"RAIN STOPPED PLAY"
Witness: AGIM ZEQIRI
Testimony begins on page 744. Slobo’s cross examination starts on page 764
http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/020220IT.htmhttp://www.un.org/icty/transe54/020221IT.htm
Watson: Okay, it wasn't the brightest start for the prosecution but maybe they're just testing the water before zinging Slobo with some........erm........zingers.
Holmes: Yes, that's the answer. They're just warming up before they unleash the zingers.
Watson: So tell me alittle about "zinger" witness Mr Zeqiri.
Holmes:Well the press ate up his testimony. The UK Telegraph shouted "MILOSEVIC came face to face with one of his alleged victims yesterday when a farmer whose wife and five children were killed by Serb forces" whilst the BBC squealed that the witness "told the court yesterday that Serb forces burned his village and killed 16 members of his family"
Watson: Grrrrrr! Those beastily subhuman Serbs. Slaughtering a wife and five kiddies. How dare you murder 16 members of his family Mr Slobo. Hold on. Why the discrepancy? One minute it's 5 and now it's 16
Holmes: Unfortunately getting facts right is something that was something of a problem for this witness. Anyway, some background. He's from the Prizren region, a muslim and comes from rustic Celina which is about 17 km from Prizren ( page 744 ) and a similar distance from Orahovac and Djakovica
Watson: Tell me where Slobo gets nailed for personally ordering his forces to slaughter his family. Quick!!
Holmes: All good things who wait. He said that prior to NATO's bombing campaign the Serb forces were nearby
(
( page 746 )
Witness: They were stationed on the main road, the main asphalt road, from early March 1998. They came and they were there two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon.........They were down on the main road. They were doing exercises........They had ammunition, they had machine-guns; they had everything.........They had tanks. There were armed vehicles, jeeps, armoured personnel carriers, pinzgauer.
Question: And prior March, 1999, prior to the NATO bombing, did you see police in your village?
Witness: Yes, they came from time to time to check up, make checks.........They were looking for arms, for weapons. They were checking up.
)
And that the Serb forces demanded money from the local Kosovo Albanian muslims.(
( page 746 )
Witness: They would go into people's houses and they would say, "Bring us your weapons." And if people had them or not, they would force them to go down to the police station in Orahovac......... Their main objective was to get money out of you, and we had to find, come up with money and bring the money to them, and then there was no problem.
)
Watson: HA! Gotcha!!! You international rascal and all round card, Mr . Slobo! Robbing poor defenceless civilians.
Holmes: Well not quite.(
Question: Did it happen to you?
Witness: No, not to me. No, never.
)
So, he's saying that someone else told him that it'd happened to them.
Watson: But that's just hearsay nonsense. That's not evidence surely. I mean, why didn’t they simply call this person who claimed had money taken from him by the Serb police?
Holmes: The legal term of hearsay is........erm........."nonsense ". I'm not losing you with all this legalistic terminology am I?
Watson: I'm just about holding on. About the KLA?(
( 748 )
Question: Before the NATO bombing, also around 1998 and before March 1999, did you see members of the KLA in your village?
Witness: Well, from time to time. There weren't really any. They would cross through the town on the road from time to time. Rarely.
Question: And are you or were you a member of the KLA?
Witness: I was a village councillor and I did some -- I helped them with some minor services. That's about all.
)
Watson: So this witness also had links with the terrorist organisation, the KLA, which also has links with Bin Laden?
Holmes: YUP!
Watson: Oooooh! What a naughty man. And what are the prosecution doing listening to such vile creatures?
Holmes: Search me. About the KLA? Well, on the one hand our witness admitted helping them yet on the other hand it seems he has absolutely no idea what the KLA did.(
( 774 )
Slobo:Did you ever see the KLA shoot at police members?
Witness:No, I never did.
Slobo: Did you ever hear of the KLA members shooting at police?
Witness: No. Personally, I don't know of any case.
Slobo: Did you ever hear of a policeman being killed by the KLA?
Witness: No, I don't know anything about that.
Slobo: So you never heard that a policeman was killed by the KLA?
Witness: I personally don't know of any case, no.
)And(
( 775 )
Slobo: And you never happened to hear from anybody about the killing of a policeman by the KLA?
Witness: No. I don't know anything about it. I can only tell you what I've seen with my own eyes. I didn't see anything.
Slobo:Did you hear of any kind of activity on the part of those 300 members of the KLA who were alongside your village - you say that they weren't actually in your village - but those 300 whom you supplied with food and clothing? Did you hear what they did, those 300 that you mentioned, that you talked about?
Witness:No.
Slobo: So you don't know anything about their activities?
Witness: Nothing, no.
Slobo: Did you ever hear that the KLA had killed an Albanian?
Witness: No. I don't know anything about that.
Slobo: Did the KLA kill anybody, as far as you know?
Witness: I don't know anything, no.
)Watson: Oh, he does sound a little ignorant of local news.
Holmes: Ignorant and proud it seems
(
( 774 )
Witness: I was never interested in watching television, and I wasn't interested in watching the news. I was interested in my own family and raising my family, and I wasn't interested in all these other things
)Watson: Oh dear, hardly a credible witness
Holmes: And he noted that the Serb security checkpoints didn’t need sandbags in 97 but in 98 and 99 they did. And he’s at a loss to explain why.(
( 773 )
Slobo: Well, why was the police, then, behind these sandbags? What was the purpose of these sandbags, if the police was actually there to check the drivers' documents and so on?
Witness: I don't really know.
