dailynews.yahoo.com
Western Leaders Face War Crimes Trial in
Belgrade
By Beti Bilandzic
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia put Presidents Bill Clinton and Jacques
Chirac of France and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) in
the dock Monday, accusing them of war crimes during last year's NATO
(news - web sites) air strikes.
The names of the three, and of 11 other Western leaders including Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,
were attached to 14 empty front row seats in the Belgrade court room where
the trial opened.
Serb authorities appointed lawyers for each of them.[it will be a blast if they won<g>]
The trial began a few days before September 24 presidential and
parliamentary elections which the Yugoslav government portrays as a choice
between ``patriotism and treachery,'' branding its domestic opponents traitors
and NATO lackeys plotting to destroy Serbia.
President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites), who will be seeking a
second term in the polls, was himself indicted by the U.N.'s International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in May last year for war
crimes in Kosovo.
District Public Prosecutor Andrija Milutinovic and his deputy took three
hours to read the list of charges of war crimes during the March-to-June
bombing. Yugoslav officials said it should take four days to present the
evidence.
``They are charged with inciting an aggressive war...war crimes against
civilian population...use of banned combat means, attempted murder of the
Yugoslav president...the violation of the country's territorial integrity...,'' the
charges sheet said.
``They fired 600 cruise missiles and made 25,119 (air) sorties during the
78-day aggression, attacking both military and civilian targets, killing and
wounding many people, causing mass destruction of property,'' it added.
The prosecutor read out the names of 503 civilians, 240 soldiers and 147
police who he said were killed during the bombing, which NATO launched to
halt Belgrade's repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
Piles Of Stacked Documents
Piles of documents containing evidence were stacked on a court room table,
and presiding judge Veroljub Raketic said there was six times as much
material available elsewhere.
Court officials read out statements of the accused leaders to support the
charge that they were inciting war.
Films of NATO attacks on Yugoslav targets were shown as the officials read
out survivors' testimonies and forensic reports.
These testimonies included a mother whose daughter was killed in the
Montenegrin village of Murino where she had been sent for safety and a
rescuer speaking about a girl in flames who died in his arms as he took her
out of a wrecked train.
A doctor from the town of Aleksinac, whose parents and sister were killed
when their house was hit, was quoted as saying he wanted to kill himself
when he saw what happened.
The accused face sentences of up to 20 years imprisonment if found guilty.
Serbian Justice Minister Dragoljub Jankovic said he expected maximum
sentences on the basis of the evidence.
``The question is how the sentence will be carried out. As the international
community's stand on our country is changing, I believe some of them will one
day be extradited,[please come and take Albright, quick<ggg>'' he said in the town of Sabac, the independent Beta news
agency reported.
But the mother of one of 16 employees killed in an attack on the state
television building in Belgrade described the trial as a farce, saying in a written
statement to reporters at the trial that those responsible in Yugoslavia should
also be tried.
NATO insisted throughout the campaign it was aiming only at military targets
and took all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.
When the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in February that 500
civilians had been killed by the air strikes, NATO said its report constituted
legitimate criticism but that NATO's actions could not be compared with
Serb violence in Kosovo. |
