LT. COL. SEL’S WORK NOTEBOOK CONTRADICTS THE PROSECUTION’S CASE
www.slobodan-milosevic.org – December 12, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed on Monday. At the beginning of the hearing Milosevic asked the tribunal to allow him, over the Christmas break, to travel to Moscow for medical treatment at the Bakulev Medical Institute. The trial chamber denied the request for medical treatment saying that it needed to be made in writing in order to be considered.

As far as the trial itself was concerned, Lt. Col. Janos Sel completed his testimony. Lt. Col. Sel was the commander of the 2nd Company of the 549th Motorized Brigade of the Yugoslav Army during the Kosovo war.

Lt. Col Sel had already been examined by the defense and partially cross-examined by the prosecution. His testimony was suspended while the prosecutor obtained his work notebook from the Army of Serbia and Montenegro.

Upon receiving the work notebook the prosecution was unable to find anything that contradicted the testimony already given by the witness. So the prosecution contacted four soldiers who had allegedly served in Lt. Col. Sel’s unit.

These soldiers were given the pseudonyms “Soldier A”, “Soldier B”, “Soldier C”, and “Soldier D.” The witness confirmed that three of these soldiers had served in his unit. He explained that they were in the unit for five days, but went AWOL before seeing any combat. Soldier “D”, on the other hand, was never even in the unit.

Mr. Nice accused Lt. Col. Sel of several crimes based on statements that the soldiers had given to prosecution investigators.

When Milosevic re-examined Lt. Col. Sel he asked questions about these soldiers. Unfortunately, the Judges forced him to ask these questions in closed-session. But when the closed-session ended he announced that he had proven beyond any doubt that these soldiers were all lying in their statements to the prosecution investigators. It is worth noting that neither the prosecutor nor any of the judges objected or challenged that statement.

During the cross-examination, Mr. Nice wasted a great deal of time asking the witness questions about things that allegedly happened outside of his unit’s area of responsibility. These questions inevitably got the response: “I don’t know. That was outside of my area of responsibility.”

Mr. Nice accused the witness of not teaching his men about international humanitarian law. The witness responded that everybody in the Army of Yugoslavia, in addition to their regular training, was given a laminated pamphlet that explained international humanitarian law and gave a detailed code of conduct for the soldiers.

The work notebook that Mr. Nice had been so keen to obtain proved everything that the witness had been saying about discipline in the army.

The work notebook showed that alcohol was prohibited in the army. It also showed that looting was prohibited and that soldiers were inspected to make sure that they weren’t looting.

The notebook even referenced orders about the appearance of soldiers. Soldiers had to be clean-shaven and maintain a clean-cut physical appearance.

The work notebook showed that soldiers were prohibited from burning houses, haystacks, fences, and other civilian property. In fact soldiers were not allowed to open any unnecessary fire. The notebook showed that soldiers who fired their weapons unnecessarily were disciplined. One soldier was disciplined just because he fired his weapon into the air in celebration.

Mr. Nice tried to make the notebook look like something incriminating, but failed. Certain excerpts from the notebook were maliciously mistranslated. Mr. Nice made reference to one passage that talked about the slaughter of pigs, but the English translation omitted the word “pigs” so it looked like the notebook was talking about some type of slaughter of people. Mr. Nice got caught in the mistranslation when the witness read the passage from the original Serbian version.

Mr. Nice and Milosevic held different positions about the admissibility of the notebook. Mr. Nice only wants selected passages admitted, while Milosevic wants the entire notebook admitted into evidence. Milosevic argued that Mr. Nice’s excerpts were frequently taken out of context and often mistranslated.

Mr. Nice was grasping at straws throughout the entire cross-examination. He accused the witness of wrongdoing because rope was supposed to be used to tie-up people caught sneaking across the border illegally.

Mr. Nice made a big deal about “tying-up civilians with rope,” but as Milosevic noted in the re-examination, tying somebody up with a rope isn’t much different than handcuffing them.

And, lest we forget, the people we’re talking about aren’t normal civilians; we’re taking about people who attempt to sneak into country illegally. The notebook said that these people were to be tied up and handed-over to the police, not that they were to be mistreated in any way.

The entire exercise was for all naught anyway. As the witness explained, his unit didn’t catch anybody sneaking across border, so there was no need to tie anybody up in the first place.

During the re-examination Milosevic asked the witness whether there was anything in the notebook that confirmed any aspect of the prosecution’s case. The witness answered that the notebook absolutely contradicted the prosecutor’s arguments. With that Lt. Col. Sel’s testimony was finished and the trial adjourned until Monday, January 23, 2006.

# # #