With a film crew from ITN journalist Ed Vulliamy Observer reveals the terrible truth of Serbian concentration camps in the management of the war in Bosnia. While the former Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic on trial in The Hague, Vulliamy is called as a witness - and is being questioned at a nearby private meeting with the man charged with genocide, the brain
The white curtain behind the reinforced glass panel increases, and there are other, not four feet, wearing a gray jacket and violet tie with a pin opposite shows the crest of a two-headed eagle and crossed Cs Cyrillic to represent "
Samo Sloga Srbinspasava
" - ". one unit saves the Serbs"
is a perfect fit, building deep in the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, in the small cell and the visitors' room. On the panel thickness across the bullet-proof glass is Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb leader during the worst massacre in Europe since the plague of the Third Reich's most wanted fugitive from the world - and now in the trial in The Hague. We talked through the holes in the glass is pressed against. His American lawyer, Peter Robinson, seated next to her.
On my side of the glass, which share a table with Ann Sutherland, a trial lawyer in the process of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), because it is my evidence against Karadzic the next day before judges and other members of Karadzic's defense team.
an interview is requested by Karadzic before giving official testimony in court the next day. Ironically, when you call the control unit came out of nowhere, in August 2011, saying that "defense" had requested an interview, I drove through the fog of rain up a mountain track in Bosnia to attend the consecration of a small monument to mark a mass grave at a distance: a crack in which the bodies of 124 men had been kidnapped and hidden - a closely guarded secret by the Serbs for years. The men were imprisoned in concentration camps Omarska and Keraterm camps in northwest Bosnia. Which was transferred the same day I arrived and discovered the field, with a team of ITN - August 5, 1992 - in the forest above a village called Hrastova Glavica. Once there, they were removed from the bus in groups of three. They were given a last cigarette and shot one by one, abandoned the body of the crack in the rock and into space, found and exhumed 15 years later.
I was in The Hague, including testifying against the man on whose authority had visited the camp today, Dr. Karadzic. I also agreed to be interviewed by him - partly because of the confusion in the unit to call witnesses by telephone fog that day, and partly on the grounds that a prosecution witness should be considered by the court to compel the defense of their claims. And, of course, I was as curious as I was nervous. Somewhere in the back of my mind was pure surrealism of this meeting. Lawyer
Karadzic, Robinson, brought an action in the cell saying that Karadzic was tired after a day in court, he would ask the initial questions, and I remember the details of a meeting between myself, the team of ITN Karadzic and two days before, we walked through the doors of the Omarska camp. I told him that I miss the way Karadzic doors this summer, four months after the carnage of Bosnia, which began in April 1992 when the Bosnian Serbs unleashed a hurricane of violence against non-Serbs, forging a ethnically "pure" strip of land. At the end of July 1992, Karadzic has appeared on the evening news from ITN in another "peace conference" in London failed to discuss the massacre in Bosnia. Karadzic was questioned about allegations of atrocities concentration camps published this morning
Guardian
. He said they were false, and challenged the paper and ITN to come see for themselves. I went Belgrade the next day.
After a delay of several days (when I know now, the fields were ready to evacuate and killing many prisoners), I met Radovan Karadzic, in addition to its headquarters in the capital Bosnian Serb pale noon, Aug. 3. He had a weak handshake for someone so supposedly dangerous. Karadzic said that we would see Omarska. He was, said, "a research center," while the other camp, Trnopolje, was a place where people came on their own - ". Displaced because their villages were burned "We also discussed areas where the Serbs were arrested on the other side by the Croatian authorities and Muslims. They also talked about the history of Serbia and its people and long struggles "heavenly."
We then went to perfection in the chain of command: first delivered into the hands of Vice President Karadzic, Nikola Koljevic, Professor anglophile who kept quoting Shakespeare. Koljevic escorted us to the biggest city of Banja Luka, Bosnian Serbs, which was upgraded to a more Milutinovic, who took us beyond the Bosnian Muslim town of Kozarac burned and abandoned in Prijedor, where the fields were managed. Here we find the "personal crisis", directed by Stakic and his assistant Milan Kovacevic. And from there we proceeded with the police chief of Prijedor and commander Zeljko Mejakic field through the doors of Omarska, to see men in various states of decomposition removal of a large hangar, being pierced with a patio and in a bar, where he devoured watery bean stew like famished dogs. "I will not tell no lie," said a man named Dzemal Paratusic, "but I can not tell the truth. Thank you for coming. "(Paratusic survived and now lives in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.)
We were denied access to the rest of the camp, despite the assurances of Karadzic, as he explained to our guests. "We have orders ... you can do this and this and that, but not" And they were grouped together and taken to the Trnopolje camp of Omarska, where we are, behind barbed wire in the eyes of remarkable men, some skeletons, which had arrived from another camp - Keraterm - morning. There, he says, there was a terrible massacre, one night, 150 men in a shed. A prisoner, Fikret Alic, said he had been assigned the responsibility of the bodies into trucks, but could not do it. We went to have seen the small, but enough to know that a great darkness horror, but it was invaluable developed around Prijedor.
