1 Friday, 15 February 2002

2 [Defence Opening Statement]

3 [Open session]

4 [The accused entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.30 a.m.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I think that I have presented ample

8 arguments against the false allegation of the Prosecution that for the

9 Serb refugees from Republika Srpska and Krajina, that we had settled them

10 in Kosovo and Metohija and changed the composition of the population

11 there. I have data showing that there was a total of 5.000 refugees in

12 Kosovo from Republika Srpska and the Serbian Krajina.

13 In relation to the total number of refugees in Yugoslavia, that up

14 until the war and after Dayton reduced from 1 million to 700.000, so in

15 relation to this number of 700.000, 5.000 is less than 1 per cent. Or to

16 be quite precise, it is 0.7 per cent. And if we bear in mind that the

17 territory of Kosovo counts for 10 per cent of the territory of the

18 country, then it is quite clear that proportionately in this territory,

19 this part of the territory of the country, the number of refugees was

20 fewest, which is only logical because nobody wanted to go there and nobody

21 forced the refugees to go to a particular place. And if this figure were

22 to be compared to the total population, then even the share of 0.7 per

23 cent would become much smaller, in fact, negligible. So the entire idea

24 of the change of the population structure falls, as does the idea on

25 alleged deportations that I have already referred to, but I will come back

1 to that, too, later.

2 I can tell you that not even the terrorists expected such harsh

3 allegations. And the day before yesterday, when the Prosecution ended its

4 opening statement in regard to Kosovo there were celebration over there.

5 And in doing so, I'd like to tell you that you're only encouraging

6 terrorism that is still going on over there, but I'll come back to that

7 too.

8 Let me continue now. The movement of Albanians from Kosovo was of

9 strategic importance for the Clinton Administration to win the support of

10 the media and public opinion, confirmation and justification for what they

11 were doing. The airstrikes were so fierce that at that time even in

12 Kosovo, even wild boars from the mountain of Cicavica swam over the

13 Cicavica River, something that never happened before.

14 As for the population, I wish to underline that under the threat

15 of bombs, more than 100.000 Serbs also fled to Kosovo. And this is an

16 official figure of the International Committee for the Red Cross in

17 Geneva. And if you had wanted to view the totality in a serious manner,

18 you should not have omitted this because these are figures of the body

19 responsible for refugees, and they are probably the most relevant data

20 that you should have relied on.

21 Anyway, you can look up the figures regarding Serb refugees in

22 Macedonia and you will see how things stand. And surely you have access

23 to those data as well.

24 Therefore, simultaneously with the fierce bombing, the KLA

25 terrorists forced all Albanians that did not leave Kosovo upon their

1 orders and the requests of NATO and under pressure of leaflets and

2 horrific round-the-clock bombing. So they referred to all these Albanians

3 who did not leave Kosovo as traitors because they betrayed the wartime

4 concept which should have created the illusion of an exodus of the

5 population before what you are referring to as the Serb forces. Simply

6 the allegations of Albright, according to -- of Serb deportations needed

7 to gain confirmation. And there were hundreds of cameras waiting at the

8 borders to examine the witnesses of alleged Serb misdeeds and to perform

9 that part of the media war.

10 This same thesis is one of the main tasks that need to be

11 accomplished by this false indictment, to persuade the world that Serb

12 forces performed deportation, which is a notorious lie. However, even

13 towards the end of the second month of the war, all those combined crimes,

14 the bombing and destructive ones, the media and terrorist campaigns still

15 failed to produce satisfactory results.

16 So it was decided that new and bloody and murderous messages

17 should be sent to the Albanians that they had to leave, and that is why on

18 the 13th of May, 1999, exactly one month to the day since the previous

19 massacre and destruction of the Albanian column of -- column of Albanian

20 refugees about which the public was informed yesterday, another mass crime

21 was committed.

22 For one of those crimes - I cannot tell you with precision, but we

23 will find out later whether it was the 13th of May or the 14th of April -

24 for one of those crimes of the bombing of Albanian refugees, we

25 intercepted a talk between the pilot and the command centre and broadcast

1 it on our television. The pilot says that it is not a military column,

2 that he can see tractors, peasants, civilians, and the response from the

3 command is, "Carry out your orders," and he struck at the column.

4 And so on the 13th of May, 1999, on the main road from Prizren to

5 Suva Reka, at a crossroads near the village of Korisa, which is Prizren

6 municipality, NATO forces bombed a column of between 500 and 600 Albanian

7 refugees who were returning to their homes in the village of Korisa. So

8 after two months of war they are still returning home, though you were

9 claiming that the Serb forces are forcing them out. And because they are

10 returning home, they were being bombed by the NATO Air Force.

11 In that massacre, dozens of persons were killed, and according to

12 initial reports, some 50 were killed and many more succumbed to their

13 wounds later. But this is a highly eloquent, though drastic example of

14 the suffering of people to complete the pattern that the aggressor had set

15 as an assignment and an explanation for the crimes it committed in

16 Yugoslavia.

17 Will you please show the photographs of this crime committed

18 against Albanian refugees, on the 13th of May, 1999. Will you please show

19 photograph by photograph and not two at the same time, because you can't

20 see them well.

21 Carbonised bodies, the remains of the victims.

22 Overturned tractors.

23 This is a semi-carbonised body next to a destroyed tractor.

24 The remains of carbonised bodies of the victims.

25 These are remains of carbonised bodies of three persons in a

1 tractor-trailer, and there's hardly anything left of them to be seen.

2 Carbonised remains beneath the tractor.

3 You see the child that was killed, one of ten babies killed in the

4 column of refugees.

5 Another child from the refugee column killed.

6 Another killed child from the refugee column.

7 One of 26 children that were killed when the column of refugees

8 was bombed. One of 26.

9 Again, carbonised bodies of the victims from the column.

10 Carbonised bodies on the tractor-trailer.

11 A semi-carbonised body.

12 The same images of carbonised corpses.

13 A male victim killed during the raid on the column.

14 The body of a baby killed in the column.

15 A young boy.

16 A child, again.

17 A woman.

18 This is just the ground.

19 This is one of the children.

20 It was not possible to send a more horrific message -- the

21 Prosecutor is probably bored; I see him yawning. A more horrific message

22 could not have been sent to the Albanians who were returning to their

23 villages, that that is prohibited. Who returns will be shot at. He has

24 to pay his disobedience with his life. He has to abandon Kosovo. He has

25 to justify the previous premise that all are fleeing from the Serb

1 forces. And the Serb forces were trying to save them; they assisted them,

2 they transported them to the hospital, even to the most elite medical

3 institutions, even to Belgrade and not to Pristina and other towns in

4 Kosovo.

5 I should now like to draw your attention to the fact that, in that

6 fury of failure and fiasco of the attack on Yugoslavia, and the

7 persistence with which its policy was being implemented, a special

8 characteristic of the bombing was that of inhabited areas.

9 In the south of Serbia there is a small, poor town of Surdulica.

10 Very hard-working people live there. They are known for their diligence

11 and goodness.

12 On the 27th of April, 1999, this small town of Surdulica, in which

13 there is absolutely no facility which might justify it, though there is

14 nothing that can justify the targeting of any facility in an illegal

15 aggression whereby the charter of the United Nations had been violated and

16 which was not allowed by the Security Council, whereby all the norms of

17 international law and the statute of NATO were infringed upon, cannot be

18 justified. But this is a unique crime. Please look and see how a small

19 town in the south of Serbia was totally destroyed.

20 We know from history of individual towns. We know of the village

21 in Czechoslovakia, the only one destroyed by the Nazis during the Second

22 World War, and it remains a symbol of crime. These new ones, this time so

23 many villages were destroyed that each one of them could be a symbol of

24 crime, even for those Nazi days, only many times over in this case.

25 These are the remains of Surdulica, what is left of the town after

1 the airstrikes. For instance, this is the destroyed house from which ten

2 bodies were uncovered.

3 This is the immediate vicinity of where the rocket struck. These

4 are views of the less damaged buildings which were, as you can see,

5 totally destroyed only they were not razed to the ground. And by the

6 degree of destruction it is quite visible that no one inside could have

7 survived.

8 These are also destroyed houses in Surdulica. Virtually one can

9 only see the ground on which they stood. They have been razed to the

10 ground.

11 The same thing. Here the streets and house numbers are indicated,

12 which is not relevant at this point in time for what I am saying, because

13 I'm talking about the town as a whole. You see what the remains look

14 like, as if there was nothing there anyway.

15 And this is a part of the bodies of the victims who were pulled

16 out of the rubble on that first day, because the documents date to that

17 period.

18 On the 28th of April, another horrific, savage attack on Prizren

19 and Jablanica, also in Kosovo and Metohija. May we now see those

20 pictures, please. Perhaps these photographs are the best commentary.

21 They require no comment, in fact.

22 The old part of the town of Prizren where some 50 houses were

23 destroyed belonging mostly to the Romany people, the Romany ethnic group.

24 Four were killed and 20 other persons seriously injured. That was on the

25 28th of April, 1999.

1 This is another detail. It is another spot where Zuljfiri Drenis

2 died, and Zuljfiri Djula, Becir, Kasandra Zuljfiri, and Maksum Zuljfiri.

3 This is what it says on the caption. That took place on the 28th of

4 April, 1999.

5 Prizren had a mixed population, Serbian, Turkish, and Albanian.

6 In Prizren, people lived a normal life in harmony. And when I visited

7 Prizren on one occasion, everybody told me that, the presidents of the

8 political parties, all the sides, the priests and the imams and the

9 fathers, all of them. And that was precisely the impediment, that kind of

10 life in Yugoslavia.

11 This is one the corpses being taken out from the rubble. Here you

12 can see some feet. They belong to a three-year-old child, a little girl.

13 Some more destroyed houses in Prizren. Again the same thing.

14 Once again Prizren, and some Muslim houses again.

15 This is a bombed village, the village of Jablanica, on the 1st of

16 May. And some 20 houses completely destroyed, more than 50 houses in

17 ruins, people killed.

18 Here these are the houses of the Murati family that were

19 completely destroyed, and the inhabitants died, too, on the 1st of May,

20 1999. Once again the body of Ahmet Murati being taken out from under the

21 rubble, who was killed in Prizren.

22 This is a damaged mosque. It was damaged on the 1st of May, 1999,

23 in that same bombing operation.

24 The Kula settlement in Prizren that was bombed. And there seven

25 people were killed and 15 others seriously wounded, most of them

1 Albanians. About 50 houses were destroyed. And that was on the 1st of

2 May, 1999.

3 This is where the rocket hit, and so on and so forth.

4 This is the total destruction of the houses belonging to the

5 Berisha household. They were Albanians. They were all killed

6 practically, four of them on the spot, and seven were very seriously

7 injured.

8 Here you can see members of the police, the army, and Civil

9 Defence taking out the casualties from the Berisha household. Once again,

10 these people are saving an injured woman from the Berisha house, Meta, in

11 Prizren on the 1st of May, 1999.

12 This is a child that was killed and pulled out from under the

13 ruins, also on the 1st of May, 1999, in the Kula settlement of Prizren.

14 On the 30th of April, a house was targeted in the centre of

15 Belgrade. It was a residential building, undoubtedly so. It could not

16 have resembled any kind of administrative or official building. And on

17 the 1st of May, once again, the villages of Bitanovac and Sacevo [phoen]

18 near Kraljevo. I'm not going to show you these photographs one by one. I

19 will provide a set of photographs to save time, but in this set of

20 photographs you will be able to see the bombing of Sremska Mitrovica and

21 the corpse of a young woman. On the 2nd of May, the bombing of Valjevo.

22 Here you are.

23 These are the destroyed houses in the village of Bitanovac near

24 Kraljevo. This is a whole household destroyed. Zace, near Kraljevo. A

25 whole residential block destroyed in Valjevo on the 2nd of May.

1 Once again, a residential building destroyed, with a number of

2 apartments, also in Valjevo on that same day.

3 This is a residential building in Belgrade in a residential area,

4 but I don't think I need comment when you see that a whole homestead was

5 picked as a target in a small village, as if somebody was training or

6 playing a game and trying to see who he would hit, who he would kill.

7 On the 5th of May, at 1430 hours, which is just about the end of

8 the working day in our country, when people go home from work, a densely

9 populated area of Novi Sad was bombed. It was called the Detelinara, and

10 that was a large neighbourhood, district. The projectiles fell right next

11 to a primary school and in between residential apartment blocks and

12 completely destroyed the apartments and homes in all these residential

13 blocks in that particular street. You will be able to see photographs of

14 that, photographs of Novi Sad. And Novi Sad suffered enormous damages.

