Milosevic says it’s all a conspiracy

Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Shifting from accused to accuser, Slobodan Milosevic took the offensive at his war crimes trial Thursday and charged that Western countries tried to bomb Yugoslavia “back to the Stone Age” and were staging a political trial against him.

In his first chance to speak in his defense, the ousted Yugoslav president claimed he had tried to prevent civilian casualties during the Balkan wars, that he fought a legitimate campaign against terrorists destabilizing his country, and that he knew nothing of Bosnian Serb concentration camps.

After sitting restlessly through two days of wrenching prosecution allegations that he orchestrated murder, rape and expulsions, Milosevic dismissed the prosecution case as “concoctions.”

Thumping his desk and waiving his arms energetically, he told the prosecutors, “You basically have nothing. You just want to invent things. This is a political trial, and this has nothing to do with the law itself.”

In what is seen as the most important war crimes trial since World War II, the 60-year-old Milosevic could face life in prison if convicted of any of 66 charges against him.

Prosecutors say Milosevic is responsible for a decade of violence in the Balkans that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia. They have indicted him for crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo, and for genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Milosevic tried to turn the tables, accusing the Western powers of criminally bombing his country in a 78-day campaign in 1999 that dislodged his forces from the Serbian province of Kosovo.

At Milosevic’s request, a court clerk displayed dozens of photographs on courtroom monitors showing charred bodies, decapitated corpses, and destroyed villages and bridges.

“Only Nazis could have thought of such bombing of villages. The aim of the aggression was obviously to break the whole nation, to throw Serbia back to the Stone Age,” he said, narrating as the gruesome images flashed one after another.

“This is yet further proof of the collaboration of NATO forces and this terrorist force that was used to destabilize Yugoslavia,” he said, referring to the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.