³¹³⁷

Tuesday, 16 April 2002

[Open session]

[The accused entered court]

--- Upon commencing at 9.02 a.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Ryneveld.

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes, Your Honours. Just before I call the Prosecution's next witness, I wonder if I might have the Court's permission to deal with a matter of housekeeping from one of the last witnesses that I dealt with.

You'll recall that when I spoke -- when I led the evidence of Mr. Loku, there were some questions during cross-examination by Mr. Tapuskovic about some further photos that might be available in the bundle of photos available to the Prosecution concerning the hole -- the holes in the mountainside and perhaps the foliage that might have affected his ability to see what he testified about. We had promised at that time to produce the balance of the photos in our collection, and due to circumstances, those appeared not to have ever been presented into evidence, and I propose to do that now, if I may.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. You will have to remind us of what a convenient number is going to be.

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes. I believe those photographs -- do we have a number?

JUDGE MAY: It may not matter just for the moment.

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes. They appear to have gone in -- the original ones went in as 56 and 57, so perhaps we could make it 57A. ³¹³⁸

JUDGE MAY: Yes, 57A.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you. That matter attended to, the Prosecution proposes to call Richard Ciaglinski. Ciaglinski is spelled C-i-a-g-l-i-n-s-k-i.

JUDGE MAY: Pronounced Ciaglinski.

MR. RYNEVELD: Pronounced Ciaglinski. I don't know where the "N" comes from, but that's the way it's pronounced.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you.

[The witness entered court]

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: If you'd like to take a seat.

THE WITNESS: Thank you.

WITNESS: RICHARD CIAGLINSKI

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honour. Examined by Mr. Ryneveld:

Q. Witness, I understand that you're presently a Colonel with the British Armed Forces and at present a defence attache to Bulgaria and Sophia; is that correct?

A. That's correct, yes.

Q. Is it right, sir, that from the 5th of December 1998 to approximately the 23rd of March 1999, you served with the OSCE in Kosovo?

A. I did, as a member of the Kosovo Verification Mission. ³¹³⁹

Q. I see. And just briefly, by way of background, sir --

THE INTERPRETER: Could the speakers pause between answer and question, thank you.

MR. RYNEVELD:

Q. I understand, sir, that you joined the British Armed Forces in August of 1974, attended and graduated the Sandhurst Military Academy and received your commission in 1975.

A. That's correct.

Q. Then in 1994 to 1997, you served as a British Military Attache to Poland.

A. I did.

Q. And you hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics, a Master of Education degree, and you're a first-class interpreter in Polish?

A. Yes, I hold all the above, and I am an interpreter in Polish.

Q. And I understand - this is particularly relevant to the issue that I'm going to be asking questions about later - you completed a host of military courses, particularly in the areas of weapons recognition; is that correct?

A. That's correct.

Q. Sir, is it also true that you commenced your operational duties with the KVM in December -- on December 5th of 1998 in Pristina as part of Major General Drewienkiewicz's staff?

A. Yes. I arrived on the 5th of December, did some training in Brezovica for two, three days and then moved down to General DZ's staff.

Q. And by "General DZ," that's -- we accept that that's a shortening ³¹⁴⁰ of "Drewienkiewicz"; is that correct?

A. That's correct, and it saves a lot of time.

Q. Yes. Now, sir, when you were there, did you assume the role of a particular aspect of the Verification Mission?

A. Yes, I did. Because of my previous experience as a military attache and other types of work I had done in the British Armed Forces, General DZ asked for me to actually join the mission and to work on his weapons and arms verification team.

Q. And you agreed to do that, I take it, and as a result of that, what kinds of things did you do?

A. Well, the intention was that, in accord with the various agreements, my job was to try to design a method of inspection to verify that the agreement was being carried out in order that we could see that the troops were in barracks, the tanks were in barracks, the number of weapons of certain calibres were also being stored in barracks or not there at all.

Q. All right. Now, sir, if I remember correctly, you said something in pursuance to the agreements. What types of agreements are you referring to?

A. There were two main agreements. There was the agreement which was signed which allowed us to operate, which I think was referred to as the Holbrooke agreement but in fact I think it was an agreement signed by Mr. Geremek, the head of the OSCE, which specified exactly the size of the force, the size of the KVM, and what responsibilities we had pursuant to verification. ³¹⁴¹

Q. And was that the agreement the basis upon which you conducted your particular aspect of the mission?

A. Yes. That and the Sean Burns document which also then specified, went into a little bit more detail about, for example, the number of MUP patrol points.

MR. RYNEVELD: Might the witness be shown Exhibit 94, tab 3, Madam Registrar.

Q. First of all, Witness, if you could look at that and tell us if that in fact is the agreement to which you've made reference.

A. Yes, it is.

Q. All right. And did you have reference to that document during the course of your duties?

A. I kept the document in my pocket throughout the entire time I was in Kosovo.

Q. All right. And secondly -- I don't know if we need to show that on the ELMO.

MR. RYNEVELD: I believe it was shown on the ELMO during the evidence of the last witness, Your Honours. We can perhaps refer to that later, if need be.

Q. The second document that you referred to --

MR. RYNEVELD: Might the witness be shown tab 4 of Exhibit 94, please.

Q. And this document, if you recognise it, perhaps should be put on the ELMO.

First of all, Witness, do you recognise it? ³¹⁴²

A. I do.

Q. Is that the document to which you have referred as the Sean Burns document?

A. It certainly is.

Q. And did you have reference to that document during the course of your duties?

A. Yes, throughout the entire time I was there.

Q. What kinds of issues were of particular relevance contained in that document to your particular task?

A. Well, it was very important that the verification went according to the agreements, and therefore we tried to sort of keep both sides to these two documents. And it was important that the number of the MUP, the MUP patrols, was kept down to the number specified in this document, otherwise movement around Kosovo would have been impossible because there would have been so many checkpoints that no one could have moved. And so this is the main relevance, is just limiting the number of MUP patrols and checkpoints throughout Kosovo.

Q. Yes. Now, as a result of this, did you in fact visit various parts of Kosovo in the course of your duties of verifying that these agreements were being adhered to by both sides?

A. Yes. So for example, we did try to carry out a verification of barracks and military VJ locations, and we also carried out a spot check, at one point in our tour during our stay in Kosovo, of the number of MUP locations that were actually on the ground at any one time.

Q. Yes. Witness, part of the difficulty of you and I both speaking ³¹⁴³ the same language is that there can be immediate response and answer.

A. Sorry.

Q. We need to wait for the interpretation. Now, did you have unlimited access to MUP and VJ sites?

A. No, not at any time.

Q. Tell us about that.

A. Well, when we first tried to carry out our very first verification, which was of the barracks, the Junik barracks just west of Pristina, we were met with a very hostile reception. We were not allowed into the barracks. We were threatened that we were parking illegally, obstructing the barracks, and this went on for some time.

Q. Yes.

A. This was just the very first attempt to verify, and this was done with the presence of General DZ and a number of other verifiers.

Q. Allow me to interrupt at this point to ask when your initial attempts would have been, in time.

A. This would have been at the beginning of January 1999 -- sorry, wrong. It would have been about a fortnight after I started my work in Pristina, which would have been the second or third week in December 1998.

Q. All right. And you've told us about your initial attempts. Did you ever visit some other three main VJ sites?

A. Yes. After a great deal of negotiation with the Serbian Cooperation Commission in Pristina, we were allowed to take a team to visit three particular sites at various locations around Kosovo. ³¹⁴⁴

Q. And did you have reasonable access to those sites?

A. Yes. Obviously our visit was awaited and prepared for, and therefore, we were shown what the VJ wanted us to see. But certainly we had no difficulty with access on those days.

Q. Had they had notice, through these negotiation proceedings, of your impending arrival for inspection?

A. Yes. On every occasion, we gave notice. For the three inspections, there was a great deal of notice. For the -- our first inspection at the Junik barracks, it was a very short notice, I think, less than 24 hours. And then we also tried an inspection at the barracks in Prizren for which we gave more than 24 hours notice, and we were also met with a very hostile reception, eventually being allowed to accompany the commanding officer to his office to carry out some discussions but not allowed to carry out any inspection.

Q. I see. Had you requested to visit other sites and were you given permission?

A. Yes. We -- there were two tiers of inspection. There was the high-level tier where the actual headquarters, myself, I would organise the high-level visits; and each of the Regional Centres would also, as they controlled or looked after certain parts of Kosovo, they would also try to carry out their own local inspections. Certainly, even with notice, the only inspections we were allowed to carry out were the three I just mentioned. All the others were turned down or they were not answered.

Q. How many sites had you anticipated wanting to visit? In other ³¹⁴⁵ words, how many permissible sites were there, according to the agreement?

A. According to the agreement, we had free access to the whole of Kosovo and, therefore, every site was permissible.

Q. Are you able to give a numeric number to the amount of sites, VJ sites that you would have wanted to visit? I realise all of them throughout Kosovo, but do you know how many there were?

A. Well, we -- well, we certainly would have wished to visit all the permanent fixed garrisons and fixed locations. We -- anything to do with air defence was excluded because that was covered by a different agreement. But on top of the fixed locations, there were also deployed units that we wished to visit. So in total, there probably were 30 or 40, at least, sites that we should have been able to visit.

Q. Now, your initial attempts were, as you say, a fortnight after you started so that puts us about the third week of December 1998. Did this continue on into the -- into 1999, January and February, these attempts at verification?

A. Well, yes -- yes and no. It became more and more difficult, impossible to verify. So I continued to negotiate with the Commission for Cooperation for access for myself and also for the teams out on the -- in the regional areas. But slowly we had to change our method of operation, and so, for example, eventually we had to, when carrying out the inspection of the number of MUP patrol points, we had to mount a spot -- a surprise check on them.

Q. Yes. When --

A. Sorry. ³¹⁴⁶

Q. I'm waiting for translation. Did there come a time in February of 1999 when you decided to send out, shall we say, a mass cover of all of the known sites?

A. Yes, we did. The way we did this was to plan this beforehand using about 40 teams from the Regional Centres. We sent the teams to all the locations which were declared by the MUP as patrols, patrol bases, and we also sent additional teams to areas where we knew that the MUP had operated from before. And in the process, we also identified a number of other areas that we hadn't previously noted where the MUP were actually operating.

Q. I see. And I don't know if you've actually said this: You said there was sort of a spot check. I take it that means you gave no notice.

A. No. We wanted to -- there was no notice given as we wanted to see exactly what on any one day was deployed, because our feeling was that movement was very, very restricted throughout Kosovo.

Q. Do you know how many sites that your teams visited that day?

A. Yes; up to 40.

Q. And what were the results of that inspection, to the best of your knowledge?

A. Well, the MUP were allowed 29 points at any one time which they could actually be in, but on this occasion there were almost 40 points where the MUP were actually located, therefore contravening the agreement they had with Burns.

Q. Did you report those findings to anyone?

A. Yes. A report was written. A detailed report was compiled from ³¹⁴⁷ the older regional teams and passed to the OSCE chief of operations, General DZ.

Q. I see. Now, you've just referred to the fact that they had too many MUP units as a breach of the Sean Burns agreement. Were there any other breaches of the agreement that your inspection teams noted? And what did they -- what were they, if any?

A. Well, as time went along, we certainly noticed that activities were increasing and the deployment of troops outside barracks, which was a clear breach of the agreement, had taken place. This was around Christmas, when the Serbs deployed military units just to the south-east of Podujevo in large numbers; tanks and self-propelled artillery and mortar. That was just one of the examples of how -- what they were doing. Later on, they were bringing in additional equipment. New types of tanks were coming in, much more advanced tanks than the ones which were presently in Kosovo, based on the T72, I believe the M84 type of tank came in.

They seemed to stop the conscripts going back after the end of -- at the end of completion of the conscript's service, thereby extending, increasing the number of troops in Kosovo.

There were regular convoys coming in now from along the main supply route which is a road that went from Nis past Podujevo into Pristina, and these were convoys of ammunition, equipment, people. And then later, of course, we had problems at the border.

