destroyed, and -- but so were some of the older ones.
Q. Do you know that in the period from 1987 until 1999, several hundred mosques were built in Kosovo?
A. I have never seen that statistic. The number seems large to me. 2680
Q. Very well. I assume that you do make a distinction between monuments of culture and ordinary religious monuments built, shall we say, in this last period from 1987 until 1999? I assume that you do make that distinction.
A. Yes, we do make the distinction. However, because of the fact that a number of very recently built Orthodox sites were on the list of protected monuments, such as, for example, the memorial church in Djakovica which was completed right on the eve of the war in 1998/1999, and because of the fact that religious monuments in general seem to be singled out for destruction, we decided not to limit our survey to officially listed monuments but to include all religious structures. The distinction is always marked in our database where there's a separate line about whether or not a building has listed status.
Q. Yes. But there must be a different attitude among ordinary citizens and believers towards what is a historical monument and is part of the cultural heritage and a newly built religious building. So in the feelings of people, in the motives regarding protection and use, that the people too make a distinction in that respect.
A. Maybe so. Nevertheless, if you look at the list of damaged or destroyed Orthodox churches that were targeted after the war, many of them date from recent times. So whether it's a mosque or a church, it means something to people whether it's been around for hundreds of years or whether it's recently built. It fulfils its cultural and religious function. So we believed that we ought to cover these as well, but obviously our initial starting point was the listed monuments. 2681
Q. You're talking about monuments that are protected. How many mosques in Kosovo were listed as monuments of culture?
A. It depends on who does the listing and at which period. It seemed that there were several revisions of the official list for protection from the 1980s onwards. So it's hard to pin down an exact figure. But between 15 and 30, according to various documents and statistics.
Q. So 30 on the outside. That would be the maximum.
A. Yes.
Q. So you see how you reach the ratio that I referred to earlier on. You said that in 1998 and 1999, 225 mosques were destroyed or damaged, and it follows from what you have just said that these were -- that this was not a significant percentage of them that were listed as protected cultural monuments.
A. That does not follow at all. First of all, if you do an analysis, the number of listed monuments that were hit was quite high. And in addition to that, we note in our report that a number of culturally and architecturally and historically significant mosques were not included in the official listing. We assume on the basis value judgements and political motives, because otherwise you could not explain the discrepancy.
For example, we noticed that in the region of Pec, the number of mosques -- if you bear with me for a moment. I have here -- there were 36 mosques. Half of those mosques - so we're talking 18 of them - dated from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and yet of those 18 mosques, I believe no more than two or three were on the officially 2682 protected list.
So I think it's clear that the listed status of a monument does not necessarily in this context indicate that it is historically or architecturally significant. It simply reflects administrative and political priorities which in my judgement have affected decisions on whether to list or not to list the monument for protection.
Q. So it is your assessment that it was not professional criteria but political criteria that we used when the experts of Serbia and Yugoslavia and Kosovo and so on categorised monuments of culture?
A. I'm not impugning the professional qualifications of these experts, but I do believe that political considerations played some part.
Q. Are you aware that numerous monuments of culture from the Ottoman period, the Ottoman heritage - I'm not talking about the Christian ones now - were renewed, repaired, and protected by the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Serbia, that is, by the Government of Serbia, such as, for instance, the Sinan Pasha Mosque and the hamam in Prizren, and that a series of such significant monuments were maintained, conserved? Do you know, for instance, that in the 1990s, the government reconstructed the Imperial and Jasar Pasha mosque in Pristina and the Bajrakli mosque in Pec, and the Terzija bridge in Djakovica, and that all these are first-class listed monuments? Are you aware of all these significant monuments that I have just mentioned?
A. I am aware of these monuments. I'm also aware that in the case of some of them, there was conservation work done on them.
Q. Do you know, for example, that the turbe of Sultan Murat, where he 2683 BLANK PAGE 2684 died at the Battle of Kosovo, was never damaged by the Serbs? I assume that you saw that turbe or mausoleum?
