The indictment made a series of very serious and very specific charges against Milosevic, charging him with "Crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war."
The core charges in that indictment were paragraphs 18-22 that stated Milosevic had: been responsible for having "forcibly expelled and internally displace hundreds of thousands of Albanians from their homes across the entire province of Kosovo;" and in the process the police and the army had "looted and pillaged the personal and commercial property belonging to Kosovo Albanians forced from their homes;" destroyed "property owned by Kosovo Albanian civilians" by "widespread shelling of towns and villages; the burning of homes, farms, and businesses; and the destruction of personal property" and had "harassed, humiliated, and degraded Kosovo Albanian civilians through physical and verbal abuse, ... insults, racial slurs, degrading acts, beatings, and other forms of physical mistreatment based on their racial, religious, and political identification;" and that the "forces of the FRY and Serbia systematically seized and destroyed the personal identity documents and licenses of vehicles belonging to Kosovo Albanian civilians."
Paragraph 24(b) of the Milosevic Indictment states: "b. On or about 25 March 1999, forces of the FRY and Serbia attacked the village of Bela Crkva (Orahovac/Rahovec municipality) drove the villagers out and killed 65 of them.
Although I find in general most people, even many Serbs, accept the indictment of Milosevic as proof of his guilt, from time to time I check out the transcripts of his trial that are posted on my website. It usually seems to me that most of the judges in the case have generally favored the stories presented by the Muslims of Kosovo or Bosnia and have frequently cut Milosevic or his witnesses off in mid-sentence while the prosecution's case seems to get progressively untenable.
In the past several weeks, beginning July 1, 2005, almost exactly four years into the Milosevic trial, testimony by Yugoslavian General Bozidar Delic, who headed the 549th Motorized Brigade, seems to have moved the prosecution case from untenable to ridiculous. It appears that maps and testimony developed to convict Milosevic have become the best material to prove the indictments not only false, but simply physically impossible.
Delic testified not only that there was NO battle in Bela Crkva but that statements in the indictment made no sense. In a word, statements in the indictment are simply false.
Question: The indictment ... says that "Many villagers from Bijela Crkva fled along the river to Bijelo Selo and that they were forced to hide under the railway bridge and coming closer to the bridge, the forces of the FRY and Serbia opened fire on a number of villagers, killing 12 persons, including 10 women and children."
Do you know anything about this and can you comment on what the indictment states about Bijela Crkva? Are you familiar with any of these events?
Delic: No, I am not aware of any of this. I only heard about it in connection with the indictment. It says here: "They fled along the Beluga River. This is illogical. This small river does flow through Suva Reka but along the Belaja River that would mean that they were fleeing north, towards Orahovac and the shrubs and woods there. If anyone felt the need to flee, as far as I can see, nobody did, it says here "Belaja River" and then there's mention of a bridge. I'm very familiar with this territory. It is a plain which -- on which there is farmland and only vegetables are grown there. There are no shrubs there or anything of the sort, only vegetables, so that this in fact is one of the most fertile territories in Kosovo and Metohija.
So if anybody wanted to flee, it would not be logical to flee out into the open; it would be more logical to flee in the other direction, where there were shrubs. So it's simply illogical.
At that point the prosecutor, Geoffrey Nice, tried to end Delic's testimony of the terrain and the supposed fleeing villagers. When the judges finally allowed it to continue Milosevic acting as his own attorney asked General Delic, who was born in the area being discussed, if he had "any knowledge of snipers shooting at the 700 people who supposedly were hiding in the area . Delic responded: "I'm telling you this is a very flat area, a plain, with hardly any trees on it. Not even 50 people could hide there, let alone 700. That's a huge mass of people. It's completely impossible. If you look at the map, even someone who knows nothing of topography can see that this is a plain. As far as the River Drina, it's completely flat. Anyone moving in any direction on that plain would have been observed either from the road or from the areas of Bijela Crkva."
On July 20th the International Criminal Court recessed for the summer, but not without an interesting exchange between Milosevic and Prosecutor Nice who had just scoffed at General Delic's testimony stating that the "repressive environment that has been created in Kosovo since the end of the war prohibits the Albanian population from saying anything that "Albanians are victims of repression in Kosovo." Nice then tried to paint Delic as a racist for suggesting that Kosovo-Albanians are unable to tell the truth.
On re-examination, Milosevic produced a confidential motion that the Office of the Prosecutor had filed with the tribunal in the case of Ramush Haradinaj, a former KLA officer and Kosovo Prime Minister who was indicted for war crimes in March of this year. The motion explained that they were having "tremendous difficulty getting witnesses to testify against Haradinaj, because of the "repressive atmosphere and massive witness intimidation in Kosovo. According to the document, some potential witnesses have been killed for merely talking to tribunal's investigators."
Prosecutor Nice said the document was supposed to be confidential, and that it should not be heard, because it goes to show that Kosovo-Albanians are unable to tell the truth.
Well, SOMEONE isn't telling the truth. Before we turn Kosovo over to the drug-dealin' gun-toting KLA, I think we better decide just who it is we really want sitting in the United Nations building to represent that piece of real estate with a vote equal to the USA.
I expect the NY Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post to jump all over this story.
We all know that Clinton's basis for starting a war, genocide and mass graves, was sound. Nobody could possibly doubt it. It was a "good" war.
It must have been. I don't remember any anti-war activists parading through the streets.
Ooops. </sarcasm>
Bookmarking.
Oh dear, this is going to upset our resident Islamofascist apologists!
But that's a good thing!
Bump!
This is the unjust war that began what liberals decry as the disrespect the world has for America. They conveniently forget that it is the legacy Clinton gave us to save his skin.