Lost Images
April 2002 – 29’00”
VOICE-OVER
2.24 Familiar images. They are shown time and again in reports on the fall of the Muslim enclave in Srebrenica in 1995. They were made by Serb reporter Zoran Petrovic. 02.34
02.41
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ (Serbian journalist)
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: This is my original cassette.
INT: That is everything you made in Srebrenica
PETROVIĆ: Yes. This is it.
02.52
VOICE-OVER
2.54 Petrovic’s footage was used in court during the trials of Bosnian Serbs at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The Dutch Institute for War Documentation also used this footage for its investigation into the role played by Dutchbat during the fall of Srebrenica. 03.08
03.12
INTERVIEW
MARK HARMON (Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal):
(ENGLISH)
INT: How come images, real images, are so strong as evidence?
HARMON: Well, because first of all it’s like being an eye-witness to the crime. It invites you in, back in time, to events that were taking place in the past. It’s like being essentially an eye-witness.
03.34
VOICE-OVER
3.34 The tape everyone used is 61 minutes. But is this the only footage? Why are there no images of the mass execution of so many Muslim men that took place that same week? Moreover, the so-called original material shows a number of black gaps. 03.51
03.57
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ (Serbian journalist):
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: If I filmed anything that you are eventually looking for, and others, I wouldn’t be with you today. They would… Look, who is so stupid to let somebody film massacre and let him go..
04.08
VOICE-OVER
4.08 Investigations by an IKON team prove that there is another tape with new footage. These new images fill in the black gaps and provide clear evidence that genocide did occur. 04.18
TXT ON/SCR: THE MISSING FOOTAGE or LOST IMAGES
VOICE-OVER
4.24 July 12, 1995. Dutchbat had already surrendered Srebrenica to General Mladic. The battalion watched on helplessly as the Bosnian Serb commander separated the Muslim men from their women and children. There were no journalists present, bar one: a Serb journalist who was allowed into the area. 04.45
04.45
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: Yeah, can I ask you something for independent television for Belgrade?
VOICE-OVER
4.50 He filmed these scenes with his video-8 camera. They would later turn out to be of crucial importance and prove what went on in and around Srebrenica at the time. This material corroborates the evidence given to the Yugoslav Tribunal by survivors. 05.06
05:11 We travelled to Belgrade to meet Zoran Petrovic, the journalist who filmed these images. Despite being an eye-witness, this was the first time he’d been interviewed about his own film. 05.23
05.23
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ (Serbian journalist):
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: The Serbs entered Srebrenica 11th of July in the morning. And I came there 12th, in the afternoon. And I started right away to film. 05.37
05.41 And I asked one officer, it was just when they went in the compound: What’s going on? 05.50
05.51
PETROVIĆ: What’s going on today here?
OFFICER: You know what’s going on.
PETROVIĆ: I just came here.
OFFICER: You know what’s …
05.55
05.56
PETROVIĆ: I said: No, I just arrived. And he didn’t want to discuss with me.
INT: But what was he meaning, do you think?
PETROVIĆ Well, nothing special. It was enough to see the amount of people…
INT: But he said: You know what’s going on, he said. He means everybody…
PETROVIĆ: I said: I’m from Belgrade independent television.
INT: Yes, that was correct.
PETROVIĆ: So you can interpret and translate this phrase in many ways.
06.25
VOICE-OVER
6.26 However, the Serbian soldiers trusted Petrovic. They even allowed him to continue filming while they combed the hills for Muslim men. 06.34
06.39
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: You were privileged, a little bit…
PETROVIĆ: I knew some people there, you know.
INT: Right.
PETROVIĆ: You know, this is not a sealed frontier. Although Milosovic had bad relations with Serbs in that period, in Bosnia. You find some people you know, and you find a way to enter, you know.
06.56
VOICE-OVER
7.00 A careful examination of Petrovic’s tape reveals a number of black gaps during some crucial moments, cutting right through scenes and camera movements. It’s as if scenes were erased or taped over afterwards. 07.14
07.14
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: I was always checked with the people, why you have some, all, you know how are the Serbs: Always, everybody wants to be smart, you know, important. So, some, some guys said I don’t know nobody there, but says: What are you doing? Let me see it. You film this group, specially this group, you filmed this. It’s enough. Now, even in Bratunac afterwards. This, you, you erase this, you know.
07.43
VOICE-OVER
7.44 Petrovic claims that he did not erase the rough footage at a later stage, but is he telling the truth?
07.50
07.57
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: How did you erase it, because part is black. How did you do that?
PETROVIĆ: No, you just put…
INT: You had to do it there, or later, in the cutting?
PETROVIĆ: It’s also, it’s… Something was there by the road house, you know, where they were sitting and something was there. You know how you do it. You have this… on the camera. You close it, and you leave it roll. That’s all, nothing.
08.25
VOICE-OVER
8.28 If you erase a video tape on the spot and continue filming with the cap on the lens, then sounds can be heard during the gaps. This explains how sounds can be heard of people in a living room during one of the gaps: it’s the voice of Petrovic himself and a couple of children. 08.46
08.54
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: What was happening?
