Chapter from the monograph “ICTY and Srebrenica.”
Besides Branjevo/Pilica, the other major execution site worthy of examination is Kravica, and not just from the quantitative standpoint, although that certainly is a factor because over 1,000 victims are claimed to have been killed and buried there. It is also interesting from an analytical standpoint, largely because — unlike many other similar locations of alleged Srebrenica executions — there is also a fair amount of material evidence associated with it, as was the case with Branjevo/Pilica.
Kravica is a Serbian village located about 10 kilometers from Srebrenica, which was under the control of the 28th Division of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBIH) from the summer of 1992 to July 1995. In Kravica, the execution of captured prisoners from the Muslim 28th Division took place on July 13, 1995, on the premises of the Agricultural Cooperative Warehouse, where they were detained after having been captured. It is noteworthy that two and a half years earlier, this village had been attacked by Muslim forces from Srebrenica on January 7, 1993, Orthodox Christmas day. After this attack, the village was devastated and there were dozens of civilian casualties. The incident was prominently featured at the trial of Naser Orić, the military commander on the ARBIH side, who faced war crimes charges at the ICTY for his pre-July 1995 activities. The Orić Chamber had this to say about the January 1993 attack on Kravica:
“On 7 and 8 January 1993, Kravica, Šiljkovići and Ježestica were attacked by Bosnian Muslim fighters from Sućeska, Glogova, Biljeg, Mošići, Delići, Cerska, Skugrići, Jaglići, Šušnjari, Brezova Njiva, Osmače, Konjević Polje, Jagodnja, and Joševa. Also the Accused and members of his group of fighters participated in the attack. The fighters were followed by thousands of Bosnian Muslim civilians. At the time of the attack, there were relatively well-armed village guards and some Bosnian Serb civilians in Kravica, Šiljkovići and Ježestica. Evidence shows that there was also Bosnian Serb military presence in the area. The attack met with resistance. Bosnian Serbs fired artillery on the attacking Bosnian Muslims from houses and other buildings. Houses in the area were burning. In Ježestica, Bosnian Muslim fighters and civilians set many houses on fire, causing destruction on a large scale. In Kravica, property was also destroyed on a large scale. However, the evidence is unclear as to the number of houses that were wantonly destroyed by Bosnian Muslims, as opposed to other causes. As to Šiljkovići, there is insufficient evidence to establish that property was destroyed on a large scale.”[1]
In contrast to the Orić Chamber’s circumspect description of the nature, consequences, and tactical purpose of the ARBIH’s 1993 attack on Kravica, Serbian sources claim that the attackers killed several dozen civilians. ICTY Prosecution spokesperson at the time, Florence Hartman, stingily conceded only 13 victims.[2] By contrast, however, the ICTY Srebrenica chambers were unequivocal — even generous — in their estimate of the number of victims of the July 1995 massacre of ARBIH prisoners in trials involving Serbian defendants.
The ICTY chambers, when analyzing evidence of ARBIH victims in the Kravica Warehouse on July 13, 1995, were forthcoming to accommodate Prosecution claims of the number of victims, and they were not the least bit shy to clearly identify the perpetrators as Serbian forces that were guarding the prisoners. Naser Orić was acquitted,[3] yet Serbian military and political leaders have been held sternly to account for nothing less than genocide.
