MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE

Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
————————————————————————————
NOTICE: Comments posted to this discussion board are solely the responsibility of individual posters, and not of JURIST, its owner, operators, host or staff. JURIST reserves the right to block or remove posts that are in violation of law or that advocate illegal acts, that are obscene, disruptive, defamatory, threatening, harassing or abusive, that are in breach of intellectual property rights, rights of publicity or rights of privacy, that are advertisements or solicitations, or that are not related to the topic being discussed.
————————————————————————————

• discussion archive

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 12:38 am
  Thank you very much Mr. Trkla. I hope you will allow me to post your description and the location of the church?
  
  D. Jovanovic
  USA

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 2:01 am
  CROATIA DEMANDS INVESTIGATION OF INCIDENT INVOLVING SFOR TROOPS

  The government called on SFOR to provide a detailed explanation of a recent incident in which four unidentified but "visibly intoxicated" soldiers vandalized a brick wall honoring Croatian dead and missing from the 1991-95 War of Independence, dpa reported from Zagreb on 11 December. The Wall of Pain was built in 1993 in front of what were then UN offices to call international attention to the plight of Croats in the war. The news agency noted that the incident "caused public outrage in Croatia, as the wall has strong emotional and symbolic meaning for Croats, especially for the families of missing persons." PM
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  USA

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 4:45 am
  I thought that this topic was making me physically sick. The missing heads and the prosecution's lies are enough to upset your stomach. But today I am feeling better. It was just something I ate on Wednesday.

  To come back to the Meja "massacre", remember the headless corpses? Why would Albanians chop the heads of other Albanians? That is the question. But the answer is not far away. The same HRW "flash" mentions this detail: "There were four recently dug graves located in a small Catholic cemetery further up the hill." ( http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/kosovo98/flash7.shtml ). So the inhabitants of Meja were probably Catholics. You recognize them by their crushed skulls and chopped off heads.

  Let us finish the schedules at the back of the Kosovo indictment before the weekend shall we? There are three left, but I have touched on two of them already. Schedule J is about Dubrava prison. Schedule K is about Suva Reka. Schedule L is about Kacanik.

  My suggestions are the following: Schedule J (Dubrava prison) is based on the 26 men that the prison guards shot to prevent or stop their escape. According to the Spanish investigation team, there were more than a 100 victims, most of them killed directly by the bombing. In the general confusion caused by the bombing, those alive tried to escape and the guards shot them. I hate to say this, but there was nothing illegal about the last fact.

  The incident of Schedule J is dated 22-23 May 1999. This was the "heavy night of NATO bombing at Cappa Dom prison". However, there were mass graves around the prison. These are not mentioned in the indictment, but let us dwell on them. The US State Department says this of Dubrava. The URL is still the same: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/dos9912/cd.html :

  "The ICTY has completed site investigation and confirmed a mass grave containing 11 bodies at Dubrava. Earlier, ICTY had identified eleven victims; all eleven victims were identified as local Kosovar Albanians (though one was a member of the UCK). They were reportedly killed during a Serbian offensive on 14 April 1999. According to a press report, on 22 May, Serbian paramilitary massacred Albanian men in revenge for a heavy night of NATO bombing at Cappa Dom prison. According to the report, the number of bloody beds in the prison indicate that 100 prisoners may have been murdered and the victims' personal effects dumped outside the prison gate."

  So the "heavy night of Nato bombing didn't apparently cause any casualties. There were bloody beds in the prison. Fine, this suggests to the investigators 1) that they were all killed, because otherwise the beds wouldn't have been bloodied, and 2) all casualties were a result of "murder", not of the bombing.

  However, more should be made of the confirmed mass grave containing 11 bodies, although this is not mentioned in the indictment (which is not likely to deter the prosecution).

  It's funny. First the ICTY investigator "identified" 11 Albanians, although one was an UCK member. Then the ICTY investigator confirmed the mass grave containing the 11 bodies. How did the investigator "identify" the Albanians, before it was even certain they were dead? Were these 11 people the investigator had identified the only ones that were missing, or why did he identify them? Or were these 10 people the only missing Albanians that were not members of the UCK, and the eleventh had to be included to make the number add up to 11, although he was a member of the UCK?

  I think the OSCE has a different version. It says that the Albanians in the mass graves around the Dubrava prison were killed after the bombing.

  But it is hard to know which Dubrava we are talking about. The US State Department lists three different Dubravas: one in the German zone, another in the US zone (with the prison), and a third, which is called "Dubrava II".

  About the Dubrava in the German zone we know this:

  "According to ICTY information on November 10, 1999, a site investigation was completed and has confirmed finding nine bodies at Dubrava. According to the UCK, on 25 May 1999, eight men and one woman from Dubrava, Suva Reka Municipality, all Kosovar Albanians, were killed during a Serbian offensive."

  Notice that it says: according to the UCK all were Albanians killed by the Serbs. There is no independent verification for this even after the confirmation, so the State Department probably knows the UCK is lying. Notice that beside this, the US State Department doesn't mention mass graves or anything suspicious in itself, beside the fact that these bodies are mentioned on the website of the US State Department.

  About Dubrava II we read this: "According to ICTY information on November 10, 1999, a site investigation was completed and has confirmed finding 9 bodies at Dubrava II."

  This is pretty neat. It doesn't say they were in a mass grave or individual graves. It doesn't say who the victims were, or indeed, whether they were "victims" of anything. They are not even "reports" of a Serb offensive! But the most interesting thing is that in Dubrava II, 9 bodies were found. This is exactly the same number as in Dubrava in the German zone. And both are based on ICTY information on November 10, 1999! So maybe the number of bodies gets twice as big, as they are being "reported"!

  Schedule K is about Suva Reka. The most remarkable thing about this schedule is that all the victims belong to the Berisha family. Could the Serb forces really have done it? The US State Department has written a whole epic about Suva Reka by using the word "reportedly" in every sentence. What it factually says is this:

  "According to ICTY information on November 10, 1999, a site investigation was completed and has confirmed finding 103 bodies at three sites; 55 bodies at one site, and 15 and 33 bodies at the other two sites."

  Nothing about mass graves. They could be digging in the local cemetary.

  Digging in the local cemetary becomes more plausible when we turn to the last Schedule, Schedule L (Kacanik). This is broken down to four localities: Kotlina, Slatina, Stagovo and Dubrava. Notice that this "Kacanik" is not a separate locality like the rest of the Schedules but a municipality with several different villages in it.

  The US State Department has a long story about Kacanik, but also of each of these separate localities. We already saw this reduplication in case of Dubrava (one of which is listed among the villages in Kacanik).

  But let us see the randomness of the procedure, which is evident in a passage on Kacanik:

  "According to September 1999 information, the international forensic team did not excavate the second mass grave which they opined likely contained the bodies of at least some of the remaining 29 individuals from the list of 47 who they believed were a mixture of members of the UCK and civilian victims. However, ICTY has reported that a site investigation was completed at another mass grave in Kacanik and confirmed finding three bodies--likely at the site described by, but not exhumed by the international forensic team."

  So it is not certain even to the State Department whether the ICTY investigated the same site which the international forensic team hadn't. What ICTY found was a "mass grave" of three bodies! Is a grave of three bodies necessarily a mass grave? But in any case, this makes it more understandable why the international forensic team didn't excavate this "second mass grave". Maybe they knew there were only three bodies. The problem is why they thought - at the same time - that there were 29 bodies in the grave. Another problem is why they didn't excavate the grave if they thought they would find some many bodies. A third problem is how they could take a grave containing three bodies for a grave containing 29 bodies.

  They must have been looking at a cemetary. Possibly. Another twist in the Suva Reka story comes clear in the Pravda article at http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/2001/07/21/10695.html . There was a mass grave near Suva Reka containing 900 bodies, presumably Serbs and other non-Albanians, but it wasn't opened.

  And all this becomes all the more confounding, because it is not at all clear which graves the prosecution is referring to in its schedule L. This is one of those instances where you have to make a case for the prosecution first in order to be able to refute it. It is uncertain which forensic reports you should find, because a forensic report on a grave containing 29 bodies could just as well be a forensic report on a grave containing three bodies. And that in addition to the problem that no-one really knows where this miracle grave is located! One would have to find the ICTY reports, but if ICTY knew any better than the rest of us what it is doing, why hasn't the prosecution provided us with accurate schedules at the back? The only way to solve these problems is to throw out the prosecution's case. The other way would be to push the prosecution's back against the wall as the defense part of the trial starts and demand that the prosecution should clafify what it actually wants. I am just not sure whether that can be done.

  But one can guess that the prosecution has something to hide. The OSCE site is a fairly objective version of the events, at least by ICTY standards. The report on Kacanik can be viewed at http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/p5kac.htm . Here we are told that the Stagovo was an UCK stronghold. We are told that the UCK attacked Dubrava and Slatina. In Dubrava, the Serb forces separated men of the fighting age frome the rest and seven of them were held. Some say they were killed, others say they were taken somewhere else. In Slatina, the killings took place "in the course of the forced expulsions", while some of the dead were UCK soldiers. In Kotlina the UCK held displaced Albanians against their wills.

