Nebojsa Vlajic says to Blic the indictment against the CI SDP leader Oliver Ivanovic and four Serbs is based on unreliable witnesses’ testimonies and that there is no physical evidence.
The testimonies were written on about 5,000 pages and handed to Ivanovic’s lawyer on Friday afternoon. Vlajić says for Blic that he received over eleven binders, each about four inches thick containing up to 500 pages of testimony.
– These are statements of dozens of witnesses. What I read is unreliable because there were no witnesses and eyewitnesses, but every one of them says that they did not see Oliver at the scene and that someone else said that he saw him – explains Vlajić.
The indictment, written on 50 pages, accuses Ivanovic of ordering the murder of four Albanians in Mitrovica on 14 April 1999 and that he instigated the murder of ten Albanians who were killed in riots in Mitrovica on 3 February 2000. The first case is treated as a war crime, and the other as aggravated murder.
– Special Prosecutor argues that in the first case, occurred in April 1999, Ivanovic was able to order the killing of four Albanians. It does not state that Ivanovic had some function. For the second event the Prosecutor claims that Ivanovic was the commander of the “Bridge watchers”, although there is no evidence for this, as Ivanovic was only a member of the Serbian National Council. Oliver Ivanovic has spent the entire war in a suit and tie and in no way he was involved in war and conflict – says Vlajić.
He argues that the witnesses accusing Ivanovic of war crimes are unreliable. Although due to the interest of his client, he does not want to reveal the names of witnesses. Vlajić says that it is enough to say that the Tribunal in The Hague refused to accept the testimony of one of them, marking him as unreliable, and that Natasa Kandic said for one of them that he is compromised.
