THE HAGUE, Feb 14 (Hina) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has dismissed claims by the UN war crimes tribunal prosecution that Serbian military and police forces had deported thousands of Albanians from Kosovo. He
maintains the population fled the attacks of Albanian terrorists and the NATO bombing. "The population was expelled with OVK (Kosovo Liberation Army) orders, beatings and murders, calls and the NATO bombing. This is the truth about your deportations," Milosevic said on Thursday in his first statement to the trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, which charges him with crimes in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Deportations are the key part of the indictment for crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo in 1999. Milosevic began his statement with the screening of a 50-minute video recording by the German television station Mon
THE HAGUE, Feb 14 (Hina) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic has dismissed claims by the UN war crimes tribunal
prosecution that Serbian military and police forces had deported
thousands of Albanians from Kosovo. He maintains the population
fled the attacks of Albanian terrorists and the NATO bombing.
"The population was expelled with OVK (Kosovo Liberation Army)
orders, beatings and murders, calls and the NATO bombing. This is
the truth about your deportations," Milosevic said on Thursday in
his first statement to the trial chamber of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, which
charges him with crimes in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Deportations are the key part of the indictment for crimes against
humanity committed in Kosovo in 1999.
Milosevic began his statement with the screening of a 50-minute
video recording by the German television station Monitor. This
footage juxtaposes official explanations of the reasons of the NATO
air raids on Yugoslavia and descriptions of the crimes with expert
testimonies, TV footage and secret German intelligence reports
according to which the crimes against civilians that Milosevic is
charged with were actually armed conflicts between Serb forces and
Albanian guerrillas. The TV footage depicts official NATO
interpretations of the events in Kosovo as the West's war
propaganda.
While Milosevic calmly watched the screening, the judges took notes
for the first time.
Commenting on the prosecutor's claim that this trial was not
against a nation but against an individual, Milosevic said that
everything the prosecutor said in his opening statement in the last
couple of days boiled down to an accusation of the Serbian
intelligentsia, the institutions of the Serbian state, from
parliament to the government, as well as of all the citizens who had
elected him twice.
At a time when Americans are travelling to the other part of the
world to combat terrorism, here the struggle against terrorism at
home is proclaimed a crime, said Milosevic.
Briefly commenting on claims that Serbia had been implicated in the
war in Croatia and Bosnia, he said this was another imputation on
the prosecution's part.
Milosevic once again accused the West of breaking up both
Yugoslavia and Bosnia.
(hina) ha