Agence France-Presse
September 15, 2004
THE HAGUE - The UN court here has suspended the trial of Slobodan Milosevic until October 12 to allow the defence lawyers assigned to the former Yugoslav president more time to prepare their case, the judges said.
Presiding judge Patrick Robinson said he was giving British lawyer Steven Kay and his co-counsel more time to get "an overview of the witness situation." Kay had earlier said he would need more time and resources to deal with the witness list as Milosevic was not cooperating with his defence counsel. He said the delay would enable him to get to grips with Milosevic's original witness list of 1,631 names and see who should be called first. Kay earlier complained that many witnesses scheduled to appear in the defence case had refused to come because Milosevic is no longer conducting his own defense.
"Of the 23 witnesses we have been able to contact, 20 have refused to testify ... We have got senior people from foreign governments refusing to cooperate, ambassadors," Kay said. Milosevic insisted that he had nothing to do with the witnesses refusal to show up. "It is up to the witnesses. I do not want to influence the witnesses in any way," he said. To show why people were unwilling to take the stand he quoted from a letter of the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992, James Bissett, who called the proceedings in The Hague "a Stalinist show trial". "I do not want to be part of this travesty of justice," Milosevic quoted Bissett as saying. Russian parliamentarian Nikolai Ryzhkov publically announced he had refused to testify last week. A group of five French witness also announced they would not come if they were questioned by the imposed lawyers. A group of thirty defence witnesses from Serbia-Montenegro also said they would not testify at the trial in protest at the decision to impose a lawyer, the Beta news agency reported on Tuesday. Among the thirty - mostly Milosevic's one-time allies - were former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic, historians Slavenko Terzic and Vasilije Krestic, writer Momo Kapor and ex-Croatian Serb leader Borislav Mikelic, Beta reported.
Kay had asked the court on Wednesday to allow Milosevic to question his witnesses first, followed by questioning by the assigned counsel. The lawyer said he believed the witnesses would appear if Milosevic was the one examining them.
The defence team also demanded new medical tests to determine if Milosevic was fit enough to represent himself but both motions were rejected. Kay has also said he would ask for the trial to be suspended pending an appeal against his assignment. The court explicitly refused to grant suspension on those grounds but nonetheless said that it was likely that within the adjournment they approved to give Kay more time the appeal will be decided as well. Milosevic on Wednesday again blasted the court and his imposed lawyer.
"I insist you give me back my right to defend myself, to call my witnesses," he said. When the judges told him that they forced him to take counsel because medical reports showed he was too ill to continue to act as his own lawyer Milosevic blamed the court for his health problems. .... "Imposing work and deadlines on me while I was ill ... led to a serious deterioration of my health," Milosevic told the court. ....