Testing the Pilica Massacre Narrative

[The paper that follows was read at the XII International Law Association meeting in Tara, Serbia, 5 – 9 June 2013. It focuses on some evidentiary issues that arise in relation to proving some key aspects of the Srebrenica massacre. We recommend it to our readers on its own merits, but also as a response to Srebrenica genocide advocates whose best argument seems to be that what has been confirmed in ICTY judgments automatically acquires the status of sanctified truth beyond the pale of permissible inquiry or further discussion. A thorough analysis of ICTY judgments with attention to the sort of evidence that has been admitted is long overdue. When scholars finally get round to it, the results are bound to be shocking. The article that follows, with a rather narrow focus on the evidence that was uncritically admitted by several chambers in relation to the goings on at the important massacre locale of Pilica-Branjevo, is a foretaste of what a comprehensive study of this aspect of the Tribunal’s procedures would reveal.]

Getting away with proving mass murder

Attachment 1 Erdemovic Enlistment Contract Signed by Mladic

Attachment 2 Erdemovic Enlistment Contract signed by de Gaulle

Attachment 3 Model of prisoner with hands tied behind his back as described by Q

[Srebrenica as Genocide? The Krstic Decision and the Language of the Unspeakable, by Katherine G. Southwick [Yale Human Right & Development Law Journal, Vol. VIII (http://www.law.yale.edu/academics/vol8.htm) explores some fundamental theoretical issues about the legal nature of the events surrounding Srebrenica in July 1995. The most controversial of these issues is whether those events may rightfully be described as genocide. The author, Katherine Southwick, expresses some serious doubts in that regard and argues that the Krstić Chamber should have adhered more closely to the provisions of the Genocide Convention. The author’s discussion is based on the ICTY judgment in the Krstić case and she argues that according to the International Law Commission, “the distinguishing characteristic of the crime of genocide is the element of specific intent, which requires that certain acts be “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” By excluding consideration of the perpetrators’ motives for killing the military-aged men, such as seeking to eliminate a military threat as the defense alleged, the Krstić chamber’s standard for establishing specific intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims, in whole or in part, was incomplete. In addition, stretching the meaning of certain terms in the definition, such as a group “in part” and “destroy,” also suggests a misapplication of the word “genocide.” In effect, adopting an interpretation of genocide that cannot and will not be universally applied, the Chamber untenably broadened the meaning of the term. To the extent that this landmark finding influences modern interpretations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, the author proposes that limiting the finding to crimes against humanity—thus maintaining clearer distinctions between these sets of crimes—would have better served the authority of the international tribunal, the development of international humanitarian law, and the capacity of other states to comprehend and respond effectively to future instances of mass violence. We put this analysis before our readers not just for its cogency, but also because it demonstrates that the facile propaganda view of Srebrenica is not an open and shut case and certainly not the last scholarly word on this subject.]

[The comment below has provoked lively responses. One of them is by Canadian attorney Christopher Black. He seems to point out some fundamental flaws in the strategy followed by the Karadžić defence. By acquiescing to the rules for the admission of evidence being turned on their head, Mr. Black seems to be suggesting that Dr. Karadžić is, in effect, acting as the Tribunal’s enabler in subverting the proper administration of justice, and all to his own ultimate detriment, of course. Here is Mr. Black’s view of the DNA affair.

“I fail to understand why the Karadzic team does not make a demand for full disclosure instead of piecemeal demands and why they do not hold press conferences to complain about what is going on. Further, having some "expert" produce a summary of the conclusions of these DNA labs is nothing less than hearsay in the absence of the hard evidence.

“If the prosecution claims to have DNA of a claimed missing person then to prove that person was killed they need to call witnesses to say so. And even if they can do that then they still have to prove the unlawful execution of the person to whom the DNA belongs.

“They also need to prove the provenance of the DNA – that is, does it come from the remains found in relevant locations or does it come from a relative or the live "missing" person? There must be a continuous secure chain of evidence. The ICTY purports to say none of that is relevant. If I was on that team – if I was Karadzic – I would walk out of the trial. Why do they sit there taking this crap?”

Our comment follows.]

Procedural monkey business usually is an infallible sign that something is not right with the evidence. The illustration that follows derives from the current practice of the Hague Tribunal. It has to do with the defendant’s right of access to the most significant material evidence used against him in relation to Srebrenica charges. It concerns also the important issue of the denial to the accused of the right to independently test the evidence used against him. These circumstances raise a legitimate question: is there anything resembling equality of arms between the parties in dispute before ICTY, the Prosecution and the Defence? But that poses some broader questions as well. Is there a shred of professional integrity remaining in the Hague Tribunal? Is there a distinction between the Prosecution and the Chamber, or are those bodies indissolubly conjoined and act in unison, as a sort of joint enterprise aiming to achieve essentially identical objectives to the detriment of the Accused?

          It has been evident for some time that a concise exposition of basic facts about Srebrenica would be useful. Over a decade and a half after the event Srebrenica continues to be engulfed in heavy fog or, to put it in contemporary language, disinformation. Following the Leninist Agitprop model, messages about Srebrenica can be divided in two categories. The first consists of “agitation”, which means a simplistic story line for the broad masses, not overly concerned with facts and arguments, and certainly not encouraging critical analysis. It is based on the repetition of emotional platitudes such as “genocide” and “eight thousand executed men and boys”. The second category projects a propaganda line geared to a more select and influential public. It is based on the pseudo-history of the Yugoslav conflict promoted by the Hague Tribunal and the political apparatus which sustains it.   