  So all the incidents in Schedule L can be traced to UCK activity. There would have been some collateral damage, but that defense is unlikely to have any success, because this is not Nato that we have in the dock. But look at it from the viewpoint of the Serb forces, will you. It becomes quite impossible to know who is a civilian and who is a combatant, if the soldiers were civilian clothes! This is perfidy written large! It is a war crime. Unfortunately, perfidy is mentioned in the Geneva Conventions, but the prosecution and the judges will take into account only those breaches of the Geneva Conventions which are "grave" enough to be enumerated in the exhaustive list in Art. 2 of the ICTY Statute. Perfidy isn't there. However, "perfidy" is forbidden even by customary law concerning war crimes, so it would fall under Art. 3 of the ICTY Statute (war crimes). True, perfidy isn't mentioned even there, but this list is not exhaustive. It says: " Such violations shall include, but not be limited to..." And we know that the prosecution has availed itself of a rather similar blanket provision in Bosnia indictment, Art. 5(i): "other inhumane acts", which forms the core of the purpose of the "joint criminal enterprise" in Bosnia (would you believe it).

  This being so, one might try to introduce "perfidy" as a defense. Conversely, the Serb forces then acted under duress (or some other justification).
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 5:08 am
  Many or you may have seen the letter of the President of the tribunal concerning the health concerns. The President says this doesn't belong to his competence. It does to the competence of the Trial Chamber, which already had ruled on the matter - allegedly. The President is strictly speaking right. But since he is right, the district court of The Hague was wrong in another instance in early 2001. It said that Milosevic should have presented his plea for release to the prison guard according to the Rules of Detention. The prison guard (or "officer") would have transmitted the request (or the "complaint") to the President. However, if the "medical services" which are mentioned in the Rules of Detention do not belong to the competence of the President, why would the plea for immediate release, which is not mentioned in the Rules of Detention? The district court in The Hague thus made a mistake. I am not sure what that entails. Probably the worsening of Milosevic's health.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 5:15 am
  

  If I am not mistaken Slatina is near Pristina and was the site of one of the largets Yugoslav Air Force bases, the one the Russians were able to reach before the NATO foot soldiers did, event which caused friction between generals Jackson (UKNATO) and Clark (USNATO), a little friction to avoid starting "world war III".

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 7:26 am
  JN.....Kacanik ( & possibly Kotlina) had loyalist village militia units. They were attacked by the 162nd UCK 'brigade' under Commander Bardhi (BTW invading from Macedonia) sometome in mid-march 1999

  It is likely that the dead Albanians found at Kacanik and Kotlina were loyalist village militia units killed by Bardhi's KLA unit. Please note that the mass grave of the Albanians killed at Kacanik and Kotlina has been turned into a garbage dump according to press report. Another indication that those buried there were enemies of the KLA.

  Djakovica also had a significant loyalist-neytralist population. Which may explain why it was repeatedly bombed by the USAF. Recall that KLA units acted as defacto FAO's for the bombers. It isn't too far fetched to imagine the KLA calling in airstrikes on its "enemies" in Djakovica.

  Please do not forget that The Yugoslavs organized some 2,000 loyalist Albanians into village miltias. Somewhere on some webpage there is a Official Yugoslav report listing which village had active loyalist militias.

  It may be illuminating to cross reference the location of loyalist milita villages with the mass graves.

  Finally, one should also note that Pro-Rugova villages seemed to be a target of KLA attack. Another opportunity for cross-referencing.....
  
  AP Vucelic
  NY
  NY

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 8:11 am
  Vera I a looking forward to transcripts from the M. questioning Laber - session, because i got pretty confused by vast discrepancies in your view and that of the ICJ http://www.cij.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewReport&reportID=203&tribunalID=1 Now, i suppose ICJ is not on drugs, or something? Are you saying that HRW is an amateurish organisation, and are you also implying that there were no gross violations of human rights, lives and dignity in Yu-wars, or that if there were any, then Milosevic didn`t know about them + couldn`t act? I am really looking forward to transcripts.Thanks for your contribution on illuminating them.
  
  Nebojsa Matic
  Norway

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 9:16 am
  Mr. Jovanovic you may post my comments. Please note the main street is called the Stradun and if my memory serves me right the Orthodox Church is located on “Uska Ulica” or “Narrow Street”

  Gogol the administration in Dubrovnik tends to exaggerate damage to infrastructure (earthquake or other) because they get money (250 million last thirty years)from UNESCO to repair and maintain the city
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 10:14 am
  Mr Matic You are not only one who sees distance between view of Vera and official view. Thing people like Vera dont understand is that because one view wrong doesnt mean complete opposite is right. HRW womans testimony was amateur (Milosevic embarassed her). There was human right violation by all sides, Milosevic knew that this was going on but turned away much same way as Vera turns away when she see those women she calls witches on television tell her about dead Albanians buried in Serbia. It is common response. Hague is wrong but so is Milosevic and people who follow him.
  
  Davor Markovic
  Sombor
  Yugoslavia

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 10:49 am
  In response to Nebojsa Matic's snotty comment, let me add that this is not an ICJ site he is referring to. By ICJ we mean the International Court of Justice. He means CIJ, Coalition for International Justice. Maybe the CIJ are on drugs, if drug use is recognized as a fundamental human right. Or if they were really into human rights, they would make some noise about the concoction called the prosecution case. Maybe that would get them closer to safeguarding some basic human rights.

  Perhaps they think it is a violation of human rights to speak for the accused in a trial, because the accuser is always right. Those who speak out are dismissed as Milosevic's "followers". How valiant.

  And the sweeping retort that Milosevic should have "acted" shows that some people still have no clue what this trial is about (any better than the rest of us). Well, did he "act" or didn't he? That is the question. The prosecution says he did. He was trying to creat a Greater Serbia. Save your breath for the prosecution, if your retort is that he didn't act. We are just having a discussion.

  As to the suggestion that HRW are amateurs, I would say they are not. They are highly qualified professionals like the whole ICTY bunch. I am sure they get paid accordingly. At least, birds of a feather flock together.

  Thanks AP Vucelic for the valuable comments. Maybe someone does some cross-referencing later. I think we should now look at the pattern. I guess whatever the prosecution is saying, it is not saying that Milosevic individually organized every killing. Maybe in Kosovo, too, there was some "overall persecution campaign". But in that case we should see some pattern. However, if we look for a pattern in the different schedules at the back of the Kosovo indictment, we see there is no pattern.

  I would say there is some substance to two schedules: Dubrava and Kacanik. However, even the Kacanik schedule lacks any pattern. First, the period is "March to May 1999". Second, the locations are spread all over the municipality of Kacanik.

  Only the "massacres" at Dubrava and Stagovo allegedly took place in late May, when the fighting was fiercest. One should expect some "collateral damage" at that time by the Serb forces (if that term can be applied to anything else but Nato). In the earlier incidents, we see the family concentration again. The incident in Kotlina in late March basically revolves around two families: Kuqi and Loku.

  So whatever pattern there is, it is the lack of a pattern. That makes the case look good at least if we look at what the prosecution has made of it. When one goes through the schedules, violence by the Serb forces appears more or less sporadic.

  The wild card is Bela Crkva. I think if one tries to fit it into some pattern, the closest counterpart would be Racak. And it is very healthy to have some reservations about Racak. True, t the massacre at Bela Crkva didn't single out men of fighting age, but the greatest blemish in Schedule B is that it centres on three families: Popaj, Spahiu and Zhuniqi. I just can't think of any reason why the Serb forces would do something like that, while I could think of a couple of good reasons why the Albanians would. However, the theory has factored this anomaly into the equation: the Serbs were on a rampage. On the other hand, if they were, did they only have these three families to choose from?

  If we accept all the victims listed in schedule L as real casualties and add to this number the victims mentioned in Schedule J (Dubrava) we have 76 names. This is the approximate number of the bombing victims at the Dubrava prison. As we peruse the schedules, there is nothing to suggest any large-scale human catastrophe (in terms of massacres) for which the Serbs would be responsible. And yet this was the very reason that was used to justify the bombing campaign. On the other hand, if we look at the schedules consistently, we see that the bombing caused as many victims in these schedules alone as the Serb forces.

  It is suggested that the bombing saved lives. However, if the bombing didn't endanger lives, why did the OSCE get evacuated before it started? They would have been needed on the ground to verify any human rights abuses, which are now so central. It is argued that the bombing is irrelevant to this case, but as to the number of reliable verifiers on the grond, it most assuredly is not.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 12:39 pm
  

  Q. Can you deny in public here that you were aware on that occasion that the Clinton Administration was supporting the Croatian army in Operation Storm, not only verbally but also by providing logistic and other support?

  Milan Babic being cross examined by Mr. Milosevic.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 3:10 pm
  Davor Markovic says:

  "Hague is wrong but so is Milosevic and people who follow him."

  Yes -- Hague is wrong but Hague is not on trial. Many people on all sides are wrong but they are not on trial. Those who are wrong try other people. The Hague is wrong because it's biased, the greatest crime for a court. Either you are on Hague side or Milosevic side and it's up to you to choose which "wrong" side you take.

  
  
  Nicole J
  Canada

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 5:29 pm
  Davore... I guess you mean Hague is wrong by putting Milosevic on trial...and Milosevic is wrong by being tried bu Hague?? Fine...thinking...
  
  M. Ciric
  netherlands

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 5:47 pm
  

  Some information would indicate Mr. Milosevic will have a defence council imposed on him during a hearing Monday 16 December. During the same period Biljana Plavsic will be sentenced. The ICTY web page has no information which I can see about Mr. Milosevice's hearing announced.

  Is there someone among us who knows about this?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. CT

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 6:16 pm
  

  Davore
  
  You said, "There was human right violation by all sides, Milosevic knew that this was going on but turned away."
  
  Firstly, Milosevic has admitted that there were human rights violations on all sides, he didn't deny that. He stated in a UPI interview that "We are not angels. Nor are we the devils you have made us out to be. Our regular forces are highly disciplined. The paramilitary irregular forces are a different story. Bad things happened, as they did with both sides during the Vietnam war, or any war for that matter."
  
