Milosevic to stay on attack,
lawyer says
THE HAGUE, July 3 (AFP) -
Slobodan
Milosevic will stay on the offensive in his trial at the UN war crimes tribunal,
lawyer Zdenko Tomanovich predicted Tuesday.
"He's not going to defend
himself, he's going to attack," Tomanovich told reporters, adding that it was
therefore "not important" whether Milosevic was represented before the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY).
Milosevic, who faces life imprisonment if convicted, "will not
have a lawyer in further proceedings," Tomanovich said through an
interpreter.
Tomanovich, who stressed that he was neither the defendant's
spokesman nor his lawyer, said that at Tuesday's initial appearance, the defiant
ex-president "was not defending himself, he was attacking the court."
The
fallen strongman, appearing before the ICTY to answer charges over his role in
the 1998-99 Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, waived his right to
counsel, rejected the charges against him and branded the tribunal
"illegal".
Presiding Judge Richard
May prevented the defendant -- the first former head of state to face the
tribunal -- from elaborating on his assertions by cutting off the sound on two
occasions, a prerogative allowed under tribunal
rules.
Tomanovich said Milosevic was aware that
his microphone could be disabled during the hearing, and had expected
it.
The Belgrade lawyer also said that Milosevic refused, after the
10-minute hearing, to speak to chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte in a meeting
that normally follows an initial court appearance.
"He didn't want to
meet a person with whom he didn't want to talk and whom he didn't want to see,"
Tomanovich said.
Del Ponte's spokeswoman Florence Hartman earlier told
AFP that the two had spoken during their brief meeting.
The high-profile
defendant's refusal to appoint a lawyer prompted fears that the tribunal would
be unable to ensure a fair trial, with deputy chief prosecutor Graham Blewitt
saying the former president had the right to "the best legal defence in the
world".
"We would like to see him totally defended so that at the end of
the process, whatever the verdict is, the international community can have
confidence in the process," Blewitt said.
Tribunal spokesman Christian
Cartier said the court might deem it necessary to appoint a lawyer to defend
Milosevic, should his defense seem "diminished" over the course of a trial that
is expected to last some two years.
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Miroslav Antic,
http://www.antic.org/
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