An
Kosovo-Albanian farmer has said troops controlled by Slobodan Milosevic
burnt down his village and killed his family.
Agim Zeqiri, a Muslim, was
the first victim to appear before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague
that will decide if the former Yugoslav leader is guilty of genocide.
Mr Milosevic earlier
succeeded in getting the court to exclude testimony from a war crimes
investigator as it was based on the stories of other people.
I have not seen my family since then, they
were all killed  |
|
Witness Agim Zeqiri |
He also continued acting
as his own lawyer, cross-examining the witnesses that did appear
before the court.
Mr Zeqiri, 49, said Serb
forces burnt down his village of Celina a day after Nato launched air
strikes against Yugoslavia in late March 1999.
He fled with his family
from the assault on the village of about 7,000 people and took refuge
at a nearby stream.
He was later separated
from them and was one of just two from a family of 18 to survive, he
said.
"I have not seen my
family since then. They were all killed," he said, not looking at
Mr Milosevic during either his testimony or cross-examination.
Mr Milosevic scribbled
notes on a piece of paper but did not look up as the witness described
the fate of his village and family on 25 March 1999, when the troops
came.
"They
surrounded the village entirely at about three o'clock in the
afternoon," Mr Zeqiri told the court on the seventh day of the
trial.
He ended up
with a gypsy who was shot in front of his eyes.
"We
heard the firing, the shots, and I saw a bullet hit the gypsy. He came
up to me... and then they fired again and he fell down in a ditch and
then I left."
During his
cross-examination, Mr Milosevic sought to show that the Celina
villagers were supporting ethnic Albanian rebels who were fighting for
Kosovo's independence from Serbia.
"So,
you helped them [rebels] with food and clothes?" he asked.
"Yes,"
Mr Zeqiri answered.
"How
many of them were in your village?" Mr Milosevic asked.
|
What sense and meaning do these spots in which
the people were killed have to do with the accusations against me
|
|
Slobodan Milosevic |
"There were at least
300. They were not in our village. They just passed through from time
to time," the farmer said.
"So, you assisted a
unit of 300 UCK members," Mr Milosevic concluded, referring to
the Albanian acronym of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Though Kevin Curtis - the
second prosecution witness who had gathered more than 1,000 witness
statements from crime scenes across Kosovo - was prevented from
testifying, the tribunal did hear from Stephen Spargo, the
prosecution's intelligence analyst.
He displayed maps which he
said showed the routes taken by some 800,000 ethnic Albanian refugees
deported from Kosovo by Serbian forces in 1999.
Visa denied
Mr Milosevic stressed that
the court would have to prove he ordered the crimes.
"Otherwise, what
sense and meaning do these spots in which the people were killed have
to do with the accusations against me?" he asked.
But the tribunal has set
precedents that commanders can be convicted if they knew, or should
have known, about crimes by their subordinates and did nothing to
prevent them.
Click
here for extracts from Mr Milosevic's defence
Meanwhile, the Dutch
Foreign Ministry confirmed that a visa application by Mr Milosevic's
wife had been denied because she had applied too late.
Mira
Markovic: Denied a visa |
Mr Milosevic earlier
complained that the refusal was tantamount to physical mistreatment.
The hearing could last two
years, with 350 witnesses set to be called by the UN.
Mr Milosevic faces charges
of genocide in Bosnia, and of crimes against humanity in Kosovo and
Croatia but rejects the legality of the court.
He is the first former
head of state to be indicted before an international tribunal.
