‘Srebrenica genocide’ a Hoax? Former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic gave a sneak-peak of his Srebrenica defense during a hearing and a series of pre-trial briefs filed at the Hague Tribunal last month. Speaking at a pre-trial hearing on July 23/2009/rd Karadzic said, "This is the last ever opportunity for us to clarify what happened in Bosnia, and particularly in Srebrenica. I assure you that we are talking about the differences that can be numbered in the thousands of victims [this] is matter of establishing the facts, and if we do that, I don't even care what the Trial Chamber's decision will be about me. I just want to find the truth." He said, "Everything in relation to Srebrenica that has been presented so far is erroneous ... everything is contentious and everything needs to be established fact by fact." Karadzic did not dispute the fact that there were some executions. He said, "people's hands were tied, and based on that we can assume that those people were executed, but this is a generalization which cannot be used to establish the guilt of an entire people, not only one person." He said, “We have to establish the truth. When somebody died, whether they died in 1992, 1993, or 1995; whether they were killed in combat or whether they were killed as a result of executions.” During the trial of Slobodan Milosevic the former UN Protection Force commander in Bosnia, General Philippe Morillon, described Srebrenica as a "hellish circle of revenge." He said the Bosnian-Muslims "engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region..Karadzic set out a series of arguments that, if he can prove that even some of them, will seriously undermine the credibility of those alleging genocide in Srebrenica. He said, "graves are being dug out [and] bodies are being moved to Srebrenica in order to prove a point ... There are living people whose names are on the tombstones. In the first elections, there were people who voted who had been listed as missing and killed. ... There were people who fell victims in combat throughout the entire period, and people who died in 1992 on 1993 [who] were later on portrayed as victims of massacre in Srebrenica ... there are many people living abroad who were listed as missing.Indeed, there is no dispute between the prosecution and the defense that many of the bodies found in the mass graves around Srebrenica had been dug-up from other locations and reburied. The prosecution's explanation is that this was done to conceal evidence of killings. Karadzic's explanation appears to be that those bodies were re-buried to inflate the body count and give credence to the allegation of genocide. Karadzic raised the possibility that victims are being double and even triple counted by investigators. For example, if the same person's DNA is found in three separate gravesites they may be counted as three separate victims. He said, "There is a multifold exaggeration here. We wish to establish exactly who perished and whose DNA was provided in order to be able to say that, yes, this number of victims is beyond contention ... I have mentioned primary, secondary, and tertiary graves. One DNA could have been portrayed three times representing three persons and we need to verify everything."To ascertain whether double-counting has taken place, Karadzic is demanding that his expert team be given access to all of the post-mortem and DNA evidence. His intention is to compare 300 random samples from all of the DNA collected to see if there are any duplicates. If there are, his expert team will analyze all of the samples until they ascertain how many unique samples have been found. Unfortunately, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), which handles the exhumations and the DNA analysis, is not sharing the evidence with Karadzic’s defense team. As it turns out, nobody from the Tribunal has ever seen the DNA evidence. Prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff told the court, “The ICMP did also not provide the DNA to us. They have it. So it's not that they give it to us and not to others.”It’s a little bit shocking that the Tribunal relies on the ICMP’s findings to substantiate allegations as grave as genocide when they haven’t even seen the evidence – let alone tested its quality or reliability. When dealing with allegations as serious as genocide you’d think they’d be more careful. In a pre-trial brief filed on June 29th, Karadzic challenged the Tribunal’s questionable use of the term “genocide” in relation to Srebrenica.In a separate motion filed by the defense on July 22nd, Karadzic asked the court to subpoena NATO command for documents related to airlifts by US C-130 aircraft to the Bosnian-Muslim airbase in Tuzla. In the filing Karadzic stated that “guns and other military equipment was delivered from Tuzla by helicopter to Zepa, largely to be forwarded in transit from there to Srebrenica. Both were UN safe zones from which the Bosnian Muslim Army launched attacks against the Bosnian Serbs.” Karadzic wrote in the filing that “the material related to the sighting of aircraft carrying supplies of arms into Tuzla for onward shipment to the safe area of Srebrenica, is relevant to rebut the allegation in the indictment that Dr. Karadzic was part of a joint criminal enterprise to eliminate the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica. The documents obtained will support Dr. Karadzic's defence that there was a legitimate military objective to commence operations in March 1995 directed at the enclaves, since they had become a safe haven to which weapons were being smuggled and from which attacks on Serb civilians were being launched. “In addition, documents showing the actual presence of an aircraft carrying weapons in violation of the United Nations Arms Embargo on the side of the Bosnian Muslims from NATO member states are relevant to the credibility and bias of international witnesses from those states to be called by the prosecution for the purpose of establishing violations of United Nations safe zones and other agreements on the part of Dr. Karadzic and the Bosnian Serbs.” If the pre-trial hearings are this interesting one can only imagine what Karadzic has in store for the Tribunal when his trial starts and he gets to cross-examine witnesses and call evidence. http://real-srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/