TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
GR2 (Government): Witness 35 is someone I'm not permitted to identify because of the strictures imposed on reference to the evidence hearing.
GR2 (Government): But he was a very experienced man, and he said that in general terms, it could not be a mistake for a weapons expert to confuse a missile with a bomb.
GR2 (Government): That's page 388 of 423 of the confidential transcript.
GR2 (Government): And it's important to note on this point, where false evidence has been deployed, that the real world position was entirely opposite to that portrayed by Mr. Garlasco
GR2 (Government): and his alleged picture of an RBK bomb.
GR2 (Government): The true position is that Georgia did hit its own villages with cluster missiles that Georgia had bought from Israel, and they carried M85 cluster bomblets.
GR2 (Government): Human Rights Watch has since admitted that it was misled by a dozen false witnesses interviewed separately who claimed that the damage from Georgia's own cluster missiles was caused by Russian planes that bombed their villages.
GR2 (Government): Georgia is fond of presenting witnesses.
GR2 (Government): My learned friend is fond of referring to them.
GR2 (Government): But the quality of the witnesses is shown by Human Rights Watch being misled.
GR2 (Government): Quite obviously, those false witnesses were put forward by Georgia as part of an information operation.
GR2 (Government): Georgia hit its own villages with these cluster weapons.
GR2 (Government): There's no doubt about that.
GR2 (Government): The only live question is whether they were hit accidentally or whether it was deliberate.
GR2 (Government): Just picking up some of the references, you've got Human Rights Watch admitting that they were misled by the dozen witnesses at page 30 of the exhibit.
GR2 (Government): At page 34, you've got Human Rights Watch suggesting that this could have been the result of malfunction of the weapons.
GR2 (Government): But of course, Human Rights Watch was strongly under the influence of Mr. Garlasco at that point.
GR2 (Government): And then on page 35, rather inconsistently, we've got the first Deputy Minister of Defense of Georgia expressing satisfaction with performance of Georgia's cluster weapons, which held up the Russian advance for several days.
GR2 (Government): Now, at the evidential hearing in this case, there was more of the same.
GR2 (Government): Georgia deployed witnesses to support Georgia's current allegations that villages were bombed.
GR2 (Government): Please note that Georgia has never acknowledged that Georgians were killed or injured by its own cluster missiles raining down on all of these Georgian villages.
GR2 (Government): Instead, Georgia has presented made-up stories of post-conflict killings.
GR2 (Government): For example, witness 22 said that Mr. Lalashvili
GR2 (Government): was shot in Terdznezi, one of the villages hit with Georgian cluster missiles.
GR2 (Government): He said that Mr. Lalashvili was shot,
GR2 (Government): but he also said at the evidence hearing that he was almost dismembered.
GR2 (Government): That sounds like a victim of cluster munitions, not shooting.
GR2 (Government): I could go on, but there isn't time.
GR2 (Government): Please note witness 23's evidence.
GR2 (Government): And please note that the witness was confused about whether the administrator of the relevant village, also Terdznezi, was a man or a woman.
GR2 (Government): It was very questionable whether some of the witnesses put up even came from the places that they were supposed to have come from.
GR2 (Government): The court should also note that even after Human Rights Watch was forced to acknowledge Georgian cluster attacks on Georgian villages, the NGO, the Georgian NGO behind August Ruins, the other major report on the conflict, continued to blame Russian bombing.
GR2 (Government): And so, for example, we get Human Rights Watch reporting that M-85s caused two casualties during a strike on Shindizi on the 9th of August, and Varnagogidze 45 was killed.
GR2 (Government): At the same time, August Ruins, in fact, later, with presumably full knowledge of the Human Rights Watch work, said that Ivangidze was killed from a bombing raid on Shindizi.
GR2 (Government): That's annex 277 to Georgia's submissions of the 30th of December, 2014, page 55.
GR2 (Government): Now, Georgia continued to produce unreliable witnesses to alleged Russian bombing at the evidential hearing in this case.
GR2 (Government): We had witness summaries prepared on their behalf, presumably, which said, for example, that they saw an airplane.
GR2 (Government): But then when they gave evidence, they hadn't seen an airplane.
GR2 (Government): If they had seen one, they would have said so.
