Milosevic prepares to launch attack on Blair and Clinton in his opening speech at trial
By Philip Sherwell and Neil Barnett in
Belgrade
(Filed: 04/07/2004)
Slobodan Milosevic has finalised the anti-Western tirade with which he will launch his defence tomorrow in the next stage of the world's biggest war crimes trial for half a century.
The former Yugoslav president will pepper his opening speech with swipes against Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Nato as he tries to turn the case upside down and portray them as the "real war criminals" for the 78-day bombing campaign that drove his forces from Kosovo in 1999.
He will also announce his plans to summon as witnesses a number of international figures, including the British Prime Minister, the former American president and the heads of MI6 and the CIA. The three-man panel of judges will decide at a later stage whether to issue them with subpoenas to appear.
The hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague will resume after a four-month interval as Milosevic replies to the prosecution case on 66 charges ranging from violations of the customs of war up to genocide during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
He has chosen to represent himself and his approach will owe much more to political offence than legal defence, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt from his legal advisers. "Our plan is to attack," said Uros Suvakovic, the vice-president of Sloboda, the network of supporters that funds and co-ordinates his defence.
The sight of Milosevic railing against the West, portraying himself as the victim of an international conspiracy and refusing to recognise the court trying him is certain to be mirrored in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein's war crimes trial begins. In lessons that have not been missed by the new rulers in Iraq, the Milosevic trial has already illustrated the difficulties of bringing former heads of state to justice and proving their responsibility for murderous crimes committed by their followers.
An Iraqi delegation led by Salem Chalabi, the head of the special tribunal prosecuting Saddam and his henchmen, visited the Hague last month. The Iraqis have opted for a fast-track national tribunal in an effort to overcome some of the delays and hitches that have dogged the Milosevic case.
Milosevic's trial began in February 2002 and the prosecution's efforts to present a wide-ranging case against him have contributed to its slow progress. "Courts cannot be historical museums or provide full historical documentation of all events," said Richard Dicker, of Human Rights Watch. "They cannot look at everything and need to focus on specific cases."
The trial has also been delayed for several months because of the 61-year-old's poor health - he has a weak heart and high blood pressure and claims to be suffering from stress. He has been given 150 days to present his case, but the court will sit for a maximum three days a week because of his health.
Legal observers following the trial believe that the prosecution has struggled to prove the most serious charge of genocide, which would require it to establish a link between Milosevic and atrocities such as the Srebrenica massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims.
Milosevic has been preparing his case from the private office he was recently given at the detention centre on a tree-lined street close to the beach front in Scheveningen, a few miles from the tribunal headquarters.
His 160 sq ft cell has plenty of creature comforts, including a cable television with access to Serbian channels, a coffee machine and a private bathroom. The new office has a dual-lock mechanism: Milosevic has one key and the other is held by his guards. It is equipped with telephones and computers and has space for him to talk privately with legal advisers or potential witnesses.
Zdenko Tomanovic, one of his Serbian lawyers, told the Telegraph that the prosecutors gave Milosevic 630,000 pages of written documents, 1,000 video cassette tapes, 100 CDs and 100 DVDs. "Just to read all that, any ordinary man needs at least two years," he said.
