Milosevic

Judges in the trial of ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic this week heard claims that the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 was part of a coordinated assault which also included the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, and the Albanian military.

Hague tribunal prosecutors say the air strikes by NATO forces which began in March that year were intended to put an end to mounting persecution suffered by the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo at the hands of Milosevic’s regime.

During the eleven-week bombing campaign, it is alleged that the accused’s security forces stepped up their efforts in the region and drove some 800,000 civilians from their homes.

But former Yugoslav Army, VJ, colonel Vlatko Vukovic insisted in court this week that he and his colleagues acted professionally throughout the conflict, despite being faced with a ruthless alliance of local separatist rebels and their international backers.

NATO and the KLA were in fact to blame for intentionally causing massive refugee flows in order to create the impression of a humanitarian disaster in the region, he claimed.

He also asserted that the army of neighbouring Albania helped in the attack against Serbian and Yugoslav security forces by shelling over the border into Kosovo.

In addition, the witness challenged allegations that dozens of ethnic Albanian civilians were slaughtered and their homes torched in the part of Kosovo where he was stationed at the time.

Vukovic - who led a motorised battalion in western Kosovo during the conflict there - is by no means the first of Milosevic’s defence witnesses to speak of cooperation between the KLA and the international community. But he was more expansive in his allegations than most.

He claimed that it was a “frequent occurrence” for NATO helicopters to transport rebels around Kosovo, explaining that KLA attacks would routinely originate from areas where such helicopters had recently landed.

He also offered his assessment that floodlights visible in the interior of Kosovo at night were being used to guide NATO aircraft to military installations. It was known at the time, he said, that the KLA had sophisticated communications equipment, including satellite telephones, which would allow such coordination to take place.

Vukovic went on to claim that teams of observers deployed by the international community to monitor the situation within Kosovo were also complicit in the “aggression” against Yugoslavia.

These teams, armed with global positioning systems, would often be seen noting down the coordinates of various facilities and geographical features, he recalled. He became convinced of their role in the bombing, he added, because of a correlation between their visits to military installations and subsequent raids.

Another important actor in the conflict, Vukovic told judges, was the army of the neighbouring Republic of Albania. He referred to an entry in his own unit’s so-called war diary from May 1999, which recorded the shelling of Yugoslav military positions by tanks in Albania. On two occasions that he knew of, Vukovic added, Albanian troops had even crossed over into Yugoslav territory.

Vukovic also expanded on Milosevic’s claim that population movements in Kosovo at the time – far from being the result of mass deportations by his security forces – actually stemmed from panic caused by the NATO bombing.

The witness acknowledged that some refugees he spoke to had told him they were afraid of the Yugoslav army. But the majority, he said, were either fleeing the air strikes or had been ordered from their houses by the KLA. He claimed that Albanians who returned home were even specifically targeted by NATO aircraft.

Vukovic said that, in his opinion, the aim was to engineer a humanitarian crisis for political ends. He also claimed that driving civilians from their homes facilitated the air assault because it “enabled NATO to target everything in Kosovo indiscriminately”.

The witness said he and his men, for their part, tried to help the refugees as best they could. They showed them safe routes and searched out accommodation in nearby villages for those who needed to rest.

“There is nothing more sad than to look at columns of poor people moving out of their homes following somebody’s orders,” read one passage in Vukovic’s war diary.

Another entry referring to refugee movements noted, “Soldiers – the way soldiers do – [gave] juice and biscuits to the passing children.”

Evidence was presented during the prosecution stage of the trial suggesting that the VJ and Serbian police robbed, beat and murdered civilians and confiscated their identity documents as they fled towards Macedonia and Albania.

Vukovic also spent much of his time in the witness stand commenting on a series of alleged atrocities listed in the indictment against Milosevic which are said to have taken place in the area where he himself was stationed in 1999.

In one incident, in the village of Bela Crkva on March 25, security forces are alleged to have gunned down some 85 people, including a number of women and children. Vukovic acknowledged that his unit had passed through the village around that time but said his men did not even alight from their vehicles.

Judge Iain Bonomy noted that an order from the time, presented in court as evidence, included an assignment to search the village. But Vukovic insisted that, in the end, this had not proved necessary.

The witness also denied allegations that, also on March 25, 1999, houses were looted and burned in the villages of Celina, Mala Kruse and Velika Kruse. Vukovic said operations in the area at the time – which involved his own men – were intended only to root out KLA fighters. Care was taken, he said, to avoid civilian casualties.

He also dismissed evidence that some 105 men and boys were subsequently crowded into a house in Mala Kruse and shot.

“I guarantee that the army never did anything like that,” Vukovic said, adding, “You can bring in all 220 soldiers who were engaged in that operation with me and they will confirm it.”

Prosecutors will have a chance to cross-examine Vukovic on his evidence when he returns to the witness stand next week.

Michael Farquhar is an IWPR reporter in London.