Milosevic Spouts Facts. Who's Spilling Secrets?

BELGRADE, Serbia, March 17. A secret document is a sexy thing, a sort of striptease whose lure is less what it reveals than the aching promise. Bogoljub Bjelica, president of the Committee for the Freedom of Slobodan Milosevic, would allow the briefest peep of a United States government file that he got his hands on and that he expects may make its way to Mr. Milosevic's trial for war crimes.

"The answer to the question, 'Who produced war in the Balkans?' must be found," said Mr. Bjelica, suggesting conspiratorially that the answer lay in hidden files like this one. "President Milosevic, during all these years, was doing everything to prove the truth. He is doing the same now in The Hague. And he will prove the truth."

It was a banner week for secret files in Belgrade, even if they have served, so far anyway, more to smoke up intrigue around the trial than to illuminate any particular truth.

The issue exploded in public on Friday, in an incident that one official here said was "more like a badly directed spy movie than anything else." The night before, plainclothes counterintelligence officers arrested an American diplomat, John David Neighbor, and a Serbian deputy prime minister, Momcilo Perisic, while the two met for drinks at an out-of-the-way motel, something of a lovers' haunt once named Romeo and Juliet.

The allegation was espionage and, if local press reports are to be believed, not of an ordinary sort: some newspapers said that Mr. Perisic, a former army chief of staff who fell out with Mr. Milosevic, handed over state documents that could incriminate him. He is on trial at The Hague charged with war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia as the former Yugoslavia fell apart and in Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, against an ethnic Albanian separatist movement.

American officials, angry that Mr. Neighbor was whisked away with a bag over his head and held for 17 hours, denied that any documents changed hands. Mr. Perisic, released a day later, made the same denial. The army has said nothing about the content of the supposed documents.

But the question of what might be hidden in Yugoslavia's archives ½ or more to the point, what lies out of reach of Hague investigators ½ is very alive.

Hague investigators complain often that the federal Yugoslav government, which is in charge of the army, has yet to comply with requests to hand over documents relating to the wars (though the governments of Yugoslavia's two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, have cooperated).

"We have total obstruction from the federal government," said Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for the Hague prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte. "We don't have access to their records."

But there is the daily issue in court of how much information Mr. Milosevic is getting: his cross-examinations of ethnic Albanian witnesses are minutely detailed, and he seems to have good information about everything ranging from a witness's pension, to who owned the land where a gas station was built, to the structure of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought the Yugoslav Army in Kosovo.

Mr. Milosevic has the right, of course, to use whatever he can find to contradict witnesses or question their credibility. He says he gets it from "associates" in Serbia, in a process his lawyers describe as an organic telephone tree of informers, including some Albanians, who pass along bits of information as the testimony unfolds.

Still, the questions remain: where do his associates get their information, and is that something The Hague is entitled to?

A recent edition of the weekly newspaper Nedljni Telegraf, considered to have close contacts with state security officials, suggested a partial answer. The newspaper said that, before losing power in October 2000, Mr. Milosevic transferred thousands of army documents to his own archives.

Moreover, the paper said, the director of Serbian state security, Rade Markovic, copied scores of police documents relating to the rebels and other files to compact disks.

Mr. Markovic, who remained in power for four months after Mr. Milosevic was toppled, was later jailed for revealing state secrets in a closed trial.

"You can just imagine how much you can do in four months," said Vladan Batic, the Serbian justice minister.

But like other officials here, Mr. Batic said he had no direct proof of how much was copied or missing. An army spokesman declined to comment, and several federal officials said they were completely in the dark, though the Telegraf report is considered largely accurate. Several top officials, in fact, cited it.

Mr. Bjelica, whose group is helping Mr. Milosevic conduct his defense, smiled and bobbed his bushy eyebrows when asked whether it had access to secret state files.

"We receive hundreds of thousands of letters, of documents, of videotapes," he said vaguely. He added that "numerous officials" inside the army and various ministries had also been calling with information to help Mr. Milosevic, though most of the help, he said, came from "citizens who were victims of NATO crimes."

If Mr. Milosevic chooses to mount a formal defense, he will be required to share the documents with prosecutors, in the same way that they have served him with their documents (which Mr. Milosevic claims not to read).

But one of the lawyers, Zdenko Tomanovic, said he had yet to see any internal Yugoslav documents. In fact, he said he would soon petition the new Yugoslav government for the files, "to help us and provide us with the information." According to the Constitution, he said, "the state is obliged to help its citizens."

It is a surprisingly welcome development to see the NY Times publishing an article sympathetic to Milosevic and explicitly acknowledging the validity of a Serbian point of view about the war. Just think of the difference between:
"Defiant Milosevic Spouts Propaganda"
and:
"Milosevic Spouts Facts"!

Such articles demonstrate that Milosevic's political victories at the trial are so convincing that they can not be ignored even by the mass media that for a decade contributed to the demonization of the Serbs.

Also note the dismal position of the ICTY prosecution, who, despite the support of NATO's propaganda machine and hundreds of millions of dollars, they are desparately trying to gain access to Yugoslav military secrets to find something - anything - that may help them to nail down Milosevic.

'Who produced war in the Balkans?' must be found," said Mr. Bjelica.

Wagging finger:

"I did not start a war with those Balkan countries."
"I did not....."

Watch the famous denial on RealPlayer HERE.

