US embassy cable - 04THEHAGUE347

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 THE HAGUE 000347 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR S/WCI - PROSPER/RICHARD, EUR/SCE - 
STEPHENS/GREGORIAN/MITCHELL, L/EUR - LAHNE, INR/WCAD - 
SEIDENSTRICKER/MORIN, USUN FOR ROSTOW/WILLSON 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: BK, HR, KAWC, NL, PHUM, PREL, SR, ICTY 
SUBJECT: ICTY: KRAJISNIK TRIAL OPENS SMOOTHLY 
 
1. (SBU)  Summary.  The trial of Momcilo Krajisnik before the 
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 
(ICTY) opened smoothly for the prosecution on Feb. 3. 
Krajisnik, who is being tried on eight counts including 
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, held many 
prominent positions in the leadership of the Republika Srpska 
(RS) during the war, including the presidency, and was 
closely associated with Radovan Karadzic and Biljana Plavsic. 
 In its opening statement, the prosecution argued that 
Krajisnik had control and authority over Bosnian Serb 
military forces and political organs that committed a variety 
of criminal acts, from murder to forced relocation of Bosnian 
Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations.  Like most high-level 
ICTY indictees, Krajisnik is not accused of personally 
carrying out these criminal activities.  Rather, the 
prosecution argued that Krajisnik was a member of a joint 
criminal enterprise whose objective was to exterminate large 
portions of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations 
in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).  The Chamber has indicated 
that the trial could take over two years to complete.  End 
Summary. 
 
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Second only to Karadzic in Power and Influence 
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2. (SBU)  In a well researched and detailed three-hour 
opening statement, Senior Trial Attorney (STA) Mark Harmon 
(American) argued that Krajisnik was one of the most powerful 
and influential leaders of the RS, second only to notorious 
war criminal Radovan Karadzic.  He argued that Karadzic was 
the republic's "front-man" while Krajisnik operated levers of 
power behind the scenes.  Harmon painted Krajisnik as a 
hard-line nationalist who planned and ordered the mass 
killings of Bosnian Muslims and Croats during attacks on 
towns during the 1991-1992 portion of the war in BiH, with 
the end-goal of exterminating these populations from large 
portions of the region.  Krajisnik's indictment contains 
eight counts, including genocide, crimes against humanity, 
and violations of the laws of war. He is accused of 
committing these crimes not personally, but as a member of a 
joint criminal enterprise (NB: he is charged under Articles 
7(1) (individual responsibility) and 7(3) (superior 
responsibility) of the ICTY Statute).  Members of this 
enterprise also include Plavsic and Karadzic.  Krajisnik was 
originally indicted with former Bosnian Serb president 
Plavsic, but Plavsic pled guilty in October 2002 to the crime 
against humanity of persecutions.  In the course of her plea 
agreement's "agreed facts", Krajisnik, Milosevic and Karadzic 
are fingered by Plavsic as the key perpetrators of the plan 
to eliminate Muslims and Croats from Serb-dominated areas of 
Bosnia. 
 
3. (SBU)  One key piece of evidence that the prosecution 
plans to introduce is a document distributed at a 1992 
Bosnian Serb Assembly session that outlines six proposed 
strategic objectives of the RS.  The objectives include 
establishing borders that separate the Serbian people from 
other ethnic communities in Bosnia, and dividing the 
ethnically mixed city of Sarajevo into Serbian and Muslim 
portions.  The prosecution stated that Karadzic announced 
these objectives to the Bosnian Serb Assembly, and that they 
were adopted as a formal Decision and signed by Krajisnik in 
his capacity as the President of the Bosnian Serb Assembly. 
 
4. (SBU)  At the start of the proceedings, the judges of 
Trial Chamber I (Judge Orie presiding) indicated that the 
case could take well over two years.  They allotted the 
prosecution 450 hours to present its case-in-chief, not 
including the time the defense takes for cross examination. 
Because of the length of the proceedings, the defense opted 
to defer its opening statement until later in the trial. 
Krajisnik, however, requested to make a statement to the 
Chamber.  In contrast to the behavior of other senior 
indictees such as Milosevic or Seselj,  Krajisnik made a 
short and reserved speech, claiming his innocence and 
expressing his belief that the proceedings would result in 
the emergence of the truth.  Krajisnik, arrested in a 
late-night SFOR raid at his home in Bosnia in April 2000, has 
been in the ICTY detention facility in Scheveningen awaiting 
trial for almost four years. 
 
5. (SBU) Comment: The trial of Momcilo Krajisnik is among the 
three or four most important cases to be heard by the ICTY, 
in a category that is just below Milosevic, Karadzic and 
Mladic.  In many respects, the trial will delve deeper than 
the Milosevic trial can into the criminal enterprise of RS 
leaders, focusing not only on the specific crimes of the 
Bosnian war but also the intentions and responsibility of the 
senior-most Bosnian Serb leadership.  It is also likely to 
put flesh on Biljana Plavsic's skeletal, twenty-two paragraph 
"factual basis" for her guilty plea.  In the hands of a 
strong American-led prosecution team and an experienced 
presiding judge (who recently issued a judgment in the 
"Sarajevo Siege" case against Stanislav Galic), there are 
high expectations that the trial might not only prove 
Krajisnik's guilt but also go a long way towards establishing 
accountability and creating the kind of historical record of 
the Balkans conflict that the international community has 
expected of the ICTY. End comment. 
SOBEL