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CNN Live At Daybreak

Preview of "CNN PRESENTS" Airing Saturday Night

Aired February 08, 2002 - 06:19   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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic begins today -- begins Tuesday, rather, in The Hague, Netherlands.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour has this preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (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.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Case No. IT-99-37-I (ph), the Prosecutor versus Slobodan Milosevic.

AMANPOUR: At his arraignment, Milosevic played the court as though he was still president.

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, FORMER YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT: I consider this tribunal a false tribunal and indictments, false indictments. It is illegal.

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 tribunal's prosecutors saw their first chance to hold him personally responsible for the crimes of war.

When Milosevic's security forces battled Kosovo-Albanian separatists, observers were alarmed by what looked like civilian casualties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One-five. I repeat, one-five bodies clustered together. It looks like they were all shot trying to escape. Over.

AMANPOUR: This scene from Kosovo in January 1999 would confirm the prosecutor's hunch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been beheaded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's affirmative. Over.

AMANPOUR: Here at Ratchec (ph) and in places like it lay Milosevic's undoing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Different pieces of skull.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus Christ.

AMANPOUR: A few months later, an Albanian doctor shot this footage, 127 mostly old men slaughtered in the hamlet of Izbetsay (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)

COSTELLO: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Tune into "CNN PRESENTS: The People Versus Milosevic," Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

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