The Hague | Tuesday
TWO witnesses testified in a closed session of the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic on Monday, giving evidence of atrocities committed during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.
The hearing took place behind closed doors, to protect the two witnesses’s identity as they gave their account of events during the war between Yugoslav forces and separatist Albanians.
The trial resumed after being suspended between three weeks when Milosevic fell ill and the court went on vacation.
On Tuesday, a third witness is to testify before the court, in a session open to the press and public, but with his face disguised and voice distorted to avoid recognition.
Presiding judge Richard May, often at loggerheads with the former leader, demanded Milosevic speed up his defence earlier on Monday in order not to lose time and to avoid being cut off from speaking.
Milosevic, however, insisted he had the right to perform his defence as he planned to, but May warned the former president to conduct the case in a ”reasonable way.”
The former Yugoslav leader is defending himself against charges of atrocities committed during the three conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia — the 1991-95 war in Croatia, the 1992-95 Bosnian war and the Kosovo conflict in 1998-99.
The section of the trial dealing with events in Kosovo is expected to last several more months, when the prosecution is planning to call around 100 witnesses.
The tribunal’s rules of procedure include conditions for the protection of witnesses, from allowing their faces and voices to be distorted to speaking on condition of complete anonymity, with the identity of the witnesses not revealed to the defence.
The last option has been used only once since the creation of the UN Hague court.
Milosevic’s trial on more than 60 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in the Balkan wars was adjourned in mid-March because he had influenza.
Hearings were then again postponed last week because the chamber handling the case was on vacation.
If convicted, Milosevic faces life imprisonment.
The trial started on February 12 after the Serbian government, led by Prime Minister Zoran Djinjic, handed him over to the tribunal in June last year.
In the first five weeks of the trial over a dozen Kosovo Albanians testified about alleged atrocities committed by Yugoslav forces during the 1998-99 war in their province.
Milosevic has maintained that the masses of Albanians fleeing to Macedonia and Albania in that period were trying to get away from fighting between the army and Kosovo Albanian KLA rebels and 1999 NATO bombardments, and not from allegedly abusive Serb soldiers.
After refusing to appoint an attorney, Milosevic, defending himself, has pointed the finger of blame at the Western alliance for its bombing campaign which ended that war in the province.
The prosecution claims Milosevic was ultimately behind a plan to carve a Greater Serbia out of Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo through a campaign of ethnic cleansing and violence.
But Milosevic has painted himself as a fighter against ”terrorism,” and pointed to his role as Balkans peacemaker when he signed the US-sponsored Dayton accords which had ended the war in Bosnia in 1995.
Milosevic is the biggest catch for the UN’s court, which was established in 1993 but is yet to put on trial other leading figures blamed for the Balkans carnage of the 1990s, including four senior allies of the former strongman. – Sapa-AFP