Mistake:unlike Milosevic, the Jews offered Muslims a state.
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Mistake:unlike Milosevic, the Jews offered Muslims a state. |
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Posted by Moshe on January 27, 19102 at 19:22:22:
In Reply to: Milosevic war crimes case faces collapse posted by Independent on January 27, 19102 at 17:18:25:
:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=116523
:
:Milosevic war crimes case faces collapse
:By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade
:26 January 2002
:The trial of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo is on the verge of
:collapse because former aides have refused to testify against him.
:The case hinges on evidence collected by Western intelligence officers rather
:than the UN's own investigators, and some of the 90 witnesses who provided
:testimony against the former Yugoslav president have died.
:Three weeks before it is due to open, Europe's most important war crimes trial
:since Nuremberg is reported to be in such disarray that prosecutors travelled
:to Belgrade earlier this week to try to shore up the case. But despite
visiting
:several of Mr Milosevic's allies in their jail cells and homes, the team led
by
:the British barrister Geoffrey Nice came away empty-handed, according to
:sources in Belgrade.
:Mr Nice flew to Belgrade on the same flight as Mr Milosevic's wife, Mira, who
:had been visiting her husband in his cell in Scheveningen in the Netherlands.
:Mr Milosevic is accused of the murder of 900 Kosovo Albanians and the forced
:eviction of 800,000 civilians from their homes in 1999.
:The UN tribunal was adamant yesterday that it was "ready" to try Mr Milosevic
:for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. But Florence Hartmann, a spokeswoman
for
:the UN chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said the court may decide next week
:to postpone the case, which is due to begin on 12 February.
:Prosecutors want judges to join the Kosovo trial with indictments against Mr
:Milosevic for war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, for which there is said to be
:abundant evidence. Judgesare due to discuss unifying the indictments at a
:hearing on Wednesday. If they do, they would have to postpone the trial to
:allow more time for preparation of the Bosnian and Croatian cases against Mr
:Milosevic.
:Ms Hartmann denied that the Kosovo case was collapsing: "We are ready. We
don't
:have any problem with the Kosovo case," she said.
:But the case has a fundamental weakness in that the testimonies it relies on
:are exclusively from Western officials based in Kosovo before Nato air raids
:began in March 1999, and from ethnic Albanian victims. The credibility of some
:of these testimonies is in doubt because they were gathered by intelligence
:officers, and not by the tribunal's own investigators.
:Members of Mr Milosevic's inner circle could provide the missing pieces of the
:puzzle, but it is unlikely that any regime insiders, who share Mr Milosevic's
:Serb nationalist views, would travel to The Hague to testify against the so-
:called "Butcher of the Balkans".
:His supporters still describe the armed ethnic Albanian rebellion in Kosovo
:as "terrorism", and view the trial against Mr Milosevic as a Western
conspiracy
:against freedom-loving Serbs. They fear being branded "traitors of the Serb
:nation" if they testify.
:Serb authorities are still balking at Mr Nice's request for two top Milosevic
:aides be handed over. Nikola Sainovic and Vlajko Stoiljkovic were respectively
:the official in charge of the security forces in Kosovo and the Interior
:Minister. The pair, along with their boss, were indicted for war crimes in
:Kosovo in 1999.
:The UN team interrogated Rade Markovic, chief of the secret service under Mr
:Milosevic, in his Belgrade prison cell three times. Mr Markovic is on trial
for
:his alleged role in an assassination attempt against the former opposition
:leader Vuk Draskovic.
:Mr Markovic's lawyer, Dusan Masic, said his client was willing to go to The
:Hague, but analysts doubt that his testimony would benefit the prosecution.
:Also in Europe
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:Milosevic war crimes case faces collapse
:Berlusconi digs in over EU convention
:Leaders decry use of religion to justify violence
:
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