Subject: Freedom fight in the Hague (7)
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 14:27:02 +0200
From: "Vladimir Krsljanin"


FREEDOM ASSOCIATION SPECIAL BULLETIN
No.7
May 21, 2002



Tanic Has Discredited The Prosecution





With the cross-examination of Ratomir Tanic, one of
the key witnesses to the prosecution, Slobodan
Milosevic has publicly exposed the whole Hague
indictment against him as a politically constructed
one. Today's final examination of this witness has
shown that Tanic is not only inventing things or
talking as alleged participant of events he had found
out in the press, but also that he is a man once
sentenced for robbery and a crook whose statements are
being publicly denied by almost everyone whose alleged
associate he had been.



Witness Tanic has only shown a capacity to construct
stories so that, when cornered with no valid reply, he
calls upon his own general evaluations, print errors
or translation mistakes, etc. For instance, when
Milosevic reminded him that in his written statement
he had mentioned that round-tables were just fronts
for real discussions (he meant Milosevic's policies on
Kosovo, off-course), Tanic without hesitation
responded that this was the "role of round-tables
everywhere in the World".



A few times Tanic got into dead-end situations, when
he was forced to assert that his bosses were lying. He
did that when Milosevic ran a video tape, in which the
president of New Democracy and current Interior
Minister of Serbia, Dusan Mihajlovic, said live on TV:
"Tanic had never participated in making decisions or
implementing them, but could have been only an
observer, as any other citizen".



We remind that Tanic almost always called upon his
party leader Mihajlovic, with whom he had allegedly
directly participated in all events regarding Kosovo
and Metohia, since New Democracy has at the time been
a member of the ruling coalition. At a direct
Milosevic's question regarding Mihajlovic's statement
mentioned above, Tanic replied that "Mihajlovic is not
telling the truth now". The same pattern applied to
former Serbian Vice-Prime-minister Ratko Markovic's or
Serbian Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic's
denials of his affirmations. He finally complained
that "it seems everyone has left him".



How reliable a witness Tanic may be before any legal
institution has been clearly put in evidence today,
after Milosevic had presented a certificate of the
Belgrade District Court from May 17 of this year, by
which Ratomir Tanic was declared guilty on March 7,
1977 for hard robbery and sentenced to a year and two
months of imprisonment. On November 1 of the same year
the Serbian Supreme Court had this sentence changed to
a 7 months reclusion, and that one was final. At a
direct question on that episode of his life, Tanic
tried to avoid answering directly, but after Milosevic
insisted, he admitted "not recalling since it happened
a long time ago". At a later question by one of the
Amici Curiae, Tanic replied there had been a minor
punishment and that he was young at the time. He also
claimed not remembering what kind of felony it had
been.



For several times Tanic's examination showed he had
been collaborator of a few Western intelligence
services and that he had obviously prepared his
testimonial together with them. New Democracy's
vice-president, Nebojsa Lekovic, confirms this, by
stating that "Tanic had never in any way participated
in negotiations with the Kosovo and Metohia Albanians
and that he had left the country because of having
enormous unpaid debts, while he had now accepted to
testify for the money". Besides, the book Tanic had
not finished writing yet is financed by the British
Intelligence Service, something he himself confirmed
after being asked by the Amici Curiae. He has as well
confirmed that he was receiving cash from these
services with no written record, and that the content
of the book is exclusively about charges against
Slobodan Milosevic.



Today has started the testimonial of the forensic
expert Erich Packard, and it will be resumed tomorrow.


===*===


Subject: Fw: Freedom fight in the Hague (8)
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 03:33:23 +0200
From: "Vladimir Krsljanin"

FREEDOM ASSOCIATION SPECIAL BULLETIN
No.8
May 22, 2002


Science hardly reliable for the Prosecution



French forensic expert Eric Bacard today's testimonial
referred to pathologists reports from different
locations in Kosovo and Metohia where bodies of people
died during the conflict were found. It appeared that
these findings, while based on scientific achievements
in this field, were written in order to prejudge
crimes against the victims. Namely, wherever it was
not possible to come to a decisive conclusion, meaning
different causes of death were possible, the reports
were insisting on causes that meant crimes had been
committed. However, Milosevic managed to unmask such
report tendencies during his cross-examination, since
the witness himself while answering had to remain
consequent to his trade and communicate the real
truth, something that often was not coinciding with
the Prosecution intentions.



Keeping in mind the high level of expertise to these
questions, in this report only some characteristic
examples may be pointed out. At Milosevic's question,
how come it was possible to induce several death
causes for the same person, Bacard replied that only
several causes can be induced. The witness said that
the circumstances of lethal outcome, if there had been
caused by war casualty or a conflict between two
persons, may be established only as a hypothesis, and
not as it is been done in a report.



Most of the ambiguous quotes relate to skeletized
corpses, where tissue putrefaction occurred. So at
Milosevic's question, how possible it may be to make a
distinction if injuries were committed with a sharp
object on a person alive or after death, or how such
quotes apply to carbonized corpses, Bacard replied
that in most of the cases it is rather difficult or
virtually impossible to give an answer. He was
expressed that blindfolds were never found on victims,
which was mentioned in one of the reports.



Several Milosevic's questions referred to details of
the pathologists report from Racak, and from the
witness's answers no one could have concluded that
reliable findings show murders were committed from a
short range, e.g. there was no massacre as
characterized by OSCE Mission chief William Walker.
Bacard even denied the allegations enshrined in the
pathologists report from Racak, stating that in
neither of the cases the distance from which the
victims found there were shot could have been
precisely established. The witness insisted no
cold-blooded execution took place in Racak, since only
shots from less than a few centimeters could be
reliably detected as such.



Typically, in the pathologists report from Racak there
was no analysis of the "parafin glove", by which it
has been proved that the dead ones before being shot
were themselves shooting with firearms. Bacard said
that method was rejected as unreliable. However, he
could not give an answer to the Amici's question why a
traditional analysis of the victims' clothes had not
been performed, something that even today would be
possible to do.



How unprecise and incomplete, and especially
one-sided, are the reports on pathologists' findings
on which the Prosecution relies, was clearly shown by
some of Bacard's conclusions. In one of the reports
it's been said that some of the victims, due to their
health could not take part in the armed conflicts,
like the one who had bladder cancer, but Bacard
testified that illness was in such stage, so that
person could take part in armed conflicts. Also, other
report affirms 19 out 20 found skeletons were women,
but the witness had to clarify that their gender could
not with certainty be established for corpses in their
stage of skeletization.



In today's cross-examination Bacard came out with the
conclusion that reports about the victims of NATO
bombing of Dubrava penitentiary were not true, since
they were all killed by the blasts, and their
subsequent wounds were caused by bumping on different
kinds of objects, meaning part of them had not been
executed after the bombing had stopped.



The unreliability of some of the pathologists' reports
was evidenced also today by the case of Suva Reka,
where Bacard could not be a judge of two pathologists'
totally opposed findings.



Photographs, shown to the witness by one of the Amici,
from which it is clearly visible that the corpses in
the ditch near Racak were brought there from another
location, made Bacard only conclude that photographs
could not constitute a reliable evidence.


===*===


To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of
equals)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to
defend Slobodan Milosevic)
http://www.jutarnje.co.yu/ ('morning news' the only
Serbian newspaper advocating liberation)