A. Yes. I visited it, and it was intact, although very badly in need of restoration.
Q. And do you know, for example, that Sinan Pasha, the Sinan Pasha mosque in Prizren, which was built in the seventeenth century, was built by the material that had been used previously to build the Christian monastery of the Archangel which was destroyed in order to have the mosque built, and that that mosque once again, the one dating back to the seventeenth century, regardless of that, was listed in the first category, "Word Class Site," and maintained by the government and its institutions? Are you aware of that?
A. Yes.
Q. And do you know that a large number of mosques during the war was used by the KLA, especially their minarets, as sniper nests and that they were legitimate military targets in that case? Are you aware of that? Because you delved into the reasons for the destruction of the cultural monuments, I assume.
A. I have no way of knowing what happened during the war. What I can tell you is that in many cases where we saw mosques burnt out, minarets decapitated, we did not see any signs that the mosques had been targeted by small-arms fire, which I would assume is the -- would have been the result of a firefight with KLA or snipers. But I'm not a military expert, so I couldn't begin to tell you.
What I can tell you is that in many cases, not only were the 2685 mosques damaged or destroyed, but there was extensive evidence of defacement, things like scriptures torn from their covers and scattered on the ground, sometimes defaced with human excrement. The walls full of Serbian graffiti, obscenities, anti-Albanian or anti-NATO slogans. Clearly those are not attributable to legitimate military action. That's all I can say on this subject.
Q. All right. As to the graffiti, the whole world knows about graffiti, and they are a characteristic feature everywhere. But do you know, for example, that the Hadum Mosque in Djakovica, which was not directly targeted by NATO, but when it targeted places in Djakovica, it did significantly destroy it on the 10th, 14th and 15th of April when the mosque was in fact destroyed in the bombing although it was not a direct target? Are you aware of that?
A. The Hadum Mosque in Djakovica is one of the sites that we have documented very extensively. It is in the booklet you see there. We found, first of all, no sign that it had been subjected to explosive damage. The front end had been burnt down. There had been an attempt to burn the interior. The minaret was decapitated, and you could see on the minaret several small round holes. Again, I'm not a military expert, but I would suggest that somebody was using something other than a missile to -- than an aerial missile to decapitate the minaret. Similarly, the library was burnt out. The airstrike damage in Djakovica is -- is quite visible. There's a big Yugoslav army base on the outskirts of town which was very thoroughly flattened, but surrounding houses seemed in reasonable condition. And this site was at some 2686 considerable distance from the centre of the old town, which looked like it had been damaged by fire.
Q. And do you know that the members of the KLA, on the 4th of May, attacked from the surrounding hills of Djakovica, and right up to the 14th of May there was fighting in the area around Hadum Mosque and the marketplace, and that in a repeated attack by NATO on the 25th of May, a direct hit destroyed the large marketplace or, rather, the old centre of town? I think in your report you have made mention of the fact that somebody else did that and not NATO in that airstrike.
A. Well, again with a caveat that I'm not a military expert, I can tell you that we did a very extensive survey of the damage to the marketplace, and the damage seemed to be very circumscribed. It was limited to rows of shops directly facing the main street. The rows of buildings behind them tended to be in good shape. The shops all looked burnt down; the interiors completely charred, the timbers of the front and the roof gone. However, the partition walls behind them were, in most cases, perfectly intact. And I would suggest that both the pattern of destruction and the nature of destruction would indicate that this was arson rather than things done from the air.
Q. As we quite obviously don't agree on that. We began with the Prizren rebuilding, and you yourself said that you were not a ballistics expert, do you really not consider that it would be a good idea for some experts to take a look at it and to ascertain whether what I am claiming is the truth or whether your findings are the right ones, of a non-ballistic expert and so on, especially if we bear in mind the 2687 information about fighting in Djakovica which went on for a full ten days and the bombing of the old marketplace and that in that fighting --
JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, this is not a matter for the witness. He's given his evidence as to what he's seen. He's given his conclusions. You're saying there should be another expert. Well, that's a matter for others. It's not for the witness to say.
