Posted on 06/01/2002 6:38:24 PM PDT by Banat
Trouble at The Hague: No Witnesses
BELGRADE – Carla Del Ponte's deputy Jeffrey Nice admitted yesterday that the prosecution had serious problems with potential witnesses from Mr. Miloshevich's "inner circle".
Mr. Nice claims that it would be "easy to solve the case if only one of the inner circle witnesses would agree to testify". Even though Glas had written extensively about this particular problem before the trial had even started, Nice's admission comes as a surprise – most of all because it comes from the prosecution itself and was uttered in the Hague courtroom, of all places.
During Mr. Miloshevich's Kosovo trial, 64 of the planned 90 witnesses have taken the stand. By the end of July, ex-Head of the ex-Kosovo Verification Mission William Walker, Kosovo's Communist chief from the 1980s Azem Vlasi, Bosnia's outgoing "High International Representative" Wolfgang Petrisch and the Norwegian diplomat Knut Vollaebek will also appear as prosecution witnesses.
One of Mr. Miloshevich's solicitors Dragolyub Tomashevich says the prosecution is desperate.
- "The prosecution can't find any evidence to support what they have laid out in the indictment, which is, obviously, based on fantasy. As the indictment isn't based on truth, the prosecution tries to save whatever can be saved and I must say Mr. Nice's admission was stunning, but also encouraging as it helps my client, Mr. Miloshevich", said Mr. Tomashevich.
The Court's Council has told the prosecution to finish with their witnesses by July 26. The prosecution, however, insists it needs at least two more months.
Milsovic has to be guilty as far as the NWO/ICTY is concerned.
What will they do if he actually wins his case.
Or will "they" let it go that far...
This entire 'trial' is a farce, but I think that the judges are turning (wishful thinking?). May has stopped being so visibly biased and the bench seems to have had about enough humiliation. I hope that they stand their ground and start insisting on some real law - but it's a bit late when Milosevic has been indicted on clealy no evidence whatsoever. What happened to proving a prima facie case?
As for hard facts, well Walker really doesn't have any. The fact he can contribute is that he saw some dead people, the rest will be all hearsay. Interesting that we aren't hearing from forensic experts in detail.......for that is the only way the prosecution can provide a hard case......the 'eyewitnesses' have proved to be uniformly unreliable.
The prosecution's failings lie in what Pythogoran identified a while back.....
The prosecution appears to have swallowed the Clinto-KLA story line wholesale, so they have been lax in double checking 'evidence', testing 'eyewitness' claims, and so forth. Since the prosecution hasn't done the minimum of amount of homework.....time and time again they get blindsided by Milosevic's cross examination.
It is actually a shame that Milosevic was essentially forced to defend himself. If the ICTY was set up to provide a fair trial, then Milosevic would have been able to rely on professional litigators to cross examine the prosecution testimony...........One can be certain Professional Litigators would have exposed even more lies, misinformation, and contradictions in the prosecution case........
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.