PETROVIĆ: But, believe me, it’s not so impor…
INT: No, what I mean is this. Your eyes were not closed. So you know, you are the only one almost, what was happening there.
PETROVIĆ: No, it happened what I have on film. Even this part of one minute, or 30 seconds, it’s not something… in these 30 seconds that somebody killed a group of people and I have not to film it. It’s too stupid, and too perverse, you know.
09.23
VOICE-OVER
09.27 This denial only provokes more questions. Why the gaps and the strange sound fragments? And why did Petrovic only manage to shoot one tape during two whole days? There has to be more material. Far away from the Yugoslav Tribunal, we visited a Frenchman called Jean René Ruez. He was the man who compared all available film material with the survivors’ testimonies for the Srebrenica trials. 09.49
09.51
INTERVIEW
JEAN RENE RUEZ: (Head of Srebrenica Investigation Team)
RUEZ: On this specific scene, if you return back a little bit… When he closes on the group of prisoners, if you look frame by frame, you will see that with group of soldiers… little bit closing on some prisoners there… So God knows what happened after. Do they beat up after that someone, do they lead someone away? Or, is it just of no interest for Mr Petrovic and he thinks it’s not worth being shown to anyone.
10.22
10.29
INT: Was it done here, or at the place there, or…
RUEZ: No, this was done later. I mean, this cut was done later.
INT: Yes…
RUEZ: Yes, sure.
10.34
VOICE-OVER
10.36 On July 14, Petrovic left Srebrenica late in the afternoon while a lot of shooting was still going on at the enclave. Petrovic arrived in Belgrade that evening and went straight to the cutting room at Studio B, an independent TV network. He was given 28 minutes’ air time. 10.54
10.56
INTERVIEW
PETROVIC: (ENGLISH)
10.56
PETROVIC: My only limitation was the quality of the pictures. So everything important is sometimes bad quality pictures was in, because it’s a… I felt it’s important, for the whole picture.
11.12
VOICE-OVER
11.12 Robert Block was one of the western journalists stationed in Belgrade at the time. He is currently working in America and we went to see him there. He wrote an article on Petrovic’s film for the British daily The Independent. In it, he described scenes of piled-up corpses. To him, this was irrefutable proof of the Srebrenica genocide. Different footage, in short. According to Block, he first heard about this film from his Serbian colleague Dragan Cicic. 11.41
11.43
INTERVIEW
ROBERT BLOCK: (former journalist with The Independent, now with The Wallstreet Journal)
BLOCK: Dragan said: There was this documentary last night on tape that seemed to show certain things. I said: How can we see it? So I think it was Nikolai who ended up calling Studio B, who said we could come in and see the footage. After we had seen the footage, which was interesting, I was desperate to try and get the BBC… and I knew the people very well, I was working in the British media, and I called them up and I said: You have to get copies of this tape. Because what I was afraid of, by the time my story came out the next day, the tape would disappear. I left messages for the BBC, and they didn’t call me back until really late that night. And they said that they would do it tomorrow.
12.23
VOICE-OVER
12.24 Block looked at Petrovic’s rough footage several times. He clearly remembers one particular shot of corpses. 12.31
12.33
INTERVIEW
ROBERT BLOCK:
12.33
BLOCK: A scene of a lot of men, keeled up, were fallen at the foot of a wall outside a garage, outside a building. It first, because it seemed to be, what I remember is that they were driving by in a car, because the camera was moving. And you saw them as they approached this building what looked like piles of possessions which had fallen. And there was something, and I remember there was a voice-over in that particular segment, and it said many people had died here. So we said: Were those clothes… And we asked the guy who was at the editing… So back up, back up, and go very slowly. And we went frame by frame into it until we said: Stop. And there you could see in freeze frame that they weren’t piles of clothing and possessions, they were bodies.
13.25
VOICE-OVER
13.26 Block’s Serbian colleague Dragan and his driver Nicola Cicic confirmed the existence of the scenes featuring the corpses. 13.34
13.34
INTERVIEW
DRAGAN CICIĆ: (journalist from Serbia):
(ENGLISH)
DRAGAN: What you saw in film was, I already told you, the actual scenes in the film that involved bodies, 10 to 15 people in front of a wall. 13.45
13.46
NIKOLA CICIĆ (Driver)
CICIC: They wanted to see those scenes a number of times. You could see blood on the garage wall, at about the height of a grown man. They were interested in that. 14.09
VOICE-OVER
14.10 So more film was shot on July 13, showing bodies piled up near an execution site. At least according to the three witnesses who saw it in the Studio B archives. But Petrovic continues to deny the existence of this other footage. 14.24
14.24
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ (journalist):
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: Look, it was in my interest to present the best material. Why I should hide things? Why? Tell me why I should hide this. Make me another question.
INT: Maybe because it was dangerous for the Bosnian Serbs to show the picture?
14.45
VOICE-OVER
14.46 Black gaps in the original film, and a new tape with bodies. Fantasy or reality? We can’t check, because the tape that Block saw no longer exists. When the BBC contacted Studio B about the tape the following morning, it was gone. 15.02
15.02
INTERVIEW
PETROVIC: (ENGLISH)
PETROVIC: It is more… Maybe the only case in the history of this television, that some programme disappeared. So the reasons are: Or maybe somebody took it to sell it. Or somebody was afraid, or somebody was menaced by, maybe police came and took it.