  Secondly, Slobodan Milosevic's position regarding the war is on record. In 1992 at the 2nd Congress of the SPS president Milosevic stated, "Stopping the war will be of greatest assistance to the Serbian people in war-torn areas, as well as in the resolution of their problems in general. This contribution, i.e. the contribution to halting the war and establishing durable and just peace must be made by Serbia in every possible manner."

  Not only did Milosevic advocate ending the war in his speeches, he backed his rhetoric up with actions. Serbia and Slobodan Milosevic personally endorsed the following 6 peace plans: The Cutilheiro plan (the Lisbon Agreement), the Vance-Owen Plan, the Vance-Stoltenberg, the plan of the European Union, the Contact Group plan, and the Dayton accords.

  Slobodan Milosevic bent over backwards to put a stop to the war and the suffering it was causing. In fact, in my opinion he was too single-minded about stopping the war. Dayton was a lousy agreement for the Serbs but he accepted it anyway, when he probably shouldn't have.
  
  Andy Wilcoxson
  Washington, United States

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 6:21 pm
  I think you have things backwards Nicole. According to English and Canadian law one is not "wrong" until one has been proved "wrong" beyond a reasonable doubt.

  Our role in this trial should be to judge both sides objectively. But for judgement to be credible rules have to be followed according to the letter of the law. There is so little letter of the law in this trial, that it does sometimes appear to be "nothing but a pack of cards".

  May in particular seems like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who far from being in control of a "court", seems at times not even in control of either himself or the clear facts as presented in this case. He makes the whole trial appear very biased even if it is not, because of his own obvious personal hostility towards Milosevic.

  In fairness to Judge May, the fundamental flaw here is that May was appointed by Blair, and is a citizen of a nation which bombed Serbia. He has always had a very glaring conflict of interest as a judge, and I think a wiser and stronger judge would have recognised this up front. Whoever appointed Judge May chief justice appeared more interested in seeing Milosevic found guilty by a suitable choice of judge, than in seeing that justice was done, and further seen beyond doubt to be done. In the long run this type of justice stands condemned by history.

  My sense is that in an adversarial system May should be acting as a referee, rather than as the heavy weight prizefighter. I wonder who deserves the credit for scripting his current role. Did May choose it out of insecurity, the better to keep "the" court under "his" forceful control, or did Milosevic cultivate it by deliberately antagonising him, the better to undermine the credibility of the court as fair and unbiased? How much here is brilliance and how much stupidity?

  Judge May is doubly handicapped, because Milosevic's behaviour in remaining cool and collect under so much greater pressure, only accentuates the differences between these two prizefighters. Milosevic ends up scores points both for being the David facing off against the Goliath's of the court with all their funding and resources, and for being the chained Goliath who single handedly takes on all comers.

  Judge May is also handicapped by his relationship with the other two judges. Judge Kwon has proved himself intellectually superior (or just more wide awake), and Judge Robinson has often come across as more balanced and reasonable in his comments and cautions.

  Milosevic is winning the battle for the hearts of those following this trial, while the prosecution is loosing the battle for their heads. The prosecution should be convincing us that they are armed with the irrefutable facts, with which to write the definitive text on a ten year conflict in the Balkans. Instead all too often it looks like it is they who have never read a book on the Balkans.

  The problem is made worse for me personally because the prosecutions case appears so very boring, while Milosevic's cross examinations are both educational and entertaining. Given limited time there is a strong tendency to follow and cheer for the better player, rather than remaining objective and analytical.

  I wonder what percentage of the prosecutions air time is followed by the world audience, and what percentage of Milosevic's cross examinations? Perhaps that is something that Frank could answer?

  I think this a trial where the presecution can't afford to loose every battle, if at the end of the day they want to be believed when they claim to have won their case.

  This trial isn't at core about who is wrong. It is about who is responsible for war, and who is responsible for peace. It is also very much about credibility.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 7:45 pm
  

  Ian,

  While I do not disagree with your comments I think one is in danger of giving to this circus called a trial the legitimacy that it does not have.

  First, conducting a trial in foreign, not neutral to the conflict countries speaks for itself. Even the Nüremberg Trials were conducted in Germany.

  Truly Judge May (NATO) if he had any decency and sense of justice would have already dismissed plenty of what the prosecutor has presented as evidence and its case. Do we need to hear over 115 witnesses when not a single one brings any conclusive evidence?

  And what about the lenght of the trial? Nüremberg ended its business with the top leadership in roughly six months; here two years are probably not enough.

  Events so poorly undertood by the prosecutor, events 11 years old, only to be attributable to Mr. MIlosevic 1999 or 8 years later when it was so convenient to make him the eveil enemy because the NATO war couldn't be justfied in any possible way.

  All this begs the question: what jurist, lawyer, judge knowing traditional legal values would acept to serve this monkey's justice ?

  And we know, the first wave of jurists serving in this institution left in time before they were to be perceived too much involved with it, to be replaced by a lesser category of people.

  I look forward to see what sentence Biljana Plavsic will get. Why did she plead guilty will be known soon.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 9:16 pm
  Nebojsa, there are no 'vast discrepancies' between my report and that of CIJ. The only difference is that Ms Judith Armatta stops at the very beginning of Laber's testimony and never ventures to the logical conclusion: the 'reports' are worthless and should be disregarded. Armatta gloats over the fact that May prevented Milosevic to question the anonymity of informants, the possibility to contact them and offer them protection of the ICTY to testify, the principle of direct procedure in any other court that the HW should defend and the separation of the right of self-determination from the human rights corpus (to quote from my last post). Well, of course she gloats over it, having in mind who is financing CIJ and what is their agenda (check those 3 URLs I gave last time). But, a really unbiased analyst would question such rulings by May and such narrow selection of human rights to be defended by Helsinki Watch. But having in mind that the sponsors of CIJ and HW are the same, this questioning could not be expected. And then, never mentioning the bias, impreciseness and politicking of these 'reports', Armatta actually said the following: "In fact, the importance of Ms Laber's testimony was not the truth of the report, but the fact that Milosevic had notice of it, yet did nothing to investigate the crimes described.' Indeed a shiny example of brazen twisting of things: someone receives a 25-page 'report' from a NGO known for its political agenda, based on propaganda, wrong premises, teeming with imprecise and vague info, concluding that economic sanctions should be imposed upon your country, and you're supposed to 'investigate the crimes described'?! And the truth of the report itself is not important?! No, I'm not saying 'that HRW is an amateurish organization' - they do the job and get paid for it, that's pretty professional. Whether their 'reports' are the truth - well, even Armatta from CIJ says they aren't, and to her it's not important. Such as they are, they're serving the purpose of keeping the rogue countries in check. No, I'm not 'implying that there were no gross violations of human rights'; of course there were. Perhaps these violations were not what was described in those 'reports'; maybe the perpetrators were others than reported, circumstances different than depicted, consequences not such as stated. How can one act upon such a report? And particularly how can one act within Croatia in the midst of a civil war?! Your own problem is the same that Armatta displays at the very beginning of her piece: you regard Laber's outfit as a respectful, trustworthy organization, aimed at protecting human rights worldwide. It's not. It's just a blunt political tool.

  To Davor: It's good that you 'see distance between view of Vera and official view'. What is 'official view', in your opinion? That what's written in the ICTY indictments? Or, that what was/is written in the mainstream media, which served as a source for these indictments? OK, if all this has been already etched in stone and became the Official Truth, why bother noticing some isolated views of 'people like Vera'? I don't remember any official reports published about 'dead Albanians buried in Serbia', just allegations, assumptions and slander in the press. Sorry that I called those humanitarian women 'witches'; I was too benign - I should've called them sponzoruse (this is the Belgrade slang for girls having 'sponsors' or sugar daddies). What kind of independent, noteworthy opinion could such persons possibly hold? I don't remember their 'reports' on human rights abuse against the Serbs in Kosmet in the 80s, 90s and today, or in CRO and B&H. Yes, I think they protested over the lawsuits against some Serbian journalists; very commendable thing. But why all their 'reports' are always aimed at embarrassing the political opponents of their sugar daddies?

  Walter, the main street in the old town of Dubrovnik is indeed Stradun - the name deriving from the Italian la strada = street, and stradone = large, wide street; such slightly broken Italian words are numerous in all Dalmatian dialects. As for your opinion of the girls around Dubrovnik to be the best looking anywhere, no need to apologize to me: I'm a Dalmatian girl as well (my birthplace is Zadar; living in Vukovar and then in Belgrade came later). Actually, the girls from Split (also an Adriatic-coast town) are universally considered to be the most beautiful in all of the ex-YU (although ELITE Models Agency swears the richest source to be Belgrade, because of the mix it represents). In fact, the whole Dinaric Mountains coastline region, Montenegro included, generates this same type of women, tall, clean-cut and strong, with that leggy, oval-faced quality of Gibson Girls. This comes from the healthy Mediterranean diet, plenty of exercise and good genes. I remember my paternal grandmother already in her late sixties: she was still rowing a boat & laying fishing-nets, her black hair elegantly crowned in a complicated, two-braids bun. You should've seen her balancing a huge bucket of water or any other weight on top of her head - the best way to learn how to walk straight. No wander you were struck by the looks of those girls from Konavli: they have generations of lookers behind them.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 10:02 pm
  We give Friday the 13th's a legitimacy they don't have. This trial is a many layered thing.. A soap opera is not very legitimate either, but that doesn't stop people watching them. Even a soap opera become more legitimate if it is a credible soap opera.