Several preliminary considerations are in order when assessing the credibility of the received narrative about Srebrenica:
•    How could Serbian Army commanders have thought that a massacre of 8,000 individuals, and the subsequent relocation of nearly as many corpses, could have remained unnoticed by NATO forces that were controlling the airspace over Bosnia and monitoring all troop movements on the ground?  

•    How could an allegation of the execution of 8,000 individuals be made and then widely accepted if the only hard evidence in The Hague Tribunal’s possession that points to summary execution involves the remains of 442 persons that were found with blindfolds and ligatures?

[The Srebrenica Lobby persistently portrays what happened in Srebrenica as an indisputable illustration of genocide. The recently retired religious head of the Bosnian Muslim community, Mustafa Cerić, has gone even a step further by demanding that a world day of mourning for Srebrenica be established, on a par with the annual observance of the Holocaust. The Srebrenica PR campaign consists of the relentless repetition of the Lobby’s two main mantras, “8,000 executed men and boys” and “genocide”. There is little doubt that of the two pillars of the Srebrenica narrative, “genocide” is the Lobby’s political red line. The numbers game has not been going well for them lately (the recent drastic reduction in the number of Srebrenica execution victims in the Tolimir trial verdict has been met by silence rather than the expected howls of protest) but the insistence on “genocide”, regardless of how many victims, remains unyielding.

[Dr. Ljubiša Simić’s new monograph “Brčko: How war crimes are condoned and ‘normalized’” deals with largely unknown and unpunished criminal acts committed in Brčko District during the Bosnian conflict, 1992 – 1995. It is reasonable to assume that the anonymity and impunity of these crimes is due to the ethnic background of the overwhelming majority of the victims, who happened to be Serbs. However, it must also be pointed out that one of segments of this monograph focuses on the shelling, throughout the war, of Brčko town, which was under Serbian control, resulting in death and injury to hundreds of residents of all three ethnic groups, Serbs, Muslims, and Croats. The names of victims on the lists which the author meticulously provides for each year of the war clearly show that. One supposes that these facts must pose a significant danger to the established narrative of the Bosnian conflict, which explains why the indiscriminate shelling of Brčko, which in every relevant way is analogous to that of Sarajevo, is systematically ignored and why nobody has been called to account for its destructive consequences. Other major features of this new monograph are savage mutilation murders of Serbian prisoners of war in the villages of Boderište and Lipovac, which nearly twenty years later the Public Prosecutor’s office in  Brčko is still officially “investigating”, and evidence of concentration and torture camps for Serbian civilians for which also no guilty parties have been brought to justice. This monograph is a ringing indictment of the judicial system in Brčko District for its refusal, in spite of ample evidence, to prosecute perpetrators of serious war crimes against citizens of Serbian ethnicity. The text that follows is the English summary of Dr. Simić’s book.]

    The recent Tolimir trial verdict at ICTY [1] generally follows the standard pattern, but some interesting departures should be noted. General Tolimir was head of the Department of Security and Intelligence at the Main Staff of the Republika Srpska army during the war in Bosnia. He was only one hierarchical step below General Mladić, and the verdict will certainly impact the Mladić case which is being heard by a different ICTY Chamber.

[One of our foremost objectives is to facilitate the dissemination of authentic information about Srebrenica beyond the confines of the former Yugoslavia. For that reason we have an active Srebrenica educational program in the English language. We are quite aware that the Srebrenica propaganda narrative is being spread mostly through the Anglophone media. However, there are still important cultural and linguistic spaces that remain largely beyond the pale of Srebrenica lobby propaganda. To the extent that the official story does penetrate there at all, it is conveyed through Western monopoly media agencies and its impact is minimal. Nevertheless, we have not neglected those areas of the world and we intend to offer our views there as quickly and effectively as practicable.

[It was time for an update of Dr. Ljubiša Simić's analysis of ICTY experts' forensic data from exhumations of Srebrenica mass graves. Much interesting and relevant information has appeared since Dr. Simić's Chapter V of "Deconstruction of a virtual genocide" was written two years ago. Several prosecution witnesses at the Karadžić trial have shed new and important light on many aspects of these procedures. Extremely significant in this regard was the cross-examination testimony of chief prosecution investigator Jean-René Ruez. He stated that when at the end of 2001 ICTY forensic teams terminated their field activities they had exhumed all reported Srebrenica-related execution sites. That means that exhumation activities conducted after 2002 by ICMP and the "Institute for missing persons" in Sarajevo were focused on gravesites that were mostly associated not with executions but with the fighting resulting from the breakout of the 28th Division of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Srebrenica enclave. Thus, just as Srebrenica Historical Project [www.srebrenica-project.com] has maintained, the remains unearthed by these agencies subsequent to the departure of Tribunal forensic experts are more likely to be combat casualties than execution victims. In addition to the inclusion in Dr. Simić's updated text of references to a huge number of blast injuries in the autopsy reports prepared by the Tribunal's own experts after exhuming casualties buried in Srebrenica-related graves, ICTY chief investigator Ruez's admission that exhumations concluded in 2001 were practically exhaustive of execution victims is highly significant. That removes another important prop from under the Srebrenica "genocide" narrative. It strongly suggests that verifiable Srebrenica executions do not exceed 1.000 and that most of the casualties processed forensically after 2001 were the result of combat. The number of post July 11, 1995 Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina prisoner executions is therefore roughly comparable to the number of Serbian civilians killed by soldiers of the 28th Division in their attacks from the Srebrenica enclave between 1992 and 1995. And that still leaves unanswered the tantalizing question of whose orders the executioners belonging to the multi-ethnic 10th Sabotage Detachment were following and who provided the financial reward for their crime, as described by "Crown Witness" Dražen Erdemović during his cross-examination at the Karadžić trial. As usual, we put the facts before our readers and leave it up to them to draw conclusions.]