Farmer Testifies About Serbian Forces’ Rampage

Serbian forces burned a paralyzed ethnic Albanian woman alive in her home, killed a toddler and blew up a mosque during their 1999 crackdown in Kosovo, a witness said Monday at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Halil Morina, a retired ethnic Albanian farmer in Kosovo, said three-quarters of his village, Landovica, was torched in March 1999, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began bombing Yugoslavia in response to the crackdown in Kosovo.

“While they were burning the village they killed a gypsy . . . and a paralyzed woman. They set fire to her in her own house,” Morina told the Hague court.

Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes related to conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of any charge.

Milosevic spent about an hour cross-examining Morina, asking him if he had seen ethnic Albanian rebels or if villagers had suffered during NATO bombing.

Morina told Milosevic he was “just a farmer” and couldn’t tell him about the Kosovo Liberation Army. He said he hadn’t seen NATO bombers on their raids or the damage they inflicted.