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am not saying that another expert witness should be brought in, Mr. May, and I'm not suggesting anything to the witness. All I'm doing is asking him for his opinion in view of the fact that he is making assessments and evaluations about things that he himself said he did not understand.
Does he consider that a group of experts, who are well-versed in what neither I myself nor the witness is well-versed in --
JUDGE MAY: I have made the point. I have made the point, and it is a ruling, that this is not a matter for this witness. You asked him about the damage. He gave the best answer he could. Now, if you have any further comments, you can make them, the Prosecution can make them, but we're not getting anywhere by this.
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. Let me continue with my questions then.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
Q. Who was Petrik -- is Petrik Domi [phoen]? I think you mentioned him and said he secretly filmed the burning of the marketplace in Djakovica?
A. Petrik Domi was a young resident of Djakovica. His photos were 2688 distributed by wire service agencies after the war.
Q. After the war therefore. And do you know that, during the war, he was a member of the 124th Brigade of the terrorist KLA?
A. I have no idea.
Q. And that that material of his was in fact rigged, just as on many occasions was the case of the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia?
A. I have no information of that sort.
Q. And do you happen to know that the mosque in Landovica, which you visited, is only 20 metres away from the Prizren-Djakovica road, where at the end of January 1995, from the minaret of that mosque, a column of the Yugoslav army was targeted? And at that time in Kosovo, the Verification Mission was in place.
A. I only described the damage. I have no information about what may have happened.
Q. And do you have any information and were you interested at all in taking a look at how many mosques were destroyed in the area where the fighting went on with the so-called KLA and how many in the area where there was no fighting?
I'm asking you this in view of the fact that you put forward your facts for the indictment and some which should be relevant for an assessment of that information and those facts and figures.
A. If you look on page 14 of the report, it has the distribution on a map.
If you could turn on the ELMO. If you could try to focus it so 2689 it's all there. Okay. That's good enough. A little bit more. Good. As you can see, the pattern of -- this is the map of damage to Islamic religious sites. You can see that the pattern of destruction covers much of Kosovo. There are significant exceptions. The city of Prizren has no damage sites, whereas Djakovica, Pec, Mitrovica have large numbers of damage sites. In Pristina, only one mosque was burnt, as well as the archives of the Islamic community. Similarly, there were relatively low numbers in other towns. However, villages all the way from the north to the south were targeted. Significant exceptions include the southernmost tip, the Gora region, which is Muslim but not Albanian. The Goranci are Slavs who are Muslim.
There was a very heavy destruction in the area roughly between Prizren, Djakovica, and Suva Reka, where a significant exception was the village of Mamusa, which is mainly ethnically Turkish. There, the mosque was intact. But most other villages in the surrounding region, the mosques were destroyed or damaged.
Otherwise, there was less damage to be seen in Eastern Kosovo where there is a fairly heavy Serbian population; in Kamenica region, Novo Brdo, around Strpce, which is mainly an ethnic Serb region, as well as the far north, but otherwise, you see a fairly general pattern going on. Some of it is also a question of the distribution of mosques. There were relatively few mosques in the Drenica region. What few there were were mostly damaged or destroyed.
That's all I can say about patterns.
Q. Well, more or less what you have just said coincides with the 2690 assumption that where there was combat between the army and the police on one side and the terrorist KLA on the other, there was much greater damage, immeasurably greater than where the Serb population was in the majority and where, if we assume that the Serbs destroyed mosques, you would expect the mosques to be destroyed more than in where the fighting was going on.
Now, do you know what period, because I'm sure you deal with this, when the most -- when the oldest monument to Albanian architecture dates back to? And can you tell us what that monument is? What is the oldest monument?
A. I think that's a question of definitions. Whether you call a mosque an Albanian monument or an Islamic monument is a question. Whether you call a medieval residential site one or the other is a question of definitions of ethnicity.
The oldest Islamic sites date back to the early fourteenth century. Residential architecture tends to be on the whole more recent, as you would expect that people rebuild their houses quite often. But I'm not sure what the point of the question is.
