Milosevic attacks trial authority

Milosevic faces 66 charges relating to genocide and war crimes

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CNN) -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has used his first opportunity to address his war crimes trial to accuse prosecutors of mounting a "lynching."

He told the court in The Hague on Wednesday he wants a response to his longstanding questions on "the very legality of this tribunal" and on the legality of his arrest last year in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

But presiding judge Richard May interrupted the former Yugoslav leader and told him that the court had dealt with the legal questions Milosevic raised and Milosevic's challenges were now "irrelevant."

The second day of the trial was adjourned, and Milosevic, who is representing himself, will begin his opening statement on Thursday on the charges against him. He made his challenge after listening to prosecutors Dirk Ryneveld and Geoffrey Nice deliver statements.

In his first words to the court on Wednesday, Milosevic, 60, said: "This tribunal does not have the right to try me because it has not been established lawfully.

VIDEO Milosevic on trial accused of "the worst crimes known to humankind." CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports (February 12) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)   MORE STORIES • What they said: Quotes from the prosecution  • Charges: A summary of the indictment  • Timeline: The Milosevic years  • The view from Serbia  • Speaking out for Kosovo's dead    EXTRA INFORMATION • In pictures: Milosevic in court  In-Depth: The case against Milosevic  CNN Presents: The people against Milosevic    RESOURCES On the scene: CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports    CNN.com Europe More news  from our European edition    QUICKVOTE Slobodan Milosevic says the charges against him are a conspiracy by the West. Do you agree? Yes No View Results

"We cannot speak of a fair or equitable trial here.The prosecutor is not only biased but has already publicised my judgment."

Milosevic's legal advisers have complained of prosecutors saying publicly that he deserves life imprisonment.

"From your prosecutors' office a media campaign has been orchestrated as a parallel lynching," Milosevic told the court.

Milosevic has said he does not recognise the authority of the court and will defend himself before the three-member panel of judges.

He is charged with 66 counts, including crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo and genocide in Bosnia last decade.

May said that if Milosevic had bothered to read the court's decisions he would know that all the legal points raised about the trial and his arrest have already been dealt with by the court.

"You had the right of appeal. You did not take it," May told Milosevic. "The matters therefore have all been dealt with, and your views about the tribunal are now completely irrelevant as far as these proceedings are concerned.

"All the matters you raise you've argued before and we have ruled upon (them). There is no reason for them to raised again in these proceedings. We will be hearing the rest of your arguments and submissions tomorrow morning."

This is the biggest European war crimes trial since Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg after World War II.

Earlier, Ryneveld, who is prosecuting Milosevic's conduct toward Kosovo, said the war crimes trial is "primarily a deportation case" that involves the persecution "of civilians in a widespread, systematic scale."

Ryneveld said Serb forces "executed a concerted plan to terrorise the ethnic Albanians, or Kosovars, into leaving." Killings, lootings, beatings and rapes by the Serb forces generated an exodus of Kosovars, he said.

Villagers would listen to the sound of artillery from neighbouring villages, see houses burning and hear horror stories from those who were fleeing, he said.

"They feared that the same fate awaited them," Ryneveld said, so they would get on their carts and tractors and join the convoy of displaced people avoiding rape and murder.

Ryneveld said that by June 1999, more than 800,000 Kosovo Albanian civilians had been ousted from their homes by Serb forces and had to flee to neighboring states.

A prisoner at Trnopolje detention camp, Bosnia, in 1992

"In the process," Ryneveld said, "thousands of civilians were murdered," many of them elderly, women and children.

He said that even though the indictment involving Kosovo covers the first six months of 1999, "it must be remembered that the discriminatory campaign" against Kosovars started earlier and resulted in the internal displacement of thousands.

Ryneveld predicted Milosevic will say that the refugee crisis was spurred by the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, not by the actions of Serb forces.

"The witnesses will tell you that the vast majority of refugees fled their homes because of the attacks by Serb forces and not because of NATO bombing," said Ryneveld, who pointed out that Serb forces intensified their efforts to terrorise the Albanians in Kosovo during the NATO campaign in 1999.

In March 1999, NATO issued an ultimatum to Milosevic to stop a crackdown on Kosovo Albanians or face air strikes.

Kosovo Albanians had signed a peace deal in France but Yugoslavia rejected it. NATO warplanes then began an air campaign against targets throughout Yugoslavia that was suspended in June after Serb troops begin to withdraw from Kosovo.

Milosevic also is accused of responsibility in Bosnia for the Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys, the siege of Sarajevo, and the deportation or imprisonment of over a quarter of a million.

Prosecutors on Wednesday screened graphic film of gaunt prisoners in Bosnian camps, and claimed Milosevic masterminded "unrelenting violence" not seen since World War II.

They showed 1992 video footage of thin and frightened prisoners at the Trnopolje detention centre, and said that at that centre and others at Omarska and Keraterm in eastern Bosnia, thousands of detainees were starved, beaten, sexually assaulted and tortured. They said many were murdered and their bodies buried in mass graves.

Prosecutors say the prison camps were part of a campaign to rid large portions of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo of non-Serb populations and create a "greater" Serb state.

Milosevic, who has already spent seven months behind bars in The Hague, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.