War Crimes Yugoslavia

Zeljko Raznjatovic, a Serbian paramilitary leader better known as Arkan, who was charged with some of the worst war crimes during Yugoslavia's vicious breakup, was killed Saturday as he sat in the lobby of a Belgrade hotel. At least two masked gunmen walked into the Intercontinental Hotel in the Serbian and Yugoslav capital and shot Raznjatovic, the head of a paramilitary unit called the Tigers, around 5:15 p.m., witnesses said.

Serbia could begin arresting war crimes suspects within days, its prime minister said Friday, stressing that it has little choice if it wants to avoid punishing sanctions and international isolation. The U.S. Congress has given Yugoslavia until Sunday to cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague or risk losing $120 million in financial aid. Serbia is the main Yugoslav republic. "If we do not cooperate, we could face international isolation and U.S.

For 2 1/2 months this spring, an average of 128 lives were snuffed out each day in Kosovo. During a single changing of the seasons, at least one out of every 180 Kosovo Albanians died. That is the harsh, inescapable reckoning now emerging to confront international war crimes prosecutors, NATO peacekeepers and most of all the traumatized survivors of Kosovo as they try to rebuild this vast necropolis of the graves and ashes of 10,000 dead.

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the first head of state to be put in the dock for crimes against humanity, began here Tuesday with prosecutors accusing the former Yugoslav president of masterminding the slaughter of thousands of people and the abuse of hundreds of thousands more during a bloody decade in power. The first day of the long-awaited proceedings at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was a watershed in the annals of international law.

Long before Zeljko Raznatovic became the feared "Arkan," before he was an assassin for the state, a filthy rich gangster or an indicted war crimes suspect, he was the son of a Serbian war hero growing up in the projects of New Belgrade. The high-rise apartment complex is still known as "the Six Corporals" because many of the first people to move in were families of soldiers like Arkan's father, a guerrilla who fought the Nazis. Zeljko was only 9 when he ran away from New Belgrade.

NATO forces pounded across Kosovo's borders Monday to secure abandoned towns for awaiting refugees, and U.S. troops took up positions guarding a suspected mass grave site that could be the first to verify claims of Serbian atrocities. Accounts varied of how many bodies lie under a 3-foot mound of fresh dirt in an otherwise overgrown cemetery.

On their way out of Kosovo, Serbian security forces took prisoners with them and left ethnic Albanians to dig up shallow graves and wonder who might still be alive. Many of those searching for the missing can only hope that by digging up unmarked graves in the fields and forests, they might find a relative's body, to give it a proper burial and lay one more of Kosovo's ghosts to rest.

President Slobodan Milosevic tried to keep her out of Kosovo, but on Wednesday, war crimes prosecutor Louise Arbour surveyed by air and on the ground traces of the awful deeds that the Yugoslav leader's forces are accused of committing against the province's ethnic Albanians.

A Bosnian Serb army officer pleaded not guilty Tuesday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to charges of murdering Muslims in a U.N.-declared "safe area" in 1995. Lt. Col. Dragan Jokic is charged with four counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in the July 1995 massacre of Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. He was stationed near the U.N. enclave during the 3 1/2-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Jokic, 44, has been held at the U.N.

Military officials said 183 Yugoslav army officers and soldiers have been charged with committing war crimes in Kosovo, and the trials of some of them have already started or taken place. An officer from the army's legal branch said more charges are likely.

Kosovo's U.N.-run Supreme Court said acts committed by Slobodan Milosevic's forces in the Yugoslav province constituted war crimes or crimes against humanity, but not genocide. The three-judge court said that "the purpose was not the destruction of the Albanian ethnic group in whole or in part." The former Yugoslav president is being held at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity.

A Bosnian Serb army officer pleaded not guilty Tuesday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to charges of murdering Muslims in a U.N.-declared "safe area" in 1995. Lt. Col. Dragan Jokic is charged with four counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in the July 1995 massacre of Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. He was stationed near the U.N. enclave during the 3 1/2-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Jokic, 44, has been held at the U.N.

U.N. war crimes prosecutors in the Netherlands revealed a secret indictment Wednesday against a former Bosnian Serb security chief charged with the genocide of Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has made a career of hiding from reality, but as a war crimes prisoner, he can no longer run from it. For all the bluster on display at his first appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia last week, Milosevic is now utterly bereft of power and privilege.

A Yugoslav court sentenced Rade Markovic, the feared Serbian secret police chief under Slobodan Milosevic, to one year in jail for revealing state secrets. Markovic is the first senior Milosevic ally to be convicted by a court since reformers ousted the former Yugoslav president in October. Two of Markovic's former police associates, Milan Radonjic and Branko Crni, also were sentenced to one year in jail, and a third, Nikola Curcic, received a sentence of one year and four months.

Now that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has appeared before the U.N. war crimes tribunal, pressure is building for the hand-over of other suspects ranging from well-hidden fugitives to Serbia's president. Some indictees are living quietly but openly here in Belgrade, including four associates of Milosevic who were indicted together with him two years ago on charges of crimes against humanity.

Criticizing Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica for dismissing her court's claim to Slobodan Milosevic, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor rejected calls that the former president first stand trial at home. Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said she remained "cautiously optimistic" that Milosevic would be extradited to the Netherlands-based tribunal so that the U.N. court can try him on suspicion of involvement in atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The new chief prosecutor for an international tribunal said Friday that the Yugoslav government is obstructing the investigation of war crimes committed against Serbs. Full investigation of cases in which Serbs were the victims rather than the accused has not been possible because Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government has blocked investigators from entering most areas of Serbia, Carla del Ponte told a news conference here. She urged Milosevic to reverse that year-old policy.

Radiating contempt for the outside world, which has called him to account for a decade of bloody mayhem, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic defied a war crimes tribunal Tuesday by refusing to retain defense counsel or enter a plea. "I consider this tribunal false tribunal and indictments false indictments," Milosevic told the court in imperfect English at his initial appearance on four counts of war crimes, for which he would spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

Nothing will be allowed to block the imminent transfer of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic said Tuesday. Even if Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court rules in favor of Milosevic and declares that a new decree aimed at providing a legal basis for such a hand-over is unconstitutional, authorities will fulfill an obligation under international law to turn him over to the tribunal, Djindjic said.