[EDITOR'S NOTE: The tribunal was not in session from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1.]

October 2
Defense attorneys began to try to chip away at a timeline during which prosecutors say Dusko Tadic was committing war crimes.

Three witnesses traveled from Bosnia to testify about where they thought Tadic was between May and Aug. 1992, when prosecutors say he raped, murdered and killed inmates at the three Serb-run prison camps in Northern Bosnia.

The most compelling of the evidence was a stack of documents from the Prijedor police department. They showed Tadic worked at a traffic checkpoint in Prijedor from June to August 1992. The documents say Tadic worked almost every day between six and 12 hours a day from June 16 to August 2.

The documents were introduced through the testimony of Miroslav Brdar. He said he worked with Tadic during all his shifts at the checkpoint. He said while they were working, Tadic's whereabouts were known at all times. Brdar said Tadic would not have been able to take the police car assigned to them, because they had to report mileage every day.

Clearly, the defense is trying to establish that Tadic spent so much time guarding the checkpoint, he had no time to be at the camps during the dozens of incidents prosecution witnesses reported.

But on cross-examination, prosecutor Alan Tieger pointed out that the checkpoint was only a few kilometers away from the camps. He also pointed out that the same police department in charge of the checkpoint was manning the camps.

Brdar's insisted he didn't know thousands of Muslims were killed at the camps, nor was he aware that about 50,000 Muslims were "cleansed" from Prijedor. Tieger looked incredulous as the witness said this, suggesting that it is implausible that a Serb working for the Serbian police to not know about the ethnic cleansing going on all around him.

Other Highlights:

October 3
In her first press conference as the tribunal's new chief prosecutor, Canadian Appellate Judge Louise Arbour said one of her main goals will be to assure the arrests of everyone charged with war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

When asked how she would apprehend former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military chief Ratko Mladic, she repeatedly said she would "use the measures available" without further explanation.

Unlike her predecessor, Justice Richard Goldstone, whom she replaced Oct. 1, she did not lambaste the United Nations. However, she pointed out that her trouble lies in the fact that an international tribunal does not have its own law enforcement infrastructure and must depend on the UN and the individual states.

She expressed hope that her job would be more legal than political.

In court, the tribunal heard the testimony of three more witnesses who claimed that Dusko Tadic was working at a police checkpoint in Prijedor from June to August 1992, a period of time, according to the prosecution, when Tadic committed war crimes at three prison camps.

Rajko Karanovic, a Serb truck driver who delivered food to the troops in Kozarac for 40 days from the end of May through the beginning of July 1992, said he passed through Tadic's checkpoint three or four times a day and frequently saw Tadic on duty.

Karanovic also said he delivered food to the guards at the Trnopolje prison camp. he said he never saw Tadic at the camp or heard that Tadic was a guard there.

On cross examination, prosecutor Grant Nieman tried to discredit the witness by suggesting he too took part in ethnic cleansing. Neiman questioned Karanovic about violently evicting a Muslim woman and her child from an apartment and then taking over her apartment. The witness denied that the takeover was violent. But the line of questioning once again brought to the fore the horrors of ethnic cleansing:

Neiman suggested Karanovic, armed with a knife and a machine gun, burst into the apartment where the woman was alone with her ten-year-old daughter. According to Neiman's version, Karanovic held a machine gun to the 10-year-old girl's head and told them to get out. Then he put the gun to the mother's head and said if they didn't get out they'd be killed. Karanovic denied the incident.

The second witness, Slavica Lukic, a Serb from Prijedor, said she lived just a few meters from the checkpoint where Tadic is said to have been working. She said she saw Tadic there frequently in June 1992. She said he helped her travel from work and back by waving down cars at the checkpoint and telling them to give her a ride. She also said that during his shifts, Tadic frequently walked to her house for a cup of coffee and a little chat. She said he never talked about politics, never expressed extreme nationalist views and never said he hated Muslims.

The third witness, Nada Vacina, a Serb, said she often saw Tadic at the checkpoint during the second half of June 1992. She and her mother-in-law traveled to the village once a week to get water and supplies. She said if Tadic was at the end of his shift, he'd give here a ride in his police car.

On cross-examination, Prosecutor Alan Tieger quizzed Vacina about Serbs taking over Muslim apartments. She said she didn't know much about the thousands of Muslims from Prijedor who ended up in the prison camps. She insisted she had many Muslim and Croat friends who never went to any camps and who are alive and well to this day. Tieger also questioned her about Tadic's apartment and whether she knew it had been owned by a Muslim, taken over by Serbs, and given to Tadic.

