THE AD HOC TRIBUNALS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
An Interview with
Alexandra Tomic
International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life
Brandeis University
2016
!
Interviewee: Alexandra Tomic
Location: The Hague, Netherlands
Interviewers: David P. Briand (Q1) and
Leigh Swigart (Q2)
Date: 25 May 2015
Q1: This is an interview with Alexandra Tomic for the Ad Hoc Tribunals Oral History
Project at Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life.
The interview takes place at the International Criminal Court [ICC] in The Hague,
Netherlands, on May 25, 2015. The interviewers are Leigh Swigart and David Briand.
Q2: As I was saying, we're particularly interested in talking to people who have been in
language services because it's so clear that nothing was going to work at the ICTY
[International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] or the ICTR [International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] without this massive work by the people who were
translating and interpreting. So we're very pleased to be able to talk to you about your
work at the ICTY, and later at the ICC. Why don't we start with where you were when
things were really heating up in the Balkans?
Tomic: I was pregnant, and I was living in England, in Cambridge, with my then
husband. We were quite unaware of this, as you can imagine. Because I wasn't living in
Belgrade at the time, I did not know how bad things had become. Of course we read the
newspapers, but this was before the web, so of course you didn't have all the information.
Q2: And you are from what is now Serbia.
!
Tomic -- 2
Tomic: I am from Serbia, that's right!from Belgrade. I went to live in England in 1988
so that was two years before. My daughter was born the nineteenth of May 1991, and a
few weeks later Croatia declared independence!or rather Slovenia first, sorry. I should
know this. Slovenia first. Then there were instances of occupation of the Yugoslav
people's army barracks. It looked a little bit out of hand, but it didn't look too bad. Then
of course we all knew that Croatia would be a disaster because of the large numbers of
Serbs living in Croatia. We never really thought about it before; this is not something that
I had ever considered important while I lived in the former Yugoslavia, but some people
clearly did. So that was 1991. The few people from the former Yugoslavia whom I knew
were Croats, and Bosnians, so we actually got together every now and then!had lunch
or we'd meet at parties!and they were just as astounded as I was because of course
they'd been living in England as well. Also they did not share any of the high emotions
that were happening.
It got progressively worse, as we all know, and in 1992 when it became terrible, what
happened is that my then husband got a job in the British School of the Netherlands, and
because we had a little bit had enough of England!there were the elections, of course.
John Major had won the elections, and my husband was then working as a teacher, and
we all know what that means in England!if the Tories go in, teachers don't get a good
deal. So we thought, alright, let's go do something else. Then we moved in 1992 and as
we moved I immediately went to the Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland [Dutch Council for
Refugees], which is the refugee's council in Holland, because I thought they must have
refugees, they must need people, and I started working there.
!
Tomic -- 3
Q2: As an interpreter?
Tomic: As an interpreter, as whatever they asked me because they were absolutely
desperate. I didn't have any Dutch at the time, but the coordinator's English was excellent.
He was married to an American. He was so happy to see me. I went summer of 1992 and
immediately all the Bosnian refugees started coming; these were already asylum seekers,
or rather they were already refugees so their status was recognized. That was really good
for me because I had felt a huge amount of guilt that I wasn't doing anything, that I wasn't
there. I had some exchanges with my friends, some of the friends from Belgrade who
were very anti-Croat or anti-Bosnian, so I didn't feel I could tell them what I really
thought because they would tell me, "You don't know this because you are abroad."
I wanted to do something practical and I thought, I'm not deciding here who's what, I'm
just dealing with what needs to be done. I thought that was much better, and I felt much
better, although the stories were horrific because these are exactly the stories that we
heard on the news, that we read in the papers. This was eastern Bosnia. These people
were very quickly processed. These were people from Zvornik, so this is exactly the
border between Serbia and Bosnia. Mali Zvornik, "Little Zvornik" is in Serbia, and just
Zvornik is on the Bosnian side.
These were wonderful people. These were whole families with already practically grownup children. I would interpret these talks, facilitating talks. These were people who were
!
Tomic -- 4
so traumatized, and that was just horrendous. In fact, all of my people were always
Bosnians. Now we will say Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, or whatever. They were all
really happy to see me. My accent would betray me!I'm from Belgrade!and they'd
always say, "Oh, it's so nice to meet you," because in fact they were relieved to see
somebody normal who was not the bad guy. I think that's what it was. I organized to meet
them, and a couple of times when I couldn't find childcare I brought my daughter along,
who was by then about a year, a year and a half. They were really happy to have a child
present.
This was not professional interpreting, but I was still doing the job. That I did for a little
while, and then in 1993 I think was the resolution by the Security Council on
establishment of the Tribunal. I was still working for them [Vluchtelingenwerk]
whenever they needed me. I had some childcare arrangements so that was not so difficult,
and occasionally the Vluchtelingenwerk would ask me to translate some article that they
needed for their work, presumably for the case files or something.
Q2: I know that you'd studied English and French at university, but had you ever had any
interpreting or translating experienced before?
Tomic: Only informally. There wasn't anything that I'd done. Rather, I was doing
translation for private clients, but there were very few at the time. This is quite funny!in
1989, so we're talking end of the Cold War, I did have a diploma and I had some
translating experience which I had done also for clients in Belgrade, and somebody told
!
Tomic -- 5
me the British army is often looking for strange languages. Serbo-Croat, as then was
called, because it is a strange language, so I said, "Okay, fine." I found a contact, wrote to
the Education Training Center somewhere in England and I said, "I can teach this," or
whatever, because I know that their intelligence officers need that. They replied to me
with a letter to say that they could foresee no need for this language. This was exactly
two years before one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe.
Q1: Oh, wow.
Tomic: I wish I had kept the letter because I think that just sums it up, doesn't it? This
would be the same thing!I'm sure that there was somebody receiving a letter like that
offering to teach Arabic in 2000. [Laughs]
Q1: Right, right.
Tomic: So then I started a little business, which I thought could take off, making quiches
and doing this on the side, and I thought, this is really nice because—
Q2: This is in England?
Tomic: No, no, it was in Holland.
Q2: This is when you lived in Holland, okay.
!
