Posted on 09/29/2003 10:45:57 PM PDT by DTA
Key Srebrenica Witness Admits Lying
Momir Nikolic's fictional account of massacre raises questions about plea-bargain system.
By Chris Stephen in The Hague (TU 327, 29 September 2003)
The Hague prosecution's star witness in the Srebrenica case has admitted in court that he lied in testimony when he said he ordered one of the biggest single massacres of Bosnian Muslims.
Former Bosnian Serb army captain Momir Nikolic's admission in a courtroom appearance this week will undermine confidence in other details he has supplied about the Srebrenica killings in July 1995, and raises questions about how plea-bargain agreements are negotiated with those accused of war crimes.
Nikolic, an army intelligence officer who was present during the massacres and was indicted by The Hague for playing a major role in them, made history as the first Serb officer to give evidence against his colleagues.
But now doubts about his reliability as a witness have arisen after he admitted that a statement he gave to prosecutors earlier this year contained a lie.
In a courtroom appearance on September 29, he admitted he did not give the orders to gun down more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslims inside a warehouse at Kravica. He was not even present when it happened, on July 13, 1995. Kravica was one of the single biggest massacres carried out by Serb forces around Srebrenica.
In recent days, Nikolic has been in court as part of a plea-bargain deal with prosecutors, giving evidence against Vidoje Blagojevic and Dragan Jokic, Bosnian Serb officers indicted for war crimes alongside him. In May, prosecutors agreed to drop a genocide charge against him and seek a lesser sentence of 15 to 20 years, and in return he changed his not guilty plea to an admission that he committed crimes against humanity.
But now, Nikolic has renounced his original statement that he had personally supervised the Kravica killings.
"You needed to give him [the prosecutor] something he did not have, right?" said Michael Karnavas, defending. "You wanted to limit your time of imprisonment to 20 years, that was part of the arrangement, yes? Quid pro quo?"
Nikolic admitted he had lied, "I did not tell the truth when I said that. Afterwards I said I had made a mistake, I had lied.
"I apologise. All I can do is confess and say that discussing the crime is a very difficult situation to be in."
"I think we should call it for what it is, a bald faced lie," said Karnavas.
"I'm still a little bit confused," the American lawyer continued. "How is it that you thought by admitting to one of the most horrendous executions in this area, that this would help you in getting the kind of sentence that you are hoping and praying for?"
"I wanted the agreement to succeed," responded Nikolic.
His original statement to prosecutors included testimony that while at Kravica, he had observed the involvement of another war crimes suspect, former army officer Ljubomir Borovcanin, in the killing.
He has now told the court that although he was not present, he was certain that Borovcanin had been there.
"You implicated Borovcanin in your falsehood in order to make your story more convincing, so that the prosecutor would buy it?" said Karnavas. "You needed to give him [the prosecutor] some more facts to sweeten the deal - that's why you provided false information about Kravica?"
He went on to ask Nikolic whether he had lied so as to make his story impressive enough for prosecutors to offer him a plea-bargain deal. "Your lawyers had a laundry list of factors that the prosecutor was expected to agree to," said Karnavas.
"The prosecution did not exert any influence on me," responded Nikolic. "What I did is my own mistake."
Karnavas continued to press him, saying, "Did you think that by falsely admitting to having ordered this execution that you were solving a question-mark in the prosecutor's case as to who had ordered that murder?"
Nikolic's admission could have serious implications for the prosecution strategy of using plea bargains.
In recent weeks, prosecutors have persuaded several former Bosnian Serb commanders to give evidence against their former comrades by offering to cut their sentences.
Nikolic's plea-bargain negotiations took six months, starting last November. It now seems he was so desperate to get a deal with prosecutors that he was willing to lie to them.
The prosecutors are in a difficult position. They will only offer plea-bargain arrangements to people who can give high-quality evidence. But this case suggests that some defendants could be tempted to embroider the facts to make their crimes more "worthy" of a deal.
Chris Stephen is IWPR's tribunal project manager.
I had to look up both lebensraum and irredentism. Wow!
Those words are Fusion worthy!!!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Srebrenica+hoax
Thanks for the blinding flash of the obvious. I assumed everyone on this thread would realize that not many Bosnians, be they Serb,Muslim, or Croat, speak English as a first language, and would therefore understand that the term I used was a translation. Sorry if the quotation marks caused any confusion.
I had a pool of about 12 interpreters (the numbers fluctuated due to personnel changes, etc). They were fairly evenly split between Muslims and Serbs, although I did have one Croat.
I don't speak Serbo-Croatian, and never claimed to, but that particular term came up many times in conversations with locals in the Kravica/Glogova area.
The main question is still unaddressed: Who shot up the warehouse in Kravica?
Also, is there a pic on the web of the warehouse on the web anywhere?
What if it was a place, during the war, that ambushers used? What were the dimensions - length, width, and height? Naser Oric and his soldiers raided Kravica several times didn't they? What if they kidnapped Serb villagers and killed them and their livestock there?
Even if those atrocities are not true?
Most of what I read indicates that Serbian atrocities are mainly fiction.
Then I guess you are saying the accusations against the Croatians and Bosnians are "untrue" as well?
That the whole thing was just a figment of our imaginations?
Ultimately, you are responsible for vetting your sources of information.
I suggest you do so a little more rigorously.
Are you saying that the accusations must be all true or all false? Why?
Then you need to do a little more reading.
As stated before, the other parties must bear their part in the blame, but so must Serbia.
I am sure there are exaggerated claims on all sides, but that does not mean any of them are blameless.
Just out of curiousity, how old were you in 1991?
How well do you remember the actual events?
No insult intended, just wondering if you experienced that part of world history as an adult, or if you were still a child, adolescent, teenager, etc..
( I was 44 years old, and kept very close track of every thing that happened during that time. )
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