15 All the bridges in Novi Sad were destroyed. The Danube was cut off.

16 There was no -- there were no water supplies. Residential areas were

17 targeted in Novi Sad and so on.

18 On the 7th of May, between 0255 to 0425 on two occasions, that is

19 to say, during the night, in the middle of the night when people and

20 children are fast asleep, the residential part of the town of Nis and then

21 the industrial district of Nis were targeted. And the greatest

22 destruction took place in the village of Medosevac in which tens of houses

23 were destroyed and damaged. Many people were killed and wounded.

24 And on that same day, in the middle of the working day, from 11.30

25 in the morning until 11.45, just before noon, the NATO Air Force threw two

1 containers with cluster bombs, and one of them, one of these containers

2 hit the south-eastern part of the town with the medical clinical centre

3 located there. The cluster bombs were fragmented around the hospital and

4 in front of the department of pathology of the clinic, whereas the second

5 container was thrown into the heart of town, which is where the university

6 headquarters of Nis were located as well as the medical centre, a large

7 central city market which at that time of day is full of people. People

8 were killed at stalls. Then we have the Nis fortress, which was a

9 historical monument too.

10 Many people died as a result of the cluster bombs, and we will be

11 providing the public with the list. For practical reasons I'm not able to

12 bring the lists in here and read them out.

13 May we now see, please, a few photographs which will illustrate

14 Nis, what happened in Nis, Medosevac, and the bombing of Novi Sad. It

15 doesn't matter what order you take them in because I have briefly

16 explained what they are about, and I think everybody will be able to see

17 for themselves.

18 These are the destroyed houses in Medosevac. Fourteen people were

19 killed here, although there doesn't seem to be much destruction to houses

20 because the cluster bombs did their job.

21 Here we can see the remnants, remains of the cluster bombs.

22 Cluster bombs, you know, don't destroy houses, but they do kill people,

23 and they are a prohibited weapon.

24 This is the corpse of Ljiljana Spasic. She was seven months

25 pregnant and it lies at the corner and intersection of two streets. She

1 was killed there at that corner where the cluster bombs were used.

2 This is another damaged house in Medosevac. It is one of the

3 approximately 50 houses that were destroyed and damaged on the 7th of May,

4 1999.

5 This is a crater left by a large bomb which practically

6 incapacitated all of the residential buildings in that part of Novi Sad on

7 the 6th of May, 1999. A figure of 100 apartments is mentioned here as

8 having been destroyed or, rather, 100 families left without a roof over

9 their heads. In just that one part.

10 This is part of Djuro Molnar Street where the primary school was

11 damaged and with the residential blocks located around it and cars that

12 have been submerged by the earth.

13 The terrorisation of Novi Sad and terrorisation in general of that

14 part of Serbia is quite a specific goal, target, because in that part of

15 Serbia, 27 ethnic groups live in harmony together. There were never any

16 nationalistic conflicts or incidents, and that is why they had to be

17 destroyed.

18 On the 7th of May, at 2350 hours, the building of the Embassy of

19 the Peoples' Republic of China was targeted. In that building, the

20 building of the Chinese Embassy, diplomats were killed and journalists

21 were killed, and all the statements that were made as to the error or

22 mistakes that were made are completely untruthful.

23 First of all, they justified it by saying that it was a mistake

24 because there had once stood a military building there and they didn't

25 have an updated plan. That was a notorious lie because the Chinese

1 Embassy in the area of Belgrade was built on an open space of land. It

2 was a modern villa, palace, and many Western diplomats and spies would

3 attend receptions and various ceremonies held in the Chinese Embassy, and

4 they would take back reports about what they were given to eat for dinner

5 and what the furniture looked like in the embassy and what the teacups

6 looked like. And then they say that they didn't know where the Chinese

7 embassy was.

8 The largest number of strategic buildings that were targeted were

9 targeted on the basis of intelligence reports, and all these hundreds of

10 diplomats, all of them supplying information and intelligence linked to

11 targets just didn't simply know where the Chinese Embassy was in

12 Belgrade.

13 It is quite clear, especially when we know that the attack was

14 launched directly, even without the knowledge of some other NATO members,

15 directly from the United States by planes which are only used for

16 strategic targets at long distance, it becomes quite clear that Clinton

17 wanted to go down in history as the first man to have bombed Chinese

18 territory by bombing the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Otherwise, when in

19 Rambouillet our legal team -- when our legal team in Rambouillet discussed

20 part of a document which the American representatives offered up, and they

21 made the remark that this was professionally very poorly done, it was

22 poorly written from the legal aspect, the answer he got, a spontaneous

23 answer, was how can you say it was so bad when it written by the same man

24 who wrote the document about the autonomy of Tibet, if you please.

25 This was no accident, just as in the case of many other things

1 related to these matters. Only somebody who is not allowed to see that,

2 or dare not see that, can believe that this is some kind of a mistake, or

3 that somebody did not know.

4 The village of Orljane, by Doljevac, I'm taking this only as an

5 example of an insane, pointless thing. They were targeting peasants who

6 were plowing their fields outside the village. Actually, it was a woman.

7 I will show you the field itself, the maize. There is nothing on this

8 picture. Only if you were to use a magnifying glass, perhaps you could

9 see something in the distance, but there is only this killed woman. This

10 was a savage game where people were targets.

11 On the 11th of May, Murino, near Plav, in the municipality of

12 Plav, in Montenegro, was hit several times, this poor, small town of

13 Murino. The population sought shelter in the surrounding areas, in

14 surrounding villages over there, as in Kosovo, over there like everywhere

15 else where bombs were falling. You will see the pictures from Murino.

16 You will see the pictures of a little boy called Daniel who, on

17 the 16th, in Vrbovac, near Vitina, was killed by a cluster bomb. On this

18 first page it seems as if somebody had shot him from a hunting rifle. He

19 is so badly hit, there are so many small wounds on his body, and on the

20 other picture you will see that his limb was blown off, his leg, and that

21 he was practically turned into an invalid.

22 I did not show you pictures of the building of the Chinese Embassy

23 or the corpses. These images were shown all over the world. I believe

24 that this is not a shortcoming in my statement, and I don't think that the

25 Prosecutor will say that I do not have proof of the Chinese Embassy being

1 bombed.

2 Look at this field. There's nothing here and there is the killed

3 woman. They kill a village woman, working in a field, from an aeroplane.

4 Here she is. This is Doljevac on the 11th of May, 1999. The woman's name

5 is Jagoda Mladenovic. She was killed as she was plowing her field.

6 This is an example of bestiality, targeting people this way. This

7 is what the houses that were destroyed near Murino looked like, near Plav,

8 in Montenegro.

9 This is also Murino.

10 This is this small town that such a misfortune had befallen.

11 On the 18th of May, 1999, Jasenica, near Valjevo, was targeted.

12 There is sufficient evidence of that as well, photographs included; also

13 pictures of killed people. You will see Milka Krunic from the village of

14 Jasenica. She was killed in her own house. Also you will see the

15 destruction of the village.

16 On the 21st of May, in Sombor, houses. Sombor is in Vojvodina.

17 You will see more about that as well.

18 On the 21st of May, Djakovica, in Kosovo and Metohija.

19 On the 25th of May, Sabac, at 1305.

20 On the 25th of May, Nova Pazarska Banja.

21 On the 26th of May, at 8.30, the village of Radost, the

22 municipality of Orahovac, between the railroad and the Beli Drim River.

23 Again, it was Albanians that were killed. You will see the corpse of a

24 child, an Albanian born in 1988, from the village of Radost, near

25 Orahovac, among others.

1 On the 26th of May, at 2310 hours, Ralja, a village on the

2 outskirts of Belgrade. This family sought shelter at their weekend

3 cottage, at the house that they originally came from. These two children,

4 Stefan and Diana Pavlovic, were killed while they were asleep in their

5 home. You will see that as well.

6 Could you please have these photographs shown. I'm trying to show

7 these photographs set by set so that you could bear in mind what I had

8 said in connection with that.

9 This is Jasenica, near Valjevo, where Milka Krunic was killed.

10 This is a house that was destroyed on the 18th of May, 1999, in

11 Jasenica, near Valjevo.

12 This is the corpse that I have been speaking about.

13 Fifty houses in Sombor, on the 21st of May, in Vojvodina.

14 This is the street of Vuka Karadzica. The owner was born in

15 1940.

16 A burned house, a demolished house, on the 21st of May, in

17 Sombor.

18 You can proceed.

19 This is in Djakovica. Ibrahim Cosi, an Albanian who was killed

20 right there in his own house, you can see him here on this picture.

21 This is from Sombor. There is probably another page before the

22 previous one, but let us go on.

23 Also Sombor, the street of Svetisava. Go on.

24 This is in Sabac, when Sabac was targeted.

25 This is Nova Parzaska Banja, over 30 houses in Nova Parzaska

1 Banja.

2 In this area near Novi Pazar, there is a population of Serbs and

3 Muslims. This is a corpse of a child, Kajtomika [phoen] Strati, from the

4 village of Kastrati, born in 1988. While he was tending to his flock

5 together with his friends, he was killed by NATO bombs. This is the

6 cattle.

7 You can go on.

8 These are corpses of children who were killed while they were

9 asleep. This was during the bombing of Ralja, a village near Belgrade, at

10 11.30 at night. They were in their pyjamas.

11 These were destroyed houses on the 26th of May. These are what

12 the houses looked like. This is Ivanovic, whose daughter Biljana was

13 killed, and so on and so forth.

14 Yesterday I spoke to you about the destruction of a small mining

15 town called Aleksinac, where people work in coal mines, in pits. I spoke

16 of the major crime that was committed by NATO on the 5th of April.

17 On the 28th of May, that is to say, a month and a half later, or

18 perhaps even a bit more than a month and a half later, at 30 minutes past

19 midnight, again Aleksinac was attacked. As a matter of fact, with 14

20 rockets. The centre of the town of Aleksinac was hit by seven rockets,

21 and one hit the area of the municipality of Sverlig as well. And then

22 there is a list of everything that was totally destroyed.

23 Aleksinac should be shown separately. Please, could you show

24 these photographs.

25 Why Aleksinac in such a savage manner and for a second time at

1 that? That's a pointless question, because this entire war was pointless,

2 and it constitutes a crime. Those who come to kill children who are

3 asleep can hardly sleep peacefully themselves if they are human at all and

4 if they have any kind of moral sensitivity.

5 That's the corpse of Biljana Momcilovic.

6 Please go on. Please show the photographs in the same order in

7 which I gave them to you.

8 This is the point of impact where people were killed and wounded

9 on the 28th May. Spring had already started. It's green but there are no

10 more houses left.

11 Please go on. These are destroyed houses. The names of the

12 people who were killed are listed here. Husband, wife, daughter,

13 seriously wounded, killed. Sisters, et cetera.

14 This is also one of the victims from Aleksinac, Dusanka Savic,

15 killed in a neighbour's house.

16 These are also victims of the bombing of Aleksinac. Destroyed

17 houses in Aleksinac again. The dead were pulled out of the rubble. This

18 man was pulled out of the house that you saw a minute ago. Branko

19 Mitrovic is his name. Totally destroyed houses in Uzicka Street in

20 Aleksinac.

21 This is the 28th of May in Aleksinac. Eighty houses, most them in

22 Uzicka Street and Niska Street.

23 These are houses destroyed in Petrovaradin near Novi Sad on the

24 29th of May, 1999. This is one of the destroyed houses in Petrovaradin,

25 the settlement of Ribnjak in Novi Sad.

1 On the 29th of May, Cumurlija was bombed near Nis, and here, too,

2 you will see the ruins and the bodies.

3 On the 29th of May Cuprija was bombed again when more than a

4 hundred civilian buildings were destroyed and damaged. You will see some

5 of the points of impact of some of the projectiles on the 30th of May.

6 Family homes were bombed, and the village cemetery in the place Drvenik

7 near Raska. You will also see the houses and the cemetery. The living

8 and dead Serbs, but on these are only the dead, but both the living and

9 the dead were bombed.

10 On the 31st of May, Ripanj, a village near Belgrade. Again you

11 will see the bodies of women. Also on the 3st of May, Ripanj, destroyed

12 houses.

13 The 31st of May, the village of Drazevac, near Obrenovac. Again

14 women were the victims.

