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CNN Saturday Morning News
Milosevic Trial to Begin at Hague in Coming Week
Aired February 09, 2002 - 09:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The fate of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic will spin what happens at U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands. Milosevic goes on trial in the coming week.
For more, we turn to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, live from London. This is obviously a much-anticipated trial, Christiane, and you have such long and deep understanding and history of Mr. Milosevic and his -- the accusations against him.
Give us a sense of -- you know, it's almost hard to get a sense of all the atrocities of which he is accused. Can you kind of lay it all out for us?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'll try to do that, Miles. And of course we'll be in The Hague at the war crimes tribunal for the trial that starts on Tuesday, February 12.
And this has been a long-anticipated trial. It was even in doubt up until a year ago, or not even a year ago, that Milosevic would ever make it to the tribunal, because, as president of Serbia and before that Yugoslavia, he was refusing to surrender after he'd been indicted, and there was a lot of doubt as to whether he would actually be brought to trial.
And before he was indicted there was some doubt as to whether the -- what they call, the tribunal, the big fish of the Balkan wars would ever be prosecuted.
So Milosevic is going to be charged -- is going to be on trial for some very, very serious charges -- in fact, the most serious charges under international law. He has been indicted for alleged crimes committed in three wars in the Balkans during the 1990s, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia. And for the Bosnia war, he's been charged with genocide. For the other two wars, Kosovo and Croatia, he's been charged with an array of war crimes, including crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Conventions and the laws and customs of war.
This is an extraordinary situation, because Milosevic was and is the only sitting head of state to have ever been indicted by an international tribunal. And, of course, for a long time Milosevic was both a demon and also a necessary partner for some of the negotiations and eventually for the Dayton peace accords. So Milosevic has long been an antagonist of the West, has long been an antagonist, certainly, of the United States and of Western Europe, as these wars in the Balkans have played out, and we're all so familiar with what happened in Sarajevo, for instance, in Srebrenica, in Kosovo just in 1999, when NATO went to war to basically save the Kosovo Albanians from Milosevic's forces back in 1999 under the Clinton administration.
In any event, he's been in The Hague since July, when he was handed over by the Serbian government, again, surprising many, who thought that they wouldn't hand him over. And he is going to be having to face what the prosecution says will be a very, very solid case for all the crimes that the prosecutor alleges he committed during his time as president of Yugoslavia and Serbia and basically strong man of the Balkans.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): In the middle of the night on April 1, 2001, men wearing masks and brandishing automatic weapons came to the Belgrade home of Slobodan Milosevic. These were some of the same special forces who once terrified the population of Yugoslavia. Now they turned up for the arrest of their former president and the removal of his armed bodyguards.
Eighty-eight days later, under intense pressure from the United States and Europe, Milosevic was handed over to representatives of the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he was flown to a prison in The Hague.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Case number IT-9937-I, the prosecutor versus Slobodan Milosevic.
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AMANPOUR: At his arraignment, Milosevic played the chord as though he were still president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, FORMER PRESIDENT OF YUGOSLAVIA: I consider this tribunal false tribunal, and indictments false indictments. It is illegal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: In one decade, Milosevic had taken his country into four wars, losing all of them. A quarter million dead were left scattered across the Balkans.
Despite the blood that flowed in Croatia and Bosnia, it was in Milosevic's own Serbian province of Kosovo that the tribunals' prosecutors saw their first chance to hold him personally responsible for the crimes of war. When Milosevic's security forces battled Kosovar Albanian separatists, observers were alarmed by what looked like civilian casualties.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One-five, I repeat, one-five bodies clustered together. It looks like they were all shot trying to escape, over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: This scene from Kosovo in January 1999 would confirm the prosecutor's hunch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been beheaded?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's affirmative, over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Here at Rajac (ph) and in places like it lay Milosevic's undoing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) pieces of straw.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus Christ.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: A few months later, an Albanian doctor shot this footage, 127 mostly old men, slaughtered in the hamlet of Isbitze (ph). What he saw would match these U.S. satellite photos of graves in the same area.
(on camera): Slobodan Milosevic is the first-ever sitting head of state to be indicted by an international court, and he continues to deny the charges against him. But prosecutors here at the tribunal say they can prove their case. But proving a president's criminal responsibility will take more than just videotape, more than even corpses.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Well, that was an excerpt of a documentary that will air on CNN tonight about Milosevic and the crimes with which he has been charged. But what's going to be interesting, as we watch the beginning of the trial and the many, many months and weeks that it is likely to take, is how Milosevic responds.
