Posted on 04/06/2002 12:57:37 PM PST by A. Pole
Milosevic's war crimes trial to resume on Monday
AFP [ FRIDAY, APRIL 05, 2002 9:07:24 PM ]
HE HAGUE: The trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic will resume on Monday after a three-week adjournment due to his illness and administrative matters, officials of the UN war crimes tribunal said on Friday.
The next hearing will be a closed session as two protected witnesses will give evidence. A third, whose identity is also shielded, will testify on Tuesday, officials of the prosecutor's office said.
On Tuesday, the court will be open to the public but the face of the witness will not be visible and the voice will be distorted to avoid recognition. The trial of Milosevic on more than 60 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in the 1990s Balkan wars was adjourned inmid-March because the accused had influenza.
Hearings were postponed this week because of a vacation of the chamber handling the case. In the trial which started February 12 this year Milosevic is defending himself against charges of atrocities committed during the three major conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia: the 1991-95 war in Croatia, the Bosnian war (1992-95) and the Kosovo conflict in 1998-99.
The tribunal's rules of procedure and evidence include provisos for the protection of witnesses from allowing their face and voice to be distorted to speaking on conditions of complete anonymity, with the identity of the witness not revealed to the defence.
The last option has been used only once since the creation of the UN Hague court. The three protected witnesses to appear next week will testify about events in Kosovo. The section of the trial dealing with events in the Serb province is expected to last several more months. The prosecution is planning to call around 100 witnesses.
In the first five weeks of the case over a dozen Kosovo Albanians testified about alleged atrocities committed by the Serbian army and police forces in the province in 1998 and 1999.
Milosevic has maintained that the masses of Albanians fleeing to Macedonia and Albania in that period were trying to get away from fighting between the army and Kosovo Albanian KLA rebels and NATO bombardments, and not from allegedly abusive Serb soldiers.
If convicted, the former president faces life imprisonment. The Serb government handed Milosevic over to the tribunal in June last year. He is the first former head of state to appear before an international court.
So, an un-identified individual gets to present any story they want as "evidence" in complete anonymity that the defendant then has to counter. Tell me again, how is this trial is legal???
It sounds like that Larson cartoon where the cleaner accidentally switches on the lights.
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