Please note that this is not a verbatim transcript of the Press Briefing. It is merely a summary.

Date: 12.04.2006
Time: 12:00

Registry and Chambers:

Christian Chartier, Senior Information Officer, made the following statement:

Good Afternoon.

As part of his visit to the international judicial insitutions based in The Hague on the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the International Court of Justice, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan will be making a short visit to the Tribunal this afternoon. He will have brief meetings with the Prosecutor and the President of the Tribunal before saying a few words to staff in the Tribunal’s lobby. As you may already know, there will be no media opportunity of any kind.

On Monday, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1668 confirming that Judge Joaquin Canivell will continue to serve on the Bench hearing the Krajisnik case. Judge Canivell was appointed as an ad litem judge in 2003, and his mandate was to expire in April 2006; resolution 1668 enables him to see the case through to its completion, notwithstanding the fact that the cumulative period of his service in the Tribunal would then exceed three years (which is the term of office for ad litem Judges). The Tribunal is grateful for this decision.

In terms of the courtroom schedule for next week, the trial of Momcilo Krajisnik, a former leader of the Bosnian Serb political entity, will continue after Easter on Thursday 20 April.

The trial of Milan Martic, former President of the war-time Croatian Serb entity, sits tomorrow at 9:00 in courtroom II. It is scheduled to resume on Monday, 24 April.

Finally, the Vukovar trial against Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin, former Yugoslav Army high-ranking officers, continues tomorrow at 9:00 in courtroom I. It will then adjourn to resume on Wednesday 26 April in courtroom III.

I would like to draw your attention to a number of the Chambers’ filings on the list which will handed over to you at the end of this briefing:

Firstly, on Friday 7 April, the Appeals Chamber suspended the payment of fines imposed on Ivica Marijacic and Markica Rebic as a result of them being found guilty of contempt of court. This Judgement was rendered on 10 March and you may remember that both men were sentenced to paying a fine of 15,000 euros each. They have appealed against this Judgement and also filed motions requesting the suspension of the payment of the fines until the Appeals Chamber has disposed of the appeals. The Appeals Chamber on Friday decided that "the payment shall not be due" before its Decision on the merits of the case.

Also on last Friday, Trial Chamber I sitting on the Krajisnik case issued a document setting forth in details the procedure on calling and examining Chamber witnesses, hereby saying that it is considering calling a number of persons to testify as Chamber witnesses. A final decision in this regard will be made at the close of the Defence case.

Lastly, on Tuesday, Trial Chamber III sitting in the Milutinovic et al. case issued an Order to Serbia and Montenegro regarding their practice in implementing the Tribunal’s decisions on provisional release. You may remember that a number of accused on provisional release, namely Dragoljub Ojdanic, Nebosja Pavkovic and Nikola Sainovic attended the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic. The Trial Chamber considers that "there is no provision in the Orders for Provisional Release which authorizes either the Government of Serbia and Montenegro or the Government of the Republic of Serbia to permit the Accused to leave the municipality of Belgrade." The Chamber therefore ordered "the Government of Serbia and Montenegro and the Government of the Republic of Serbia to file within 14 days submissions indicating (a) whether it is their practice to exempt an accused from the explicit conditions of provisional release (b) if so, the basis of such a practice and (c) all other information relevant to this issue."

And finally, I wish you all a pleasant Easter break.

Office of the Prosecutor:

Anton Nikiforov, Advisor to the Prosecutor and acting Spokesperson of the Office of the Prosecutor, made the following statement:

We are pleased to see UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visiting the Tribunal today. Tomorrow, President of the Bosnian Presidency Sulejman Tihic will visit the Tribunal to meet with the Prosecutor. This visit is a courtesy call on the Tribunal.

Deputy Prosecutor David Tolbert attended a conference about regional cooperation in fighting war crimes in Novi Sad organized by the OSCE this week.

To clarify the controversial reports in the Serbian media about the so called Holmec incident taking place in Slovenia in 1991 and the question of why the ICTY did not investigate it.

