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Saturday March 9, 2:27 AM
Milosevic cites FBI on al-Qaeda presence in Kosovo
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for war crimes here, produced an FBI document he said backed up his claim he was fighting al-Qaeda terrorists in Kosovo.
Milosevic is accused of murders, deportations and other atrocities as part of a campaign to carve out a Greater Serbia after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.
As his trial wound up its fourth week, he returned to one of his chief defenses: that he was struggling against separatists and terrorists to hold a crumbling Yugoslav republic together.
"Neither the army nor the police have been implicated in war crimes," he told the UN tribunal.
Cross-examining Sabit Kadriu, a Kosovo human rights activist, Milosevic asked him what he knew about the activities of Osama Bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network and Islamic mujahedin fighters in Kosovo.
Milosevic contends the violence in the Serbian province was due to "terrorist" operations of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which had outside support in its drive for independence.
Kadriu dismissed the one-time Serbian strongman's suggestions of Kosovo as a hotbed of terrorism, saying: "It's a fiction of your imagination."
Presiding Judge Richard May asked Milosevic where he was getting his information and the defendant waved a document he said was produced by the FBI last December documenting al-Qaeda and mujahedin activity in Kosovo.
The document was entered into evidence but no details were discussed.
Milosevic spent the day sparring with Kadriu in a cross-examination laced with political polemics that drew rebukes from the bench for both sides.
Clearly frustrated by the tribunal's efforts to rein in his questioning, Milosevic snapped back at May: "I'd like to ask you not to give me instructions, please."
Kadriu, a teacher and branch leader of the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, testified Thursday about Serb savagery in Kosovo, including massacres of Albanians, mutilations and public rapes in 1999.
But Milosevic came back with his own litany of atrocities he said were perpetrated on Serbian Kosovars.
He grilled Kadriu on alleged killings, burnings and rapes of Serbs as well as the destruction of their forests, orchards and cemeteries in the predominently Albanian province of Serbia.
"Do you know how many inhabitants of Kosovo, under pressure from Albanian violence, had to leave the province?" the Serbian nationalist thundered. "Do you know, or do you not know?"
Kadriu, who kept his eyes mostly turned from Milosevic but stole an occasional glance, denied such incidents.
"I have never heard of these things," he said. "Power was in the hands of Milosevic. Who would dare to do such things?"
Milosevic also challened testimony that the Albanians were subject to discrimination. He asserted, for instance, that nearly 236,000 Albanian chilren attended school in Kosovo in 1999 as opposed to 45,000 Serbs.
But Kadriu shot back: "The (Albanian) students were thrown out. They all studied outside the school buildings. Everybody knows that."
Milosevic is accused of orchestrating the deportations of some 800,000 ethnic Albanians and the murders of at least 900 in Kosovo.
He is facing charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. If convicted he could be sentenced to life in prison.
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