------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 3, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
MILOSEVIC DEFENSE TO OPEN JUNE 22 AT NATO'S COURT
By John Catalinotto
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will open his defense against war crimes charges at the NATO-founded International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on June 22.
Despite serious health problems President Milosevic, who defended himself ably while cross-examining the 300 witnesses his enemies called during two years of testimony, will continue to be his own trial lawyer during the defense. His main goal has been to expose both the kangaroo court and the imperialist attack on his country during the 1991-1999 period examined during the prosecution case.
The media stopped major coverage of this trial once Milosevic began successfully exposing the criminal U.S. and West European aggression against his country.
Some 1,631 names appear on the defense's witness list, including U.S. President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke from the U.S. administration that launched the destructive 1999 war on Yugoslavia.
The latest NATO offensive against Milosevic and Serbian nationalist prisoner Vojislav Seselj included reversing a law the Serbian parliament passed earlier this year providing limited funds to Serb defendants. This law was a rebuke to the Western imperialists who now occupy four of the six republics of the former Yugoslavia and have taken over Serbian industry, banking and media.
While the 10,000 Euros per month ($12,000) the law provided is inadequate for a complex defense such as Milosevic's, it now has been stopped completely by a legal maneuver. Under pressure from Western- owned media and non-governmental organizations, judges of the Constitutional Court of Serbia suspended the law.
Milosevic aide Vladimir Krsljanin is appealing to supporters of the former president's defense to continue to donate funds. Without such support, Krsljanin says, it will be impossible for legal assistants to remain in The Hague, interview potential witnesses, and help the president prepare his defense.
Milosevic's defense got backing in the final statement of the World Peace Congress, held in Athens, Greece, May 6-9. Around 150 delegates representing 60 member-organizations from more than 50 countries took part. The statement, which opposes the U.S. occupation of Iraq, "preemptive war" policy, and aggression against Cuba and other countries, includes this about Yugoslavia:
"The WPC expresses its solidarity with the peoples of Yugoslavia in their struggle against the consequences of the barbarous NATO aggression, which led to the occupation of part of Serbian territory, Kosovo, and its transformation into a NATO protectorate. The so-called Hague Tribunal is one example of the manipulation of truth and an attempt to legitimize the aggression and other crimes of the USA and NATO."
Lord Iain Bonomy from Scotland was named to join the three-judge panel hearing Milosevic's case at the ICTY. He replaces the senior judge, Richard May, who resigned earlier this year for unexplained health reasons.
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