Tomic -- 6
Tomic: Yes. I thought I could do this, and I was getting more and more clients, especially
because vegetarianism was so high then. I'm not vegetarian but I can make a lot of
vegetarian dishes, so this was going so well. I remember!it must have been some World
Cup or European football cup!because a Belgian guy had asked me to bake I don't know
how many quiches, so I was late at night, or rather early in the morning, in my kitchen,
baking these things that had to be picked up at ten, and if you have to have things picked
up ten you have to start at three or four in the morning. So I was doing that, and I was
listening to BBC World Service, and there was the deputy prosecutor's voice for the first
time I heard it!Graham Blewitt!saying, "I have got the funds, I've got the budget, I'm
gathering my staff, and I'm asking for people to apply!." I heard that at 3:00 or 4:00 in
the morning on BBC News World.
Q1: On the radio.
Tomic: The next day I called the ICJ [International Court of Justice] because I did not
know the difference between ICJ or anything else, and I said, "Could I apply?" They said,
"Yes, yes. We are temporarily here, but we will move soon. We will send you a form."
They never did, so I phoned again after a week, and then I got a form, filled in a form.
This was 1994, and I got a reply in end of July, "Come for an interview."
I I was tested and interviewed by the person who was going to become my boss later,
Maja Drazenovic, who became the Chief of Conference and Language Services section.
!
Tomic -- 7
We met, we liked each other immediately; it was a kind of click. She asked me!one of
the questions I remember was, "What would you say if somebody told you, how can you,
a Serb, be interpreting and translating?" That was the key. I said, "I can because it has
nothing to do with me. I'm a professional doing my job," and she said, "Okay, that's the
correct answer," or words to that effect. About three weeks later I got a call from Alistair
Milroy, who was chief of investigations, and I came to sign my first contract, which was
a few days, and then a few days, and for the next nine months I had temporary contracts.
Q2: And this was now document translation, or it was interpretation?
Tomic: It was translation, and then occasionally they would have somebody either to
speak to in person or to speak to on the phone. There were little things like that, but it
was all terribly improvised. Imagine that my first contract was two days, and then it was
four days, and then it was two days. It was like that for nine months.
Q1: What year was it that you started?
Tomic: That was 1994.
Q1: Okay, right at the beginning.
Tomic: So, August 1994 was my first contract!the second part of August, I think.
!
Tomic -- 8
Q2: And were you living in The Hague then?
Tomic: No, I was living in a place near Leiden called Oegstgeest. I found reasonable
childcare, and I discovered that there was a bus that stopped in my street in Oegstgeest,
which was about twenty kilometers from The Hague, that went all the way directly to the
tribunal, at which point I said, "Okay, this is kismet." [Laughter] "This is destiny. It has
nothing to do with anything else, I was just meant to do this."
Q1: Yes.
Tomic: So for the next many years this is what I took, until they changed the bus route or
something, and I got a car eventually. That was the beginning. I started in document
translation. One of my first documents I remember was the rules of detention, and I had
no clue, because of course I had always done a lot more into English, and I haven't read
anything in Serbo-Croat for many years. I had only read newspapers and magazines, but I
hadn't really read books. That shows within a year you lose the fluidity of written
language. I remember that Maja came into my office and she said, "You did it all wrong."
I said, "Really?"
She said, "Yes, do it again." I remember that as being so genuine!this is feedback, and
I'm going to remedy what's wrong. Now that I'm a manager, if I said that to somebody,
they would go immediately to staff council and complain about my cruelty. [Laughs]
!
Tomic -- 9
Q2: Your management skills.
Tomic: Exactly. But in fact this was just perfect.
Q2: Was it specialized terminology that was the problem, or was it—?
Tomic: I think at the time we were not quite sure what we wanted to do, how we were
going to cope with this Frankenstein-y type of term, BCS [Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian].
Q2: Yes, I wanted to ask you about the creation of this.
Tomic: Very soon we realized we couldn't call it Serbo-Croat, we couldn't call it Serbian,
we couldn't call it Croatian. We also realized that we could not do what they did at peace
conferences over the years, which is to have three booths. You know that they had three
booths in Brussels.
Q2: I didn't know that.
Tomic: They had three booths. They had the [Franjo] Tuđman booth, the [Alija]
Izetbegović booth, and the [Slobodan] Milošević booth. It's completely insane, everybody
travelling with their own team. Of course we knew we couldn't do it because that would
be just giving in to stupidity. One of the first things that Maja did was to request!I think
!
Tomic -- 10
that was her!an affidavit by Morton Benson [professor of Slavic languages at University
of Pennsylvania] and somebody else!these people were authors of a dictionary!to say
that Serbian and Croatian and Bosnian are just one and the same languages; they're
mutually intelligible and the only difference was lexical.
Q2: And that's true, that it's only lexical and phonological?
Tomic: It's only lexical, but you will hear this denied as it were by people who!in the
past ten years Croatian has gone a lot further because its official Croatian is changed.
They dislike any foreign words, so that "airplane" is not called airplane. They actually
have made a word which means "air" and "plane," but it's not the word "airplane." You
take Croatian words and you put them together.
Q2: So they're purifying their language?
Tomic: Yes, and this has always been a little bit the case in Croatian. Now they've gone
way into that!but that's just how it is. It is policy. It is maybe a lack of maturity, but the
whole of the Balkans suffers from one giant lack of maturity. Actually, a Slovenian
colleague said that the entire region!and he actually included Slovenia in that, although
Slovenia has escaped, sort of!has a "somatically" difficult past. We all suffer in a way
coming from there. And it's true, because I think that's what people call emotional
baggage, but in fact that's what it is. It's not just emotional; it's also somatic. You take it
!
Tomic -- 11
with you, you carry it. The worst things about living anywhere, I think, during the years
of the war and afterwards was that people would ask me where you're from.
My absolute favorite answer!well, absolutely favorite incident. You said you liked
anecdotes. I have a favorite Turkish shop in Leiden where I've been going for over
twenty years, and when I go there they always had all the products from the region, so I
would go and buy things. Mr.!I assume he's called Mr. Meltem because the shop is
called "Meltem"!would ask me, "Are you from Bosnia?"
I said, "No."
He said, "Croatia?"
I said, "No."
