THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Six high ranking Serbs including former President Milan Milutinovic hear verdicts
Thursday in their trial on charges of orchestrating a 1999 campaign of murder, torture and deportation of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
The trial is the first to be completed at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal for atrocities committed by Serb forces as they battled separatist forces for
control of Kosovo, the former Serb province that has since declared independence.
The only previous case was against former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, but his trial was aborted without verdicts when he died of a heart attack
early in 2006.
Prosecutors have requested sentences of between 20 years and life imprisonment while defense lawyers called for the acquittal of all the defendants.
U.N. prosecutors called 113 witnesses to testify against Milutinovic and his fellow defendants Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola
Sainovic, Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff Dragoljub Ojdanic, Yugoslav Army generals Nebojsa Pavkovic and Vladimir Lazarevic and Serbian police Gen. Sreten
Lukic. Defense attorneys called 118 witnesses in a marathon trial that started July 10, 2006.
The six allegedly conspired in what prosecutors say was a criminal plot to drive ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo to ensure continued Serb control of the
province.
Prosecutors say Serb forces killed and persecuted thousands of Albanians and forced some 800,000 from their homes in a campaign of terror that was finally
ended by NATO air strikes.
Witnesses testified that Serb forces shelled towns and villages, murdered civilians and raped women as they were driven from their homes and forced to flee
in bedraggled convoys.
The U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted 161 suspects, the majority Serbs, and finished cases against 116. The Security Council is pressing
the court to complete its cases as soon as possible.
The trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested on a Belgrade bus last July posing as a bearded health guru, is expected to get
under way later this year.
Karadzic's military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, remains on the run and Serbia is under heavy pressure from the European Union to arrest and
hand him over for trial.
http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-eu-war-crimes-kosovo,0,1244538.story