Q. The point of the question is that you have been speaking and not differentiating between monuments of the Ottoman-Turkish architectural type, and I'm asking you to tell me the oldest monument to Albanian architecture. So we're not talking about the Ottoman and Turkish architecture here but Albanian architecture.
What is the oldest monument to Albanian architecture in Kosovo?
A. I don't necessarily want to get into long historical arguments, 2691 respecting the Court, but I would posit that the people who built the mosques in Kosovo over the nearly 600 years that there has been Islam in Kosovo had been, in the main part and especially in the villages, Albanians, also in the towns. For example, in Pec, one of the mosques that was -- we found destroyed was the Kursumli xhamia. You would call it an Ottoman monument, but the founder of the mosque was an Albanian native of Pec, Husein Pasa, who became Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was not a nation state, and everyone who was in the empire participated, to one degree or another, in the common cultural enterprise. So it's very hard to sort out, in the culture of those 600 years, what belongs to which nationality. I think the question, to a degree, is somewhat absurd.
Q. I don't think it is absurd, because, for example, the Grand Vizier of the Turkish sultan, Sulejman II The Magnificent, was Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic, who was a Serb by origin. But we do not consider that what he built, the buildings he built all over Turkey, is the subject of Serb architecture. And the same holds true vice versa?
JUDGE MAY: What is the significance for these proceedings of all this?
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] With these proceedings, nothing at all. It has to do with --
JUDGE MAY: Move on to another topic, then.
MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation] All right.
Q. But are you aware of the fact that NATO, on several attempts, on the 10th, the 14th, and 15th of April, in the course of May 1992 [as 2692 interpreted], directly targeted the old marketplace of Pec, which was destroyed, which is where the Bajrakli mosque is, the first-class, world-listed monument which was devastated in part?
A. I'm aware of the allegations. We also investigated it, as we did all of these allegations. With respect to the Bajrakli xhamia, we have extensive documentation. I can tell you, first of all, the roof and the walls of the mosque are completely intact, the interior completely burnt out. Even the door was intact but charred. I fail to see how this could be attributed to bombing, again with the caveat that I'm not a military expert.
I can, however, tell you that the interior of the mosque, up to about a five-metre height, was exposed to very high temperatures, suggesting the use of some sort of accelerant to create the fire. The furnishings of mosques are very sparse. There are only carpets. And in the absence of some kind of flammable, it's very hard to set fire to one that does not have wooden elements, as this one does not. The heat was so high that marble columns holding up the women's balcony were completely cracked by the fire, that the surface of the pulpit, which was hand-carved of marble and dated from the fifteenth century, had in part been turned to powdery burnt lime. I would suggest that the mosque was not collateral damage from bombing but a victim of arson.
Q. You mean collateral damage during the bombing of the marketplace in Pec?
A. That is what was suggested, and I suggest that was not the case. In the case of the marketplace, the pattern of damage was very similar to 2693 that of Djakovica. The shops on either side of the main market street were badly charred, houses just one row behind were perfectly intact, and this for several blocks in length. I can describe the damage. I leave the conclusions.
Q. You claimed that the Catholic church of St. Anthony in Djakovica was not damaged by the bombing, although there is a fact, and I want to ask you about it, and that is: Do you know that on the 29th of March, 1999, during the attack on Djakovica, it was precisely NATO planes that damaged the St. Anthony Church, and the whole front wall above the entrance to the church was split and the nuns' part -- that the wall cracked? And as far as I remember, this was justified as being collateral damage. Do you know anything about that?
A. We visited the church and talked to the parish priest, who was present in Djakovica throughout the war, and we have his account of what happened. And according to his account, the Yugoslav army troops ejected him and the nuns from the friary and took over the church and the parish buildings as their operational quarters half an hour before the NATO airstrikes. The church looked perfectly fine. It had had no repair work done on it since the war, and we were there in October 1999. The parish buildings had new windows, and they were busy repainting them because the interior had been badly vandalised.
Q. And do you consider that when the army went to the konak of that church was a crime, to seek shelter?
A. It is not for me to make legal determinations. However, I understand that the use of buildings that are protected under 2694 international law is analogous to the abuse of the Red Cross symbols, and therefore it's not legitimate. But as I say, I'm not a lawyer.