GR2 (Government): I don't have time to go through the transcript, but I do urge the court to go carefully through the confidential transcript of evidence.
GR2 (Government): I can, perhaps, make one graphic point.
GR2 (Government): Perhaps because its witnesses were weak, Georgia embellished its allegations with purported radar plots showing Russian aircraft on alleged bombing runs.
GR2 (Government): Witness number nine, a Russian aviation expert, was presented with these radar plots and said they were unrealistic.
GR2 (Government): They showed the planes circling too long over what was supposed to be targets.
GR2 (Government): That would be suicide for a pilot.
GR2 (Government): After the evidential hearing in November, 2017, Georgia produced more radar plots, which are truly remarkable.
GR2 (Government): First, they showed Georgian radar seeing through the Caucasus Mountains all the way into Russia.
GR2 (Government): That would be impressive technology if it existed.
GR2 (Government): But in fact, it looks as though the authors of these plots forgot about the Caucasus Mountains altogether because the planes are shown flying at a steady height of 1,000 meters all the way from Russia, and the Caucasus Mountains don't go below 1,700 meters at their lowest point.
GR2 (Government): So the planes were flying through rock.
GR2 (Government): We have a line drawn on the profile of the mountains at page 37 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): So once again, quite clearly, the plots are false.
GR2 (Government): And for completeness, barely three weeks ago, Georgia produced lots more plots.
GR2 (Government): They occupy some three CD-ROMs.
GR2 (Government): Of course, like much of the material that my learned friend likes to rely on, this comes too late for cross-examination or proper examination at the evidence hearing.
GR2 (Government): But we've checked, and the new material does not cure this impossibility of altitude.
GR2 (Government): But I agree with my learned friend that an important allegation in this case is that Russia fired an Iskander missile at the central square in Gori on the 12th of August, 2008, killing, amongst others, the Dutch journalist Stan Storermans.
GR2 (Government): Early news reports, which Georgia doesn't focus on very much or at all, said that Mr. Storermans was tragically
GR2 (Government): killed in a mortar attack.
GR2 (Government): You've got some excerpts from those in the open exhibit at pages 39 and 40.
GR2 (Government): Given that the attack happened as Georgian forces had left Gori and as Russian forces were arriving, we can guess who fired the mortars, given Georgia's consistent response to Russia's advance, even as it proceeded through Georgian villages where they fired cluster missiles.
GR2 (Government): However, Georgia and its allies did their best to blame Russia.
GR2 (Government): You will see, if you look closely at the evidence, that Mark Garlasco of U.S. Military Intelligence
GR2 (Government): and Human Rights Watch appears in this story, too.
GR2 (Government): Through Human Rights Watch, he said on the 15th of August, 2008, that the square had been struck by an RBK cluster bomb.
GR2 (Government): That's page 41 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): And Human Rights Watch was supposed to have seen the nose cone of such a bomb.
GR2 (Government): However, shortly after that, Mr. Garlasco changed his position,
GR2 (Government): without explanation, to say that Russia attacked with the Iskander, a hugely powerful weapon which would have destroyed the square had it been fired.
GR2 (Government): The only evidence was purported photographs of the scene and of pieces of the missile.
GR2 (Government): And much of that initial material has disappeared from the internet.
GR2 (Government): But some is preserved in a report on Mr. Storiman's death
GR2 (Government): by his Dutch TV channel in 2009.
GR2 (Government): At page 50 of the open exhibit, you've got a still from that section of what seems to be the first video.
GR2 (Government): Please scrutinise that frame, because you'll see that the supposed section of missile has been superimposed on a background of grass and buildings, supposedly in Gori.
GR2 (Government): The outline of the missile is very distinct.
GR2 (Government): The grass and vegetation does not cross it.
GR2 (Government): The shadows on the missile section are inconsistent with the shadows on the buildings.
GR2 (Government): And please also watch the actual video, because if you do, you will see the grass behind waving through an apparent gap in this solid missile piece.
GR2 (Government): So quite plainly, this video is fake.
GR2 (Government): Now, with its submission in November 2017, Georgia produced for the first time another video attributed to Reuters.
GR2 (Government): Perhaps a misprint for Reuters, but perhaps not.