INT: I don’t know.
PETROVIC: Ask some Milosovic people.
15.27
VOICE-OVER
15.27 We started phoning around, in our search for the footage the world has never seen. A number of Serbian war refugees had moved to North America. Via contacts, we spoke to someone who had a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape showing the Studio B program in question.
This is the actual material, including advert captions at the bottom. Although the quality is poor, this film has no gaps. It shows a few new scenes that the Serbian’s must have considered too incriminating to release.
We showed the tape to Ruez. 16.06
16.17
INTERVIEW
JEAN RENE RUEZ: (Head of Srebrenica Investigation Team )
RUEZ: It’s always quite amazing to see something that you could only imagine.
16.22
VOICE-OVER
16.22 Ruez analysed lots of footage for the Yugoslav Tribunal. There is no better person to assess the value of this film. 16.31
16.33 This is part of the footage that was broadcast world-wide. An unfinished camera movement. And a black gap where material was erased. 16.43
16.49 The new material shows the same camera movement in full and the black gap is filled in. The camera pans to the hills, away from the firing tanks. If you look closely, you can see people on the hills. Falling bodies can be seen where the shells hit the ground. It looks like a group of people in flight. 17.07
17.07
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
RUEZ: So that’s em… anti-aircraft guns shooting inside the woods. It’s 30 mm shells that when they explode, hit the top of the trees, so the
(?) spreads down, and if there are people underneath, they can get severely hurt.
17.24
VOICE-OVER
17.34 In this film, a number of shots start making sense. One of the gaps turns out to feature a German shepherd dog. The Bosnian Serbs used these dogs to track down Muslims. 17.47
18:02 Important material according to Ruez… But there is more.
Opposite the Dutchbat compound in Potocari was a white building with a balcony. Everything that happened there must have been visible to the Dutchbat soldiers. On 13 July, Petrovic shot this footage of the white house.
Ostensibly it shows nothing significant, only people’s belongings like clothes.
But that changes when you watch our tape. The shot with the shell case has gone and has been replaced by scenes of men crowded together on the balcony. 18.36
18.48
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
INT: I go back.
RUEZ: Yeah, back, that’s a new shot with the prisoners on the balcony of a white house.
INT: This is the so-called white house?
RUEZ: Yes. It was packed with prisoners, that’s why there were all also sitting on the balcony. This house was used during two days. 12 and 13.
INT: So how important …
RUEZ: Indeed…
INT: …is this shot?
RUEZ: Two things. One is that it confirms that indeed the house was packed. It confirms testimonies of, I mean, all the women who saw their men in that place. But mainly since they are victims, but also part of one of the warring factions, so always have to take care of what people say. But mainly the testimony of Major Kingori. That confirms his comment when he says: Men are sitting on top each of another in the house. He is talking about the house, the place he could visit, he could enter that house. 19.46
FOOTAGE:
dB: (…) no good. No, I’m talking about the overcrowding in that place. Where all the men are being taken. It’s too crowded. They are sitting on each other, it’s not good. 20.00
20.03
RUEZ: So this is a photograph of the white house, when seen from the entrance of the UN compound. And this is photograph taken from inside the house from the balcony, and this is the view that one prisoner would have had when sitting on the balcony. 20.26
VOICE-OVER
20.26 The men who were packed into the white house could look straight at the Dutchbat soldiers. The majority of these men have not been seen or heard of since. 20.36
20.38 We showed the tape to Robert Block in New York. Because where are the shots of the corpses, the shots which Block and his Serbian colleagues saw at the time? 20.49
20.52
INTERVIEW
ROBERT BLOCK: (ENGLISH)
BLOCK: Here.
Yes, this was, this was one of the shots. This was a man, here. This was a man here. And we spent a lot of time, because the original I remember when we saw it, was a longer shot that you come up closer. And I believe as he’s… as in the voice-over, in his commentary, I believe he’s making something about large numbers of dead, if I’m not mistaken, in this scene.
21.30
FOOTAGE (with the serbian commentary of Zoran Petrovic himself)
“…dead muslimsoldiers and Serbs who returned from their positions”
21.40
BLOCK: This is clearly, what.. This contains some of the scenes that we originally described. Which later appeared to have disappeared.
21.48
VOICE-OVER
21.47 Here are the shots in question. In front of the door is a pile of corpses, or are we looking at clothing, after all? Ruez is in no doubt. They are corpses at an execution site. 21.58
21.59
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
RUEZ: That’s new.
INT: New what? I go back?
RUEZ: Yeah. This is new, so far. The rest is not fundamental, let’s say. But this is more than interesting.
With better quality it will come out. You can see a head, a torso, a… even a belt before the trousers. Especially this one.
INT: Yes.
RUEZ: Head, torso, arm, belt. The warehouse complex.
INT: This is the place…
RUEZ: The Sandici meadow in question is on the right. And this is the warehouse in its full size.
