May 12, 1996
At War Crimes Trial, a Disputed Definition
By MARLISE SIMONS
HE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb and accused war criminal, sat through the first days of his trial last week looking pallid and shifting uneasily in his blue U.N. chair.
Much of the time, Tadic, a former cafe owner and policeman, simply stared across the courtroom, an ultramodern hall outfitted for this occasion with new computers and furnishings.
He took notes as the prosecutor rose to list the charges of killing, rape and torture in the former Yugoslavia that brought Tadic to The Hague to face this U.N. war crimes tribunal.
But as the first international war crimes tribunal in half a century got under way, the focus quickly shifted from the stocky man in the dock to the nightmare of the war.
Since the trial opened, on Tuesday, the prosecution has insistently spoken of the enormous scale of the violence in the former Yugoslavia. It portrayed it as the result of a plan conceived in Belgrade that used the Yugoslav army initially against Serbia's neighbors and subsequently to support local Serbian militias.
Court officials give several reasons for the prosecution's strategy. First, they say, the prosecutors are determined to show that what happened in Yugoslavia was not a local civil war, but an international conflict, with one state attacking others.
This definition will be essential for the tribunal to try Kadic and other defendants on charges of "grave breaches" of the laws of war. If the conflict is defined as purely internal, a number of charges against Kadic and others will have to be dropped.
Similarly, the prosecution must demonstrate that the brutalities of "ethnic cleansing" committed against Muslims were part of a broad, state-organized policy. The existence of an official policy or system is needed in order to try Tadic and other defendants here for "crimes against humanity."
For much of last week, therefore, Grant Niemann, an Australian and one of three senior prosecutors, presented a history lesson, for which he called on James Gow, a specialist in military history in the Balkans from the University of London.
As Gow outlined the start of the Yugoslav conflict, he used charts and video footage that appeared on computer monitors sunk into the table in front of each participant.
One segment, which Gow told the court was a key to the thinking of Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, was recorded as the breakup of Yugoslavia loomed. It showed Milosevic proposing to rewrite the constitution and to include the right to secede "not just for republics but also for ethnic groups." Both the Croatian war of 1991 and the Bosnian war that began in April 1992 have centered on the Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia that wanted to preserve ties to Belgrade.
Another video segment showed a Serbian nationalist leader accusing Milosevic of arming and supporting Serbian paramilitary groups that fought in Croatia and Bosnia. In a third, a former Serbian paramilitary leader said his troops fought in Bosnia and Croatia with support from Belgrade. In the same section, taken from a BBC series, Milosevic dismissed this statement as ridiculous. He has consistently denied responsibility for any war crimes.
"This series of extracts, I think, shows how the paramilitary groups were operating and cooperating with official bodies of Serbia," Gow told the court.
The first courtroom clash occurred Friday, when one of Tadic's lawyers challenged Gow's account of history, suggesting that he was biased against the Serbs.
It was clear, however, that the defense team, in addition to defending its client, is also trying to push the tribunal toward firmer definitions and rules. Michail Wladimiroff, the Dutch lawyer who heads the defense team, complained last week about the vagueness of the court's rules, definitions and standards of evidence.
He said in an interview: "At issue here is the question: was this a civil war or an international conflict? What establishes an international nexus here? We don't know and the tribunal did not tell us."
Court officials seemed relieved last week at the arrival in The Hague of the first Bosnian Muslim in court custody.
Zejnil Delalic is one of only three Muslims indicted by the tribunal for war crimes. He is accused of responsibility for murder, torture and rape committed by troops under his command against Serbian inmates of a prison camp in central Bosnia in 1992.
The court interrupted Tadic's trial for a pretrial hearing for Delalic, who pleaded not guilty. As of last week, the court has four accused war criminals in its custody. Another person indicted by the tribunal is awaiting transfer from a German jail and two others are held in Bosnia.
Officially, 57 people have been indicted by the court. But a court official said that seven others, some of "significant" rank, were recently secretly indicted.