Q. Now, I just want to question for clarification before I ask you to comment on your last recitation of breaches. The first incident you ³¹⁴⁸ referred to referred to the MUP, which is the police; is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And that was they had more units than they were permitted by the agreement, and that is the police arm of the Serbian forces?

A. That's correct.

Q. The second -- the second incident you referred to, I believe you use military forces and you referred to tanks and matters like that. Was that the MUP again or was that now the VJ or what? Can you help us with that?

A. Yes. Excuse me. The -- sorry. The MUP were the police units. My second reference to the tanks deploying and supplies arriving mainly applies to the VJ, the Yugoslav army. However, the MUP were also increasing their forces with the quality and type of equipment they were bringing in.

Q. To your knowledge, did the MUP have access to tanks and things like that or was that more the domain of the military?

A. The MUP did not have access to very heavy equipment, so they did not have access to -- they didn't have their own T55s or M84s or heavy artillery, but they did have access to smaller wheeled armoured personnel carriers and sort of medium gunnery equipment as well as mortars.

Q. Now, Witness, you've already referred to the agreement that was -- went in as tab 4, as well as tab 3. You then recited to us a number of matters that you deemed were breaches, and I think you recited those for us. Would you also look, please, at Exhibit 94, tab 52 in these proceedings. ^{3149 BLANK PAGE 3150}

A. Thank you.

Q. Before it's placed on the ELMO, you can tell us whether, first of all, you recognise this document.

A. I do.

MR. RYNEVELD: Might it be placed on the ELMO.

Q. It refers to the 26th of February, 1999. Can you tell us what this document describes and how it is that you know about it?

A. Certainly. Every single day the OR KVM units throughout Kosovo would compile a report on the previous 24 hours. These reports were then passed to our headquarters in Pristina where they were then, if you like, fused into one document which would cover the sort of main activities which had taken place in Kosovo in that period. And therefore, this is a document I would see every single day on first coming in to work.

Q. This is but one of a daily report that would pass your desk; is that correct?

A. It certainly is.

Q. And would you at times have also been the source of the material contained in those reports?

A. Yes, I would.

Q. Looking at Exhibit 94, tab 52, would you describe for us, if you would, please, what kinds of matters are covered in this particular daily report.

A. Certainly. As you can see, first of all, the sort of a summary showing the developments, and then any major issues before the security situation and any other major issues which have taken place, as well as a ³¹⁵¹ state of the number of people within the mission on any particular day.

Q. And then it seems to divide the security situation into various districts; is that correct?

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. Their Honours have a copy, I believe, so perhaps you could just tell us, roughly, what some of the notations were with respect to this particular date.

A. All right. Well, something of particular interest is that, for example, the Mitrovica district reported that at 1330 hours, the VJ declared Bukos an area of a permanent garrison, which, to us, was extremely significant.

Q. The next line after that. Were you given access?

A. No. As I said, it was generally denied, and the only way we could gain access was if the patrols, the teams on the ground came back to myself, I would then contact the -- somebody from the Cooperation Commission. If it was army, I would contact Colonel Kotur or General Loncar. If it was the MUP, I would contact Colonel Mijatovic and try and agree access for the -- for our units on the ground. Usually the access was denied.

Q. Sir, is the expression "winter exercises" in relation to your duties in Kosovo a term that is known to you?

A. Yes. I have -- I came across this term.

Q. In what context?

A. Certainly when -- just before Christmas when we discovered -- it was announced to us just after we started that the VJ were deploying units ³¹⁵² to the Podujevo area. When I questioned this and pointed out it was a breach of the agreement, I was then told: "It's not a problem. We need to exercise. The agreement allows for exercises and therefore we are exercising our troops and we are allowed to exercise our troops on our training areas." When I pursued this further and asked for a clarification of what a training area was or a permanent garrison was, I was informed that the training area that the Serbian forces used in Kosovo was in fact the area of Kosovo.

Q. And what did that interpretation do, from your perspective, to the terms of the agreement?

A. Well, it was a total breach of the agreement.

Q. Thank you. Moving on to paragraph 6, if I may, Your Honours. Now, apart from those earlier three VJ sites that you mentioned that were -- that were inspected with prior notice, can you give a general description of the scope of your mission and how successful it was in terms of verifying adherence to the agreements?

A. Well, I would say that in -- if we tried to follow the agreement, it was totally unsuccessful. It was a disastrous attempt at verification by the sort of methods which we thought we had been allowed to carry out in accordance with the agreement, and that's why we then had to think of other ways of trying to see what was going on and trying to keep a record of what was going on within Kosovo.

Q. And what tactics, if any, if I can use that phrase, did you then adopt in an attempt to find a way to successfully monitor the situation?

A. Well, the only thing we could do was to flood the ground with as ³¹⁵³ many verifiers as possible, to have not only our bases within the main sort of five regional locations headquarters, but we actually tried to get as many people out, living in villages, in towns throughout Kosovo who would actually report. They would note the movement of troops, they would note the movement of the MUP, they would note the movement of the vehicles and any aircraft that the Serbians were using. As well as we would actually aggressively, if you like, follow, pursue any convoys or any units that left their barracks or left their winter exercise locations.

Q. So you'd sort of wait outside the barracks and, as they moved, you would follow; is that what you're saying?

A. Exactly. It was a difficult task because in those sort of -- in trying to carry this task out, we would be harassed to a great extent. We had patrols who were threatened at gunpoint. We had patrols who were deliberately blocked by armoured vehicles. We had two occasions, at least, where our verifiers were beaten up.

Q. Part of this process that you've just described, this new tactic, as it were, the movement of equipment, for example, how would you be able to identify whether equipment from one place ended up in another place? Is there some method of recording?

A. Yes. Fortunately, virtually every military organisation I know has a system of putting numbers on their -- all their vehicles, all their tanks. So it's very easy to see if a vehicle has moved from one location to another location by just noting the number on -- painted on the side of it. ³¹⁵⁴

Q. Now, having conducted this new tactic, how long a period of time would you say you were involved in that method of attempted verification? How long did that go on?

A. I would say that once we were -- we knew that we couldn't carry out what we considered to be our sort of right of inspection, we carried on this method virtually until the end.

Q. The end being near the 23rd of March, 1999?

A. Correct.

Q. And what degree of success did you have with this new process?

A. We, I believe, were quite successful, as can be judged by the amount of time that the VJ and the MUP would try to prevent us from carrying this out, although the VJ and the MUP became much more aggressive as we approached the 23rd of March.

Q. Did you come to any conclusions based on these records you kept about troop movements, vehicle movements, et cetera, et cetera, in regard to whether or not there was a breach of the agreements?

A. Yes, we did. The conclusion we drew is that they had virtually more than doubled the size of the garrison in Kosovo as well as having brought in a great many new pieces of equipment and equipment which was of a much higher quality and greater lethality.

Q. Were those all matters covered by the agreement? Were those all no-nos so to speak?

A. Yes, every one of those was a breach of the agreement.

Q. I'm going to ask you, sir, while you were engaged in your official observer capacity, can you give us some specific instances of Serb forces ³¹⁵⁵ involving aggressive conduct by Serb forces?

A. Yes, I certainly can. One of the very first instances of this I came across was the doctor's house just west of Podujevo in an area called Lapastica where -- this was a doctor's house. It was a medical station where the KLA, wounded KLA, were being treated. And it was shut up. The doctor was murdered. The entire area looked as if it had been hit by a nuclear bomb. A few days after the incident, we searched the area and we also found the body of an 80-year-old man who had been shot, unarmed, in part of the surrounding buildings.

Q. Just so that we can orient ourselves in terms of time, are you able to give us an indication of when you made this inspection?

A. This was in December 1998.

Q. All right. And you say this is a doctor's house near Podujevo. All right. And did you take any photographs or see any photographs of this 80-year-old man in situ, as it were?

A. Yes. I had the opportunity to, and I thought it was important that I should photograph the scene.

Q. You personally photographed the scene?

A. I -- yes. I took a number of photographs.

Q. I'm going to show you now a photograph with a number K021-8721.

MR. RYNEVELD: Mr. Usher, could you show a copy of that to the usher and hand copies off to the other parties.

Q. Is that the photograph you took, sir?

A. It certainly is.

Q. And where was this individual found, the body of this individual ³¹⁵⁶ found in relation to the house?

A. The -- I would say about 30 or 40 metres from the house, in a compound next to some stables where the man had obviously run away to hide.

Q. And you said, I believe, in your evidence that he was unarmed. At least, you found him to be unarmed?

A. The only thing you might see lying next to his body is an axe.

Q. Now, could you tell from what you saw about the doctor's house and the immediate surrounding area how this -- how this death came about or how the damage to the house came about?

JUDGE MAY: Exhibit number.

THE REGISTRAR: The photo will be Exhibit 96.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honour.

THE WITNESS: I had a chance to speak to the -- the unit overlooking the -- the Serbian unit overlooking this doctor's house, and they informed me that they -- they confirmed that they had attacked this house because it was a building that was being used for the treatment of wounded, and they regarded this as a legitimate target and, therefore, they had attacked it in force, using -- they had a T55 tank. They had a weapon called the Praga which is a 30-millimetre heavy machine-gun usually used in the anti-aircraft role, as well as mortars and small-arms fire, but the target was fairly -- extremely well destroyed. Everything was shot up. The entire building was shot up, the room had been trashed, medical supplies had been destroyed. There were several other bodies not far away. ³¹⁵⁷

Q. I believe you also indicated that the doctor himself had been shot?

A. The doctor had been shot as well, yes.

Q. Was it clear to you from what you could see upon your arrival that this in fact had been a medical facility?

A. It was very clear. In the first place, it was known as the doctor's house, and secondly, there were medical supplies strewn all over the place. Several rooms and around the outside of the house as well, the -- there were syringes, there were bandages, there were various drugs, saline solutions; and all this had been scattered around and destroyed.

Q. The injury to the 80-year-old man, now you've taken the photograph, could you determine how it was that he came to his tragic end? Could this have been as a result of shelling or mortar rounds or -- are you able to tell us a conclusion that you may have come to?

A. Yes. Because of the weather conditions which, as you saw from the photograph, there was snow on the ground and had been for some time, since November, and the fact that he had two bullet wounds - one in his head, one in his chest - and the fact there was no blood except where he was lying, it would seem to indicate that he had actually been shot where he was lying.

Q. When did you speak to the Serbian units who admitted responsibility for this incident?

A. I had been visiting this military location for some time, and in fact, I became very familiar with Podujevo and this particular location which we referred to as Tank Hill, and probably on -- I would speak to ³¹⁵⁸ them almost every single day. They got to know me quite well. And the day that we actually went down the hill to look at this building, before we went down, they told me what they had done and why they had done it.

Q. So you knew before you went down what had happened because they told you what they did?

A. Yes. And I also knew that the body of the old man was missing, because some of the relatives had complained that they hadn't seen him for some time and they were wondering whether he was still somewhere within the complex.

Q. If I understand your evidence correctly - and please expand on this if I have it incorrectly - you were told that they regarded this as a legitimate military target; is that correct?

A. Yes. They said that because the KLA were being treated there, it was a totally legitimate target.

Q. What was your view, and did you communicate that to them?

A. Myself and a colleague did in fact say that they should -- that they must have been aware that it was a medical facility, to which they replied that it was also a facility which treated terrorists and harboured terrorists.

Q. From your understanding as a military man, sir, is that a legitimate military target?

A. If the KLA had actually been using the house as a point from which to attack or use as a fire base, then I suppose you'd have to regard it as a legitimate fire target. But this was only ever used as a medical facility. It was known throughout the area as the doctor's house. He was ³¹⁵⁹ the local doctor for that whole area.

Q. Thank you. That's one incident, sir. I'm going to perhaps focus your attention: Were you familiar with an incident concerning villages near Jablanica and Decani, and if so, can you tell us about that?

A. Yes, certainly. It's another area I know quite well, and around the 10th of January, 1999, there was a certain amount of activity in the area because of locations and movements of both the MUP, the VJ, and the KLA. And it was also an area, especially Jablanica, where one of the top KLA commanders had his headquarters.

I was down there on the 10th, carrying out various negotiations, and shortly after my departure from this area, the Serb forces launched a massive attack, using heavy artillery, against the villages from the Decani area towards Jablanica, and they continued to shell the villages in that area for two days.

