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Milosevic
disputes destruction in Kosovo
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Apr 10, 2002
(United Press International via COMTEX) -- For a second day Wednesday, former
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic hotly disputed testimony by an American
expert who said Yugoslav security forces deliberately damaged or destroyed
hundreds of Albanian mosques and other religious buildings as well as historic
sites in the province of Kosovo.
Milosevic, a former lawyer who has chosen to represent himself in his trial for
war crimes and crimes against humanity, blamed the ruin on NATO airstrikes and
Albanian acts of terrorism.
The
international U.N. tribunal reconvened Monday after a three-week adjournment due
to the defendant's reported illness. It opened in The Hague, Netherlands, on
Feb. 12 and is expected to last about two years before ruling on the charges
against the former Serb leader.
Andras
Riedlmayer, a Harvard University Fine Arts librarian who specializes in Ottoman
Turk and Islamic cultural and religious heritage, summarized a survey of
Kosovo's war-damaged architectural sites he and a team of assistants had
prepared after inspecting hundreds of localities to assess damage shortly after
Yugoslavia's 11-week conflict with NATO that ended in June
1999.
Serbian soldiers, police and
paramilitaries in 1998 and 1999 caused widespread destruction to some 500
villages in Kosovo and severely damaged or destroyed about 225 mosques, or one
in three Muslim houses of worship in the region, Riedlmayer
said.
He also said the Serbs gutted
traditional Albanian bazaars, the overwhelming majority of some 500 defensive
stone towers known as kullas, for centuries inhabited by large Kosovo Albanian
families, libraries, hamams (public baths) and other architectural
heritage.
"There was a clear pattern of
systematic targeting by the Serbian forces of mosques in Kosovo -- including a
number of important monuments from the 15th and 16th centuries," Riedlmayer
said. "The deliberate destruction of cultural property without overriding
military necessity is a war crime."
The
tribunal's statute says "criminal responsibility for violations of the laws and
customs of war" is also incurred by "the seizure or destruction of, or willful
damage done to, institutions dedicated to religion, education and the arts and
sciences, and to works of art and historic
monuments."
During cross-examination,
Milosevic dismissed Riedlmayer as a biased witness for being an American and for
having been asked to do his survey by The Hague tribunal. He claimed it was not
Yugoslav forces but NATO's bombing and terrorist actions by the ethnic Albanian
Kosovo Liberation Army that caused the destruction or damage of Serbian Orthodox
and Albanian Catholic churches and monasteries as well as of mosques in
Kosovo.
Milosevic alleged that "Albanian terrorists dynamited and
destroyed" Orthodox churches and other facilities "so as to erase the traces of
NATO vandalism."
But
Riedlmayor retorted that in most cases it was evident this was not "collateral
damage" from fighting between Belgrade's forces and the KLA rebels nor the
result of NATO's bombing. The cause of destruction and damage to buildings was
heavy gun shelling or explosions and arson, he insisted. The only two religious
buildings that his experts had found being damaged from the air were a village
mosque in Jablanica and a Catholic church in Prizren, according to
Riedlmayer.
He denied that the two major
Serbian heritage sites -- the Pec Patriarchate and Decani Monastery in western
Kosovo -- were damaged by NATO bombs as Milosevic had claimed. Slight damage
there was caused by dampness, he said. But some Orthodox priests had told his
team their religious buildings had suffered from being turned into Yugoslav
military facilities during the brief war, he
added.
Riedlmayer also said, "I am an
American citizen but if we had discovered damage from bombing or been notified
about it by priests and monks who had talked to us, we would have certainly put
this into our report." He said he and his team were not paid and had received no
instructions from the tribunal. Only their costs were covered by a
sponsor.
Riedlmayor said some Serbian
Orthodox churches in Kosovo had indeed been destroyed since the end of the war.
He suggested this was done by Kosovo Albanians as "tit for tat" for destruction
wrought by the Serbs, adding it too was a
tragedy.
Earlier in the week, three
protected prosecution witnesses testified in closed sessions on Monday and part
of Tuesday. The witnesses, whose identities were not disclosed, are believed to
be Albanian women raped by members of the Yugoslav army or Serbian police and
paramilitary units before the arrival of NATO-led peacekeeping troops in Kosovo
on June 10, 1999.
On Thursday and in the
next few days, senior Western army officers who were members of the Verification
Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe just before
the NATO-Yugoslav conflict started on March 24, 1999, are expected to be called
to the witness
stand.
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