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;) 15:09 2002-10-03
Biljana Plavsic Turns Traitor; Milosevic Stands
Up
“I plead guilty,” Bosnian
Serb wartime leader Biljana Plavsic said speaking by video-link from
a tribunal office in Yugoslavia yesterday. Thus, Plavsic is the
first high-ranking suspect who pleaded guilty to crimes against
humanity during the Balkan crisis in 1991. Meanwhile, Slobodan
Milosevic had sharp exhanges with Mesic, and judges had to interrupt
him several times.
“I plead guilty,” Bosnian Serb
wartime leader Biljana Plavsic said speaking by video-link from a
tribunal office in Yugoslavia yesterday. Thus, as the BBC
reports, Plavsic is the first high-ranking suspect to plead guilty
to crimes against humanity during the Balkan crisis in 1991.
After the ex-president pleaded guilty to genocide and war
crimes, the prosecutor dropped all other charges against her.
Plavsic was a close comrade to the leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan
Karadzik, who is still free. Earlier, he promised that he would
never surrender alive to the Hague Tribunal.
Biljana Plavsic
is to testify in the Hague once again. Everyone is wondering what
she will say against the ex-president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan
Milosevic.
According to the Russian newspaper
Kommersant, Biljana Plavsic, who is currently 72, is a
legendary person. Her name was written on most armored vehicles
during the Bosnian war. Plavsic took the presidential post in Serbia
in 1996 and held it for two years, but she lost the next election.
She voluntarily surrendered to the UN Tribunal in January 2001. At
the same time, she openly declared that she would be able to prove
her innocence.
Meanwhile, Milosevic devoted the first half
of the day yesterday to his cross-examination of the incumbent
Croatia President, Stipe Mesic. The BBC informs that main
issues during the examination concerned the right of the former
Yugoslav republics do self-determination and the events in the early
1990s when armed conflicts broke out in Croatia first and then in
Bosnia.
Slobodan Milosevic harshly critcized Mesic, and the
judges had to interrupt him several times. Milosevic was told that
he should ask questions only, “not make his own speeches or give
evidence to crimes of other people who are not witnesses in the
actual case.” Milosevic in his turn responded that everything he was
saying “concerned the trial, because it discredited the witness.”
Milosevic accused then-speaker of the republican parliament Mesic of
organizing assassinations of Serbs in Croatia.
Western
observers who were present at the trial say that Mesic avoided
Milosevic’s eyes and looked at judge Richard May only. BBC
journalists report that Milosevic was wonderfully prepared for the
trial and artfully used testimonial evidence.
Sergey
Stefanov
PRAVDA.Ru
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