John Zametica, witness at the Radovan Karadzic trial

At the beginning of the cross-examination by prosecutor Edgerton, it transpired why Dr. John Zametica got angry at Karadzic in June 2013, withdrawing the statement he had given to the defense and leaving The Hague, only to agree, after many trials and tribulations to testify. In June, Zametica left in a huff because in his view the defense had been reckless enough to directly undermine his statement pertaining to the hostage crisis in May 1995.

In the statement, Zametica said that some Russian volunteers from Pale were responsible for the first steps that resulted in the capture of the UNPROFOR soldiers. When he signed the statement, Zametica was shown a document that clearly indicates the Republika Srpska leadership had organized the operation to take UN staff hostage and to place them around the potential NATO air strike targets. When Zametica was asked if he really meant to say that the four VRS corps had independently decided to start arresting UN peacekeepers at the same time, Zametica replied that in his view there was an ‘avalanche effect’, a reaction to what the Russian volunteers had done.

In a bid to contest the witness’s claim that he was opposed to the idea to take hostages in the spring of 1995, the prosecutor showed evidence that as Karadzic’s advisor Zametica had played an active role in the process. In a statement broadcast by Reuters on 26 May 1995 Zametica said that Serbs were placing UN members around potential air strike targets and that the international community would have ‘to pay a high price’: if NATO continued the air strikes, the planes would ‘have to kill’ the captured peacekeepers, Zametica said. Zametica explained this sounded ‘like a fabricated statement’. The witness was sure that he ‘was careful’ in his contacts with the media and that he never used such harsh words.

Another of Karadzic’s advisors, Gordan Milinic, claimed the mass executions of captured Srebrenica inhabitants were a ‘farce’. Unlike Milinic, Zametica agreed that there had been a ‘massacre’. When he was asked if by that he meant the murder of thousands of Muslim men and boys, he said, ‘I don’t have a clue, I was not there, I only know that something terrible had happened’. He stubbornly denied that the political leadership was to blame, saying that the massacre had not been planned in advance: it just happened ‘in the field’. Zametica stressed that ‘if the army did that’, it was not under Karadzic’s control. Zametica didn’t agree with the suggestion that the chain of command functioned well, refusing to countenance it even when he was shown documents indicating that Karadzic had been kept in the loop throughout the Srebrenica operation and that he was able to respond and to instruct military commanders very quickly.

The prosecution highlighted Zametica’s public appearances in the foreign media, in which Zametica labeled ‘torture, rape, murder and deportation’ as Muslim propaganda and invoked the evacuation agreement signed by the VRS, UNPROFOR and the representatives of the Muslim population from Srebrenica.

The prosecutor put it to him that the agreement was ‘nothing but propaganda’, signed by UNPROFOR and the Muslim representatives under duress. Also, the prosecutor recalled that one of the signatories, Dutch officer Robert Franken, had testified before the Tribunal, and had clearly said he had been forced to sign the agreement. The prosecution relies heavily on what Miroslav Deronjic, Karadzic’s civilian commissioner for Srebrenica, said in his statement to the OTP investigators: that a decision to draft the agreement was reached at a meeting with Zametica and Karadzic in a bid to cover up the deportations. Deronjic also noted that the two of them ‘knew about the murders and executions’ of the captured inhabitants of Srebrenica. The witness replied that Franken told lies ‘because he may be ashamed and wants to change history’. Deronjic’s ‘scandalous’ allegations ‘revolted’ him, Zametica said.

Even if Zametica’s theory about ‘disobedient troops’ who killed the prisoners of their own accord and then concealed the killings from the political leadership held water, the witness had to have learned about the crimes in Srebrenica from the foreign media, the prosecutor argued. Zametica admitted that monitoring the foreign press was his job at the time. Nevertheless, Zametica claimed that he had never seen an article, Bodies pile up in horror of Srebrenica, published in the London newspaper The Independent on 17 July 1995. The prosecutor showed Zametica the letters of protest and warnings sent by high-ranking UN officials, Mazowiecki and Akashi, after 40,000 civilians were expelled and thousands of men went missing. The prosecutor went on to ask Zametica if some kind of investigation was undertaken about that. ‘I was busy with other matters, I don’t know, ask Karadzic’, the witness responded.

In a bid to discredit the witness the prosecutor showed an interview he had given to the Belgrade magazine NIN in 1997. Zametica told the reporter that Karadzic and Mladic ‘will never surrender’ to be tried by the ‘legal farce’, the Tribunal in The Hague. Asked if he still thought that today, Zametica replied ‘In the meantime I have changed my opinion, ever since Jovica Stanisic’s acquittal I’ve considered this Tribunal to be fair’.

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