Milosevic Continues to Recall 'Historical Facts' at Trial

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, February 19, 2002

Milosevic Continues to Recall 'Historical Facts' at Trial

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Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic returned to the dock on Monday for the second week of his trial, continuing to recall "historical facts" in a series of wars in the former Yugoslav territories, particularly Croatia and Bosnia, during the 1990s.

At the trial court of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Milosevic told judges that the conflicts during the 1990s in the Balkan region were caused by "the will and interests" of some big foreign powers. The then U.S. administration was not only involved in the conflicts but also "carried out crimes," he said in his rebuttal to prosecutors' opening statements, which were made in the first two days after the trial formally started last Tuesday.

According to court proceedings, from late Monday, prosecutors are expected to call the first group of witnesses, ranging from survivors of massacres to former allies of Milosevic and forensic investigators responsible for exhuming rotting human remains from mass graves in the Balkans.

Many will be "protected witnesses" offered in anonymity by the court in what prosecutors call a measure to prevent reprisals. Milosevic told the court last week that anonymity meant that they would be "false witnesses," part of an "ocean of lies" against him.

Kosovo Albanian politician Mahmut Bakalli is said by his party to be the first to give evidence on Monday afternoon, but prosecutors in The Hague declined to give any comment on this.

The U.N.-sponsored ICTY has accused Milosevic of genocide in Bosnia's 1992-1995 war and of crimes against humanity in Croatia in 1991 and in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1998-1999.

It is a foregone conclusion that prosecutors can satisfy the ICTY that many massacres, tortures, rapes and mass expulsions did take place in the three conflicts.

The challenge for the prosecutors is to show that Milosevic either ordered such atrocities, knew of them yet failed to halt them, or knew about them after they were committed but failed to punish the perpetrators. Observers say the "chain of command" is easier to prove in Kosovo than in the Bosnian and Croatian conflicts, although the latter wars produced many more casualties.The trial therefore is expected to be a marathon one.

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