THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 20(Hina) - The trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague resumed on Tuesday with the testimony of prosecution witness Anthon Zwan, who spoke about the
phenomenon of genocide.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 20(Hina) - The trial of former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague
resumed on Tuesday with the testimony of prosecution witness Anthon
Zwan, who spoke about the phenomenon of genocide.#L#
Zwan, a sociologist working at Amsterdam's Genocide Research
Institute, prepared for the prosecution a report on genocide and other
mass crimes whose targets are specific ethnic, religious and minority
communities.
Zwan was asked not to mention the genocide on the territory of the
former Yugoslavia, so he based his report on the Holocaust, the pogrom
of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, and genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda.
He said today the Holocaust of World War Two constituted the standard
model of genocide, but added that all genocides had common traits --
state authorities as organisers of attacks, the collective
perpetrator, and victims from a specific group.
For genocide it is typical to develop from the top down, a process for
which the most senior state bodies are the most responsible, Zwan
said.
Genocide is always preceded by a decision from top state officials,
but they are difficult to catch in flagrante since they, aware of the
extreme nature of genocide, leave no traces, he added.
Adolf Hitler was never an eyewitness to acts of genocide nor did he
sign an order to kill Jews but he did ask in debates that it be done,
Zwan said.
Although he did not speak of genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with
which Milosevic is charged, Zwan's report mentioned all the traits
which that crime had during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
In the wake of Milosevic's attempt in his defence to attribute the
mass crimes in Bosnia to local leaders and paramilitary groups, Zwan
described, at the prosecution's request, how the pogrom of the Jews in
Poland was organised by 30 local leaders but only after the Germans
had started doing it.
The Milosevic trial resumes on Wednesday. The trial chamber has given
him 90 minutes to cross-examine Zwan, after which the prosecution will
call a new witness. According to prosecutor Geoffrey Nice's
announcements last week, former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's
chief of staff Hrvoje Sarinic, who conducted secret negotiations with
Milosevic from 1993 to 1995, is due to take the stand tomorrow.
(Hina) ha sb