I was sickend when NATO bombed the Christian nation of Serbia. Milosevic is not with out fault but his motives of war were to "protect the Serbian people from being slaughtered by the ETHNIC Albanians". Do you think if Slobo starts getting too close to reveiling who the real criminals are in the Balkins' war by using "indisputable facts", that he will suddenly become sick and die? What are the chances that Bill Clinton, Gen Wesley Clark and the Albainian leaders will ever stand trial for war crimes?

Slobodan's purpose was also to maintain the border integrity of the Serbian nation of which Kosovo was a part. If Serbs under his sway using brutal tactics to suppress the murderous terrorists and rebels of the KLA to protect Serbs and to prevent the secession of Kosovo makes Milosevich a war criminal, then Abe Lincoln, whose armies pillaged the south to prevent its secession was likewise a war criminal. The Southerners were just as passionate about leaving the Union as the Kosovars were about leaving Serbia.

The difference is that this time the world intervened (thanks to Bill Clinton's pressing need to distract the public), and took sides in that civil war solely on the basis of Kosovar accounts (whose screaming about atrocities had about as much ring of truth as those of the Palestinians) of genocide which were never proven, and militarily forced the secession of Kosovo.

The men of the blue and the grey buried the bodies of the fallen in groups. Where were the lefist morons then insisting that these "mass graves" were proof positive of genocide and war crimes in the midst of our own Civil War?

REALLY?!! The defendant/defense is obliged to share the information with the prosecution? Is the accused obliged to incriminate himself? Very interesting.

Once again it's good vs. evil. We gave him information WE are good, He won't share his sources HE is evil.....

Not only that, he is SPOUTING THE FACTS. That is not fair when prosecution does not have them! Also right now he has flu and spouting might infect the prosecution, the judge and fragile kangaroos. This would be an attempted genocide.

The HumWarriors are truely desperate for the whoppers they are now telling ( roughly..... we'd be winning the ICTY case but for all the secret info Slobo has kept from public eye) are easily disproven.

Fact of the matter 99% of the information Milosevic has used in his cross examinations to demolish each and every "eyewitness" is simple public knowledge avaliable to anyone with half a brain and a modem.

Yes, even the fabled secret FBI 'report' is public knowledge. About 2 hours after the first wire service story on this came out......the FBI report was posted on FR.

Thanks to either Joan or Kate22.....could the one who posted it originally, pluz post it on this thread ?)

Just some spots I bumped on:

Still, the questions remain: where do his associates get their information, and is that something The Hague is entitled to?

Oh, my... three years ago The West claimed to have enough evidence to start a humanitarian war and destroy an independent state.

Today, with all CIA, KLA and other NATO services right there on the ground, with quislings in power at Serbia and Montenegro they are begging for information!

What a pity scene... or they plan to re-start bombing to get all they want from Kostunica - no matter if he has anything to share? Not a bad idea, ah?

----------------------------------

I agree 100%. However, it's also doubtful that anyone will ever get these facts through the thick skulls of the neo-conservatives who supported bombing Serbia and backing the KLA terrorists right along with the very same Democrats they purport to be against. Not that I'm saying Milosevic is a saint; I thought he was a socialist dictator. But his trial is still a sham.

I thought he was a socialist dictator.

Well, the first part is true, he was a socialist, but the dictator he was not. Same way maybe as with Clinton. He was a good political player and shrewd manipulator. That is why I am convinced that he DID NOT COMMIT any significant crimes. He knew perfectly well that West is looking for his mistake and all those crowds of journalists sniffing around are not friendly to him .

But it was different with Croatian, Muslim and Albanian leaders. They did not come to power through bureaucratic careers but came from the militant fringes like KLA, had often violent tempers and believed that they have impunity and Western blessing to do crimes.

Secrets? The klintoon/soros kangaroo court? An army of pasty faced commuters from Virginia, working for perpetual contractors, can't figure this out?

There must have been a mass dirtying of diapers at the thought of Primakov's testimony.

Wagging finger: "I did not start a war with those Balkan countries."..."I did not....."

You nailed the CHIEF CULPRIT, clinton--who waged aggressive war to destroy Yugoslavia for the sake of his NWO masters (Soros and the other international financial manipulators, including those who play in petrodollars) and their muslim savage pets!!!!

I think that there was another incident with clinton wagging his finger--something to do with Yugoslavia that I don't recall right now. But we all know that when clinton wags his finger, he's LYING, don't we!!!

The NATOcrats and NWO operatives of the IMF, etc, have laid Yugoslavia low, divided the country, and put the yellow traitor Djindjic (the Serbian clinton) in power. But the brave Serbs are still able to muster enough gumption to feed Slobo the information he needs to make the perverters of justice in the Hague and their muslim pets look like the liars and vile toadies they really are!!!!

And now even the New World Order Times has to admit that what Slobo is "spouting" are FACTS!!! Stay tuned for more good news for Serbia anf the Christian world, for a change!!!!

Can CNN be sued for leading organized disinformation during the war? Can Clinton, Albright, Blair and Clark be subpoenaed at this trial? Is there any competent international body which can actually sue them for attacking civillian targets and killing civillians in Yugoslavia (cluster bombs in Nish in the middle of the day, depleted uranium, bridges, TV station, hospitals, schools, waterplants, the Yugo automobile factory, refineries, powerplants, etc.). If Milo was convicted for crimes that took place while he was in charge, can this establish a precedent for conviction of the above politicians for killing Serbian civillians? How many mass graves have been found and is the number of the victims 100,000 - this is what Clinton told me (looking straight into the camera, playboy cinical smile on his face). Is the West going to pile lies over lies, over lies, will this ever stop?

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