  I think there is a great deal to be learned from this trial. It begs many questions -- and offers the possibility of revealing truths about the nature of power, which normally would be hidden far from public scrutiny. I am not at all convinced that it does not serve a greater truth, by being so obviously flawed. It is said that there are none so blind as will not see, and I hope that the written transcripts of this trial will eventually force those in the west to see. It is said that ships on the beach are lighthouses to the sea, and I hope that this ship on the beach is a lighthouse for those seeking to establish genuine international justice for all.

  We have a fatal flaw in our perception of the world. We see ourselves daily as the good guys, and the rest of the world as the bad guys.. We need to understand that we see truths only dimly, and that we are lied to by our leaders, when this serves their interests. We would be much better served if we saw ourselves at fault more often, and the rest of the world saw us at fault less often. People who do not learn from their mistakes repeat them.
  
  Ian Davis
  Waterloo
  Ontario, Canada

• Friday December 13, 2002 at 10:06 pm
  

  Ian; I think you got it. Carla lost the case on day three when the BBC stopped the live coverage. The few of us who fallow the trial may be right, but who will know? Ask any of your friends if they even care. Not that they are bad people, but the media blackout is so powerfull that; MILO GUILTY; on the front page in one year will not even get a segment on CNN.

  The sports analogy that you made is the only way. Or one skit by J LENO, would bring the trial to the public.

  Gogol; From your posts I think you agree.
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 4:29 am
  I was trying to track down the location of the loyalist militias in the Kosovo conflict as well as the pro-Rugova troops. I didn't have any success. Instead I found some interesting things.

  I don't know about the professionalism of the HRW, but I think it is biased to the core. It was the HRW flash which made such a big deal of the Gypsy street cleaners taking away the bodies from Meja. When you put two and two together, I think you can easily conclude that the perpetrators of this massacre were some Muslim Albanian group with its decapitation ritual carried out in a Catholic Albanian village. But why didn't HRW draw the obvious conclusion?

  To my dismay I bumped into the following URL: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kosovo/Obrinje6-08.htm . Here, HRW explains that UCK vowed to respect the Geneva Conventions and other customs of war. To HRW, that is the end of story. The following extract should give you a clue. Even the word "professional" is used - and applied to the KLA:

  "In an interview given to the Albanian-language newspaper Koha Ditore in July 1998, UÇK spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said: 'From the start, we had our own internal rules for our operations. These clearly lay down that the UÇK recognizes the Geneva Conventions and the conventions governing the conduct of war.' UÇK Communique number 51, issued by 'UÇK General Headquarters' on August 26, stated that, 'The UÇK is an institutionalized and organized Army, is getting increasingly professional and ready to fight to victory'.

  It is amazing that HRW takes this in earnest. It seeminlgy never crosses their minds at any point that the KLA might be lying! The Serbs are. Are the HRW really such idiots, or a bunch of fat cats that have just stopped thinking, or are they some other sort of "professional"?

  As to finding the location of the pro-Rugova FARK (Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo), the task is not easy. Besides, there were at least four different Albanian military structures in the Kosovo conflict: KLA, FARK, Liberation Army of Kosovo and the Army of the Republic of Albania. The KLA seems to have been backed by Iran and the Muslim state, the FARK by the US, the Liberation Army by Germany, and the Army of the Republic of Albania of course by Albania. Check the URL at http://www.kosovo.net/who.html .

  So there would have been a lot of potential for mutual Albanian destruction. That is exactly what makes the verification so difficult.

  But actually that doesn't matter. As we look at the schedules in the Kosovo indictment, we see that the Serb forces demonstrate no clear pattern in their "massacres". It is true that conclusion is contingent on the premise that the rest of the massacres listed in the schedules demonstrate a pattern that would point to Albanian involvement. However, the Albanian "fingerprints" are too obvious to ignore: killing families, decapitation, AK-47s etc.

  This has to be taken into account when rebutting the charges. I think Milosevic assumed in his cross-examination that the killings could have been perpetrated by the Serb forces but that the killings were justified by the presence of the KLA. That may have sounded a bit weak. On the other hand, if the KLA was responsible for the killings itself, it would explain why Milosevic could not help sounding uncertain.

  Vera, I think the "official version" that has been referred to is Mirko Klarin. Judging by the money trail he is at least a professional. Judging by some other criteria, he is not.

  I have not followed the trial since day 3, when it was stopped on BBC, but I believe things on this site more than Klarin. You want my rationalization? First, if the prosecution is doing such a splendid job as Klarin says, why did the BBC stop broadcasting the trial, followed by a near-complete news blackout? Second, judging by the lunacy it took to write the indictments, one can easily expect the prosectuion to sound just as ludicrous as has been said.

  And last but not least, we didn't hear about Babic from Klarin. That may be, because he will be Mr Official Version only as long as he prostrates to May's wishes. May can revoke the privileges of the "official" media at the ICTY at the drop of a hat, if we should believe Mr T (this time). On the other hand, it is exactly the Babic denouement that reveals how reliable even the non-professional accounts can be.

  OK, we may have our differences, but we can leave it all to Judge May. According to Art. 13 of the Statute, he is a person of high moral character, impartiality and integrity. And why shouldn't he? His salary or post-trial career will not depend on the conviction of Milosevic, whereas that of the prosecution might. No, May's job is to judge, to do justice. Unless, of course, someone has given him the impression that the prosecution should win and Milosevic lose. In which case he might not be so professional, as he would like us to believe.

  In the final analysis, the history books may say what Ian is saying now. However, within the parameters of the trial itself, it is obvious that it should stop. I don't care if Milosevic was a monster, he is nothing compared to the monster into which the judicial system is turning. So you don't have to wait two years to draw the conclusions. Stop now. It should never be too early to start learning from your past mistakes.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 6:12 am
  

  Abiding by the GENEVA CONVENTION?

  A car bomb explosion in Kosovo's capital Pristina injured over thirty people, a NATO official told AFP.

  The incident came on the eve of a UN Security Council fact-finding visit to the province.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 6:32 am
  

  "In Dardania suburb, in Bill Clinton Avenue, a bomb exploded in a car, injuring several people in front of a known restaurant," said Barry Fletcher, a spokesman for the U.N administration.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 12:19 pm
  Mr Wilcoxson I dont say that Hague is fair institution. But as I see Milosevic is charge for crimes committed by his side, if he admit that all sides committ crimes then he impciated his own side, no? As far as discipline concerned my brother fighting in Bosnia he laughs when say discipline. You want to know what happen - make me laugh to see all of you talk so much when you know nothing. My brother and other army were given alcohol in form of rakije as part of ration. Tell me about more discipline please Andy. Tell me from your experience but to believe Milosevic is showing ignorance. As for Milosevic trying best to stop suffering that is funny one. I can see that you never lived in Yugoslavia to take such simple view. Milosevic and Franjo were same both wanted war for own reasons. Nobody defend Franjo here but instead defend Sloba - that is joke. If evil in West is to believe propoganda of West its ok but in same way to believe propoganda of Milosevic well I dont now. Mr Ciric Intelligent comment you should come to Yug and join G17 or something they looking for more foreigners. I think official view is similar to IWPR (like says Jari) but opposite is to support Milosevic. Both is stupid for me. Your idea Vera on those women is simplistic I will tell you why. Maybe you know refguees from Croatia - I will tell you about some one I know. They went to Helsinki Odbor of Biserko's skpeptik like you. Only they and VERITAS helped them so when I hear people that know nothing about these people saying usual Seselj things it make me think why they dont try to listen what they say. You may know that people in BG dont care about the refugees very much - they try to look other way or forget what happened or just blame Croats. In Sombor we have few hundred of them. They are victims - you talk of us being sad victims, our country being raped and other things. I sorry if you were raped as person but as country we were not. Those refugees are victim were raped first by Croats then by us and NATO/ US. They are victims not me - ( I dont know maybe you had bad experience). Final to try to call women witches is what Mira Markovic would say typical Balkan attitude to women. Why Vera you attack these women first place and call names second place. Mira Markovic was called witch by her stupid critics - why should anybody think in different way about somebody caliing women witches because they dont believe same things as they? Do you call Djidjic evil or Kostunica pimp or Vojin Dimitijevic, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Petar Lukovic or Teofil Pancic whores? No people reserve best name for women. I have different attitude in direction of women. What Vera say about graves in Serbia is true there is no report I think, but bodies are there. I dont need report to know that bodies are there and also you know report or no. There are difference of opinion course but I ask people in nice way to think what they write and not to just take opposite view because one side wrong.
  
  Davor Markovic
  Sombor
  Yugoslavia

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 12:43 pm
  You are saying that Yu-army was not disciplined, Then you know nothing about subordination and chain of command. Even prosecution tried to prove that army was highly professional and since so, followed the orders of the suprime command, consequently Milosevic, as supreme commander holding him responsible because of such army.

  Whether your brother drank alcohol is his problem and the problem of his commander. You cannot say that supreme command order that, and that these orders were carried out through a chain of command.

  By the way do you know what is the average officesrs' years spend in school and what are subjects in other armies compare to YA?

  Other things require no comment.
  
