In March 2009 the Centre for Research Architecture was invited to provide an expert testimony in the UN International Tribunal for the “prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia” or the ICTY – Case no. IT-05-87/1: The United Nations versus Vlastimir Djordjevic.

The case was concerned with the sixteenth century Hadum Mosque Complex in Gjakova/Dakovica, destroyed on March 24th 1999 in the early days of the Kosovo War.

During two previous trials, that of Slobodan Milošević, aborted after his death, and that of Milan Milutinović, the historical record could not have been satisfactorily determined. Both sides were claiming complex and possible scenarios. The prosecution sought to demonstrate that the Hadum Mosque was hit by an armed unite of the interior ministry: shelling from the ground decapitated the solid stone minaret, which then fell over the roof of the adjacent library building which in turn duly collapsed. The defense team claimed that the destruction was caused by a stray group of NATO cluster bombs, aimed at a near by Serbian military base. Our task was to study and model the remains of the built structure and its rubble, assuming that the narrative of its destruction was written into the architecture of the rubble; to reconstruct – as in an autopsy – the event backwards from rubble to building – uncovering the “cause of death”.

Inside the courtroom, architectural forensics appears as a technical report. The form report draws the space of the expert witness, the subject who speaks in the name of things. What does the wall, which remains standing testifies for? Holding on to the legitimacy of rational enquire, “to report” is a process of translation which validity is measured against levels of technical precision and scientific expertise. We were asked for 85% certainty, but prematurely disqualified under the 15% left for contestation. Technical legal matters had prevented the introduction of new witness during on-going cases and our analysis could not have been incorporated in the frame of expertise of the trial as such.

Here are at display correspondence and archival images of Architectural Forensics: Case 01: Hadum Mosque Complex. They narrate both a mode of research – “a series of consultancies” – and an open controversy. The material estifies not only for the situation it seeks to investigate, but as well as for the trial chamber whereby it operates. The report-in-the-making presented here reveals how procedures of justice exceed the space of the law, embodying a set of knowledge/technologies not traditionally represented as part of the court yet crucial for the (re)construction of a fact in dispute.

The historical record remains open. It is plausible that both scenarios have actually occurred. In fact both have. The mosque was destroyed by a NATO bomb and by a Serbian Forces, not in a single entangled event, but as two distinct historical possibilities that simultaneously and paradoxically coexist. While the testimony was called off, no commemoration practice could reduce and frame these into one single and enclosed historical account. The crimes committed on Kosovo were those of both the Serbian Yugoslav state and of NATO’s bombing. This realization does not lend itself to becoming a tool of jurisprudence, but opens a way to articulate differently the politics and culture of the area.