Witness in ICTY trial admits exaggerations in number of dead civilians in Knin

ZAGREB, Sept 2 (Hina) - On the second day of his testimony in the trial of three Croatian army generals at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on Tuesday, Canadian intelligence officer Phil Berikoff admitted that there had been exaggerations in estimates of the number of dead civilians in the Croatian Serb rebel stronghold of Knin during a 1995 Croatian military offensive.
At the time of Operation Storm in August 1995, Berikoff wrote in his electronic diary that he had seen between 300 and 400 dead civilians in Knin. He later removed the entry from the diary.
I distanced myself from that estimate because I did not see the bodies, Berikoff said responding to questions from attorney Greg Kehoe, who represents General Ante Gotovina.
The witness explained he had got the information from his superior, Colonel Andrew Leslie, stressing once again that had not seen the dead bodies personally.
Many people, including me, had a tendency to exaggerate. That piece of information was an exaggeration, Berikoff said.

During the two days of Operation Storm, on 4 and 5 August 1995, Berikoff went into town several times and saw about 15-20 wounded people in and around the hospital.
Some of them were soldiers, while some had only parts of camouflage uniform on, the witness said.

Kehoe also raised the question of photographs the witness had taken at the request of Colonel Leslie.

Berikoff said he was ordered to take as many photographs as possible of housing destruction, but added that he did not have time to check if any of those houses and apartment buildings had served as military facilities, because soon after the Croatian offensive he was transferred to Sarajevo.
The defence attorney presented a statement by another international official saying that the schoolhouse, situated next to the police station in Knin, served as a lodging facility for 500 Serb troops.
I was not interested and it was not my duty to establish what individual buildings were used for, the witness said.

Berikoff confirmed that the Canadian UN Battalion was dispatched to the Knin hospital on 4 August to evacuate the wounded. Asked if those were soldiers, he said there were military-age men among them.
Berikoff served as a UN information officer in Serb-occupied areas of Croatia, known at the time as UN Sector South, from mid-July until 5 September 1995. He will continue his testimony on Wednesday when he will be cross-examined by attorney Gilian Higgins, who represents General Ivan Markac.
(Hina)