  Pero Peric
  Canada

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 3:54 pm
  Mr. Davore,if somebody rapes the truth... is that also an oversimplification (lot's of posts over here,including the "trial" itself ,deal with that)-or is there even more simple way to say it?
  
  m. ciric
  netherlands

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 4:04 pm
  Vera I love YOU and Ms Raièeviæ in Podgorica. I'm proud of you. The first time in my life I can see, and this time I believe it, what you see is what you can/want/wish/try/whatever. I've been shaken, seriously, by what was going on in Jugoslavija. I was born in Vojvodina (it was one of the two autonomy provinces in Srbija, one being Vojvodina another Kosmet). Three years after I was born my family moved back to Montenegro. There I got my primary and secondary education. I went to the JNA, it was obligarory at the time, and then to Slevenija. I was 22 when Tito died. I was not in The communist party (the only reason being lack of interest for politics), and I was proud of not being a member of an organization. I advocated in-evry-village-there-is-a-girl-for-me attidude. My motto was: "My roots are in my bank account", and it was like that all the time. Tito died when I was 22. In Slovenia. I was lucky, whatever was happaning. I had never been interested in politics till Gorbaèev forbade wodka in the Sovjet Union. Those days when Miloševiæ took over the power in Srbija will be the turning point in my life, to whatever effect. I was of course against him, but only for a few months. And I changed my view not because of Miloševiæ and his actions or beleives or whatever, I changed it because I could clearly see that sometnihg about Slobodan Miloševiæ was not right. Slovenija is a quiet place, which I love about it, and there I was, what should I say, maybe "watching" or "spectacling" or "viewing"... I gave it a measure. I still don't know that much about politics to be able to say whatever for sure. But I do know that if I was gospodja Martinoviæ or gospodja Raièeviæ I would be a happy man.
  
  jagos mirkovic
  ljubljana
  slovenia

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 6:03 pm
  Just read the post by Davor Markovic. ( Male or female?). I hardly understood any point. Here is mine: We all know that Milosevic is guilty of many things but hardly of those he is charged with. We all know that Hague is a biased court what the discussion here is mostly about, how much biased? The war in the territory of Yugoslavia was an internal CIVIL war. What the name implies is that it was fought by civilians. Some in uniform some out. It is hard to distinguish when the victims are civilians and when in uniform. For instance, who supplied the uniforms to KLA? In this terrible war, ALL SIDES WERE EQUALY GUILTY!
  
  D Jovanovic
  USA

• Saturday December 14, 2002 at 9:11 pm
  To Davor: I had problems understanding your writing. Let me see: you think Franjo Tudjman is on trial in The Hague; you're a feminist; you think Kostunica should be called a pimp; you think I'm a Seselj supporter; your home town has hosted more refugees than Belgrade; you know that bodies are there and you need no proof of that. Or maybe I misunderstood you? Your English is not quite what it should be, sorry. Try again.

  Jagos, I'm having a strong empathy with your views. You don't need to say anything about politics, just keep watching from your quiet place. Hope that Ms Raicevic appreciates your frankness as I do. Don't worry, everything will be all right.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Sunday December 15, 2002 at 3:21 am
  Davor Markovic,
  
  You said, "But as I see Milosevic is charge for crimes committed by his side, if he admit that all sides commit crimes then he implicated his own side, no?"

  Yes he did implicate his own side, that's my point. He didn't try to lie and deny the fact that there are Serbs who committed crimes over the course of those wars. The point is that he didn't tell them to commit those crimes.

  Slobodan Milosevic is only responsible for his own actions. If he ordered the Army or anybody else to commit crimes then he is a criminal. If he ordered the Army not to commit crimes but they went out and committed them anyway against his orders then he is not a criminal. And he did issue orders as the commander of the VJ that atrocities not be committed against civilians, and you can expect to see him tender those orders before the Hague Tribunal. The prosecution's witness, Rade Markovic, testified on July 26 that Milosevic had ordered forces under his command to protect civilians at all costs.

  From everything that I have seen Slobodan Milosevic never ordered any crime to be committed by anybody. If you have something proving that he did tell people to carryout criminal acts then you should go to the Hague and confront him with it.
  
  Andy Wilcoxson
  Washington, United States

• Sunday December 15, 2002 at 3:05 pm
  One of the earlier Albanian witnesses testified that he saw a field officer falsify a report to his superiors about event in a battle over in village in Kosovo. The witness said that Milosevic was responsible for what took place in that village. Milosevic asked .the witness how was he in Belgrade supposed to know if a report at the bottom of the chain of command has been falsified? To this judge May responded that this was not for the witness to know.

  In every army there are those who will falsify reports. NATO provided us with a professional liar in Jamie Shea who organized and paraded German, American and British generals who told us lie after lie for 72 days about Milosevic and what a military target was and what collateral damage was. The idea that the end justifies the means or covers your ass is a euphemism in the military to lie. In America the art of lying by the military and the Commander in Chief is so blatant and so skillfully camouflaged and the media wraps it in the flag of nationalism that honest people are afraid to question and speak out.

  I know one thing for sure when village boys went into the JNA they came out in majority of cases disciplined men. In Bileca Herzegovina at the officer’s training school I saw and met men from all parts of former Yugoslavia who were principled in their actions.

  This war in many cases was fought by militias and volunteers where retribution was the order of the day. You know full well Davor that Slovenian militia at the start of the war shot lightly armed soldiers. This is just one example of what took place in Slovenia. The same thing took place in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and to a lesser extent in Kosovo. Davor you seem to forget that in Serbia all ethnic groups found place of safety. The fact that your brother drank rakija when his safety depended on a clear head tells me something about his personal discipline.

  When an agency like the HRW turns a blind eye to abuses by those who pay them what other name applies. I think she was too kind. Yes I think Djindjic fits your description well.

  for a great legal article which is still timely, see this
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Sunday December 15, 2002 at 4:05 pm
  
  LE GRAND GUIGNOL
  à la saxonne

  Mr. May: NATO

  Mr. Nice NATO

  Mr. Kay NATO

  Mr. Saxon NATO

  Mr. Groome NATO

  Mr. Ryneveld NATO

  Ms. Romano NATO

  Fr. Uertz-Retzlaff NATO

  Ms. Higgens NATO

  Mr. Robinson Jamaica (COLONIAL)

  Mr. Kwon South Korea (OCCUPIED)

  Mr. Tapukovic Yugoslavia

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Sunday December 15, 2002 at 11:14 pm
  Former Bosnian Serb leader says she will not testify against Milosevic But Plavsic told Politika: "Frankly speaking, I would have nothing to say in the proceedings against Milosevic." "I never attended any meetings (of the Bosnian Serb leadership) with him," she added. "What's a ten-year sentence to me? It is the same as a life in prison," she said. "My only condition was that I don't testify in other (prominent) cases."
  
  Dan A.
  Canada

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 4:10 am
  For Milosevic to be guilty for the crimes committed by his side, it is not necessary that his issued any command to commit atrocities. That would be what Art. 7(1) of the Statute says. But even this straightforward provision has been watered down by the indictiment, which gives this article the widest possible meaning, that of a "joint criminal enterprise".

  But the trick of the prosecution is really that it was enough for Milosevic to have known about the crimes and did nothing to stop them or punish the perpetrators in his position of a commander. This is the so-called "command responsibility" in Art. 7(3) of the Statute. So you see, in terms of issuing direct commands Milosevic might come out clean. That is why the prosecution is trying to water it down with this delusional "joint criminal enterprise". However, the problem is "command responsibility" in Art. 7(3).

  First to have "command responsibility", you have to know if Milosevic was in this sort of command position. In Kosovo, I think Milosevic may or may not have been in a position of a commander. Rade Markovic says he wasn't. But even if he was, all Milosevic had to do to exonerate himself was to punish the perpetrators, which is what I think the 200 or so war crimes convictions in Serbia are about. What I am still wondering about is what these people got convicted of, because the massacres are in all likelyhood far fewer in Kosovo than the 200 convictions.

  In Bosnia and Croatia, I doubt very much if Milosevic was in a position of a commander. The prosecution is somehow trying to argue by the existence of the rump presidency. But even being a member of the rump presidency doesn't mean having "command responsibility".

  And then you have these legal monstrosities: being a member of the rump presidency is a little like belonging to a "joint criminal enterprise", although the "joint criminal enterprise" belongs under Art. 7(1) and the joint command responsibility under Art. 7(3).

  This is all so wishy-washy as can be, but before you go on arguing that Milosevic didn't issue any orders to commit any atrocities, remember that the lunacy which is evident in the indictments is crystallized to the fullest in § 5 of both the Croatia and the Bosnia indictment:

  "By using the word committed in this indictment the Prosecutor does not intend to suggest that the accused physically committed any of the crimes charged personally. Committing in this indictment refers to participation in a joint criminal enterprise as co-perpetrator."

  Interpretation: when we say that Milosevic committed all these crimes, we don't mean that he committed them personally. That is what the Prosecution is saying here. Now, it is obvious that Milosevic didn't kill anybody personally. That is not what the prosecution means, either. The prosecution means that he needn't even have "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime" (which Art. 7-1 talks about). His crime was to belong to a "joint criminal enterprise", as the prosecution says in the excerpt, the membership and the existence of which the alleged members didn't even have to be aware of until they read the indictment.

  I hope I can convey to you my dismay at the utter depravity of the prosecution's case. This way you can convict anybody. Just say that someone belonged to some enterprise, even if he didn't know it at the time. Just show that he made a few phone calls to someone else.

  In this context, it may be good to keep repeating what Markovic said: that Milosevic issued orders to save the civilians. Doesn't that show he didn't belong to a joint criminal enterprise? Yes, he might have said that to avoid conviction, but that is the toughest part of all: you have to accept the fact that Milosevic might have done everything to avoid conviction. That means in all likelihood that he is not guilty as charged. Avoiding conviction by abiding by the rules is not a crime.

  On the other hand, it has been suggested that by his faciliation of the meeting between Bildt and Karadzic, Milosevic was actually part of the joint criminal enterprise together with Karadzic.

