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High drama as Milosevic trial
begins Lawyers for the former Yugoslav leader said last night he was refusing to
acknowledge the Hague court's jurisdiction and rejected the charges against him
as part of a campaign to commit "genocide" against the Serbs.
"The purpose [of the trial] is to hide war crimes committed by Nato in
Kosovo," Zdenko Tomanovic, one of the lawyers, told reporters after spending
nearly three hours talking to the former president, who he said was in good
spirits.
Mr Milosevic will therefore not be represented by counsel at the hearing, a
decision described by officials as a sign of contempt for the UN body.
As Dutch police and UN guards sealed off the tribunal building, there was no
mistaking the mood of impending drama as judges prepared to hear the first ever
war crimes charges levelled against a former head of state.
Mr Milosevic, accused of atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999,
will be driven the two miles from the UN remand centre in the leafy suburb of
Scheveningen for the brief arraignment hearing, which will start at 10am.
Officials said he would be held underground in a secure area before being
escorted into court and asked by Judge Richard May, a Briton, how he pleads to
four charges: deportation, murder, violation of the laws of war, and
persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds.
All are defined as crimes against humanity and carry a penalty of life
imprisonment. Two other judges, from Jamaica and Morocco, are expected to flank
him under the blue and white UN flag above the bench. The chief prosecutor,
Carla del Ponte, will also be in court.
A fleet of TV satellite vans were setting up last night to broadcast the
start of the trial; 1,000 journalists are expected to cover it.
In Brussels, diplomats said they were examining how exemptions could be made
to the EU visa ban on Mr Milosevic's powerful wife, Mira Markovic, their
children and two close relatives, should they wish to visit him. She has already
talked of renting an apartment nearby for the duration of the trial, which is
unlikely to start before next year.
Reports from Belgrade said Mr Milosevic had told his wife he wanted his
defence to be political. But tribunal sources said there was likely to be little
opportunity for that today as Judge May will insist there can be no discussion
of jurisdiction at this early stage.
"He [Milosevic] said the real war criminals were the leaders of Nato and that
they should be tried and not him," a Yugoslav legal source told Reuters news
agency.
Meanwhile, the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, the man behind Mr
Milosevic's extradition, yesterday said that the EU could ill afford to keep
Yugoslavia out of its ranks, stressing that regional stability was dependent on
the federation being accepted to its ranks within the next decade.
"I don't think we should promise something earlier than 10 years, but in the
next two, three years we will define the agenda and, realistically, I hope to
fulfil the conditions within 10 years," he told a meeting of the World Economic
Forum in Salzburg.
He said that ideally the Yugoslav federation, consisting of Serbia and
Montenegro, would campaign together with a single figurehead to enter the EU,
aiming to present a plan to Brussels by 2004, and hoping to join the EU by 2011.
Mr Djindjic dismissed the idea that his country's constitutional crisis meant
that it was unstable. "The constitutional crisis is less important than a
football game in the effect it has on daily life," he said.
He pledged his country's full cooperation with the tribunal in bringing to
justice further suspected war criminals, but said he hoped the trials would be
held in Belgrade in future. Should Mr Milosevic refuse to enter a plea this
morning, the court will give him 30 days to think about it before entering a
"not guilty" plea for him.
Special report: Yugoslavia war
crimes
Ian Black
in the Hague and Kate Connolly in Salzburg
Tuesday July 3, 2001
The Guardian
Refusing to recognise the UN war crimes
tribunal, a defiant Slobodan Milosevic today faces his accusers alone in a
remarkable moment for international justice that is likely to be watched live on
television by millions around the world.
Miroslav Antic,
http://www.antic.org/
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