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CNN Live At Daybreak

Milosevic Trial Enters Second Day

Aired February 13, 2002 - 05:09   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: And it's not known for sure if former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will speak this afternoon in the second day of his war crimes trial.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour is covering the trial in the Hague, Netherlands and joins us live with an update -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the prosecution went first in its opening statements and their statements are taking much longer than anticipated. This is the second day that the prosecuting attorney is laying out what he calls the crime base for the indictments against Milosevic. Those are three separate indictments for three separate wars during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He's charged with 66 separate counts of crimes against humanity, genocide and other violations of the laws and customs of war.

Today sitting in court he is again being confronted with specific stories of atrocities that were committed during the Balkan wars and with which he is accused of having command responsibility. The prosecuting attorney at one point showed a videotape that was, in fact, discovered by journalists back in the summer of 1992 when they happened upon an internment camp in eastern Bosnia during the war there.

And they found hundreds of Moslems in that camp emaciated, some of whom they were told had been killed. And this set a pattern during the Bosnian war, if you remember, of concentration camps and other such detention centers for all non-Serbs who were in the path of the Bosnian Serb army as they were going about their war in the former Yugoslavia.

So that tape was shown. And then also the prosecuting attorney talked about Sarajevo and about the long bombardment of that capital city.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK IERACE, PROSECUTOR: The siege of Sarajevo, for that's what it was popularly known as, was an episode, it may be decided, of such notoriety in the conflict of the former Yugoslavia that we must go back to WWII to find a parallel in European history.

Not since then had a professional army conducted a campaign of unrelenting violence against the civilians of a European city so to reduce them to a state of Medieval depravation in which they were in constant fear of death. In the time period of this indictment, nowhere is safe for a Sarajevan, not at home, at school, in hospital, to be free from indiscriminate attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Now, Slobodan Milosevic will get his turn to make his own opening statement. We're not sure whether that will be later this afternoon or even tomorrow. He continues not to recognize this tribunal's jurisdiction and he says that his defense will be that he was acting simply in the best interests of his own people, that he was defending Serbs and the Serbian nation and that he was, in fact, a peace partner with the West, trying to bring peace to the Balkans, not trying to make war -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Christiane, you know, at face value it seems an easy case for prosecutors. Is it?

AMANPOUR: It's not an easy case because what they have to establish is direct command responsibility. It's not as though Milosevic was on the battle front ordering these battles or taking part in these individual crimes with which he is accused. So they have to be able to prove that he ordered those actions to have been taken or that he knew about what was going on and failed to prevent or punish those who were carrying out these crimes with which he is charged.

It's going to be a difficult case. The prosecution, of course, says that they are confident, but in the absence of smoking guns, if you like, they need insider witnesses, high level people around Milosevic who will agree to testify against him and who are able to point to Milosevic having given these orders or having known about what was going on -- Carol.

COSTELLO: We understand.

Thank you.

Christiane Amanpour reporting live from the Hague this morning.

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