INT: But he drove here with the car?
RUEZ: They pass here, the moment he filmed they pass here. On this road towards Bratunac. 23.08
VOICE-OVER
23.08 The Kravica warehouse is one of the Bosnian Serbs most notorious execution sites. It was here that almost one thousand men were killed. 23.18
23.18
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
RUEZ: The two white spots that you see in the dark area is the back of the warehouse, it’s little windows. Through these windows they were throwing grenades inside. And through this opening people tried to run out. These bullet holes are the consequence of a massive shooting on these guys, who probably attempted to go out. So let’s imagine another situation. Shooting starting from the openings. First reaction: Try to get out.
INT: They were not shot from this side, where we are standing now?
RUEZ: Yes, they were. From the back of the building and from the front of the building, so here, when the killing is over, you have much more holes than here on the film.
INT: You mean they were still shooting there when this was filmed?
RUEZ: I’m going to show you something.
INT: Because I hear shots in the film.
RUEZ: Yes, yes. I have to compare with a photograph. So if you look at this window, it’s the first one at the left of this entrance. There is no bullet hole at all on this picture. If you take this picture, you have three bullet holes just underneath.
INT: But that picture…
RUEZ: And two more here. So between this moment and some time later, these bullet holes were added. Since the bullet holes are not close to this window at this moment, later on some survivor insider tried to jump out. Maybe when the grenades were thrown inside, because it was not in one process, it was in a, in several waves. Until they were convinced that everyone was dead inside.
VOICE-OVER
25:06 It seems nothing: just a few seconds of video tape. But how important are these images in fact? We showed them to the Chief Prosecutor, the American Mark Harmon, of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. 25.18
25.19
INTERVIEW
MARK HARMON (Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal):
(ENGLISH)
HARMON: That included crimes that were committed at the warehouse. And at the warehouse there were approximately 1,000 people that were massacred on the 13th of July 1995. Now those images that I saw are shocking images.
25.36
VOICE OVER
25:37 Shocking images, but how important are they in the light of the two Muslim survivors? 25.42
25.42
INTERVIEW
HARMON: (ENGLISH)
HARMON: The two witnesses who survived were Bosnian Muslims.
INT: They are in a way subjective, in that war, because they are part of a fighting group, right?
HARMON: They were civilians. They were not participants in the combat.
INT: But they are part of an ethnic group, right?
HARMON: They were Bosnian Muslims.
INT: Which are in war against the Serbs at that time.
HARMON: There was a… Correct.
INT: OK. Does that meant that that footage that we have, where you see that the people lying there dead, are civilians, that is a real proof, in fact.
HARMON: Well, it certainly corroborates what the witnesses have told us happened at that warehouse. Yes, what we were told was that these people were unarmed civilians in the warehouse, and they were murdered.
INT: How important is that picture then?
HARMON: It’s important because it corroborates the testimony of two witnesses who testified publicly in the trial of General Krstic about the events of the massacre at that warehouse.
INT: Mr Ruez said that it is of the highest interest, this shot. Is that correct?
HARMON: It’s very interesting footage, and it’s very important footage. Yes, were I to retry somebody from Srebrenica who was responsible for the massacre at the warehouse, I would use that, those images as evidence.
INT: Could it also, maybe in the future, be used for, against General Mladic, for example? This kind of material?
HARMON: It certainly could. It certainly could. I think it’s one of the values of that piece of film footage is this. In the Republika Srpska, in certain elements of that society, there is a denial that the massacres in Srebrenica took place. This is a very graphic image to confirm that the massacres took place. And it is important in that regard, to enlighten the community, the public, about what happened, and the public includes the Republika Srpska, because if there’s going to be any kind of reconciliation, the people have to address honestly and fairly what happened during the war.
INT: Is that a proof of, it is a massacre, because a lot of people involved, is that also kind of a proof of genocide in a way?
HARMON: Yes, absolutely.
28.07
VOICE-OVER
28:08 The first visual evidence of genocide, says Harmon. And material that will be used in further trials, possibly against General Mladic. 28.18
28.24 But one question remains: Why did Zoran Petrovic omit these images? And where is the real version of the original tape? 28.32
28.32
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: This is in the original, this. This part is in the original. This is not the original.
PETROVIĆ: You must tell me where you want to come to? Because this question is not a
journalistic question.
INT: I want to know if the original is the original.
PETROVIĆ: What the hell do you have with my original. Original is what… Imagine I don’t have this cassette at all. Did I film the people, who probably are missing, yes? So I have nothing to do with later on. I had honestly to film this, because in a frame of second I saw it. In a frame of second, you know? In a few seconds, you know? So if I was to do something bad, or to, I don’t know, I cannot understand what you are asking me.
INT: I can even understand and imagine that you say to yourself: I am taking a big risk. I don’t show this, because I have, in the latter stage, I have problems. I can even imagine that. But be honest about it.
PETROVIĆ: No, look. I don’t want to discuss anymore. I gave too much. Please.
INT: But it’s not…
PETROVIĆ This is my last word.
