“My brother's trial will go to pieces”

Yesterday, Die Presse, an Austrian weekly, published an interview with Borislav Milosevic, ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s brother. Ex-Yugoslav ambassador to Russia, Borislav Milosevic, who now lives in Moscow, speaks about The Hague Tribunal’s work, about the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, and about Slobodan Milosevic and his relatives’ fate.

Borislav Milosevic fully supports his brother. He does not loose optimism and believes that the trial in the Hague is doomed to failure. According to Borislav, “my brother's trial will go to pieces, for there are no proofs of his guilt. All points of the indictment are based on assumptions.”

It is obvious, as Borislav Milosevic says, that the so-called International Tribunal on former Yugoslavia is illegal. The decision to create such an institution can be taken only by UN general assembly. This tribunal does not correspond with UN principles and was created for US's sake. This is a classical political tribunal: “The court’s activity has an obvious political colour: justifying of American and NATO crimes.”

According to Borislav Milosevic, as quoted by Inopressa, Yugoslav state security services are also incited against the ex-President: “For, it is known to everybody that the special services help the Chief Prosecutor and the prosecution.” Now, Slobodan Milosevic is being supported only by “Serb people and patriots who know what really happened.”

In the trial, Milosevic already managed to brilliantly prove the unreliability of some witnesses.” In particular, he “knocked out and tore to pieces” the trial’s first witness: Kosovar Skupschina’s member and ex-leader of Kosovar communists Mahmut Bakali. Milosevic conduct himself with dignity and conscientiously prepares himself for sessions (however, very well planned and rapid process does not further it). He is able to ask questions that stun the “witnesses” and make them answer in such way that judges are simply forced to cut off microphones or change the subject of the discussion.

Milosevic was “the head of the state and he did not commit any illegal actions,” - his brother says. “He only defended his country from separatism.” During the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbian protests and the president’s policy were logical: “In Croatia, Serbs were second-class citizens and this was why they made protests.” The main guilt belongs to the US and NATO, who were interested in the destruction of Yugoslavia and provoked the bloody war in the region with their activities.

Borislav Milosevic does not know where Sobodan’s son Marco is, though he is sure that he is neither in Russia nor Yugoslavia. He does not exclude his possible return home in the future, but, now, “he has nothing to do there.”

Remember, that just after the ex-President’s extradition, the 1998-2000 Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow, in his interview to Russian RTR TV channel, unambiguously said: “This is simply kidnapping committed because of outside pressure. The blackmail was fully successful. A unique case in the international law, an unexampled violation, contrary to all legal and moral norms… I am sure that our people mostly do not accept it, for Serbs’ self-respect was annihilated with this act. This is final loss of our sovereignty. The leaders who take decisions like that have no historical prospects, and their offspring will not forgive them for it. Kostunica says that the question is in the situation, in the ruling coalition, and that he and his supporters have remained in the minority. Though, tell me, does the president not have any other key factors to influence the situation? Can he not say anything? Kostunica’s speeches sound like that ones of Pontius Pilate, he just washed his hand of it all. Kostunica still continues the same policy of manoeuvres, trying to pretend to be a nationalist politician for Serbia and at the same time statesman who is ready to cooperate with “international community," the USA, and NATO.

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic will be recommenced this week, on Thursday, the Hague Tribunal’s spokesman said. A week ago, the trial was stopped because Milosevic was said to have caught a cold. He seems to have been prepared himself.

Sergei Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

ITAR-TASS photograph: Borislav Milosevic (left) and State Duma deputy Nikolai Ryzhkov (right) Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/25/38774.html