VOJISLAV SESELJ - DAY 1: KOSOVO AND THE WEST
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - August 19, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Saban Fazliu completed his testimony at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Friday. Mr. Fazliu is a Kosovo-Albanian forest ranger from the area of Urosevac. He has testified that the KLA and NATO were responsible for the war in Kosovo, and that the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Police behaved properly.

Mr. Fazliu has suffered severe abuse at the hands of Kosovo-Albanian nationalists. When he went to The Hague five months ago to prepare to give evidence his 16 year-old daughter was kidnapped.

The prosecution did not believe that Mr. Fazliu’s daughter was kidnapped so they checked with UNMIK and got the answer that she was reported to the police as being kidnapped on April 15, 2005.

UNMIK, however, doesn’t think there is anything strange about the fact that Mr. Fazliu’s daughter vanished from the face of the Earth at precisely the moment that he went to The Hague to prepare his testimony. UNMIK isn’t treating this case as a kidnapping; they consider it an ordinary missing person case.

Mr. Saxon went even further, the prosecutor said that it was Mr. Fazliu’s fault that his daughter was missing. Mr. Saxon suggested that she ran away from home because her father was an embarrassment to her.

It takes a special kind of asshole to say something like that to a father who knows that his teenage daughter has been kidnapped, but that’s just what sort of a guy Mr. Saxon is. It doesn’t advance the prosecution case one iota to suggest things like that about Mr. Fazliu’s daughter.

The KLA has killed several of Mr. Fazliu’s friends and family members, they even came to his house to kill him. Luckily, Mr. Fazliu was able to protect himself on that occasion and managed to capture his would-be killer.

When KFOR came to Mr. Fazliu’s house they erroneously believed that he was a Serb. KFOR brought an Albanian interpreter to speak with the suspect, and Mr. Fazliu claims that he heard the interpreter speaking to the man in Albanian saying, “don’t worry you will be released immediately.”

After Mr. Fazliu completed his testimony Vojislav Seselj took the witness stand.

Vojoslav Seselj is the former deputy Prime Minister of Serbia, the President of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), and an ICTY defendant himself.

Seselj’s testimony began with him reciting his curriculum vitae, and explaining the platform of the SRS. Seselj explained that the SRS advocates greater-Serbia, meaning the unification of all lands where Serbs constitute a majority.

Seselj said that the SRS is the only political party that advocates greater-Serbia. He said that Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) opposed the idea of greater-Serbia.

Seselj said that the SRS only joined a coalition government with the SPS in 1998 because of the great danger that was facing Serbia. He said that if it weren’t for the Kosovo issue and the threat of NATO aggression the SRS “would not be caught dead in a government with its ideological opponents.”

Seselj’s testimony mainly dealt with his experience as Serbia’s deputy prime minister, and Serbia’s interaction with the West.

Seselj explained how the contact group worked to break-up Yugoslavia and Serbia. Seselj will be the first witness in Milosevic’s defense case to give evidence about the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, but today he focused on Kosovo.

He said that NATO used the KLA as their proxy army. He said that they supplied the terrorists with weapons and incited terrorism against Serbia. He blamed the American envoy Robert Gelbard in particular. He said that Gelbard gave politically neutral statements as a cover while he secretly went to meet with and encourage the KLA.

He explained that the United States wanted to move its troops out of Germany while maintaining a military presence in Europe. He said that provoking wars in Yugoslavia gave the Americans exactly the pretext they needed to station troops on the Balkan Peninsula.

Seselj explained the position of the Serbian government in relation to Kosovo. He said that Serbia wanted to establish a bi-cameral legislature in Kosovo. One side would be a chamber of citizens on the one-man one-vote principle. The other side would be a chamber of ethnic communities where all of the ethnicities living in Kosovo would be equally represented, this chamber would have to approve all legislation before it could be enacted, which would eliminate the danger of racist bills becoming law through the process of ethnic out-voting.

Seselj also told the court that the Serbian Government wanted to have dialogue with the Kosovo-Albanian leadership so that a political solution could be found. He said that the government insisted on full equality for all citizens regardless of their ethnicity, and that the Albanians got better than equal treatment in Kosovo.

Kosovo-Albanians were not required to pay for their healthcare, or their electricity, which was freely given to them by the Serbian government. Even though they were being given all manner of assistance by the state, they were not required to pay any taxes. Albanians got a free ride from the Serbian government in Kosovo.

The prosecution has alleged that Serbia was a police state. Seselj scoffed at the notion that Serbia was a police state. He explained that Serbia did not have enough policemen to be a police state.

Seselj also denied that there was any such thing as the so-called “joint criminal enterprise” alleged by the indictment. He said that, as deputy prime minister, he would have known about it if it had existed.

With that the trial adjourned for the week. The trial is scheduled to resume again next Tuesday. Seselj is expected to testify for at least the next two weeks.

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