THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 25 (Hina) - An ethnic Albanian from the Kosovo village of Landovice told the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague on Monday that a few days after the start of NATO's air raids on Serbia, Serbian troops in March
1999 shelled his village, killed part of the population, and set most houses on fire, including one with a paralysed old woman. Testifying in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, charged, among else, with crimes against humanity in Kosovo, witness Halil Morina described how after the village was burned down a group of Serb soldiers mined the local mosque and demolished the minaret. After they began destroying the village, the Serb soldiers collected the bodies of the victims and set some on fire, together with the houses, he said. The surviving residents fled in fear to the nearby town of Prizren, while the Serbs later put them on buses, making sure they were ta
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 25 (Hina) - An ethnic Albanian from the Kosovo
village of Landovice told the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague on
Monday that a few days after the start of NATO's air raids on Serbia,
Serbian troops in March 1999 shelled his village, killed part of the
population, and set most houses on fire, including one with a
paralysed old woman.
Testifying in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, charged, among else, with crimes against humanity in
Kosovo, witness Halil Morina described how after the village was
burned down a group of Serb soldiers mined the local mosque and
demolished the minaret. After they began destroying the village,
the Serb soldiers collected the bodies of the victims and set some
on fire, together with the houses, he said.
The surviving residents fled in fear to the nearby town of Prizren,
while the Serbs later put them on buses, making sure they were taken
to Albania, said Morina, adding the column of refugees going to
Albania was 25 km long, with many people going on foot.
Prosecutor Dirk Ryneveld asked if they wanted to go to Albania, to
which the witness replied, "We didn't but had to... What could we
have done? There was no other way."
Before the refugees reached the border, the Serb police took
identity cards from all, threw them on a heap and never returned
them, said Morina.
He is the third ethnic Albanian testifying about the systematic
destruction of Albanian villages in Kosovo and deportations.
Last week, as part of the Kosovo part of the Milosevic trial, the
prosecution started interrogating witnesses to prove that Serb
forces under Milosevic's command deported to Albania thousands of
ethnic Albanians from villages in the Prizren area, setting the
villages on fire and killing part of the population. Some of the
local residents were stripped of all documentation so as to be
unable to prove their citizenship and return from Albania or
Macedonia to their homes in Kosovo.
Milosevic is charged with the deportation of around 800,000 Kosovo
Albanians, a crime which has been qualified as one against
humanity.
During cross-examination, Milosevic attempted, as with the first
two witnesses, to extort answers which would indicate that the
suffering of the Kosovo Albanian population was the result of the
NATO attacks on Serbia or the response of Serb troops to attacks
from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Not one of the witnesses has confirmed the KLA operated in their
villages. When the second witness, Fehim Elshani, was interrogated
by one of the amici curiae, it transpired that his son was a member
of the KLA.
(hina) ha sb