Martino Lombezzi

Resolution 808

exhibition work in progress

As the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has finished its activites at the end of 2017, “Resolution 808” gives an insight into this institution, that during the 25 years of its existence was normally closed to the public. We had exclusive access to the Evidence Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor, where 14,000 artifacts from the war are stored.The project gives the viewers a glimpse into the place where war criminals like Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic were prosecuted – and where history was made.

As the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has finished its activites at the end of 2017, “Resolution 808” gives an insight into this institution, that during the 25 years of its existence was normally closed to the public. We had exclusive access to the Evidence Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor, where 14,000 artifacts from the war are stored.The project gives the viewers a glimpse into the place where war criminals like Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic were prosecuted – and where history was made.

ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Video feed Court sessions are always transmitted live through the website of the ICTY, with half an hour delay. When a witness is protected, the public only sees a blurred image, and hears a distorted voice. The participants in the trial can always look the witness in the eye, however – it is the right of the indictee to see who is testifying against him.
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Hallway The ICTY building is called 'the giant pizza slice' by insiders. New employees get lost for sure – it takes weeks or even months for them to find their way.
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Simonida Stosic, interpreter 'Interpreting is an unnatural skill: you have to speak and listen at the same time. It is a shizophrenic ability', says Simonida Stosic. She left the Former Yugoslavia in 1992. 'I didn't like what I was seeing: people easily fell for propaganda. My place was not there anymore.' Years later, she stood face to face with the ones that had ruined her country. 'The stories told by the witnesses made me feel ill. I hated the perpetrators that were tried. But if I would keep thinking about the gruesome testimonies, I would go mad. So I just concentrated on my job.'
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Witness Room Witnesses get support from the ICTY from the moment they are invited to tell their story in court. In the building, there are special rooms where they can have some rest and prepare for trial.
Belgrade, Serbia, May 2021. Nikola Šainovic in the seat of the Socialist Party of Serbia. ‘Civilians died on both sides’, says Nikola Sainovic, a close associate of president Slobodan Milosevic in the Kosovo War. He was convicted for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Kosovo, and returned to Belgrade in 2015. ‘I feel responsible as a stateman’, he says. ‘Could I have avoided the war? Did I miss something? These questions keep coming back to me.’ Sainovic was granted early release after serving two thirds of his sentence. In December 2017, he was nominated for the Chairmanship board of the Socialist Party of Serbia.
Belgrade, Serbia, May 2021. “Šljivancanin” home made plum brandy A bottle of home made brandy that Mr. Veselin Šljivancanin is giving as a present to his guests, with his name printed on the label. Šljivancanin, a former Montenegrin Serb officer in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), was convicted on a war crimes indictment for his role in the Vukovar massacre. ‘When I came home, it was a big party’, Sljivancanin says. ‘There were so many people in my apartment, it was almost impossible for me to enter.’ He enjoys this new episode of his life: on the streets he is recognized on a daily basis. ‘This shows I am a decent, honest man’, he says. ‘If I were a bad officer, I wouldn’t have been so popular.’
Sarajevo, Bosnia, February 2020. Archivists of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The two archivists Sead Bublin and Amar Alajmovic with a box containing war crimes evidence. Even though the importance of easily accessible and well-functioning archives is continuously stressed by both domestic and international experts and institutions, the situation is far from ideal in most Balkan courts. The condition of the archives of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is just one example of the challenges that are being faced by everyone involved in war crimes trials. Bosnia’s state court is rapidly running out of space for its ever-growing multitude of documents and evidence from war crimes trials, while the lack of an online archive is hampering lawyers and impeding public access to information.
Belgrade, Serbia, May 2021. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS, Srpska Radikalna Stranka) seat in the Zemun neighborhood. The SRS is a far-right ultranationalist political party in Serbia, founded in 1991 by paramilitary leader and convicted war criminal Vojislav Šešelj. Šešelj's racist rethoric and his Party actions contributed to the climate of tension and violence in Serbia and prepared the terrain for the war.
Belgrade, Serbia, May 2021. Apartment blocks in Juri Gagarin street, Novi Beograd neighbourhood. The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived in this area during his years as a fugitive. There he adopted the identity of Dragan Dabic, a self-styled spiritual healer, and started to give lectures and work as a consultant for private health companies until he was arrested in July 2008. In 2019 he was sentenced to life imprisonment over his role in the mass killings of civilians in the conflict in Bosnia.
Belgrade, Serbia, May 2021. Veselin Šljivancanin in the office of his lawyer. Šljivancanin, a former Montenegrin Serb officer in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), participated in the Battle of Vukovar and was subsequently convicted on a war crimes indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for his role in the Vukovar massacre. His prison sentence was changed twice, from five to seventeen to ten years. He has since been ordered released by the ICTY on time served and good behavior. Since his release he wrote three books and has been hosted by different TV shows in Serbia, and invited as speaker by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Dictionary Serbocroatian used to be the official name of the language that was spoken in the former Yugoslavia. Since the break up, however, the three dominant nations claimed their own language. So in the tribunal, the official term that is currently used is BCS (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian), to mark the – small, but sometimes essential – differences between the three.
