THE HAGUE, May 20 (Hina) - By confronting the testimonies of persons who learned of the Ahmici massacre on the same day it happened or the day after, a prosecution attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY), Gregory Kehoe, on Wednesday challenged the credibility of the defence of General Tihomir Blaskic, who claims to have learned of the Ahmici crime six days after it happened. In the trial of the Kupreskic group, witness Ante Rajic said that Mirko Safradin from the senior command had radioed him saying Ahmici was in flames; Dr Muhamed Mujezinovic testified before the ICTY that he had been told about the Ahmici case by two nurses two days after it had happened. On April 19, the commander of the Vitez brigade, Mario Cerkez, had asked Mujezinovic if he had heard about Ahmici; a Television Busovaca team filmed the village in flames on the same night the crime happened.
THE HAGUE, May 20 (Hina) - By confronting the testimonies of persons
who learned of the Ahmici massacre on the same day it happened or the
day after, a prosecution attorney at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Gregory Kehoe, on Wednesday
challenged the credibility of the defence of General Tihomir
Blaskic, who claims to have learned of the Ahmici crime six days
after it happened.
In the trial of the Kupreskic group, witness Ante Rajic said that
Mirko Safradin from the senior command had radioed him saying
Ahmici was in flames; Dr Muhamed Mujezinovic testified before the
ICTY that he had been told about the Ahmici case by two nurses two
days after it had happened. On April 19, the commander of the Vitez
brigade, Mario Cerkez, had asked Mujezinovic if he had heard about
Ahmici; a Television Busovaca team filmed the village in flames on
the same night the crime happened. These are some of the examples
Kehoe presented one after the other in the ICTY trial chamber on
Wednesday.
The president of the Trial Chamber, judge Claude Jorda, yesterday
asked Blaskic how it was possible that he, as the commander of the
operational zone in question, did not know what had happened five
kilometres from him, whereas judge Almiro Rodrigues asked Blaskic
if he had wanted to know about it at all.
Blaskic earlier testified that he learned of the gravest of the
crimes he is charged with - the massacre of some 100 Muslims from
Ahmici in the early morning hours of April 16, 1993 - only six days
after it had happened, in a letter sent to him by a British UNPROFOR
commander, Bob Stewart.
"Uninterrupted fighting was going on. I was tied to my place of
command. I am not negating that there was fighting going on in
Ahmici... I have never said that I did not know that the fighting was
going on in Ahmici, but I learned of the crime only on April 22",
Blaskic said raising his voice.
"Stewart had his men in Ahmici, he had armoured vehicles... I wonder
how it is possible that he did not know about it earlier, because he
had his soldiers in Ahmici on April 16", he continued in the same
tone of voice.
The many questions posed by prosecution attorney Kehoe were aimed
at presenting possible information routes through which Blaskic
could have received information on the Ahmici crime.
During yesterday's hearing, the prosecutor returned to the issue of
who organised the crime. If it had not been him who ordered the
operation, Kehoe wanted to know who it was, asking the defendant to
give a name.
"I have no knowledge of who carried out the immediate planning",
Blaskic answered.
The hearing then continued behind closed doors at the request of the
defence.
After more than two years of hearings, the trial of Tihomir Blaskic
should be completed in July, when the defence and the prosecution
are to deliver their final statements.
The trial chamber should pronounce the verdict by the end of the
year.
Blaskic, a former Croatian Defence Council commander for central
Bosnia, is charged with crimes committed in the Lasva River valley
in 1993 during a Croat-Muslim conflict.
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