Request for Investigation against Del Ponte Rejected

Saying that the request was unfounded, judge Bakone Moloto indicated that “there is no reason to believe that Carla del Ponte is responsible for contempt of the Tribunal”.

The former President of Republika Srpska, RS, who is on trial for genocide and other crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that Del Ponte violated the Tribunal’s rules by conveying the content of a confidential list of witnesses, which indictee Slobodan Milosevic filed with the Tribunal, to US diplomats in 2004.

Judge Moloto determined that the list of Milosevic’s witnesses, although filed by the Defence as a confidential document, was not made such by a Tribunal’s decision and that, therefore Del Ponte did not violate a judges’ order.

The Prosecution used the same argument, requesting the Tribunal to reject Karadzic’s request.

In his request for opening of an investigation Karadzic quoted a diplomatic letter sent by the US Embassy at The Hague to the State Department on April 16, 2004.

The letter says that, on that same day Del Ponte conveyed to US diplomats the names included in the list of Milosevic’s Defence witnesses, which Milosevic had filed with the Tribunal as a confidential documents three days before.

“Reading directly from the list taken out of the motion, she said that the motion included former President Bill Clinton, former State Secretary Madeleine Albright, former Defence Minister William Cohen, Ambassador Christopher Hill, general Wesley Clark and former Ambassador Richard Hoolbroke,” the letter quoted by Karadzic’s Defence said.

In its response to the motion the Prosecution reminded the Tribunal that, while presenting his introductory statement in 2002, Milosevic announced that he would invite most of those US officials, listing them by names, to testify at his trial.

Milosevic, former President of Yugoslavia, stood trial for crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. He died in the Hague Tribunal’s Detention Unit in 2006.