Our recent remarks concerning the credibility of some of the key evidentiary claims upon which the Srebrenica narrative is based [“Karl Popper Looks at Srebrenica”] elicited lively commentary, and not just in the arcane field of philosophy of science. One reader in particular has taken the trouble to research what space-based photographic surveillance technology can and cannot do and, more importantly, what quality images it is capable of producing.
The reader should for now remain anonymous, but he has furnished us the attached satellite photograph, which shows in great detail an Orthodox church in Sarajevo and the surrounding neighbourhood, and he comments:
“It is quite unbelievable what evidence can be generated by satellites… Just look at the automobiles, everything is so clear and visible. But these are Google satellite images, so that military equipment can be expected to produce images of superior quality and more detail.”
With regard to the withholding of the alleged Srebrenica genocide photographs, he calls the affair “shameful” and expresses annoyance at what he regards as an “insult to our intelligence”.
Image 1: Google image of Sarajevo street scene
Indeed, we are dealing with an extraordinary evidentiary claim that has been made in relation to an extraordinary crime. It is said not only that photographs of mass slaughter in the region of Srebrenica are in the possession of certain intelligence agencies, but that the crime was under continuous observation from space and that a visual record of it exists from on high for the entire week after July 11, 1995, while it was still unfolding. A similar claim has been put forward concerning the alleged “reburials” in the Fall of that year, as a result of which it is said that the bodies of thousands of executed prisoners were transferred to secondary mass graves in remote locations in order to conceal evidence of the crime. If this evidence does exist and if experts were to be allowed to examine it properly, its probative value would obviously be very high. Finally, a key issue in the Mladić and Karadžić trials would be irrevocably settled.
This is represented as evidence of “disturbed earth” and mass graves that are alleged to lie underneath it:[1]
Image 2: Disturbed earth photograph, 27 Aug 95
Unfortunately, very scant photographic evidence, not even half a dozen fuzzy low resolution images of incriminating Srebrenica events, such as the one above, has ever been revealed, either to the general public or to the complacent chambers of ICTY which have considered these matters. One example is the photograph of purported mass graves in Nova Kasaba, dated 27 July, 1995. Without much more foundational and related evidence, this photograph is completely uninformative. As evidence of something other than a patch of land possibly in the process of construction or under some form of cultivation it would seem totally useless in a court of law as proof of anything in particular.
That was essentially admitted in an interview several years ago by Jean-Rene Ruez, former chief investigator for the Office of the Prosecutor at ICTY. These revealing comments, it should be noted, were made by Ruez only after he left his post at the Hague Tribunal. In response to interviewer Isabelle Delpla’s question about the significance of those famous photos which suggest “that the massacre could be followed as it unfolded in real time,” the former chief investigator of the Hague prosecution responded:
“That is a good question, but the expression ‘satellite photos’ ought to be discarded. The official designation is: ‘images made by aerial recognizance platforms.’ These are pictures that were made by the U2…With regard to this, we must correct some erroneous notions….U2 planes are technology from the sixties. The picture covers an area 30 km in diameter and everything there is potentially visible… Theoretically, if you have that picture you should know what is going on in the zone; but, practically speaking, the picture is impossible to interpret if you do not know in advance what it is that you are searching for within it and if you do not conduct cross comparisons with ground-based observations.”[1]
Have we understood correctly the former chief investigator for the Hague prosecution? Does this mean that – contrary to the impression that has been assiduously nurtured and disseminated over the years – those photos, which figure as critical evidence,[2] were not made at all by satellites equipped with cutting-edge technology, but that the Bosnian war theatre was being monitored using obsolete intelligence technology left over from the sixties? The precise answer to this question is quite essential. If the latter is true, then the concealment of this “definitive” visual proof of the crime for the next 50 years is completely unjustified. The absurd official rationale, that its publication could compromise US intelligence-gathering techniques, does not withstand scrutiny. We should recall that in 1960 Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in a U2 spy plane. His plane fell on USSR territory and we may safely assume that its intelligence capabilities have from then on been basically known to Russian special services. What, then, could possibly justify the deliberate concealment of what turns out to be U2 photographs which – according to the manufactured climate of opinion on this subject – should be capable of resolving most of the remaining doubts in relation to genocide in Srebrenica? And if the images were made by satellite, the disclosure of at least Google-quality photograph would not endanger any secret technology, but it would be most informative.
The adamant refusal to subject key “smoking gun” evidence of Srebrenica allegations to critical expert scrutiny is a smoking gun in reverse. The argument that publishing obsolete mid-nineties satellite or spy plane images (assuming that they exist as such at all) would compromise sensitive intelligence gathering techniques is exactly what our reader has called it: an insult to our intelligence.
Endnotes:
[1] Cultures & Conflicts, 2007 – 1, no. 65; on the internet: http://conflits.revues.org/index2198.html.
[2] The evidentiary status of satellite photos should be clarified. No sustained attempt has been made by the Prosecution to use them in ICTY proceedings so far on the pretext that the US government refuses to divulge them out of concern that public dissemination might compromise its intelligence techniques. But the frequent political and media invocation of this evidence, and its role in shaping the perception of Srebrenica, makes it a fair target for defence disclosure requests so that finally its status and the issues it raises could be settled in court. All such applications, however, have been routinely dismissed by various ICTY chambers based on the cited security rationale. So the real impact of this unseen evidence, if such it is, although potent has been mainly extra-judicial. Paradoxically, it is precisely the mystification that surrounds it that in psychological terms gives these alleged “satellite photos” a status and an aura that in all probability they would never have if they had been properly ventilated in a courtroom.