While ICTY Prosecution officials such as Ms. Hartman were ready to publicly haggle about the number of Serbian victims, the number of ARBIH victims was set at about 1,000 in a succession of judgments. Depending on the judgment, the number was a bit smaller in one case and a bit larger in another. Remarkably, none of the chambers ever bothered to verify the number of people who could fit in the space, even when filled beyond capacity.[4] The dimensions of the Warehouse are well established. The measurements were in fact made and properly documented by Prosecution investigators.[5] Yet no empirical test, which could easily have been done, was ever conducted to determine the maximum number of individuals the Warehouse could hold — even when tightly packed.[6] Instead, ICTY chambers based their figures of the number of Kravica Warehouse victims on mere speculation,[7] a mixture of eyeball estimates[8] and often convoluted extrapolations from the forensic evidence.[9] [See Annex I]
Each of the various ICTY chambers that heard a Srebrenica case determined a different figure for the number of Kravica victims:
Krstić: “Between 1,000 and 1,500 Bosnian Muslim men.”[10]
Blagojević and Jokić: “On the evening of 13 July, at least 1,000 Bosnian Muslim men were killed in the Kravica Warehouse.”[11]
Popović et al.: “Taking the evidence outlined above into account, the Trial Chamber concludes that at least 1,000 people were killed in Kravica Warehouse.”[12]
Tolimir: “[T]he Chamber finds beyond reasonable doubt that members of the Bosnian Serb Forces killed between 600–1,000 Bosnian Muslims at Kravica Warehouse on 13 and 14 July 1995.”[13]
Karadžić: “[T]he Chamber finds that, on 13 July 1995, between 755 and 1,016 Bosnian Muslim men were killed by members of the Bosnian Serb Forces at the Kravica Warehouse.”[14]
Mladić: “[T]he Trial Chamber finds that from 13 to 14 July 1995 [Serbian forces] killed approximately 1,000 Bosnian-Muslim males, including minors and elderly, who were detained in Kravica Warehouse.”[15]
These varying conclusions of the death toll at the Kravica Warehouse pose several significant problems.
(1) First of all, the glaring imprecision of the victim count, coupled with the tendency of the trier of fact to maximize the statistical dimension of the criminal act, is meant to enhance the psychological impact of the crime. The Kravica death toll fluctuates around the 1,000 mark, but the range of “possible” figures varies between 600 and 1,500. Doesn’t a 900-victim margin of error strain credibility? The ICTY Srebrenica chambers betray an inherent incentive to maximize the number of victims at each separate execution site in order to facilitate reaching the preordained overall total of about 8,000 victims. The circumstances which make it difficult to determine the precise number of a large concentration of victims also make it easier to inflate the number of victims.
(2) Srebrenica-related judgments exhibit a general pattern of downplaying the number of combat deaths in favor of inflating the number of execution deaths. The Krstić judgment, the first in this series, dismissed with a few casual remarks the huge issue of legitimate combat deaths suffered by the ARBIH column.[16] Over time, evidence accumulated of the staggering casualties experienced by the 12,000- to 15,000-man mixed military/civilian column that was conducting a breakout from Srebrenica to Tuzla. Since the introduction of this evidence in various trials,[17] it was no longer possible for the chamber to minimize or conceal these facts. It had to be admitted that the column was a legitimate military target for Serbian forces and that inflicting losses on the column was not a war crime.[18] As the series of Srebrenica trials drew to a close, the Defense began presenting evidence — particularly statements given by several dozen column survivors upon their arrival in territory controlled by the Sarajevo government — depicting an enormous number of legitimate combat casualties that were occurring simultaneously with extrajudicial executions of prisoners, both of which were taking place in the same small operational area.
Therefore, simply counting corpses is unsatisfactory. To attribute criminal liability correctly, it is necessary to identify and distinguish two different categories of soldiers: those who were captured and then executed, and those who were killed in action. This distinction is particularly crucial with respect to Kravica, because, the day before the Warehouse massacre, the column exiting Srebrenica passed within a few kilometers of Kravica, where it clashed with the Serbian military forces. Six known survivor statements exist that were given to debriefers in Tuzla. These statements confirm the clashes and detail considerable ARBIH casualties.[19] Even though these statements originate from Prosecution discovery material, neither the Prosecution nor any of the chambers have taken them into account, nor did they make an effort to distinguish between two legally different causes of death that were occurring within a short distance of one another and only a few hours apart.[20] The ICTY’s failure to discuss a factor of such magnitude, and its attribution of almost all exhumed human remains found in the vicinity of Kravica to the Warehouse massacre, seriously skews its analysis of this event.