****
April 2002 – 29’00”
VOICE-OVER
2.24 Familiar images. They are shown time and again in reports on the fall of the Muslim enclave in Srebrenica in 1995. They were made by Serb reporter Zoran Petrovic. 02.34
02.41
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ (Serbian journalist)
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: This is my original cassette.
INT: That is everything you made in Srebrenica
PETROVIĆ: Yes. This is it.
02.52
VOICE-OVER
2.54 Petrovic’s footage was used in court during the trials of Bosnian Serbs at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The Dutch Institute for War Documentation also used this footage for its investigation into the role played by Dutchbat during the fall of Srebrenica. 03.08
03.12
INTERVIEW
MARK HARMON (Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal):
(ENGLISH)
INT: How come images, real images, are so strong as evidence?
HARMON: Well, because first of all it’s like being an eye-witness to the crime. It invites you in, back in time, to events that were taking place in the past. It’s like being essentially an eye-witness.
03.34
VOICE-OVER
3.34 The tape everyone used is 61 minutes. But is this the only footage? Why are there no images of the mass execution of so many Muslim men that took place that same week? Moreover, the so-called original material shows a number of black gaps. 03.51
03.57
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ (Serbian journalist):
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: If I filmed anything that you are eventually looking for, and others, I wouldn’t be with you today. They would… Look, who is so stupid to let somebody film massacre and let him go..
04.08
VOICE-OVER
4.08 Investigations by an IKON team prove that there is another tape with new footage. These new images fill in the black gaps and provide clear evidence that genocide did occur. 04.18
TXT ON/SCR: THE MISSING FOOTAGE or LOST IMAGES
VOICE-OVER
4.24 July 12, 1995. Dutchbat had already surrendered Srebrenica to General Mladic. The battalion watched on helplessly as the Bosnian Serb commander separated the Muslim men from their women and children. There were no journalists present, bar one: a Serb journalist who was allowed into the area. 04.45
04.45
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: Yeah, can I ask you something for independent television for Belgrade?
VOICE-OVER
4.50 He filmed these scenes with his video-8 camera. They would later turn out to be of crucial importance and prove what went on in and around Srebrenica at the time. This material corroborates the evidence given to the Yugoslav Tribunal by survivors. 05.06
05:11 We travelled to Belgrade to meet Zoran Petrovic, the journalist who filmed these images. Despite being an eye-witness, this was the first time he’d been interviewed about his own film. 05.23
05.23
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ (Serbian journalist):
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: The Serbs entered Srebrenica 11th of July in the morning. And I came there 12th, in the afternoon. And I started right away to film. 05.37
05.41 And I asked one officer, it was just when they went in the compound: What’s going on? 05.50
05.51
PETROVIĆ: What’s going on today here?
OFFICER: You know what’s going on.
PETROVIĆ: I just came here.
OFFICER: You know what’s …
05.55
05.56
PETROVIĆ: I said: No, I just arrived. And he didn’t want to discuss with me.
INT: But what was he meaning, do you think?
PETROVIĆ Well, nothing special. It was enough to see the amount of people…
INT: But he said: You know what’s going on, he said. He means everybody…
PETROVIĆ: I said: I’m from Belgrade independent television.
INT: Yes, that was correct.
PETROVIĆ: So you can interpret and translate this phrase in many ways.
06.25
VOICE-OVER
6.26 However, the Serbian soldiers trusted Petrovic. They even allowed him to continue filming while they combed the hills for Muslim men. 06.34
06.39
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: You were privileged, a little bit…
PETROVIĆ: I knew some people there, you know.
INT: Right.
PETROVIĆ: You know, this is not a sealed frontier. Although Milosovic had bad relations with Serbs in that period, in Bosnia. You find some people you know, and you find a way to enter, you know.
06.56
VOICE-OVER
7.00 A careful examination of Petrovic’s tape reveals a number of black gaps during some crucial moments, cutting right through scenes and camera movements. It’s as if scenes were erased or taped over afterwards. 07.14
07.14
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: I was always checked with the people, why you have some, all, you know how are the Serbs: Always, everybody wants to be smart, you know, important. So, some, some guys said I don’t know nobody there, but says: What are you doing? Let me see it. You film this group, specially this group, you filmed this. It’s enough. Now, even in Bratunac afterwards. This, you, you erase this, you know.
07.43
VOICE-OVER
7.44 Petrovic claims that he did not erase the rough footage at a later stage, but is he telling the truth?
07.50
07.57
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: How did you erase it, because part is black. How did you do that?
PETROVIĆ: No, you just put…
INT: You had to do it there, or later, in the cutting?
PETROVIĆ: It’s also, it’s… Something was there by the road house, you know, where they were sitting and something was there. You know how you do it. You have this… on the camera. You close it, and you leave it roll. That’s all, nothing.
08.25
VOICE-OVER
8.28 If you erase a video tape on the spot and continue filming with the cap on the lens, then sounds can be heard during the gaps. This explains how sounds can be heard of people in a living room during one of the gaps: it’s the voice of Petrovic himself and a couple of children. 08.46
08.54
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: What was happening?
PETROVIĆ: But, believe me, it’s not so impor…
INT: No, what I mean is this. Your eyes were not closed. So you know, you are the only one almost, what was happening there.
