More witnesses to alleged atrocities in the Serb crackdown on Kosovo are testifying Tuesday at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague.
On Monday, a doctor described a rampage by Serb forces in a southwestern Kosovo town (Suva Reka) after NATO forces began bombing Yugoslavia in 1999. Argon Berisha, an ethnic Albanian, said up to 50 men, women and children, many of them his relatives, fled to a pizzeria from a house set on fire by Serb police.
He said the police fired automatic weapons and threw grenades at the group. He said it seemed the police were well trained and knew where to leave the bodies so they would burn up, as if it were, in the doctor's words, their "daily business."
Mr. Milosevic's trial is now in its third week. He faces 66 charges of war crimes during the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s.
Mr. Milosevic, the first former head of state to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, is conducting his own defense.
The former president has challenged the legitimacy of the Hague tribunal and accused witnesses of hindering his defense by presenting incomplete testimony.
On Monday, he challenged the testimony of a farmer from southern Kosovo who said he knew nothing about actions of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Mr. Milosevic said this forced him to prove his own innocence instead of having the prosecution prove his guilt as required under tribunal rules.
Presiding Judge Richard May rejected the complaint. The farmer told the tribunal that Serbian forces went on a killing and destruction spree in his village in 1999.