GR2 (Government): See page 52 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): Page 51 is the grass waving through the gap in the missile.
GR2 (Government): 52 is the Reuters quality version.
GR2 (Government): And this remake corrects the defect of the floating missile piece.
GR2 (Government): But old movies are often the best.
GR2 (Government): And the old movie here raises the central question relevant today.
GR2 (Government): Why did Georgia find it necessary to fake the original video?
GR2 (Government): The only sensible explanation is that initially, Georgia did not have real missile pieces or props to put in place to support its Iskander claim.
GR2 (Government): Now, over time, Georgia's claim has been embellished in various ways.
GR2 (Government): Thus, at page 45 of the open exhibit, we've got the most striking example of a fake picture.
GR2 (Government): It shows the tail of an Iskander missile resting on a sofa inside a top floor apartment.
GR2 (Government): And it's supposed to have entered through the ceiling on this side of the room, crossed the room, and then landed gently on the sofa for the world's press to photograph.
GR2 (Government): But the picture is physically impossible.
GR2 (Government): Russia did go to great lengths to disclose what it could in terms of classified information.
GR2 (Government): The tail of a real Iskander missile weighs hundreds of kilograms.
GR2 (Government): You'll see the figure in the evidence.
GR2 (Government): It comes down vertically at many times the speed of sound.
GR2 (Government): If it had truly hit an apartment block, it would have smashed through the entire building and buried itself in the basement.
GR2 (Government): Mr. Storeman's Dutch television channel recognized this
GR2 (Government): when they did a documentary on his tragic death.
GR2 (Government): And at page 49 of the open exhibit, you see their graphical representation after speaking to a German missile scientist of the tailpiece smashing down through a building.
GR2 (Government): So how could such an impossible photograph come about?
GR2 (Government): Well, again, chronology and context may help to explain.
GR2 (Government): You see that at page 43 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): After Russia pulled back from Gori, an American military mission coordinated by the US State Department moved in.
GR2 (Government): And it turns out that the sofa picture was taken on the 25th of August by a US Navy photographer.
GR2 (Government): You see that on page 46.
GR2 (Government): There's a misprint in one of the submissions.
GR2 (Government): His name is Lieutenant Jim Hoft, H-O-E-F-T.
GR2 (Government): Of course, Georgia soon moved away from its pictures and video, just as Milern and Friend has done today.
GR2 (Government): And it prefers to rely on an official report of a Dutch investigative mission which investigated the death of Mr. Storeman's from late August 2008.
GR2 (Government): The Dutch investigative mission, or DIM, said that Georgia cooperated with the investigation.
GR2 (Government): But remarkably, at the evidential hearing, it turned out that the DIM investigators were not given access to missile pieces.
GR2 (Government): Instead, the DIM were apparently prepared to work only with pictures and video.
GR2 (Government): So the Dutch report is worth nothing more than the pictures and the video that you have before you.
GR2 (Government): It's also interesting to note that the Dutch attributed the sofa picture to the HALO Trust, a British demining charity.
GR2 (Government): In fact, as we've seen, the copyright belongs very clearly to the US State Department, or possibly the US Navy.
GR2 (Government): I'm sorry for its use.
GR2 (Government): In the absence of any hard evidence, primary evidence identifying an Iskander, the Dutch relied on three things as purported proof.
GR2 (Government): First was little bullets supposedly taken from the wall in Gori, and a little bullet taken from the body of Mr. Storeman's.
GR2 (Government): But that is hopeless, too.
GR2 (Government): First, we only see videos showing small holes from an Iskander after the US State Department arrived.
GR2 (Government): Page 64 is a still from one such video dated 27th of August 2008.
GR2 (Government): This rash of little holes is not there in the early pictures.
GR2 (Government): It's also qualitatively different from what Georgia now relies on, which looks to be spattered damage of some different weapon in relation to two or three buildings.
GR2 (Government): The devastation from an Iskander would have been across a massive area and almost total.
GR2 (Government): Now, Mr. Ackermans of RTL now says
GR2 (Government): in a statement produced nine years after the event that the taxi in the square was sprayed with little bullets from an Iskander.
GR2 (Government): Of course, that comes too late for cross-examination.
