WATCH OUT LADIES PADDY ASHDOWN HAS X-RAY VISION!
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - September 21, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Slobodan Milosevic continued his re-examination of Gen. Bozidar Delic at The Hague Tribunal on Wednesday.

What happened during the first hour of today’s re-examination is a mystery because the Hague Tribunal’s telecast didn’t have any audio. When the audio problems finally got fixed Milosevic was asking Gen. Delic questions about some topographical maps and 3D computer models of southern Kosovo.

On March 14, 2002 Paddy Ashdown testified as a witness for the prosecution. He said that he was on the Kosovo-Albania border near Junik and from his perch at Junik, through his binoculars, Ashdown claimed to see Serbian forces torching, looting and shelling several villages.

Both the maps and 3D computer models proved that Ashdown could not have seen most of the places that he claims to have seen from the vantage points where he says he was at. In most cases there would have been mountains obstructing his view, and in other cases the thick woods at the coordinates where he says he was located would have prevented him from seeing very far.

Milosevic joked that he would drop the whole issue if Paddy Ashdown could prove that he had X-Ray vision and the ability to see through mountains.

Milosevic questioned Gen. Delic further about the collaboration between the KLA and NATO. He showed Delic a letter that the KLA main staff had sent to Wesley Clark during the bombing. The KLA opened its letter with the expression of gratitude: “Please accept our thanks…” unfortunately the Judges cut Milosevic off and wouldn’t let him read the whole text of the letter.

From the brief excerpts that he was allowed to put to the witness it emerged that the KLA was urging NATO to mount a ground invasion and focus its bombing raids more on Serbian tank and artillery positions.

Milosevic also questioned Delic about the situation in Malesevo. Delic said that Malisevo was a KLA stronghold and that Wesley Clark and Richard Holbrooke were very keen on keeping the VJ and MUP out of there. Delic said that certain members of the OSCE-KVM had access to Malisevo and it was thought that the KLA was receiving weapons from them there.

During Delic’s cross-examination he was accused of killing KLA prisoners of war on Mt. Pastrik.

To prove that the KLA POWs had not been killed he showed the tribunal a videotape where members of the OSCE-KVM could be seen on Mt. Pastrik in the same area as the KLA prisoners. Unfortunately, there was nowhere on the tape that the prisoners could be seen actually interacting with the KVM members.

To make matters worse, the prosecution had testimony from Gen. Drewienkiewicz to the effect that the KVM had been denied access to the captured prisoners.

To prove that Drewienkiewicz and the prosecution were lying, Milosevic presented a statement from another prosecution witness, Mr. Ian Robert Hendrie.

Mr. Hendrie had also served as a KVM observer, and his statement said that the KVM had been given access to the prisoners. He said that the KVM took statements from the prisoners, and even took their pictures. He added that the VJ did not obstruct the KVM, and that the prisoners were later released.

This is bad news for the prosecution because Gen. Drewienkiewicz is one of their key Racak witnesses, and he’s just been exposed as a liar.

With that Milosevic brought the re-examination to a close. Unfortunately Gen. Delic is not free to leave The Hague. Mr. Nice wants to re-cross-examine the witness on a number of issues, but he wasn’t ready to do it today. Gen. Delic is likely to return to the witness chair next week.

The next witness on the docket was Col. Bogoljub Janicevic. Janicevic is a Kosovo-Serb, currently living as a displaced person in Nis.

At one point he was the president of the Strpce Municipality. He served in the Serbian Ministry of the Interior where he obtained the rank of Colonel. He was the chief of the Urosevac SUP and later he was named the chief of the Pristina SUP. Today he is retired.

He began his testimony by speaking about interethnic relations in Kosovo. He said that relations between Serbs and Albanians were good up until about 1968 to 1974. At that point he says Albanian nationalists began to commit hate-crimes such as murder, rape, assault and vandalism against Serbs and other non-Albanians.

He testified that Albanians who opposed their nationalist brethren were attacked too.

He also spoke of a campaign of “Albanization” in Kosovo. He said that Kosovo officials, starting in the 1950s, began to falsify public records in order to make Kosovo appear to be more Albanian. To bear these points out Janicevic presented several documents to the court.

He gave the tribunal several examples of this “Albanization” campaign. If somebody neglected to mark their ethnicity on the census they would be counted as Albanian. People’s names would be changed; he gave the example that Muratovic might be changed to Murat in the public record. He said that land was registered improperly to Albanians, even some Serbian Orthodox Church buildings were registered falsely as Albanian property or Muslim Mosques.

Janicevic testified that this sort of thing happened far too frequently to be explained merely as bookkeeping errors. He will continue his testimony when the trial resumes on Thursday.

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