  It is not true that we shouldn't support the opposite view (that of Milosevic) just because someone is wrong (like the tribunal). Supporting opposite views is what the adversarial system in trial is supposed to be all about. However, the tribunal's proceedings aren't really adversial, so we are actually doubly justified in supporting the opposite view - opposite to both the prosecution and the tribunal.

  Milosevic has his political enemies, but that shouldn't be enough to subject him to a trial. The sham justice that the tribunal is actually enforcing is the fallacy that since Milosevic made political mistakes, justice requires that he should be judged in a political trial. Then there would be politics against politics, and the equality of arms would be guaranteed. The fact is, however, that the trial becomes politics about politics, not justice.

  Just to keep repeating some truisms. This trial is a farce. Normally, everything possible should be done to avoid prejudging the case. Here, however, the trial is all about prejudging. One trial supporter (the one in charge of live coverage) is even advocating a propaganda film "Milosevic - a making of a dictator" during the trial. That is just the kind of propaganda material that got Milosevic to the trial in the first place. This trial wouldn't even exist without prejudging. And to flesh this prejudging component to the fullest, the Dutch parliament is having an inquiry into (allegedly) its part of the Srebrenica massacre. I guess the timing couldn't have been better, if your intention is to prejudge the Milosevic trial.

  Everybody knows every side committed atrocities. However, it is the Serbs that have to pay for it. So far, nobody in this discussion has denied that. Now, does the admission by Milosevic that every side commit atrocities give any credence to the trial. Well, to come back to my first point, his admission that even his side committed atrocities incriminates him only if he didn't punish the perpetrators afterwards. In that case, the admission is the first step to observing the law.

  However, the point here is that if every side committed atrocities and only one side gets convicted, the proceedings are biased. That in itself should be enough to stop the proceedings. Bias is enough to disqualify the judge, for instance. On the other hand, even if bias is something you expect from the prosecution, the prosecution should not make everything possible to render the policy of the tribunal biased, as it is doing now.

  Remember, in Suva Reka there was a mass grave allegedly containing 900 Serbs and other non-Albanians. The mass grave was not opened by the investigators. If this is true - if there are 900 bodies in the mass grave and the mass grave wasn't opened, -because the victims were Serbs, we would have a clear case of bias and fraud. The 900 Serbs are more than a couple of times more than the 340 mentioned in the schedules at the back of the Kosovo indictment (and even of those 340 dead most were killed by Albanians).

  So can bias get any bigger than this? This is not just a case of both side committing atrocities. The prosecuted side is the one that committed less atrocities - and probably in reaction to the atrocities committed by the Albanian side. So this goes past bias, it becomes fraud.

  It is interesting what Florence Hartmann said. She said it was not the task of the prosecution to establish the number of dead in Kosovo but just to verify that war crimes were committed. This is how she explained why all the graves were not opened. What she was really saying was why the graves containing the Serbs were not opened.

  But wait a minute. She said that it was the task of the prosecution to verify that war crimes committed. Wouldn't the opening of the grave containing 900 Serbs and other non-Albanians have contributed to the conclusion that war crimes were committed? She didn't say that the prosecution's business is only to verify crimes committed by the Serbs - although that is exactly what she meant. When she said the prosecution wasn't interested in the total number of the bodies, she was suggesting that the rest of the bodies would tell the same old stories as the bodies exhumed so far: the same sad old story of crimes committed by the Serbs. Only, I think we have enough proof already that the Albanians were responsible even for the bulk of those crimes which the prosecution is now looking into. Maybe that would be the sad old story told by the rest of the graves.

  What we know of what went on in Kosovo during the bombing depends on eye witnesses' accounts. We have also aerial photographs made by Nato. In other words, we have nothing. Remember how unreliable Nato's information proved when it was talking about the destruction caused by itself to the Serb war machine. The Nato figures were grossly exaggerated or just based on false information.

  So all we have is nothing. We have Milosevic, the monster, on trial. Isn't that enough? But here it becomes misleading to talk about "opposite sides". Milosevic may have been a monster, but he was monster that the West had made. Not only thanks to biased reporting. The US was determined to ruin Yugoslavia as early as 1990. I think Gogol has demonstrated this. The US stopped its aid to Yugoslavia. The US citizens were to undermine Yugoslavia's credibility in the international financial institutions. Aftewards, the international organization joined the game. The Security Council imposed sanctions. What was the desired effect? Well the factual effect was that the economy was going down and the international community was trying to stage the man at the helm, Milosevic, as the culprit. The sanctions were a set-up, pretty much like everything else, including the peace agreements.

  So before saying that it is dumb to see Milosevic's side, I think it is even dumber not to see that the monster called Milosevic was exactly what the West wanted. It was the West that made him, and it was the West that needed him.

  But there is a connection between the West and Milosevic from another persepctive as well. Check Boyle's black list again. He demands Del Ponte should indict David Owen, Thorvald Stoltenberg, Michael Rose, Thomas Karremans in addition to Karadzic and Mladic. So clearly, at some point the West was as guilty as the Serbs from some viewpoint, the Muslim's. If you want to be consistent, and I think in a trial you should, you can only conclude that you can't. The opposite sides smelt into each other.

  So those who accuse us of being biased, because we see Milosevic's point, have reasons of their own to be biased. We have to live with the tribunal's bias anyway, so we can't turn a blind eye to it. That means that to be of any use to the defendant's viewpoint, we have to see the tribunal's. We see both viewpoints. Most people only see one. Just because the tribunal is wrong doesn't mean Milosevic is right. But just pointing out this fake reasoning doesn't mean that he is wrong. And in the end it doesn't matter. If the tribunal is wrong, the trial should stop. It is that simple. Everybody agrees but few admit it. Due to bias, most do not.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 5:44 am
  

  Plavsic guilty plead is the dream of all the prosecutors at the ICTY and all the NGOs working in "proving" the "scale" of the "atrocities". Plavsic does not known more than anyone else about the claimed and exagerated number of victims because the evidence, the forensic evidence, the legal evidence is not there but she can claim guilt for something, a little of the misery of war in trying to save the few years left of her life to be in freedom.

  No body will have to prove anything, since her acceptance of guilt makes the crime's claim and other people charged with it an unquestionable fact.

  Conveniently all other charges were dropped.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 5:55 am
  

  The joint criminal enterprise is again the concept which was used to indict the whole NAZI leadership, party membership, and indeed the whole of the III Reich by the Military International Tribunal in 1945. Nazism was in their eyes nothing else than that: ajoint criminal enterprise from that point on everything was possible, and besides who was there to stop it?

  Who over-rules the ICTY?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 6:25 am
  

  Plavsic sentencing hearing is introducing not only the figures on victims but also the existence of concentration camps and further more the number, preliminary number of immates, the figures advanced are preliminary and if one is to belive the testimony BiH must have been full of camps, over 800 it is been said.

  I am surprised Disneyland Prosecutor does not use the occasion to introduce Count Dracula as a Serb ...
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 6:29 am
  I can't help myself. I just don't have enough guts to keep it for myself. And I'm on torns to see if there's anyone outthere who at least sometimes thinks the way I do. I completely agree with most of the conclusions expressed in this forum; I've been with you as a reader for a month or somethig; had a look in the archives; used a lot of your links; every single moment I've spent with you I thought you are doing great things here, things of which I can be proud of as a human being, and I love you all without exeption, not only Vera, it's just that I'm simply fascinated by the way she walks; but there's something I wouldn't be quite ready to agree with anymore, and it is concerning the question who and with what intentions wants The Farce in The Hague to go on. If I got you right, you think it's wanted by Nato because they want to get rid of the responsibility for the dirty things that happened in the Balkans. I agreed a month ago. But then, if it is right, are they such assholes not to see that this is leading directly to the opposite direction? I don't believe the one who wants this is that naive. Now, in my paranoid opinion, it must be someone else, someone who wants to discredit someone else who is in Nato (you are allowed to play with commas). Which gives me creeps; is it too paranoid? But again, I heard a wiseman say: "Being a paranoid doesn't mean your life is not in danger". And I go on with my paranoid construction. There must've been a point in the time where someone said: "This thing in the Hague is going too far. Cool. We'll make it work for us. Let's push this to the extreme, and use it when we need it to shut someone up. Besides, those who've been doing a little too much research into such boring details will shut up, the media will be full of digestable selection anyway". I see it as a possible answer to the question which puzzles me painfully, namely, how in the world of mine a play such as The Fraud in The Hague is feasible at all outside the theatres. In the name of the international community, and in the house of international justice. Do you remember the importance some people ascribed to this mockery of humanity in The Hague? Why did I think my paranoid construction is worth sharing with you? In case my view happens to be true, it will be easier to understand, hard to believe, but you never know, a sudden deus ex machina in The Farce in The Hague. Whatever happens, I believe that it is of extreme importance for the peoples of the Balkans, and not only them, to know what in fact was happening during all those dark years in the Balkans. Besides, I got the same pleasure reading some of the transcripts (6. december for example) as I get when I read good fiction. It doesn't matter what you think about the muck described in The Fraud in The Hague (the naturalistic author still being anonymous), I wish you all as many pleasant moments as possible in these days of we-are-waiting-for-something euphoria.
  
  Jagoš Mirkoviæ
  Ljubljana
  Slovenia

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 7:22 am
  What is the purpose of a sentencing hearing? Is this a movie on ineffective assistance of counsel? What do you think Plavsic and her lawyers are thinking now? Good decision? Welcome to the land of hearsay and irreleevant evidence! I'm still waiting for those dominoes of guilty defendants to fall.
  