(3) The statement of column survivor Behudin Muminović is revealing in connection with the possible composition of burial sites in the proximity of Kravica. It is designated in the ICTY Electronic Disclosure System (EDS) as document no. 00464352. Muminović stated that he left Srebrenica with other males on July 11, 1995; that en route he witnessed combat with Serbian forces at Sandići[21] and Kamenica; that the principal type of ammunition to which he and other members of the column were exposed was artillery shelling; that at Kravica he saw six corpses and that on July 12 in passing with others in the column he saw a mass burial of an estimated 500 bodies being conducted by the Serbs. Muminović was later captured by Serbian forces, taken to a prisoner of war camp, and then exchanged on 24 December 1995. If one so wishes, Muminović’s visual sighting of “500 bodies” may be interpreted figuratively, as meaning “many” instead of being taken literally, without diminishing the point of his account. Most of the human remains attributed to the Warehouse massacre were exhumed from the Glogova burial sites in the village of Sandići, where this witness saw a mass burial taking place a day before the Warehouse events (13 July) — and at least two days before the burial of Warehouse victims had begun. All these remains were, as a matter of course, indiscriminately attributed to the Kravica Warehouse killings.[22] Neither the Prosecution nor the Chamber addressed this anomaly; it is not known whether this issue of confounded victim counts was ever raised by any of the defense teams.
(4) The forensic evidence is murky when it comes to corroborating the statistical aspect of the now-established Kravica narrative, that about 1,000 prisoners were summarily executed there, which constitutes a large chunk of the presumed total of about 8,000 Srebrenica victims. Without going into excessive detail, autopsy reports from the exhumations at the burial sites considered to be related to the July 1995 events around Kravica[23] tell a complex and heterogeneous story. That is important to point out because when mass death is attributed to a single cause and set of circumstances, it is reasonable to expect a mostly uniform pattern of injury. In this case, however, there are human remains without a determinable cause or time of death, or with causes of death attributable to artillery fire and other weaponry not known to be used in executions, and their numbers are statistically significant.[24] This raises serious evidentiary issues that were, once again, systematically ignored by the Chambers, the Prosecution, and the Defense in ICTY proceedings.
(5) Equally important, there is a credible alternative version of events leading up to the Warehouse killings that undermines the view of the Kravica episode as part of a broader Joint Criminal Enterprise (“JCE”)[25] to execute a large number of ARBIH prisoners, rising to the level of genocide. Evidence was presented in several Srebrenica trials that the killings at the Warehouse occurred spontaneously and were sparked by an incident during which one of the prisoners seized a guard’s weapon, then shot and killed the guard.[26] The remaining fifteen to twenty guards panicked and overreacted by opening fire on the prisoners. It is difficult to reliably reconstruct this sequence of events because the ICTY chambers rely preferentially on the two “surviving witnesses.” (When physical evidence is lacking, such witnesses tend to pop up conveniently to fill the gaps in the Prosecution’s case; two of them testified pseudonymously in various trials about what happened in the Kravica Warehouse, just as Q and Ahmo Hasić played a similar role in the preceding Branjevo/Pilica case study.) In the Popović, Tolimir, and Karadžić judgments, the chambers at least made passing mention or allusion to the existence of this alternative account, without, however, granting it any serious consideration. Jurists would argue that this was surely an error on the part of the chambers. A spontaneously erupting slaughter, regardless of how catastrophic the consequences may be, cannot be made to fit the Prosecution model of a JCE to commit genocide, which in general requires some prior planning, and in particular dolus specialis. At least one ICTY chamber showed signs of being aware of this difficulty when it nonchalantly ruled that if the prisoners in the Warehouse had not been killed under such circumstances, then they would have been properly executed later, anyway.[27] Jurists not beholden to the ICTY or its sponsors will surely cite this prescient ruling as an example of judicial speculation at its most outrageous.