So far, as you've seen, he has refused to accept the legitimacy of the international tribunal. He has refused to appoint himself a defense counsel. He says that he is going to defend himself, and that he is going to cross-examine and call witnesses and basically present his own case.
The tribunal is being put in a very, very tricky position, because it is now being asked to basically bend over backwards to make sure that under this situation, Milosevic has a fair trial.
So this is going to be not only fascinating in terms of the legal precedent and bringing to account what the tribunal always said that it wanted to do, and those were the perpetrators, the alleged perpetrators of the Balkan wars, but also how this trial is going to proceed logistically and legally as the defendant, in this case Slobodan Milosevic, refuses to appoint himself a lawyer and apparently is going to take this matter into his own hands.
It'll by very, very interesting, and we'll be there at the start and throughout this trial, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Christiane, those really quite frankly sickening pictures that you shared with us at -- you know, the question of seeing those pictures and then linking them to Milosevic, it's a -- it may be a stretch, I don't know. Question I have is, what is the burden of proof here? We're familiar with U.S. courts. What does the prosecution have to prove in order to link Milosevic to the genocide that is evident?
AMANPOUR: Well, as you say, these are exceptionally serious charges, the most serious under international law. I mean, you know, apart from genocide, that is the most serious crime in the remit of any kind of legal situation. So she is very, very aware that this is going to be a very difficult and complicated and lengthy case.
She -- the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, believes that she has the wherewithal to gain a conviction. However, as you point out, there are many people who are concerned and who wonder whether in fact this will be possible, because it is going to be up to her to prove the chain of command, to prove that Slobodan Milosevic, as president, as commander in chief, as head of the military operations and the paramilitary operations and the secret police, knew or ordered or knew and did nothing about the crimes that were committed in Kosovo and Bosnia and Croatia.
So this is going to be very difficult.
Another difficulty is going to be the fact that some people are suggesting that there are witnesses who may be afraid to come to the court, particularly witnesses who will find themselves cross-examined and questioned, indeed, by the defendant himself, and many people are worried that they -- witnesses might be intimidated by this.
The court is obviously making preparations and precautions for this. They have a way of protecting witnesses who feel they need that protection. But this is going to be an exceptionally difficult and interesting case, and it's going to be a very, very long one. Milosevic is charged in three separate indictments, for Kosovo and Croatia and Bosnia, and these are going to take part in essentially one big trial but consecutively. O'BRIEN: I guess it's worth pointing out, though, just the fact that this trial is happening is remarkable, really, that a head of state was lifted out by people previously loyal to him, taken to The Hague to stand trial before an international tribunal. It's worth restating how remarkable that is.
AMANPOUR: Well, it is remarkable. And as I say, many, many people never thought that they would see this day. If you remember, more than a year ago now -- actually about a year ago now, under great pressure from the United States, the new democratic government of Yugoslavia and Serbia arrested him and put him in jail in -- I believe it was April 1 last year, put him in jail in Belgrade.
That was the beginning of the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. Up until then, the new, the new government of Yugoslavia had been rather reluctant to take this step, but under pressure from the U.S., under pressure of not getting the required aid and all the sort of things that they need to come out of their 10 years of isolation, they did that.
And then under further pressure they essentially spirited him off to The Hague, even though an extradition law had failed to pass the courts there.
So they basically put him in The Hague, and this was something that many people thought they would never see the day. Now he's at The Hague. He is behaving in a way that no other defendant there has behaved so far. And it's going to be an incredible challenge.
But what's also interesting is that Milosevic doesn't just face these international charges, he is also facing an array of charges that are home-grown. If you like, the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities have been conducting a lengthy investigation, and our documentary will show you quite significant details of that investigation, everything from alleged extermination of domestic political opponents to money laundering and massive theft of Yugoslav resources.
I mean, it's a huge, huge case against him that has been presented, and Milosevic is going to have a hard time, given the route that he has chosen, to defend himself. He's going to have a hard time without a lawyer on these very, very complicated charges.
O'BRIEN: CNN's Christiane Amanpour, fascinating documentary that is coming up tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. It'll air again tomorrow as well at -- let's see, what time does it air tomorrow? I don't have the time tomorrow. It airs again tomorrow sometime. I'll try to get you that information a little bit later. Nobody's telling me in my ear right now.
Christiane, thanks for being with us, really appreciate your insights on this story, which is sickening and also just fascinating. We appreciate it.
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