Q. Very well. Although you're not a lawyer, you consider that it was a violation of the law, or abuse equal to the abuse of the Red Cross symbols. Now, as you consider that, could you tell me how you characterised the aggression of the NATO pact on Yugoslavia?
JUDGE MAY: Not for the witness to deal with. Now, Mr. Milosevic, we're coming to the time when we're going to adjourn. You've been cross-examining this witness for very nearly an hour and 40 minutes. We shall expect you to wind up tomorrow morning fairly soon.
THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I haven't been able to complete my questions because I didn't expect this witness, Mr. May. As you well know, this witness turned up --
JUDGE MAY: Tomorrow morning we'll go on. Mr. Nice, what is the position after this witness?
MR. NICE: There's no witness, apart from this witness, for tomorrow, because of events concerning a witness who might have been called today. We then have a slightly tricky position on Thursday and Friday. A witness, General Drewienkiewicz, is due to give evidence, and although, as I think I told you earlier today, he's going to produce a considerable quantity of material, it had been hoped to fit him into Thursday and Friday if we had full sitting days. Of course, Thursday and Friday are now not going to be absolutely full days, and I'm concerned that it may not be possible to have his evidence completed in two days. I'm not sure how difficult it's going to be for him to stay over or to be 2695 available for next Monday. I'm hoping it may be possible, but it's certainly going to be extremely difficult.
I mention that because, of course, the Chamber had had it in mind to deal with some administrative matters and some general topics at the end of the week, by which we took Your Honour to mean Thursday or Friday. When this witness is concluded, might tomorrow be suitable? Although it will be difficult for us, I think, to have got all the answers to Your Honours' questions by then, I've already started the process of speeding up our work on those questions to see if they could be dealt with tomorrow if everybody else would be in a position to.
JUDGE MAY: Yes. It will obviously be convenient, then, to deal with those matters tomorrow, the procedural matters. We'll have time available.
MR. NICE: We certainly will.
JUDGE MAY: As for the witness that you mentioned, you say Thursday is not a full day. My recollection is that it is.
MR. NICE: I'm sorry. My mistake. Thursday is, Friday isn't.
JUDGE MAY: That's right.
MR. NICE: Entirely my -- can I mention something else, just ...
[Prosecution counsel confer]
MR. NICE: Simply because I'm on my feet, rather than having us popping up and down, I'm mentioning something on Ms. Romano's behalf relating to this witness's evidence. There is a question that arises about the two exhibits shown to him -- two documents shown to him by the accused, which he was able to deal with, and whether they should become 2696 exhibits. And secondly, I understand that there is a CD, or CD-ROM, whatever these things are called, detailing all of the survey, containing all the photographs of the survey, which it hadn't been possible for the unit here to reproduce in time for today but which it probably will be possible for them to have got produced for tomorrow. Now, in light of the very extensive questions that have been asked of the witness by the accused, the witness might prefer to be in a position, as he would be tomorrow, to deal with some of those issues by the CD-ROM, which can be produced for the Chamber, and indeed for the accused, to help.
[Prosecution counsel confer]
MR. NICE: I'm grateful. Apparently the amici and the accused have the material already, but I think Your Honours may be assisted by having this as well tomorrow.
JUDGE MAY: We do not want to retain the witness too long tomorrow, if that can be avoided. We'll consider that in the morning. As for the other two photographs, I don't know where they have got to.
MR. NICE: I think one of them -- I think they've gone back to the accused. Obviously I haven't discussed the issue with Mr. Riedlmayer, but it may be that he will have a view on whether he could explain some of these very detailed answers he's giving about particular buildings of which the accused asked him by reference to the CD-ROM. I don't know what his answer will be.
JUDGE MAY: He's heard that. He can consider it overnight. We'll adjourn until tomorrow morning, half past 9.00. 2697 BLANK PAGE 2698
--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 4.31 p.m., to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 10th day of April 2002, at 9.30 a.m.