The war lasted three years, Karadzic's hand enthusiastically joined by British diplomats and others under the chandeliers of London, Paris and Geneva, as the cleverest, enjoyed his friendship and plays with his powerlessness and cynicism, a peace plan failed the other, while the murder on the ground continues. When the war ended in 1995, Karadzic was indicted for genocide and persecution and several counts of crimes against humanity, the same diplomats now shouting his capture
Over time, the terrible truth about the camps emerged. Mass graves were discovered, the parents are, and the testimony of the court at Omarska and Trnopolje discovered secrets: the mass murder and torture, beatings, rape, forced deportation before (who had accompanied the One of the trains). The trial in The Hague is the chain of command until we had passed in the opposite direction: first, Dusko Tadic, a murderer from the pump to the parish and torturer who roamed the countryside in general, the groups after Kovacevic then the guards, then Stakic - among many others. Koljevic shot himself in 1997. Now here Karadzic.
past 13 years, Karadzic was protected in different ways by both Serbia and the Bosnian Serb stronghold, and sections of the same international community that is supposed to hunt him. The European Union has made its delivery to The Hague a condition for consideration of the accession of Serbia and was arrested in the summer of 2008 - a wild hair professional medical herbal alternative to hide behind a false name and a beard, friends in Belgrade. In my own search for the
Observer
, who had met and drank with his entourage, a wild and eccentric band that compares your writing with Joyce and Dostoevsky. Nerma Jelacic, spokesman for the court today in The Hague, and was harangued in my rental car to get to the mountains where Karadzic was protected on the town of Foca.
But now I'm in front of him - a man accused of "personal" and "upper" criminal responsibility for genocide, extermination, persecution, violence, murder, deportation, unlawful attacks against civilians, " The main objective is to spread terror. "In short, it is - apparently - one of the serial killers working the second half of the 20th century. The processes are divided into three sections: the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995, the atrocities and ethnic cleansing by the Bosnian municipalities in the same period, and the massacre of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
This research, in The Hague - the cases against Karadzic and his military counterpart General Ratko Mladic -. It was during the last 18 years
the other side of bulletproof glass
Karadzic was awake. He is friendly, almost jovial, but not very endearing.
He asks: "Did you feel that was available" during the war? On that day, yes, certainly. But after discovering the fields, had not received permission to travel to their territory. I told him that "someone dear to you" permission is denied - a reference to his daughter, Sonja who headed the press office in Pale
Its initial line of questions relates to the same camp of Omarska. I did not know he was a "temporary research center" of the alleged Muslim fighters Yes, I know this statement, I reply. Did you know that 59% of Omarska prisoners were sent to a prison camp of war, and 41% ", released in Trnopolje?" No, he did not, until we found the camp.
Do Iinvestigate the camps, Serbs who had been arrested? Yes I did, I say. A few days after the discovery of Omarska, towards the town of Capljina, and found a nearby camp called Dretelj, a Muslim-Croat militia HOS call.
Then, after a quarter past one, the "interview" desired climax. Karadzic produced a revisionist old chestnut of an argument, he said that I had invented and ITN reports on the Trnopolje camp, and the pictures of prisoners behind barbed wire on the refugees were free to come and go. No sense in going through all over again: this notion quite advanced by a "media expert", Thomas Deichmann, five years later, he found the camp had been tried and convicted the defendants canceled as a result of trial and error, and had the subject of a civil action in London between the MTI and the British champion of the theory,
Living Marxism
Magazine in 2000, with the jury to find deep ITN.
revisionistThis charge was also approved in late 1990 by the British "intellectuals" and was raised recently by the distinguished professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky. Now Karadzic brings a touch: you play a resize the video hardware Bosnian Serb TV to make his point. I reply that I was convinced then and remain convinced that the men in these photos were prisoners arrived from Omarska and Keraterm, under supervision, and that the camps were real.
not sleep the night before my appearance as a prosecution witness. I hate to do this, it is worrying, trembling, humble and wonderful in its own way. Upon entering the courtroom the next day, exchanging a glance with Karadzic, who puts his helmet, raises his eyebrows and grimaces of the face on the screen of your computer, as if to say "Let's do it" brotherhood with Gladiator.
