MR. NICE TELLS LIES WHILE ACCUSING COL. PAPONJAK OF BEING A LIAR
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - May 10, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

The testimony of Col. Radovan Paponjak came to an end at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday. Paponjak, the former head of the Pec Secretariat of the Interior (SUP), was called to testify about events at the Dubrava Prison.

Mr. Nice concluded his cross-examination of the witness late in the day, following which President Milosevic re-examined the witness. During the cross-examination, Mr. Nice frequently called the witness a liar and insulted him.

When the witness said that NATO had bombed the Dubrava prison for the third time on May 22, 1999, Mr. Nice accused him of “making-up” his testimony as he went along.

Mr. Nice claims that NATO did not bomb the prison after May 21, 1999. According to Mr. Nice, Serbian police executed prisoners on May 22nd. He says that the Serbs attacked their own prison with grenades, executed more than 20 prisoners with firearms, and then blamed NATO for the deaths.

Mr. Nice conveniently ignores the testimony of his own witness, and ignores the information contained in his own exhibits. During the prosecution case the prosecution called BBC reporter Jacky Rowland to testify. According to her evidence, NATO bombed the prison between May 21st and May 24th, 1999.

During Ms. Rowland’s examination-in-chief a news report that she filed with the BBC was played (the videotape is prosecution exhibit 292). In her May 24, 1999 report she said, “It's clear that the prison has been badly pounded by NATO since our first visit on Friday [May 21st]. One building was smouldering while the dining room [and] several cellblocks were badly damaged.” (See page: 9009 of the August 27, 2002 transcript)

Mr. Nice knows full well that NATO bombed the prison after May 21st, because his own witness said they did. The lying accusations that Mr. Nice was making against Col. Paponjak were really beyond the limit of reason.

The witness testified both in the examination-in-chief and in the cross-examination that none of the prisoners were executed. Mr. Nice tried to act like he had caught the witness in a lie. Mr. Nice said that he had autopsy reports complied by Dr. Eric Baccard proving that 37% of the prisoners who were killed at the Dubrava prison had died from gunshot wounds.

Mr. Nice has absolutely no proof that 37% of the persons killed at Dubrava Prison died as the result of gunshot wounds. Dr. Baccard carried out autopsies on bodies found in the Rakosh cemetery, and he found that 37% of those bodies had sustained gunshot wounds. The only problem was that he didn’t know whether the bodies he autopsied came from the Dubrava Prison or not.

Take a look at the following excerpt from the May 22, 2002 transcript – pages 5333 to 5334.

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: And all the bodies found at the grave in Rakosh, were they killed at the prison in Dubrava or could they have been brought there and buried from some other place?

DR. ERIC BACCARD: I don't have information, forensic information, that would allow me to answer that question.

[End Excerpt]

As you can see, the only liar in the courtroom today was Mr. Nice. Mr. Nice has no proof that 37% of the prisoners killed in Dubrava were shot. Mr. Nice couldn’t know where the people that Dr. Baccard autopsied came from – Dr. Baccard didn’t even know, he only assumed.

In addition to questions about the Dubrava Prison, Mr. Nice asked general questions about the situation in Pec. For the most part, those questions did not relate to any specific charges in the indictment.

Mr. Nice is always the first to complain when Milosevic leads evidence that isn’t directly related to a specific part of the indictment, but it’s a restriction that the prosecutor doesn’t seem to apply to himself.

During his re-examination, Col. Paponjak denied that there was any military facility at the Dubrava Prison. NATO justifies its attack on the prison by claiming that a military base was there. Mr. Nice also claimed that there was a military facility there. Col. Paponjak observed that no military equipment could be seen on any of the more than 2 hours of videotape that was shot of the prison and exhibited at the trial. One would assume that military equipment would have been visible if it was there.

It was also noted that prisoners who were wounded in the NATO bombing were taken to the Hospital. It would be absurd for the Serbs to take wounded prisoners to the hospital for medical treatment if their intention had been to execute them.

Following the conclusion of Col. Paponjak’s testimony the trial chamber debated the admissibility of the documents that the witness brought to court. Mr. Nice did not want any of the documents to be exhibited, but most of them were exhibited anyway.

The Milosevic trial will resume on Wednesday, May 11, 2005.

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