THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 26 (Hina) - A French media expert, witness for the prosecution of the U.N. war crimes tribunal (ICTY), Renaud de la Brosse, on Monday completed his testimony at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 26 (Hina) - A French media expert, witness for
the prosecution of the U.N. war crimes tribunal (ICTY), Renaud de la
Brosse, on Monday completed his testimony at the trial of former
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. #L#
Milosevic attempted to discredit de la Brosse's report on years of
propaganda in ex-Yugoslavia entitled "Media in the Heart of the
Yugoslav War" by claiming the author was ignorant of the language,
selected biased sources and doctored findings.
Cross-examining the witness, Milosevic singled out the titles of
some articles by foreign journalists cited in the report, branding
them as "examples of hatred towards the Serb people and myself".
He cited titles such as "Serbia -- the Black Hole of the Balkans"
(unofficial translation), or his biography entitled
"Opportunistic Monster" (unofficial translation). He especially
slammed a book by the ICTY prosecution's spokeswoman, Florence
Hartmann, "Milosevic, la diagonale du fou", for "hatred and lies".
Hartmann wrote the book in Belgrade in the 1990s as a correspondent
for Paris's Le Monde. She refused to give a comment for Hina on
Milosevic's attack on her book.
De la Brosse rejected Milosevic's claims that Serb media had not
stigmatised the Croat people as a whole, citing a number of examples
of the creation of a "historic amalgam" -- equating Croatian
authorities from the 1990s with those from the 1941-45 Independent
State of Croatia (NDH), and the constant connecting of the genocide
of Serbs during WWII with preparations for "genocide against Serbs
in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina".
De la Brosse again quoted statements by Jovan Raskovic and Dobrica
Cosic about Croats being genocidal. He also cited an example from
Hartmann's book about the simultaneous broadcast of the late
Croatian president Franjo Tudjman's speeches and those of NDH
leader Ante Pavelic on Television Belgrade.
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