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AFP; AP. 4 October 2002. Milosevic clashes with judge again; Milosevic Denies Responsibility. THE HAGUE -- Slobodan Milosevic denied he bore responsibility for ethnic Serbs accused of killing non-Serbs in Croatia in the early 1990s, saying Friday they were defending themselves against Croatian aggression. "There was no aggression from Serbia. It was a civil war (in Croatia)," Milosevic said. "The Serb people had war imposed on them, and furthermore it was a war of self-defense." Milosevic often clashed with the presiding judge over his cross-examination of a "protected" prosecution witness. The former Yugoslav president was cut short several times by Judge Richard May and ordered to stick to the point as he led the witness, a moderate Croatian Serb politician identified only as C037, through a catalogue of alleged atrocities committed against Serbs in the Western Slavonia area of Croatia in late 1991. But it all got too much for the judge at one point, when Milosevic's microphone failed as he was asking a question. Judge May snapped: "We can't hear you but it sounds that what you are saying is irrelevant [!]." He went on: "You are trying to argue your entire case through this witness, which is a waste of the court's time. If he simply read something in the paper, then that's no use to anyone." Milsoevic, who on Monday had questioned the crediblity of the witness on the grounds that his evidence consisted almost entirely of hearsay, denials and memory lapses, then retorted: "Mr May, I expected you to make such comments to the prosecution in their examination. "He was asked if he heard about something or read it in a newspaper or saw it on Croatian TV, but I am only asking him what he knows. So you accept testimony of something heard in the examination-in-chief but you are not allowing me to do so." Milosevic was also angry at a prosecution request to change the order of calling witnesses due to difficulties of people travelling to the Netherlands. He said he thought the court had agreed to provide him with a list of who was to appear at least a week ahead. "There are 125,500 pages, 600 videotapes and two to three hundred audio tapes and it is physically impossible to view them all or even make a selection unless I have notice a few days in advance. If the prosecution try to use these tricks, it is impermissible." After another lengthy period of cross-questioning in which Milosevic tried to establish an inventory of how many Serbian villages in the region had been torched, May intervened again to warn him: "You are rehearsing at great length and, if I may say so, with much repetition, that crimes were committed against Serbs. "That may or may not be so but it is not relevant to our determining whether crimes were committed by you or by others." Milosevic hit back: "I wish to remind you that I am not concealing my view that what you call an indictment is a false indictment, primarily for two reasons." "First of all, no aggression took place, it was a civil war, and secondly the Serbian people had this war imposed upon them both in Croatia and in Bosnia." "It is evident they were defending the territory where they lived and were trying to avoid pogroms such as those perpetrated 50 years earlier. That is the only truth I am trying to explain here." And denying he was contending that the other side was equally guilty, he insisted: "I have committed no crimes." Also Friday, the war crimes tribunal withdrew an indictment against a Bosnian Croat accused of murdering a wheelchair-bound man and three other Muslims, saying his case could better be handled by a court in Bosnia. Zoran Marinic, a former military policemen, was charged in a 1995 indictment with the murder of four Muslim civilians in Bosnia while serving with a Croat rebel group two years earlier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ProletarianNews http://www.utopia2000.org --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org 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 ==^================================================================