At issue is the balance between the broad ICTY mandate and limited time resources. International Tribunal was created to process most serious crimes, most serious violations of the international humanitarian law, massive violations of laws and customs of war, widespread and systematic attacks or violence against protected groups. And all this in the context of the proven protracted armed conflict. It remains unclear if 9-10 days of tensions, some hostilities rose to the level of an armed conflict.

In any event, the OTP having had the mandate to investigate and prosecute any single case of war crimes, had to prioritise the cases and to give precedence to the most serious crimes, cases of massive violations of the international humanitarian law. All other cases – which were as we all know in thousands during the conflicts in the 90-es – were supposed to be processed by the national courts. This is the essence of concurrent jurisdiction clause from the ICTY Statute. There are no small or big crimes – crime is a crime if proven in a court of law. But the scale of criminality is of importance for the international court.

Established in 1993 and facing the raging war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and complex armed conflict in Croatia, Office of the Prosecutor logically concentrated on the massive atrocities in Bosnia in the first place. Later on the OTP had to review all available information about different alleged crimes – there were virtually thousands reports – and had to draw the line: to consider how much could be achieved by temporary international organ in a reasonable time.

Difference shall be made between systematic, planned widespread attacks and individual cases of crimes, individual incidents. And the main point here is there was never a monopoly of the ICTY in regard to prosecution of the war crimes.

International Tribunal is by definition reserved for the most serious crimes and for the highest level of responsibility. Tribunal was never supposed to process all the cases. And we will not deal with this particular case of Holmec now, as it was not investigated by the OTP. However, if the Prosecutor is requested to provide assistance in this case she will consider it positively.

Amount of information about the Holmec incident put presently in the public domain mainly in the Serbian media, together with the level of controversy about it, requires proper attention by the national jurisdictions. Co-operation between them on the war crimes cases was always encouraged by the ICTY and the OTP and personally by the Prosecutor.

Questions:

Asked when the internal enquiries into the deaths of Milan Babic and Slobodan Milosevic would be available, Chartier said that that would be soon, stating that he had no further indication with regard to the timing.

Asked whether or not the Swedish Inquiry Commission had presented its report on the UNDU to the Tribunal, Chartier said that the Swedish experts conducted their on-site audit of the Detention Unit in the course of last week, completed it by Thursday of last week and have returned to Sweden. They were now preparing their audit report to be submitted to the Tribunal in due course. Chartier pointed out that the Swedish experts were requested by the Tribunal to look into the day-to-day management and running of the Detention Unit, nothing more, nothing less.

Asked what was meant by "cultural revolution" announced by Judge Antonetti in court proceedings this morning while referring to the work of the Bonomy Commission, Chartier said that he had not heard the comment. The Bonomy Commission was actually a Working Group established a few months ago with the aim of looking at ways to speed up trials.

Chartier said that it was his understanding that the Bonomy Working Group had completed its work and that its findings and recommendations had been disseminated through to the Judges for consideration. Chartier reiterated that he was not aware of those findings, but that he was aware of what the President of the Tribunal, Judge Fausto Pocar, told the Diplomatic Seminar held last Friday, namely that it was expected that a Plenary Session be held at the end of the month considering further amendments to the Rules and Practice Directions and to adopt any changes necessary to speed up proceedings, both at the Trial Chambers and Appeals Chambers stages.

Asked if Resolution 1668 included comments by the Russian Representative on the inefficiency of the Tribunal, Chartier said the resolution did not include any such comment. It was a short text exclusively dealing with extending Judge Canivell’s mandate. He stressed that the resolution was adopted with unanimity, including thus the Russian federation. Chartier added that he was aware of the comment made by the Russian Representative, which exclusively related to the fact that the Security Counsel had to extend again the mandate of the Judge as the case could not be completed before the end of his term.

Chartier said that it was a well-known fact that the Krajisnik case has taken longer than expected for a number of reasons. If the comment by Russia reflects a degree of impatience, we share it, said Chartier. He added that it was now contemplated that the case would be completed by August/September, so it would actually be a slight delay of a couple of months.

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