Quotes From Slobodan Milosevic Trial
Milosevic at arraignment in July, 2001:
"I consider this tribunal (a) false tribunal and (the) indictments false indictments. It is illegal, being not appointed by U.N. General Assembly. So I have no need to appoint counsel to (an) illegal organ."
At the start of his trial in February 2002:
"The prosecution is uttering such horrendous lies, what we have heard here insults the intelligence of this planet ...
"Your bosses broke up Yugoslavia. They pushed Bosnia into a civil war. The Serbs did not start the war. It is nonsensical to accuse the wrong side ...
"I'm not trying to say that some individuals did not do this, but the police and army defended the country courageously and honorably ...
"America crosses the globe to struggle against terrorism in Afghanistan, but to fight terrorism in the heart of your own country is considered to be a crime. Our defense was a heroic defense against the aggression of the NATO pact ...
"You (prosecutors) basically have nothing. You just want to invent things. This is a political trial, and this is nothing to do with the law itself."
Prosecution witness retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark:
"I said, 'Mr. President, you say you have so much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is it then, if you have such influence, that you allowed Gen. Mladic to kill all those people in Srebrenica?' And Milosevic looked at me and he paused for a moment. He then said, 'Well, Gen. Clark,' he said, 'I warned Mladic not to do this, but he didn't listen to me.'"
Prosecution witness Croatian President Stipe Mesic:
"What he was interested in was a 'Greater Serbia' that would be created on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic said he was fighting for Yugoslavia, but he was doing everything to destroy it."
Prosecution witness Milan Babic, wartime leader of Croatian Serbs, to Milosevic in court:
"You dragged the Serb people into war ... You brought shame on the Serbs."
Peter Galbraith, former U.S. ambassador to Croatia:
"Slobodan Milosevic was the architect of a policy of creating 'Greater Serbia' and little happened without his knowing and involvement. He was a proponent of ethnic cleansing."
From Milosevic's opening statements in his defense in February 2004:
"Accusations leveled against me are an unscrupulous lie and also a tireless distortion of history. Everything has been presented in a lopsided manner in order to protect those who are truly responsible ...
"They call themselves the international community, but in the territory of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, they supported a totalitarian chauvinist elite, terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, whose objective was an ethnically pure state. That is to say, a state without any Serbs ...
"In the early 1990s, it was the Serbs who were killed and expelled from Croatia ... It was the Serbs who were being killed and expelled from Kosovo ... Persecution of all non-Albanians (in Kosovo) continues with undiminished fervor, continues until this day."
This entry was posted by rodoyf, on
Saturday, March 11, 2006.
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