HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------Former major denies treason
Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday December 12, 2001
The Guardian
A former French army intelligence officer appeared before a military tribunal in Paris yesterday, accused of giving the Serb government secret details of planned Nato air strikes shortly before the Kosovo war.
Major Pierre-Henri Bunel, 49, has never denied that in four meetings with a Serb agent between July and October 1998, he handed over documents outlining possible Nato bombing targets.
But he rejects outright the charge of treason, and says he was acting on the instructions of a French intelligence agency to convince the then Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, that Nato meant business.
The prosecution says the documents Mr Bunel handed to Col onel Jovan Milanovic in the agent's Brussels apartment gave Belgrade "a clear picture" of Nato's objectives and were "liable to harm the fundamental interests" of France. Mr Bunel, who retired from the army in 1999, faces 15 years in prison if he is convicted.
"I am not a traitor," he said yesterday. "I was asked to tell a Serb intelligence officer that the only way for Milosevic to avoid massive bombardments was to pull out of Kosovo.
"The information I delivered was sensitive, but not top secret. There were no lists of targets, just general descriptions of the type and nature of potential bombing objectives."
Immediately after his arrest in 1998, Mr Bunel, who was head of staff to General Pierre Wiroth, a French military adviser to Nato, told investigators he had handed over the information "strictly for humanitarian reasons".
Army sources said he may have acted out of resentment at his lack of recognition by the military establishment: almost all the officers who graduated with him from the Saint Cyr military academy in 1975 have been promoted to colonel or higher.
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