Listening to Milosevic ("Let us agree on one more point before we proceed") and Lilic ("You know very well that my intentions have always been good"), one of The Hague's informers wrote last week: "Someone could almost have imagined hearing the sounds of a violin and seeing a dimmed light as the man in the dock and the man on the witness stand attempted to refresh their memories of the glorious days of Milosevic's reign." Violins indeed were missing in an entirely surreal moment that before yesterday would have been as unlikely at The Hague as a future acquittal for Milosevic. The accused in the "process of the century" softly read the principles of the Yugoslav Left (JUL) [the party of Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic] program, carefully emphasizing every word; Judge Richard May made sure not to miss anything; Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice had nothing against the JUL program being introduced as evidence and an official court document; and witness Lilic stared into space, saying "Well, fine, program principles are one thing"...and then the defendant proudly concluded that what he just read was written by his spouse and that it was the best program composed by the Left at the end of the last century.
JUL was brought up by Lilic's comment that the members of Milosevic's spouse's party occupied the most significant positions in society and had a hand in many important decisions, made most frequently in a very exclusive circle. And just when it appeared that the prosecutor had received confirmation that important decisions during the war years were made at a "family council," thus independent of legal, institutional channels, Lilic, on the following day, said that he didn't know of any illegal decisions made by the state or military authorities. Those who wondered why Lilic had been called to testify seemed to have been flummoxed by the general atmosphere at the court and the polite relationship between the witness and the defendant - something that rarely happens in The Hague when Milosevic cross-examines prosecution's witnesses. That politesse was somewhat beneficial for Nice. He extracted a confession from Lilic saying that he had, as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, personally signed a pension decree for a general accused at The Hague of masterminding the merciless, several-year-long shelling and siege of Sarajevo. Lilic also admitted that Belgrade provided salaries - he explained it as concern for the social status of the families of military personnel - for officers that fought in the Bosnian Serb Army. He also said that news of the massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995 reached Belgrade fairly quickly, but was never discussed at the Supreme Defense Council, and no investigations were ever conducted. Nice could be satisfied with such an answer, as one can draw the conclusion that Belgrade financially supported an army without questioning what had happened in Srebrenica and who had ordered a massive execution.
However, for most informers, the most important part of Lilic's testimony was his attempt to explain how Slobodan Milosevic had nothing to do with the crimes in Srebrenica, that he didn't know about them (nor did the entire military and state leadership at the time) and that he was "visibly shaken and angry" when he found out about everything, saying that "only crazy people" could have [carried out the atrocities]. Some agencies (The Associated Press, for example) described Zoran Lilic as the man who dealt the prosecution a potentially tough blow as Nice is attempting to link Milosevic to genocide precisely through the story about the Srebrenica crimes.
Lilic's testimony perhaps strengthened the impression that the story about Milosevic and his responsibility for genocide, listed as one of the charges, will be hard to prove, but just at that time (and probably not by chance), the existence of a document [...] that could turn the whole story around came to light. While Lilic claimed that Milosevic was ignorant about Srebrenica, journalists close to the Prosecutor's Office [...] announced that a new document, dating back to July 10, 1995, had been included in the official case file. The document proves that official forces of the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) participated in the Srebrenica operation.
Former Republic of Srpska Interior Minister Tomislav Kovac - who supposedly emigrated to the United States last year with valuable information - signed a decree in July 1995 inviting police units of the Serbian Interior Ministry to move from the surrounding area of Sarajevo and join the operation around Srebrenica.
The existence of such a document and evidence of Belgrade's fingerprints in Srebrenica has already been declared to be one of the most important discoveries made by The Hague in Slobodan Milosevic's trial. Last April, after a 6-year-long investigation and $6 million spent in the quest for the truth, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation concluded in a 7,000-page report that no evidence existed that could tie the events in Srebrenica to former authorities in Belgrade.
Current authorities in Sarajevo have already expressed their conviction that with the help of the new evidence, the two Hague courts could wrap up their work more easily: Milosevic will, despite Lilic's claims, be responsible for Srebrenica, while the Bosnian charges handled by the International Court for Justice [...] will appear more convincing.