David Browne, defence witness of Jovica Stanisic

Franko Simatovic’s defense case was interrupted this week to allow Jovica Stanisic to call his expert witness David Browne, forensic document examiner. Through Browne’s evidence, Stanisic is trying to prove that there are ‘anomalies’ in the notebooks in which former commander of the VRS Main Staff Ratko Mladic kept his diary between June 1991 and November 1996. The defense also contends there is evidence of ‘fabrication’ and that everything was ‘staged’. Details were discussed in closed session.

In April 2011, 37 excerpts from Mladic’s notebooks were admitted into evidence as prosecution exhibits. The notebooks were seized in the search of Mladic’s wife’s apartment. The excerpts show there was ‘communication and cooperation between the participants of the joint criminal enterprise’ aimed at ethnically cleansing large parts of Croatia and BH, the prosecution contends. The excerpts also show the contribution of the accused to the implementation of that goal, the prosecution also alleges.

Since he can’t read the Cyrillic script and Serbian language, Browne couldn’t analyze the contents of the notebooks. He focused his efforts on determining if the notebooks he received had ‘any anomalies’ and if there was evidence that ‘somebody tampered with them’. Browne thus looked for suspect dents in the paper that didn’t match the writing, how the sheets were bound and which glue was used.

In Browne’s opinion, ‘it is unlikely’ that the existing damage resulted from regular use, some pages are not ‘aligned’ but jut out of the notebook and half of a sheet is missing in one of the notebooks. Two missing pages follow after the entry about a meeting between Jovica Stanisic and Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade in June 1995 but are not related to that meeting that was described on a previous page, the witness noted.

Browne also noted that Mladic’s handwriting was ‘tidy, small and compressed’. This led him to conclude that there ‘probably’ were ‘rough sketches’ which were used as a basis for the entries in the diaries which were written later. There was nothing in the diaries that indicated they were written ‘in the course of an action or that the person who wrote them was under fire and pressure’, the witness added.

In his responses to the prosecutor, the witness said that the ‘chronology of the notebooks makes them only partially reliable in terms of their truthfulness’. The witness explained he found it illogical that someone would keep a diary of events simultaneously in several different notebooks. According to the witness, it was not logical for Mladic to write down entries in one of his notebooks while he was in the Main Staff and in another while he was in the field.

The cross-examination of the witness continues tomorrow.

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