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Reuters. 16 March 2002. Yugoslav Army Frees Former General in Spy Scandal. BELGRADE -- The Yugoslav military on Saturday freed a top Milosevic-era general whom it had arrested and accused of espionage along with a U.S. envoy as they met in a restaurant, officials and media said. State news agency Tanjug quoted a military court saying it had released Momcilo Perisic, a former Yugoslav army chief of staff and now a Serbian deputy premier, but forwarded criminal charges to army prosecutors for further consideration. Beta news agency quoted Perisic as saying: "I am released and I believe I am not guilty." Officials from Perisic's Movement for Democratic Serbia (PDS) political party confirmed to Reuters that he was free and said he would soon address a party meeting and perhaps also media. Perisic and the diplomat were seized in a restaurant near Belgrade on Thursday night, sparking a furious response from Washington and plunging the Serbian political scene into crisis. Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic accused the Yugoslav military of fabricating a scandal to embarrass the country and said army intelligence, which informed neither its superiors nor top Yugoslav politicians of the arrests, was out of control. The arrests have exacerbated tension between Djindjic's reformist government and moderate nationalist Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, to whom the army owes at least nominal allegiance. Plain-clothes officers roughed up the U.S. envoy and interrogated him over spying allegations during a 17-hour incarceration, the U.S. embassy said. Danas newspaper said investigators found audio recordings of meetings of the Yugoslav army chiefs of staff in the diplomat's briefcase. It gave no source for the claim. Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said the diplomat, first secretary John David Neighbor, alleged the objects were planted in his briefcase. Media speculated the material was intended as evidence against former President Slobodan Milosevic, who is on trial in The Hague on U.N. war crimes charges. Prosecutors hope to tie him to atrocities blamed on the Yugoslav army in Kosovo. Sections of the Yugoslav army are believed to be thwarting Hague prosecutors in many ways, including shielding several prominent war crimes suspects, such as former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, indicted on genocide charges. Djindjic described the arrest, during which a bag was put over Neighbor's head, as "a first-rate scandal with international consequences." Mihajlovic said it looked "more like a badly directed spy movie than anything else." After a crisis meeting with Djindjic, Kostunica did not condemn the arrests, saying only that the charges leveled against Perisic were serious. "According to everything I have learned so far, and I repeat so far, the legality of the procedure itself, from the standpoint of domestic procedure, is not disputable," Kostunica said. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