  E. Bennett
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 7:31 am
  

  The issue of deportation came to the regional press here. For all you tom judge:

  HERE
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 7:35 am
  

  ORANGE - The team of armed agents arrived at 6 a.m. on Dec. 3. Loud knocks on the front and back doors of the ranch-style house woke Anna Sak. Her husband, Dariusz, was getting ready to go to work at a Seymour machine shop. Their 17-year-old daughter, Joanne, was still asleep. Their 19-year-old son, Arek, was at UConn in Storrs, where he studies art. Anna Sak opened the front door a crack. Staring back at her were three men, two women and an Orange police officer. The men and women wore dark jackets and showed badges. On the back of the jackets were the words "INS Police." The Sak family’s lives were about to be torn apart. The Polish immigrants had lived in Orange for 12 years and were trying to obtain U.S. citizenship. But deadlines were missed and their time was up. Anna Sak let the three men and two women inside the house. Orders were immediately given. "Get dressed." "Pack your bags." Then the words that sent a wave of panic through the Sak family. "You’re getting on a plane. You’re being deported." "Can I make a call?" Anna Sak asked. "No." "Can I have a smoke?" "No." After putting their clothes on and packing a few small bags, the Saks were handcuffed, put into a government vehicle and taken to JFK Airport in New York City. At UConn a short time later, other Immigration and Naturalization Service agents stopped a bewildered Arek Sak outside of a classroom, handcuffed him and drove him to JFK. Everything in Orange was left behind. Wedding photos on the wall. Food in the fridge. The family dog. By the next day, the family was living in a tiny apartment 200 miles from Warsaw with Dariusz Sak’s parents. "The only world my children have ever known is America," said Anna Sak, her voice cracking with emotion during an exclusive telephone interview last week from Poland. "They can have no life here at all - they don’t speak the language, there are no jobs and they could never fit in with such a different culture. They are typical American kids now living in a wasteland. All they keep asking is, ‘Mom, when can we go home?’ " Rules are rules: The Sak family’s nightmare is not likely to end anytime soon. A combination of legal technicalities, missed communications and aggressive action by the INS has combined to force the Saks out of their adopted country. The government says they can’t come back for at least 10 years. The Saks said that when INS agents arrested them they were treated with disdain, and given two choices - leave for Poland or go to prison for up to a year awaiting a federal appeal with no chance to post bond or bail. Anna Sak said having her children incarcerated was out of the question. The contrast to their typically American home on Derby Avenue in Orange and their current living conditions is striking, they said. "Now, we sleep in hallways and on the floor in the kitchen," said Anna. "We were allowed to come here with only the clothes on our backs and a dollar in our pocket. We have been good Americans, we have worked hard and they throw us out of the country like pieces of garbage." But Michael Gilhooly, director of public affairs for the Eastern Region of the INS that covers 25 states including New England, said his agency deported the family only after all legal avenues for their continued stay in the United States had been exhausted. "When the Sak family entered the United States in July 1991 they had valid, non-immigrant visitor visas," said Gilhooly. "They were admitted for six months. But the family remained past January 1992, which means they overstayed their visas, a violation of immigration law." Gilhooly said the family applied for various forms of relief from deportation, and was allowed to remain in the country many years to pursue their due process "with the clear understanding that the outcome of litigation might be deportation." Then, in August after the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., denied the final appeal, the family was ordered to leave the U.S., Gilhooly said. The court gave the family 30 days to "wrap up their affairs and they were supposed to depart by Sept. 28." "But the family was in the United States beyond the removal date. We had an order of removal from the courts and we enforced it," he said. Gilhooly said deporting both illegal and criminal aliens is not unusual, with a total of 147,000 having been deported during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The Saks were considered illegal aliens when they were deported. Anna Sak said she suspects the INS has become more aggressive since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attacks. Gilhooly denies the accusation. Bleak outlook: Relatives, friends and educators are trying frantically to find a legal or legislative avenue to at least enable the two teenagers to return to Connecticut. Immigration lawyers said that bid appears to be a long shot. That’s because of the decision in late August by the Board of Immigration Appeals, four years after the Saks’ appeal was submitted, denying the family’s last hope for political asylum. Under federal law they had just 30 days from that time to file another appeal in U.S. District Court, or face not only deportation, but a 10-year ban on returning. But the injustice, the family says, is that neither they nor their former New York attorney, Robert Shannon, were notified that the final appeal had been denied by the immigration panel. A spokeswoman for the immigration board in Virginia said the case falls under one of several categories that prohibits any public comment by the board. Anna Sak said the family was never warned they could be deported so suddenly. Her four sisters became citizens and she expected to as well. "We were waiting for a decision by the appeals board, and the next thing we know these agents are in our home and we’re forced to leave," said Sak. "I would never have believed this could happen in America." Shannon, the family’s former lawyer, and Hartford attorney Jose Del Castillo, whom the Saks’ were in the process of hiring, said it is unusual for the INS to move so aggressively against non-criminal aliens. "It’s very surprising, I don’t know why the INS would have acted so aggressively against this family, a family of truly good people," said Shannon, who formerly worked for the INS and advised the Saks in a letter dated Nov. 15 that "I never received any decision from the Board (of Immigration Appeals) regarding your appeal." Del Castillo said after meeting with the Sak family in late November he was, ironically, going to file a new court action in federal court in Hartford on Dec. 3 - the day they were deported. "Someone has made a terrible mistake here, and while it may be unclear who that was and how it happened, one thing is clear - this was not the fault of the family," said Del Castillo. "It sadly appears they got tangled up in some kind of bureaucratic mistake, but I’m not sure what can be done now that they are out of the country." Anguish: But family members and friends are trying. Immigration lawyers are being consulted, and Arek Sak’s friends and professors at UConn are contacting legislators such as U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, about a special act of Congress that could allow for the family’s return. Derby Mayor Marc Garofalo, who has known the Sak family for seven years because they attend the same church, St. Michael Roman Catholic Church in Derby, said he and other church members are "absolutely shocked and mortified" the family was deported "They came to church every week as a family, and they seemed to be very close and have a lot of faith," said Garofalo, who is joining in the effort to try and bring them back to the United States "These people were not living in the shadows, they owned a house on a state highway, were living openly, working hard and doing everything like a typical American family," said Garofalo. "Arek is a brilliant artist. It just doesn’t make sense that they would have purposely avoided the law. This whole episode is very perplexing and disturbing. "It seems ironic that people who appeared to be playing by the book would end up getting deported," said the mayor. "If, as it appears there was an injustice done to them, it is absolutely outrageous, and someone needs to correct this." Arek said that he and Joanne, a senior at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, barely eat or sleep. He said because they don’t understand the Polish language they can’t converse with other kids, and can’t even watch television. "All I do is try to draw to express my anguish," said Arek. "I cannot even consider the possibility of not returning to America. Staying here would be impossible." Anna Sak said when she closes her eyes at night "all I can see is my son in handcuffs. I have nightmares about that every night, and I will for the rest of my life."

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 9:26 am
  

  Holly maccarronni, Elli Wiessel the champion of the holocaust is testifying!!!!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 9:30 am
  Yes Gogol! Isn't that amazing? Relevance? I just read an article indicating further witnesses. The defence just called Milorad Dodik, former Bosnian Serb PM.
  
  E. Bennett
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:13 am
  

  Did she, the Babylonian Whore give testimony also? I had to step out for an hour or so wile she did.

  Quite a coward's performance this prosecution bringing this witness when there is no trial just a sentencing hearing!

  Typical of the Grand Circus!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:25 am
  Not yet! Yippie, you didn't miss a thing! Oh, will we be forced to wait until tomorrow? Watching these characters, the Abe Lincoln-esque Mr. Pavich, the ever-sour Mr. Wilson (a la Dennis the Menace, aka Ms. Del Ponte), reminds me of a cartoon. Unfortunately, this is real! Someone needs to tell these characters!
  
  E. Bennett
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:27 am
  My view is that this is a selective prosecution and therefore a violation of the United Nations Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Milosevic is a political prisoner. As long as this trial continues by the rules set out in the ICTY confidence in fairness how international justice is carried out is dead.

  It defiles justice that this tribunal uses charges such as aiding and abetting, conspiracy and terms like joint criminal enterprise and yet violates the accused right to rule of law and due process. I am sure that Milosevic’s defense team can advance a case of selective persecution. This case was brought forth by NATO instigation. If this case was truly interested in justice others would be sitting beside Milosevic at The Hague. The others I accuse, the main perpetrators, Clinton, Blair and their accomplices the other NATO and non NATO countries that aided and abetted the breakup of Yugoslavia.

  The judge in this case intrigues me. He is humorless, and he serves his masters by forgetting his oath, inherited traditions of British jurisprudence, but worst of all he is a man who has lost his conviction and conception of the future for international justice. Unfortunately Milosevic will be judged by this bastard but than again he is NATO’s bastard happy to serve queen and country. Than again we on this post may be guilty of not “seeing ourselves as others see us”. The difference between us and Mr. May is in that we are not serving any masters.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:43 am
  HTML correction Hopefully
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:54 am
  

  Well, I don't understand, the sequence, if Maddie did not and the defence is now on the stand, she missed her chance or will she testify for the defence?

  Come on, Maddie by Babylonian just for the boys!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:59 am
  

  NAZI ECHOES

  Aha!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 11:01 am
  

  "It is of enormous significance that Mrs. Plavsic accepts before this Chamber that horrendous crimes were committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that she acknowledges her own individual criminal responsibility for them," said U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

  Not kidding!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 11:49 am
  The above statement by Carla Del Ponte is absolutely horrendous! That alone shows the exact reason why Plavsic’s plea should be overturned on ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Really! What attorney would allow their client to lay themselves before this Tribunal? That's a crime in itself.
  
