(Open Session) Page 1623
1 Day 15 Friday, 20th March 1998
2 (8.30 am)
3 (Open session)
4 JUDGE CASSESE: Would the Registrar call out
5 the case number.
6 THE REGISTRAR: IT-95-13a-T, Prosecutor v
7 Slavko Dokmanovic.
8 JUDGE CASSESE: Appearances.
9 MR. NIEMANN: My name is Niemann and I appear
10 with Mr. Williamson, Mr. Waespi and Ms. Sutherland for
11 the Prosecution.
12 MR. FILA: My name is Fila and I appear for
13 the Defence of Mr. Dokmanovic with Ms. Lopicic and
14 Mr. Petrovic.
15 JUDGE CASSESE: Mr. Dokmanovic, can you hear
16 me? Thank you.
17 As you see, we have kept our promise to hold
18 a hearing today. We were excused by our President from
19 attending our plenary session so we can work here the
20 whole day. However, we have to take account of some
21 other constraints, namely, the fact that another Trial
22 Chamber also will hold a hearing, so we agreed with the
23 Presiding Judge of Trial Chamber 1, Judge Jorda, that
24 we should stop at 1 o'clock and if we need to continue,
25 we can only resume at 4 o'clock pm so that Trial
Friday, 20 March 1998 Case No. IT-95-13a-T
Witness: Stjepan Mesic (Open Session) Page 1624
1 Chamber 1 can hold its hearings at 2.30, from 2.30 to
2 4. I hope this is convenient to you.
3 Before we call the witness, I would like to
4 ask Mr. Fila whether he could specify a point which I
5 forgot to raise with him, namely, whether sooner or
6 later, he is in a position to tell us how Defence
7 witnesses need to be heard by means of
8 video-conference.
9 MR. FILA: Your Honour, I will provide you
10 with an answer in writing, but before that, I need an
11 answer from Mr. Niemann, whether he has accepted this.
12 One of these witnesses to be heard via video link will
13 appear. If it is shown that Mr. Dokmanovic was not at
14 all at Ovcara, he will not need to appear at all.
15 JUDGE CASSESE: In due time, we will be told
16 so that we -- I think, we hear the technicians can make
17 the necessary preparation, and also I think we need to
18 issue an Order for this purpose so therefore we should
19 know in advance.
20 I think we are now in a position to hear the
21 witness. The Prosecutor may call the witness.
22 MR. WILLIAMSON: Your Honour, the Prosecutor
23 would call Stjepan Mesic.
24 (The witness entered court).
25 JUDGE CASSESE: Good morning Mr. Mesic. I
1 would like to ask you to make the solemn declaration.
2 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will
3 speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
4 truth.
5 JUDGE CASSESE: Thank you. You may be
6 seated.
7 STJEPAN MESIC
8 Examined by MR. WILLIAMSON
9 Q. Mr. Mesic, what is your nationality?
10 A. Croatian.
11 Q. And where are you from originally in Croatia?
12 A. I was born at Orahovica in Slavonia.
13 Q. In 1965, did you run for political office in
14 Orahovica?
15 A. Yes, in 1965 I ran in the elections on the
16 citizen's ticket and I was elected to the Croatian
17 Assembly.
18 Q. At the same time, did you seek another
19 position or were you elected to another position as
20 well?
21 A. Yes, after that, I was elected an alderman at
22 the Municipal Assembly and I was also elected President
23 of the Municipal Assembly of Orahovica.
24 Q. You indicated that you ran on a ticket other
25 than that of the Communist Party; is that correct?
1 A. Yes, that is the citizen's ticket. Actually
2 there was the legal possibility then, in addition to
3 the list of candidates which was proposed by the
4 Socialist Alliance and/or the League of Communists, it
5 was also possible for a group of citizens of 100 people
6 to have a candidate run on their behalf and that list,
7 that ticket would become official. Prior to me, nobody
8 did that. I was the first and the last one actually
9 who availed himself of that legal opportunity.
10 Q. In the late 1960s, did you become involved in
11 a movement which was known as the Croatian Spring?
12 A. That is correct. The movement called the
13 Croatian Spring was a multi-layered movement. It
14 consisted of a part of a League of Communists, the
15 progressive section of the League of Communists of
16 Croatia, the students' movement, the youth movement,
17 the movement comprising university professors and the
18 Martitska Hravadska, which is the cultural society of
19 Croatia, a cultural organisation.
20 Q. What were the participants in the Croatian
21 Spring movement advocating?
22 A. At that time, the only thing one could have
23 advocated and the thing we did advocate was the greater
24 democratisation in the society, clean accounts in the
25 state, which meant that we were supposed to ascertain
1 in Yugoslavia what was paying for what and who was
2 paying that, why was that being paid for. We advocated
3 the resolution of the foreign exchange system. We
4 advocated the democratisation of society. We wanted it
5 to be possible for people to function normally, to
6 travel normally. At that time, the possibility was
7 still constrained of travelling abroad.
8 Q. What was the reaction of Tito to the Croatian
9 Spring movement?
10 A. Initially, Tito supported us. He came to
11 Zagreb. He even encouraged the Croatian Spring
12 movement, but when the generals had deciphered Croatian
13 Spring as a nationalistic movement, then characterised
14 it as such, Tito accepted what was demanded of him from
15 the army and he asked that all those who had
16 participated in that movement be removed from politics,
17 and also that they be ousted from their professional
18 posts so that at the meeting in Kragujevac and the 21st
19 session of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
20 started, I can freely say, the persecution of the
21 participants in the Croatian Spring, which included
22 myself and another 10,000 people and the 10,000 people
23 or even more ended in prison.
