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 will re-iterate something I have said many times in this thread and others.
I understood, with the Croatian and Slovenian declarations of sovereignty, that a bloodbath would ensue.
Additionally, I submit to you, that it is not fully the fault of the Serbs.
All of the groups that comprised the former Yugoslavia have hated, and hate each other right up to the present, and it was only the presence of the old Soviet Union that prevented them from starting their killing spree as soon as WW2 was over.
It is just a continuation of age-old hatreds.
All parties are responsible, and any party that denies their part is simply lying.
You and others may be correct in defending the Serbs in some instances, but if you are denying any culpability for what has happened since 1991, you are not only lying to me, but you are lying to yourself.
That is all I am saying and that is all I have said.
"About 15,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters had attempted to escape from Srebrenica overnight and were shelled as they fled through the mountains."
15,000 fighters it says! Is that true or are they adding thousands at whim like they (reporters) seem to do regarding Bosnia.
Why doesn't anyone find it strange that 15,000 Muslim fighters who had been receiving arms from Iran in the UN safe zone for years - this came out in the Dutch report, right? - whine about 600 lightly armed UN officers not fighting for them?
Where's the interviews and testimony from all these fighters - including Naser Oric? When exactly did they leave, where were the skirmishes along the way and who did they see hurt or killed in the nightly fights? Where's a list of the several thousands of fighters who got out? Are they included as being "missing men" from Srebrenica?
That's a tough question. I suppose it could be a combination of both Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims that shot up the warehouse, or it could be one side or the other. It could also be a lunatic from either faction that was loaded up with too much plumb brandy and had too much extra amunition, or it could be the location of a very nasty slaughter. It all depends on who held the area and when and for how long.
I was in Vukovar in 1995 and that warehouse looks like every single building in Vukovar regardless of it was a Croat house, Catholic church, Serb house or Orthodox church.
A building riddled with bullet holes in the former Yugoslavia tells me nothing.
If it was a slaughter and the time was taken to remove the bodies, why not burn down the warehouse? Haven't any of those people seen "Pretty Village Pretty Flame"?
I guess it's the garage area where allegedly 1,000 Muslims were crammed before they were shot, so the story goes. But could 1,000 men fit? Why would the gunfire be concentrated around the doorway off to the side of this, and become much, much more dilute around the garage area if that's where the target was?
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