(6) Finally, there is the role of Prosecution‘s omnipresent cooperating witness Momir Nikolić in furnishing some of the key details. Nikolić was a security officer for the Bratunac Brigade, a Serbian military unit that played a prominent role in Srebrenica-related events in July 1995. Nikolić was eventually arrested and brought to The Hague to face a litany of the usual charges, including genocide. A short time before his trial was scheduled to start, he entered into a plea-bargaining agreement with the ICTY Prosecution in which he agreed to admit guilt to some charges in exchange for a reduced sentence that was ultimately fixed at twenty years’ imprisonment. He agreed to act as a Prosecution witness in subsequent Srebrenica trials as part of the arrangement. One peculiarity in Nikolić’s case should be noted. In order to impress the prosecution with his cooperativeness, Nikolić even lied by taking responsibility for several murders that, as was eventually established by a diligent defense attorney, he did not commit.[28] Liu Daqun, the sentencing judge, initially rejected Nikolić’s dishonest guilty plea only to later reverse himself and accept it, but in the judgment Nikolić’s evidence was excoriated for “lack of candor,”[29] while in its submission to the Popović chamber it was the Prosecution that proposed that Nikolić’s “evidence should be relied on only when corroborated.”[30]. That wise stipulation was ignored in Nikolić’s subsequent appearances as Prosecution witness. At ICTY, apparently, the ancient adage falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (“false in one thing, false in everything”) never entered its judicial practice.
Momir Nikolić rendered uniquely valuable services as a witness for the ICTY Prosecution: he seemed to pop up anywhere an evidentiary gap needed to be filled. For the Prosecution, he is the principal source of evidence for the alleged reburial of executed prisoners in secondary and tertiary mass graves, which was allegedly undertaken by Serbian forces to conceal evidence of the mass crime.[31] Nikolić was in Potočari, so he could apprise the court of the details of the Serbian “ethnic cleansing operation” during which about 20,000 Srebrenica residents — women, children, and the elderly — were evacuated by Serbian authorities by busses away from the combat zone to safety in Kladovo, the nearest town controlled by the ARBIH.[32] Nikolić also just happened to be in the company of General Ratko Mladić in Konjević Polje. He testified in Mladić’s trial that Mladić ran a finger across his neck in a throat-slitting gesture in response to Nikolić’s question of what fate was awaiting the prisoners. This gesture supposedly left no doubt about the General’s intentions.[33] Predictably, Nikolić, a natural Johnny on the Spot, was also in the proximity of the Kravica Warehouse at just the right time to offer his first-hand observations to the court of what happened there. Interestingly, Nikolić actually went above and beyond the call of duty in his 2003 confession to affirm “that he had ordered the executions at Kravica Warehouse.”[34] He later recanted this confession, which was never corroborated by any other evidence but, in the view of ICTY chambers, this tenuous connection apparently sufficed to validate this bearer of false witness to testify on other aspects of the Kravica affair.
In accepting Kravica details furnished by Nikolić and by incorporating them into its judgment as credible evidence, the Karadžić Chamber went out of its way to be empathetic and lenient:
“The Chamber examined his explanation for this untruth, wherein he stated inter alia, in relation to his plea agreement ‘[…] we’d been working on [it] for a long time and I did not want it to fall through. I wanted this agreement to be reached’. In this situation, Nikolić was prepared to sacrifice himself and assume responsibility for something he had not in fact done. The Chamber reviewed his evidence and is satisfied that, unfortunate as it might have been, Nikolić’s inconsistency was not the result of any oblique motive to lead the Chamber into error. It was extremely important to him that the agreement did not turn out to be an abysmal failure and he was willing to compromise the veracity of his statement in order to ensure that outcome. The Chamber was also mindful of the fact that Nikolić voluntarily corrected his inconsistency at the first available opportunity.”[35]
What general conclusions may now be drawn about the ICTY’s account and evaluation of events that took place on 13 July 1995? The first fundamental conclusion we may draw is that, even after half a dozen trials over an almost twenty-year period where evidence about Kravica was heard, we are today none the wiser about the number of prisoners killed in the incident. There is, moreover, a credible account that the incident was provoked by a spontaneous outburst. Without calling into question that a crime was committed, that makes it difficult to fit Kravica into either a JCE or a genocidal scenario, whatever may be said in this regard of other episodes in the Srebrenica chain of events. One could argue that the in dubio pro reo principle requires the court to at least duly consider this alternative account and, if it is disinclined to give it serious weight, then it should at least offer reasoned grounds for rejecting it along with its obvious implications. Secondly, the forensic evidence is at best muddled because human remains deriving from heterogeneous circumstances have clearly been intermingled, with no effort having been made to distinguish among them. As a result, the contention that as many as 1,000 prisoners were executed at the Kravica Warehouse, as part of a larger JCE to physically exterminate captured military-age males from the Srebrenica enclave, remains uncorroborated by the available evidence. Whatever actually happened in Kravica, the account articulated through ICTY judgments does not stand up to scrutiny.
