THE HAGUE, Feb 21 (Hina) - Kosovo Albanian Fehim Elshani is the second witness for the prosecution in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague-based war crimes tribunal to testify about deportations
of Kosovo Albanians from the Prizren area. The 68-year-old farmer from the village of Nogavac described today how, several days after the start of NATO bombings, Serbian forces held several Kosovo Albanian villages under siege with the aim of deporting its residents to Albania. He described how the villagers collected tens of thousands of German marks and gave the money to Serbian forces to let them leave the villages and how Serbian police and soldiers burned the villages. The prosecution yesterday started calling witnesses who are to help prove that Serbian forces, at the time under the command of Slobodan Milosevic, deported to Albania thousands of Albanians from villages in the P
THE HAGUE, Feb 21 (Hina) - Kosovo Albanian Fehim Elshani is the
second witness for the prosecution in the trial of former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague-based war crimes
tribunal to testify about deportations of Kosovo Albanians from the
Prizren area.
The 68-year-old farmer from the village of Nogavac described today
how, several days after the start of NATO bombings, Serbian forces
held several Kosovo Albanian villages under siege with the aim of
deporting its residents to Albania.
He described how the villagers collected tens of thousands of
German marks and gave the money to Serbian forces to let them leave
the villages and how Serbian police and soldiers burned the
villages.
The prosecution yesterday started calling witnesses who are to help
prove that Serbian forces, at the time under the command of Slobodan
Milosevic, deported to Albania thousands of Albanians from
villages in the Prizren area, burned the villages and killed part of
the villagers. In doing so, the Serbian forces confiscated all
personal documents of part of the villagers to prevent them from
claiming citizenship and returning from Albania and Macedonia to
their homes in Kosovo.
At the start of today's hearing the judges had to deal with problems
in translation from Albanian to other languages of the tribunal as
it was established that some parts of the testimonies had been
translated incorrectly or had not been translated at all. In the
testimony of Kosovo Albanian Agim Zeqiri the translators failed to
translate that he started undergoing hemodialysis as a consequence
of his being beaten by Serbian forces.
Quoting a mistake in a translation, Milosevic accused translators
of trying to moderate the witnesses's words, for example those
referring to the relationship between Kosovo Albanians and the
Kosovo Liberation Army.
Witness Zeqiri, who started his testimony yesterday, this morning
said he was not feeling well enough to speak, actually refusing to
answer further questions by Milosevic, while at the same time he
answered several questions by the judges.
(hina) rml .