Trbic: Never-ending Circle

Upholding the Prosecution’s request for presentation of additional evidence against Milorad Trbic, the Trial Chamber has postponed presentation of closing arguments until the end of August.

Originally the presentation of closing arguments was due to begin on June 12.

“The Court admits the Prosecution’s proposal for presenting additional evidence and examining two court experts, also allowing the Defence to reply to the evidence. The Court plans to finalize evidence presentation on July 6, while the tentative dates for presentation of closing arguments are August 24 and 26,” Trial Chamber Chairman Davorin Jukic said.

Trbic is charged with having “participated”, together with other members of the army and police from July to November 1995, “in the execution of more than 7,000 Bosniak men”. The indictment contends that, at the time Trbic was Assistant Commander for Security with the Zvornik Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, and as such that he was responsible for commanding the Military Police Squad of that Brigade.

The trial began in November 2007.

At the status conference, which was supposed to be the last one at this trial, the Prosecution presented its motion for “reconsideration” of presentation of additional evidence pertaining to data on the identification of 3,737 victims from Srebrenica.

“When we filed the first indictment we did not have the data on these 3,737 people. We are now submitting it as additional evidence. Since November 2008, when we received the material from the Podrinje Identification Project, PIP, we have been asking for additional pieces of information about them,” Prosecutor Kwai Hong Ip said.

The Prosecution filed an amended indictment against Milorad Trbic in March 2009. Among other things, the indictment mentions that 3,737 victims of Srebrenica have been identified.

The Defence objected to the proposal as being “inappropriate” since the Prosecution had repeated it three times.

“The Prosecution finalized its evidence presentation a long time ago. Shall we wait until some time in the future when the data pertaining to all 7,000 victims mentioned in the indictment has been gathered,” Defence attorney Milan Trbojevic asked.

He added that if the Court admitted the Prosecution’s proposal he would invite a court expert who would dispute the evidence.

“The Defence is saying that this is an endless circle. Yes, this is absolutely true. There will be no end to this until we have found all the bodies. However, the Prosecution wants to introduce this document only,” Ip said.

The next status conference is due to take place on June 19. Three days later two proposed Prosecution expert witnesses will testify.