He said, "Where are you from?" And I would always!this was 1994 or something. I
thought to myself !"You don't want to know where I'm from." This was always my
copout!I would say, "I'm from Belgrade," which is kind of, I'm not from Serbia,
because I'm from Belgrade. He looked at me and he said, "Germans are to blame for
everything." And I thought, what a marvelous, marvelous shopkeeper. He's keeping up
with the political events and he's able to please his customers, or at least what he thinks is
pleasing his customers.
!
Tomic -- 12
Q1: And that enabled you to keep going to the shop.
Tomic: I know, but he laughed, I laughed, and we understood each other, and I've been
going to the shop ever since. Of course he's a tradesman. He would not have been
offensive, but I thought the way he said it !he didn't miss a beat.
So it was just a little bit awkward when we started gathering staff, more and more people,
and there was a lady from a mixed marriage who had been married to somebody from
elsewhere!this is when we started gathering the team.
Q2: And your boss was from where?
Tomic: And Maja was from Zagreb.
Q2: From Zagreb, okay.
Tomic: She was a pure interpreter. So she was getting people from all over a little
bit!maybe a little bit more from Zagreb, but that was understandable because these are
the people she knew. Then we sort of started. Over the years, I can say, there was no real
tension between the nationalities inside the service. There was always more tension
within the nationalities. I was always great friends with a number of people from Zagreb,
and from Sarajevo, or Tuzla or wherever, I didn't have a problem, but there were a few
people from Belgrade I could not stand. It's actually the opposite of!I think Freud called
!
Tomic -- 13
it the "narcissism of small differences." But for me, Belgrade!I knew Belgrade. I knew
where which street was, and if somebody told me that they lived in that street and went to
that school I was like, "Ah, yeah, loser." [Laughter] While of course about Zagreb and
Sarajevo I had no prejudices, so they were just people to me. It's just funny how that
works out.
Q2: It's like the way the British are sorting by their class!
Tomic: Exactly, exactly.
Q2: !and by accent all the time.
Tomic: Yes, yes. "Oh, you're from Oxford?" [Makes disapproving sound] "Goodbye." So
that's exactly!it was almost that. At first I think we mingled a lot. We were a lot
together, because we re-created!and it's true!we re-created a little Yugoslavia in CLSS
[Conference and Language Services Section]. We did!with all its faults, unfortunately.
Q2: And this service was inside the Registry?
Tomic: This was inside the Registry, although we serviced the Office of the Prosecutor
[OTP] as well, and Chambers, so it was a lot different from what it is here.
Q1: And CLSS is?
!
Tomic -- 14
Tomic: Conference and Language Services Section. Because there were not many
hearings, of course everything was translation first, and I never thought I would want to
do interpretation, except on missions. Very early on, the first missions started going to
interview. First there was a mission close by in Europe. I remember I went there!this
was the last Belgian army barracks in Germany, in Cologne. Imagine!there were still
Belgian troops in Germany. General [Francis] Briquemont had been a UNPROFOR
[United Nations Protection Force] commander in Sarajevo, and resigned after seven
months. We went there, and I remember going there with a New Zealand investigator and
a French investigator, and this was one of my first missions. I'm not sure if it was the first
one, but I remember that I was a rookie. I thought, I'm just going to follow what happens.
I got briefed, and I was just to interpret French/English, English/French, or rather that
General Briquemont didn't want to speak in English, but he understood English, and that
would give him extra time to think as well, so I was interpreting back and forth. It wasn't
really high pressure. It was very high up in terms of hierarchy, he was a brigadier general
or something, and it was fantastic. I thought to myself, if this is what a mission is like!it
was in fabulous Belgian barracks with the most amazing restaurant on the lake. This is
also when I realized, oh, interpreters don't have time to eat, right.
I then realized the cultural differences that we were going to encounter in this. The New
Zealander, he was wonderful!but he had no clue about manners. It's not that he was
rude, he was just very direct. General Briquemont was a gentleman, and he would
!
Tomic -- 15
always!extremely polite, very nice to talk to, and I think we went back to see him about
three times. When we went to sit at lunch, General Briquemont said to me, "Madam à ma
droite"!"Madam to my right"!which is just a polite way of saying!this is normal for
the only woman at the table. That's how it is. But of course before I had any time to say
this to the mission leader!"He wants me to sit on his right, so you position yourself next
to me so that I could interpret"!he pushed me out of the way and said, "I'm going to sit
next to the general," [Laughter] so I thought, okay. I just let it go. I'm not going to have a
fistfight. Otherwise we'll be deported. [Laughter] But it was all good humor.
I also remember the wonderful French investigator, Jean; he wasn't paid on time for the
mission. There was an issue with us getting advances. At the time, remember, there was
no European currency. There was no euro, so we also had to be issued cash for each
country, by cashier, in advance. He didn't get that money so we ended up paying for him,
and I thought, this is so not how it's supposed to be. But it was wonderful. I learned a lot
and I also realized I can do English/French. My French had been very good then. It's still
okay, but I'm not sure I could do this now. At the time I realized, it's good, it's okay, I can
do it. Into French it's of course harder, but in consecutive it's not so bad, because I have
time to think and you can take notes. After that I did a lot of little phone calls, and then
some missions to the field to Bosnia. I did not go in the war; I went right after Dayton
was signed in 1995 [Dayton Peace Accords]. We actually went two days or something
after Dayton was signed, so that was pretty soon after.
Q2: What was that like for you to go back? You hadn't been back for a long time.
!
Tomic -- 16
Tomic: I hadn't been. It was very, very strange. I went with two completely different
people!Teresa, who is high up in Homeland Security.
Q2: Yes, I know that name.
Tomic: Yes. She's an extraordinary woman, amazing trial attorney!and then there was a
complete maverick of a French investigator from the south of France who had been in the
anti-terrorist squads. His idea of investigation was something completely different. He
was working against ETA [Euskadi Ta Askatasuna] in the south of France, in the Basque
country. He never thought we should follow the same route home.
Q1: Very careful, yes.
Tomic: Yes, but also quite neurotic!while Teresa was a lawyer, so everything has to be
done as it should be done, and American, and very particular. So between the two of
them, I was!oh, this was so weird.
Q1: Where were you with them?
