Why [The Yugoslav Leaders] Were Indicted (electronic book)

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'Why They Were Indicted'
Dusan Vilic, Bosko Todorovic
Grafomark, Belgrade, 2001
Nebojsa Malic, translator
Jared Israel, editor
[Posted 16 February 2002]
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‘Why They Were Indicted’ provides a point-by-point refutation of the ICTY’s Kosovo 'indictment' of Slobodan Milosevic and other Yugoslav leaders.

For the first time, journalists, scholars and the general public can read Yugoslav Army documents that refute the unprecedented campaign of slander which has been conducted against the Serbian people and their leaders.

We wish to publish this book with the addition of essays by George Szamuely and myself. To do this we need financial help. Instructions for sending contributions are posted at the end of this text. Please let us know that you wish your contribution to be used for the publication of the book, ‘Why They Were Indicted.’

Thank you!

-- Jared Israel

Introductory note - About the ICTY Indictment of Yugoslav Leadership

On May 22, 1999, two months after the start of NATO aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the ICTY, brought a so-called indictment against Yugoslav leaders. Slobodan Milosevic, Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and Vlajko Stojiljkovic were accused of “crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war.”

Prior to the NATO aggression, there was a systematic anti-Serb campaign which accused the Yugoslav Army (Vojska Jugoslavije - VJ) and police forces of “excessive force and repression against the Albanian civilian population.”

Since this campaign preceded the NATO aggression, had it been based on fact, then an indictment of the top Yugoslav leadership for “crimes against humanityÖ” would have been announced several months before the start of NATO bombing. This is especially true since the NATO Council’s decision to initiate air and missile strikes against FRY was publicly explained as a “humanitarian operation,” with the basic objective of dealing with a “humanitarian disaster” that supposedly preceded the NATO aggression.

The indictment (Paragraph 25) claims that by October 1998, due to “a campaign of shelling predominantly Kosovo Albanian towns and villages,” some 300,000 people (15% of the total population) were displaced in Kosovo-Metohija.

This is utterly untrue on many counts.

The Yugoslav Army (VJ) did conduct anti-terrorist operations in Kosovo-Metohija from July 25 to September 28, 1998. These resulted in combat casualties among the terrorists as well as some movement of civilians. However that movement was not caused by expulsions by the VJ or by the shelling of towns and villages. In some cases, it involved the spontaneous flight of civilians from areas of combat. In other cases, civilians were ordered to leave their homes by secessionist leaders supported by foreign powers. The aim: to stage a “humanitarian disaster” to justify NATO bombing.

Secondly, the indictment uses the loaded term “shelling.” In doing this, the ICTY consciously disregards the fact that, with the exception of Orahovac, no town or village in Kosovo-Metohija could have been a target of artillery bombardment during 1998 because there were no terrorist operations in these towns and villages during that year. Only Orahovac (July 18-20, 1998) saw a sizeable counter-terrorist operation. The purpose was to free Serbian civilians held hostage by the terrorists and subjected to violence and murder and to free 134 officers of the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) under siege in two buildings.

Moreover, no anti-terrorist action during 1998 involved “shelling” of inhabited areas because the Yugoslav Army (VJ) Command specifically forbade such actions in its operational orders. (For details, see the refutation of Paragraph 25 further below).

There was no “humanitarian disaster” in Kosovo-Metohija in 1998.

Even those civilians who temporarily fled combat operations or established refugee columns and camps on “KLA” orders, returned to their homes and settlements at the end of anti-terrorist operations.

Thanks to the great efforts of the Serbian State and the FRY, no Albanian family in Kosovo-Metohija, as well as families of other ethnicities, had to face the winter of 1998-99 without housing. The media campaign claiming a “humanitarian disaster” that supposedly had already happened by the end of 1998 was manufactured in order to prepare the international community for the upcoming NATO aggression against Serbia and FRY

On the grounds that its purposes were humanitarian, the massive bombing was code-named “Merciful Angel.” But the fact that Slobodan Milosevic and his associates were not indicted until close to the end of the NATO aggression points to motives of a non-angelic nature.

U.S. political and military leaders, especially Madeleine Albright and Gen. Wesley Clark, publicly boasted that Yugoslav defense forces would capitulate after two or three days of massive air strikes. The Yugoslav political and military leadership would bow to the Rambouillet ultimatum it had previously rejected. (Appendix B of the Rambouillet "agreement" gave NATO the right to virtually occupy all of Yugoslavia. But the leaders didn't capitulate even after two months of round-the-clock strikes against civilian and also military objectives throughout the FR Yugoslavia. The will of the people to resist grew parallel to the death toll and infrastructure devastation.

VJ and Serbian security forces could not hope to militarily defeat a greatly superior enemy, whose economic potential according to some estimates was some 676 greater than that of FRY, sapped by a decade of embargoes and blockades. Yet its heroic defense and the moral support of the entire population caused significant losses to the enemy, while the Yugoslav Army suffered minimal casualties. Yugoslavia emerged from this greatly unequal contest as the moral winner.

This unexpected outcome of the NATO aggression disturbed its creators.

Blackmail, a decade of blockades and embargoes, media demonization and finally, the 78 days of air and missile strikes against 995 targets in Yugoslavia were not enough to force the capitulation of the country and its armed forces. That is why the North Atlantic Council and the U.S. government decided to declare Yugoslavia’s military and civilian leaders war criminals, thus attempting to mask the general impression of failure, and the responsibility of NATO for atrocities. Convictions and long sentences would send a powerful message to the next victims of aggression: do not even try to resist or the same fate will befall you.

Therefore, the ICTY indictment’s goal is not to prosecute real criminals, but to punish the defiance of those who refuse to submit to foreign Imperial forces driving towards a new world order [Novus Ordo Seclorum].

From the standpoint of future armed interventions by NATO and the U.S., their planners could not allow the Yugoslav model of decade-long resistance ñ and especially the model of defending against 78-days of air and missile strikes, combined with multiple land attacks from Albania, in early 1999 ñ to become an attractive model for defense doctrines in other small countries, aiming to preserve their national identity, liberty and independence.