October 21
The Tribunal was not in session.

October 22
The trial shifted back to The Netherlands after a week of testimony via a satellite video link from the Bosnian town of Banja Luka. The defense continued to presented alibi witnesses to convince the court that Dusko Tadic couldn't have committed the war crimes with which he's charged.

Highlights:

• Joso Popovic, a Serb refugee who was the vice-president of the local SDS board at the same time that Tadic was president, denied that Tadic was the commander of the Trnopolje detention camp He also denied that either he or Tadic were involved in planning for the cleansing of non-Serbs from the Kozarac region. But he admitted that Sasha, the elder of the witness' two sons, worked at the camp as part of his mobilization by the Bosnian Serb army. A brief part of Popovic's testimony was heard in closed session.
• Sinisa Popovic, the 22-year-old son of the previous witness, supported his father's testimony. And like his father, he was also questioned briefly in closed session.
• Drago Jankovic, the defendant's cousin, testified that his army unit was assigned "to help Serb and Muslim civilians who were in danger." He repeated that Tadic worked as a traffic policeman at the Orlavci checkpoint the summer of 1992.
• On cross-examination, Jankovic said some things that were perhaps a little hard for the judges to swallow. For one thing, he maintained that the shelling of Kozarac -- which other witnesses have maintained took place over three to four days -- lasted no more than three-quarters of a single day, and even then consisted only of brief periods of actual shelling. Jankovic claimed that he and the other Serb soldiers were only there to help Serbs and non-Serbs alike escape injury. When asked about the Keraterm, Omarska, and Trnopolje detention camps, Jankovic said that he only knew that civilians were bussed to Prijedor, and had no idea what happened to them after that.
• Ljubomir Tadic, one of Tadic's three older brothers, began his testimony at the end of the day, giving details of his family's life in Kozarac.

October 23
Ljubo Tadic denied that his brother, the defendant, had any part in the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from the Kozarac area in 1992 and gave a detailed account of much of the defendant's whereabouts during that year.

But on cross examination, the witness had to admit that he wasn't with his brother all the time and he was forced to deny that he practiced pro-Serb nationalism himself.

According to Tadic, his brother never showed much interest in politics, even though in 1991 he joined the SDS, the political party lead by Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader charged by the tribunal with genocide and other war crimes.

Echoing other witnesses, Tadic said his family got along well with its mostly-Muslim neighbors, though he did admit that the political climate chilled a bit in 1991, especially after his brother allegedly received a threatening letter from the "young Muslims of Kozarac," promising the start of "a Holy Jihad," or holy war.

Nonetheless, Tadic said his brother remained in Kozarac until the day before the town was shelled. He regularly visited the city because he opened a wholesale beverage distributorship in part of the family home, the same building where his brother's cafe was located

Tadic was in Banja Luka when the shelling began, and said his brother's family was reunited there on May 23, 1992. He said he and his brother returned to Kozarac twice in the coming weeks, once about June 1 or 2, and again three or four days later. On the first occasion, they found evidence of damage from the shelling, but most of their possessions remained intact. By the second trip, however, their premises had been looted. Ljubo had lost over three hundred crates of beer and Dusko lost most of the possessions from his coffee bar.

Ljubo Tadic backed up the defendant's account of his whereabouts after the shelling of Kozarac in May 1992. He said his brother joined the traffic police in Prijedor on June 16, and eventually ended up working with newly arrived refugees back in Kozarac. The witness himself was also mobilized on June 16, and spent the next years in and out of Banja Luka.

On cross examination, Ljubo Tadic admitted that some of what he knows about his brother's comings and going during the summer of 1992 are from what others told him, although he insisted that he had seen his brother regularly in Banja Luka, Prijedor, and Kozarac.

This witness was also put on the defensive about statements he might have made in the past about Muslims starting a "jihad" against Christians and that any Muslim massacres were just retaliation for Serb massacres during World War II. Ljubo Tadic didn't admit making those statements, but he didn't completely disassociate himself from them, either.

Finally, Ljubo Tadic vigorously denied that either he or his brother had helped to plan and prepare for the Serb attack on Kozarac.

October 24
The defense shifted gears today, as his attorneys moved from alibi testimony to an expert witness.

Three witnesses testified. The first two -- Pero Opacic and Janko Opacic -- were called in a closed session in the morning.

The third, Willem Wagenaar, a professor of psychology at the University of Leiden (a Dutch city near The Hague), is considered one of the leading experts in the field of identification and was originally contacted by the prosecution. Because of the questions he raised, prosecutors decided not to use him.

Wagenaar has testified many times in the past in both Dutch and international cases, including the "Ivan the Terrible" case in Israel, in which a Polish-born U.S. retired autoworker was accused of being an infamous World War II concentration camp guard.

Though the prosecution presented some 52 witnesses who identified Dusko Tadic in the courtroom or through a photographic line-up, Wagenaar said that most of those witnesses cannot be relied upon because they had known the defendant previously. He said research has shown that it is common for witnesses who have known a suspect before a crime to confuse him with someone whom they subsequently see commit that crime.

Four witnesses identified Tadic through a photo line-up and they didn't know him before the conflict. Wagenaar acknowledged that those identifications were significant but still problematic. He said they could have received subliminal clues by investigators or the media.

Much of Professor Wagenaar's testimony consisted of the witness and defense attorney Michail Wladimiroff going over some 50 "rules" investigators should follow in order to correctly administer a photo line-up identification test. These rules are from a textbook written by this witness. Among the rules: Investigators who administer the line-up shouldn't know which photo represents the accused. Witnesses should have to make an identification quickly and not be given a lot of time to think about it. Witnesses should be told that it's possible there is no photo of the accused in the line-up. And witnesses who've been given this test should not be allowed to interact with other witnesses who have yet to take it.