Tomic: We actually went to Sarajevo. We had to go to Zagreb first, so I went to Zagreb
just after Dayton was signed. I could not imitate the Zagreb accent !to pretend that I'm
from Zagreb. You just can't.
!
Tomic -- 17
Q2: Is this a very different accent?
Tomic: It's just a question of accent, and I would sound ridiculous, so I just spoke my
broader Serbian in Zagreb. Nobody batted an eyelid. All capital cities are actually a lot
more tolerant than the provinces, and I was fine. Then we went to!I can't even
remember who we went to see, but we ended up going across the barricades and going
with a British army officer who I think was more scared than everybody put together. I
got to see the Italian UNPROFOR units. They all had the plumes, and I remember the
Bosnians called them, "Here come the cockerels," because of course they didn't look very
serious. [Laughter] Actually, I'm mistaken, it had already became IFOR, Implementation
Force. This was the implementation force for Dayton, after which it turned into SFOR,
the Stabilization Force. Throughout all of the missions that I ever did!and I went to
many, many missions!we always had NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]
support.
Q2: When you were on those missions, were you translating between the French speakers
and English speakers as well as the!?
Tomic: Oh, it was just horrendous. That was when I thought, they're not paying me
enough, because while the French investigator understood English, he understood what
he wanted to understand. Teresa didn't speak any French, so before I was to say anything
to the Republika Srpska!i.e. Bosnian Serb officials!I had to wait for them to have an
!
Tomic -- 18
argument, which they then had in half broken English, French, and me trying to sort it
out. It was one of those crazy things, but I did see the funny side of it. I thought, I will
look back at this as saying this is completely crazy. I remember that with Teresa, we had
to share a room in the Holiday Inn because there were no rooms. There was no hot water.
Of course there were no windows. It was very cold, so it was plastic sheeting, I remember
that. It was all weird, it was all strange, it was all—
Q2: What was it like for you to see your—?
Tomic: I saw the devastation. I think the devastation was quite clear. I think nobody goes
there and remains unaffected. This is incredible!you saw a building that is only
operational up to four floors and the rest is destroyed. When we went with the chief of
investigations later, John!that was a couple of years later. I remember because my
second daughter was just born and I was planning to finish breastfeeding just in time to
go on a mission. I remember having some people having comments!"Oh, that's
irresponsible." I said, "I've organized everything. It's all going to work. No worries. I'm
not going to miss this because this is important." These were a series of investigations,
and speaking to high officials from Republika Srpska, and having a very large delegation
for the first time to hear their side of the story, so it was really important to me.
Q2: Was there any sense when you were actually in the field that your Serbian
connection made a difference to people you were interpreting for?
!
Tomic -- 19
Tomic: I had one very unpleasant moment that was with Teresa when we went to the
court in Sarajevo. I can't remember which court it was. She wanted some specific
documents which related to certain events in Sarajevo. Obviously all sides kept prisoners,
all sides behaved terribly!some people more than others to larger or lesser extent and so
on!so this was exactly what the Tribunal's work was about. This is how I saw it. The
judge who saw us, he was the president of the court. I started to interpret what Teresa was
saying, and he interrupted me, and said, "Where are you from?" We are not supposed to
react to this. We're not supposed to have a direct conversation with a person. I'm
supposed to interpret to her, but I got caught unawares because I was already feeling a
little bit uneasy. This was right after Dayton, so the cease-fire was what, a week old? You
could still hear gunfire.
I said, "I'm from Belgrade," and he just went, "You scum!" And I started to stammer, and
I felt a massive slap on my thigh from Teresa!"Interpret to me!" Of course, she brought
me back to my senses, so I just interpreted. She says, "You are not to talk to him." She
gave a little speech, which I then interpreted, and then he calmed down. I remember
being under a terrible cloud for the rest of the day, to such an extent that that totally
marked my whole day there. It was only weeks later that I actually remembered that just
after the whole interview, after we were given access to some archives, he came and
apologized to me. But I had blocked it out for weeks because the first shock was so great.
Q1: So traumatic. When you were on these field missions, were you speaking with
potential witnesses for the courts?
!
Tomic -- 20
Tomic: These were all kinds. I had suspects, witnesses, eyewitnesses, experts, officials of
all sides. Some sensitive sources. For years we went to talk to a sensitive source in an
undisclosed location for twelve or thirteen times, trying to find some mass grave
locations. This was from a Croatian sensitive side. Clearly that was real!for me the
Tribunal really tried. I know because I was there. Of course, all the accusations from all
the sides are easy to make because they don't know, and of course we cannot say, "Well,
actually, we spoke to this person, this person, this person," but I know that if I went
eleven, twelve times, on a mission to try and find mass graves!and when I'm talking
about mass graves I'm not talking about few dead!although the definition of a mass
grave is three plus.
Q2: Is that right?
Q1: Really?
Tomic: Apparently, yes. That was how it was used in the Tribunal. They were
trying!"But let's try bigger." I know it sounds horrible but that's what grabs people's
attention and that's what you can put in an indictment. Otherwise an indictment against
let's say some Croat perpetrators for what they did to Serbs, say, "Oh, I've got these!."
Of course, these are still people, but it doesn't work that way. You can't have somebody
answering for hundreds and then somebody answering for three. I mean, you can, but it
was uneven. So all those missions, that was with everybody. In March 1996 I went to a
!
Tomic -- 21
mission in Romania, because the then rump Yugoslavia government!I don't know what
to call it. Serbia-Montenegro? No, it was a rump Yugoslavia government!refused to
accept jurisdiction of the Tribunal. Romania accepted to let us go to their territory to
interview witnesses about this. This was about the camps near Konjic!Čelebići.
Q1: These were people who had fled the region into Romania?
Tomic: No, not at all. They were actually bussed in from Belgrade, but we couldn't work
on the Serbian/Yugoslav territory.
Q1: Oh, I see.
Tomic: They wouldn't let us work there. So a lot of people came, and since I was the only
one from the Tribunal, I took charge of the other interpreters who were freelancers. Then
we made teams. Because there was a lot of sexual abuse that was going on in that camp,
we made teams. It's strange how you get to do things. You have no idea if that's correct,
but you're just making these assumptions and going on common sense and it works out
okay. So we decided to make teams, woman/woman teams, interpreter/investigator,
woman/man team, man/woman, and then two men, so that there would be every
permutation for people. We would actually say, "Who would like to!?" My idea was to
introduce everybody so that the witnesses would feel more at ease. I worked with a
female German investigator.