15 On the 3st of May, a very heavy airstrike was conducted on Novi

16 Pazar. This is the area I referred to where Serbs and Muslims lived

17 together. They are the dominant ethnic groups. And the attack was

18 against a residential part of Novi Pazar. On the first strike 11 were

19 killed and an enormous number seriously injured. I don't have data for

20 those who succumbed to their injuries later.

21 The elementary school was damaged, so was the medical centre,

22 Jedinstvo, a large number of family homes, the bus station and so on.

23 That was the worst crime that was committed in Novi Pazar since Novi Pazar

24 has been in existence in new Yugoslavia.

25 On the 8th of June, at 0015 hours, again the area of Novi Sad was

1 attacked. This time the neighbourhood of Sangaj. Because it is quite

2 obvious, as the dates indicate, residential districts and settlements were

3 always struck at night when they were sure that people were asleep inside

4 and they would get killed.

5 You can show this set of photographs, please. This is Cumurlija

6 with which this series of photographs begins. I mentioned the woman who

7 was killed.

8 This is Cuprija, the air raid of the 29th of May, 1999. One

9 hundred civilian buildings destroyed and damaged in Cuprija on that day.

10 A small town. One hundred civilian buildings.

11 This is the point of impact of one of the projectiles, again in

12 Cuprija. These are destroyed family homes and the village cemetery in

13 Brvenik near Raska on the 30th of May. This is also Brvenik in Raska on

14 the 30th of May. This is the destruction and damage of 17 tombs at the

15 village cemetery in Brvenik near Raska.

16 Next, please. This is Ripanj, a village near Belgrade, showing

17 the house in which the owner, a woman, was killed on the 31st of May,

18 1999. Her name was Slavica Stojiljkovic. Here is her body.

19 This is again in Ripanj, a house destroyed, and the names of the

20 victims. The appearance of the crater in Ripanj, a village near

21 Belgrade.

22 This is Novi Pazar. This is in the vicinity of the bus station.

23 On this spot that you just saw, 11 people were killed. These are

24 destroyed houses in Novi Pazar. You see here people being pulled out of

25 the rubble. Again a view of damaged buildings where Djordje Pantovic was

1 killed in his own shop. This is the victim.

2 Golub Ratkovic, born in 1953. He is from Novi Pazar. Dragan

3 Simovic, born in 1953, also from Novi Pazar. Miodrag Nikic, born in

4 1970. Zvezdana Jajic, born in 1962, also from Novi Pazar. Simic from

5 Novi Pazar. A child, Vladan Simic's child, called Marko Simic, born in

6 1977 in Novi Pazar. Dejan Milosevic, born in 1973, from the village of

7 Saronje near Novi Pazar. The remains of Mirko Roglic, born in 1983, also

8 a victim from Novi Pazar.

9 These are destroyed houses in Novi Pazar, destroyed on the 31st of

10 May. About 40 houses were destroyed on that occasion. A close-up view of

11 some of the houses.

12 On the 20th of May, five minutes after midnight in Belgrade or,

13 rather, over Belgrade, an airstrike was carried out on the Dr. Dragisa

14 Misovic clinical hospital centre. It is a large hospital centre, one of

15 the best known in Yugoslavia. It is situated in Belgrade, as I was saying

16 in the Bulevar Mira or Bulevar of Peace.

17 The neurological clinic was struck of the clinical centre, and

18 patients were killed, of course. Patients were also killed in the

19 intensive care unit. In this strike, all the buildings within the complex

20 of the clinical centre were damaged, including the maternity ward, the

21 gynecology and obstetrics department, and the children's hospital for

22 tuberculosis and lung disease.

23 There is no one in Yugoslavia who does not know of the Dr. Dragisa

24 Misovic clinical centre. And it is also situated in the residential part

25 of Belgrade where virtually all representatives of the Diplomatic Corps

1 reside, at least as far as the ambassadors and senior diplomats are

2 concerned. I will show you a few, only a few, photographs from the

3 Dragisa Misovic clinical centre.

4 I don't think there is any point in my commenting on these

5 photographs. These are all patients from the neurological department of

6 the hospital. The patient is Zora Brkic. The pictures speak for

7 themselves.

8 This is the surgical theatre, which was also damaged.

9 Another patient of the neurology clinic. His name was Radosav

10 Novakovik, and he was killed in the hospital.

11 This is the intensive care unit or, rather, what was left of it in

12 the neurological clinic.

13 Please proceed. This is the interior of the central part of the

14 destroyed neurology clinic and the place where the body of Branka Boskovic

15 and Radosav Novakovic were found.

16 These are all victims. Please go on.

17 This is what the destroyed neurology clinic looked like on the

18 20th of May, 1999. Again a view of the buildings of the clinical centre

19 Dr. Dragisa Misovic.

20 This is the institute for urology and nephrology and a patient's

21 room after the raid.

22 I mentioned Surdulica to you, describing it as a small town in the

23 south of Serbia that was bombed and in which people were killed and the

24 town itself virtually razed to the ground. On the night of the 30th and

25 31st of May, 1999, Surdulica was struck again, only this time it was the

1 sanitorium in Surdulica that was directly struck. It is a specialised

2 hospital for lung disease, a sanitorium, in the south-eastern part of

3 Surdulica. And the projectiles fell not only on the hospital for lung

4 patients but also a building of the old people's home and hitting

5 virtually everything in the vicinity.

6 The targeting of the sanitorium, I find it difficult to rank those

7 war crimes, to rate them in any way. You are lawyers whose speciality

8 this is, and you probably have your own idea about that, because all these

9 crimes are grave. But striking a sanitorium full of patients is something

10 that probably the person who did it should explain, and I hope he will.

11 Please be kind enough and show these few more photographs. I've

12 reduced the number of photographs of the sanitorium.

13 These are bodies on the balcony of the sanatorium building. These

14 are photographs taken immediately after the strike so that most of the

15 people were not identified.

16 The head of Dusan Manojlovic, born in 1927, it was found in front

17 of the sanatorium.

18 Stamen Rangelov, from the village of Bozica, in Surdulica, who was

19 killed in the laboratory premises.

20 The bodies pulled out of the sanatorium building. As you can see,

21 a yard full of bodies on that morning.

22 The bodies of a mother and daughter, Bosilka Malobabic and Milena

23 Malobabic. They were refugees from Karlovac.

24 These are again the bodies of victims.

25 These two were refugees from Korenica.

1 Again, victims from Duga Resa.

2 These are the bodies of the people killed in the old peoples home

3 attached to the sanatorium, and their names are listed here. They were

4 from Vladicin Han, the village of Kalemance, which is in the

5 neighbourhood.

6 This is again the body of a victim pulled out of the rubble,

7 Napilo Dragic.

8 Again, a victim, a woman, Bogdanka Janjanin, born in 1925, from

9 Vrhin Most.

10 Slavko Popovic.

11 Two hospitals, one after the other. As you saw, the clinical

12 centre Gragisa Misovic, and then the sanatorium in Surdulica; in the

13 former, a clinical ward, and in the latter, an old peoples home as well.

14 I have many documents about the bombing of cultural facilities.

15 But I will place this at the disposal of the public and to you. It

16 consists of 20 pages. I'd rather not read out now those 20 pages of

17 documents, but they refer to the destruction of cultural facilities in

18 Belgrade, in Nis, in Nova Pazar, in the Nova Pazar Banja or spa, in

19 Gucevo, Novi Sad, Vrdnik, Ursac, Kapaonik, Kursumlija, Balenac, Smaila,

20 Zablace, Zvetne, Priline, Svrtenik, Djunis, Krcmar, Pancevo, Grcanica,

21 Draganac, Kragujevac; a large number of facilities, almost as many as in

22 Belgrade. Decani, Goracevac, Cacak, Valjevo, Kadinjaca, Velika Hoca,

23 Sreckovac, Bustranja, Vinca, Belo Brdo, Gornja Nerodimlje, Zitoradja,

24 Smederevo, Palis, Sabac, Gazimestan, Tekeris; the villages in the environs

25 of Kraljevo, close to which such cultural monuments are to be found,

1 Cuprija, Trsnik, Mrsac. I have listed only the names of the localities in

2 which several cultural monuments were bombed, and the review consists of

3 20 pages.

4 I should now like to mention the bombing of the prison.

5 JUDGE MAY: If you're moving on to another topic, that would be a

6 convenient time for the adjournment.

7 Mr. Milosevic, how much longer do you think you're going to be?

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't know exactly because, as you

9 know, I have no conditions to prepare in, nor do I have any assistance, so

10 I really don't have any idea how long this could take. But I assume that

11 I've covered one half, I assume I've covered a half. I'm sure I have.

12 One half of what I would like to say.

13 JUDGE MAY: Well, we shall expect you to finish this evening.

14 That will give you two days, which was the same as the Prosecution had,

15 and it seems a reasonable amount of time.

16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't think you should limit this

17 statement of mine, regardless of whether the Prosecution had two days or

18 not. After all, yesterday --

19 JUDGE MAY: We will determine -- we will determine what is a

20 reasonable amount of time for you to make a statement, as we have to have

21 regard to the amount of time taken up by this trial.

22 Yes, we'll adjourn now until half past eleven.

23 --- Recess taken at 11.00 a.m.

24 --- On resuming at 11.30 a.m.

25 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

1 THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]

2 JUDGE MAY: We have no interpretation.

3 THE INTERPRETER: The microphone was not switched on for the

4 speaker.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Could you please tell me the amount

6 of time that I have at my disposal to speak.

7 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We've reflected on that. You can have the rest

8 of today and you can have until the first adjournment on Monday. That

9 will be an extra hour and a half; that will be ten hours in all.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So that means an hour and a half on

11 Monday; is that right?

12 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Then I will have to

14 shorten what I want to say, including the documents, because they require

15 a great deal more time.

16 I should like to mention the bombing of the prison in Istok

17 because I have been -- I heard here when the indictment was read out

18 that it was said that the Serb soldiers threw hand grenades and that that

19 was the way that they destroyed that particular prison at Istok, in

20 Kosovo.

21 That particular prison was bombed on the 19th and 21st of May, but

22 I'll skip those photographs. I'll just show you the bare necessities.

23 But in this unfortunate indictment, it says that the Serb policemen used

24 hand grenades, whereas you're going to see a crater made in the reinforced

25 concrete, a crater big enough for a whole train column to pass through,

1 and that the crater had indented the reinforced concrete. And you'll be

2 able to see the victims. Many of the prisoners were killed; 95 prisoners

3 were killed in fact, and 196 detainees were injured.

4 Could you just show these two pieces of paper, these sets of

5 photographs. I won't be showing the others. And while you're doing that,

6 let me say that throughout the aggression the bridges were bombed, Zezelj

7 Bridge on the Danube at Novi Sad was bombed again, the Ostruznica Bridge.

8 Take a look at this photograph and the crater up there. That is

9 where the projectile made a direct hit, hitting the prison. That is just

10 one photograph.

11 Please proceed to the next one. And let anybody say that that

12 damage and demolition was caused by a hand grenade.

13 This is a pavilion where a number of prisoners were killed.

14 Next, please. This is the hallway, the corridor.

15 Next, please. These are the corpses in one of the prison cells.

16 Corpses after the bombing. You can see what it looks like. Have a look

17 here. And whether that kind of destruction can be caused by a mere hand

18 bomb, hand grenade.

19 Look at these bodies under the rubble.

20 Next, please. This is what the bombing looked like.

21 The bombing of bridges continued. The bridge at Ostruznica. I am

22 not going to show you any more photographs.

23 The Sarajevo Bridge in Grdulicka Klisura. The railway and

24 motorway bridge at the village of Toplica. You can see dead people who

25 were killed on the bridge.

1 On the 1st of May, at 1340 hours, on the main road running from

2 Pristina to Nis, at the village of Luzane, the Podujevo municipality in

3 Kosovo and Metohija by the bridge on the Lab River, that was also

4 targeted. They targeted a bus full of passengers, amongst whom many women

5 and children. The bus was hit with a direct hit and cut in two. And in

6 the bus, killed on the spot, were 39 passengers and 13 -- which means that

7 the bus was packed jammed full. The other 13 received serious injuries

8 and some succumbed to them. I can't just skip over that.