PETROVIĆ: No, it happened what I have on film. Even this part of one minute, or 30 seconds, it’s not something… in these 30 seconds that somebody killed a group of people and I have not to film it. It’s too stupid, and too perverse, you know.
09.23
VOICE-OVER
09.27 This denial only provokes more questions. Why the gaps and the strange sound fragments? And why did Petrovic only manage to shoot one tape during two whole days? There has to be more material. Far away from the Yugoslav Tribunal, we visited a Frenchman called Jean René Ruez. He was the man who compared all available film material with the survivors’ testimonies for the Srebrenica trials. 09.49
09.51
INTERVIEW
JEAN RENE RUEZ: (Head of Srebrenica Investigation Team)
RUEZ: On this specific scene, if you return back a little bit… When he closes on the group of prisoners, if you look frame by frame, you will see that with group of soldiers… little bit closing on some prisoners there… So God knows what happened after. Do they beat up after that someone, do they lead someone away? Or, is it just of no interest for Mr Petrovic and he thinks it’s not worth being shown to anyone.
10.22
10.29
INT: Was it done here, or at the place there, or…
RUEZ: No, this was done later. I mean, this cut was done later.
INT: Yes…
RUEZ: Yes, sure.
10.34
VOICE-OVER
10.36 On July 14, Petrovic left Srebrenica late in the afternoon while a lot of shooting was still going on at the enclave. Petrovic arrived in Belgrade that evening and went straight to the cutting room at Studio B, an independent TV network. He was given 28 minutes’ air time. 10.54
10.56
INTERVIEW
PETROVIC: (ENGLISH)
10.56
PETROVIC: My only limitation was the quality of the pictures. So everything important is sometimes bad quality pictures was in, because it’s a… I felt it’s important, for the whole picture.
11.12
VOICE-OVER
11.12 Robert Block was one of the western journalists stationed in Belgrade at the time. He is currently working in America and we went to see him there. He wrote an article on Petrovic’s film for the British daily The Independent. In it, he described scenes of piled-up corpses. To him, this was irrefutable proof of the Srebrenica genocide. Different footage, in short. According to Block, he first heard about this film from his Serbian colleague Dragan Cicic. 11.41
11.43
INTERVIEW
ROBERT BLOCK: (former journalist with The Independent, now with The Wallstreet Journal)
BLOCK: Dragan said: There was this documentary last night on tape that seemed to show certain things. I said: How can we see it? So I think it was Nikolai who ended up calling Studio B, who said we could come in and see the footage. After we had seen the footage, which was interesting, I was desperate to try and get the BBC… and I knew the people very well, I was working in the British media, and I called them up and I said: You have to get copies of this tape. Because what I was afraid of, by the time my story came out the next day, the tape would disappear. I left messages for the BBC, and they didn’t call me back until really late that night. And they said that they would do it tomorrow.
12.23
VOICE-OVER
12.24 Block looked at Petrovic’s rough footage several times. He clearly remembers one particular shot of corpses. 12.31
12.33
INTERVIEW
ROBERT BLOCK:
12.33
BLOCK: A scene of a lot of men, keeled up, were fallen at the foot of a wall outside a garage, outside a building. It first, because it seemed to be, what I remember is that they were driving by in a car, because the camera was moving. And you saw them as they approached this building what looked like piles of possessions which had fallen. And there was something, and I remember there was a voice-over in that particular segment, and it said many people had died here. So we said: Were those clothes… And we asked the guy who was at the editing… So back up, back up, and go very slowly. And we went frame by frame into it until we said: Stop. And there you could see in freeze frame that they weren’t piles of clothing and possessions, they were bodies.
13.25
VOICE-OVER
13.26 Block’s Serbian colleague Dragan and his driver Nicola Cicic confirmed the existence of the scenes featuring the corpses. 13.34
13.34
INTERVIEW
DRAGAN CICIĆ: (journalist from Serbia):
(ENGLISH)
DRAGAN: What you saw in film was, I already told you, the actual scenes in the film that involved bodies, 10 to 15 people in front of a wall. 13.45
13.46
NIKOLA CICIĆ (Driver)
CICIC: They wanted to see those scenes a number of times. You could see blood on the garage wall, at about the height of a grown man. They were interested in that. 14.09
VOICE-OVER
14.10 So more film was shot on July 13, showing bodies piled up near an execution site. At least according to the three witnesses who saw it in the Studio B archives. But Petrovic continues to deny the existence of this other footage. 14.24
14.24
INTERVIEW
PETROVIĆ (journalist):
(ENGLISH)
PETROVIĆ: Look, it was in my interest to present the best material. Why I should hide things? Why? Tell me why I should hide this. Make me another question.
INT: Maybe because it was dangerous for the Bosnian Serbs to show the picture?
14.45
VOICE-OVER
14.46 Black gaps in the original film, and a new tape with bodies. Fantasy or reality? We can’t check, because the tape that Block saw no longer exists. When the BBC contacted Studio B about the tape the following morning, it was gone. 15.02
15.02
INTERVIEW
PETROVIC: (ENGLISH)
PETROVIC: It is more… Maybe the only case in the history of this television, that some programme disappeared. So the reasons are: Or maybe somebody took it to sell it. Or somebody was afraid, or somebody was menaced by, maybe police came and took it.