Q. When you say, "shell the villages," they weren't shelling a particular headquarters, or were they sort of mass shelling the village itself?

A. It would be very difficult for them to know the exact location of the headquarters of Mr. Ramush because it was an area that Serbs had actually no access to. So that would have been an impossibility. They were generally shelling the area and the villages and locations around Jablanica.

Q. Did you notice during part of your verification duties, shelling of another area?

A. Yes. There were at least two other occasions when I -- maybe ³¹⁶⁰ more, where I sort of watched the shelling. There was the shelling of an area south of Podujevo. This was in March, where the tanks and artillery were lined up along the main road between Podujevo and Pristina, and they were just shelling the hillside. They were obviously shelling some positions, but they were also shelling villages. And on another occasion, near -- south of Mitrovica, one foggy day they were shelling, firing at tanks, at targets somewhere to the south of Vucitrn. As it was a foggy day, I asked the VJ what they were firing at, and they said that they were just doing target practice as part of their training, and they were firing against deserted villages. And I said, "Well, how do you know that they are deserted villages because you can't see them in the fog?" And he said, "Well, because, first of all, we chucked the people out, and therefore we know they're empty villages."

Q. These incidents that you've referred to, how did you view them in your official capacity in terms of whether or not those were legitimate military actions or matters that you needed to report as a breach?

A. I was happy that one of the activities, the shelling of the trench lines and bunkers to the west of the main road south of Podujevo was legitimate, because they were KLA positions. But other instances were definitely, in my view, illegal as they were against civilian targets. They were indiscriminate, and we reported this to DZ in Pristina.

Q. Did you notice any incidents of looting of civilian homes?

A. Yes. I certainly on several occasions personally saw, at a distance because we weren't allowed any closer, Serbs walking out or military walking out with refrigerators, TVs, other goods, as well as on ^{3161 BLANK PAGE 3162} one occasion, in the Gornja Lapastica area, I actually went into a house that had been looted previously by the Serbs and there was nothing left in there of value.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Colonel, just to return to what you said earlier, that you are satisfied that certain positions were KLA positions, how did you satisfy yourself as to that?

THE WITNESS: Sir, I was in a very good position - in an open area with binoculars, with two of my colleagues - and we were able to observe -- we were actually in between -- halfway between where the guns were firing and where the positions were. So the actual rounds were flying over my head. And I was able to see quite clearly the KLA positions and the KLA fighters in those positions.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you.

MR. RYNEVELD:

Q. Sir, I'd like you to turn next, if I may, to -- you've mentioned a number of times your dealings with the Serbian Commission on Cooperation; is that correct? Perhaps you could give us a very brief idea at this point in terms of the make-up of that committee -- that commission, its mandate, who did what, and what role you played with them.

A. As far as we understood and what we were told was that the Serbian Commission of Cooperation with the OSCE was the official Serbian body that the OSCE did all its business with and through.

Q. Yes.

A. The commission was headed up by a retired general, Dusan Loncar, and his second-in-command or his military person on this committee was a ³¹⁶³ Colonel Kotur, Milan Kotur. He also occasionally would have on this committee a VJ representative, Colonel Mijatovic, who was probably the most -- second-most senior MUP person after General Lukic in Kosovo.

Q. Was there any -- sorry.

A. There were also at times a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from Belgrade on the commission, a Mr. Babic.

Q. How often -- I'm sorry, that's the Serbian representatives.

A. Yes.

Q. The OSCE would meet with them. Who, on a regular basis, would meet with these individuals, from the OSCE or KVM?

A. The senior representative would have been General DZ -- DZ, accompanied by myself as the liaison, Serbian liaison officer for the OSCE, with the OSCE to the commission, and usually with one or two interpreters, a Ms. Irina Babic or Mr. Dejan Trga. However, what -- the way we began to work was, because these meetings were on a daily basis, every day at 10.00, and the meetings could go on for as long as five hours at a time, this was not seen as a good use of DZ's time, and therefore he delegated to me that I should attend all the meetings, and this is what I did.

Q. During the course of these daily meetings, who appeared to have the authority on behalf of the Serb leaders of this commission?

A. Certainly initially I would say that General Loncar started off very confident and able to answer most of our questions. But as time went along, we noticed that he had to refer more and more often back to Belgrade for guidance and solutions. ³¹⁶⁴

Q. And when you say "back to Belgrade," did you then know or later discover who, if anyone, he was consulting with in Belgrade in order to deal with the issues that were raised at the meetings?

A. Yes, we did. We discovered this probably for the first time on the 27th of December when there was a serious breach of the agreement by the VJ. And there was a possibility of a very serious conflict breaking out between the KLA and the Serbian security forces.

Q. You told us when you discovered it. Can you tell us what you discovered?

A. What we discovered in this incident was that the -- there was a Serbian farmer who had been taken prisoner by the KLA. There had been an attempt by the MUP to get him out, and it ended up with the MUP patrol having to withdraw because of the amount of KLA fire that was coming from that area. I was then informed at this meeting, at the end of this morning meeting, that the decision had been taken to send in a very large force against this position, against the KLA in this area, and to extract this man by force.

I'd said that it was crazy because in the -- in the process of getting one man out, they would lose a great deal of people and so would the KLA, resulting in huge loss of life, especially as I knew what the KLA had actually prepared for the Serbians. They had actually -- at that time, they possibly had between 1.000 and 2.000 fighters not far from this village. They had moved equipment, truckloads -- tractor loads of ammunition in preparation for the Serbs. The Serbs also had a large force. So I suspected that if this action took place, there would be a ³¹⁶⁵ huge loss of life. Therefore, I volunteered, prior to any activity, to go in and attempt to try to get this farmer released by the KLA to prevent any further sort of fighting.

Q. How was that proposal by you met?

A. When I gave this proposal to General Loncar, he said he was unable to stop the activity and to affect the activity, however, he would have to refer to Belgrade and -- for a ruling.

Q. Yes.

A. So he then left the room, went next door. I could hear him on the telephone. I mentioned to Colonel Kotur, you know, "Who is he ringing?" And he indicated that it was probably Mr. Sainovic he was ringing in Belgrade. I later -- the following day, when the whole activity was over, I came back and sort of mentioned this again to him about who he'd called, and I mentioned Mr. Sainovic's name. And he said, "No. It was even higher. You have no idea how high level General Loncar spoke to in Belgrade."

Q. To your knowledge, who, if anyone, was even higher than Sainovic at that place?

A. Well, I don't know anyone any higher than Mr. Milosevic.

Q. Did you at any time have discussions with General Loncar about, on his trips back and forth to Belgrade, who -- the kinds of people he would be meeting with and did he name any names?

A. General Loncar began to visit Belgrade more and more often, and more and more often he wouldn't be present at the -- at our meetings in the mornings, and he began -- indications I had by talking to him ³¹⁶⁶ informally and to Colonel Kotur was that he was having high-level meetings in Belgrade, usually with Mr. Sainovic.

Q. Now, returning to this particular incident, the phone call is made, the speculation is that it's Sainovic. You later find out it was someone higher than Sainovic who you then understood to be Mr. Milosevic; is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, as a result of that telephone communication, was there an answer given to you about your offer to negotiate to attempt to prevent this massive loss of life?

A. Yes. There was. There was an immediate -- following the telephone conversation, I was given an immediate answer that I could proceed, together with the Red Cross, in trying to extricate the Serb, and the Serbian forces were pulled back to their start line, to their starting locations, and we were given access, freedom to move across sort of the line, if you like, to negotiate with the KLA and to -- by the -- sort of by the time it got dark, we had just managed to get the Serb out and there was no activity. There was no action. So we prevented this conflict that day.

Q. How -- I'm sorry, how did you manage to resolve the conflict?

A. Well, because we handed the Serb -- we took him from the KLA and delivered him to the -- to the police station in Podujevo, to the police. Therefore, that was immediately -- the Serbs were immediately informed in Pristina that the man was out and, therefore, they kept their word and they didn't attack that day. ³¹⁶⁷

Q. So as a result of your intervention at that particular point, there was no armed conflict between the two sides.

A. Right.

Q. Now, I understand, sir, that humility may prevent you from volunteering this, but did you receive any commendation for your efforts in this instance?

A. Yes. I was awarded a British Gallantry Award.

Q. Now, sir, I'd like to move on to January 6th of 1999. Were you present at a meeting that occurred that particular day?

A. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh.

Q. Can you tell us who you may recall, if you have recall of this, who may have been present?

A. I believe this was the meeting with Mr. Sainovic.

Q. Yes.

A. This was a meeting that Ambassador Keller, one of the deputies of the OSCE mission in Pristina, was heading, and I was there as the -- again as the Serbian representative, and the other side was headed up by Mr. Sainovic, and Mr. Andjelkovic was also there.

Q. Do you recall whether General Loncar may have been there?

A. I think he probably was. I can't swear I remember now.

Q. Would you happen to recall if Brigadier General Maisonneuve was there?

A. Yes, General Maisonneuve definitely was there.

Q. And I understand, sir, that this particular meeting on the 6th of January was held at the request of the OSCE/KVM because of what you ³¹⁶⁸ collectively deemed to be a deteriorating situation as you've outlined to us. Do you remember what, if anything, occurred at that meeting after it started?

A. Yes. There were a number of issues that we discussed and points we made to Mr. Sainovic, as he also made points to us. Mr. Sainovic accused the OSCE, and in particular the Americans and the Germans, of actively supporting and helping the KLA, which we obviously rebuffed. We -- we made a number of points. We spoke about the continued difficulty we were having in the Serbs allowing us to keep -- to have a medical evacuation helicopter, our own helicopter, which was an unmarked civilian helicopter as opposed to the ones that we were being offered by the Serbs, which was a military helicopter and military markings at the time and of a type that would immediately have the KLA firing at it, which wouldn't have been good for medical evacuation. There was a problem of fuel delivery to the OSCE. Occasionally we had difficulty in obtaining diesel for our vehicles because petrol stations refused to sell it to us. And we also spoke about the prisoners, the KLA prisoners who were in a gaol somewhere in Serbia, that we wished to visit and to negotiate their release.

Q. During the course of this meeting and the topics that were discussed and Sainovic's participation in this meeting, did you personally form any opinion with respect to the authority that Sainovic may have had on behalf of the Serbian government? The Federal Government, sorry.

A. Mr. Sainovic came across as an extremely confident and competent Minister who we had no doubt represented the Federal Government. He was ³¹⁶⁹ able, on his own, to make a decision, far-reaching decisions. So for example, he allowed us instantly to visit the prison in Nis. And the following day, I had my very first visit with the prisoners in Nis. He was able to give us answers immediately on the helicopter, the fuel, border access. And we also discussed the funeral arrangements for Racak, and he was able to give us absolutely definite answers which were not maybes, but they were, Yes, this will happen. So we had no doubt at all that he had the support of Belgrade when he made these answers, gave these answers to us.

Q. Now, were there, during the course of time, some other matters that you discussed with General Loncar which were ultimately referred to Sainovic? For example, you mentioned the permission to visit the 11 prisoners, the KLA prisoners, in Nis. Were there some other examples where matters had to go from Loncar to Sainovic?

A. I'm sure there were, but my mind's gone blank. I'm sorry.

Q. All right. For example, did you ever make any requests about information about troop movements?

A. I'm sorry. Yes, of course. Yes. One of the -- part of the agreement did actually state that any troop movements would be notified to us. And similarly, we had an agreement that every day we gave our sort of daily records to the Commission of Cooperation, and this is in fact one of the topics that was discussed with Mr. Sainovic on this particular occasion. Because although we'd asked Loncar repeatedly for these documents to be given to us, we never actually received any troop movement details. For example, we would often find out or be told in the morning ³¹⁷⁰ meeting that two hours ago, at the start of this meeting, a troop movement had actually already commenced. When asked why, they wouldn't inform us. They said well, because they didn't trust us, that if they passed information to us, we'd pass the information to the KLA and the KLA would then attack this convoy. So they felt no respect and no trust for us whatsoever.