Endnotes:
[1]. Prosecutor v. Naser Orić, Trial Judgment Summary, p. 9, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/oric/tjug/en/060630_Oric_summary_en.pdf
[2]. In relation to Serbian casualties in the 1993 attack, Ms. Hartman was quite reserved: “First of all, the OTP is always very careful in the use of the word ‘victim’ (…) I would comment on the various figures circulating around the Kravica attack of January 1993. The figures circulating of hundreds of victims or claiming that all 353 inhabitants were ‘virtually completely destroyed’ do not reflect the reality. During the attack by the BH army on Kravica, Jezestica, Opravdici, Mandici and the surrounding villages (the larger area of Kravica), on the 7th & 8th January 1993, 43 people were killed, according to our information. Our investigation shows that 13 of the 43 were obviously civilians. Our findings are matching with the Bratunac Brigade military reports of battle casualties which are believed in the OTP to be very reliable because they are internal VRS reports,” ICTY Weekly Press Briefing, 06.07.2005. Little of this admirable restraint was evident when the ICTY estimated the number of victims of Serbian conduct in July 1995.
[3]. Orić was acquitted on the spurious grounds that he did not have “effective control” over ARBIH forces in Srebrenica during the period covered by the indictment. See Orić Appellate Judgment, Par. 90–93 and 160.
[4]. In the Karadžić Trial Judgment the Chamber in fact found this to be the case: “Around 5 p.m. the warehouse became so tightly packed that the detainees almost suffocated.” (Par. 5227) See also Tolimir Trial Judgment, par. 355.
[5]. For Warehouse dimensions, see Popović et al., Footnote 1507 Ex. P04529, “Sketch with measurements of Kravica Warehouse, with marked copy of Ex. P01563 and attached declaration of Tomasz Blaszczyk, 4 May 2009.
[6]. Andy Wilcoxon has suggested the following solution, which is based on the Warehouse dimensions as well as on evidence of the number of prisoners brought to Kravica: “The Kravica Warehouse is a finite space. The total floor space of the two rooms of Kravica warehouse where the prisoners were held is 589.5 square meters; 262.5 square meters in the west room, and 327 square meters in the east room. Therefore, we can estimate that the number of prisoners who could have been seated on the floor of Kravica warehouse is somewhere in the region of 600 or 700 men if the warehouse were empty, which it wasn’t. The warehouse was in use at the time of the massacre and part of the floor space was occupied by the material being stored inside of the warehouse. One of the men who survived the massacre testified that inside the room of the warehouse where he was sitting there were containers, an old wire fence, and a dilapidated old car that were all being stored inside of the warehouse.” See: Srebrenica: The Ugly Truth, 21 July 2014, http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/srebrenica071114.htm
[7]. Prosecution expert witness Dusko Janc was of the view that “it is impossible to provide the exact number of [Kravica] victims.” (See Mladić Trial Judgment, par. 2706)
[8]. See Tolimir Trial Judgment, par. 376. Also, Karadžić Trial Judgment, par. 5277.
