Krajisnik

Lawyers for Momcilo Krajisnik have launched a tirade against the judges hearing his case, accusing them of making factual inaccuracies in their judgments and discounting the serious financial problems currently dogging the defence team.

Krajisnik, a former top Bosnian Serb politician, is charged with two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity and one of violating the laws or customs of war for his alleged involvement in expelling thousands of Muslims and Croats from Bosnia in 1991 and 1992.

At the root of the outbursts by Nicholas Stewart and David Josse is the 180,000 US dollars owed to the accused, which they say is having a “significant detrimental effect” on the preparation of their defence.

As a result of the financial difficulties, the lawyers this week submitted two separate motions seeking to delay the start of their case - both of which were denied by the judges.

Responding to a defence request to postpone the start of their case from October 3 to October 25, the judges said the preparation should have been an “ongoing project, initiated well before the close of the prosecution’s case”. They added that Krajisnik and his defence should not be granted extra time to compensate for problems caused by the accused’s own failure to pay his legal bills.

A second motion that proceedings be postponed until the appeals chamber rules on an application filed by the defence last week was also rejected. The defence team has appealed an August decision by the trial chamber ruling the prosecution has presented sufficient evidence against Krajisnik and he will have a case to answer on all charges.

The defence must file all witness lists by October 3 with the case set to begin on October 10.

Josse argued even before the judges announced their decision that to disallow a postponement would be “absurd and prejudicial”. After the judgment was announced, Stewart lashed out even more vehemently.

He claimed that the judge’s assertion that the defence team had been given increased resources in May this year was “clearly wrong” and constituted a “factual error”.

When the presiding judge, Alphonse Orie, said that he could not remember the exact amount of the supposed increase, Stewart interrupted. “That is an extremely woolly approach to an important issue. It is vague. It is wrong. It’s making assumptions in an extremely important area,” he said.

“It’s quite clear that the trial chamber has all this material – inaccurate, incorrect – in its head, and this is the basis on which some of these decisions on scheduling are being made.”

The defence insists it has inadequate staff and resources to submit its witness lists, which should have been filed on September 26.

“No court, whatever its powers and its jurisdiction, can in fact make people do the impossible,” said Stewart, who warned that in a worst case scenario the trial chamber would be presented with “a rag bag, scraps of paper with bits of notes on” in place of the expected witness summaries.

Eventually, the chief of the Office of Legal Aid for the Defence, Sebastian Van de Vliet, was brought in to address the chamber. He confirmed that the registry’s latest offer was for an extra 6,000 dollars per month for additional staff. When the judge asked Stewart to comment, he said he would not conduct discussions on the issue in open court.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger said the court should consider carefully the defence’s own “accountability and responsibility” for the position they were in, and their possible “failure to act” to prevent the current circumstances. He added that the defence had raised a number of “essentially illusory difficulties”.

Helen Warrell is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.