Gotovina et al Judgement Volume I - ICTY

3928163. The Trial Chamber used specific terminology in its factual findings. Forexample, it used the term “the Trial Chamber finds” for incidents where the factualbasis was sufficient to further consider the incident against the applicable law. If anincident was not further considered, the Trial Chamber used terms like “the evidenceindicates” or “the evidence suggests”.64. With regard to perpetrators, the Trial Chamber first assessed whether the specificevidence with regard to an incident indicated their identity or affiliation. Often, theevidence on a specific incident indicated that the perpetrators wore military-typeuniforms, but could not in itself support a conclusion on the armed forces, if any, towhich the perpetrators belonged. In such cases, the Trial Chamber then consideredevidence of units of armed forces being present in the vicinity and at the time of theincident and assessed whether this allowed drawing inferences about the identity oraffiliation of the perpetrators. If there was insufficient documented troop presence in thearea, the Trial Chamber concluded its review of the incident by stating “nor has theTrial Chamber received sufficient evidence about which armed forces, if any, werepresent in or in the vicinity of […] at the time.” In some instances the Trial Chamberreceived only vague, general or insufficient evidence tying the alleged perpetrators toany official armed forces. In those circumstances, the Trial Chamber’s considerationswere expressed by the phrase “The Trial Chamber has received no other reliableevidence to which armed forces, if any, the alleged perpetrators belonged”. In doing so,the Trial Chamber considered on a case-by-case basis whether a documented trooppresence was temporally and geographically sufficiently close to certain events to drawrelevant inferences.65. The Trial Chamber used the formulation “members of Croatian military forces orSpecial Police” in its factual findings. This formulation is meant to include HVO forcesand exclude paramilitaries and civilians wearing uniforms. Evidence of civilianswearing uniforms, mass demobilization, “war lord”-type soldiers, members of officialarmed forces being sent on leave as early as the first half of August 1995, and the lackof evidence of organized paramilitary groups operating in the Indictment area requiredthe Trial Chamber to closely examine whether persons in military-type uniforms were infact (active) members of official armed forces. 133 In assessing whether persons were133 See e.g. Berikoff’s evidence in relation to Cetina village (Chapter 4.2.1), exhibit P1200, or Hayden’stestimony about civilians in uniforms (P986 and P987).34Case No.: IT-06-90-T 15 April 2011 `