As part of his defence before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic plans to use a CBC-TV documentary to argue that the media spread lies about alleged atrocities in the Balkans.

During the 16-minute program, The Truth About Rajmonda: A KLA Soldier Lies for the Cause, CBC journalist Nancy Durham admits that she was deceived when reporting from Kosovo in 1998 — and unwittingly spread propaganda for the Kosovo Liberation Army.

But Durham says her work was also misused by the Serbian side to bolster claims that the West manipulated information.

Blic News, Yugoslavia’s largest independent newspaper, has learned that the CBC program is just one of many videotapes that Milosevic plans to use as evidence. Asked to comment on that prospect, Nancy Durham said:

My film is on the public record. If Milosevic wants to show it, I hope he will use the full version and not the edited one which was broadcast by Radio TV Serbia without my permission. RTS cut out the bits that were critical of Serbia’s actions in Kosovo.

In my film about Rajmonda, I wanted to explain why she had lied to me and why it had taken me so long to realize that she had lied to me. It’s a film about war, media and propaganda.

Both sides used me for propaganda purposes and it’s a depressing experience.

After reporting that I’d been used by the Albanian side, some Serbs saw me as a hero, proof that foreign journalists lied about what happened in Kosovo. I was being used again.

The head prosecutor of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, may also present Durham’s new documentary, Exposed. That piece investigates claims about eighty-six bodies found in a freezer truck dumped in the Danube River. It premiered on the BBC in February.

“We didn’t broadcast the film just before the court proceedings in order to help The Hague or anybody else. We simply wanted to find out what happened and report it. That’s the job of every journalist,” Durham said in an interview with Blic News:

I went to Belgrade to shoot a film about Milosevic’s defence. Everyone talks about his alleged crimes, but few talk about his defence. I thought that would make a fascinating film, but I couldn’t get the access I needed — to his lawyers or his wife. So the film went in a different direction.

It ended up looking at the crimes he was accused of sponsoring in Kosovo. I found Bosko Radojkovic, the policeman who investigated the freezer truck full of bodies found in the Danube. He had the courage to talk about the crime and his own part in the cover-up — the story was kept quiet for two years. He, the investigating officer, helped to hide the bodies and then he blew up the truck. He was willing to go on the record about it.

Radojkovic had disobeyed orders by holding onto incriminating photographs he had taken as the truck full of corpses was hauled from the Danube River.

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