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Archive Part of the archive of the ICTY is based in former Courtroom II. Humidity and temperature is measured constantly, and only assigned people can enter. In total, the archive contains 10 kilometers of physical documents and 2 petabytes of audiovisual material. The challenge is to preserve it for the next centuries, so that in 100 years, journalists and academics can still find what they are looking for.
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2018. Evidence Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor, evidence collection. Reel-to-reel tape. The famous ‘Kill them all’ intercept was crucial in the trial against general Radislav Krstic and colonel Dragan Obrenovic. The seized reel-to-reel tape contained audio of a conversation between the two men about a few muslim men who were captured close to Srebrenica. “Kill all of them!” orders Krstic. “Don’t leave anyone alive!”
Tuzla, Bosnia Erzegovina, February 2020. International Commission for Missing Persons, Podrinje Identification Project. Morgue. Since 1999 the Podrinje Identification Project forensic facility has conducted human remains analysis and DNA sampling, and has coordinated the identification process for cases of the estimated 8,100 persons missing from the 1995 fall of Srebrenica. Their work becomes more and more complicated. In the first period after the war, so many mass graves were uncovered that up to ten victims were identified per day. Now, only rarely a new mass grave is discovered, and forensic anthropologists have to identify bones that were found next to a river or in a forest, without any context or hint of whom it could belong to.
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Machine Facts 'When an expert starts talking, the content tends to be very specific', says Martina Fryda-Kaurimsky, interpreter for the ICTY. 'For example in the Srebrenica cases, a lot was said about excavators and how they were used to dig mass graves. As an interpreter, you have to prepare very well, in order to understand exactly what it means and to interpret properly. We really needed these kinds of overviews in the booth.'
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Judge Fausto Pocar Fausto Pocar (Italy) works as a judge at the ICTY since 2000. He was the president when Slobodan Milosevic died in prison, in The Hague. ‘We were disoriented, as were the people in the Balkans. Our goal, to get the main leaders of the war to justice, had failed. In the meanwhile we received fierce criticism from Serbia, that we didn’t treat him well in prison. Well, it was the opposite: Milosevic didn’t want to be treated. He didn’t take his pills, he tried to be more sick.’
Belgrade, Serbia, May 2021. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS) seat in the Zemun neighborhood. Detail ‘I destroyed the very essence of the Yugoslavia tribunal’, Seselj says when we interview him. ‘I demonstrated that the court is illegal and anti-Serb.’ Seselj was notorious in The Hague, because he tended to provoke not only the judges, prosecutors and witnesses, but also the interpreters and even his fellow inmates. Back in Belgrade, he still has a lot of supporters.
The Hague, The Netherlands, November 2017. Mladic lawyer ‘Our job is challenging,’ says Dragan Ivetic, one of the defense lawyers of Ratko Mladic. ‘We have to fight for a fair trial whereas mostly the verdict has already been settled in the media.’ Ivetic worked day and night with his co-counsels, legal advisors and many interns to build the Mladic case. ‘An impossible job’, he says. ‘Especially when you consider the massive amount of documents and testimonies and the great time restraints. It all comes down to a lack of sleep and drinking lot’s of coke.’
ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2017. Martina Fryda-Kaurimsky, interpreter 'The legal discussions between prosecution and defense, I enjoy most', says Martina Fryda-Kaurimsky. 'But they are also the most challenging. They go so rapidly, and they are so in-depth, that at the end of it, you're dead.' In her first months at the tribunal, she didn't understand all the aspects of international criminal law. 'In the evenings, I studied the legal concepts that were used in the courtroom. I really had the sense of doing something important. To be part of this, and to help document the war crimes that have happened in my country, still gives me fulfillment.'
Srebrenica, Bosnia Erzegovina, May 2019. The Drina river As a natural border, the Drina river runs between Bosnia and Serbia. Like all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, both countries try to come to grips with the memory of the war – but they are more divided than ever, even internally. Each ethnic group cherishes its own account of the recent past, and as long as they do not recognize the facts that were established in The Hague and deny their own responsibility, a dialogue seems to be further away then ever.
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El Pais Semanal, November 2017

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Internazionale, December 2017

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De Volkskrant, July 2020

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Politico, March 2019

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BIRN portal, June 2020

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Den Haag (The Netherlands), Atrium of the City Hall, November 2017. Exhibition “Resolution 808. Inside the Yugoslavia tribunal”

Officine Fotografiche Roma. Mostra "Resolution 808. Inside the Yugoslavia tribunal" di Martino Lombezzi e Jorie Horsthuis.
Officine Fotografiche Roma. Mostra "Resolution 808. Inside the Yugoslavia tribunal" di Martino Lombezzi e Jorie Horsthuis.

Officine Fotografiche gallery.  Rome, Italy, 2018

UNIBO Campus. Forlì, Italy, 2018