Posted on 02/06/2003 7:25:28 AM PST by vooch
After the flat-voiced, obviously under-duress witness C-013, and the scam with the no-show threatened witness, the Prosecution came up with one Charles Kirudja, a former UNPROFOR civil official in CRO and B&H and he took almost 3 days. His mealy-mouthed talk may deceive into believing he speaks the truth, but such an impression quickly fades away. He describes something that resembles to be positive for Milosevic or the JNA or the Serbs, and then twists and turns it upside down, leaving ugly hints.
One example: When asked in the examination-in-chief what were his observations based on his meetings with Milosevic, Kirudja said he was surprised how well informed of the political details Milosevic was, never in need of any assistants as other politicians do. This may sound even as a praise, but when Groome jumped to it, asking suggestively whether Kirudja warned of that 'danger' in his reports, he said he 'would like to be precise' (his favourite formula), that he didn't use the word 'danger' but yes, he did note that.
The man is a Nigerian and a Muslim, unable to detach himself from his religion and to even pretend to be unbiased. He took sides from the day one, going to such lengths to even hire a Muslim interpreter in Belgrade (to his admitted surprise, such persons were living undisturbed in this city, even Muslim refugees from B&H!).
He wildly exaggerated in his reports whenever the supposed victims were Muslims: he used the expression 'concentration camps' because somebody told him so and when his superior, the Indian General Sadish Nambiar, warned him to be careful what he's writing, consented to 'detention centres'; but he was happy to state that later on 'photographs came up' with 'skeletal man' which 'proved' he was right. See how all this is neatly connected: some obscure overzealous official puts the word in his report, never bothering to visit the alleged atrocity and verify, then some photos are taken of one skinny and ten paunchy men in front of chicken wire fenced area and there you have it - a proof! (Btw: the skinny one took off some serious weight for only 10 days of his detention; the others didn't.)
Kirudja wasn't just hypersensitive to the sufferings of his fellow Muslims, he also took trouble to smear their opponents, the Serbs. Almost everyone of them he met during his missions was painted black, and if that was not possible, the witness would praise his qualities and ascribe to him evil intentions.
All that was skilfully hidden throughout the testimony by the flowery manner of speaking of Mr Kirudja, a true specimen of a UN official: able to talk incessantly and say little if anything (see Kofi Annan as the case in point).
But, while Kirudja threw such mud on all the Serbs, little could he imagine that one of them would come up much later as the important witness for the Prosecution: Slobodan Lazarevic, self-proclaimed YU spy, more probably a British spy. In his written statement before the ICTY investigators few years ago Kirudja portrayed Lazarevic as a poor human material, always out to obtain something for himself personally, and he was 'under the impression way back then that he would make a good mercenary'. When Milosevic quoted that to Kirudja, May tried to protect the credibility of that 'important' witness by saying it's for them to decide about that 'member of the KOS'.
Milosevic didn't let May to get away with that: "Mr May, you have stated here that Lazarevic was a member of the KOS. This is just something that he himself claimed to be. One later witness, a Muslim, testified there was no KOS at that time anymore."
May mumbled this would be dealt with later.
Milosevic proceeded to pound Kirudja with that, stating Lazarevic was probably lying both the UN and the local Serbs, being actually on the side of some third party and made him admit that Lazarevic was a material to make a good mercenary, 'that's what I said, not that he was one', the slippery Kirudja wiggled.
When Milosevic asked whether it could be concluded Lazarevic was a man of low moral qualities and not to be trusted, Kirudja slipped by saying that indeed he gave his statement much earlier and Lazarevic testified here in September but yes, Lazarevic led them onto the false trails within the sector, the UN interpreters told Kirudja that the man interpreted wrongly, he wanted once to arrest one of the UN interpreters and he was a material to make a mercenary.
May got extremely nervous, saying 'we can not go on about this any further' and Milosevic remarked icily that 'there is not a single individual to whom so much space was devoted ' in Kirudja's statement, but 'very well, we shall not deal anymore with that witness of yours'.
The stronghold of Kirudja's testimony was to be the statement that the Serbs in Krajina deceived the UN and circumvented the Vance Plan by actually keeping their forces under the guise of police.
