THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 21(Hina) - Cross-examining an expert on genocide before the Hague war crimes tribunal on Wednesday, the defendant, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, said the prosecutors did not have legal arguments
to back their assertion that Serbs had committed genocide during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 21(Hina) - Cross-examining an expert on genocide
before the Hague war crimes tribunal on Wednesday, the defendant,
former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, said the prosecutors did
not have legal arguments to back their assertion that Serbs had
committed genocide during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.#L#
Anthon Zwan, a sociologist from the Amsterdam-based Genocide Research
Institute, made a report on the phenomenon of genocide at the
prosecution's request, focusing on the Holocaust, the genocide against
Armenians in Turkey and genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda.
The report does not cover the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with
which Milosevic is charged, but the common traits of all the genocides
Zwan covered coincide with the mass crimes against specific ethnic
groups committed during the wars in Bosnia as well as those in Croatia
and Kosovo.
Those traits include the most senior state officials as organisers, a
collective perpetrator, and helpless victims from a specific group.
During cross-examination, Milosevic contested Zwan's expertise by
claiming that he was a sociologist and not a lawyer. He said the
report was characterised by a journalistic approach and that the
prosecutors used it for lack of evidence about genocide in Bosnia.
At Milosevic's asking Zwan confirmed that during World War Two Serbs
had been exposed to genocidal attacks by then Croatia's Ustasha
regime, but said the assertion that 700,000 people had been killed at
Jasenovac concentration camp was exaggerated, adding that the
casualties included between 100,000 and 150,000 Serbs and Jews.
(Hina) ha sb