!
Tomic -- 22
We spoke with many sexual assault victims, but it's strange that you actually brace
yourself and then you just say, "Okay, this is it, and it's horrible, but I'm going to get
through it," and we did. We did and we processed a lot of them. Some we managed to get
proper statements from; others we knew they had been abused but they wouldn't tell us.
You know when you see a woman who is looking so depressed, and there's just nothing
in the world!and I keep waiting, because we didn't have time to process everybody's
statements that were written, given to the police in Bosnia!or, sorry, in Serbia. Well, I
don't know what to call it anymore.
I remember this one particular one and thought, "Oh, God, I hope they didn't do anything
to her children." I was waiting to hear who was killed. Every witness is a horrible story.
Sometimes you get to read the statement beforehand, sometimes you don't. You know
there's a village, you know that on the morning of the twenty-second of April, twentyfourth of April!usually it was April, May!there was an attack, and you know what
weapons were involved, you knew which unit, so this was all familiar, so all you're
hearing is who's going to be killed.
I remember thinking, why is this woman so depressed? The investigator kept asking her
questions, and nobody from the immediate family was killed. Okay, she had witnessed
horrible things, and she was in the camp. Nobody was killed, so something must have
happened in the camp. We actually broke the interview to have a break. This is
something that, if you remember when we discussed on community interpreting, you
would never ever do. The interpreter would never say, "I think!." But we had worked
!
Tomic -- 23
together, the investigator and I. We got on very well, and we wanted to get evidence, so I
said to her, "Look, there's no way that nothing happened. She was there for three weeks."
So we spoke to the leader of the group, and said, "Yes, she was raped, and she doesn't
want to talk about it, and that's it." Of course, we asked several times. She just bent her
head, wouldn't talk, shook her head, that was it. We don't know whether that would have
helped her or not.
Q2: Did you get the sense that sometimes when people recounted their experiences that
they did feel better? Or was it hard to know?
Tomic: It's very hard to know, very hard to know. Sometimes, yes, but it's all so
wretched. It's actually just a history of misery, and it's so unnecessary. Who needed all
this? I think that sense of futility of broken lives, of broken childhoods, or devastated
landscapes, villages burned, mosques!for what? To set the same corrupt states of the
same corrupt families? So yes, very difficult.
Q2: When did you transition into being a simultaneous interpreter?
Tomic: I had one false start when Maja suggested it, and she said, "Go into the BCS
booth." And BCS!we decided that it would be all varieties in the booth, but for written
translation we decided it would be separate when indictments had to be served so that we
wouldn't give to a Croat a fully Serbian!that would also be difficult, so in that sense—
!
Tomic -- 24
Q2: And again, it's mostly lexical differences.
Tomic: They're lexical differences but they're differences, so you would recognize. That
was really hard for proofreading. I think proofreading was murder because you would
have the same things but just with some differences. I remember once we were
translating an indictment!I can't remember for who it was; I think it was one of the first
indictments!and we had to have it in Serbian for him, although why I don't know
because he was a Bosnian-Serb. We had a Bosnian one for the Bosnian authorities, and
then we had some other versions. It was really bizarre because of course the BosnianSerbs do not consider the Serbian-Serbian is really their language either, as there are
dialect-related difficulties and additional vowels. For instance is that certain vowels we
will say in the word for "milk"!I would say "mlijeko" in Bosnia or in Croatia, while in
Serbian they would say, "mleko." That kind of thing happens in many words, of course.
So we were proofreading like crazy!"Is this correct? This is correct"!and just as we
were about to give it we then realized we'd forgotten to!we'd actually left the English
word "indictment" because we were so frantic. There were silly things happening like
that.
Q2: You mean you hadn't even done the English version?
Tomic: No, no, the English version existed, but because to keep the format, the easiest is
just to type across the English version, but we hadn't looked at it all !so we forgot the
title.
!
Tomic -- 25
Q2: Oh, you hadn't saved the!. [Laughs]
Tomic: Strange. So that was that. Maja put me in the BCS booth, and I did a few tryouts,
and I found it extremely difficult. I just did not have the BCS. My BCS wasn't rich
enough. I wasn't reading!all my readings were with witness statements.
Q1: A big difference from the law aspect of it.
Tomic: I couldn't do legal argument, never in a million years. Maybe I could manage
witness statements, but then I didn't need to do witness statements because witness
statements had been given in the testimonies in Bosnian/Croatian /Serbian in court, so I
would never have to do that. So I thought, you know what, I'm not going to do this now. I
also felt there was not a particularly great atmosphere. A lot of the interpreters were
coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia. A lot of them were from
Belgrade, and so they felt they were!they were truly qualified, huge experience. Many
of them had worked with [Josip Broz] Tito!imagine that. So to them we were like!you
know - amateurs. But I felt I knew everything about what happened from the beginning
of the investigation to the end. So after going on many more missions, I was seconded to
an investigation team for three years, that was very good. We were working specifically
on two investigations!that's nice because then you get into one particular area. Then I
said to Maja, "Look, I think I'd like to go the English booth." She said, "Alright, let's try
you out," and I did pass the sort of test.
!
Tomic -- 26
Q2: So you were going from BCS into English?
Tomic: And French into English.
Q2: And French into English, okay.
Tomic: The reason why they allowed me is because I had French and they needed more
people.
Q2: Yes, but that's interesting because I know normally you translate towards your native
language, right?
Tomic: Completely, so I was doing it in my "B," so I was going with my "A" and my "C"
into my "B," which is really not done!but a lot of things were possible because they
needed it.
Q2: But did you have formal training then?
Tomic: We did have training. We had a lot. It was done there. It was between six weeks
and three months, I think. Then they let us go!as the third in the booth, so it will be like
one person goes for half an hour, another person goes, and then I would take it. It was
okay. I felt there was a huge amount of relaxation that you could learn about being in a
!