GR2 (Government): But it's very striking that there are no little holes in the taxi in the early pictures and video.
GR2 (Government): See pages 60 to 63.
GR2 (Government): Indeed, one of the court's own witnesses noted that the statue of Stalin had not any scratch on it.
GR2 (Government): I do assure you that a real Iskander missile would not have shown such cultural sensitivity.
GR2 (Government): Second, the Dutch relied on supposed common characteristics between the wall bullets and the little bullet taken from the body of Mr. Storemans.
GR2 (Government): But that is hopeless in terms of primary evidence.
GR2 (Government): If it's right, it only shows that the shrapnel is the same.
GR2 (Government): It doesn't show that it comes from an Iskander.
GR2 (Government): And if Georgia and its allies had Iskander shrapnel, what confidence can we have that the single fragment got into Mr. Storemans' body from an explosion on the 12th?
GR2 (Government): Instead, Georgia asserted at the evidential hearing that Mr. Storemans' body was taken directly
GR2 (Government): to Holland for an autopsy.
GR2 (Government): That's instead of any proof of chain of custody of the body.
GR2 (Government): But that assertion was untrue.
GR2 (Government): The autopsy occurred on the 19th of August, a full week later, and it's transpired from the report that when the body was examined, it had already been embalmed, sutured, and stitched by unknown persons, which the pathologist gave as a rather odd reason for not taking photographs.
GR2 (Government): See page 65 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): Now, three weeks ago, and this is very interesting, Georgia tried to cure the odd absence of pictures of Mr. Storemans' body by producing its own.
GR2 (Government): One might have thought that these would be comprehensive, but they miss out the entry wound for the particle that is supposed to have killed Mr. Storemans.
GR2 (Government): They do include a very disturbing picture of Mr. Storemans' head, which shows a round hole
GR2 (Government): with no exit wound, and the intended message to this court is that this was another Iskander bullet that remained in his skull.
GR2 (Government): However, the devil is always in the detail, and please look at the tomography report, which is attached to the autopsy report at annex 4 to Russia's submission of the 24th of November.
GR2 (Government): It says that the fragments in the skull that caused the hole had a density lower than bone.
GR2 (Government): That means they were not metal.
GR2 (Government): They were absolutely not what the Dutch said Iskander bullets were made of, sintered tungsten with a very high density of 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter.
GR2 (Government): So whatever made the hole had nothing to do with an Iskander.
GR2 (Government): I can't tell you what did.
GR2 (Government): Georgia is better placed.
GR2 (Government): Going back to the Dutch investigation report, the last thing that the Dutch relied on, and my learned friend relies on now, is numbers on missile parts.
GR2 (Government): Three points.
GR2 (Government): First, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, these numbers don't belong to any missile that's ever been in the Russian inventory.
GR2 (Government): Second, the missile comes down so fast that paint burns from friction, so the numbers would have burned off.
GR2 (Government): And third, the green numbered piece on which Reliance is placed appears to be hand-painted.
GR2 (Government): That's page 69 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): So this ultra-modern, class-leading missile, a world leader, is hand-painted.
GR2 (Government): Unsurprisingly, that doesn't correspond to Russian military manufacture.
GR2 (Government): The short point is this.
GR2 (Government): Georgia's case came down to video and pictures that have been shown to be false.
GR2 (Government): And they also don't correspond with reality or physics.
GR2 (Government): The factors ignored by the Dutch investigators are at page 57 of the open exhibit.
GR2 (Government): But please just look at the pictures yourselves.
GR2 (Government): The best pictures show pieces of missile lying gently on a sofa or nestled on grass.
GR2 (Government): This is not hundreds of kilograms coming down vertically at massive speed.
GR2 (Government): The nose cone of the missile, which weighs also hundreds of kilograms, leaves a dimple on the tarmac in the square.
GR2 (Government): And the ballast piece is bent over.
GR2 (Government): So from some angles, it looks as though it's sitting.
GR2 (Government): It's embedded in the tarmac.
GR2 (Government): But actually, it's just sitting on it.
GR2 (Government): Now, we've had more pictures, Reuters quality I've referred to.
GR2 (Government): But there are mistakes even in that.