[9]. The hodgepodge nature of the forensic evidence relied on by the Karadžić Chamber in arriving at its Kravica victim estimate is evident in pars. 5257-5258 of the Trial Judgement: “The Accused argues in his final brief that the Glogova gravesite was a “mixed grave” which contained not only victims from the Kravica Warehouse incident but from other killing incidents related to the fall of Srebrenica, as well as victims who had died years earlier. The Prosecution acknowledges that a number of bodies found in the Glogova gravesites were brought from places other than the Kravica Warehouse. The Prosecution explains that this number includes at least 80 victims executed in Bratunac, including at the Vuk Karadžić School, plus approximately 100 individuals who cannot be determined beyond reasonable doubt to have been executed (…) As of 13 January 2012, DNA analysis led to the identification of 226 bodies from Glogova 1 and 171 from Glogova 2, as persons listed as missing following the take-over of Srebrenica. However, Dušan Janc clarified that not all of these 397 individuals can be linked to the killings at the Kravica Warehouse, since bodies which cannot be linked to this execution site were brought to Glogova, namely at least 80 victims executed in Bratunac, plus approximately 100 bodies brought from other locations…” See also Popović et al. Trial Judgment, par. 443.
[10]. Krstić Trial Judgment, par. 205
[11]. Blagojević and Jokić Trial Judgment, par. 296
[12]. Popović et al. Trial Judgment, par. 443.
[13]. Tolimir Trial Judgment, par. 376.
[14]. Karadžić Trial Judgment, par. 5286.
[15]. Mladić Trial Judgment, par. 2707.
[16]. Krstić Trial Judgment, par. 77.
[17]. ICTY Prosecution military expert witness admitted in the Popović trial the mixed nature of the column as well as its legitimacy as a target, Transcript, p. 20244, lines 19–25 and 20245, line 1. Chief Prosecution Investigator Jean-René Ruez acknowledged that “a significant number [of Muslims] were killed in combat.” Monitor, April 19, 2001, EDS number 06038344.
[18]. It is significant to note that no one was ever prosecuted for attacking this column either at The Hague or before the War Crimes Court in Sarajevo.
[19]. These witnesses are: Behudin Muminović. EDS no. 00464352; Ševal Ademović, EDS no. 01008095; Ramiz Husić, EDS no. 00813498; Midhat Kadrić, EDS no. 00371768; Nurif Memišević, EDS no. 00396028; and Husejn Mustafić, EDS no. 00401647.
[20]. The column’s engagement in combat in the evening hours of July 12 in the general area, including Kravica, is confirmed in the Popović Trial Judgment, par. 381. In the Karadžić Tial Judgment, par. 5162, reference is made to the fact that “during the night of 12 July and the morning of 13 July, there was an exchange of fire between the Bosnian Serb Forces and members of the column, resulting in many Bosnian Muslim deaths” in the general area of Kravica. Heavy fighting and column casualties around Kravica are also confirmed in the NIOD Report on Srebrenica prepared in 2002 for the Dutch Parliament: “The rearmost section of the column thus came to suffer serious losses. The delays also hampered the column in passing Kamenica, as the VRS had been given the opportunity of laying ambushes which would form an insurmountable obstacle for the larger part of the column. The assaults on the column in the area around Kravica, Konjevic Polje and Nova Kasaba were therefore responsible for the heaviest death toll,” Part IV, Chapter 1, The Journey from Srebrenica to Tuzla.
[21]. Village in close proximity to Kravica.
[22]. See Popović et al. Trial Judgment, par. 439; Tolimir Trial Judgment, par. 376; Karadžić Trial Judgment, par. 5258 and 5282; and Mladić Trial Judgment, par. 2706.
[23]. Burial sites Glogova 2-9, Blječeva 1, as well as Zeleni Jadar 5 and 6, see Mladić Trial Judgment, par. 2706, and Ravnice, see Karadžić Trial Judgment, par. 5285.
[24]. See Annex II, Forensic Situation at Mass Burial Sites Linked to Kravica Warehouse in ICTY Judgments.