Q. While we're on that point and before I move to another example, maybe you could clarify to the Court something I understand from your answer, and that is you would have these daily meetings with them and you would give them daily reports about things that you saw about their own troops, I take it. Similarly, would you have also had negotiations or discussions with members of the KLA from time to time?

A. Yes. I certainly would pass on all our requests for information and also any protests that we had on a daily basis. So I would protest any violations. I would protest any sort of activities which were out of proportion to the amount of force that -- and violence that they were using.

I personally, from about the end of December, had no more contact with the leadership of the KLA. I felt that my position as the liaison officer with the Serbs would have been compromised if I had been regularly meeting with the various KLA commanders. So another one of my colleagues, David Wilson, his job was to -- he was the KLA -- liaison officer to the KLA, and we would meet several times a day or in the evenings or somewhere out on the ground if there was an incident taking place, and we would sort of exchange information. Therefore, I was very aware of what the KLA were ³¹⁷¹ doing but I wasn't personally talking to the KLA.

Q. The follow-up to that question is: Were you or was your colleague, to your knowledge, passing information from one side to the other in terms of what the other side was doing?

A. We were regularly accused of this by the Serbian Cooperation Commission, but I can very honestly under oath say that at no time to my knowledge did any of my colleagues or myself communicate any equipment to the advantage of the other side. It would have been unethical and broken the agreement. It would have compromised our position as verifiers.

Q. Another example, sir. I'm not saying a final example, a final one I'm going to ask you about: Racak funeral arrangements, was that another issue that may have been referred by Loncar to a higher authority?

A. Yes. I mean, this was obviously one of the main occurrences in Kosovo and the funeral itself was going to attract a huge amount of public and international interest, and therefore, we spoke over several weeks while the bodies were being forensically examined and the examinations and investigations were going on. There was quite a long delay between the massacre and the funeral itself, so we had a lot of time to discuss this, and we were continually asking for a dignified, quiet funeral. Loncar was fairly adamant, certainly in my discussions with Loncar and Kotur. We kept being told repeatedly that if any KLA were seen at the funeral, for example, the VJ and the MUP, especially the MUP forces, would go in and sort it out. And during our discussions, this meant that if any terrorists were seen down there during the funeral, they would actually open fire and, you know, try -- upper hand, trying to kill the terrorists. ³¹⁷² During these five weeks, we did in fact manage to persuade them that there were other, better ways of dealing with funerals and these types of events based on the UK experience of Northern Ireland and dealing with similar types of events, and in fact, eventually as a result of our discussions and as a result of discussing it with Mr. Sainovic, we were able to sort of implement this more peaceful way of dealing with the funeral. So that was one of our successes.

Q. That is a decisions that Sainovic made. You're nodding your head, meaning yes?

A. Yes.

MR. RYNEVELD: Your Honours, with this 9.00 schedule, I'm not sure when the break is.

JUDGE MAY: Half past.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you. I'll continue with the examination.

Q. Now, sir, are you familiar with General Brankovic?

A. Yes, I am.

Q. And how it is that you came to know him?

A. What happened was that as the -- the activity of the Serbian security forces was increasing and growing, so we felt that General Loncar and his commission were becoming -- having to refer more and more often back to Belgrade. And also, you know, in his frequent absences, we were not surprised to be informed one day that there was going to be a brand new commission of new experts coming out who would be able to deal with this more directly. And in fact, my very first meeting with General Brankovic, he did inform me that he was not just there to represent the -- ^{3173 BLANK PAGE 3174} the VJ and the military but he was actually a direct representative of the Belgrade government.

Q. And by "Belgrade government," you're talking about the Federal Government --

A. Federal Government, yes.

Q. -- headed by the accused.

A. Correct.

Q. And what would you -- so was Loncar still there at that time? Did he replace him or were there -- were they there together, or -- tell us about that.

A. No. What had happened is that at the few meetings I had with General Brankovic, which were fairly acrimonious because of the way he tried to treat us and -- he was -- basically, he became very difficult. He became a difficult man to speak to. He insisted on all topics that were to be discussed being submitted 24 hours in advantage. He wouldn't take any sort of current questions without notification. Meetings had to start exactly when he insisted, making our -- this would have made our work impossible because sometimes we'd have up to two or three meetings a day during the escalation of events and there was no possibility of notifying him, giving him this type of notification. So Brankovic was there for a few times, difficulty to see, these meetings no longer happened on a daily basis.

Loncar had disappeared. Kotur had told me that he had had enough of this politicking and he had asked to go back to his military unit, and so he was also out of the commission. ³¹⁷⁵

Q. Are you able to give us a rough time frame of when this transition took place? Are we talking December 1998, or January or February?

A. This was March.

Q. March 1999?

A. 1999.

Q. Thank you. Okay. And who were some of the -- okay. So we've got Loncar disappearing, Kotur returning -- Kotur returning to his unit and he's no longer in the commission.

A. No.

Q. Who are some of the other Serbian staff? Are you able to remember or --

A. I'd have to refer to my notes which I've left downstairs, but --

Q. All right. Well, perhaps --

A. -- there were at least two other colonels who came in but Mijatovic still remained as part of the commission.

Q. All right. And since you mentioned Mijatovic, what dealings would you have with Mijatovic, under what circumstances?

A. Colonel Mijatovic, we took to be the second in command of the MUP Kosovo, and he would usually come along to the meetings on an infrequent basis, usually to inform us that one of his patrols or his policemen had been attacked or killed or wounded, and -- excuse me. And we would then be sort of subject to a good half hour, 40 minutes of abuse about our inefficiency in preventing these killings and only wishing to verify the one side and not verify what was happening to the Serbian side, which was totally untrue. ³¹⁷⁶

Q. I see. Do you recall the name of the colonel who replaced Colonel Kotur?

A. I'm not sure if it was Petric or Petrovic.

Q. And if it was Petrovic, he would have replaced Kotur as the VJ liaison officer?

A. Correct.

Q. And then we have Mijatovic as the MUP man basically?

A. Yes.

Q. And who is Lukic, Sreten Lukic?

A. General Lukic was the chief of the MUP in Pristina, in Kosovo.

Q. Right. Do you know where Mijatovic and Lukic may have operated from, their headquarters or where they were located?

A. Yes. I -- even though Colonel Mijatovic rarely came to the commission for the meetings, I would -- there were occasions when I would go to his headquarters to have meetings in his office. So both Lukic and Mijatovic worked in the sort of operational part of the MUP headquarters which was based behind -- between the stadium and the main administrative part of the MUP headquarters, not far from the OSCE headquarters, in the centre of town.

Q. A little later in your evidence I may ask you actually to look at some maps and describe some things for us. And now, this -- this location, do you know whether helicopters had access to that location?

A. Yes. The next to the operational headquarters was the sports stadium, and there were regular helicopters arriving and landing in this airfield. For example, when Mr. Sainovic flew in, he would often land in ³¹⁷⁷ the stadium with the helicopter.

Q. And just so -- I may have not have -- this is in Pristina, I take it?

A. It's right in the centre of Pristina.

Q. Now, sir, in the time remaining before the break, you've talked to us about winter operations or winter exercises, and you've talked to us about the agreement that you were verifying or observing. Can you give us a list of things that you witnessed which gave you some indications of perhaps planned operations for the springtime?

A. Yes, there were a number of indicators which not only showed us that there was something being prepared but also which then prevented us from operating and working to our mandate. So as you say, the first thing was the deployment of troops outside the barracks into their winter exercise areas; the fact that the conscripts were not being allowed to go home, they were being kept on for an extra term, thereby increasing their numbers; the fact that these ammunition columns were coming in; the fact that we saw trains arriving with tanks at Mitrovica and being driven to locations around Kosovo.

Q. I believe you mentioned earlier in your evidence about the improved material. I think you said certain kind of tanks and things like that were of a better quality. What significance did you place on it?

A. Well, it wasn't just the fact that new equipment was coming in of a better quality and greater performance and lethality but we also noticed that there were a greater number of MUP coming in and a type of MUP which we had not seen before. The normal policeman in town is dressed almost ³¹⁷⁸ like your average policeman. The MUP which operated out in the field wore a form of combat kit, not very modern -- with not very modern equipment being carried, or modern helmets. Whereas suddenly the MUP who were appearing in Kosovo, these were people wearing the very latest kevlar helmets, body armour, a new type of combat clothing which we hadn't seen before, carrying weapons which were of a quite different sort, short barreled -- shorter-barreled weapons, automatic weapons of MP5 Scorpion type. These were qualitative improvements and changes. And also these troops were -- it was very obvious from the way they acted and carried out operations that we saw, these were a qualitative jump, increase in the way they performed, they looked, and what they did, and their general aggressive behaviour.

Q. And you were able to note that when? When did this --

A. This was all happening in March.

Q. Now, in addition to better equipped MUP units, or as you've described these, you've also referred to the fact that there were people being replaced on this commission. Did that factor into your indications as well, the fact that you had Loncar and Kotur leaving and new people coming in?

A. Yes. When you factor in the increase in number of troops, the equipment, the extension of the border area, which I should have mentioned, and the fact that what had become a reasonably good working relationship with the Loncar commission, the commission had now been replaced by an aggressive organisation which made our work virtually impossible and wouldn't really listen to reason. These were all ³¹⁷⁹ indicators that things were changing and drastically changing in Kosovo.

Q. You also mentioned Exhibit 52, where there was a declaration of Bukos as a permanent garrison. You recall that?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. I'm sorry, that was Exhibit 94, tab 52. What, if anything, did that factor in for your assessment?

A. What was happening were these garrison areas, as they were referred to, which were areas of open countryside or strategic positions within Kosovo, these were now becoming areas, huge areas which we had no access to and therefore the Serbs could carry out their activities whatever they may be, training or what they were doing, without any observation possible by the Verification Mission. So when they set up one of these garrison areas, they would -- they would block off with armed guards every single access route, track, road, and we were stopped at gunpoint. In fact, on one occasion myself, DZ, a number of other people from the headquarters, we tried to move around the Vucitrn area and we spent several hours detained by VJ on this occasion, troops at gunpoint, with cocked weapons, ready to shoot us if we carried on and tried to enter one of these areas.

Q. My final question before the break, if permitted, is you referred to I believe border areas earlier in your evidence. Can you lay out for us what you mean by that?

A. Yes. A very important aspect of our work, because these were very sensitive areas, especially the border between Albania and Kosovo, was that we have access to this area because there were a great many incidents ³¹⁸⁰ taking place. In December, for example, there was a very major ambush by the Serbian forces of a KLA rearmament, re-equipment convoy, and a great number of the KLA were killed.

Our problem, our mandate was to verify these events. Now, at the beginning, we had some access. The access to the border areas became more and more restricted, even though the document did state that we have free access around the whole of Kosovo. In certain areas, like the Prizren area, the border where General Maisonneuve had his regional responsibility, the access became virtually nonexistent. He had to apply on a daily basis, which was normally refused, for access to any of his patrols to go into the border zone, which was a zone about four or five kilometres in depth.

In March, we were suddenly informed that this border was growing. It was going to be extended to possibly 14 or 15 kilometres, and access to it was definitely restricted. We would not be able to, at any time, enter this zone. Now, this now took in a huge area where there were a large number of Albanian villages, villages that the Serbs saw that I believe that these were villages occupied by terrorists and therefore we would have no ability to verify or to even try to prevent any fighting. And this, to us, was a major indicator that, (a), we couldn't carry out our work, and if we tried to carry out our work in these areas and in fact increasingly more in all areas, there was a danger to our verifiers, a physical danger, of either them being beaten up, roughed up, or actually shot or crushed by one of the large vehicles because we only had light -- well, non-armoured and lightly armoured jeep-type vehicles. ³¹⁸¹

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you.

JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn now. Colonel, would you remember this, in this and any other adjournment there may be in your evidence, not to speak to anybody about it, including the Prosecution, until it's over. We will adjourn now for 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 10.34 a.m.

--- On resuming at 10.59 a.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Ryneveld.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honour.