24 Q. Were you removed from your positions as
25 President of the Municipality and from your seat in the
1 Sabor?
2 A. Yes, I and everybody else were removed from
3 our positions and I was practically left in the street
4 and could not find employment for two years. Although
5 I had been admitted to the bar, I could not practise my
6 profession as an attorney. I could not hold any public
7 office for that matter, so that until the time when I
8 was to serve my prison sentence, I actually did not
9 work. I only found short term ad hoc employment until
10 they found out who I was and then I would be let off,
11 so it lasted. I was sentenced to two years and two
12 months and I spent my prison sentence in Stara Gradiska
13 prison.
14 Q. Upon your release, were you able to find
15 employment at that time?
16 A. No, I was not able to find employment. But
17 it so happened that an engineer, Zarko Vincek was his
18 name, he was heading a consulting firm and he had been
19 in the ranks of the partisans, together with my
20 father. He of course did not consider himself no more
21 than I did a nationalist, so that he gave me a job, so
22 in fact after he left, I got to be the manager of the
23 firm.
24 Q. As a result of the Croatian Spring movement,
25 were some changes made by Tito in the structure of the
1 Yugoslav government?
2 A. Yes, they were. I believe that Tito's latest
3 options were greatly influenced, in fact, by the ideas
4 of the Croatian Spring movement, but also by the ideas
5 of liberalism in Serbia, which is why he indeed
6 proceeded to amend the constitution and have a new one
7 adopted in 1974, which introduced into the Yugoslav
8 mechanism a confederal model. He intended thereby to
9 create such a system of decision-making in Yugoslavia
10 where there would be a -- at the top a Presidency which
11 would bring all the most important decisions by
12 consensus, and the Members of the Presidency would
13 rotate to hold the presidential and vice-presidential
14 functions following an automatic mechanism, and he
15 thought that after his demise and the disappearance of
16 his charisma, Yugoslavia would be able to function too.
17 Q. How many members were there in the Presidency
18 as set out in the new constitution of 1974?
19 A. According to the new constitution, there were
20 eight members of the Presidency, two representing the
21 provinces, the others representing the republics, with
22 practically that constitution making the provinces --
23 conferring upon the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo
24 the status of a state which was not acceptable to the
25 Serbian leadership, so that immediately after the
1 adoption of the 1974 constitution, they raised
2 objections, vociferous objections, to that particular
3 constitutional arrangement. I mean, coming from
4 Serbia.
5 Q. After Tito's death in 1981, did the system
6 function in the way that he had envisaged?
7 A. Yes, for a time the system did function by
8 virtue of its very inertia. However, more and more
9 conflicts came to the fore and were experienced because
10 of different clashing interests in the different levels
11 of development of the different republics. Some were
12 dissatisfied because they were just the raw materials,
13 the resource base and their raw materials were sold at
14 markets at lower prices than was the case at the world
15 markets. The other parts, the more developed parts
16 were not content because they had to pay for the less
17 developed parts, various contributions, which then
18 exhausted their own economies, of those republics, and,
19 secondly, the problem which was there obviously was
20 that this top-heavy mechanism of the army exhausted the
21 country, it swallowed up very extensive resources and
22 that also led to conflicts among the republics and
23 conflicts of interests among them.
24 Q. When did Slobodan Milosevic come to power in
25 Serbia?
1 A. Slobodan Milosevic assumed the power -- I
2 cannot recall the exact year, but some two or three
3 years prior to these democratic changes. He was
4 consolidated practically in his seat of power by the
5 so-called rallying of the people. The conflicts in
6 Kosovo actually threw him out on the surface, because
7 practically what he intended to do was to destroy the
8 autonomy of Kosovo, of the province which actually
9 later events demonstrated. After everything which had
10 transpired in Kosovo and Vojvodina, one could see the
11 true face of Slobodan Milosevic and his actual
12 intention which was that Serbia had to be whole and
13 could not consist of three parts and this is an idea
14 which he systematically pursued.
15 Q. What was the anti-bureaucratic revolution
16 which occurred under Milosevic?
17 A. It is hard for me to assist on that from the
18 angle of Croatia, but I believe that it was a farce, a
19 travesty. It was just a power struggle and they were
20 supposed to oust the old echelons, the Tito-oriented
21 old structuring and the pro Yugoslav echelons. New
22 structures were to be installed instead to accept
23 Milosevic's totalitarian authority and power and this
24 is what he indeed implemented.
25 Q. What was the Yoghurt Revolution?
1 A. The Yoghurt Revolution is the name given to
2 that phase of the anti-bureaucratic revolution which
3 was waged in Vojvodina that -- because in Vojvodina
4 that the leadership that was in power was in favour of
5 autonomy and it consisted of people who were not
6 burdened by any sort of nationalism and who bothered
7 Milosevic so that he brought loyal people, people loyal
8 to him, but mainly people who were not natives of
9 Vojvodina that --
10 Q. Was Milosevic also able to affect a change in
11 the leadership in Montenegro?
12 A. Yes, he was, because the Montenegrin
13 authorities, the leadership was also pro Yugoslav in
14 their orientation and when I analysed Milosevic, he was
15 really never interested in any Yugoslavia, be it
16 federal or confederal. The only thing that he was
17 interested in was a Greater Serbia and that was his
18 basic objective. Namely, the first demands raised by
19 the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution were that
20 Yugoslavia had to be reconstructed, that Serbia had
21 only received damage within Yugoslavia and clearly that
22 the autonomies had to disappear and that only later --
23 and only later, when he implemented all of this, when
24 he had implemented all of this, he -- because of the
25 Croatian factors, was ostensibly advocating the
1 country's -- Serbia's remaining in the whole