INT: I don’t know.
PETROVIC: Ask some Milosovic people.
15.27
VOICE-OVER
15.27 We started phoning around, in our search for the footage the world has never seen. A number of Serbian war refugees had moved to North America. Via contacts, we spoke to someone who had a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape showing the Studio B program in question.
This is the actual material, including advert captions at the bottom. Although the quality is poor, this film has no gaps. It shows a few new scenes that the Serbian’s must have considered too incriminating to release.
We showed the tape to Ruez. 16.06
16.17
INTERVIEW
JEAN RENE RUEZ: (Head of Srebrenica Investigation Team )
RUEZ: It’s always quite amazing to see something that you could only imagine.
16.22
VOICE-OVER
16.22 Ruez analysed lots of footage for the Yugoslav Tribunal. There is no better person to assess the value of this film. 16.31
16.33 This is part of the footage that was broadcast world-wide. An unfinished camera movement. And a black gap where material was erased. 16.43
16.49 The new material shows the same camera movement in full and the black gap is filled in. The camera pans to the hills, away from the firing tanks. If you look closely, you can see people on the hills. Falling bodies can be seen where the shells hit the ground. It looks like a group of people in flight. 17.07
17.07
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
RUEZ: So that’s em… anti-aircraft guns shooting inside the woods. It’s 30 mm shells that when they explode, hit the top of the trees, so the
(?) spreads down, and if there are people underneath, they can get severely hurt.
17.24
VOICE-OVER
17.34 In this film, a number of shots start making sense. One of the gaps turns out to feature a German shepherd dog. The Bosnian Serbs used these dogs to track down Muslims. 17.47
18:02 Important material according to Ruez… But there is more.
Opposite the Dutchbat compound in Potocari was a white building with a balcony. Everything that happened there must have been visible to the Dutchbat soldiers. On 13 July, Petrovic shot this footage of the white house.
Ostensibly it shows nothing significant, only people’s belongings like clothes.
But that changes when you watch our tape. The shot with the shell case has gone and has been replaced by scenes of men crowded together on the balcony. 18.36
18.48
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
INT: I go back.
RUEZ: Yeah, back, that’s a new shot with the prisoners on the balcony of a white house.
INT: This is the so-called white house?
RUEZ: Yes. It was packed with prisoners, that’s why there were all also sitting on the balcony. This house was used during two days. 12 and 13.
INT: So how important …
RUEZ: Indeed…
INT: …is this shot?
RUEZ: Two things. One is that it confirms that indeed the house was packed. It confirms testimonies of, I mean, all the women who saw their men in that place. But mainly since they are victims, but also part of one of the warring factions, so always have to take care of what people say. But mainly the testimony of Major Kingori. That confirms his comment when he says: Men are sitting on top each of another in the house. He is talking about the house, the place he could visit, he could enter that house. 19.46
FOOTAGE:
dB: (…) no good. No, I’m talking about the overcrowding in that place. Where all the men are being taken. It’s too crowded. They are sitting on each other, it’s not good. 20.00
20.03
RUEZ: So this is a photograph of the white house, when seen from the entrance of the UN compound. And this is photograph taken from inside the house from the balcony, and this is the view that one prisoner would have had when sitting on the balcony. 20.26
VOICE-OVER
20.26 The men who were packed into the white house could look straight at the Dutchbat soldiers. The majority of these men have not been seen or heard of since. 20.36
20.38 We showed the tape to Robert Block in New York. Because where are the shots of the corpses, the shots which Block and his Serbian colleagues saw at the time? 20.49
20.52
INTERVIEW
ROBERT BLOCK: (ENGLISH)
BLOCK: Here.
Yes, this was, this was one of the shots. This was a man, here. This was a man here. And we spent a lot of time, because the original I remember when we saw it, was a longer shot that you come up closer. And I believe as he’s… as in the voice-over, in his commentary, I believe he’s making something about large numbers of dead, if I’m not mistaken, in this scene.
21.30
FOOTAGE (with the serbian commentary of Zoran Petrovic himself)
“…dead muslimsoldiers and Serbs who returned from their positions”
21.40
BLOCK: This is clearly, what.. This contains some of the scenes that we originally described. Which later appeared to have disappeared.
21.48
VOICE-OVER
21.47 Here are the shots in question. In front of the door is a pile of corpses, or are we looking at clothing, after all? Ruez is in no doubt. They are corpses at an execution site. 21.58
21.59
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
RUEZ: That’s new.
INT: New what? I go back?
RUEZ: Yeah. This is new, so far. The rest is not fundamental, let’s say. But this is more than interesting.
With better quality it will come out. You can see a head, a torso, a… even a belt before the trousers. Especially this one.
INT: Yes.
RUEZ: Head, torso, arm, belt. The warehouse complex.
INT: This is the place…
RUEZ: The Sandici meadow in question is on the right. And this is the warehouse in its full size.
INT: But he drove here with the car?