GR2 (Government): If you compare pages 52 and 53 of the exhibit, you see that at this quality, we've got two versions of one section of the missile, one with a silver seam.
GR2 (Government): Obviously, one of the artists thought that that was a little bit more convincing.
GR2 (Government): Unfortunately, so many people are employed doing this that evidently some don't know what the others are doing.
GR2 (Government): Now, the object of George's further photographic and video evidence is to try to show that the attack happened on the 12th of August.
GR2 (Government): But we've got a Russian forensic report.
GR2 (Government): And that makes plain what we all know, that in metadata, the most malleable and unreliable thing is the date.
GR2 (Government): We can all give a photograph any date by resetting the date on the camera or the phone or whatever.
GR2 (Government): But even so, if the Georgian data is true, some interesting revelations follow.
GR2 (Government): Three of the most important pictures showing parts of the missile supposedly in place after the attack show on their face an orange date of the 12th of August.
GR2 (Government): But the metadata says 15th of August.
GR2 (Government): That's annex 8, pictures 5, 11, and 12 to George's November submissions.
GR2 (Government): And note also page 17 of the Manukarian report, the Russian forensic report.
GR2 (Government): It shows that the metadata of one of the main square videos, entitled gory central square after bombing, was created on the 11th of August, the day before the alleged attacks.
GR2 (Government): So we simply can't trust the dates and McLernand-Friends chronology.
GR2 (Government): What we can trust is common sense and physics.
GR2 (Government): And with respect, there's no answer to Isaac Newton in McLernand-Friends case.
GR2 (Government): We've got some new evidence from the supposed owner of the flat where the missile landed on the sofa.
GR2 (Government): And it's supposed to have bounced off the wall and knocked over the television before landing on the sofa.
GR2 (Government): And that slowed it down, which is why it didn't demolish the entire building.
GR2 (Government): Well, that's perhaps a great advertisement for Georgian televisions and furniture.
GR2 (Government): But it's got nothing to do with any convincing evidence before this court.
GR2 (Government): And when McLernand-Friends makes accusations of presenting false evidence, Georgia has had these points for a long time.
GR2 (Government): It has come before you today with no answer to them.
GR2 (Government): And it has the temerity to suggest that false evidence has been put forward on the Russian side.
GR2 (Government): Now, one interesting development three weeks ago is an offer by Georgia to allow inspection of all of the missile pieces.
GR2 (Government): It's accompanied by a heavily redacted diplomatic note from America.
GR2 (Government): That says that the missile parts were received from Georgia in several shipments beginning in August 2008.
GR2 (Government): But 10 years after the event, it's impossible to know how many trips these parts have undertaken, in which direction, and it's impossible to know where they came from in the first place.
GR2 (Government): And the fundamental problem for Georgia is page 50 of the open exhibit, which we went through at the evidential hearing and to which there's no answer.
GR2 (Government): If these pieces did come from an Iskander and they were genuinely found where they claimed to have been found, why was it necessary to fake this video?
GR2 (Government): On provenance, we know nothing in terms of these new parts put forward, save that the Russian Ministry of Defense has confirmed that the test sites for Iskander missiles, which stretch over thousands of square kilometers, are not secure.
GR2 (Government): So perhaps the United States, having helped in so many ways, is helping again.
GR2 (Government): The truth is that Georgia knows that its Iskander case is hopeless, and it's admitted as much by its latest conduct.
GR2 (Government): Almost three weeks ago, at the end of April, barely three weeks ago, it tried to delay this hearing by shunting off the Iskander issue to the prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court.
GR2 (Government): And Georgia asked for an adjournment that was rightly refused.
GR2 (Government): But it's striking that in the correspondence presented, the ICC prosecutor has asked for the actual missile parts and essential evidence like the chain of custody of the parts, precisely what Georgia has failed to begin to prove, in this case, before this court.
GR2 (Government): And for completeness, Georgia has produced seismographs three weeks ago, alleged to show an Iskander attack.
GR2 (Government): We haven't had time to examine those properly.
GR2 (Government): But given the artistry applied to radar plots, there's no reason for any confidence that these reflect reality.
GR2 (Government): With respect, it should not be necessary to examine this further material now, because it comes too late.