[25]. “Joint Criminal Enterprise” is a mode of criminal liability that is not mentioned in the ICTY Statute. It was made up entirely out of whole cloth by ICTY judges. A person charged under this form of liability could not possibly have known that conduct for which he is being be punished was illegal at the time he allegedly engaged in it.
[26]. Information about this incident is acknowledged in the Popović Trial Judgment, par. 444. It is accepted as confirmed in the Tolimir Trial Judgment, par. 359 [“The Chamber finds that a Bosnian Muslim prisoner killed Krsto Dragićević which led to Čuturić sustaining burns to his hand and that this incident caused the Bosnian Serb guards to become agitated and angry and led to the shooting of many Bosnian Muslim prisoners in front of the warehouse as described by PW-006.”]. An oblique reference is made to it in the Karadžić Trial Judgment, par. 5230.
[27]. The Popović chamber’s refined reasoning to this effect is articulated in par. 444 of its judgment: “The Trial Chamber is of the view that the only reasonable inference is that the full-scale execution of the Bosnian Muslim men at Kravica Warehouse was part of the common plan to murder the able-bodied males of Srebrenica and of the genocidal plan. The Trial Chamber is also satisfied that the prisoners were detained there temporarily, most likely to be moved to another detention site, as was the pattern throughout, to ultimately be killed. However, as a reaction to the unexpected ‘burnt-hands’ incident, the Trial Chamber finds that the plan to murder the Bosnian Muslim prisoners detained in Kravica Warehouse was moved forward and they were killed on the spot.” The chamber cites no evidence presented during the trial upon which this “view” of the prospective course of events could have been based.
[28]. See IWPR ICTY, 3 October, 2003, Sporan kredibilitet svedoka maskara u Srebrenici [Credibility of Srebrenica Massacre witness disputed], https://iwpr.net/sr/global-voices/sporan-kredibilitet-svedoka-maskara-u-srebrenici
[29] See Momir Nikolić, Sentencing Judgment, par. 156
[30] Popović Trial Judgment, par 49. In assessing this witness’ credibility, the Popović chamber took the further unusual step of advising a „cautious and careful approach when considering the evidence of Momir Nikolić” (ibid., par. 51).
[31]. See Momir Nikolić, Statement of Facts and Acceptance of Responsibility, https://www.legal- tools.org/uploads/tx_ltpdb/NikolicM._ICTYTCPleaAgreement_Statementoffacts_06-05-2003_E_05.htm
[32]. Ibid.
[33]. See Nezavisne Novine (Banja Luka), 3 June 2013, http://www.nezavisne.com/novosti/bih/Momir-Nikolic-Mladic- nagovijestio-ubijanje-zarobljenika-u-Srebrenici/194724
[34]. Popović et al., Trial Judgment, Footnote 72.
[35]. Karadžić Trial Judgment, par. 5058. The Chamber went on to cite another one of Nikolić’s overzealous lies but concluded reassuringly that the witness’ credibility remained intact: “The Chamber also notes the false identification Nikolić made of himself in a photograph that had been shown to him and the explanation he advanced for that falsity. He testified that he thought the individual in the photograph looked like him. He did not want to tell the Prosecution that he was not the person in the photograph; he stated, ‘[p]erhaps I had forgotten something. So I didn’t want to exclude the possibility.’ Nikolić then felt himself impaled on the horns of a dilemma when he was told that the photograph had been taken in Sandići because he knew that he was never in Sandići. As it turned out, the photograph was of another man. The Chamber holds the view that in his desperation to ensure that he did nothing to jeopardize his agreement with the Prosecution, Nikolić found himself in an intractable situation of his own creation.
ANNEX I: INTERPRETATION OF KRAVICA WAREHOUSE RELATED FORENSIC EVIDENCE IN ICTY JUDGMENTS
ANNEX II: FORENSIC SITUATION AT MASS BURIAL SITES LINKED TO KRAVICA WAREHOUSE