At the bank, there are four judges, Chief Judge O-Gon Kwon Korea. Ann Sutherland presents evidence of a previous test, that of Stakic - sentenced to life imprisonment, reduced on appeal to 40 years - and described the meeting with Karadzic and the discovery of the camps, which is illustrated with images of MII. Omarska, in an interview after our discovery of the field, Karadzic said: "We have 13 prisons and jails in Omarska is the worst." Karadzic could close Omarska that "even in two days" if the Muslim side have agreed to a prisoner exchange.
at Omarska, the film is not us trying to see the field properly - quarters in which we now know that thousands of men were crowded, and have been known for torture and performance of mass - the authority of Karadzic, and are denied access. And now, judges look to the man who had given these orders, so he can begin the examination of the witness. Karadzic cuts the living: "Do you think it has managed to maintain their objectivity?" I try to explain something to the judges in the past, I misused the word "objectivity" when I speak of " neutrality '. "When something is a specific event, I am always the goal," I said, but "not to attempt to try to be neutral. I am not neutral between the camp guards and prisoners, rape victims and rapists ... I honestly can not sit in court and say that I am or want to be neutral in this type of violence. "
Karadzic challenges my use of the word "racist" to describe its program - the Bosnian Muslims are "the Serbs who converted to Islam, and that's what the Lord [David] Owen believes yes, "he said. I reply that "the prisoners in the camps were Muslims or Bosnian Croats, and the people who the Bosnian Serbs were ... and where I come from, if self-defined ethnicity is to remove or disable the territories of all members of other ethnic groups and to erase all memory of them, which is racism. "
Here are the questions that almost amounts to a general discussion of politics: how the Serbs and Croats said Karadzic "in favor of decentralization in Bosnia consists of three entities, while the side Muslims wanted a unitary state in Bosnia. "I agree with your analysis, but could not resist an observation that" there is a gap between policy and mass murder. "Judge Kwon concludes this smooth discussion meanders, the time of the first break. Then back on the sand. There gladiators Karadzic camaraderie this time, as back in the courtroom, his face hardened, his eyes hardened. And his voice too. Need I remind you that Karadzic accepted some of the peace plans? Yes, I remember "endless plans, treaties, none of which is over land. The murder of its business. "How do I know about the" fight "around Prijedor? My first article quotes the fields of a prisoner who had been involved. I say that resistance was not submitted at the time of arrived - this speech is a good time
then questions about Omarska, citing my article ". There were no visible signs of serious violence, not to mention the systematic extermination "I say we were trying to enter the hangar" where it was suspected that terrible things took place. Hindsight has shown that 'they were. " "How do you know?" Karadzic asked. "I've heard dozens of people who were killed at Omarska was widespread and systematic ... own record of the court over the years would, I think, is enough. "
Karadzicquestion the veracity of a quote from a child speaks a massacre of 200 men in the Keraterm camp. I say, "He had the wrong number, but the massacre was carried out." Then Karadzic insists: "If I told you, Mr. Vulliamy, none of this is true, and all those who said something to the murders was a single death of a person who was mentally ill, do you think or you think? ... It seems that you choose to believe things that are harmful to the Serbs quite easily. "
simple murder? I have to let this sink in. Do you really believe that? "I did not choose to believe things that are harmful to one side or the other. Do not think one person was killed in the Omarska and Keraterm together ... I think there much of a person with mental illness was killed ... I Sorry, with respect, I must say that if I say it's one I do not believe you, sir. Nothing personal ... and, at the expense of the Serbs is not relevant. This is not how to measure these things. "
"With all due respect," Karadzic said, "would be relevant if it is true. However, I told you all seen a single death. All they discuss the murders, but only saw one. "Next, we turn to Trnopolje. In my first report, said Karadzic's why I said he could not be called a camp Trnopolje concentration, but I have since changed their minds. Judge Baird sitting at the end of the bench, asked for clarification.
I try to explain that in the immediate aftermath of our discovery, I thought the invocation of the Holocaust in the media did not like our coverage, and the use of "camp concentration ", an animation term. But this thought: "I decided," said the bank ", after consultation with the people in the museum of the Holocaust and the survivors [the Holocaust] to use the term refers largely to its own definition comes from the Boer War in South Africa. It is fair to say that Trnopolje was exactly that [concentration camp], where thousands of civilians gathered before the forced deportation and death. "
Karadzic takes its theme. Have civilians were "evacuated to a combat zone" at Trnopolje? "It was not the deportation ... this ... was the evacuation according to the demands of these people." I reply that I was in a convoy of deportation "people who [had] told me something different ... soldiers and police came around their homes and received an ultimatum to leave ... People in the convoy went to travel with nothing but a voluntary basis. "At the same route four nights later," a large number of people who were outside the bus and carried on Mount Vlasic, known by that court as the slaughter of Vlasic. "
Karadzic is rightly some of the stupidest things I've written about him. The first is a title in a magazine of Bosnia: "I live for the day when I will take the stand against Karadzic in The Hague." He wonders if this makes me an impartial witness against him. I do not remember if I said it or not, but the answer: "No disrespect, I have lived today."
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