Milosevic

A hectic week in the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has been marked by repeated warnings from judges that the accused – who insists on defending himself in court – is not making a good job of it.

The testimony of Milosevic’s latest defence witness – high-profile Serb nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj – was brought to an abrupt halt on September 20 when the chamber ruled that after more than five weeks in the stand, Seselj’s value to the case had finally been exhausted.

Next, retired Yugoslav army general Bozidar Delic – who already spent over a month giving testimony prior to the start of the tribunal’s summer recess in July – made a brief reappearance in court.

Later in the week Milosevic called Bogoljub Janicevic, who served as chief of police in the Urosevac area of Kosovo until April 1999.

Janicevic’s area of responsibility at the time included the village of Racak where, in one of the most notorious episodes of the Kosovo conflict in January 1999, Yugoslav and Serbian security forces are alleged to have murdered some 45 ethnic Albanians.

Throughout his examination of the three witnesses, judges expressed exasperation at Milosevic’s scant regard for court protocol and his constant use of questions that were either leading, repetitive, provocative or simply irrelevant.

Seselj’s brief period of testimony at the start of this week sprawled over a wide range of topics, including crimes committed against Serbs during World War Two and the apparent prevalence of pan-Islamist ideology in Bosnia in the early Nineties.

But Presiding Judge Patrick Robinson cut in repeatedly to warn the accused against leading the witness, asking him questions he wasn’t in a position to answer and going over material that had been dealt with in detail already.

“I’m beginning to form the conclusion that you have exhausted all the useful questions that you have for re-examination,” he eventually said, ordering Milosevic to wrap up his questioning within the next fifteen minutes.

Sometime later, having issued more warnings and consulted with the other judges on the panel, Judge Robinson brought the exercise to a close, announcing, “This is pointless.”

Next to take to the witness stand was General Delic, who argued that the uprising by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, against Belgrade forces in Kosovo in the late Nineties was carried out in close cooperation with the international community.

As an example, Delic cited the role played by a unit known as the Atlantic Brigade, apparently made up entirely of Albanian American recruits who wore the United States flag on their uniform.

Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice was quick to point out that this did not mean the presence of the Atlantic Brigade in Kosovo was actually sanctioned by the US government.

Returning to a topic already discussed in great detail before the summer break, Delic also continued to attack testimony given in the trial by the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia, Lord Paddy Ashdown.

Appearing as a prosecution witness in March 2002, Lord Ashdown recalled standing at elevated points along the border with Kosovo in 1998 and seeing tanks pounding houses which did not appear to be returning fire.

Delic – now armed with computer-generated diagrams produced by the Belgrade Military Geographical Institute – insisted it would have been impossible for Lord Ashdown to see much of what he claimed to have seen from the vantage points he described.

It was eventually agreed that Delic would return to the courtroom for a final time next week to be examined further by prosecutors.

In the interim, Milosevic called Janicevic, who spent a great deal of time describing how from the Seventies onwards non-Albanians in Kosovo were increasingly subject to abuse, including discrimination in employment and even rape and murder.

The judges repeatedly urged Milosevic to focus his questioning on the time period directly relevant to the charges against him.

Eventually, Janicevic began to discuss KLA activities in his area of responsibility in the late Nineties, including the establishment of a local headquarters in Racak. It has long been Milosevic’s position that those killed in the village in January 1999 were insurgents who fell during fighting with government forces.

Janicevic also described KLA activity in the municipality of Kacanik, where prosecutors say more than 100 civilians were killed during a series of massive offensives by government forces between March and May 1999.

According to a report issued at the start of this month, Milosevic has already used over 60 per cent of the 360 hours of court time allotted to his defence case.

So far, he has focussed largely on fighting prosecution allegations concerning the Kosovo conflict. He will also need to find time to answer charges relating to the separate conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia, and has announced that he plans to file for an extension of time in which to present his defence.

The judges hearing the case have repeatedly urged the accused to make use of his court-assigned counsel Steven Kay and sometimes even seek to offer him legal advice of their own.

But as Milosevic pressed ahead with his confrontational courtroom approach this week, their patience appeared to be fraying.

At one point during Janicevic’s testimony, Judge Iain Bonomy exclaimed that he was “just exhausted” with trying to get the accused to see that his constant use of leading questions would only serve to undermine his case.

“There’s a limit to how much you can do to try to persuade someone conducting his own case to try to do it with a modicum of common sense,” said Judge Bonomy.

General Delic will continue his testimony when the trial resumes on September 28. Once he is finished, Janicevic will return to the witness stand.

Michael Farquhar is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.