Tomic -- 27
space and there's nothing; there's just a microphone, and you're there, and it's your voice
and your intellect and you have to defend yourself. [Laughs] I thought that was very Zen
experience. I actually found it not stressful, strangely enough. I also realized, because I
had gone to so many missions, that people face to face are a lot more stressful than a
courtroom, because you're behind the glass. The glass is usually tinted.
Q1: Now were you completely in the booth at that point? You weren't doing any more
field operations?
Tomic: I did a lot of interpreting in the detention center. Since a lot of the accused were
Serbian, they felt that it was better that I go. I like to say that I spent as much time in the
detention center as if I had committed several small misdemeanors. [Laughter] It's just
soul-destroying, just going there, having to wait. The metal detector is extremely
sensitive, much more sensitive than here. And then you wait, and they come and pick you
up, and then they pick you up, and then!it's a prison, I mean.
Q2: And this is when you were interpreting for the defense counsel?
Tomic: I was both translating/interpreting also for a formal suspect and accused
interviews. I think I have somewhere that I've spent thirty-five hours of interviews with a
self-confessed murderer. Just before the trial we went on a mission to the camp in
question, so I actually saw everything!I saw the camp, or the campground, where he
killed people at point blank range.
!
Tomic -- 28
Q2: What was it like to be in such intimate contact with somebody who was accused of
crimes like that?
Tomic: It was surreal. It was quite surreal. It was really surreal. I learned a lot from the
investigators I was working with because this is something that is obviously not shown in
any detective series, which is how much preparation goes into interviewing an accused.
I also realized that what they did was that, because everything was recorded, tape
recorded, video recorded, the videotape would go!one would go to the defense, one
would go for the record keeping of the court. They were all sealed there in front of them.
There were three copies I think, and all that was prepared in advance by the
investigator!the stickers, the addresses, everything!the names, the times. This is
another Australian investigator!he would always start with the same, "Today is the
twelfth of January 1997. This is a formal interview." Again, every time it would start the
same. It's that predictability with the amount of preparation that in fact gave structure to
the whole thing, and it's that structure that you cling on to as you're saying things like,
"How many people did you kill in total?" I would have to interpret that to him, and I'm
thinking, how on earth can you even begin to ask that?
Q1: You have to compartmentalize it.
Tomic: Exactly.
!
Tomic -- 29
Q2: Were the people being interviewed—?
Tomic: Were they cooperative?
Q2: Yes, were they cooperative?
Tomic: In general, yes. I also spent quite a lot of time interviewing another accused in
relation to Srebrenica. I didn't interview; I mean I was assisting. All of these
people!well, I suppose the previous one actually confessed, but he didn't know how
many he had killed. He couldn't remember. There was one moment when I thought, this
is really bizarre. We had a break and I was about to leave the room!the security guard
was always there!I'm about to leave the room and the security guard asked me, "Where
are you from?" Our security guard. I was so shocked that I said, "Belgrade." I should
have said, "None of your business," and left, as the investigators were leaving. Then the
accused said, "Oh, whereabouts?" I was thinking, how did I find myself in this
conversation?
Q2: So what did you do? Did you just—?
Tomic: I think I even said a vague part of town, and he said, "Oh, this is where my
relatives live," and then gave me the name of my street where my mother lives.
Q2: Oh, my gosh.
!
Tomic -- 30
Tomic: And I said, "Ha," [Nervously] and I just [Takes a deep breath]—
Q1: And left.
Tomic: You just suddenly realize there are people who live where I'd lived who are
actually related to this catastrophe. We sometimes even had jokes about it. This is
terrible, to joke, but people like that, we would say, "He's a nice guy for a mass
murderer," because you have to joke, because otherwise!this was no disrespect to the
victims, this was just, how do I get out of this unscathed? How do I survive!?
After I started working regularly in the booth!because we had morning and afternoon
sessions, so sometimes we had morning, sometimes we'd have afternoon!we would call
a special number and we would listen to the message, "You are in courtroom one." Then I
decided I needed transport!I got a car so that I could drive myself at odd times. I
remember if I had an afternoon session in particular, it would go until 7:00-7:15 in the
evening. I would drive myself. I remember because I was still living in the same place
near Leiden!I remember going home, arriving home and then having no recollection of
how I got there. It's quite a feat that I actually got there every time.
Q2: Was it difficult to compartmentalize your life as a mother and a partner with your
professional life?
!
Tomic -- 31
Tomic: Mother was okay, because I thought, okay, I have perspective. The kids reminded
you all the time of their presence. Now they're grown and they remember that I was
away, but it was really hard in my private life. I'm not going to accuse the tribunal for
breaking up my marriage, but it was certainly!the perspective it gives you makes it very
hard for you to hear about anything else because your inner resources will be obviously
preserved for the children. I wasn't going to shout at the children or anything, although I
did remember at one point that I told them!they must have been something like two and
eight, and they were a little bit naughty in the evening!and I said, "Oh, stop behaving
like children." And they stopped and looked at me, and I just realized I was being
completely ridiculous, of course. How else would they behave?
But I was able, I think, to have a good time, but I couldn't take any!when you do a job
like this you have no space, I think!certainly I didn't have. Maybe people better than me
did!to deal with any kind of additional problem. So if my husband said, "Our washing
machine is broken." "I don't care. You deal with it." Then it would become, "I spent
fifteen hours over the past two days working with a mass murderer, so don't you tell me
about a washing machine!" Which is insane. I think if we had had proper training we
wouldn't have gone down that path.
Q2: Was there no counseling? Was there no—?
Tomic: No, there wasn't anything.
!
Tomic -- 32
Q2: Is there here at the ICC?
Tomic: Yes, that's something we did very early on. That's because of obviously!we did
very early on with some therapists, especially for the Bemba trial. We did a lot with the
welfare officer because Bemba is all about sexual violence, and that's very hard to listen
to.
Q2: So you were at the ICTY until 2003?
Tomic: Yes.
Q2: And what was your impetus then? Did you come directly to the ICC?
Tomic: I came directly to the ICC, and I would say that my main motivation for applying
was that I realized that every single defense lawyer knew my name. I know that sounds a
bit strange. These are not bad people; they're just doing their job. But I started meeting
them at airports, or rather I must have seen them before but I never paid attention, and I
was with my children and they would say, "Nice children. How old are they?" It's like
there was just too much—
Q1: Too much contact.
