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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (17067)	9/18/2000 10:46:47 PM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

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.