  E. Bennett
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 12:20 pm
  Apropós Laber testimony: First of all, apologies for mixing the I`s , C`s and J`s in my previous posting, and for writing after a lapse; and for the rest, Vera writes: someone receives a 25-page 'report' from a NGO known for its political agenda, based on propaganda, wrong premises, teeming with imprecise and vague info, concluding that economic sanctions should be imposed upon your country, and you're supposed to 'investigate the crimes described'?! (And the truth of the report itself is not important?!) I am prompted to say: Well, yes! Particularly if the report is supported by other reports.And particularly if that is a part of your job: to investigate allegations of war crimes in the country over which you are presiding. And if the report was such a scandal, why didn`t anybody stand up then-- Milosevic for one -- and reject it vehemently, why wait for the trial? And by the way: have you read (any of) the repport(s), Vera? I mean, in what way, specifically, do you find the organisation biased?
  
  Nebojsa Matic
  Oslo, Norway

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 12:55 pm
  Apropós Laber testimony: First of all, apologies for mixing the I`s , C`s and J`s in my previous posting, and for writing after a stance; and for the rest, i am prompted to reply to Vera as she writes someone receives a 25-page 'report' from a NGO known for its political agenda, based on propaganda, wrong premises, teeming with imprecise and vague info, concluding that economic sanctions should be imposed upon your country, and you're supposed to 'investigate the crimes described'?! Well, yes! Particularly if the report is supported by other reports, and if a part of your job is to instigate an investigation about allegations of war crimes in a country over which you are presiding; and by the way, why didn`t anybody -- Milosevic for one -- dispute the reports, step by step, at the time,why wait for the trial? Or is mister president the great Chivas Regal above all this? And what in particular is BIASED, or IMPRECISE about HRW`s reports(if you go to their site, you`ll find plenty of particular names), has anybody here read them? I would really like to know if that is the case, so please indulge me with more than vagueness.
  
  Nebojsa Matic
  Oslo, Norway

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 1:35 pm
  

  Matic

  You wonder about the imprecisions of the HWR reports. I can only direct you to the testimony of Jeri Laber herself on the 10 and 11 December. You can judge by yourself and of course if you need any help please call on us, we will be delighted to enlighten you.

  Video footage of her performanceis to be found HERE

  Be patient.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 1:57 pm
  Nebojsa. Please, I feel I have to respond to yuo. Vera's discription seems very accurate to me. If you assume it to be true and then watch the trial again (or read the transcripts), you will find that neither Nice's questions nor Labers answers contradict that asumption! It comes out very clear that the so called 'investigations' based on a small number of interviews were hastily compiled in a report and the suspisions that crimes had been committed were listed up in a letter addressed to Milosevic and also the military in Serbia. Although Serbia was not at war, it was comman knowledge that Milosevic was the man to address regarding all alleged crimes of the Serbian side, I think was explained. The purpose was to have ground to call for economical sanctions on Serbia (that was not explicitly said but also not denied). I think she also explained that not getting a response at all would have been more responsive than answering in the way they did. The reason for delivering a similar letter (and equally long) to Tudjsman was not the same as for the one to Serbia. It was done to show that the Helsinki Watch was impartional. But in wiew of the purpose of the report it is obvious that they are biased. Then compare the 'political background'-part to what we who follow the trial have learnt about it (from any witness, even Mesic). And then add that she herself says they could not in anyway prove the crimes but merely they reported what interwiewed people had heard or seen and sometimes experienced for further investigation. Even May said that it she could not answer for the content of the reports but was there to testify how they delivered their letters and what she had seen on her short visit to the SFRY then (which weren't much). She first denied her organisation being both investigator, procecuter and judge, but later her tongue slipped and she explained the economical sanctions by saying that they wished to PUNISH Serbia without the innocent population suffering (which in itself seems to be a contradiction). Anyway, to impose a punishment you must have reached a verdict, so they really thougt they were the judges aswell.
  
  Ann-Marie Laios
  Sollentuna
  Sweden

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 2:22 pm
  I read that Plavsic has said Albright is her friend. “Bookends.“ Did anyone ever notice that of all the bible names used throughout time, the one never used is “Judas?”

  As for Elie Wiesel testifying, I wonder how much money he has made off the holocaust. The Serbs went through a terrible holocaust in World War II, and no one suffered more then they did. Not one Serb has made a cent off their grief.

  Did Wiesel ever speak out against bombing innocent people or using depleted uranium on innocent people?

  I am not a fan of Mr. Wiesel, and never have been.

  
  
  Kathryn Love
  SJC
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 3:17 pm
  What I find extremely ironic about Mr. Wiesel's testimony is that Mrs. Plavsic and her family suffered greatly during the time of World War II. She and her family were placed into a camp and her world was turned upside down. He is a brave man with some wonderful writings; but, what is his relevance and how can his "statement" be justified? I thought direct examination meant that questions would be followed by answers. It sounded like Mr. Wiesel gave the Prosecutor's closing argument.
  
  E. Bennett
  USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 4:44 pm
  Nebojsa, HRW lead by Mrs. Labers, among other things has stated in its report that Serbs were dominating Yugoslavia and depriving all the other nations in Yugoslavia of their rights. If you lived in the same Yugoslavia that I lived in you would know that this statement of HWR is an outright lie. Mrs. Labers knew that HRW report is false on this fact, since she had hard time remembering that the dictator of Yugoslavia comrade Josip Broz Tito was half Croat half Slovenian. Tito's economist in chief was for many years comrade Boris Kidric of Slovenia. The man who has developed self-management economic system for Tito was comrade Edvar Kardelj of Slovenia. For several years Mahmud Bakali an Albanian emigrant to Yugoslavia, who has never applied for a cityzenship, was president of Yugoslavia. These are all very easily verifiable fact. So HRW never verified any of the facts that they have reported. They were just parroting what they have heard from the sources of their choice. This type of evidence is inadmissible in any court of law, as soon as the first lie is found. During Mrs. Laber's cross-examination I have not heard only the lie stated above, but many others. If you believe that the HRW reports can replace proper police investigations and forensic reports you still live and crave for justice delivered by Joseph Stalin which the ICTY have broth to much higher level of deceit since they are not using almost any police investigations and forensic evidence. On the contrary most of their evidence in based on the false NGO repots and unreliable witnesses hiding behind their high-ranking titles.
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 5:06 pm
  Vera

  instead of wasting your time in back and forth with HumWarriors

  Please write up some of your reports on the daily goings on at the Tribunal

  Your daily reports are invaluable and get lots of airplay in cyberspace. They are posted on many, many chatrooms, websites, etc.

  The War Mongering HumWarriors are trying to bait you so you spend your time arguing with them instead of writing your reports and getting the word out

  JN

  Go to Kosovo.com and send the moderators a line asking for info on the loyalist Militia's set up in KosMet. Also ask for official Yugoslav Government lists of those killed and by whom in 1997 and 1998. They have a vast archive
  
  AP Vucelic
  NY
  NY

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 6:51 pm
  

  The plot thickens:

  The BBC reports Plavsic accused Mr. Milosevic of master minding the killings in Bosnia and that she brought documents to prove it.

  Given the fact the notorious May(NATO) Robinson (COLONIAL) and Kwon (OCCUPIED) troika is also trying Mr. Milosevic while hearing Plavsice's great late show it is difficult to separate one from the other. But, as Jari said these gentlemen are to be trusted since they are very trusty and besides as Voltaire said: Whatever is, is Right
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 7:22 pm
  In one of the ABC news it sais:"In a document outlining the factual basis for her admission of guilt, made public for the first time on Monday, Mrs Plavsic says the Bosnian Serb leadership collaborated closely with Slobodan Milosevic in the conception and execution of the objective of ethnic separation by force." Has anybody seen it, where it can be found. This woman was nothing but trouble and embarassment for Serbs, from day one. I still remember how she was cought by Muslims in Sarajevo, in a UN transporter, apparantly trying to save her sister, or some other member of her family. She seemed to be scared to death, and gave a lot of satisfaction to Muslims of Sarajevo. I also remember vividly her speech from Bjeljina, in a commemoration of Ravnogroski-Chetnicki movement. She was all in pathetic tears while her words were going:" Brother Chetnics, I can't beleive you survived all this!" She was a hard line nationalist, obviously, which means nothing at the end. I still can't comprehend what kind of deal with this Ilegal Hague institution one can make at age 72. How embarassing for the whole nation.
  
  Ozren Vukobrat
  Vancouver
  Canada

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 8:07 pm
  

  In a document outlining the factual basis for her admission of guilt, made public for the first time on Monday, Mrs Plavsic says the Bosnian Serb leadership collaborated closely with Slobodan Milosevic in the conception and execution of the objective of ethnic separation by force.

  This is the first time a leadership figure has made a direct political connection between Milosevic and the campaign of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

  ABC

  That is why she will get a suspended sentence (or the scorpion will kill her anyways)
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 8:12 pm
  

  Now, this document to be introduced at Mr. Milosevice's trial Plavsic will have to testify there, a thing she claims she will not do. So, who is bringing the document or is it one of those documents which speak by themselves?
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Monday December 16, 2002 at 10:02 pm
  In a document outlining the factual basis for her admission of guilt, made public for the first time on Monday, Mrs Plavsic says the Bosnian Serb leadership collaborated closely with Slobodan Milosevic in the conception and execution of the objective of ethnic separation by force. ------ Would Milosevic be able to call her as a witness now? Can anyone clarify?
  
  Dan A.
  Canada