A Bosniak man pleaded guilty to contempt this week after admitting that he accepted money in exchange for signing a false statement in the trial of Bosnian Serb cousins Milan and Sredoje Lukic.
Judges at the Hague tribunal sentenced the man, Zuhdija Tabakovic, to three months in prison with credit for time served. He is expected to be released this week.
In exchange for a plea of guilty to three of the six contempt charges, the prosecution agreed to dismiss the remaining three charges and impose no fine.
Court documents said Milan Lukic’s former case manager, Jelena Rasic, initially approached Tabakovic about signing the statement in October 2008, as well as two other men known in court as “X” and “Y”, who were recruited by Tabakovic to sign additional false statements.
Steven Powles, Tabakovic’s lawyer, said it was Tabakovic who notified the tribunal field office in Sarajevo in December 2008 of his involvement in the scheme, and also provided investigators with the false statement and other documents, including a map that Lukic drew himself.
“[Tabakovic] initiated this case by bringing matters to the attention of the [Office of the Prosecutor],” Powles said.
“In contacting the prosecution … Mr Tabakovic put right his wrong and ensured no actual damage was done to the trial process.”
Tabakovic had pleaded not guilty at his initial appearance last December 22 and the trial had been expected to go ahead as scheduled on March 15.
The parties came to the plea agreement on March 11 and there was no indication why the other people said to have been involved have not been charged. The Office of the Prosecutor, OTP, declined to comment.
During much of the hearing, Tabakovic, 46, sat hunched forward, with his head in his hands.
According to the public version of the plea agreement, which was summarised by Prosecutor Paul Rogers during the hearing, Tabakovic was approached by Rasic some time in October 2008.
Rogers said Rasic subsequently produced a written statement and said that if Tabakovic signed it, he would be given a total of 2,500 euro, plus new clothes, shoes and an all-expense-paid trip to The Hague to testify on Lukic’s behalf.
Rasic added that the money was coming from Lukic himself, and that Tabakovic would receive 1,000 euro upon signing the statement, while the rest would come just before or after he arrived in The Hague, the prosecutor said.
The statement – included as an exhibit in the public version of the 92-page plea agreement – relates to the charge in the Lukic indictment that on June 7, 1992, Milan Lukic and some other men took seven Bosniaks, Bosnian Muslims, to the banks of the Drina river in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad and shot them.
According to the plea agreement, Tabakovic was in Sarajevo on June 7, 1992 and “had not seen or been involved with any of the events referred to in the statement”.
The Lukic cousins were accused of leading a campaign to terrorise and kill Bosniak civilians during the summer of 1992 in Visegrad. The trial began in July 2008 and concluded the following spring.
On July 20, 2009, Milan Lukic was found guilty of all 21 counts against him, including the burning alive of about 120 civilians in two barricaded houses. Sredoje Lukic, a former police officer, was found guilty of aiding and abetting the first of the house fires – on the town’s Pionirska Street – as well as joining Milan Lukic in the beating and mistreatment of civilians at the Uzamnica prison camp. Both are appealing against their convictions.
After Tabakovic signed the false statement in October 2008 and had it notarised at the municipality building in Sarajevo, Rasic gave him 1,000 euro in cash, the plea agreement states. She also gave him a map, which Milan Lukic hand-drew in blue ink to help Tabakovic “better understand the events in the statement”, it says.
According to the plea agreement, Rasic then asked if Tabakovic knew any other people who would be willing to sign similar statements for money, and Tabakovic subsequently recruited two other men, known to the court as X and Y - both X and Y signed false statements and each received 1,000 euro afterwards.
The document continues that in late December 2008, Tabakovic went to the tribunal field office in Sarajevo and told them about the false statement. In a tape recorded interview on December 31, he said he had come forward because it was “the proper thing to do, actually” and that he felt “relieved and much better” as a result.
Powles, Tabakovic’s lawyer, told judges that because his client came forward when he did, “there was no prospect thereafter of [him] coming to the [tribunal] to give false evidence” and it “could not have happened from there on in”.
Powles also said that Tabakovic was led to believe he would be a witness if the contempt case went forward, and was not interviewed as a suspect until September 2009.
“It was Tabakovic himself who sought to ensure that no harm was done to outcome of Lukic trial,” Powles said, adding that his client signed the statement because he needed money, and not for ethnic or patriotic reasons.
Powles said that Tabakovic sent his “sincere apologies to the trial chamber and the victims of the crimes in the Lukic case”.
The following day, on March 16, a status conference was held to discuss the Lukic cousins’ appeal against their respective convictions.
Presiding judge Mehmet Guney said the appeals hearing was unlikely to be held before June, and both the prosecution and defence requested six weeks’ notice of the exact date.
The judge also asked Milan and Sredoje Lukic about their health.
“My health is fine,” Milan responded. “[But] when an innocent man is in detention, you know how it is.”
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