Tomic: Too much contact.
!
Tomic -- 33
Q1: Too close.
Tomic: There was like, "I really want!." I was sick of spending so much time in the
detention. I actually remember my last assignment in detention!there was an Australian
lawyer!a woman whose every other word was "cool." I said, "I really don't want to do
this anymore." It wasn't lack of respect for whatever, it was just, it's enough. Nine years is
enough.
Q2: And then the ICC had been established.
Tomic: Yes, and I applied, and there were some strange vacancies—one coordinator, one
head. In the end I got this job. I applied for a couple of things, but in fact they abolished
some or moved something and I got a position of a non-existent section, to put it together,
and that's how I started.
Q2: So you came in to actually head the Language and Translation Services.
Tomic: Yes, and it didn't exist. I had to get people and write the jobs.—
Q1: You got to build it.
!
Tomic -- 34
Tomic: I get to build it, and of course I built it all on my own experience. Also I had very
little experience of management.
Q2: So was this exciting, or challenging, or scary? What was that like?
Tomic: It was pretty terrible. I actually quite hated it, I have to say. I don't love it now,
because it's so much easier to just go in a room and interpret. That's just so much easier.
One of the things in interpreting, which I always loved, was that you were there but you
were not there. You were participating but you were on the edge. You would be part of it
but you were not asked your opinion. I would go into a meeting and I would know
immediately who had the power in that room, because I started analyzing it a lot. That
person you could tell there was that, so I was able to have multiple layers of discourse in
my mind while interpreting. When I got very good at consecutive!which is really
difficult. Much harder than simultaneous.
Q2: Really?
Tomic: Much harder. Simultaneous is easy-peasy.
Q2: Just because you have to retain what has been said?
Tomic: Also because there's a lot more going on. In simultaneous you're kind of in a
cocoon. You're focusing. I also learned to relax. I had a very good senior colleague who
!
Tomic -- 35
taught me to sit up; you need your lungs so you have to sit straight. Don't ever run to the
booth because you don't want to get there out of breath. Prepare thoroughly!all of these
things!and if you cannot do something and you realize it, get your colleague to take
over. Don't be an ego and think, I can do it. So this was all good advice, but I came into it
from a completely different angle. I knew I wasn't a conference interpreter. I was
somebody who could do court interpreting in court simultaneously because I knew
everything inside-out in that court. But don't ask me to be in a diplomatic conference
because I will get everybody's title wrong, which I incidentally I did.
I'm still very proud of this. There's one absolutely awful man who is still around. He was
the high up in Republika Srpska and I remember he came to visit Carla Del Ponte at some
point and although she was effective, I had adored and idolized Louise Arbour for whom
I had also interpreted many times, and there was a difference in approach. Anyway, the
gentleman in question was addressed properly by the Chief Prosecutor but I kept
misinterpreting by pure omission, I was downgrading him every time. He glared at me.
Nobody said anything because these are highly diplomatic situations; people just pretend
everything's fine. One of the assistants of Carla who speaks BCS said, "You do realize
you've been demoting him throughout?" I said, "Oh, good." [Laughter]
This also is something that has to be learned. You have to know the titles. I wasn't really
fantastic at it. One of the things I really liked was being able!and then I knew!when
you know you're in flow, you're interpreting, you're taking notes, you're doing it and then
a lady comes and says, "Would you like some coffee?" and I say, "Yes, please. No
!
Tomic -- 36
sugar," and then I continue the sentence, and I thought, this is it. This is the height of
what I can do, but just don't ask me to do it with prime ministers. I could do it in the field,
I could do it as long as it was nitty-gritty, but empty sentences, I found that impossible. I
just didn't have enough patience.
Q2: Well, I could tell from what you were saying about those notebooks that![Laughs]
Tomic: Yes, I'm going to keep this. This is something I enjoy a lot. I've kept records of
some of the things.
Q2: So at the ICC you have never done any courtroom work?
Tomic: I did once when a Serbian delegation came for the first president and we didn't
want to pay [for Serbian interpreters], so I did the entire meeting for an hour interpreting
both ways. I thought, this is the last time I'm going to do this. There was a lot of empty
speeches, so that was not for me. I think a couple of times I did something into English
from French as a translation because there was nobody else to do it, but I really don't!of
course I don't do it. This is a pure aberration and exception.
Q2: What have been the challenges here? What have you brought from the ICTY and
what has been hard!? What were the challenges when you came in?
!
Tomic -- 37
Tomic: I always believed that the reason why it was hard at the ICTY was because we all
came from that region. Just to give you one example, I remember the hardest time of all
was in 1999 during the NATO air strikes, where half of the service had some connection
to Serbia, and if they were not from Serbia they had family or whatever. I was thinking,
okay, this is something that's happening but I have to keep going, and I went to work. I
had very good fortune that my chief of investigation under whom I was working was just
saying, "Is your family okay?" It was fine. I was in touch with my dad who was working
as a surgeon in Belgrade, and he was very upbeat. He was very anti-Milošević, and he
had things to say like, "Oh, the Americans should just get rid of us forever. We are no
good," and things like that. So this was a different perspective.
But there were people who were absolutely traumatized!and I understand!like a
colleague whose daughter was pregnant and about to give birth in Belgrade. Now you're
being bombed by the biggest air force of them all. You're not going to say, "Who cares?"
But she should not have come to work; she should have stayed at home, or whatever.
Done something else. But she came to work and then started attacking the British and the
American trial attorneys. She wasn't an immature person she should have known better.
In any case it's always hard when the personal and the political get together.
In 1999, I remember!and I think I've kept that. It's quite funny. There were a hundred
and something people in the service, and we got a memo one fine day. It must have been
somewhere in April, May 1999. The subject of the memo was, "Political Discussions in
the Office," and says, "Please note that office is not the place for political discussions."
!
Tomic -- 38
We knew there must have been an incident but nobody knew what it was. For the rest of
the day, nobody worked because we were all going to each other's offices saying, "What
happened? What happened? What happened? What happened?" When you talk about
what did I bring to the ICC, I said, "I'm never going to send a memo that people who did
not participate in the incident would know nothing about." You have an incident, you call
the people involved.