Q. Witness, in the course of the last answer you gave before the break, you referred to access to an expansion of the border area. Might I invite you, please, to turn with me to Exhibit 94, tab 63. Now, 63 is -- appears to be a chronology of major events. Are you familiar with that document? Perhaps we'll wait until you get it. And then turn to our internal markings, it's about four or five pages into the document, K00078021, page 021. And that page has in fact got a serial number, numerical from 118 to 140. I'd like you to look at lines 128 and 129, referred to as events on the 16th of March. Now, is that the date, looking at that -- first of all, I should ask this question: Are you familiar with a chronology of events of this nature?

A. I am, yes.

Q. And by looking at the 16th of March entry at lines 128, 129, and 130, does that refer to the incident that you indicated to the Court, for example, where it says,"enlargement of border zone from five kilometres to ³¹⁸² around ten kilometres"?

A. Yes. In fact, I can say also that serial 128, T72 tank, I was actually in Mitrovica and I saw the train and I then followed the tanks down to the Glogovac area. So I can confirm that myself. And the border area was, say, extended from five to around ten, which also meant up to 14 or 15 in some areas.

Q. And the next entry, at 130, "extension of VJ conscript service by 30 days," is that in reference to the other matter that you mentioned, the retention of conscripts beyond their normal term of service?

A. Correct. That would be confirmation of -- by then, we knew it was happening but we suspected it was happening before as well.

Q. Thank you. All right, sir. Now you've told us, sir, that you had meetings with various individuals, including Mr. Lukic. How did you know Mr. Lukic, and how did you know -- I think you said that he was the head of the MUP for Kosovo. How did that information come to your attention?

A. Well, certainly on arrival and being briefed as to how the organisations were constructed. I was informed that General Lukic was the man in charge of the MUP. I was also -- this was also confirmed at many occasions during my 10.00 meetings with the commission, and on the rare occasions that I managed to meet him, he was also announced as the head of the MUP in Kosovo, as well as the day when I was introduced to the new commission, General Lukic was present and that was confirmed that he was the boss.

Q. I see. And one other question by way of background, in our earlier references to Sainovic, you mentioned that he did -- you did see ³¹⁸³ him on occasion. How often would you say that he visited Kosovo from Belgrade during your tenure?

A. Well, the first thing I have to say is that his -- each visit he made, he did not necessarily see any representatives from -- of the OSCE, the Kosovo Verification Mission. So -- but we were occasionally aware that he was there. I personally saw him three or four times, but I know he was there more often, having meetings with, for example, Ambassador Keller, who was one of his main points of contact with OSCE mission.

Q. So over, say, a three-month period of January, February, and March, are you able to give us a rough estimate of how often he would come to Kosovo?

A. I would say he was probably there every few days, maybe every two or three days.

Q. Thank you. Now, sir, talking about the MUP, did you, during the course of your tenure in Kosovo, form any opinion about the role that the MUP played in Kosovo?

A. Yes. The -- the first thing I learnt was that the MUP really wasn't particularly interested in carrying out ordinary policing activities. They certainly did not behave like any police force I've ever come across before. They were not particularly interested in local crime, traffic control, you know, sort of presence in the streets, doing what we think policemen do. They were mainly in their infantry/military role. So whenever we saw the MUP out in the field, they would be carrying assault rifles, wearing combat kit, combat-type uniforms with some sort of helmets. ³¹⁸⁴

Q. All right. Perhaps this might be an appropriate time to show you some photographs.

MR. RYNEVELD: Madam Clerk, can the witness be shown Exhibits 17, 18, and 21A and B, and I'll just do all of them at once.

Q. While those are being gathered to show you, sir, I believe you mentioned earlier in your evidence that there were different kinds of police, that there were some kind of police wearing normal uniforms and then there was the different kind of police, better equipped, totally different. Would you be able to recognise those uniforms if you were to see them again?

A. I think so.

Q. Well, then we'll wait for the exhibits and ask you to look at them.

Perhaps we can look at the uniforms first, and I think that's Exhibit 18. Let's display it on the ELMO first of all. Looking at Exhibit 18 - and I'll describe it briefly - there appear to be a series of ten photographs on this sheet, depicting individuals wearing different kinds of uniforms. From your experience as an observer and your military background, sir, are you able to indicate to us whether or not you saw any troops or individuals wearing uniforms of these kinds, and if so, can you describe them?

A. Yes.

Q. By number.

A. Yes, I certainly saw all these types of uniform being worn in Kosovo. So the first -- number 1 is a typical VJ uniform. ^{3185 BLANK PAGE 3186} Number 2 is probably also a VJ unit. They're preparing a track change.

Three is definitely the type of police force that was used by -- in Kosovo for sort of routine operations and clearing villages and working around Kosovo on Tank Hill, for example, overlooking Lapastica near Podujevo.

Number 4, this is something that appeared much later, probably mid-March, and this is a new type of police force which appeared with no real insignia, except it does say "Policija" on the man's arm, but he was not displaying any unit. And also the type of weapon he was carrying would indicate it was some type of special forces of specially trained police.

Q. If I can just back up to photograph number 3. Is that Cyrillic writing on the shoulder patch of the individuals in number 3?

A. Yes. Because I speak some Bulgarian, Bulgarian is in Cyrillic so I do read Cyrillic.

Q. And what does that patch say? Are you able to --

A. Yes, "Policija."

Q. That's also police, eh? And the weapons, if you're able to tell from the restricted view you have of what they're holding?

A. Well, number 3, they're an AK47 variant but the Yugoslav-produced variant of the AK47. I think it's called an M70.

Q. I see.

A. Number 4, this seems to be possibly an AK47 type of weapon with a folding stock, which is usually for parachute type forces or special ³¹⁸⁷ forces use.

Q. Number 5.

A. Number 5, although this looks like a combat uniform of the VJ, this is again a police unit. These are some of the two types of uniform that appeared on the police arriving much later. So you also see in 6, the same type of helmet is being worn but whereas on the left it appears to be a sort of greeny-olive camouflage kit, on the right they are wearing the typical dark blue of the MUP.

In 6 -- well, in fact in both 5 and 6, the soldier in the foreground is holding a sniper rifle. This is another version of the AK47 but a long-barreled weapon, a longer-barreled weapon.

Q. And again there appear to be pocket flashes indicating -- is that again?

A. That's policija again, yes.

Q. And in number 6, there appears to be a blue uniform with, is that a green kind of a vest or something they're wearing?

A. That's their vest in which they keep their ammunition and bits and pieces.

Q. I see.

A. It's typical combat clothing worn by combat troops.

Q. Number 7, if you're able to assist us.

A. Yes. Again, number 7 is something which is a bit more than ordinary police. It's -- they're not army. It's difficult to tell if they're police, but I think, looking at the shoulder flash, it's difficult to make out, but I think this is another special type of police unit. ³¹⁸⁸

Q. And the weapon?

A. AK47.

Q. Number 8.

A. This is -- I can only surmise that this is more of a some sort of paramilitary unit with heavy machine-gun. I can't really tell what type of vehicle it's mounted on, but these units were seen around and they were associated with the Serbs.

Q. Nine.

A. Number 9 is a truck full of VJ soldiers, it looks like. This is typically the webbing they wore. The helmets, I'm now guessing that this -- if this was the VJ, then this would have been taken towards the end of the campaign when the Serbs were leaving Kosovo, judging by their sort of overgrown appearance.

Q. All right.

A. Number 10 is certainly a KLA fighter. He doesn't have a -- well, the uniform is unusual. This might even be sort of a German or Swiss patterned uniform, with UCK on the shoulder, indicating he is KLA.

Q. And are you able to tell from the very small portion what kind of weapon that might be, if that indeed is a weapon?

A. Looking at the magazine, it appears -- it's an automatic magazine weapon, so again, it would be the back side of an AK47, which was the weapon of choice of both sides.

Q. While we're at photographs, we may as well deal with -- you referred to equipment you saw. Perhaps Exhibit 17, please. Now, Exhibit 17, just so that we're clear, is a multi-page document, but again it has ³¹⁸⁹ four different pages, each numbered, with some vehicles on it, from 1 to 15. If you can tell us, first of all, if you saw vehicles of this type during your tenure, and if so, if you're able to identify any of them, that would be of a great assistance. Starting perhaps, with number 1.

A. Yes. I mean, I recognise all these vehicles as vehicles that were used in Kosovo. Certainly 1 and 3 came in much later, whereas we saw more of 2 and a great deal of number 4. If you -- I prefer to go backwards from 4.

Q. Sure. Just let us know which one you're talking about.

A. Number 4.

Q. Yes?

A. This is the vehicle we referred to as the Praga, which is actually an anti-aircraft weapon of quite a high calibre, rapid firing, which was used extensively throughout the entire time I was in Kosovo, usually against buildings or positions held by the KLA. It's a direct firing weapon of high velocity.

Q. So it would be used for purposes other than aircraft, at least, while you were there?

A. While I was there, it was regularly used to -- in actions against the KLA and against KLA villages or against Albanian villages.

Q. And that's a Praga, then.

A. A Praga, yes.

Q. Go ahead.

A. The vehicle above number 2 is called a BTR60, and again this is a vehicle which can move troops and also commandos. These vehicles, I used ³¹⁹⁰ to see down at Prizren, at the barracks in Prizren, usually used by the army but not exclusively.

Q. And if they're used to move troops, would they also be referred to colloquially as "APCs," meaning armed personnel carriers?

A. It could be. Certainly number 1 is -- is a true APC, although number 2 is a wheeled, if you like, APC, armoured personnel carrier, whereas number 3 is more of an armoured fighting vehicle, which is -- which can be used to deliver troops, but it also has a fairly heavy gun which can actually be used as part of an assault.

Q. And did you in fact see those vehicles in operation in assault type of situations?

A. Yes. Yes.

Q. Next page, if you would, please, numbers 5 through 8.

A. Number 5 is a variant of the T72 which was brought in in March through Mitrovica, referred to as -- its correct designation is M84. And this is a much more powerful, potent weapon than the number 6, which is a T55 type of vehicle, which is very old a 1950s generation tank. Still very effective but nowhere near as fast and manoeuverable or fire control system as good as the M84. And 5 is what raised our sort of hackles, if you like, when we saw these things arriving at Mitrovica, that something was afoot.

Q. I see. Now, I'll ask perhaps a couple of naive questions, but 5 and 6, you've given them numbers, I take it they're tanks?

A. Sorry. Yes, they are tanks, yes.

Q. And from your earlier evidence, you understood that to be VJ or ³¹⁹¹ army type equipment and not MUP?

A. This is army equipment, yes.

Q. And in fact, the individuals riding in the top of number 6 are wearing what?

A. They are wearing typical tank clothing with the protective head gear.

Q. I see. I forgot to ask you earlier: The vehicles 1 through 4, would they be MUP or MUP and VJ or just VJ, or are you able to say?

A. They were certainly driven around by the -- by the MUP, except -- well, both, because, for example, 4, it was usually used in support of the VJ -- of the MUP, and that would actually have a VJ gunner sitting in the back there, firing the gun. Again, 2 could be used by either, whereas 1 and 3 were seen usually sort of by the MUP.

Q. I'm going to pause here to ask a question about what you actually saw. When you saw operations --

A. Uh-huh.

Q. -- against villages, was it exclusively the MUP or exclusively the VJ or were they together or what can you tell us about that?

A. Certainly the normal method of operation was that the -- that the MUP would actually lead the entire operation, and the MUP would provide, if you like, the infantry soldiers on the ground who would actually advance toward the position and take the position. The VJ role initially was to provide heavy fire support. So they would have an outer ring, if you like, of artillery or tanks who could either, beforehand, soften up the target or at any time required could ³¹⁹² actually shell the target by indirect and direct fire. But all the activity, the sort of going into the villages, clearing the villages that we ever saw, was carried out by the MUP.

Q. When you say, "carried out by the MUP, going into the villages," were the VJ present as well?

A. Yes. The actual assault would be carried out solely by the MUP. Only later would the VJ, the soldiers, the army, move in. Except for one occasion just north of Kosovo -- of Pristina, in the town called Lebane, where a patrol of VJ one day were driving through and a sniper KLA, presumably sniper, fired and wounded one of the soldiers, an officer, in one of the four-wheel drive vehicles. And then the operation, the response, because this was an attack directly against the VJ, the response was purely VJ, and the VJ then assaulted the village. But for the first time, I actually saw a different type of assault. So rather than shelling the village or doing a lot of damage in the village during the assault, they surrounded the village and carried out a meticulous search but without actually any firing taking place. And we went in the village later and there was no sort of wholesale destruction at all.