RUEZ: They pass here, the moment he filmed they pass here. On this road towards Bratunac. 23.08
VOICE-OVER
23.08 The Kravica warehouse is one of the Bosnian Serbs most notorious execution sites. It was here that almost one thousand men were killed. 23.18
23.18
INTERVIEW
RUEZ: (ENGLISH)
RUEZ: The two white spots that you see in the dark area is the back of the warehouse, it’s little windows. Through these windows they were throwing grenades inside. And through this opening people tried to run out. These bullet holes are the consequence of a massive shooting on these guys, who probably attempted to go out. So let’s imagine another situation. Shooting starting from the openings. First reaction: Try to get out.
INT: They were not shot from this side, where we are standing now?
RUEZ: Yes, they were. From the back of the building and from the front of the building, so here, when the killing is over, you have much more holes than here on the film.
INT: You mean they were still shooting there when this was filmed?
RUEZ: I’m going to show you something.
INT: Because I hear shots in the film.
RUEZ: Yes, yes. I have to compare with a photograph. So if you look at this window, it’s the first one at the left of this entrance. There is no bullet hole at all on this picture. If you take this picture, you have three bullet holes just underneath.
INT: But that picture…
RUEZ: And two more here. So between this moment and some time later, these bullet holes were added. Since the bullet holes are not close to this window at this moment, later on some survivor insider tried to jump out. Maybe when the grenades were thrown inside, because it was not in one process, it was in a, in several waves. Until they were convinced that everyone was dead inside.
VOICE-OVER
25:06 It seems nothing: just a few seconds of video tape. But how important are these images in fact? We showed them to the Chief Prosecutor, the American Mark Harmon, of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. 25.18
25.19
INTERVIEW
MARK HARMON (Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal):
(ENGLISH)
HARMON: That included crimes that were committed at the warehouse. And at the warehouse there were approximately 1,000 people that were massacred on the 13th of July 1995. Now those images that I saw are shocking images.
25.36
VOICE OVER
25:37 Shocking images, but how important are they in the light of the two Muslim survivors? 25.42
25.42
INTERVIEW
HARMON: (ENGLISH)
HARMON: The two witnesses who survived were Bosnian Muslims.
INT: They are in a way subjective, in that war, because they are part of a fighting group, right?
HARMON: They were civilians. They were not participants in the combat.
INT: But they are part of an ethnic group, right?
HARMON: They were Bosnian Muslims.
INT: Which are in war against the Serbs at that time.
HARMON: There was a… Correct.
INT: OK. Does that meant that that footage that we have, where you see that the people lying there dead, are civilians, that is a real proof, in fact.
HARMON: Well, it certainly corroborates what the witnesses have told us happened at that warehouse. Yes, what we were told was that these people were unarmed civilians in the warehouse, and they were murdered.
INT: How important is that picture then?
HARMON: It’s important because it corroborates the testimony of two witnesses who testified publicly in the trial of General Krstic about the events of the massacre at that warehouse.
INT: Mr Ruez said that it is of the highest interest, this shot. Is that correct?
HARMON: It’s very interesting footage, and it’s very important footage. Yes, were I to retry somebody from Srebrenica who was responsible for the massacre at the warehouse, I would use that, those images as evidence.
INT: Could it also, maybe in the future, be used for, against General Mladic, for example? This kind of material?
HARMON: It certainly could. It certainly could. I think it’s one of the values of that piece of film footage is this. In the Republika Srpska, in certain elements of that society, there is a denial that the massacres in Srebrenica took place. This is a very graphic image to confirm that the massacres took place. And it is important in that regard, to enlighten the community, the public, about what happened, and the public includes the Republika Srpska, because if there’s going to be any kind of reconciliation, the people have to address honestly and fairly what happened during the war.
INT: Is that a proof of, it is a massacre, because a lot of people involved, is that also kind of a proof of genocide in a way?
HARMON: Yes, absolutely.
28.07
VOICE-OVER
28:08 The first visual evidence of genocide, says Harmon. And material that will be used in further trials, possibly against General Mladic. 28.18
28.24 But one question remains: Why did Zoran Petrovic omit these images? And where is the real version of the original tape? 28.32
28.32
INTERVIEW
ZORAN PETROVIĆ: (ENGLISH)
INT: This is in the original, this. This part is in the original. This is not the original.
PETROVIĆ: You must tell me where you want to come to? Because this question is not a
journalistic question.
INT: I want to know if the original is the original.
PETROVIĆ: What the hell do you have with my original. Original is what… Imagine I don’t have this cassette at all. Did I film the people, who probably are missing, yes? So I have nothing to do with later on. I had honestly to film this, because in a frame of second I saw it. In a frame of second, you know? In a few seconds, you know? So if I was to do something bad, or to, I don’t know, I cannot understand what you are asking me.
INT: I can even understand and imagine that you say to yourself: I am taking a big risk. I don’t show this, because I have, in the latter stage, I have problems. I can even imagine that. But be honest about it.
PETROVIĆ: No, look. I don’t want to discuss anymore. I gave too much. Please.
INT: But it’s not…
PETROVIĆ This is my last word.
****