The problem with that is Kiruja's own explanation of the UNPROFOR's task there: according to him, they were there only to 'observe' how the local police is keeping order. If so, then why were they called the 'UN Protection Forces' and the areas in question the UNPAs = UN Protected Areas?
Kirudja was forced to admit the Serbs did observe the Plan by placing all the heavy weaponry under the 'double key', and have taken them back only after they were attacked by the Croats. And here his dangerous, despicable bias surfaced again: yes, the Croats did attack the protected areas, but 'they have explained to us' for instance about the Maslenica Bridge attack, that it was 'previously taken by the Serbs'. So, according to sugary Kirudja, all's well with such a vague explanation why the defined UNPA zones could be freely attacked by the Croats and it's not OK for the Serbs to feel threatened and unprotected and to defend themselves after being attacked.
He actually had the nerve to say that Maslenica was far to the south, so maybe the Serbs shouldn't have taken over their weaponry from other spots, far away. This is typical of a bureaucrat: to question the obvious by nitpicking about technicalities. What should they have done, according to the red-tape Kirudja? Take over their weapons only if these had been placed at the bottom of the first pier of Maslenica Bridge? Or rather not to take over their weapons at all, in order to stick to the Plan? Those clerks just love paperwork and despise messy life and unruly living men who meddle into their cleverly designed schemes. And Kirudja had the nerve to say that the Serbs should have turned to the UN for help, not to try to defend themselves.
Fishy Kirudja conveniently forgot what he had said earlier: that the UN was unable to protect, that they only observed. So they did: they observed (with the honourable exception of Canadians at Medak) as the Serbs were being killed and expelled.
When he moved on to the events in B&H, Kirudja really lost all sense of proportion. Every hint of trouble befalling the Muslims was immediately, i.e. without any verification, depicted in his reports as the concern that the 'unspeakable atrocities may be unfolding'. On the contrary, when the trouble hit the other side, the other yard and stick were applied.
The things that the representatives of the UNPROFOR saw with their own eyes and informed Kirudja of it (like the massacre of the soldiers during the JNA's organized displacement by the Izetbegovic's forces in Sarajevo on 3 May 1992), were shrugged off as something that they were 'unable to do anything about'. Well, how about putting it in the official report? Or calling it an atrocity and trumpet it through the world press?
The attack of the Croatian regular forces on the Serb village of Sjekovac, the very first armed incident in B&H and the one ending in a real atrocity (all the villagers killed) was dismissed with 'there were so many reports, I was unable to hear just about everything'. Or else, as the talkative Kirudja would put it 'life is like that; you can not see everything.'
I already mentioned his disagreement with his superior, General Nambiar, about the 'concentration camps' wording of his reports.
When Milosevic played a video showing the General stating he got no reports of genocide whatsoever, Kirudja again tried to find a loop: maybe the General was technically correct, but not factually, because Kirudja and his crew were civilians and the General was talking about his forces reporting him!
The nitpicking clerk at it again, but the fact is that the General Nambiar was a supreme commander of all the UN forces in all of the ex-YU at that time, including those in Serbia and in Macedonia, and including civilian officials such as Kirudja. Judging by the rush to report of concentration camps, I don't doubt for a sec that Kirudja also tried to report of genocide, but the General overruled him.
Kirudja also described at length about the attempts by two Serbian Town Mayors, one from B&H and the other from CRO, to organize the safe passage for Muslims who wanted to go to Austria or Slovenia - this was, naturally, reported as ethnic cleansing.
With all due respect to the witness, what has anything that he said got to do with Milosevic, except that they met few times and Milosevic was kind enough to explain to Kirudja, as he himself testified, the Constitution declaring Serbia to be 'the State of its citizens' as opposed to the Croatian example, the CRO being 'the State of the Croats'?
CIJ pronounced Kirudja an unrecognized hero of YU wars, as opposed to its villains and to Kirudja's cold-hearted superiors. But, closer to the truth would be his own remark about the comments he got from his fellow UN officials when he told them he was to testify at the ICTY: better not to meddle anymore in this thing. So true. Should have been applied a decade ago for the whole ex-YU and for all the meddling we suffered.
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