Q. I'm not sure, because of my non-military background, that I'm not quite sure when the word "shelling" is used, what is shelling? Is that from big -- big guns or does it mean bombs or what does that mean?

A. It means all of those. I'm basically -- prior to an assault or if you want to destroy a target by indirect - in other words, without actually soldiers going in and fighting house to house - what you can do ³¹⁹³ is -- I've used aerial bombardment to bomb an area. You can use artillery, which is indirect, which can be from a range of 20, 20-odd kilometres out, you can shell a village from; or if you're using tanks, it has to be direct fire because their range is no more than a few kilometres and they have to fire in a straight line. So -- and also if you use mortar fire, for example, which is also indirect. So to create a great deal of damage, sort of damage to buildings and personnel if there are any open, you would use shelling as opposed to putting infantry into a village and doing house-to-house fighting where the soldiers would obviously have to take house by house, building by building, block by block, making sure that there was nothing left of these buildings.

Q. So if I understand you correctly, the process that you normally saw would be shelling first, then the MUP going in.

A. Yes.

Q. I see. And the shelling would be performed by whom; the MUP or the VJ?

A. By the VJ.

Q. So VJ first, MUP goes in later, and then VJ might come in after that?

A. Yes. Uh-huh.

Q. So it's a coordinated type of activity?

A. Absolutely.

Q. All right. I'm sorry, I stopped you describing once. You told us about tanks. Is there anything further you want to say about --

JUDGE KWON: Mr. Ryneveld, before you go on. Earlier, the ³¹⁹⁴ Prosecution submitted a list of names of vehicles titled as Recognition Guide for Vehicles.

MR. RYNEVELD: Yes.

JUDGE KWON: Could you clarify those names first with the assistance of this witness so we can name the --

MR. RYNEVELD: Certainly. Now, this is not the witness who we propose to call who composed these but he certainly will be able to do that for us. Mr. Coo will eventually give evidence about all of this, but I think -- I don't have that list right here. Perhaps -- do you have the list, the recognition -- perhaps I'll ask a couple more questions, Your Honour, and then --

JUDGE KWON: Yes, you can go on.

MR. RYNEVELD: -- while the list is being provided. I didn't bring my copy of the list.

Q. Seven and 8, sir, appear to be like trucks, lorries, I suppose, in Britain.

A. Uh-huh. Number 7 is what's referred to as a Pinzgauer.

Q. A Pinzgauer. And what is that used for?

A. It's used for transporting troops, as is number 8, which is another type of vehicle used by the VJ. The Pinzgauer tended to be used by the VJ -- by the MUP, sorry.

Q. Pinzgauer was largely by the MUP?

A. By the MUP.

Q. And in number 8, we see a number of people driving by -- oh, it looks like a crowd there. What kind of uniforms are those we see? ³¹⁹⁵

A. Once again, that's the VJ army and it's another type of truck. I cannot give you the exact specification though.

Q. All right.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honour. I now have that list. Perhaps that list, a copy of that list, can be shown to the witness. And I see because it purports to name these, I should let him tell us first and then ask to describe the terms. I will give you the vehicle list first, the recognition guide.

Q. Have you been given a list? Now, Witness, just before we start, you have not been shown this list before coming to court today?

A. No.

Q. Thank you. You have seen the photographs but you've not seen the recognition guide; is that correct?

A. I have not seen the recognition guide.

Q. Looking for the first time at the recognition guide, the photograph that you refer to as number 1, you've indicated is sort of an APC; is that correct? That's what you told us earlier in evidence.

A. Yes, it is. Yes. That's the M60 APC.

Q. And number 2 --

A. Would be the RTR -- I called it the BTR because that's the Russian designation of it, and the NATO designation is BTR60. "VB" indicates it's a command vehicle.

Q. Number 3?

A. Can I just say that although -- recognition and identification are two different skills, and whereas, you know, I'm quite good at the moment ³¹⁹⁶ on Bulgarian types of weapons, these skills very quickly degrade and although I can recognise what each vehicle is, I don't necessarily -- I can't guarantee that I can actually put, you know, each number to each vehicle.

Q. Number 3, I don't recall what you called it or what you thought it was.

A. It was -- it's -- it's -- I said it was a troop carrier but this one actually had some gun on it so it probably is the M80 APC. Number 4, as I said, is the M53 Praga, as it was referred to.

Q. And you've already described for us what a Praga was.

A. Yes, it's an anti-aircraft weapon.

Q. Number 5, I think you told us, was a tank.

A. M84, which I think I identified correctly, and a T54/55. The difference between the two being the position of the muzzle break, as they call it, where -- you know, where the fat bit on the gun is at the front or at the middle. That differentiates whether it's a 54 or a 55.

Q. I see, so in all other respects, they look very similar?

A. Yes, they do, yes. Only train spotters can see the difference.

Q. I see. Number 7, you told us was a MUP type of transport carrier; is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And would you have known what the name of or number designation was or not?

A. No. No, I didn't know. It was Neimar-A [phoen].

Q. And number 8? I think you said that you didn't know the type of ^{3197 BLANK PAGE 3198} vehicle?

A. No, I didn't, no.

Q. But it's a VJ troop transport?

A. Yes.

Q. Number 9. What kind of vehicle is that?

A. Well, we call these Bobs. It's a particular Yugoslav vehicle that is not seen anywhere else, it's their own development. So again, it's an armoured personnel carrier, APC, as is number 10, as is number 11. Although number 12 is based on a Russian type of vehicle which in fact the correct designation is BRDM. It's a light-reconnaissance type vehicle. This one is armed with a gun, machine-gun.

Q. And again, did you see examples of these vehicles in operation in Kosovo during your tenure?

A. Yes, we saw -- I saw all of these vehicles in Kosovo.

Q. 13, 14, 15 appear to be what?

A. 13 is the -- and 14 are both Land Rovers, and 15 is an American Humvee. The interesting thing is that 13 and 14 were the type of vehicles that the units that -- the MUP units which came later were driving around in. They were not blue or armoured but they were unarmoured, as you see here, painted in a variety of colours. White, we -- we saw this at the very beginning. We saw the Serbs using white vehicles which could be confused for our OSCE vehicles. This is why DZ ordered the vehicles be painted orange. And there was one occasion when some of the Serb vehicles suddenly became orange as well and we protested this.

Q. I see. Sir, there is one final photograph -- ³¹⁹⁹

MR. RYNEVELD: And Your Honours, I have not had an opportunity to give copies to anyone before. I only have a single copy. Might the witness be shown K0215385, and we'll put it on the ELMO.

Q. Tell us, sir, if you have seen any vehicle of this nature during your tenure. First of all, have you ever been shown this photograph prior to coming to the courtroom?

A. No. I have not seen this before.

Q. Do you recognise the vehicle depicted in the photograph at all?

THE INTERPRETER: Could the speakers please pause between answer and question.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you. I'm sorry.

Q. If you're not able to say, that's fine.

A. I don't -- I can't hand and heart say that I can recognise -- it's very difficult from the back and from the scale to -- whether there was any foreshortening of the actual vehicle making it look larger than one I would recognise.

Q. The troops, are you able to indicate what type of troops those are?

A. They are police.

Q. Police?

A. MUP, yes.

Q. Thank you. Now --

A. Better trained and better equipped than the army.

Q. I think we're going to move on, if we could, to Exhibit -- the uniforms. We've done that. So it's 21 and 21 -- 21A and B, please. ³²⁰⁰ Weapons.

MR. RYNEVELD: Does Your Honour wish the recognition guide for these? Yes? Okay.

Q. First of all -- I've got a copy of that.

A. Sorry.

Q. First of all, could you look at the photographs of certain weapons and tell the Court whether or not you're familiar with these weapons.

A. Yes, I'm quite familiar with the four weapons shown here.

Q. And again, just for the record, we have two pages. One starts -- looks like a photograph, and the others look like they're -- well, I'm not sure whether our 20 -- Exhibit 21B is the same as the one that the court document is.

JUDGE KWON: Yes, this is 21A.

MR. RYNEVELD: 21A, the one on the ELMO?

JUDGE KWON: Yes.

MR. RYNEVELD:

Q. What are those photographs of, sir?

A. Well, number A1 is an artillery piece which I think is a D30, which is an indirect fire weapon. You can fire at long range, 14, 15, 18 kilometres range, possibly more, depending on the type of ammunition that you use. Used exclusively by the VJ, and we saw this weapon being used in Kosovo.

Q. Okay. You are looking at something that's on the ELMO that I have listed as 21 --

JUDGE KWON: This is B, yes. ³²⁰¹

MR. RYNEVELD: This is B. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Q. Perhaps, sir, you could be shown the recognition guide. We have some copies here.

All right. Just so we're clear, we're now looking at the photograph on the ELMO, and that is Exhibit B1, I believe. That appears to be on wheels, is it, and is it sort of like the kind of gun you'd find on a tank or smaller or larger?

A. No. In fact, according to the recognition guide, I said it was a D30 to D20, which is a slightly different calibre. Again, one of the ways you'll notice is by the thing on the end, called the muzzle break, which I wasn't looking at too carefully but it's 152-millimetre, which is a large round, it's a range of over 20 kilometres. And this is towed behind a truck, on wheels, and then when it's put into position, the wheels come off the ground and the trails here are spread out to give it stability. And again this is a weapon that's used by the VJ.

Q. And you say it has a range of, like, 20 kilometres?

A. Yes, at least. Depending on the type of ammunition that you use.

Q. Number 2.

A. This is an infantry mortar, portable mortar, M70 commander mortar, which is shoulder carried. It's only a small weapon which is -- fires mortars a few kilometres maximum range. And this is the type of weapon that was often see on the -- on the VJ -- on the MUP positions.

Q. Did you see either one or two in use at any time?

A. Yes.

Q. Number 3. ³²⁰²

A. Number 3 is a Scorpion. I think they've got these the wrong way around. The -- the MP5 is number 4. That's a Heckler Koch.

Q. So number 4 is actually --

A. An MP5, which is a German weapon. They're used by security forces, people like the police, airport police would use this because it's a short weapon. Fire 9-millimetre rounds. And it was used -- we saw this in the possession of the -- of the MUP special forces as the newer, better equipped forces came. Not a weapon we saw with the VJ. And as was number 3 here, which is a weapon called a Scorpion Zastava, which is a weapon produced in Yugoslavia. Also again not used by regular forces but used by the MUP.

Q. On any of the photographs in this page, did you see any of those in use by KLA forces?

A. Well, they had a variety of mortar, and the odd KLA might have had a three or a four, but only if they'd come into possession by you finding it or from taking it from a MUP or VJ after some action. But these were not weapons that were generally seen. Rarely seen, very rarely seen amongst the KLA.

Q. The next page, which I have as A, 21A, do you recognise the five weapons depicted in that exhibit?

A. Yes, I do; all five.

Q. And can you assist us in terms of what they are?

A. Yes. Well, numbers 1, 2, and 3 are basically the same type of weapon based on the Russian Kalashnikov, AK47, which is the typical infantry assault rifle used by both the MUP and the VJ. Number 1 -- the ³²⁰³ difference between 1 and 2 is that 1 has a folding stock. In other words, it can be shorten. The metal stock that you see can be folded underneath making it a much shorter weapon for fighting in built-up areas, for example.

Q. I see. The mechanism itself --

A. Is the same and they fire the same type of ammunition. They're both 762, although there is a version that fires a smaller round and a different designation.

Q. That's not depicted in these photographs?

A. No.

Q. Did you say that number 3 --

A. Is basically --

Q. -- is another variant of it?

A. Yes, but that was called a Zastava because it's produced locally in -- but it's a machine-gun so it has a much heavier, longer barrel with a bipod and a larger magazine for the ammunition.

