DR. ANDRIC CONCLUDES HIS EXAMINATION-IN-CHIEF
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - February 24, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Dr. Vukasin Andric concluded his examination-in-chief on Thursday. His testimony resumed with an account of another NATO attack on Kosovo refugees.
On May 14, 1999 a column of predominantly Albanian refugees from Suva Reka was bombed by NATO forces. 80 people, including women and children, were killed. Like the column from Djackovica, these refugees were returning to their homes.
Milosevic played a videotape of the grizzly aftermath of that NATO attack. Limbs were blown off of peoples’ bodies; the fire from the bombing was so intense that their maimed and mutilated corpses were charred and black.
Dr. Andric, who visited the scene shortly after the attack, said that the only vehicles in the convoy were farm tractors. He said that there were no military instillations close by, and that the NATO aggressors could not possibly have mistaken that group of refugees for the Army.
Dr. Andric, who traveled throughout Kosovo during the NATO bombing in his capacity as provincial health secretary, said that the Army and the police strove to protect Kosovo’s population regardless of their ethnicity, and that he never saw them mistreating the Albanian population.
Dr. Andric did say that there were some Serbian criminals who mistreated Albanians, but he said that the police arrested these people and they were sentenced to prison.
To prove that the Serbian government strove to help the Kosovo Albanian refugees Milosevic played a large number of videotapes.
The videotapes depicted Dr. Andric and his team distributing food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid to Albanian refugees. The tapes also featured numerous unedited interviews with Kosovo-Albanian refugees.
The refugees said that they were fleeing because of the NATO bombing and the fighting between the Yugoslav Army and the KLA. None of the refugees said that the state authorities mistreated them or chased them from their homes.
In addition to videotapes of Albanian refugees, tapes of Serbian refugees were also played. The Serbian refugees also said that they were fleeing from the NATO bombs and the fighting between the KLA and Yugoslav forces.
Milosevic pointed out the UNHCR’s statistics on Kosovo refugees, which shows that during the time of the NATO aggression 100,000 Serbs fled Kosovo. Based on the ethnic structure of Kosovo’s population, a greater percentage of Serbs fled Kosovo than Albanians at precisely the time when Serbia is accused of ethnically cleansing the Albanians.
In addition to his testimony about why the refugees fled, Dr. Andric testified about where the refugees fled to. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fled to Montenegro and to central Serbia. Dr. Andric said that if the Albanians were leaving Kosovo to escape from the Yugoslav Army, then they would not have gone to other parts of Yugoslavia.
Dr. Andric testified very briefly about the situation in Kosovo since the NATO occupation which began in June 1999. According to his testimony, KFOR did not lift a finger to protect Kosovo’s non-Albanian population. The hundreds of thousands of non-Albanian refugees who have fled from Kosovo since NATO occupied it would seem to corroborate that testimony.
Dr. Andric said that the non-Albanian population that remains in Kosovo lives in near concentration-camp conditions, and that they have no freedom of movement outside of the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica.
Following the examination-in-chief Dr. Andric was cross-examined by Mr. Nice. Mr. Nice did not ask many questions, because most of the remaining time was taken-up by legal argument and procedural matters.
Dr. Andric’s testimony will be resumed next Monday.
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