Under a 10-item plan, we intend to present the prosecution's evidence in one calendar year, provided that the court be in session 48 weeks, five days a week, 4.5 hours a day, del Ponte said at the pre-trial conference. She also announced 14 files on the basis of the crimes.
This is a monumental, Herculean task, said Michael Karnavas, the attorney representing the first defendant, Jadranko Prlic. He added the trial would not take less than three years unless the indictment was amended.
Karnavas said the indictment was too extensive and imprecise, that the defendants were charged alternately and with all forms of criminal responsibility, which he added was inappropriate to the law and practice of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The US-based attorney said this was actually the trial of Croatia's government, the late President Franjo Tudjman, Defence Minister Gojko Susak and General Janko Bobetko, as well as all members, both known and unknown, of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party and Bosnia's Croat Defence Council (HVO).
Karnavas underlined that half the indictment would fall if only those forms of criminal responsibility which can be proved were retained.
The other defence attorneys concurred with his criticisms and demands for amending the indictment.
Bozo Kovacic pointed to problems in the use of files on the basis of the crimes, while Fahrudin Ibrisimovic said the prosecution would need 60 working hours for the first 16 witnesses alone, or 25 per cent of the total 450 hours envisaged.
A visibly angry del Ponte said the indictment had been compiled by the prosecutor and that it was not up to the defence to say how to write an indictment.
We are not asked to deliver a la carte justice. I have the Security Council's mandate to try senior military and political officials. I wrote the indictment and you have it. You don't like it, but it is here and I will prove what is written in it, she said.
Ladies and gentlemen attorneys, don't tell me what you are telling me, del Ponte said, reading them some of the tribunal's rules of procedure and evidence and urging them to respect them so that the trial could be effective.
Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Valentin Coric, Berislav Pusic, Milivoj Petkovic and Slobodan Praljak, the six former political and military leaders from Herceg-Bosnia accused of the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks in 1993-94, said at the conference they had undergone a medical check-up at the detention centre this morning and that all were in good health except Pusic. He and Coric complained of not having had medical insurance while on provisional release in Croatia.
Nobody asked to be addressed in a special way aside from Praljak, who asked to be addressed as "General Slobodan Praljak," but Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti thanked him for the suggestion by addressing him "Mister Praljak".