Q. And a tripod, I take it, to steady it?

A. Yes, so -- because it's a longer-range weapon and it has a higher rate of fire, it needs a longer, stronger barrel to withstand the heat and obviously the tripod to stabilise it.

Q. And who -- did you see that weapon in -- or that type of weapon in use?

A. Yes.

Q. By whom?

A. By the VJ and the -- and the MUP. ³²⁰⁴

Q. Number 4.

A. Number 4 is a sniper rifle. And this is quite a different calibre because its designed for single-shot telescopic rifle, much longer barrel, a better balanced weapon. Called the M76. And again we have seen photographs of the MUP carrying this weapon.

Q. So this is -- this is the type of weapon that we've seen in the uniform where they're carrying weapons; is that correct?

A. Correct.

Q. All right. And because this is a Zastava, does that give you any indication as to where it was produced?

A. Yes, it indicates it was produced in Yugoslavia.

Q. Okay. Number 5, is that the same case in terms of where it's produced?

A. Yes.

Q. What is that?

A. That's another -- we call it a general purpose machine-gun, GPMG, Zastava M84. The same, except this time, rather than having a magazine, it has a belt-feed but it's an automatic heavy machine-gun.

Q. All right. Thank you, Witness. I'm going to turn to a totally different topic now, if I may.

Now, reference was made earlier in your evidence to an incident involving Racak, and do you recall being present during negotiations at the Stimlje police station concerning Racak, and if so, can you tell us about that?

A. Yes. As part of the ongoing investigations being carried out by ³²⁰⁵ Judge Marinkovic into the killings at Racak, we were having regular meetings with the local police commander in Stimlje, and on this particular occasion, we were informed that Judge Marinkovic was going to visit the camp -- the village, sorry, of Racak to carry out further investigations, and she was going to do this with the support and escort of a large number of armed MUP with armoured vehicles, APC-type vehicles, vehicles with heavy machine-guns to provide her with protection. We knew from our discussions with the KLA that if the -- if the Judge came in with this large police presence, armed police presence, they weren't going to take this sitting down, and they would actually sort of -- there would be a confrontation. So General DZ, General Maisonneuve came up with a plan that we would flood the village with a very large number of verifiers with vehicles and good communications, and we also had discussions previously -- Maisonneuve's team had discussions with the KLA to ensure that there were no KLA, armed KLA within the village which would do any harm to Judge Marinkovic, and we had their assurance that nothing would happen to Judge Marinkovic. But to ensure this, we would also surround Judge Marinkovic with our own verifiers, almost like a human shield, to give her the protection she required. Now, we agreed to meet Judge Marinkovic with the local police at Stimlje, and these discussions went on for most of the morning, several, many hours, at which I was present all the time, and the conversation basically hinged about not -- her not going into the village with the police, and the assurance DZ was giving that this would be done. The only condition that kept on being mentioned throughout this ³²⁰⁶ conversation - this was mentioned repeatedly - was that if the judge decided at any point to enter the village with armed escort, then we would like at least ten minutes' notice to get our people out because our people are unarmed and in unarmoured vehicles and the last thing we wanted was for verifiers to be killed as well in the cross-fire. And the judge acknowledged this but neither agreed or disagreed. As the conversation went on and was coming to a conclusion, she suddenly announced that ten minutes before, she had already ordered the troops into the village to go into the village and secure the village, at which point I immediately left the room, got on the radio to Maisonneuve, and I just gave him a few words, and I said, this is -- "Maisonneuve, this is CZ. Get out now." And he had ten minutes to get his people out of the village. Well, he had less; he had no time to get out of the village. And it was touch and go whether in fact his verifiers were going to get out in time. And in fact, several verifiers were stuck in the village, and there was a confrontation. We were very lucky not to take casualties. The important thing, I think, in this instance was that DZ, on several occasions, pointed out to Judge Marinkovic was that if anything at all happened to his verifiers and because of her inappropriate anything did happen to them, he would definitely pass her name -- her name would go forward to The Hague, to the International Criminal Court as someone who actually perpetrated a war crime in endangering the lives of verifiers unnecessarily.

Q. Do I understand your evidence to be that an armed conflict in fact did break out as a result of the MUP troops going in? ³²⁰⁷

A. She went into the village and there was shooting, and in fact she then withdraw with her people because she wasn't prepared to be there, obviously, in the middle of a gunfight, although she did go in in an armoured vehicle.

MR. RYNEVELD: Now, just before I go to the next topic, I wonder whether the Court -- because this witness has referred to the recognition guides, whether they should be given exhibit numbers. The vehicles then would become 17A --

JUDGE MAY: Why?

MR. RYNEVELD: No?

JUDGE MAY: No. We've got numbers.

MR. RYNEVELD: I'll move on.

Q. Ultimately, sir, in late March the KVM left Kosovo; is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Why?

A. Because we had reached a point where our presence was no longer safe or effective. For example, we were no longer able to access anything worthwhile, and therefore affect any outcomes in Kosovo because we were restricted in moving throughout Kosovo. We were restricted in going anywhere near the border areas into this new enlarged border area. Our verifiers were meeting with repeated hostilities from the -- both the MUP and the VJ. So as I said, we had several instances where our verifiers were severely beaten or threatened, and on numerous occasions our vehicles were shot at and, in some cases, damaged with gunfire. ³²⁰⁸ So we couldn't verify. We couldn't move. Our verifiers were in danger of being killed or wounded. Our job basically was over. We could not verify anything at this point, and that was the main purpose of our mission.

Q. So the decision to leave was made and implemented; is that correct?

A. Yes. We had sort of mentioned, I think, previously, a month or so previously that if the situation didn't improve and that this troop concentration, troop additions and so on, if it didn't cease, then obviously we would have to consider leaving because we couldn't carry out our function.

Q. I will return to this general area at the end of your evidence, sir. I want to move on now to another topic. When did the KVM leave, approximately?

A. About the 23rd.

Q. The 23rd of March 1999?

A. 1999.

Q. And by that, you physically left Kosovo?

A. Yes. We formed a very large convoy of all our vehicles and with the support and help of the Serbian Cooperation Commission and the police, we managed to clear Kosovo very quickly and get through the border very quickly.

Q. Did you personally ever return to Kosovo near the end of the conflict?

A. I did. I returned on the very first day that the NATO forces ^{3209 BLANK PAGE 3210} entered Kosovo.

Q. That was the 13th of June?

A. 13th of June.

Q. 1999. And what -- what did you do upon -- where did you go and what did you do?

A. By this time, I had actually reverted to my NATO role --

Q. Okay.

A. -- as a British army officer based at Rhinedahlen where the ARK is based. I was then put on to General Jackson's staff and was part of his command group together with DZ. And I came into Pristina, and on the second day I was in Pristina I went to the old MUP headquarters where we in fact set up a temporary office, DZ and myself.

Q. And while there, did you see any MUP officers doing -- engaged in doing something?

A. Yes.

Q. What was that?

A. The -- obviously there was a fair amount of damage in this area because behind the MUP administrative building was the operational building which had taken several direct hits, as did the communications site. And so there was a large amount of damage to the admin building as well. But what we saw on arrival were employees of the building, MUP and civilians employed by the MUP, removing huge quantities of documents and taking them down to trucks and having them shipped out. But the other thing that was very obvious was in a little alcove, an open area by the buildings as part of the building, there was a very large pile of -- there ³²¹¹ was a large fire burning which looked like rubbish or documents. This was a pile of about the size of a large truck which had been burning for some time and the smoke had permeated the whole building and there were bits of paper flying around. And on the second day I was there, I was tempted to go down and have a look and see what this pile of documents was, and I actually picked up several handfuls to discover -- from different parts of the pile to discover that these were applications for travel, they were ID documents, these were passports, applications for passports. So amongst this huge pile of burning rubble it seemed to be mainly documents to do with personal identification.

Q. Did you look at any of the names on any of these documents?

A. Yes. I looked through the applications and all the names of these people were Albanian.

Q. Now, I understand, sir, that you actually took photographs of that pile, did you?

A. I did, yes.

Q. And you don't have those available?

A. I'm afraid that, as I moved from the UK to Bulgaria, a lot of the stuff disappeared into long-term storage and I thought I had taken them out, but I'm afraid I didn't.

Q. You say that the size of this pile of documents was about the size of a large truck?

A. Yes.

Q. A truck?

A. Yes, a large truck. ³²¹²

Q. Now --

A. It burned for several days. It carried on burning for about a week, this pile.

Q. Now, in relation to -- I think you indicated earlier that in Pristina there was the headquarters of Lukic and some people in a stadium, and I told you we'd come back to a map.

MR. RYNEVELD: Perhaps the witness could be shown -- is it Exhibit 61 that is -- I believe it is. No. Actually, I'm thinking of the -- no, the -- there's a Kosovo atlas, and I'm afraid I didn't note down the number of that. Madam Clerk? 83?

THE REGISTRAR: Uh-huh.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you. If you could be shown Exhibit 38 and turn to pages 19 and 20 of that.

Q. Now, sir, do you recognise at pages 19 and 20 a -- which purports to be a map of downtown Pristina, do you recognise this map?

A. I do.

Q. Just so we're clear about a couple of things, perhaps you could tell us, where is the stadium located on this map, if it's depicted at all?

A. It's this oval location here.

Q. And for the record, you're pointing to what appears to be page 19, there's sort of an oval with the number 108 in the middle of it; is that right?

A. Correct, yes.

Q. And were the -- you indicated to us I believe that the general ³²¹³ headquarters was a building next to it?

A. Yes. The -- the main administrative MUP headquarters was this building here, 79, 77 --

Q. Thank you.

A. -- as depicted on this map.

Q. Thank you.

A. And right behind it, what is shown as number 77, is in fact a building which is there, which -- I was in Kosovo recently so I know that this is an occupied building, but what is not shown is perpendicular to that building, between that building 77 and the stadium, was the building that was the operational MUP headquarters which was -- had received several direct hits and was -- is now uninhabitable.

Q. All right. And where -- so -- do you know where the office was of General Lukic and -- is it Mijatovic?

A. Yes. Both General Lukic and Mijatovic had offices in this building. They're just behind, perpendicular to 77. And next to that was the communications site, the large tower which allowed them to communicate to Kosovo and elsewhere.

Q. And 108 would be where the helicopters would be landing; is that correct?

A. Correct.

Q. And the area where you saw the documents burning, is that area visible on this map?

A. Yes. It's probably where it says 79 and a little rectangle on 79.

Q. That you referred to as an alcove. ³²¹⁴

A. Yes.

Q. That would be a sort of outdoor area enclosed by the building there?

A. Correct.

Q. I see. Now, these -- just wondering, sir, obviously you don't have those photographs of the burning pile available now. If in the course of events, you're able to have access to those photographs, could you forward them to the Tribunal for future reference?

A. Certainly.

Q. Now, sir, after -- shortly after the KVM withdrawal from Kosovo, did you go to the border crossing with Macedonia referred to as Djeneral Jankovic?

A. Yes.

Q. And that is near, I take it, the Macedonian town of Blace, is it, or Blace?

A. Bllaca.

Q. Bllaca, sorry. Thank you. When was that? When did you go there?

A. I was there -- after we left Kosovo, I would go back towards the crossing point, especially if -- at this time there was indication that there were refugees already sort of coming across the border around different parts of Djeneral Jankovic, Bllaca, through the minefields and possibly also coming down the road and trying to get through the main crossing point.

Q. And did you have any discussion with any of the people that you found at that area? ³²¹⁵

A. Yes. Especially on one occasion, and the exact date escapes me, but on the day that for the first time we saw people walking down the railway track, a long what looked like to be a kilometre or two kilometres of people walking down a railway track, wearing coats and carrying suitcases, which reminded me of a scene from the Holocaust, I sort of went down to the field where they were -- they were coming in and I went to talk to the people, find out what had happened to them, you know, how it was that they were actually walking down the railway tracks. They then informed me that somebody -- that the police -- not somebody but the police in Pristina had been going round, telling people to take whatever they could carry, get themselves down to the railway station because they were going on a trip.

