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[Given the recent rash of newspaper reports, including a prominent feature in yesterday's Guardian on just this subject, concerning the epidemic people smuggling industry - particularly in regards to underage sex slavery - conducted by the CIA's KLA/UCK-linked European underworld, wouldn't Slobodan Milosevic's contentons in this regard ring true to any healthy, sensible mind? But in a (propaganda) world growing increasingly counterintuitive - in the words of Oscar Wilde - people are always willing to believe the impossible, rarely the improbable.] Milosevic Denies War Crimes Coverup By Aleksandar Vasovic Associated Press Writer Tuesday, July 23, 2002; 8:09 AM THE HAGUE, Netherlands �� Denying a cover-up of war crimes, Slobodan Milosevic told the U.N. tribunal Tuesday that ethnic Albanians whose bodies were packed into a freezer truck and dumped into the Danube River were victims of human traffickers, not Serb army troops. "We are talking here about an organized criminal group. People had drowned when the lorry toppled and ended up in the river," the former Yugoslav president said during his cross-examination of a Serb police captain. Dragan Karleusa testified about the investigation last year into the discovery of 86 Kosovo Albanians who were driven into the Danube three years ago. The corpses were later retrieved, and police suspect they were reburied at a police training base near Belgrade, in what prosecutors contend was an attempt to conceal evidence of war crimes. But Karleusa suggested the evidence was not yet conclusive that the bodies exhumed from the camp were those removed from the truck. "We are still trying to determine who they are, who killed them and where. (The) bodies are not identified yet. The elements that could be acceptable as proof have not been found," he said. Milosevic quoted several state security reports and public prosecutor's notes about widespread human smuggling in the region in eastern Serbia where the truck was discovered in 1999. "I am aware of human smuggling in the region, but not in this particular case," Karleusa said. Milosevic is representing himself as defense counsel against 66 counts of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Rather than merely question witnesses, he often makes statements asserting his innocence. Milosevic also denied Karleusa's assertion in his testimony Monday that in March 1999 Milosevic and his aids had discussed clearing the battlefields in Kosovo to remove traces of atrocities. "Do you really believe that the head of state would order anyone to cover up war crimes?" he asked the witness. At least three mass graves have been found in Serbia since Milosevic's ouster in October 2000, all hundreds of miles from Kosovo. Milosevic claimed that the "refrigerator-truck case was invented to create a climate" for his extradition to the U.N. court 13 months ago. In his earlier testimony, Karleusa said orders for operation "Depth 2" to relocate the bodies came from former Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, police Gen. Vlastimir Djordjevic and Gen. Rade Markovic, the chief of the state security service. Markovic, who is serving a one-year prison sentence in Belgrade for destroying secret police files, was brought to The Hague last Friday and will appear this week as a prosecution witness. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu 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 ==^================================================================
