CLASSIFIED PROSECUTION DOCUMENT SHOWS KOSOVO-ALBANIANS WITNESSES ARE VICTIMS OF KLA INTIMIDATION
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - July 20, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Prosecutor Nice completed his cross-examination of Gen. Bozidar Delic on Friday, just in time for the Hague Tribunal's summer recess.

The hearing began with Mr. Nice complaining that several defense documents had not been translated in to English. Mr. Nice argued that those documents could not be admitted in to evidence unless they were translated in to English before being introduced through the witness.

Milosevic responded to the prosecutor's submission by pointing out that he had submitted the documents in question to the tribunal's translation unit weeks in advance. He also argued that a vast quantity of prosecution exhibits and documents have not been translated into Serbian for him to read and understand. He pointed out that the tribunal was applying a double-standard and that the prosecutor was "behaving like a spoiled child."

Mr. Nice began Friday's cross-examination by questioning Gen. Delic about Dubrovnik. Mr. Nice wrongly asserted that Dubrovnik had been destroyed by JNA shelling. The truth of the matter is that Dubrovnik was never destroyed, and there are videotapes that prove that it was never destroyed. Professor John Peter Maher at North-East Illinois University filmed those tapes and is willing to testify at the Hague Tribunal.

At any rate Gen. Delic explained that the JNA operation in Dubrovnik was aimed at expelling the ZNG (Croat National Guard). At the time in question, Dubrovnik was part of Yugoslavia and the JNA was the only legal armed force in the country. The ZNG was a paramilitary formation, which had attacked Montenegro, and according to Delic it had its base in Dubrovnik.

Mr. Nice spent a great deal of time questioning Gen. Delic about Bela Crkva. According to the prosecution's witnesses, and the book "As Seen as Told" several Kosovo-Albanian men were killed by Serbian police in Bela Crkva. It is alleged that the villagers were chased by the police into a stream bed where the police separated the men from the women. The police then made the men strip naked, and then made them put their clothes back on. Finally the police lined the men up and executed them, shooting each of them in the back.

Gen. Delic denied that anybody was executed. According to him, no civilians could be seen anywhere in the village when the authorities got there.

During the re-examination Milosevic read out from the report of the British forensic team that autopsied the so-called "civilians" who died at Bela Crkva. According to their findings the men mostly died from gunshot wounds, and the entry wounds were generally on the front of their bodies, which means that the story about them being lined-up and shot in the back is a lie.

The next document that Milosevic read from was the KLA's book "The Phoenix of Freedom," this book documents the "ultimate sacrifice" of fallen "KLA heroes." It emerged from this book that several of the names listed by the indictment as innocent civilians killed by Serbian police at Bela Crkva were in fact KLA fighters.

The next topic that Milosevic dealt with in the re-examination was the so-called "Joint Command." The prosecution claims that the Joint Command was a parallel chain of command that Milosevic used to illegally bypass the regular chain of command so that he could order the army and police to carry out ethnic cleansing.

The first thing that Milosevic did was show the witness, and the court, a transcript of one of the Joint Command's meetings. From the transcript it emerged that the whole chain of command in both the army and police, all the way down to the level of corps command, was present at the meetings. The fact that the whole chain of command participated means that nobody could have used the Joint Command as a vehicle to bypass the regular chain of command.

During Gen. Delic's testimony much had been made of an order headlined "Joint Command." The document had number 455-63 printed on it. The Yugoslav Army had a system for numbering its documents and the number on this document proves that it was an order of the Pristina Corps. Gen. Delic said that he received that document from the command of the Pristina Corps. He also pointed out that every other communication that referred to order 455-63 referred to it as an order of the Pristina Corps.

Gen. Delic explained that the Joint Command was a body established to facilitate cooperation between the army and the police. It was not an actual command authority, the army and the police maintained their command structure, the Joint Command just gave army and police commanders a forum in which to coordinate their activities.

During his examination in chief, Gen. Delic came to court with several videotapes of Kosovo-Albanians who spoke to TV crews about how they were mistreated by the KLA and what they thought about the NATO bombing.

To challenge this material Mr. Nice tracked down some of these Kosovo-Albanians. Naturally these Albanians changed their stories to say that the KLA was wonderful and that being bombed NATO was the best thing that ever happened to them.

Gen. Delic said that the repressive environment that has been created in Kosovo since the end of the war prohibits the Albanian population from saying anything different than what they told Mr. Nice.

Mr. Nice scoffed at Delic's suggestion that Albanians are victims of repression in Kosovo. He then tried to paint Delic as a racist for suggesting that Kosovo-Albanians are unable to tell the truth.

During the re-examination, Milosevic managed to take Mr. Nice by surprise. Milosevic had somehow managed to obtain a confidential motion that the Office of the Prosecutor had filed with the tribunal in the Ramush Haradinaj case.

The prosecution's motion explained that they were having tremendous difficulty getting witnesses to testify against Haradinaj, because of the repressive atmosphere and massive witness intimidation in Kosovo. According to the document, some potential witnesses have been killed for merely talking to tribunal's investigators. It said that the problem of witness intimidation in Kosovo is far worse than it is anywhere else in the former Yugoslavia.

Mr. Nice didn't like having his own argument thrown back at him one bit. First he objected saying that the prosecution's document was supposed to be confidential, and then he said that the trial chamber should not hear this type of evidence because it goes to show that Kosovo-Albanians are unable to tell the truth.

Mr. Nice's argument is ridiculous. If Kosovo-Albanians are in such a position that they can be killed for speaking in favor of the Serbs or against the KLA, then that should be taken in to account because it affects their credibility. It doesn’t make them bad people; it just calls everything they say into question.

Finding a Kosovo-Albanian who is willing to speak against the KLA would be like going to North Korea and finding a Korean willing to stand in the middle of Pyongyang and publicly condemn Kim Jong Il. Nobody who values their life will do it.  

With that the Milosevic trial adjourned for the summer recess until August 17th. 
 

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