Posted on 05/22/2002 6:23:22 PM PDT by Spar
Milosevic Tries to Cast Doubt on Massacre Reports
Wed May 22,12:52 PM ET
By Katie Nguyen
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) on Wednesday tried to rebut allegations that Serb forces carried out mass killings during the Kosovo conflict.
The former Yugoslav president doggedly cross-examined the first forensic expert to take the stand at his war crimes trial.
At least 158 bodies were found in 11 sites across the disputed province, most of whom had been shot, said Eric Baccard, chief forensic pathologist in Kosovo for the United Nations (news - web sites) war crimes tribunal.
But Baccard said he was unable to provide much detail on the circumstances surrounding the deaths due to the decomposed state of the corpses.
Milosevic has tried to undermine prosecutor's charges that his forces committed mass killings of civilians, by saying most deaths were of armed rebels killed in battles.
Baccard's report described several causes of death, including injury to the skull, internal bleeding linked to injured organs, hemorrhage and spinal wounds.
Milosevic, who is defending himself and cross-examining witnesses in minute detail, repeatedly asked whether the deaths could have occurred at different times and if the injuries marking the often decomposed corpses could have been inflicted after death.
"If a group of armed men were surrounded by another group of armed men and there's a conflict ... where would the wounds be?" he asked the softly-spoken Baccard.
The expert said it would be too speculative to predict. "There are too many variables."
Milosevic has been on trial at the Hague (news - web sites) court since February, charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia in the last decade.
The former Serb leader is accused of pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing against the majority Albanian population in Kosovo in early 1999, driving 800,000 from their homes and killing others in villages such as Racak.
The 60-year-old former Communist apparatchik says he does not recognize the court and has refused to plead to the charges, prompting judges to enter not guilty pleas on his behalf.
He has argued that it was not the Serbs but the Kosovo Liberation Army and NATO (news - web sites) who were the true aggressors in the southern province.
"POST-MORTEM ANIMAL ACTIVITY"
As chief forensic pathologist for the Kosovo part of the criminal investigation into Milosevic's alleged war crimes, Baccard supervised expert teams conducting autopsies throughout Kosovo.
Asked by Milosevic if bodies found in a street in the western municipality of Djakovica had been dismembered by explosives or mines, the Frenchman said:
"It is difficult to answer the question because of the very poor state of preservation of the bodies that did not allow pointing out dramatic lesions.
"I could see in some cases signs of post-mortem animal activity where the bones had been degraded by dogs or other animals," he added.
According to Baccard's report, based on forensic findings, videotape material and witness testimony, 95 percent of the bodies found in Millosh Street, Djakovica, remained unidentified.
He said some human remains had been reduced to a jumble of bones, meaning forensic investigators were not always able to give an accurate count of the dead.
"This has to do with the problem with which pathologists are frequently confronted when in the presence of bones destroyed and co-mingled, when it is difficult to determine the victims, even the number of victims," the witness testified.
That is the sad part....... NO, we haven't.
And "we" lie for them...
"We" are going to pay for WJC's crimes for many, many, years to come.
I hate that klintoon-kangeroo court so much that I don't think ANY justice or truth can come out of anything that it does. It is so biased against Serbs, in general and as a court, it so jam-packed with klintoon crap....that it stinks to high heaven!!!
In the midst of a police action worthy of the Sonderkommandos from a different age (strange how some people become what they fear), 20 people are herded into a house and then shot and then burned, and all I see here is a bunch of ill-informed individuals sucking up the spew that constitutes the ramblings of a communist murderer being brought to account for his crimes.
Pathetic.
Milosevic vs. the truth continues, even after the fight's been called.
The Kosovo Albanians, since KFOR occupation, have been emptying Serbian cemeteries and taking the bodies:
KOSOVO - SERBIA: Destruction of Orthodox Graveyards Continues
The audience in the Belgrade Youth Hall saw 40 minutes of video footage of destroyed and damaged tombstones, dug out and emptied graves, burned chapels and obscenities written on the gates of five Kosovo cemeteries...The way the graveyards have been destroyed shows, according to Father Panic, that it is part of the systematic eradication of Serbian monuments, churches, graveyards and monasteries from Kosovo, which KFOR is powerless to stop. ‘It is frightening even to think about it,’ he said. ‘For example, someone has exhumed three bodies from the graveyard in Urosevac; no one knows where they are, and the local priest or the local Serbian population have not been informed about it. One day we went there and there were only holes in the ground, no casket, no bodies, nothing.’
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