[ALBSA-Info] Irish Times

[Agron Alibali]

 The Irish Times

 February 29, 2000
Pg. 11


War crimes court warns against Milosevic deal

Reuters)

 It would be "absolutely outrageous" for any country
to offer refuge to
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted for
crimes against ethnic
 Albanians  in Kosovo, the deputy prosecutor at the UN
war crimes tribunal in
The Hague has said. Mr Graham Blewitt said giving
shelter to Mr Milosevic would 
be a breach of international law. The tribunal has
issued an international
arrest warrant for the Yugoslav president and four
accused Yugoslav and Serbian 
officials.

   Greek media had reported that China has offered
refuge to the Yugoslav
leader. Earlier Greek media claimed that the US was
looking for a place of
refuge for Mr Milosevic. Both countries are permanent
members of the Security
Council, the parent body of the tribunal.

   Mr Blewitt was speaking as four Bosnian Serbs went
on trial accused of
torturing and murdering Muslim and Croat civilians at
prison camps during the
Bosnian war. The four, Mr Miroslav Kvocka (43), Mr
Milojica Kos (36), Mr Mlado
Radic (47) and Mr Zoran Zigic are together charged
with 17 counts of crimes
against humanity and war crimes for atrocities
committed in three prison camps
in the Prijedor region of northwestern Bosnia during
the spring and summer of
1992.

   "The evidence presented at this trial will prove
that the accused and others 
under their authority confined, beat, tortured,
sexually assaulted and murdered 
many of the Bosnian and Croat detainees ... solely
because of the victims'
ethnicity," a prosecutor, Mr Grant Niemann, said in an
opening statement.

   He showed the court video clips of emaciated
detainees at the Omarska camp, a
former mining complex.

   "The images of skeletal malnutrition at the
Prijedor prison camps sent shock 
waves around the world," Mr Niemann said.

   Three of the accused were commanders at the Omarska
camp. Mr Kvocka served as
overall commander and later as deputy commander while
Mr Kos and Mr Radic were
shift commanders at the camp. Mr Zigic entered the
Omarska, Keraterm and
Trnopolje camps to rape, torture and kill prisoners,
prosecutors allege.

   The indictment picks out one instance where Mr
Zigic severely beat two men
over a period of days, then forced them to jump from a
truck, lie on broken
glass and have sex with other prisoners. The two
victims died several days
later. Mr Niemann said the acts of cruelty were not
random.

   "This trial is about a government policy of
persecution and ethnic cleansing.
The crime was on a massive scale," he said.

   A handful of "ethnocentric, fanatical nationalists"
seized power in Prijedor,
regarded as a strategic corridor, and sought to
permanently remove, or
"ethnically cleanse", Muslims and Croats in order to
forge a Serb nation, Mr
Niemann said.

   About 6,000 civilians were rounded up and held in
the camps. "At a minimum,
hundreds of prisoners, whose identities are known and
unknown, did not survive
the camps," the indictment says.

   By June 1993, the Muslim population of about 49,000
had been reduced to an
estimated 6,000, prosecutors say.

   President Jacques Chirac of France will visit the
tribunal today and meet the
president, chief prosecutor and registrar. France has
agreed to put its prisons 
at the disposal of the tribunal. It is the sixth
country where convicted war
criminals will be able to serve their sentences.
Italy, Norway, Finland, Sweden 
and Austria have also made such a commitment.

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