In his testimony, the witness supported the principal allegation by the defence that a massive exodus of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in 1999 was the result of a NATO bombing campaign rather than Serbian repression.
Ibraj, 51, was in charge of security in his village, Osek Hilja, near the western town of Djakovica, in 1991. "I have never heard of the Serbian police or military forcing Albanians out of Kosovo," he told ICTY judges.
Answering questions put by Milosevic, who conducts his own defence, Ibraj said that none of the residents of his village had left for Albania nor had any of the houses been burnt.
"We asked some Albanians who were passing by in a truck why they were going to Macedonia, and they said they were going there because NATO had started bombing Kosovo," the witness said.
Milosevic, who is charged with the deportation and expulsion of around 800,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the killing of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians in the spring and summer of 1999, insists that the Albanians fled the province because of the NATO bombing campaign and that those killed were mainly Albanian guerrillas, members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were killed in clashes with Serbian military and police forces.
Ibraj said that in June 1999, when he had left Kosovo, KLA guerrillas had taken away his son and brother and that they had never been found. He added that he used to be a member of the Kosovo Democratic League led by Ibrahim Rugova and that he had not supported the KLA because they were "against the state".
During the cross-examination, the prosecutor presented evidence indicating that the witness had collaborated with the Serbian police and that he had a reputation of a violent criminal.
Citing a document of the Kosovo Democratic League, the prosecutor said that Muharem Ibraj was a notorious Albanian collaborator with the Serbian police, which the witness denied.
According to a report by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the witness and his village guard unit had a reputation of violent criminals who ill-treated civilians if they contacted the KLA or the OSCE.
Citing statements by Albanian witnesses, the prosecutor said that Ibraj and his unit, together with the police, participated in the burning of houses and killing of Albanians in Djakovica and surrounding villages, whose bodies were later exhumed from mass graves at Batajnica outside Belgrade.