9 The bus that was targeted by NATO, killing so many civilians. And

10 already on the 3rd of May -- that was on the 1st of May, whereas on the

11 3rd of May, at Savine Vode, at 1145 to 1330 hours, missiles and cluster

12 bombs were used to target the Pec-Kula-Rozaje regional road. And another

13 bus, once again pack jammed with passenger, running between Djakovica and

14 Podgorica. The passengers were killed in that incident as well.

15 A number of people were killed, a few people were wounded, but you

16 can imagine the state those wounded people were in. But I'm going to

17 cross that out. I'm not going to show you that. I don't want to take up

18 too much time.

19 Let me just show you a few characteristic photographs. I have a

20 set of photographs showing the casualties, the victims. Two busloads in

21 the space of three days or, rather, on the 1st and the 3rd of May in

22 Kosovo and Metohija, which were targeted by NATO, all the civilians and

23 practically everybody else killed, massacred. Altogether over 100

24 people.

25 There you have them. You needn't show the photographs that have

1 been crossed out because those pictures were taken from far off. Give the

2 close-up ones.

3 This is part of the bus that was destroyed on the bridge.

4 Next, please. Next, please. Next, please. These are the

5 corpses, the carbonised corpses scattered about round the bus that in the

6 hit was scattered to parts around the bridge. The corpses that are still

7 burning. Next, please. Carbonised bodies. Next, please. Once again,

8 carbonised bodies.

9 Next, please. Scattered around the road bodily remains. A male

10 body. Next, please. That was the bus conductor. Next, please. And a

11 little girl that was killed.

12 This woman was identified. Her name was Faza Andonovic.

13 Next, please. An unidentified body here, once again from the

14 bus.

15 Next, please. This is a passenger vehicle in the vicinity of

16 where the people were killed, and the passengers in this vehicle were

17 killed too. The car happened to be nearby. The number plates were from

18 Pec. Milovan Ceklic, he was killed.

19 Next, please. This is his daughter. Milijana was her name.

20 Next, please. That's all.

21 The railway bridge was destroyed between Belgrade and Bucarest

22 near Vrsac. I won't be showing you any more pictures of bridges. The

23 railway ridge at Bogutovac, the railway bridge running from Kraljevo to

24 Kosovo Polje. The road running from Kraljevo to Kosovo Polje. The

25 railway line -- the railway bridge on the railway line across the Ibar

1 River, the bridge across the Niseva River Nis and Velika Morava near

2 Mijatovac. Here you have on the destroyed bridge a car belonging to the

3 Romanian Red Cross with the Red Cross emblem on its roof, both on its roof

4 and both in the front of the vehicle. So two Red Crosses there.

5 The PTT post office building Uzice. The bridge at Velka Plana.

6 The bypass around Cacak. The corpses of passengers who happened to be on

7 the -- their journey. The bridge on the River Lim. On the 11th of May,

8 1999, another attack on at the very Hungarian border, Horgos, that is to

9 say the most northerly part and the bridge in Kokin Brod. The bridge in

10 Murin, the bridge in Vrbas. The overpass in Visoko near Kursumlija, at

11 the Truparske Sume area. The bridge at Vladicin Han on the 18th of May.

12 The bridge across the Jasenica River in Velika Plana near Belgrade.

13 The Cekavica bridge at the Jablanica River. The Djenova bridge

14 once again on the Jablanica River. The corpses lie beside the roadside

15 next to the bridges that were targeted, that were hit.

16 On the 30th of May, at 1305 hours and at 1315 hours in Varin the

17 bridge across the Velika Morava River was hit at a religious holiday when

18 there were several thousand people on the bridge and several hundred

19 civilians on the bridge itself who were easily visible at 1305 hours in

20 the daytime, during the day on that day. The people were killed. You can

21 see the bodies of the victims. Many victims. Just take a look at these

22 corpses.

23 One hour later from the time of the hit they came again to target

24 again when they knew that the first aid teams were on the bridge giving

25 first aid assistance to the casualties, and they came back to kill even

1 more people. Amongst those people were -- was a girl. Her name was Sanja

2 Milenkovic. She was a mathematical genius. She was born in 1983. And we

3 have a school certificate of hers here, a school report.

4 On 29th of May, 1999. The Television Novi Sad building was

5 destroyed and completely demolished. I'm not going to show you

6 photographs because you have shortened my time, the time I have at my

7 disposal.

8 The bombing between the 1st and 2nd of May took place of the water

9 supply system without -- which left a large part of the town of Pristina

10 without water. Most of Pristina was left with its water supply cut off.

11 And then we had the bombing of all the infrastructure. The

12 electric power facilities on the Nikola Tesla in Obrenovac electric power

13 plant, thermal power plant. Then we have the bombing of the factory of

14 Cer, Cacak. I don't have enough time to show you all those photographs of

15 the complete destruction and demolition. It was one of the largest

16 factories in Serbia, giving a livelihood to most of the citizens in

17 Cacak. Another case in point was the Prva Iska factory near Belgrade, the

18 mining and smelting basin of Bor, the sole major producer of copper in

19 Europe. That was bombed too, along with the complex of factories, the

20 Krusik in Valjevo on the 18th of May. A repeated bombing. You can see

21 the factories that were destroyed and razed to the ground. Vinacka Morava

22 in Gnjilane. That was on the 19th of May.

23 And we see the corpses of Sabija Cijan, for example from Binacka

24 Morava. Dzevat Ademi from Gnjilane, and so-and-so forth. The Mladost

25 company in Gnjilane. Once again dead bodies, both male and female. I

1 would say more female ones, actually.

2 Borovo Boreli [phoen] and Sombor on the 25th -- 21st of May. The

3 thermoelectric power plant Veliki Crnjenik at Lazarevac. I'm not going to

4 show those photographs either. The thermoelectric power plant Urbica and

5 at Obrenovac. I'm not going to show those photos either. The

6 Elektroindustriaja facilities in Nis and the Bezanijska Kosa. It's an

7 entire field the size of several football fields and Vojvodina gets its

8 electricity from there as well as the Bezanijska Kosa electric power

9 plant, which is instrumental for electricity in Belgrade. And when

10 there's no electricity in Belgrade, there's no water, there's no heating,

11 there's nothing which electricity enables us to have.

12 The centres in Sombor. All the facilities ranging from hospitals,

13 maternity wards, the water facilities and resources, passenger buses,

14 trains, all prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and Protocols and all the

15 other norms of international law; that is to say, war crimes, in fact,

16 crimes of genocide, and crimes against humanity.

17 The warehouses of fuel, all of them were bombed and destroyed, and

18 most of them created a real ecological catastrophe. This is an

19 incomparably greater damage, ecologically speaking. Much great ecological

20 damage was done to nature and the ecology, more than the factories

21 themselves and the material damage that this caused.

22 I have set this out in a very restrictive -- I have been selective

23 and had to move fast with respect to the civilian facilities destroyed in

24 the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia in which all these crimes were

25 committed. All the crimes that I mentioned a moment ago were committed.

1 Now, I'm asking you, what kind of Tribunal can you talk about if

2 you refuse to try people for all these crimes, the crimes committed by the

3 leaders and governments and army of the NATO pact countries that I

4 enumerated, that I quoted, on the territory of Yugoslavia. And you call

5 yourself a war crimes Tribunal for crimes committed on the territory of

6 Yugoslavia. Not even in the Security Council Resolution which set you up,

7 although it was unlawful in taking that Resolution, but not even in that

8 Resolution with respect to crimes in Yugoslavia are the Americans, French,

9 or anybody else exempt. And nowhere is it written that those are the

10 crimes that should be tried in Yugoslavia. And not only the ones that you

11 say were committed by the Serbs.

12 So you yourselves have interpreted your competencies and

13 authorities in terms of reference that you -- that some perpetrators of

14 crimes were exempt, but that you try only those who defend themselves from

15 attackers in their homes, and you refuse to consider those attackers as

16 being responsible and the true perpetrators. You keep repeating the fact

17 that this is a trial of the side that defended herself -- itself. And

18 thus you have defined yourself as the exponents of the side that

19 perpetrated the crimes and as accomplices in crimes against somebody who

20 defended themselves on their own territory.

21 You say that you are not trying Yugoslavia or Serbia but that you

22 are trying me personally. However, I have put forward a series of

23 arguments which you yourselves have put forward here. You have said that

24 you are going to try everyone, but you tell me I am responsible by virtue

25 of a chain of command, a command responsibility that exists in no laws.

1 That means that the armed forces of Yugoslavia whom I commanded committed

2 a crime in defending their country, in defending their people. So you are

3 actually holding a trial of a whole country here, a country that stood up

4 in defence against its attackers.

5 You are confronted with obvious forgeries here. You saw

6 everything that was on the tape played yesterday. You see that the

7 Prosecutor abides by Walker's lies which were refused. And as the

8 Prosecutor is well aware of the truth because you have seen the statement

9 given by the forensic experts from Finland, for example, Mr. [sic] Ranta.

10 She said, rather, that she handed in a report of her findings to the

11 Prosecutor, which means that the false indictment has been rigged and that

12 the truth has been hidden on purpose.

13 Not only that. Over the past two days, the Prosecution has shown

14 pictures from a camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but they are false images. In

15 view of the fact that the Prosecutor showed these images, I have a

16 videotape which shows that this is -- this lie is in the functions of an

17 anti-Serb propaganda, that it is rigged, that it has been mounted.

18 I don't want to enter into the question of this camp in Bosnia,

19 but I do want to say that these are false television programmes in order

20 to bear out this anti-Serb policy.

21 Now, if I think that I have enough time to play my own video

22 cassette, then you will be able to see that these pictures that we saw and

23 that the Prosecutor showed false images and photographs which have gone

24 all round the world to Satanise the Serb people because this is -- what

25 we're dealing with here is an English, let's say, journalist, if we can

1 call her that, a journalist who came to a collection centre for refugees

2 who were free. They could move around neighbouring villages, buy their

3 own food, and came there to seek refuge from the war, destructions of

4 war. And then she entered this collection centre which is -- has a wire

5 mesh around it because it was a warehouse. And then it was from this

6 warehouse that she filmed inside and talked to the detainees, and she

7 wanted to make it appear as if they were behind this wire mesh.

8 And this is a subject that was raised by the public. I will, if

9 time allows, show this videotape. If I don't have enough time, I shall

10 just hand it over to the public and then the public can become acquainted

11 with it and all the falsities. Let alone the Racak ones and the refugees

12 at Kosovo and Metohija which we have alleged to be settled. There was a

13 negligible amount of refugees there, below 1 per cent, 0-point-something

14 per cent, and so on and so forth, without enumerating all the forgeries

15 that have been used.

16 Now I'm asking the public: If the Prosecutor knows that something

17 has been rigged and is false but nevertheless uses it, can he be -- can

18 he do his duty? Judge May, I'm sure you know the British court's ruling

19 that if a Prosecutor is not executing his business properly, he must be

20 stopped from continuing it, and the abuse of due process.

21 We have been talking about justice and fairness, as far as the UN

22 is concerned, concerning the function of the Prosecutor, but let us not go

23 into that because these categories are thousands of miles away from all of

24 this. I'm just talking about plain forgeries here.

25 Of course, you also know about rulings concerning abuse of due

1 process if habeas corpus is not taken into account. I'm really surprised

2 that even the amici curiae did not react to the fact that habeas corpus

3 was not dealt with. You appointed them yourself, and they, as lawyers,

4 should know what kind of weight this kind of legal argument carries.

5 I'm addressing the public here and I'm calling upon the

6 professional public to react according to their professional conscience.

7 A lawyer does not have the right to remain silent before such drastic

8 examples of abuse of proceedings and violations of the law. I am

9 expecting you to state what you have to state in relation to the abuse

10 committed by the Prosecutor and all of this in the public eye.

11 As for these false accusations and my arguments, first and

12 foremost, as far as the truth is concerned, before the world public, I

13 should indeed avail myself of my right to cross-examine and examine

14 witnesses of all these events in view of the peace process, in view of the

15 decisions, in view of the policies and realisation of these policies,

16 notably in relation to crimes.

17 I'm going to call witnesses here and I want it to be possible for

18 me to question Clinton and Albright and Kinkel and Schroeder and Kohl and

19 Dini and Vollebaek and Kofi Annan and Sharping and Dole and the American

20 team at the Dayton Accords, and all those who were present during the

21 signing of the Paris Agreement, that is to say, everybody except for Blair

22 and Schroeder whom I did not talk to. All the rest I talked to

23 personally. I had personal contacts with all of them, of course official

24 contacts, and I discussed these matters that are at stake with them and

25 all of this is related to this.

1 As for this list of foreign witnesses, I'm going to submit this

2 through my associates when I finally compile this list. As for the list

3 of witnesses from home, I'm going to submit that when the Prosecutor takes

4 care of his business.

5 According to what you did in terms of this false accusation and

6 indictment put forth by the OTP, it seems that you are charging me with so

7 many crimes, so in addition to explaining the causes and consequences of

8 the crimes committed over my country and my people, it will be important

9 to clarify an answer to a question: How come I enjoyed general support in

10 1995, 1997 and 1998, and so on? And even now, after a decade, I am

11 charged with genocide no less in 1991, 1992, 1993, whatever, but at any

12 rate before these negotiations that were being held. And all these

13 political and material circumstances have to be taken into account.

14 I am going to indicate some more of them now and I will deal with

15 others later. Now I'm going to speak about the crimes of genocide in

16 Kosovo, committed after the security mission came; namely, KFOR, and also

17 the civilian UNMIK mission of the United Nations, or rather, after the

18 10th of June, 1999.

19 Grave crimes were committed there against humanity, the crime of

20 genocide and other war crimes. And also there is evidence of that, of

21 direct cooperation in the commission of these crimes between the occupying

22 troops - that's what they turned into - from being the Protection Force of

23 the UN, they, on the one hand, and on the other hand the KLA that

24 continued to loot, plunder, kill everybody and everything that was not

25 Albanian in Kosovo including part of the Albanians themselves.

1 Resolution 1244 from 1999 of the Security Council of the UN makes

2 it incumbent upon this mission to provide peace and security for all of

3 the inhabitants of Kosovo. However, facts have shown that KFOR did not

4 carry out its mission. These countries, through their contingents in

5 Kosovo in fact control certain sectors of Kosovo, but they are supposed to

6 provide basic protection to ethnic and religious communities in Kosovo.

7 And they are duty-bound to do that on the basis of various international

8 covenants including conventions on the prevention on any kind of

9 discrimination. They have not done this.

10 The result of their presence is 3.000, that is to say, under their

11 protection, 3.000 killed Serbs. Mostly Serbs, but other non-Albanian

12 citizens as well. Even some Albanian citizens; 2.500 were kidnapped, and

13 nothing is known about 1.300 of them. And their families are afraid that

14 they have been killed too. Most of them are Serbs. Several tens of

15 thousands of houses were burned, primarily Serb houses. Private and

16 socially owned property was taken away by force. Crimes were committed.

17 And over 360.000 Serbs and other non-Albanians were expelled and they were

18 under the protection of the United Nations. 360.000, including, for

19 example, 10.000 Croats from Janjevo, in Vitina, where they had lived

20 primarily. And then also churches were razed to the ground and holy

21 places of the Serbs.

22 We have seen a countless number of times on CNN - I'm not

23 criticising this - but a countless number of times we saw the Taliban

24 destroying the Buddha statue in Afghanistan. That is vandalism, no

25 doubt. However, under the protection of the United Nations, in the

1 presence of their troops, 107 churches were destroyed in Kosovo and

2 Mehotija. I did not see a single one of them. Not to mention abuse of

3 the kind that was committed.

4 The gravest crimes committed by Albanian terrorists occurred with

5 the benevolent attitude of KFOR, and until now, practically no

6 perpetrators of crimes over Serbs and other non-Albanians were found. For

7 example, in Ugljari, KFOR hid the massacred bodies of Serbs for months,

8 and in this way they were accomplices in these crimes. And also when the

9 relay station in Mokra Gora was destroyed, they were also involved in this

10 crime. All the crimes from the 10th of June were committed in the

11 presence of UN forces.

12 Where is the responsibility there? Do you apply the same rule to

13 them, that they knew or had reason to know? Who is going to convince

14 anyone that somebody did not know what was happening 100 metres away from

15 their base? But I'll get to that later.

16 Almost not a single provision of Resolution 1244 of the Security

17 Council of the UN was carried out. The number of killed Serbs went up day

18 after day, and the number of crimes as well. Only the day before

19 yesterday, bombs and hand grenades were thrown in a village near Kosovska

20 Kamenica. I have this written down and I'll get to that later. This

21 shows that this chain of crimes has not been cut off yet. It is February

22 2002 now and they have been there since the 10th of June, 1999.

23 Plunder, looting, terror, torchings, taking property to Albania,

24 all of that continues. Instead of protecting borders, KFOR allowed

25 several hundreds of thousands of citizens of Albania and Macedonia to

1 enter Kosmet. After that it is quite clear -- I realise I have to speak

2 slower for the interpreters. On the other hand, my time is so short.

3 I'll try to strike a balance between the two.

4 After everything, it is quite clear that the objective of NATO

5 aggression against Yugoslavia is the realisation of strategic objectives

6 of certain states which has nothing to do with the protection of human

7 rights; all of this is done at the expense of the gravest possible

8 violations of human rights. These states formed, financed, coordinated

9 and supported, until the present day, Albanian terrorist groups, and they

10 started doing that before 1998 in order to create a reason for

11 aggression.

12 Instead of manning further the verification commission of the OSCE

13 in Kosovo on the basis of the agreement reached between Yugoslavia and the

14 OSCE on the 16th of April, up to the number of 2.000 staff numbers, that

15 was supposed to be the largest OSCE mission, in Rambouillet, in Clabere

16 [phoen], they were supposed to influence the Albanian representatives that

17 would be conducive to a reasonable agreement.

18 Yesterday I spoke to you about this, what the only difference

19 was. We insisted that also this should be based upon the principle of

20 equality of all rights of all citizens and of all ethnic communities. It

21 seems to me that this is a well-known thing throughout the world, that

22 that is the best kind of solution for such a population pattern.

23 During the aggression, in the clashes between these terrorist

24 groups and the army of Yugoslavia, they intervened on the side of these

25 terrorist groups and they were bombing the units of the Yugoslav army

1 while they were fighting these terrorist groups. They promoted these

2 people into some kind of new forces of law and order in Kosovo. And

3 finally, they have not done a thing to prevent these same groups in the

4 commission of new crimes.

5 I am not going to read further figures concerning the number of

6 persons killed. I have already said that 3.000 persons were killed. I'm

7 not going to read lists and other pieces of information about those who

8 were wounded, injured, beaten up, all of this while they were enjoying UN

9 protection. Also, I'm not going to read the number of persons kidnapped,

10 abducted. I have already said that nothing is known of the fate of 1.300

11 people.

12 After all, in Kosovo, the rights of the UN have been usurped by

13 these forces just like these forces and these troops have usurped the UN

14 organisation as such when this court was established.

15 I'm not going to talk about 2 million destroyed books written by

16 Yugoslav and other authors; tens of thousands of icons and other holy

17 objects that were destroyed in Kosovo; entire factories that were

18 transferred to Albania and thrown into scrap yards.

19 Between 250.000 to 300.000 citizens of Albania and Macedonia

20 crossed the border, and all of this in the presence of the heavily armed

21 military and police.

22 We did not have law and order and peace in Kosovo, and when the

23 terrorist activity was at its height in 1998, we had that. This was

24 checked by the verifiers; this was checked by the Holbrooke mission. When

25 we increased the number of police because of terrorism, this number

1 reached 10.024. With 10.000 policemen, nothing of this could have

2 happened; with the presence of 50.000 UN troops, the gravest of crimes are

3 being committed.

4 The crime against the Serbs was not stopped. The latest

5 information I have deals with the 13th of February, when hand grenades

6 were thrown at Serbs in the village of Kolatec, near Kosovska Kamenica.

7 Already on the 12th of June, so that is the day after this

8 responsibility for the safety and security of all the citizens of Kosovo

9 and Metohija was taken over, as the Resolution says, automatic gunfire was

10 opened against the Belacevac workers.

11 On the 12th of June, Dobnice and Novo Selo were attacked, in the

12 municipality of Prizren, by Albanian terrorists. On the 13th of June,

13 they attacked Serb houses in old Kacanik. On the 13th of June, they

14 opened fire against members of the police who were in the village of

15 Ljubis, in the municipality of Orahovac, and the village of Studencani,

16 the municipality of Suva Reka.

17 On the 13th of June, in the villages of Gotovosa and Drajkovac, in

18 the municipality of Strbce, they opened fire from automatic rifles and

19 mortars against the villagers from this village.

20 On the 14th of June, in Zaskok, in the municipality of Urosevac,

21 they shot at a column of refugees. I should deal with this briefly in

22 order to save the time that I have and that you have made shorter for me,

23 but I hope that I will be able make all of those points that are

24 sufficient to illustrate all of the things that are taking place under the

25 protection of the UN in Kosovo.

1 On the 15th of June, in Urosevac, they barged into factories and

2 other institutions.

3 On the 17th of June, in Pristina, they carried out an armed attack

4 against a refugee camp.

5 On the 20th, from the territory of Albania, they attacked the

6 villages in the municipality of Dragas. Dragas is an area that is

7 populated by Muslims, by the Gorani. But Albanian terrorists cannot

8 tolerate anyone who is not an Albanian.

9 On the 28th of June, in the village of Miloseve, the municipality

10 of Pristina, again an armed attack on Serb houses, including the throwing

11 of hand grenades and bursts of gunfire from automatic rifles.

12 In June and July 1999, the territories of Gnjilane and Kosovska

13 Kamenica, major forces of the KLA were set up with about 1.000 terrorists

14 who had come from Albania. Every day, from automatic rifles and hand-held

15 rocket launchers and mortars, they opened fire every day, every day in the

16 months of June and July against Ranilo, Pasjane, Odovce, Rajanovci, Bosje,

17 in order to speed up the expulsion of the non-Albanian population, and all

18 of this permanently, day in, day out, with the presence of UN troops.

19 On the 13th of July, in the village of Movila, with bombs and

20 mortars and Molotov cocktails, they attacked Serb homes. I cannot read

21 out all the data because it is taking up my time. But I will say that

22 during the attack on the Bocic house, six members of his household were

23 tied up, the house locked and the house set on fire with a Molotov

24 cocktail.

25 On the 14th, they forced workers in Prileznica out of their

1 workplaces. On the 14th, they threw a grenade at a Serb house in

2 Gnjilane.

3 On the 15th of July, in Urosevac, they blew up a cafe called

4 Serbia.

5 On the 18th of July, in the area of Vitina, they carried out a

6 terrorist attack and threw hand grenades and opened fire on an entire

7 refugee column of Serbs. And at least the column should have been

8 protected by KFOR, at least the moving columns that were leaving Kosovo.

9 On the 25th of July, Albanian terrorists shelled Vrbovac inhabited

10 exclusively by Serbs in Vitovo municipality. I will skip over many of

11 these incidents.

12 On the 10th of August, in Kosovska Mitrovica, two projectiles were

13 fired at the northern part of this city inhabited by Serbs, hit buildings,

14 and attempted to enter them, and only then, after this act of violence,

15 did KFOR stop them from breaking in and causing even greater bloodshed,

16 because they saw that they wouldn't be able to do it easily.

17 On the 26th of August, in the village of Pones, in Gnjilane

18 municipality, again automatic fire was opened on citizens and Serbs as

19 they were working the fields.

20 I shall leave out things because of the time, many things.

21 On the 16th of September, in Lipljan, hand grenades were thrown at

22 Serb family homes in the immediate vicinity of the KFOR headquarters.

23 On the 22nd of September, in the village of Kmetovci, in Gnjilane,

24 they attacked with automatic rifle fire vehicles that were moving and they

25 killed a father and son that were in the vehicle.

1 On the 25th of September, in the village of Svinjare, Albanian

2 terrorists and their commanders broke in and opened fire, bursts of fire

3 in the village. And when the citizens reported this to KFOR, who must

4 have heard it because one can hear rifle fire, their patrol, instead of

5 arresting them, made it possible for the terrorists to leave.

6 On the 25th of September, bursts of fire against the Pasjane

7 village in Gnjilane municipality, once reported to KFOR, the next day they

8 intervened and they accused a Serb, Milorad Krstic, of opening fire and

9 searched his house, claiming that he was concealing weapons that had been

10 used in the attack.

11 There are more killings here that were committed. Opening fire on

12 passenger vehicles of Serbs, throwing of hand grenades, stoning a group

13 of, for instance, 154 Serb citizens, on the 27th of October, 1999, in

14 Djakovica, men, women, and children.

15 On the 28th of November, in Gnjilane, two groups of 1.000

16 extremists each in Stojana Trojica Street, inhabited exclusively by Serbs,

17 demolished 50 Serb houses. Gnjilane, in Kosovo terms, is a large town and

18 there is a KFOR headquarters there. And to demolish 50 houses in their

19 presence?

20 On the 29th of July, 1999, in Donja Dubica, 100 metres from the

21 administrative border of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija,

22 they fired at and killed a citizen by the name of Dejan Djordjevic.

23 On the 22nd of July, in Prizren, they attacked Muslims, and when

24 KFOR members arrived on the spot, they could not guarantee their safety

25 and they had to leave Prizren. And they had set fire to their house,

1 seized the vehicle of that Muslim family, money, et cetera.

2 On the 28th of July, with sticks and axes they took out Dzafer

3 Selimovski and Skender Arif, Mehmeti Ruzdi, Albanians and Muslims,

4 therefore. They beat them up and plundered them.

5 On the 15th of August, an armed attack on the Dzum in Prizren

6 municipality, inhabited by Albanians of Roman Catholic faith who were

7 celebrating a religious holiday on that day. After that the inhabitants

8 of the village of Dzum left en masse.

9 At the end of September 1999, masked Albanian terrorists broke

10 into Semso Mucevic's house, also a Muslim as you can judge by the name.

11 They beat him and his wife up and stole their property.

12 In September 1999, they set fire to the shop of Salija and Ahmet

13 Sarda, also Muslims.

14 In mid-October 1999, the villages of Lepnica and Sasovci, in

15 Vitina municipality, of Croat ethnicity, were threatened to be killed if

16 they did not move out within ten days. After that the remaining 300 Croat

17 villagers, led by the priest Nikola Duckic, of Roman Catholic faith,

18 decided to move out of Kosovo province.

19 On the 1st and 2nd of November in Gnjilane they threw five

20 grenades at apartments of non-Albanians but Muslims, all of them Muslims.

21 On the 3rd of December in the village of Orasje, Pec municipality,

22 they entered a part of the village inhabited by members of the Romany

23 ethnic minority, beat them all up and set their houses on fire.

24 On the 20th of December, in the village of Dobrocane, Gnjilane,

25 under constant threat they forced out all Romany families.

1 In mid-December 1999, also in Gnjilane, in the Presoevo Street,

2 they threw hand grenades at Romany houses, and at the beginning of

3 December, they also forced out Romanies and Muslims from the village of

4 Dragasa.

5 Because of my considerable isolation, I am not able to get hold of

6 other data, but there's obvious collaboration in a common criminal effort

7 of the KFOR and the terrorists. I think what I will now add will be

8 sufficient and which you probably don't know. I draw the attention of the

9 public to this information, too, which shows that the Albanian terrorists

10 didn't have an easy time to force out 360.000 people, and what -- all the

11 other things they had to do in their savage and criminal behaviour with

12 the permission of the KFOR and the UN police, UNMIK. And I don't know

13 where the public opinion that is listening to this can believe that on

14 such a small area as Kosovo is 50.000 troops doesn't know nor has reason

15 to know of all these things that are happening.

16 I shall read out only the drastic examples of crimes committed, of

17 plunder, torching, and killing to force them out. If they had forced them

18 out in the most decent way, it would have been a crime. If 1 per cent of

19 this had been done while we were in power there, that would have been a

20 crime that would have been ringing all over the world. This was done in

21 the presence of 50.000 troops of the UN and the UN mission in Kosovo and

22 Metohija, and this is something that the whole world should know.

23 Between the 12th and the 17th in the village of Orlane and

24 Podujev, they plundered, set fire to a house and all farming facilities of

25 peasants. On the 19th, they broke into the Suncani Breg settlement, set

1 fire to apartments in several apartment blocks.

2 On the 19th in the village of Sleovo, they plundered and set fire

3 to Serb houses and forced the inhabitants to move out.

4 On the 20th, they set fire to virtually all Serb houses in the

5 municipalities of Istok and Vucitrn.

6 I'm talking about the territories of four municipalities and

7 almost all Serb houses. I'm not talking of isolated cases.

8 On the 20th of June, in the settlement of Goles, Lipljan

9 municipality, they plundered and set fire to all Serb houses. On the 22nd

10 of June, in the village of Orlovic, Pristina municipality, Albanian

11 terrorists set fire to all Serb houses and forced the villagers from the

12 village in the presence of the United Nations and under the auspices of

13 the United Nations.

14 On the 22nd of June, in the villages of Nedokovac, Nevoljani, and

15 Vrbica, Vucitrn municipality, they plundered and torched all Serb houses

16 in the presence of the protective forces of the United Nations.

17 On the 24th of June, in the village of Zegare, Gnjilane

18 municipality, they set fire to all Serb houses. During June and the

19 beginning of July, 1999, they plundered and burned down all houses owned

20 by Serbs in the Prizren settlements of Dusanovo and Potkaljaj in the

21 presence of the UN.

22 On the 28th of June in Obilic, in the Subotic settlement, Qerim

23 Abazi's house was set on fire. And he was a member of the provisional

24 executive council president of the Democratic Party of Egyptians.

25 Under the auspices of the UN, at the beginning of June 1999, 22

1 houses were set on fire in the village of Kovatin [phoen] near Kosovska

2 Kamenica and many houses in the village of Lestari and Donji Sipastica.

3 Albanian terrorists, at that point in time and in the period I have

4 mentioned, forced out of this area the entire population of other ethnic

5 groups, Muslims, Turks, Romanies, Egyptians, Croats, all of them.

6 On the 3rd of July, in the village of Milosevo, in Pristina

7 municipality, a large number of houses out of a total of 100 that were

8 there, 50 Serb families were forced to move out on the spot. I will leave

9 out all the individual cases.

10 On the 11th of July, in the village of Strmac in Kosovska

11 Mitrovica, three Serb houses. On the 12th of July, four Serb houses in

12 the village of Gornji Livoc. Sometimes the number is reduced because

13 others were torched in the previous period.

14 On the 14th of July, in the territory of Kosovska Mitrovica

15 municipality, seven Serb houses under the auspices of the United Nations.

16 On the 15th of July, in the territory of Kosovska Mitrovica, they set fire

17 to, but of course previously looted, 35 houses. On the 16th of July, in

18 the territory of Kosovska Mitrovica municipality, again they plundered and

19 set fire to 62 Serb houses.

20 As I was saying, on the 15th, 35; on the 16th, 62. And Kosovska

21 Mitrovica is one of the largest towns in Kosovo and Metohija. There is a

22 marked presence of KFOR. Can anyone say that they did not know and did

23 not see 100 Serb houses being plundered and burned down in two days and

24 nobody batted an eyelid?

25 On the 16th of July, in Vucitrn municipality, eight houses. On

1 the 17th of July, in the villages of Lubisda and Muzevine, they set fire

2 to all Serb houses and 20 Romany houses in the village of Sinaje.

3 On the 19th of July, they set fire to seven Serb houses in the

4 territory of Kosovska Mitrovica and Vucitrn under the protection of the

5 UN. On the 21st of July, 12 houses in the Kosovska Mitrovica and Vucitrn

6 municipalities. I will not read out the names of the families.

7 On the 21st of July, in Vucitrn municipality, houses were burnt in

8 the village of Taradza. Again, I will not read out the list because my

9 time is limited.

10 On the 22nd of July, again under auspices of the UN in Kosovska

11 Mitrovica municipality, 26 houses.

12 If you were to add up the figures for Mitrovica only and only the

13 figures that I have given here before the cameras and the public, you

14 would see what was done in a single town under the protection of the

15 United Nations.

16 On the 23rd of July, they set fire to an entire Serb village

17 called Klobukar in the municipality of Kosovska Kamenica.

18 In the territory of Vitina municipality in the village of Zitinje,

19 Trpeza, Pozara, Novo Selo, Grnovo, Drobez, Kabas, and Binas, with mixed

20 populations, all the Serb houses were set on fire.

21 On the 28th of July, it was discovered that Albanian terrorists

22 had completely destroyed the villages of Rudnik and Donja Strmic in the

23 village of Suvo Grlo houses were plundered and demolished and burnt. And

24 in the village of Crkolez, only three houses.

25 On the 28th of July in Prizren, they set fire to six houses under

1 the protection of the UN. In the one-time Old Prizren inhabited by

2 members of three ethnic groups, members of Albanian gangs in Urosevac

3 plundered the apartments of all non-Albanians and after that set fire to

4 80 per cent of the houses, family houses.

5 Under the protection of the UN at the beginning of August in the

6 village of Muzicane, Stimlje municipality, they plundered and set fire to

7 all Serb houses. During July and the first half of August in Gnjilane,

8 they plundered and burnt a long list of houses that I have here which I

9 cannot read out because of limited time, but all the figures will be made

10 available to both you and the public.

11 On the 4th of August in Kosovo Polje in Braca Jankovic Street

12 number 26, the terrorists set fire to the houses of Djordje, Slavko, and

13 Goran Lakusic. In order to protect his family and property, Goran Lakusic

14 resisted the terrorists, upon which representatives of KFOR arrested him

15 and took him to prison in Gnjilane.

16 A very recognisable method. He's defending his home. He must be

17 guilty for KFOR sends him to prison. It applies universally.

18 During August 1999, in Ajvalija, Pristina municipality, they

19 plundered and set fire, under auspices of the UN, 12 houses. On the 30th

20 of August, in the village of Krpimej and Lausa, in Podujevo municipality,

21 they plundered and then set fire to all Serb houses.

22 I am leaving out the cases when five, six, or seven houses were

23 plundered or burnt, but I cannot leave out when all the houses or entire

24 villages were burned down under the auspices of the UN for which this

25 Tribunal does not consider to have jurisdiction even though it is the

1 territory of the former Yugoslavia.

2 On the 31st of August, all the houses in Kabas village, Vitina

3 municipality, were burnt down.

4 Furthermore, in the presence of KFOR, Albanian terrorists threw a

5 grenade at a business premises. When the Serb resisted, KFOR members

6 arrested him and his three sons and took him to the village Trstenik and

7 held him in detention there for a week.

8 I shall leave out all the facts and figures about the enormous

9 number of forcible expulsions because particularly in urban environments

10 and particularly in Pristina, people were looted and thrown out of their

11 apartments for them to move into them. So if they needed apartments to

12 move into, they wouldn't set fire to them. They kept that property for

13 themselves.

14 And there is a typical example in Pristina, in the Suncani Breg

15 district, which are elite areas. In block 2, five Serb families were

16 thrown out by the Albanian terrorists, and KFOR had on the previous day

17 searched their houses for weapons so that they couldn't resist. So they

18 said to them, "Look, we've searched them. You can freely move into those

19 apartments."

20 So endless lootings, countless forcible expulsions.

21 In July, on the 11th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 19th, and the 20th, 21st,

22 and 22nd, in Pristina, in Mitrovica, in Vucitrn, and in Gnjilane, Serbs

23 were en masse thrown out of their houses, looted, and their houses moved

24 into by Albanians. The lists that are still not complete will be made

25 available to you and the public. Countless numbers of killings, plunders,

1 and forcible expulsions. So far they have set fire, plundered, and

2 illegally seized more than 50.000 Serb houses and apartments under the

3 protection of the UN, KFOR and UNMIK.

4 I will leave out acts of sabotage, the destruction of the Kosovo

5 Polje-Kosovska Mitrovica railway, the fire in the TV Pristina building to

6 prevent Serbs from coming to working there. I had photographs here, but I

7 don't have time to show them because it is more important for me to say

8 certain things than to show them.

9 But please show just these two where in the presence of KFOR Serb

10 houses are burning, and in the presence of KFOR Serb villages are

11 burning. Just these two. And then let my associates distribute these

12 others to the public information media, as I don't have a chance to show

13 them here because I have not been given enough time for that. Let them be

14 shown by those who have the courage to show the victims -- the crimes

15 committed against the Serbs.

16 This is a Serb village on fire. And here you see Serb houses

17 burning in the presence of KFOR members.

18 Because of the time, I cannot speak in detail about the

19 destruction of Serb churches, but since the arrival of the KFOR mission --

20 a church is usually a big building. A church is not usually a grain that

21 is invisible or inconspicuous. A church is usually located in the most

22 conspicuous place in a town or village. It can always be visible from

23 several hundred metres away. So it is impossible for KFOR and UNMIK not

24 to have seen all this.

25 And instead of my explanation, I should like to give you as a

1 present a book issued by the Serbian Orthodox Church, which contains a

2 list of 107 Serb churches destroyed and devastated under the auspices of

3 the United Nations. Annexed to the name of each of the churches, the

4 Orthodox has placed the flag of the country within whose area of

5 responsibility the church was destroyed.

6 Many churches date back to the thirteenth and fourteenth century.

7 They were a great cultural treasure. Perhaps there are little other areas

8 in Europe where there were so many Christian churches. There were more

9 than 1.400 in Kosovo and Metohija, including the Pec Patriarchate, the

10 Base of the Serbian Patriarch.

11 I will not read out the names of the churches, but you will see

12 what the ruins look like. I also had photographs to show what the

13 churches looked like before and what they look like now; a heap of

14 rubble.

15 But if anyone can explain to world public opinion that it was by

16 accident that in the presence of 50.000 international troops someone can

17 destroy 107 churches in such a short period of time and destroy many of

18 them which are part of the world cultural heritage, that goes beyond the

19 scope of reason and understanding of any normal human being.

20 That is why I have said that as CNN can show us a thousand times,

21 I personally have seen at least 50 times the blowing up of the Buddhas in

22 Afghanistan to show what savagery was being done. Let them tell us the

23 kind of savages that did this and whether any of this they explained

24 anywhere near in such detail. And perhaps the Prosecutor, too, who

25 ridicules the Battle of Kosovo and St. Vitus Day can read out and find out

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1 what it was all about, that the battle of Kosovo was for Serbia and for

2 Europe some 613 or 64 years ago and what it meant.

3 However, from this whole overview, it is obvious that this

4 extensive crime that is ongoing and that this is criminal association of

5 the powers who committed the aggression on Yugoslavia together with

6 terrorist killers and the drug Mafia of Kosovo Albanians who today are

7 killing not only Serbs and also Albanians. Maybe you don't have the facts

8 and figures about it and are not interested in it, but this same killer,

9 Hasim Taci, whose nickname which was given to him by his friends, not by

10 Serbs, a "snake" because he poisoned his enemies, this same killer, Hasim

11 Taci, and a collaborator of NATO and Clark, it is not sure how many of

12 Rugova's associates he had killed. And he would have killed Rugova too if

13 he had not been protected by our police. And our police protected him and

14 nine members of his family and killed an assassinator who tried to jump

15 over the wall and kill him with a muffled weapon, and they were caught.

16 And I saved his life and nine-member family including a baby for whom

17 diapers were bought by our policemen. And I sent him to Italy. I called

18 up Alberto Dini by phone and asked him to send a plane in the middle of

19 the war and sent his family to Italy so that Hasim Taci should not succeed

20 in killing Rugova.

21 Well, of course, we know full well what your newspapers reported

22 about this, not to mention about the other slanderous statements which

23 don't differ anyway from those contained in this indictment.

24 So the instrumentalisation of criminals and terrorists in order to

25 destabilise Yugoslavia and then launch an aggression on my country can be

1 seen in all phases of 1998 and 1999 when the aggression finally took

2 place, and the continuation of a concerted, coordinated crime which has

3 gone on right up to the present day, the coordination -- the coordination

4 of the crime.

5 To illustrate that, could I just have this photograph shown and

6 enlarged, because you see people holding their hands clutched together

7 like this. They are Wesley Clark, Hasim Taci, Agim Ceku, killers,

8 murderers, and criminals. And this photograph symbolises the alliance of

9 an organisation commanded by Clark, Clark together with Albanian

10 terrorists in the terrain, an alliance, the consequences of which are

11 everything that I have read out to you so far.

12 Can we see it blown up, please? A larger -- zoom in on the

13 photograph, please. I think you can recognise this. Taci, Clark - there

14 they are - Agim Ceku [phoen], Michael Jackson who stated in the summer of

15 1999 that KLA had been disarmed, which was his responsibility, and then

16 that disarmed KLA continue to shoot and kill.

17 There you have it. I'm going to have that picture blown up,

18 because this is the only one I have. It has been taken out of a book,

19 actually of a little newspaper, but it does exist in colour, too. Because

20 this photograph indicates what an associated crime represents, a criminal

21 enterprise.

22 Right up until 1998, a full ten years from the time when Serbia

23 was accused for having taken over state competencies on its own territory

24 in Kosovo and Metohija, in those ten years, there were no killings

25 practically anywhere, or burnings or kidnappings or anything of that kind,

1 and nobody was imprisoned for political reasons. Even the Albanian

2 separatists and Albanian parties were free to work. All the Albanian

3 journalists were published on a regular basis. They had some 20

4 newspapers that could be bought on every corner, street corner.

5 And let me state once again not a single issue was ever banned.

6 Not a single copy, let alone issue.

7 The Albanian language stood side by side with the Serbian

8 language. It was the official language of the province. Documents were

9 published in two languages, both in Albanian and in Serbian. For all

10 Albanian children who attended state schools, tuition was in the Albanian

11 language. All the road signs and signs on public buildings and facilities

12 were bilingual. They were in Serbian and Albanian. Where in areas

13 inhabited by Turks, they were written up in Turkish and so on and so

14 forth. The Turkish, too, had their newspaper. But we're not talking

15 about the Turks. The Turks are the victims of the Albanian terrorism just

16 like the Serbs in Kosovo are.

17 The Albanians from Kosovo, like all other citizens of Yugoslavia,

18 were free to travel the world without any restrictions, including all

19 their leaders. This applied to all their leaders too. They were free to

20 travel around. Nothing ever happened to any one of them. And in the

21 middle of Belgrade they could hold press conferences and then cross the

22 street and go to have lunch in a hotel opposite, although previously they

23 had hurled slanders with respect to the state without any sanctions.

24 Nothing happened to them, and they were not even criticised for doing so.

25 There was no repression and everything was allowed except violence,

1 barring violence.

2 After Dayton, throughout the territory of Yugoslavia, there was an

3 easing of tensions. And on one occasion here, I mentioned that in my

4 assessment the nervousness and the trigger for the onslaught toward the

5 destabilisation of Yugoslavia began precisely after the summit of the

6 countries of South-eastern Europe on Crete, because that summit of

7 South-east European countries on Crete opened the road to cooperation and

8 without a doubt indicated that a peaceful solution would be applied to all

9 the problems that the Balkans were facing, and that we were having broad

10 prospects opened up in front of us, the prospects of successful cultural,

11 economic, and all other cooperation.

12 And it is at that conference that I had individual talks and

13 meetings with all the heads of state and government, amongst them the

14 Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano. We decided, we reached an agreement

15 to normalise relations fully, to abolish visas, to open our borders, to

16 develop trade, communication and tourism. And he himself spoke in front

17 of television cameras about this. He said it all, and this is all on the

18 record. You can read it. You can find it, records of that.

19 Unfortunately, he said that Kosovo was an internal affair of

20 Yugoslavia and this served as a trigger. It triggered off the following

21 developments: Several months later I got Kinkel's and Vedrine's letter

22 expressing their deep concern for the situation in Kosovo. I was very

23 surprised to receive the letter because there was nothing going on at

24 Kosovo at that time. On the contrary. We had talked about people going

25 back to school on a regular basis. We had signed an agreement, Rugova and

1 myself, calling for the Vincenzo Palia from the Vatican to help us in

2 reaching the agreement, and things were progressing towards peace, towards

3 understanding, towards a solution of the problems and without any violence

4 at all.

5 However, the German intelligence service -- and little is know

6 about that. Kinkel is well known as a Foreign Minister throughout the

7 world, but it is less known, less common knowledge that he is head of the

8 German intelligence service and that is the post that he fulfilled before

9 that. For any of those -- for those of you who don't know that, you

10 should know it. The German intelligence service rallied up criminals from

11 all over Europe. They were pushed to Kosovo. I don't think he'll deny

12 that, because too many people know that fact. So he's not going to bother

13 to deny it. Don't worry.

14 And all these people were sent to Kosovo to start killing. It was

15 then that terrorist activities exploded, and you will see what this looked

16 like, what happened. But before I go on to this area to show you what

17 happened, what it looked like, I'm going to read just a few quotations by

18 a German. So not a Serb. These quotations are by a German, Jirgen

19 Elzeger [phoen], the writer who wrote the book entitled "War Crimes: The

20 Deadly Lies of the German Government and Her Victims in the Kosovo

21 Conflict."

22 I just have brief excerpts from that book. Elzeger states the

23 following: A formula for all wars that happened in the former SFRY was

24 the same. And I said that to you yesterday. The main pyromaniac in

25 Yugoslavia, that fanned the flames of war in Yugoslavia, was Germany, and

1 the United States put out the fire using fuel. And it was the Germans

2 that recognised in 1991 the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. This is

3 no secret. Mitterrand complained that he was under pressure from Germany,

4 and he allowed the European Union to recognise Croatia and Slovenia ahead

5 of time, prematurely.

6 Against the will of the parties of NATO partners, the Germans

7 armed Croatian right up until 1994 to take over Bosnia-Herzegovina and

8 Krajina. Even the MIG war planes were used which belonged to the former

9 DDR. It was the Germans who Umelek [phoen] of the KLA in Kosovo helped

10 him at the beginning of the 1990s, sending him instructors from the BND

11 ranks by is the German intelligence ranks. The BND it's called. Or,

12 rather, when they allowed money to be collected in Germany, several

13 million marks were collected for these purposes. And they did that while

14 the USA, right up until March and April 1998, treated the KLA as a

15 terrorist organisation.

16 At the moment when the balance of forces changed along with

17 financial assistance from Germany and when this became a realistic factor

18 of power able to change the geographical map of the region, the USA began

19 to radically change its policy and to take the lead. After Croatia, along

20 with German assistance, successfully prepared and began to arm itself for

21 an attack on Krajina, Pentagon sounded the alarm and suddenly took the

22 lead, taking over the whole operation. That's what happened with the KLA,

23 too.

24 Yesterday's edition of the Washington Times includes David Keene's

25 quotation, President of the Association of American Conservatives, who

1 claims that Clinton was involved in the storm operation when the Serbs

2 were expulsed from Croatia and that this was done by the administration.

3 The observer has written about that. And there is much more proof about

4 that. And even Holbrooke was not careful enough and wrote about it in his

5 book.

6 And that's what happened with the KLA, too, with support from Iran

7 and Germany. In the summer it took control over a third of Kosovo, and

8 the Americans threw in their own terrorists. In this series of bloody

9 events, amongst the Albanian terrorists, the USA, between 1998 to 1999,

10 steered the influence -- steered influential people in the KLA.

11 I have a feeling that the interpreters are having a difficult

12 time.

13 So with their assistance in February 1999, Taci's faction was

14 victorious.

15 And as far as America is concerned, early enough on, says Elzeger

16 and I quote: " Sufficiently early on, an Albanian lobby existed in

17 American foreign policy rallied around Senator Dole, who already at that

18 time collaborated with the KLA while at the same time the American

19 government spoke about a terrorist organisation.

20 That's what happened a long time ago in Germany when the

21 Chancellor was Willie Brandt [phoen]. The BND, the German secret service,

22 gave support to its Yugoslav partner in persecuting Ustasha terrorists

23 while at the same time, as he said, the Bavarian wing the BND, under the

24 patronage of France reels of Strauss, protected these same Ustashas,

25 conspiring already at that time against the SFRY.

1 It goes on to say --

2 JUDGE MAY: Well, if you find a convenient moment, it's 1.00.

3 Would that be a convenient moment to stop or do you want to add something

4 else?

5 THE ACCUSED: No, no, no. If it is time to stop, we can stop. I

6 suppose we are continuing in one hour and a half.

7 JUDGE MAY: Half past two.

8 --- Luncheon recess taken at 1.00 p.m.

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1 --- On resuming at 2.30 p.m.

2 MR. KAY: Your Honours, before the accused resumes his opening

3 address to the Court, there's a matter we would like to raise on his

4 behalf at this stage and that concerns the length of time allotted to him

5 in his opening and about which he clearly feels aggrieved and has made a

6 number of remarks in his opening address. We would ask the Court,

7 although a deadline has been imposed until the first adjournment on Monday

8 morning, to perhaps consider the position that the accused is in by the

9 end of this afternoon and how he progresses through Monday before making a

10 final decision about the termination of the time allotted.

11 It's obviously an important issue for him in the presentation of

12 his defence. He's not aided by a support staff in court and that would

13 obviously have an effect on lengthening his address to the Court. And --

14 JUDGE MAY: How much time are you suggesting he should have?

15 MR. KAY: I think it's --

16 JUDGE MAY: Infinite?

17 MR. KAY: Not infinite, and I don't think the accused is asking

18 for infinite, but what he is asking for is that he be able to cover the

19 points that he seeks

20 [Trial Chamber confers]

21 JUDGE MAY: We'll look at it again on Monday.

22 MR. KAY: Much obliged.

23 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

24 THE ACCUSED: When can I consider then at when a time -- what

25 time is given to me?

1 JUDGE MAY: We'll see how you get on. Aim to finish in the time

2 we've suggested. See how you get on.

3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Furthermore, in this interview,

4 Osser [phoen] said, and I said that he is the author of the book on "War

5 Crimes and German Lies in the Kosovo Conflict," he said Kinkel himself in

6 February 1998 stated that the German Federal Government, and then he

7 quotes him, that he supported Albania with a total of 1 billion German

8 marks. Not a single country got that much per capita assistance. The

9 source is FAZ of the 9th of February, 1998.

10 It was also strange that a special unit, part of IFOR was

11 stationed in Zadar for a while.

12 I'm not quoting him now, but I'm saying that it is a well-known

13 fact that Willie Wimmer, a CDU MP in the German Parliament said towards

14 the end of March, "Never before did individuals lie so thoroughly and

15 fully as during the time of the Kosovo war. That is why people lost their

16 lives."

17 And even according to Spiegel, the media hysteria was supported

18 and instigated by the BND, that is to say, the German secret service.

19 Eldeser [phoen] says further on in connection with Fischer or,

20 rather, Kohl's secret plan of the split Macedonia in the Federal

21 Republic of Yugoslavia what this German plan was like. Towards the end of

22 March, the German Foreign Minister said that the Albanian issue was a

23 pending one. This comes from world history. The German issue is open,

24 and that is what everybody said, all of those who did not really want to

25 have reforms in the GDR.

1 The German issue was open for as long as the Brandenburg Gate was

2 closed and this ultimately led to the unification of Germany. Therefore,

3 will Macedonia be obliterated altogether and will the Albanians be

4 united? That is to say, will there be a Greater Albanian after Fischer

5 made Albanian revanchism of a solemn nature.

6 There is one more sentence of the German Foreign Minister that

7 says that -- the International Community will not allow a forced change

8 of borders. However, if we analyse this question more precisely, we will

9 see that Mr. Fischer is not refusing the revision of borders altogether,

10 only the use of force. What happens if borders are not revised through

11 manifestation of force but through a threat of force as was the case in

12 1938 with Czechoslovakia after the Munich Accord?

13 Mr. Fischer himself recommends to the Albanians to apply Kohl ’s

14 methods. Again this is his quote. The International Community is in

15 Kosovo and in the Balkans in order to show that the Albanian issue is --

16 does not have to be resolved with the agreement of the neighbours, and

17 this draws on the German issue. And this will certainly remain in the

18 memory of Prague and Warsaw who were completely left out of the 4 plus 2

19 negotiations. And if the Germans fooled Paris and London in such a way,

20 this can be read about in Attli's [phoen] memoirs and also in

21 Mrs. Thatcher's memoirs. However, what is recommended by Mr. Fischer to

22 the Albanians from the German example of 1990 is nothing else but the

23 obliteration of sovereign states. This should make the blood in the veins

24 of Macedonian politicians freeze. And Lubca Gigarski [phoen], the Prime

25 Minister spoke a week later and said openly the Macedonians cannot shut

1 their eyes before the fact that the Western democracy is creating new

2 Talibans in western -- in Europe and that nobody in Europe can be

3 convinced that the German and US governments do not know the chiefs of

4 these bands.

5 Already on the 30th of March, Fischer says in the Bundestag, and

6 this is a quotation, that one has to think about a general solution for

7 the Balkan problem because the problem of Bosnia-Herzegovina has not been

8 resolved yet or of Montenegro or the Kresovo Valley. That is actually

9 Southern Serbia, Southern Serbia and Macedonia.

10 I'm mentioning this because it is linked to historical facts that

11 I will draw your attention to. In the creation of a Greater Albania, we

12 see that Macedonia is next and then come Montenegro and Sandzak and then

13 Greece. All of them are in --

14 JUDGE MAY: Could you slow down, please, Mr. Milosevic.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All of them are on the planned list

16 of Albanian terrorists, and if the -- this already worked with NATO

17 assistance, then why would it not work even more often?

18 What Eldeser [phoen] says only confirms that Germany, after its

19 reunification, especially with questions related to Yugoslavia, continued

20 at an accelerated pace there where it was stopped by its defeat in the

21 Second World War, and then in the Second World War, a Greater Albania was

22 created as a Nazi fascist state, and I hope that nobody can deny that.

23 We should remind precisely those who struggled before against

24 Nazism and Fascism of certain historical facts.

25 From 1993 onwards, there was an ongoing activity of fascist Italy

1 against Yugoslavia. On the 7th of April, 1993, it annexed Albania, which

2 is a well known fact. The Foreign Ministry of Italy Ciana [phoen],

3 already in July 1939 gave instructions to Albanian emigres to act in

4 Eperis [phoen] and Kosovo and Metohija. He often repeated that the Kosovo

5 Albanian irredentism is, I quote, a knife aimed at the back of

6 Yugoslavia. The same year, in Rome, a bureau was opened to organise the

7 Albanian irredentist movement. In Albania, the Albanian fascist party was

8 established and on the occasion of his visit to Albania, the Minister

9 promised that the project of a Greater Albania would be implemented soon.

10 Already in the beginning of 1940, the secretary of the fascist

11 party said in Skadar [phoen] that Italy would soon annex parts of

12 Yugoslavia populated by Albanians. And in Tirana, very much a new

13 Albanian committee was established.

14 When World War II broke out, and a bit after that, when the

15 fascist forces attacked Yugoslavia and they were headed by Germany and

16 Italy, the blood-soaked implementation of the product of a Greater Albania

17 started. Podujevo, Vucitrn, and the Kosovo -- Kosovska Mitrovica

18 districts and all of Kosovo and Metohija were annexed to the fascist

19 Greater Albania. Parts of Gnjilane, the Urosevac district north of

20 Pasjani, Kacanik, Vitina, and Sirovacka Zupa were annexed to the newly

21 created greater Bulgaria.

22 Western Macedonia, including Tetovo, Gostivar, Debar, Kicevo,

23 Strugar, and Sveti Naum also came to belong to the Greater Albania.

24 The agreement of April 1941 established a demarcation line between

25 the Greater Bulgaria and a Greater Albania. The head of the puppet

1 government of Albania, at the Royal Italian Academy had a lecture about

2 the roots of Greater Albania. He visited in July Kosovo and when speaking

3 to the top Albanian people, he said in public that an effort should be

4 made to replace the Serb population in Kosovo as soon as possible, that

5 all the Serb inhabitants who had lived there from way back should be

6 considered to be immigrants and as such should be sent to concentration

7 camps in Albania. Later Serb settlers should be killed.

8 These are historical texts that I'm quoting. Once again, in the

9 project of a Greater Albania, there was no room for any other people but

10 the Albanian people. You could see this from the reality that I have just

11 described and that is now taking place in Kosovo and Metohija.

12 In four years of the government, a lot has been done. Local

13 Albanians under the protection of the occupation forces and assisted by

14 their compatriots from Albania committed many crimes against Serbs. The

15 European public does not know the proportions of these crimes. However,

16 according to the office of strategic service of the United States, the

17 Albanians, from April 1941 until August 1942, killed about 10.000 Serbs.

18 When these areas were occupied, Italy started not only ethnic

19 cleansing but also the systematic implementation of a Greater Albanian

20 cultural project and also in all other spheres of life. Serb children who

21 attended school under Italian occupation were forced to study in the

22 Albanian language. The same thing happened to children in Western

23 Macedonia. There was a mass expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija

24 and several tens of thousands of Albanians from Albania were settled

25 there. Some historians believe that this number is about 100.000.

1 Until April 1942, on the southern border of occupied Serbia which

2 was under German rule, there were about 60.000 refugees from Metohija,

3 parts of Kosovo that came to become part of a Greater Albania.

4 After the capitulation of fascist Italy, the Germans instigated

5 the establishment of the so-called Second Prizren League in 1943. The

6 league was organised under the protection of AVR, that is to say, the

7 German military service. We can see that the BND over the past few years

8 has taken over that role, the same one.

9 Terror over the Serbs with a multitude of individual and massive

10 crimes lasted until 1943, when it started abating. As for the proportions

11 of the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from these areas in addition to a

12 multitude of other testimony is spoken of by Herman Neubaher, who was a

13 special political plenipotentiary of the Third Reich in South-east Europe

14 from autumn 1943 onwards. There is a quotation of his that says Albanians

15 hurried to expel as many Serbs as possible from the country. Local

16 strongmen will often expelled and actually they required gifts of gold in

17 order to have this done.

18 When General Nedic , who was President of the Serb quisling

19 government in that small occupied Serbia under the Germans, when he

20 bitterly addressed himself to me, I recommended urgently to the Arbanis

21 [phoen] government that these expulsions be stopped immediately. When I

22 realised that my intervention was a failure, I wanted to resign my mission

23 in Albania and that's what Neubaher says, the plenipotentiary of the Third

24 Reich.

25 After the capitulation of fascist Italy under the German

1 occupation force, the notorious Skender-Beg SS Division was established.

2 It consisted of Albanians. And until these areas were finally liberated

3 from Nazi and fascist troops and their quislings, they persevered in the

4 project of a Greater Albania. Now these troops that are there and also

5 this new SS division which they came to call KFOR, which was actually a

6 transformed terrorist organisation, the KLA, they are doing the same

7 thing. All of this considerably changed the ethnic structure of this part

8 of Serbia and Yugoslavia and basically it was one of the most important

9 prerequisites for the successful implementation of the project of a

10 Greater Albania.

11 Let us go back to the end of 1987 and the successful summit of the

12 countries of southeastern Europe which had held peace, cooperation, and

13 stabilisation, especially the successful contact and talks between the

14 Albanian prime minister and me and his statement that the Kosovo issue was

15 an internal affair of Yugoslavia. So this alarm was sounded and it

16 started up a round of activities.

17 From then onwards an explosion of terrorism, that's the way I'd

18 like to put it, started in Kosovo and Metohija. During the entire

19 previous decade, there were very few attacks, and then only within about a

20 month's time, and from the beginning of 1998 until just before the NATO

21 aggression, 1.068 attacks were launched against individuals, citizens

22 only, that is to say, about 100 times more than in any one of the previous

23 years. And it is quite obvious that this was a turning point and that the

24 process that had started had been cut off.

25 Everybody was a target, including Kosovo Albanians, especially

1 those who were employed in the government; that is to say, people who were

2 employed in post offices, clerks who worked in government offices, et

3 cetera. This time members of the terrorist organisation KLA killed, in a

4 brutal way, 387 citizens. Out of this number, 75 were citizens -- 75

5 citizens, not 75 per cent. Seventy-five citizens were ethnic Serbs and

6 Montenegrins, and 196 were ethnic Albanians; that is to say, the Albanian

7 terrorists killed two and a half times more Albanians than Serbs in order

8 to discipline them, in order to subjugate them, in order to force them to

9 follow their policy and to behave the way they wanted them to behave.

10 Also, 15 members of other minorities were killed, primarily the Romany.

11 And in one case it was impossible to establish the identity of the persons

12 who were killed.

13 In that same period, about 200 citizens disappeared and went

14 missing or were kidnapped; half were Serbs and Montenegrins and the other

15 half were Albanians, that is, 77 Albanians and 12 of other ethnic groups.

16 In addition to these individual killings, there were various acts

17 of sabotage, planting of bombs such as in Podrevo and Kosovska Mitrovica,

18 where explosive devices were planted on marketplaces. Six were killed and

19 60 injured, again mostly Albanians, and so on.

20 Parallel with this there was an enormous number of terrorist

21 attacks on the facilities and members of the Ministry of the Interior;

22 1.642 attacks. When these are taken into consideration as well, then the

23 average for the previous year is not 100:1, that is, compared to previous

24 years. The ratio is much worse. Among these attacks, most of them were

25 attempts to kill; 163 attempted murders. And actually 241 members were

1 killed, and together with them 28 citizens, 23 wounded. Another 478

2 members of the Ministry of the Interior were seriously wounded and another

3 363 injured.

4 At the time, in that period, 246 terrorists were erected