STILL NO ACCESS TO ENTIRE COLLECTION OF SERBIA'S SUPREME DEFENSE COUNCIL

The outcome of the Bosnian Genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was seriously affected by the failure to gain access to all confidential documents detailing minutes of meetings of the Serbian Supreme Defense Council.

The International Criminal Tribunal never received complete archive of Supreme Defense Council minutes from Serbia. Many "sessions" are missing, take a look here. 

According to the explanation given by Sir Geoffrey Nice, former prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic:

"First, it is important to note that Serbia did not hand over to the Prosecution (OTP) the complete collection of SDC [Supreme Defence Council] records. For example, for the year 1995 the OTP received recordings for only about half of all the sessions held by SDC. Further, some of the SDC records were not handed over in their full stenographically recorded form but were produced as extended minutes. That means that they were shorter than steno-notes but longer than the regular minutes. The dates of the missing meetings or the meetings where this lesser form of record was provided, as I recall, were significant – namely dates leading up to, surrounding and in the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre. The full records of those meetings need yet to be provided. At the same time, these documents, significant as they are, do not constitute a single body of evidence that will explain once and for all what happened and who was culpable. They do provide a much fuller context and provide some very valuable testimonials of things that were said by Milosevic and others. In their un-redacted form they would point all who are interested (not just governments and lawyers) to other documents that have never been provided and that might well be more candid than the words of those at the SD Council meetings who knew they were being recorded by a stenographer. Second, it should also be remembered that there are other protected document collections and individual documents which were, and still are, protected by direct agreements between Belgrade and the former OTP Prosecutor, i.e. they were not protected by the Trial Chamber. These documents are difficult now to identify but if and when Bosnia-Herzegovina decides to reopen the ICJ case it will be essential to require Serbia and/or the ICTY to produce all those documents for the ICJ."

If the ICJ's Bosnian Genocide judgement was not based on full disclosure of evidence, who is there to say that Serbia was not directly responsible for the genocide that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina?