War Crime Court Issues Warrant for Milosevic

An international war crimes tribunal issued warrants for the arrest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four top lieutenants and ordered their assets frozen Thursday after indicting the men on charges that they masterminded the murders of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians and the mass deportation of at least 740,000 others.

Yugoslavia promptly denounced the action as “monstrous.” A spokesman for Milosevic’s political party accused the U.N. tribunal, whose authority Belgrade does not recognize, of acting “in the interest of NATO criminals.”

The indictment, delivered Monday but unsealed Thursday, seemed to dash any lingering hopes of a diplomatic compromise with Milosevic, NATO’s stubborn adversary and target of an alliance bombing campaign now in its third month.

“This means the Western countries envision the future of Serbia only without Milosevic,” said Hans Stark, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.

“This makes it harder to fudge the diplomatic issues,” added Rear Adm. Richard Cobbold, director of the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies.

The indictment, a watershed in contemporary efforts to develop and impose international standards of civilized behavior, marks the first time a sitting head of state has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It concerns alleged acts of murder, forced deportation and persecution on political, racial or religious grounds carried out by the Yugoslav army, police or paramilitary forces in Kosovo since January.

Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said her investigators, who have been interviewing refugees from Kosovo in camps in Albania and Macedonia, compiled evidence of war crimes “on a massive scale” committed over less than five months.

“An independent review by a judge of this tribunal has confirmed that there is a credible basis to believe that these accused are criminally responsible for the deportation of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo, and the murder of over 340 identified Kosovo Albanians,” she told a news conference here.

Indicted with Milosevic were: Milan Milutinovic, president of Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia’s two republics; Nikola Sainovic, deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia; Dragoljub Ojdanic, chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav armed forces; and Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Serbian minister of the interior, responsible for the republic’s police forces.

Officials Blamed for ‘Campaign of Terror’

Far from being spontaneous, the driving of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes in Kosovo--a province of Serbia--was the result of “well-planned and coordinated efforts” by Yugoslav politicians, the military and police, the indictment charges. The result was “a campaign of terror and violence directed at the Kosovo Albanian population.”

“We have charged all five accused . . . on the basis of personal criminal responsibility for ordering, planning, instigating, executing, for aiding and abetting in the commission of these offenses,” Arbour said.

The indictment is filled with sober accounts of looting, killing, rape, arson, the shelling of Kosovo civilians by the Yugoslav military and other alleged atrocities.

According to the document, about 65 Kosovo Albanian men were slaughtered by Serbian police as the men stood naked in a stream bed at the village of Bela Crkva on or around March 25.

At the same time, according to the indictment, about 105 men and boys from two villages in the Orahovac region were assembled inside a house, which Serbian police then sprayed with gunfire. Police then piled hay onto the dead and wounded and set it afire to destroy the bodies, the indictment charges.

The indictment runs for 42 pages and includes the names and ages of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians believed slain by Yugoslav forces in massacres--one a 2-year-old girl, another a man about 90 years old. It documents how, in at least 10 cities and towns, the populace was terrorized by Yugoslav soldiers and Serbian police into fleeing.

“The victims were entitled to expect protection from each one of these accused,” said Arbour, a former judge from Ontario, Canada.

With the approval of tribunal Judge David Hunt of Australia, international arrest warrants for Milosevic and the others were delivered Thursday morning in New York to the missions of all member countries of the United Nations, Arbour said.

Freezing of Suspected Secret Assets Ordered

In The Hague, seat of government of the Netherlands and home to the tribunal, warrants were sent to the Yugoslav mission. Arbour made a special appeal to the Ministry of Justice in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, to “stand up for the rule of law” and hand over Milosevic and the others if they do not surrender.

Members of Yugoslavia’s leadership are suspected to have stashed fortunes reaped from privatization of old Communist-built enterprises and other sources in popular offshore havens such as the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Hunt ordered U.N. member states to investigate whether Milosevic and the others possess secret foreign assets and, if so, to freeze them so the suspects cannot evade arrest.

Milosevic, held by most Western historians and leaders to have played the central role in the violent, bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia federation, has been accused by human rights activists of having played a part in some incidents of “ethnic cleansing” that occurred in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this decade. The activists also maintain that the Clinton administration downplayed Milosevic’s involvement in those incidents to enlist his help in negotiating the 1995 peace accord that ended 3 1/2 years of war in Bosnia.

Arbour said the role of Milosevic and other leading Serbs in past conflicts is still being investigated. Her deputy, Graham Blewitt, said investigators also are trying to prove that what is currently taking place in Kosovo constitutes genocide under international law.

