TWO ARMY OFFICERS REFUTE THE KOSOVO INDICTMENT’S CHARGES RELATING TO DAKOVICA AND BELA CRKVA
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - November 15, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed on Tuesday in spite of Milosevic’s ill health. An international team of medical experts from Serbia, Russia, and France has recommended that the trial be adjourned for at least six weeks to allow Milosevic’s medical condition time to stabilize.

The international medical team submitted a report to the tribunal explaining that the trial should be adjourned immediately in order to avoid serious health complications for Milosevic.

The tribunal’s doctor, a Mr. Paulus Falke, ignored the opinion of his colleagues and said that Milosevic’s health was good enough and that the trial should continue. When Milosevic presented the medical report to the Judges they said that they would consider it. Then, without considering it, they ordered him to call his next witness.

With that Milosevic called Capt. Husein Sarvanovic to the witness stand. Capt. Sarvanovic is an ethnic Muslim. He served as the commander of the motorized company of the 1st Prizren Brigade of the Yugoslav Army (VJ) during the Kosovo war.

He began his testimony by describing the weaponry that his unit had at its disposal then he explained how targeting decisions were made. He said that his unit only shelled targets where enemy fire was coming from.

Capt. Sarvanovic testified that all of his orders came down the vertical chain of command. He never knew about any orders coming from outside the chain of command, as has been alleged by the prosecution.

He testified that neither he, nor his unit, was ever ordered to do anything that would violate international humanitarian law. Nor did he or his unit ever act independently to do anything that would violate international humanitarian law.

He testified that his unit was deployed along the Orohovac – Suva Reka axis and that it was ordered to break-up KLA terrorist cells, and preserve Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity.

The village of Bela Crkva was in his area of responsibility. The indictment alleges that Serbian troops attacked Bela Crkva, robbed its inhabitants, and then executed nearly 70 Albanian civilians.

Capt. Sarvanovic testified that he was based less than 1 kilometer away from Bela Crkva and that nothing like that happened. He said that his was the only unit in the area at the critical time, and that nobody could have carried out such a massacre without him knowing about it. He said that Bela Crkva was a peaceful village and that there weren’t any problems there.

Capt. Sarvanovic completed his testimony in less than one hour. The next witness on the docket was Lt. Col. Zlatko Odak.

Lt. Col. Odak served as the commander of the logistics battalion of the 52nd Air Defense Brigade of the Yugoslav Army. He also served as the deputy commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 549th Motorized Infantry Brigade. He was stationed in the Dakovica garrison from 1986 until the VJ withdrew from Kosovo in 1999.

Lt. Col. Odak described the modus operandi of the KLA. He explained that the KLA preferred to operate in small villages rather than in large population centers. The reason for this was that the KLA could control the small number of people living in a village, but they could not control everybody who lived in a large city. Lt. Col. Odak testified that the KLA forced villagers to purchase rifles, which cost up to 300 deutsche marks each.

He said that the KLA would attack the Army from a village, and when the Army returned fire, the KLA would tell the villagers that they had to leave. The witness speculated that the purpose behind this was to create a humanitarian catastrophe that NATO could use to justify its bombing campaign.

The witness had the chance to speak with several refugees during the war. They all told him that they were leaving Kosovo to escape the NATO bombing, or that they were leaving Kosovo because the KLA had threatened to kill them if they stayed.

He described how NATO bombed civilian targets throughout Dakovica, including the mosque, the library, the old bazaar, the fruit juice factory, several civilian homes, and a column of ethnic Albanian refugees. This testimony runs contrary to the indictment, which accuses “forces of the FRY and Serbia” of shelling the mosque and the old bazaar.

The witness testified that the Army never shelled civilians. He testified that the VJ only shelled targets from which it was being shot at. He denied that the army deliberately burned down civilian houses or that it took identity documents away from refugees.

He said that the army’s objective was to defeat the KLA and to safeguard the state territory and its population.

He testified that the army did not commit crimes in widespread or systematic manner. He said that there were isolated cases where soldiers committed crimes, but that they were prosecuted when their crimes were uncovered.

The indictment alleges that in the late evening of April 1, 1999 and the early morning of April 2nd, Serbian forces attacked the Qerim district of Dakovica. The indictment claims that Serbian troops forcibly entered houses of Kosovo Albanians, killed the occupants, and then set fire to the buildings.

It just so happens that NATO was bombing Serbian radar facilities near Qerim at exactly that time. Lt. Col. Odak sent several paramedics and firemen up to the destroyed radar site to extinguish the fires and give first aid to the wounded soldiers.

In order to get to the bombed-out radar site the paramedics and firefighters had to pass directly through Qerim at exactly the moment when the indictment accuses Serbian troops of burning buildings and murdering the population.

According to the contemporaneous reports that were written by these first-responders, there was no hindrance preventing them from getting to the site. In fact, they reported that roads were clear and empty. Nobody mentioned that anybody was burning houses or killing people.

The witness also gave testimony denying that Serbian troops carried out summary executions at Meja on 27 April 1999, or that they massacred people at 134a Ymer Grezda Street in Dakovica on March 26th. As a responsible officer serving in the area, he said that he would have had to know if such things had really happened.

Lt. Col. Odak said that there was no conspiracy in the VJ to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of its Albanian population. He ended his examination-in-chief by reiterating that the Army did not condone criminal conduct. He said that the army prosecuted any soldier who violated the law.

Mr. Nice cross-examined the witness for approximately the last 30 minutes of today’s hearing. The trial should continue tomorrow, unless the judges decide to heed the advice of the expert medical team and grant Milosevic the six-week adjournment that his health requires.

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