By these standards, the identification methods used against Tadic are lacking, Wagenaar said.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger begin his cross-examination in the final half hour of the day, and most of that time was spent clarifying the witness' prior relationship with prosecutors, apparently to eliminate any implication of prosecution wrong-doing.

October 25
Moments before defendant Dusko Tadic took the stand in his own defense, the prosecution was forced to admit to the court that the evidence of one of their most powerful witnesses against the defendant could no longer be relied upon.

Shortly before lunch, the court went into a closed session. After the midday break, prosecutor Grant Niemann made the stunning announcement that as a result of an on-going investigation prosecutors had concluded that prosecution witness "L" -- who originally testified in August, and was recalled in September --had lied on the stand.

The witness admitted he was lying when he said that he saw Bosnian Serb defendant Dusko Tadic committing atrocities at a camp in northwest Bosnia in 1992.

"As a consequence, the prosecution feels we can no longer support him as a witness of truth," said Niemann. "We invite the chamber to disregard his testimony entirely, and in relation to those matters the defendant has no case to answer."

Niemann called tribunal investigator Robert Reid to explain what had happened. Reid, the head investigator in the Tadic case, told the court that he had arranged a meeting that morning between witness "L" and Pero Opacic and Janko Opacic -- two defense witnesses #35 and 36 who testified in closed session Thursday morning.

At first, according to Reid, witness "L" insisted that he did not know either Opacic. But after leaving them alone together for some 25 minutes, Reid testified that "L" confessed that Pero was his brother and Janko was his father.

According to Reid, witness "L"/Drago Opacic apologized for lying, and claimed he'd been "set up by the Bosnians." He said that he had been captured by the army of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and was beaten by military interrogators who then ordered him to lie about having been in the Trnopolje detention camp. He claimed he was shown video footage of Tadic and the camp, and was interrogated for seven hours per day for a month, until he signed a statement saying he'd been a guard there. He told Reid that if he hadn't signed this false confession, he would have been executed.

Opacic testified in August that he was a guard at Trnopolje camp and took part in gang rapes and summary executions of prisoners along with Tadic. His testimony, among the most compelling of the 75 prosecution witnesses, included details of Tadic shooting elderly men at point-blank range and raping young girls.

Reid offered no explanation as to why Bosnian authorities would do what Opacic said they did.

Prosecutors immediately withdrew charges against Tadic relating to alleged atrocities at Trnopolje. Tadic still faces a string of murder and torture charges relating to alleged atrocities in and around two other camps in the region.

The three-judge tribunal panel has the power to impose a maximum $10,000 fine and or one-year imprisonment on Opacic for perjury.

Tadic's Testimony: Under direct examination by Steven Kay, the defendant spent the afternoon going through his life prior to the fall of Kozarac in 1992. He said that most of his friends as a child had been Muslims or Croats and that he never thought anything about this because that was the way his father had raised him.

The defendant appeared to be relaxed as he spoke. The two tribunal security guards who have been sitting on either side of the defendant throughout the trial have followed him to the witness stand.

Tadic denied that he was the karate champion that others him as described, claiming that he seldom took part in competitions and that his brothers achieved a higher level of proficiency than he did. Numerous prosecution witnesses have testified that local papers frequently mentioned Tadic's Karate prowess.

Describing pre-war Kozarac, Tadic recalled that people of every ethnic nationality lived together peacefully. His coffee bar was very popular among non-Serbs, especially young Muslims, and never would have survived if it only welcomed Serbs.

Dusko Tadic recalled his friendship with Emir Karabasic, whom he is charged with murdering. He said he and Karabasic were as close as brothers and often vacationed together. Other witnesses have said that this relationship appeared to cool in late 1991 and early 1992. Tadic denied this, claiming the two men simply could not see each other as often because Karabasic was having problems at work.

But Tadic acknowledged a change in Kozarac as the conflict drew closer. He described the threatening letter he allegedly received in 1990 from "young Muslims of Kozarac," and said he has no idea who sent it.

He downplayed his membership in the SDS, the political party led by Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader charged by the tribunal with genocide and other war crimes, saying he never read party literature or even knew if the party had a statute. It would have been impossible for him to be active in the party, he said, because there was no local chapter in Kozarac at that time, and party rules would have limited involvement in the Prijedor chapter to those living in Prijedor itself. He said that he had believed at this time that all of the major political parties (the SDS, SDA, and HDZ) were working together to eradicate the remnants of Communism in Yugoslavia, not plotting any kind of ethnic division.

By April of 1992, however, Tadic said that it was apparent something was happening. He said that people -- particularly young people -- began to carry weapons on the street, often quite openly. And he said those in Kozarac who had friends or relatives elsewhere were leaving town, Serb and non-Serb alike -- which is why he sent his wife and their two daughters to stay with a friend.

Before defense attorney Kay could get to the actual fall of Kozarac, however, court was adjourned for the day. Tadic will pick up at that point as his direct testimony continues on Monday morning.

In the morning, defense expert witness Willem Wagenaar concluded his testimony. Once again, in a very even-handed manner, he stressed that the claims of dozens of prosecution witnesses that they had seen Dusko Tadic either committing war crimes or at the crime scenes could not necessarily be trusted. He repeated that the only valuable identifications in this case are the four made by persons who didn't know Tadic prior to the conflict, but also repeated that there may have been irregularities with the testing procedures used to obtain those positive identifications that could render them meaningless.