THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 21 (Hina) - Prosecutors at the InternationalCriminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague haverequested leave to reopen an evidentiary hearing in the case againstformer Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milosevic in order to do what theyfailed to do in the first two years of the trial -- to present crownevidence of the involvement of the governments of Serbia and theFederal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1995 Srebrenica massacrecorroborating genocide charges against the accused.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 21 (Hina) - Prosecutors at the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague
have requested leave to reopen an evidentiary hearing in the case against
former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in order to do what they failed to
do in the first two years of the trial -- to present crown evidence of the
involvement of the governments of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre corroborating genocide charges against the
accused. The prosecution closed its case in February 2004 after
calling 298 witnesses and introducing thousands of documents, transcripts, and
audio and video recordings over a period of 300 work days. Chief Prosecutor
Carla del Ponte then admitted that she lacked "crown evidence" of Milosevic's
involvement in genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is the first of the 66
counts of the indictment that charges the accused with war crimes committed in
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s.
In the motion made public by the ICTY on 20 July, the prosecution
requested leave to call six new witnesses and introduce a number of exhibits of
evidence corroborating allegations in the indictment which hold Milosevic
responsible for the death of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in
Srebrenica.