When they got to the railway station, most of them, because there was some amount of chaos, most of them had their ID cards and ID documents removed from them. This was a story that was recounted to me on many occasions by many different people in this field at Bllaca. And when I asked them why, you know, what was the purpose of, you know, sending you down here without ID documents, they said, "Well, because we were never to return to Kosovo. This was to ensure that there was no evidence of us ever having lived or been citizens of Pristina and Kosovo."

Q. Did they tell you whether they left Pristina voluntarily?

A. Yes, they did tell me that, why they left, and they left because they were -- they were forced at gunpoint to walk down to the railway station, and by gunpoint they were shoved onto these carriages, not knowing where they were going or why they were going. ³²¹⁶

Q. And where did they end up?

A. They ended up for the first three days, the people that came on the train, approximately 20.000, 25.000 people, they were in the field right next to the border, almost in sort of no-man's land. The first day was a nice sunny day, they just sat around. And by the third day, people were dying of disease, cold. By then it began to rain, the field turned into a quagmire, while the others were trying to decide how best to deal with them.

Q. Did the train take them right to the border?

A. Certainly not, no. It stopped -- according to the -- the -- the stories I've been told by the refugees, as they were, they were dropped several kilometres short of the border and they had to walk along the railway track.

Q. Now, you say you estimate about 25.000.

A. Yes.

Q. In what kind of an area?

A. Probably an area of a couple of -- couple of soccer pitches. So people were crammed in. I mean, there was no space between these people at all. I mean, there was -- you could maybe sit down, it was difficult to lie down. There was no water, no sanitation, nothing.

Q. During the early stages of witnessing this event, did you take a photograph of what you saw?

A. I took several photographs in this field.

Q. And after you took these photographs, did the numbers increase?

A. Considerably. ³²¹⁷

Q. I'm going to show you a blown-up photograph under number K021-8722. I don't know whether these have been distributed before.

THE REGISTRAR: Prosecution Exhibit 97.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Q. Witness, you brought a photograph with you to the Tribunal, and we've had it blown up. Is this a good representation of the photograph that you took?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. And what -- what is depicted in this photograph? Is this the field of refugees or the early part when you first saw it?

A. This is still the very early part, because the field hasn't turned into a field of mud and filth. So this is probably within the first 36 hours. This is probably, actually, the end of the first day.

Q. And it's your evidence then that the numbers considerably increased; is that correct?

A. Yes. On subsequent photographs, you can't see anything in this picture except black, except bodies, except people.

Q. And in your estimate, the total number was about 25.000?

A. We think in the first few days about 25.000 people came through.

MR. RYNEVELD: Turning now, if I may, to the additional summary of evidence, Your Honours. During the course of this discussion, I'm going to ask the Court for permission to move into a very brief private session to ask one or two questions and then move back into open session.

Q. Sir, you've told us earlier about the departure of the KVM from Kosovo, and was there -- and you've told us as well that you met on an ³²¹⁸ almost daily basis with the Serbian Cooperation Committee. Was there some time when you met with that committee where the discussion about the pending departure of the KVM was the topic of discussion?

A. Yes, there was.

Q. When, approximately, would you say that those discussions took place?

A. In the -- virtually in the last few weeks, possibly the last few days of our stay in Kosovo.

Q. And at one of these regular scheduled meetings, the departure of the KVM was the topic of discussion?

A. It certainly was.

Q. And at the conclusion of that meeting, did something occur that was particularly noteworthy to you?

A. Yes. I was given some information which I found rather surprising.

Q. And without disclosing the name of the individual who provided that information, can you tell us the general circumstances about how it was that you had an opportunity to get this additional information?

A. At the conclusion of one of our meetings, when most of the members who had taken part in this meeting had departed, myself and my interpreter met with this official, and he put a map on the table and began telling us exactly what the future options were for Kosovo.

MR. RYNEVELD: Might we move briefly into private session.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

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[Open session]

MR. RYNEVELD: Are we?

THE REGISTRAR: We're back in open session.

MR. RYNEVELD: Just waiting for the announcement. Thank you.

Q. Now, Witness, you say that a senior official spread a map out; is that correct? And during the course of that, were there discussions about what the plan was?

A. Yes. This official spread this map on the table in front of me, and without any preamble at all, he told me exactly how the plan to deal with the KLA would take place.

Q. Witness, if you are able, I'm going to hand you a copy of a map that has been previously admitted in these proceedings as Exhibit 61. ^{3221 BLANK PAGE 3222} It's just a map of Kosovo. And I'm going to give you a green marker and ask you if you could perhaps make markings on this in an attempt to outline what it was that you were told and narrate, and then we can have that marked as an exhibit. With the Court's permission, if that can be done. I'm also providing a green marker.

MR. RYNEVELD: This is a colour map of the kind produced, Your Honours, of Kosovo.

THE WITNESS: What we have to remember, that by this time, by the time we left, there were already very large numbers of VJ and MUP dispersed in strategic locations around -- around Kosovo. So what I'm going to describe doesn't actually involve a chase. It actually involves a predetermined strategy of eliminating the KLA through a series of geographical points.

Q. Yes. And I want you to approximate as closely as possible what this senior official told you and what he described to you.

A. Yes. I mean, he stood in front of me and pointed on the map, a larger scale map, what they were doing, and he said, "Right. Basically we're going to carry on our operations from Vucitrn and push the KLA across towards Glogovac. At Glogovac, there is a large force of --" this was where T72s and T84s were -- "we will then cut off and destroy any stragglers that manage to make it over the hill towards Glogovac." The next part of activity would be that the forces, the Serb forces that were positioned around Podujevo would push Commander Remi's forces over the mountains, down towards Vucitrn where in fact there would be -- since there was a large garrison at Kosovska Mitrovica, they would ³²²³ be cut off and killed, eliminated. So we've gone like this at the moment, so we've cleared this whole area of KLA. They would then move down towards -- by Stimlje and Suva Reka, which was another sort of very large area of KLA. By this time, the -- most of the KLA resistance around Kacanik had already been dealt with. This had been achieved before we left. So this wasn't an important area. The greatest concentrations of KLA were in this part of the country.

So through -- via Suva Reka, through the mountain passes, towards Prizren, clearing up all the pockets. Again, Prizren had a very large garrison, reinforced garrison, and they could deal with any sort of pockets around this area.

Then moving up towards Djakovica, operations obviously on sort of both sides, taking out any KLA. Orahovac, which was a problem area. Working their way up to Decani, going east -- one part going east to Decani to an area called Jablanica, where one of the most serious commanders of the KLA had his headquarters, Ramush, and eventually ending up in Pec. And therefore completing the operation to eliminate all the -- all the serious hot spots and major groupings of the KLA.

Q. I see. And that comment was with respect to how they would deal with what?

A. This is -- it was purely to do with the elimination, total and permanent elimination, as he put it, of the KLA.

Q. Did he at any point go on to say something else?

A. Yes, he did. Again, I found both these events quite extraordinary, that he should tell me this, which is -- although it ³²²⁴ appears a simplistic plan, a plan like this would actually require a great deal of planning and coordination and staffing. This isn't something you could start tomorrow morning because it seemed like a good idea. This would require weeks, possibly months, of coordinated planning. But the second thing he told me, which -- I remember the exact words. He said to me, "And when we have finished dealing with the KLA, we will remove all the Albanians from the territory of Kosovo forever."

Q. When this senior official told you this, about how this plan was to be carried out, did you understand that to be solely a VJ operation or what?

A. No. This was -- none of these operations at this scale could be solely VJ. These had to be coordinated MUP, VJ, special forces, paramilitaries. This had to be a combined action. He also informed me, by the way, that -- at the conclusion of this, when I looked sort of completely puzzled, he said we're only doing a job. We're only saving NATO and you and a job, because if we don't deal with the KLA and the Albanian problem, then you will have to at some time in the future.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Ryneveld, that is a convenient moment.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honours.

JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn now for 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 12.20 p.m.

--- On resuming at 12.42 p.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Ryneveld.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you, Your Honours. ³²²⁵

Q. I have only one question, but before I do that, I wonder whether the map that the witness marked be given an exhibit number.

THE REGISTRAR: Exhibit 61A.

MR. RYNEVELD: Thank you.

Q. Witness, in the discussion of the uniforms, I believe you referred to the -- you referred to the word "webbing." Again from my non-military background, I assumed that you meant camouflage pattern, or you may be referring to something totally different. Can you help us with that?

A. Yes. The -- the camouflage uniform would be just referred to as a combat uniform. The webbing is the sort of harness you wear on your chest which contains ammunition, water, medical supplies, maps, spare ammunition, grenades, this sort of stuff. So it will enable the soldier to carry a lot more equipment on his body.

Q. So, for example, when I asked you about the MUP soldiers wearing a blue camouflage uniform and a green vest, the vest is in fact the webbing?

A. Yes. We would call it webbing. You would call it a vest.

Q. Thank you.

MR. RYNEVELD: Those are the questions I have of this witness, Your Honours. Before Mr. Milosevic commences his cross-examination, I wonder whether the Court would consider instructing him to obviously respect the area of closed session. I just want to ensure that he understands the name of the individual is intended to be kept confidential, which is why I asked for private session. If there's some way the Court can control that, I would be very grateful.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Mr. Milosevic, you've heard that comment by the ³²²⁶ Prosecution. It is endorsed by the Court. The name is to be kept confidential. Of course you can ask questions about the rest. If you want to ask something about the name, then we should go into closed session to do it.

Yes.

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please. Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

Q. [Interpretation] In the KVM, you worked on the verification of arms; is that right?

A. That was one of my jobs, yes.

Q. What were all the other jobs you had in addition to this activity related to arms verification? What else were you entrusted with? What other kinds of activity?

A. It was not solely the verification of arms. It was the verification of military activities and military personnel within Kosovo. I was also responsible for helping with the training of new verifiers as they came in through our training centre at Brezovica. And of course my major job was to be the liaison officer with the Serbian Cooperation Commission.

Q. In your statement, you mentioned that you were an intelligence officer of the British army.

A. I never said anything of the sort. I said that -- I think it was pointed out by the Prosecution counsel that I am a military attache. I was one in Poland, and I'm now the defence attache in Bulgaria. I don't see what connection that has with being an intelligence officer. ³²²⁷

Q. Well, here in paragraph 4 of your statement, it says, "My career in the military has largely revolved around training systems, support, and in the intelligence areas." And you were the British military attache in Poland, that is to say, in line with your profession. Is it your assertion that this job of yours, as you put it, in training systems, support, and intelligence areas, it has nothing to do with intelligence?

A. It depends, Mr. Milosevic, how you define intelligence and intelligence work. As an attache, my job is to -- one of my jobs is to gather information, as is every diplomat's job in an embassy, on the country and to analyse it and to report. It is certainly not my job, if this is what you're insinuating, that I run some sort of network of agents and gather intelligence in some covert way. Everything I do and have done in my work in the military has been a different type of intelligence, and this is often a misunderstanding between what used to be NATO and Warsaw Pact, is that intelligence officers are some sort of counter-intelligence, agent-running officers. This is not anything which I do. Intelligence, in my case, is information gathering, purely and simply.

Q. Well, that is precisely what intelligence officers do. But I did not focus on your duty as military attache but the first part of the sentence, where you say, "around training systems, support, and in the intelligence areas." So the intelligence area is your profession, isn't it?

A. It is an area I've been involved in, but my major work has been ³²²⁸ carried out around training.

Q. Awhile ago, you mentioned when you were explaining the range of your activities that you worked on training the newly-arrived verifiers. Since your profession, as you had written it down here as I had quoted it, related to training and intelligence, did you train the verifiers in respect of their intelligence activity?

A. I was training the verifiers in observation and information-gathering activities.

Q. Well, to the best of my understanding, in other words, this is intelligence work. Yes or no.

A. We were not there as intelligence officers. We were there to carry out our mission as verifiers. The only way to verify anything is to actually go out and observe and gather information. Now, I would not call this intelligence work. This is purely observation and monitoring, something the UN asked us to do.

Q. Since you say that your military career has largely revolved around training and the intelligence area, do you consider yourself to be an expert, a specialist in intelligence activity?

A. I would not consider myself to be an expert on intelligence activity as I have spent most of my life being a trainer and, for example, I was responsible for training -- designing the military training of the f