Genocide Charge Against Milosevic

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Prosecutors with the U.N. war crimes tribunal have charged former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic with genocide in Bosnia - perhaps the most serious accusation against him so far.

The latest indictment was filed last week, prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said Monday. It must be confirmed by a judge before Milosevic is summoned to the court to plead. It was the third case filed against the ousted Yugoslav leader.

So far, Milosevic has refused to cooperate with the tribunal - which he calls illegal - or to enter a plea to charges of war crimes in Kosovo and Croatia. A plea of innocent has been entered on his behalf to all charges.

Details of the Bosnia indictment were not available, but it was expected to accuse Milosevic of responsibility for the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. It was delayed for several weeks so evidence from recent exhumations of mass graves of Bosnian civilians could be included.

In another development, a retired Yugoslav Navy admiral surrendered to the U.N. tribunal Monday to face charges of murder and the wanton destruction of the medieval Croatian city of Dubrovnik in 1991.

Miodrag Jokic, 66, was admitted to the U.N. detention unit in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, where Milosevic and 48 other suspected war criminals were being held.

Jokic was expected to appear before the tribunal later this week to plead to charges of responsibility for war crimes by himself and by men under his command.

The retired admiral arrived on a plane with Mirjana Markovic, Milosevic's wife, who was coming for a regular monthly visit to her husband. She was accompanied by her daughter-in-law and grandson.

Jokic and three other senior officers were charged with destroying much of the ancient port town of Dubrovnik during the Croatian war in 1991. They were indicted last February, but the indictments were made public only last month.

Retired Gen. Pavle Strugar, 68, was the first of the four officers to surrender in late October. They were indicted for suspected murder, plunder and the destruction of nearly 70 percent of Dubrovnik in an attempt to incorporate the 17th-century town into Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

everyone should read the complete ICTY Bosnian indictment. It is just plain silly. Milosevic was correct in calling it the work of a "7 year old child"

It describes a eleborate secret conspriciy headed by Milosevic and essentially the entire Yugoslav government. The ICTY is trying to present the absurd story that "slobo the evil mastermind created a parallel government in order to carry out his sinister deeds"

Anyone still naive enough to believe the ICTY has the slightest shred of legitimacy should read the ICTY Bosnian indictment. It can found at www.un.org/icty

Milosevich is more sinned against than sinning, and everyone knows it, now at least. It is time he was released and allowed to spend a decent retirement with his family.

If he hates the USA forever, one could scarcely blame him, but remember he is a Christian not a Muslim, and in fact now that we are learning who are enemies are, he might even be willing to help us, once he has forgiven us our sins against him and Serbia.

It isn't what Milosevich did 10 years ago that bothers me, it is the much worse things that the Albanians have done and are doing, since we removed Milosevich and Serbia from the field.

God bless the heroic Serbian people. Like the burning bush that appeared to Moses, they are ever on fire, but are still not consumed away, but somehow still exist yet today.

Some people in the Serb regime evidently systematically killed ethnic opponents especially in the late 80's and early 90's I believe. But is there evidence that Milosevic personally ordered someone to do these things? He was the elected leader, but did he actually order this and who was witness to him ordering it? The international court I believe does not have that evidence. Absent of that evidence we're assuming that whoever is in charge of the government is guilty when functionaries do bad things below them. In that case we must arrest the Chinese leaders who were in charge when Tiannamen Square happened, we must arrest the Indonesian leaders who tolerated the terrible slaughters 2-3 years ago and in prior years as well, we must arrest the leaders of Sudan where 2-3 million have perished the last 20 years in a real genocide, we must find people to arrest in Sierra Leone as the level of killing there has been much more than in Bosnia, in Burma there were a million people killed during late 80's/early 90's in an organized effort sponsored by the government, we must arrest the leaders of Burma. What about our allies in this new war, the Russians, they used biological weapons on the Afghans 15 years ago, shouldn't we find a Russian to arrest? Of course in Rwanda/Congo where 1-2 million have been killed since 1994 in ethnic violence, we have to arrest someone there also. There are many people who feel that Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. What about whoever it was in the American regime that ordered the bombing of the aspirin factory in Sudan for what has been admitted was no reason at all a few years ago. We are not prepared to apply the same standards as applied to Milosevic to others.

We wonder why people around the world are quick to accuse the Americans of arrogance even to the point where they complain that we defend ourselves when we have legitimate reasons to do so.

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