ANOTHER PROSECUTION WITNESS DISCREDITED
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - October 19, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

General Milos Djosan completed his examination-in-chief at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday.

The first 90 minutes of The Hague Tribunal’s telecast were unavailable, but when the broadcast resumed Milosevic was questioning Gen. Djosan about the testimony of prosecution witness Nike Peraj.

Nike Peraj is an ethnic Albanian who obtained the rank of captain in the Yugoslav Army during the Kosovo war. Capt. Peraj deserted the Yugoslav Army and remained living in Kosovo after the withdrawal of the VJ in June 1999.

When Peraj testified in May 2002 he claimed that Serbian troops committed crimes in the area of Djakovica and Meja. He accused Serbian troops of massacring several civilians in the village of Meja during April 1999.

As it happens, Capt. Peraj was directly subordinated to Gen. Djosan. Gen. Djosan exhibited the orders that he gave to his unit and those orders explicitly called for all crimes to be reported to him, and for the perpetrators to be punished. Gen. Djosan explained that Nike Peraj never reported a single crime to him or to the military police.

To prove that crimes were properly reported and punished, Gen. Djosan exhibited several documents showing cases where members of his unit were prosecuted for major crimes such as murder and rape all the way down to minor crimes such as theft and looting.

Gen. Djosan confirmed that there had been an anti-terrorist operation in Meja during April 1999, but denied that any civilians had been killed. He said that when his unit arrived in Meja the KLA had already left and nobody fired a single shot.

The people who died in Meja died as the result of NATO bombing. This fact is confirmed by a report written by Carla del Ponte. Her report confirms that NATO bombed Meja and killed several civilians. It also makes note of the fact that NATO attempted to deny the incident, until ultimately admitting that it had “accidentally” bombed the civilian population.

The tribunal restricted Milosevic’s use of the Del Ponte report. Judge Robinson explained that Milosevic would not be allowed to use the report in order to prove that NATO committed war crimes in Kosovo.

The restriction imposed by the tribunal is entirely unreasonable because a major point of Milosevic’s defense is that the Kosovo population fled from NATO bombs. It is Milosevic’s position that NATO committed war crimes by deliberately bombing the civilian population. He maintains that those NATO war crimes are what caused the people to flee.

The Del Ponte report serves to whitewash NATO’s war crimes. From what Milosevic was able to get away with reading in court, it emerged that the report was designed to excuse NATO’s killing of civilians. Ms. Del Ponte’s report would have one believe that NATO’s “precision munitions” and “smart bombs” only hit civilians by accident … an accident that only repeated itself a couple of thousand times during the 78-day bombing campaign.

Gen. Djosan exhibited his war diary to the tribunal. This document kept track of all the orders that were issued, all of the combat operations that his unit took part in, the supplies his unit had, and the locations were NATO and the KLA carried out their attacks.

During his testimony Gen. Djosan made note of the fact that the KLA received air support from NATO warplanes. He expanded on that today and pointed out the fact that the regular Albanian Army also supported the KLA by firing on the Yugoslav Army from its positions inside the territory of Albania.

Mr. Nice will begin his cross-examination when the trial resumes tomorrow. The first 30 minutes of tomorrow’s court session have been set aside for a status conference where Milosevic will ask the tribunal for an extension of the time he has been allotted for his defense case.

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