Q2: And now you have interpreters from all over the place.
Tomic: All over the place. They are just as difficult, so I've decided it is not national; it is
language related. It is a professional deformation where we think all translators think
they're making big literature, and not court orders. All the interpreters will say, "Oh, I
absolutely did a wonderful rendition." The interpreters are not there to be brilliant for the
sake of being brilliant; we are there to provide language services to court officials. I've
tried to get that across. I'm not sure how successful I was.
Q2: Do you think that interpreters feel unappreciated essentially?
Tomic: Language services everywhere are the category that you could fit into something
like Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Unconsoled. They think they know everything. You ask
any reviser, translator here!especially revisers!they will say, "Yes, but the point of that
argument was that they should!." They will explain to you what the attorney meant, and
they will sit on it, and they will not let you send it as done because they haven't
!
Tomic -- 39
penetrated into the essence and gotten the best. It's a professional deformation that you
only understand when you become a manager.
Q2: I've heard translators say that the weakness of a legal argument really becomes
apparent when it has to be translated.
Tomic: True.
Q2: So that in some ways the translator do sort of see—
Tomic: Yes, it's true, but we are here for that. That is the weakness, but don't use that
weakness as!that weakness you can identify doesn't make you the best in the world,
which is what they all think just because they picked up on the weakness. Of course, one
of the things that all the translators will say is that if they do!and that I know this from
the ICTY as well!if we notice some discrepancy, something that's wrong, and we write
to the author or the judge or the court officer or whatever, and they say it doesn't matter,
that is as if you told them it's the end of the world. Because of course it matters.
Everything matters.
Q2: So you're translating all the judgments, all the—
Tomic: The judgments, the decisions, resolving fundamental issues. Some motions, not
all of them, and all rulings, so if there is a ruling on the interlocutory appeals—
!
Tomic -- 40
Q2: But the OTP still has its own—
Tomic: It has its own service for operational reasons, but none of it is official translation.
Q2: So that's just their internal translation?
Tomic: It's internal. If they do submit something, if it is challenged, then we would revise
it or look at it again, but it hasn't really happened.
Q2: This comes from my own background, but I'm interested in the kind of challenges
that have come up when you're working with a whole group of unfamiliar languages,
many of which are not habitually written. What are the special kinds of problems you run
into?
Tomic: From the beginning it was!the first language was Acholi, from northern
Uganda. That was hard because we didn't know anything about it, and it just turned
out!everything came from northern Uganda. The first case!the first situation I should
say.
Q2: Now you have Ongwen.
!
Tomic -- 41
Tomic: Now we have it as a case. We went into it without too much reflection, I have to
say. It was, okay, there are no Acholi interpreters in the world. If any of these people
come to be represented, or to appear before the court, they'll need this interpretation.
Well, it is done for Kinyarwanda, so we're going to do it for!. We did an interview with
Justine Ndongo-Keller, who was the one who did the training at ICTR. We had some
experience of that. Of course, BCS cannot be compared because you had so many people
and you had a very well-educated population.
Then we found out that one of the things!if I look at Acholi, and even the
Swahili!Swahili's DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] variant and standard
Swahili!and then later on, Zaghawa from Darfur is unwritten language, what we found
out, if I can have one sort of broad generalization, is that we needed to go to older people
for more experience. Younger people might not know as much.
I think the point is never to feel something cannot be done. Anything can be done. I think
that was one thing that I feel that we've accomplished here!we've done, and we can do,
any language. We know that. If we did have a chance to do Zaghawa, we would do it. It
wouldn't be perfect, but we would do it through Arabic, and the accused would have a
fair interpretation and fair representation at trial, I have no doubt about it. One of the
things that I was reminded recently is that in fact you can do anything, and I think in
these circumstances when you have apparently impossible languages, apparently
impossible things to reconcile!I'm doing a PhD in!
!
Tomic -- 42
Q2: Yes, in military studies?
Tomic: I'm doing history and memory now. My Master's was in military studies. One of
the extraordinary people that I've come across is a British woman called Flora Sands. She
was the only British woman to have served in the Serbian army in World War I. She
actually went with the Red Cross in 1914, and then went back to get some more supplies
for the Serbs, and then went back in 1915 as Serbia was being attacked from all sides.
She joined the Serbs, and ended up being I think a sergeant, got decorated, and was the
first taxi driver in Belgrade in 1924. An extraordinary person. Her memoirs are
just!they read like the best adventure ever. I love this line from her autobiography, as
she was trying to reach the Serbs from Salonika in 1915, in November. People said to
her, "You can't, because you're cut off. You're cut off by the Bulgarians. From this side
you're cut off by the Germans." She wrote in her book, "People love to tell you you can't
do things," and I thought, that is really it. I guess that's a suitable ending.
Q1: That's perfect. Thank you very much.
Tomic: You're welcome. It was pleasure.
Q2: Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful interview.
Q1: It was really great.
!
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Tomic -- 43
!
Tomic -- Index -- 44
Arbour, Louise
35
Bemba Gombo, Jean-Pierre
32
Benson, Morton
10
Blewitt, Graham
6
Briquemont, Francis
14, 15
Čelebići
21
Conference and Language Services Section [CLSS], ICTY 13, 14
Dayton Peace Accords
15, 16, 17, 19
Del Ponte, Carla
35, 36
Drazenovic, Maja
7, 8, 10, 12, 24, 25, 26
Implementation Force [IFOR]
17
International Court of Justice
6
International Criminal Court [ICC]
1, 32, 33, 36, 38
Izetbegović, Alija
10
Language and Translation Services, ICC
34
Major, John
2
!
Tomic -- Index -- 45
Milošević, Slobodan
10, 37
Milroy, Alistair
7
Ndongo-Keller, Justine
41
North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]
17, 37
Office of the Prosecutor [OTP], ICC
40
Office of the Prosecutor [OTP], ICTY
14
Registry, ICTY
13, 14
Sarajevo
13, 14, 17, 19
Srebrenica
29
Stabilization Force [SFOR]
17
Tito, Josip Broz
25
Tuđman, Franjo
10
Tuzla
13
United Nations Protection Force [UNPROFOR]
14, 17
Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland
2, 4
Zagreb
12, 17
Zvornik
3