Posted on 04/08/2003 5:24:34 PM PDT by joan
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has indicted the editor of a Montenegrin newspaper for revealing the identity of a protected witness in the Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites ) trial, the court said Tuesday.
Monday's action was the first taken against a journalist by the U.N. court.
Dusan Jovanovic, who also writes for the daily Dan newspaper, published the name of witness K-32, who testified in July for the prosecution. Jovanovic faces a maximum punishment of seven years imprisonment or a fine of $106,000, or both, if convicted of contempt of court.
After the publication of K-32's name, the witness received threatening telephone calls, the court said Tuesday.
Reached by telephone in Podgorica, Montenegro's capital, Jovanovic said he intended to answer the summons.
The proceedings against Jovanovic started in October when prosecutors filed a confidential report and supporting material alleging he broke the tribunal's rules on witness confidentiality. Three witnesses also submitted statements.
The Dan daily was banned last month in Serbia, the other republic in the Balkan union formerly known as Yugoslavia, because of its reporting in the aftermath of the assassination of Serbia's Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.
Jovanovic protested that names of other protected witnesses were published but only he was charged.
Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, is on trial in The Hague (news - web sites ) on charges of 66 counts of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s, including genocide.
The witness known as K-32, whose image was electronically distorted on court monitors during his testimony, said he was a truck driver with the Yugoslav army unit based in the southern town of Prizren during the conflict in Serbia's rebellious Kosovo province in 1998 and 1999.
The former soldier, a Muslim from Montenegro, claimed that members of his unit executed dozens of civilians in several Kosovo villages during their campaign against ethnic Albanian rebels.
How long have the marsupials been in session?
http://www.milosevic-trial.org/trial/2002-01-30.htm:
12 the Kosovo indictment be the subject of a separate trial which would
13 commence on the 12th of February of 2002
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