“Murders, rapes, tortures, the burning and destruction of property, the psychological destruction of a race--it’s tantamount to genocide,” Blewitt, a former prosecutor in Australia, said in an interview. “When we can substantiate that charge with proper, reliable evidence, then we’ll bring that charge.”

Arbour addressed journalists outside the chamber where defendants brought before the U.N. tribunal stand trial. Asked if she ever expected to see Milosevic in the dock behind her, the Canadian legal expert hesitated, then said, “If you’re asking me whether these accused will be arrested at the next feasible opportunity, my answer is: I hope so.”

Seeing Milosevic in custody, Arbour said, is “a moment I look forward to.”

In fact, the tribunal to date has had only piecemeal success. In the six years since it was created by the U.N. Security Council, it has publicly indicted 84 suspects, though charges were dropped against 18. Of the other suspects, 35 were never taken into custody, seven were convicted and sentenced, one was acquitted and the rest are awaiting trial.

Among those still at large are former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, both indicted in 1995.

Following Milosevic’s indictment, Yugoslav authorities continued to deny the tribunal any standing to investigate “ethnic cleansing” and other alleged brutalities in Kosovo.

“The Hague criminal court is a private political court set up by [Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright, [U.S. Army Gen.] Wesley Clark and [State Department spokesman] James Rubin for all those who do not think the way they do,” Goran Matic, a senior government minister, told a news conference in Belgrade.

Matic said that even if Yugoslavia were to recognize the tribunal, Arbour’s indictment made no sense because, in Belgrade’s view, there is no war in Kosovo, only an “operation against terrorists” that a sovereign nation is fully entitled to wage under international law.

In some North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, objections also were raised that the indictment needlessly doomed efforts to make peace.

“On the one hand, Milosevic and his government are called to discuss with the international community a peaceful solution, and on the other there will be an arrest warrant hanging over his head,” a Greek government spokesman said in Athens.

Challenged to justify the timing of the indictment, Arbour told journalists, “From the point of view of the accused, actually, it’s never a very good time.” She denied that the indictment altered the ability of Milosevic and his four lieutenants to negotiate a peace deal.

“They have not been rendered less suitable by the indictment,” Arbour said tartly. “The indictment has simply exposed their unsuitability.”

The prosecutor refused to divulge any of the evidence gathered by her investigators, but it is widely believed that in the face of the humanitarian disaster still unfolding in Kosovo, Western nations such as Britain, Germany and the United States have loosened up customary regulations on secrecy and shared intelligence information, such as aerial or satellite photographs and telephone intercepts, they otherwise would have kept to themselves.

In Washington, Albright and Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy applauded the indictment of Milosevic but said it is vital for NATO to keep up the military pressure.

“The indictment is a very important step in terms of really emphasizing again and again that what has happened in Serbia is unacceptable to the international community, that this is not some figment of the imagination of NATO or of the people who are accused for some reason of just not liking Serbs,” Albright said.

But Russian envoy Viktor S. Chernomyrdin in Moscow accused “someone” of trying to sabotage peace negotiations.

“Today, in fact, we entered the final stretch in the negotiation process, but it seems as if someone needed to complicate the peaceful dialogue,” Chernomyrdin said. “All this is reminiscent of a political show. It makes no sense and it’s unpleasant.”

Chernomyrdin confirmed that he will fly to Belgrade today to continue talks with Milosevic.

In other developments:

* NATO warplanes flew a record 741 sorties during the 24 hours ending early Thursday. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea in Brussels said the increased activity reflected improved weather and the steady buildup of NATO aircraft in the region.

* The Pentagon reported that Yugoslav paramilitary forces in Kosovo may be growing. Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson, intelligence chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were “several thousand” paramilitary personnel in the province, in addition to the roughly 40,000 soldiers and secret police believed to be there.

*

Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Belgrade, Norman Kempster in Washington and Maura Reynolds in Moscow and Sarah White of The Times’ Paris Bureau contributed to this report.

The complete text of the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic and four other senior Yugoslav officials, plus video of the announcement from U.N. Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour are on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/warcrimes.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

THE ACCUSED

THE CHARGES:

The tribunal accuses Milosevic and the four other officials of crimes against humanity, including the deportation of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians and the murder of 340 others.

THE TRIBUNAL:

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established by the U.N. Security Council six years ago to prosecute Balkan war crimes.

MAKING AN ARREST:

The tribunal has no police powers, meaning it is entirely dependent on the international community to arrest suspected war criminals.

Sources: Times staff and wires