Slobo: Did the policemen have those sandbags in 1997?
Witness: No.
Slobo: And then why did the police put sandbags around checkpoints in 1998, then?
Witness: I don't know what their objective was. I don't know.
Slobo: Do you know why are sandbags used or why are they placed around a checkpoint? What is their purpose?
Witness: No, I don't know. I've never been interested in that. I've never had anything to do with that, so I don't know.
Slobo: Do you think that these sandbags are used to protect from the bullets?
Witness: They will know what they're for.
Slobo: So you don't know why sandbags are placed, do you?
Witness: It's never interested me. I don't know. So that's my view: I don't know.
Slobo: So you know that there weren't any sandbags in 1997, but in 1998 they were placed there?
Witness: Yes. Yes.
)
Watson: What about the murder of his entire family? How did Slobo get out of that?
Holmes: He didn’t. The judge got him out(
( 784 )
Judge:Mr. Zeqiri, just a short question. You said yesterday that while you were in hospital, your cousin in Germany called you and told you that your family had been killed. My question is this: How did your cousin get to know that your family had been killed?
Witness: They had found out that the family had been killed, and I called them. I telephoned with them and I found out. That's how I found out from them.
Judge:Did your cousin tell you how did he come to know the fact that your family had been killed?
Witness: I don't know.
Judge:I'm sorry about the death of your family, but did you know how your family had been killed, on what occasion?
Witness: I didn't ask. He just told me. I didn't say anything.
)Watson: So he has no idea how his family died? So there’s absolutely no reason to suppose they’d been killed by the Serbs let alone murdered by them
Did he see anyone being killed?
Holmes: Well, NATO started bombing the village on the 24th ( page 748 ). The village sought safety outside the village. Whilst there, he spoke of seeing a Roma from his village being shot right in front of him. However, it was the middle of the night and he has no idea who was doing the shooting.(
( 751 )
Witness:I was left alone with the gypsy man. He left me -- he went some five metres away to see if the other group went to the house in the periphery. I told him, "Don't go, because they will kill you." This is the words we exchanged together, and then we heard fire……..We heard the fire, the shots, and I saw that a bullet hit the gypsy. He came up to me, just turned his body in my direction. Then they fired him at him again and he fell down in a ditch. And then I left and hid until 12.00, in a stream down there.
Question: How far were you from this man that was shot?
Witness:Some five metres, five or six metres.
Question: Did you see who shot him?
Witness: No, I did not. I couldn't see that. Only I saw him falling, as I said, down in front of my eyes, but I didn't see who shot him.
)Watson: So it could have been anyone.
Holmes: Absolutely. Anyone at all. Anyway, he and about 5000 locals left the village and stayed in Pisjak about 3 km away ( 753 ) They gave themselves up to some Serb Army who separated the men from the women and kids. He claimed that they were forced to lie on the ground and whilst on the ground the Serbs murdered someone.
However he doesn’t know his name nor did he see the person being shot nor did he see the body after being killed.
Watson: So he saw nothing essentially.
Holmes: Yup. He said the Serbs escorted the mass of men to Albania. At no time does he claim they were forced to go to Albania. For people living near Pristina, Albania was the quickest way to escape the bombing going on in Kosovo. It was the natural direction to take
When the witness returned from Albania he found the village in ruins(
( 762 )
Witness:I found my home burnt. They had burned all the homes, with the exception of a few homes. All the good homes -- my home -- I'm sorry, my home was not burned. It was one of the few homes that were not burned. The others, the best homes in the village, they were all burned. I had three cows. Two they had slaughtered, one they had taken away. They had looted all my home. I didn't find anything there when I returned from Germany. It was all empty.
)
Watson: He admitted his house was untouched and he of course didn’t see how his village was destroyed.
He also claimed that the Serbs had killed 75 members of his village. He gave no evidence in support of this however and the fact that the prosecution didn’t even attempt to a pursue this claim speaks for itself ( 763 )
Holmes: Well, Slobo’s cross examination was brought to a halt that evening and the next morning when the case resumed, the witness did something rather unusual.
Watson: What?
Holmes: He ran away.(
( 782 )
Judge:Now, this witness, you've heard, is in dialysis, and therefore we should complete his evidence quickly so that he can have his treatment.
Witness: I have my own problems to deal with and my own suffering. I have nothing to say about that. I was up all night with my own problems, my own worries here……..I'm not well at all. I'm not well at all. I'm not in a position to discuss all this. I've got my own problems and worries.
Judge: Mr. Zeqiri, if you can deal with some questions for ten minutes, we'll allow Mr. Milosevic to ask questions for that time. Can you manage that?
Witness: No. Please, please. Excuse me.
)And with that, the witness got up and ran out of the room.
Watson: So are you telling me that
- He admitted helping the terrorist organisation, the KLA
- That 300 terrorists were in the village and surrounding area
- NATO bombed the village
- He'd claimed that the Serb forces took some money. However, on only one occasion and also it's hearsay anyway
- He has no idea who shot the Roma. It's pretty obivious really. There was a huge firefight between those 300 odd KLA and the Serb forces nearby. He got hit in some crossfire.
- He has no idea how his family was killed. Maybe in a NATO airstrike, maybe in cross fire between the KLA and Serb Army. Who knows?
- When he returned to his home it was still standing
- He has no idea how the houses in his village were destroyed. NATO airstrike? Fighting between KLA and Serbs?
- He's on dialysis and so that gave him his reason not to answer questions from Slobo!
Holmes and Watson: ARF
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