• Nikola Petrovic, a Serb police officer from Banja Luka, corroborated what previous defense witnesses have said -- that Tadic moved to Banja Luka at the time his hometown Kozarac was being attacked by Serbs. Prosecutors say Tadic participated in that attack. But several defense witnesses so far have said Tadic moved to Banja Luka after the attack started. Petrovic said he never heard Tadic express extreme nationalist views or any hatred of Muslims. When Petrovic said he saw a newspaper and read a headline: "Dusko Tadic War Criminal," he laughed because "it was incredible. This was just a big lie."
• Borka Rakic, a Serb lawyer whose sister is married to Tadic's brother, also said Tadic moved to Banja Luka during the attack on Kozarac. She identified a picture of a house, which another defense witness identified as Tadic's house in Banja Luka. Rakic agred that she never heard Tadic express extreme nationalist views or hatred of Muslims. On cross examination, prosecutor Grant Neiman suggested Rakic learned how to testify by watching other defense witnesses on television in Bosnia. Rakic, however, denied that claim, saying she only watches this trial once in a while.

October 4
Defense attorneys continued to produce alibi witnesses who claim they knew Dusko Tadic and worked with him in the second half of 1992.

Four witnesses took the stand:

Tomislav Dasic, a Serb agricultural engineer, said that he, Tadic, and a female surveyor were part of a commission charged with inspecting abandoned houses in the Kozarac area to determine which could be used to house incoming Serb refugees. Between Oct 1 and Dec. 15 of 1992, they worked at least three or four days a week, usually for six or seven hours a day, he said.

Dasic claimed that he never heard Tadic express any extreme nationalist views, even though he admitted that he felt Tadic would be entitled to such views, due to the "turbulent times."

Nada Vlacina, a Serb woman who lives in Prijedor and originally testified Thursday, was briefly recalled by prosecutor Alan Tieger for additional recross.

She was asked about her husband and his involvement with the Serbian army. Vlacina said that her husband suffered from health problems, and was not mobilized until April 94.

Witness Y, a Serb mechanical engineer, told the court that he and his family had been forced to flee from their predominantly Muslim region in Bosnia in June 1992, after his father's house was burned down. The approximately seventy Serb families from his village made their way to the Prijedor region, arriving on August 2, 1992. Eventually, they were assigned vacant homes in the Kozarac area.

Y said he first met Dusko Tadic in mid August of 1992, when he acted as a representative for the new settlers at the local commune. He denied that either Tadic or other party officials ever tried to force any specific political thoughts on others. He said that Tadic was elected secretary of the commune because he was one of the few local Serbs, and he knew everybody from before the conflict. Y claimed Tadic was only interested in bringing life back to Kozarac.

Y said he saw Tadic in Kozarac at the police station almost every day during this period, when both men worked as reserve policemen. He said he is sure that Tadic never spent time at Trnopolje camp because that area was not in their jurisdiction. He also said that Tadic appeared to him to be "very normal."

Prosecutor Alan Tieger requested that he be allowed to postpone cross-examination of this witness until Tuesday, to give the prosecution some additional time to prepare. The judges decided to grant the request.

Dusan Vajagic, a Serb refugee who now lives in Kozarac, Vajagic is a car mechanic and professional fireman. He, like Witness Y, described how he, his family, and other Serbs were driven out of their homes in late July of 1992. On Aug. 2, he was part of a group of some 100 families who arrived in the Kozarac area, where he was assigned an abandoned house.

Vajagic met the defendant at the end of August or the beginning of September in 1992, when he joined the Kozarac reserve police force. He later joined the local SDS party, serving as secretary (Tadic was president). Vajagic said he saw Tadic frequently at party meetings, and that Tadic was primarily concerned with rebuilding Kozarac and organizing life there. He denied that Tadic was involved with the Trnopolje camp, and described the defendant as a "family man, willing and eager to help people, a good man, never involved in conflict or clashes."

The last twenty-five minutes of this witness's direct testimony was in closed session.

On cross-examination, Vajagic told prosecutor Grant Niemann that he had no knowledge of the Muslims who had once lived in the Kozarac area, but admitted that he knew Serbs were originally in the minority there. He also admitted that Tadic was "an important man" in the area, and that the defendant organized local political meetings.

Cross examination of this witness will continue on Tuesday, in a closed session.